It was a warm day, so even though I wanted to dress up a bit for the interview, I still dressed with the temperature in mind. I wore a lift and separate type of bra under a white blouse - high necked with lots of ruffles on it, a cute little black tie and long sleeves. The sleeves were only a little puffy. I also wore a severe little open blue jacket that in some way countered and offset the impression of my conservative blouse. With this top, I wore a simple, loose-fit, knee-length blue skirt, the same shade as my jacket. I also wore matching blue heels. I don't like wearing stockings.
It was a nine-fifteen o'clock interview for a science experiment, but a very well-paying science experiment, and I really needed the five hundred dollars. The interview was held in a gymnasium of all things, but it had been very strangely furnished. At the front was a simple table with a lady sitting behind it. There were two empty chairs in front of the table and the rest of the gymnasium was walled off from view by canvas drops from the ceiling. I didn't know what to make of it, but it seemed like it might be a great maze. I walked forward and seated myself in one of the empty chairs in front of the table. The woman behind the desk glanced up to smile at me and went back to writing something on a notepad. She had all sorts of papers, files and pads in front of her.
I waited a few minutes and another girl came in. She had a slender boyish figure with shoulder length dark brown hair and black-framed glasses. She had worn a two-piece casual suit - a light brown jacket that doubled as a blouse, and matching light brown slacks and dark brown loafers with no socks. She looked to be about twenty-two and sat down in the chair beside me. I noticed from what little skin she showed that she either had a very even tan or was of Mediterranean extraction. Like me, she only rated a glance from the woman behind the desk. No one said a word.
After five minutes of silence, just when I was getting ready to start asking questions, the lady behind the desk sighed, stacked some loose papers and put her hands flat on the desk. "Now we can get started," she said briefly. She looked to be in her fifties and was wearing a laboratory smock. There was no telling what she wore beneath the smock as only bare legs wearing nursing shoes protruded. She had old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses. She picked up another sheet of paper and a pencil and looked from the other girl to me, and back to the other girl. "Name?"
"Cheryl," she answered, "Cheryl Newcas..."
"Don't need the last name," the woman interrupted as she turned to me, "Name?"
"Ella."
The woman behind the desk nodded, "I'm Janice. Ella do you smoke? You, Cheryl?"
We both said no in turn, and then Janice continued with an incredibly long list of questions including a few that I thought were very personal like, "Sexual preference, Cheryl?"
Cheryl stammered a bit while turning pink, "I don't see how... um, that is..." I could imagine in her head she was watching the five hundred dollars flying away, and then she took a breath and said, "Well, if you must know, I've slept with a few men, and a few women, and I haven't really decided..."
Janice rolled her eyes sarcastically and interrupted again, "Choose from Straight, Curious, Bisexual, or Gay." For some reason Janice suddenly pinned me with her eyes and added, "You choose curious only if you are completely sexually confused."
"Um, bisexual, I guess," Cheryl said a bit miserably, still turning redder.
"Ella?"
"Oh, straight for sure!" I declared. And there more even more personal questions like, have you ever had sex in public? Are you dominant or submissive - I had no idea how to answer that one since neither was appropriate, but Janice insisted on an answer, so I said dominant. I think the worst was 'Which do you prefer: giving or receiving oral sex?' Cheryl said giving and I said receiving. And it went on like that, with Janice making her mysterious markings on paper. Then it seemed Janice finally ran out of questions.
She gave us each a serious look then said, "This experiment has two types of characters: Accomplishers and Subjects. All the Accomplisher slots are filled so there is only room left for Subjects. Are you both willing to be Subjects?"
"Is the pay the same?" asked Cheryl cautiously. Her voice was a little high in pitch but somehow still melodious.
"The same," Janice answered with a nod, so we both expressed our willingness to be subjects.
Half over her shoulder, Janice yelled, "Wilber!"
A moment later a young man wearing a smock and black trousers came out from behind a fold in the canvas and beckoned to Cheryl and myself, "You're to follow me, please." He said with a shy little grin. And we followed him down canvas hallway after hallway. It was a maze and it was peppered with what I assumed to be rooms since some pieces of canvas had numbers on them. Finally, Wilber stopped in front of a canvas marked 37. He held it open like a tent flap and said, "Step in here please," and then he followed us in.
We were in a canvas room that went from the floor to the rafters on the walls and even the door. The room was about ten feet square. One side had a flat couch like the kind that doctor's use to examine patients, and across from it was a wooden chair. Even the floor was covered in canvas. It seemed very quiet as if the canvas muffled sound. Wilber gave us another of his shy smiles and said, "I'll be back in about thirty minutes, and should be able to give you some idea of the waiting time." Then he disappeared.
I walked directly over to the wooden chair and sat down. There was absolutely nothing in the room but the color of canvas; even the examining couch and the wooden chair were painted the tan/off-white of the canvas. That is, except for Cheryl and I, who suddenly seemed very colorful. Cheryl gave me a fishy look for grabbing the chair and went over to examine the controls at the far end of the examining couch. She found a way to lower the couch to chair height and primly sat down in the middle of it. Cheryl had sat down precisely opposite to me, crossed her legs and then just looked downward.
Neither of us said anything for a while, and Cheryl seemed fixed to a downward gaze, but eventually she cleared her throat and said, "I had to wait nine hours yesterday, and when they sent me home, they told me that no decision had been made about me, and to come back tomorrow."
She had brown eyes that looked a little sad and soulful at the moment. I swallowed and asked, "You really waited nine hours? Was it a room like this?"
She nodded and said, "Just like this, only when they told us that the wait would be four hours or more, the other girl just got up and left. I heard them tell her not bother to come back tomorrow." Cheryl gave me a direct look and a little smile, "So I'm waitin' until the cows come home if it's necessary."
I nodded, privately agreeing with her. After a few more minutes, Cheryl asked, "Is that your natural hair color?" then she added with a stammer, "I-I only ask because it's such a lovely shade of blond."
"Yes," I answered, "its called honey blond, I think." I glanced at my watch. It had been ten minutes since Wilber left.
"It's the same color as your eyebrows," continued Cheryl mildly, "and you know what they say about that?"
