The Interview Read Online Free

writer’s hat move a little. Candace pushed her bangs out of her eyes and waited for the woman to continue.
     
    “ I had to admit that he had not. Saying it was… difficult… for me. James kept my gaze the entire time; he didn't touch me again but I felt comforted somehow by his presence. It was a strange feeling. James had more to say; he appeared to be relieved by my answer. He said: ‘well, I ‘m asking to marry you. I like you; I think we’d even be happy together. Since this Ben is not here to contend with, I’m fairly certain I can win you over.”
     
    The reporter had lost all interest in taking notes.
     
    “ What did you say?” she asked, eagerly.
     
    “ Nothing… I didn’t get a chance to speak. He just tossed out that sentence and got up; he walked right out of the room and left the library. Jane Eyre was completely forgotten, I can tell you.”
     
    “ I'll wager she was!”
     
    “ I went home, and spoke with my father. He informed me that James had asked him for my hand in marriage a week earlier. I was dumbfounded… things like that happen in books, you know… ones written centuries ago. The fact that Ben had never even mentioned marriage suddenly became quite apparent. I had no tangible evidence that he even cared about me, merely a faint hope that he did. He’d never even said it. I did not get much sleep that night… in fact I cried a great deal.” The authoress sighed again; the sound of it filled Candace with a morose kind of sympathy. “I suppose I was mourning that night, weeping for dreams which had been slowly dying already.” The woman in the hat glanced at the couple down the path again. “You see, it was not that Ben wasn’t there… my soul is worked over with a stubborn sort of loyalty. My affection was, however, misplaced in Ben; he was unworthy of it. His actions warranted no allocation of my precious time or emotions be granted to him. That night, I decided that a literal James was worth more than a figurative Ben.”
     
    The reported giggled softly at that and wrote it down.
     
    “ That’s a good one.”
     
    “ I thought so as well. I repeated that line to myself several times before drifting off to sleep. The next morning, I spoke with my father about James. A good measure of character in his eyes was respect, and James had proved that by not only asking him for me, but in questioning my character... testing my loyalty. ‘It means he’s really interested in you, sweetie’, he told me. I walked along the creek for some hours that morning, just thinking. James was sitting on my parent’s porch when I returned.”
     
    “ Nice of him to give you space like that…” Candace put in. The writer smiled.
     
    “ He probably couldn’t find me and went back up to the house, knowing I’d eventually return.”
     
    “ So… did he start interrogating you again?”
     
    “ No. I offered him a glass of iced tea. He accepted and we sat, drinking tea and looking at my mother's garden.”
     
    “ Sounds boring…” Candace thought, doodling on the notepad margins; her story seemed to be slipping into a more 'mundane' category.
     
    “ Ours is not the most exciting story…” the authoress began, after a moment, “No pirates, or near death experiences, no car break-downs or love triangles… I started out with a completely clean slate with James. I didn’t fall for him right away, but I knew right where I stood with him. That made liking him a little easier.”
     
    “ So… when did you know you loved him?” the reporter asked, interested again. The serene demeanor of the woman on the bench made her feel almost ashamed of wanting a more thrilling tale to tale; so many people had everyday love stories, just like hers. Just like the ones in her books.
     
    “ We spent that summer talking on my parent’s veranda…” the lady answered. “One day I laughed at one of his jokes… he did not tell them very often, something I found I liked. He was not a clown.