Bowie knifed.

I fell in love with living in the South during grad school, so once I graduated I decided I wanted to stay east of the Mississippi. I started looking for writing or editing jobs in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Nashville, New Orleans, Jackson. One by one those places started to rule themselves out, mostly because no one in them would hire me. So I turned my starry, working-retail-in-the-meantime eyes to D.C. It seemed exciting and new and like it might have a slightly larger pool of writing/editing jobs.

One day as I was preparing for my 2-9 shift at the Pottery Barn Outlet (where I lugged 9 x 12 rugs for Germantown women and tried to cram them into the "backseat" of 2-seater sports cars in 110 degree heat), I got a phone call from a publishing company in Bowie, Maryland. Come for an interview, they said.

I had to drive to Nashville, fly to Baltimore, and drive to D.C., a circuitous route resultant of my meager retail wages. I arrived the day before the interview with my brand new suit bought on a department-store credit card I had opened to save the 10%. As I drove around D.C. with only the free map from the car rental place, I thought to myself, look at this hustle and bustle, this history, this hub of industry! And then I started to make a ring around the Maryland side of the city, thinking, I need to find where I would live. But everywhere I turned was not there. It all seemed run-down, dirty, and unsafe (including the no-tell motel I was sure to be murdered in).

The woman interviewing me was possibly the most abrasive person I have ever met. She was from New York, but lived in So Cal for a while so she supposed we had a connection. It was my first interview ever, and I thought I did pretty well. I was hopeful. But I had not done my due diligence: after listening carefully, I discovered the company was a vanity press: pay for pub. Still dripping with grad school idealism, I knew I could not take this job. So I relaxed a little. And then things got interesting.

The elastic on my pantyhose snapped while on the office tour. Admittedly, they were probably at least 10 years old because pantyhose aren't really what a modern girl has on hand. I had to duck into the bathroom and take them all the way off.

The interviewer insisted on taking me to lunch at her favorite Italian restaurant in Bowie. We pulled up to an abandoned mall. There were maybe three other cars in the parking lot. She guided me inside, where every single store was vacant except for the Italian restaurant. The lunchtime rush consisted of two customers. I ordered manicotti, though to this day I have no idea why because I have never ordered that in my life. She ordered a side dish of green beans. While we made small talk over lunch, every once in a while she reached across the table and took bites off my plate.

On the way back to the office, she offered herself a piece of gum, rolled the window down, and tossed the gum wrapper. Litterer! And also rude: she didn't even offer a piece to me.

On the plane ride home, the manicotti got mad and tried to make a jail break. I made it to the bathroom in the Nashville airport before I threw up. And then again in the dirtiest Chevron station in Tennessee. And again on the side of I-40 somewhere east of Memphis. Big rigs honked at me as I doubled over to barf.

When I got home, I had an email from the interviewer asking for an "assignment": an essay on why I thought I was the right fit for the job. Between finding Maryland repugnant, the vanity press angle, the busted pantyhose, the abandoned mall, the littering, and the food poisoning, I couldn't think of one compelling reason to give her. Instead, I called my parents and told them I was moving back to California.