I glanced at Maddy’s grey eyes. Her brows pulled together slightly, but she didn’t say anything.

Clearing my throat, I looked down at the table top, “I…am twenty-three, I just moved to the area…and I have a big family to support,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t mentioned just moving here because Maddy perked up, sensing that as a conversation topic.

“Oh, lovely,” she beamed. “Where did you make the move from? And how are you finding it here so far?”

I internally sighed. What happened to tell them as little as possible?

“From London,” I said plainly. “It’s nice here, yeah.”

“And your family? You have children?”

I almost shuddered, “No. Just younger siblings.”

“Nice, how many?”

I almost sighed out loud.

“Six.”

Her shaped brows arched in surprise, “Wow, must be a loud house.”

“You could say that,” I faintly nodded.

“So, Phoenix, any experience working in security?” Maddy reminded me of the second part of her question.

“Honestly…” I started. “Not much. I did some work for family when I was a teen, but it was off the books. I wasn’t paid for it.”

It was part truth. Working my way up the gang I’d joined when I was fifteen, had consisted of being vigilant and watching out. Either for rivals dealing on our territory, or for the police. You had to keep an eye out, or you could easily end up in jail…or dead.

“Okay,” Maddy nodded. “So, no experience in nightclubs? Considering you were underage yourself.”

“No,” I shook my head.

She nodded again, looking back to her clipboard before meeting my eyes.

“Tell me, how would you deal with the following situation? Someone, a young woman, is extremely drunk. She’s struggling to walk, her words are barely coherent, and she’s throwing up.”

The image made me want to curl my lip in disgust, but I expected as much. It was a nightclub. People drank too much. More than they could handle. And sometimes people’s drinks got spiked.

“I would pull her to the side,” I began, then wished I’d used another word instead of ‘pull’ when Maddy’s brows creased momentarily. “And I’d try to get her name, and the names of the people she might be with.”

“You can’t make any sense of what she’s saying,” Maddy piped in. “She’s inebriated.”

“Okay,” I huffed quietly. “I’d probably sit her down on the side and call her an ambulance.”

It seemed to be the right answer because Maddy smiled brightly.

“Right,” she said. “And how would you cooperate with emergency services, such as the paramedics in such a case? Or the police in other instances?”

This was starting to sound like more of an interrogation than an interview. Words like ‘emergency services’ and ‘police’ were triggers. Only bad memories arose when they were mentioned. Like, one of my brothers getting seriously hurt. Or the threat of being arrested and sent back to jail.

“Would you like me to repeat the question?”

“No,” I muttered. “I’d tell them what happened. How I found her, and how her condition is. And the same thing if the police were ever called. I’d tell them what happened before they got there.”

The words tasted foul on my tongue. Telling the police what happened. I almost scoffed. Snitching was against the code of life where I came from. Snitching was for the lowly. Everyone knew a snitch’s days were numbered. Maddy nodded, marking something on her clipboard. I frowned, wondering whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Okay, so,” she took a sip of her drink. “What are some de-escalation techniques when conflicts are arising? Say someone doesn’t have a ticket to get into the club and they’re getting rowdy? Or someone inside the club is causing a problem with other guests. They’re too drunk and acting very aggressively? How do you prevent the situation getting worse?”

This one wasn’t hard. Walter was the person who came into mind, and I almost smiled. I couldn’t exactly tell her my methods that sometimes consisted of me pinning him to the wall or the floor. I could, however, mention the methods I used before anything like that became necessary.

“I would separate them from others,” I said.

“How?” Maddy interjected.

I frowned, then motioned with my hands. “Hold their arms firmly by their sides, and walk them outside.”

“And what if they don’t want to go outside?”

I tutted under my breath, “I would explain to them that they have to calm down, or things will get out of hand.”

“They’re drunk, unreasonable.”

This woman loved her dramatic scenarios, didn’t she?

“I would force them outside,” I said. “And tell them they can’t come back in.”

She nodded, jotting something else down. I tried to read it, but her laptop was in the way.

“And I know you said you have not much security experience, but can you think of a time when you demonstrated such techniques and what the outcome was?”

I paused in thought, wondering if I should make something up or tell her an actual scenario. To lie would be the better option, but knowing her, she’d ask follow up questions that I might not be able to think of answers for fast enough.

“Well…” I trailed off.

“Anything at all,” she shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be work related.”

I dropped my gaze and tried to think of something.

“One time…” I started again. “One of my brothers was angry over something. Really mad. I tried to talk to him to get him to calm down, but he wasn’t having it. He was trying to go for one of our other brothers, so to avoid them fighting, I grabbed him and held him against the wall. I held him there until he stopped resisting and listened to me. Then I let him go.”

It wasn’t much, but it was the truth. I didn’t have to go into unnecessary details with a woman I barely knew.

“Right,” Maddy nodded. “I bet being the older brother has a lot of moments like that.”

“Sure does,” I muttered.

She folded her hands on top of each other and smiled briefly, “And finally, do you have any questions for me?”

I wasn’t expecting that, and my frown alone must have put her off.

“Anything you’d like to know about how we run our shifts? Or what a usual night looks like?”

I wasn’t particularly interested, but to say that would obviously come across badly.

“What kind of shifts would I be working, if I get the job?” I asked her.

“So, you would start your shift around 9pm normally, unless there’s a big event, in which case you may start a little earlier,” she explained. “Shifts tend to be six hours long, with you finishing after 3am.”

I nodded, sounded like what I expected with such a job. At my lack of further questions, Maddy decided to talk a little bit more about the nightclub and the job role. Most of it had been described online, but I tried to look engaged as she said it all to me again anyway. By the end of it all, she slid out from the booth and shook my hand again.

“So,” she said. “We’ll give you a ring later on and let you know if you’ve got an offer for the job.”

“Okay,” I replied. “And when can I expect to hear back?”

“Probably within a day or two,” she replied. “I have a couple more interviews scheduled, plus we’re still doing a few background checks. So that takes time too.”

I nodded nonchalantly, though I wondered how intensive these background checks would be. Surely if it were anything serious, they would have screened us before the interview process, so I assumed it was nothing to worry about.

“Alright, thanks,” I murmured, making my leave.

“Have a nice day,” she smiled before I left.

 

My eyes burned momentarily as they adjusted to the brighter light outside. I walked with my chin high, as usual, and shoulders back. The job may not have sounded appealing, with all the drunk and disorderly I’d have to be managing, but with such a job also came respect. I was strong. People would take one look at me and know they couldn’t take me down. I didn’t have to smile, in fact, that would work to my advantage of steering away troublemakers. It was hard to believe myself ‘cooperating’ with the police in particular circumstances, but at least the police here had no idea who I was. Not on first glance anyway. Sure my information was in the system, but I would be the ‘good guy’ in the situation – and probably for the first time too.

 

I had just walked through the front door when I got a ping on my phone. Another email. From Pink Moon. I raised my brows, not expecting them to have made a decision already. It had been about an hour since the interview ended. On my way home, I’d topped up on some necessities. Milk, bread and the likes.

With an uncomfortable stammer in my chest, I opened the email with furrowed brows, not sure what to expect. My brows only frowned deeper when I read what the email said. I skipped past words like ‘regretfully’ and ‘unfortunately’ and got to the point. It was a rejection. Due to a previous criminal conviction, they would be unable to take me on as an employee.

I locked my phone and let my hand fall back to my side. Staring ahead into space, I grinded my teeth together.

What. A. Waste. Of. My. Damn. Time.

Swallowing the anger that threatened to overspill from inside me, I resisted the urge to hit or kick at something. I stood there breathing heavily as my heart pounded in protest inside my chest. With all the muscles in my body tensed, I knew there was one thing I had to do now. I grimaced.

Looked like I was going to have to go crawling back to Jazz.