I told Steve that the reason I couldn�t sleep was that I was suffused with self-loathing. That doesn�t make any sense, he pointed out groggily, but of course degree of sense-making is not that to which the emotional brain responds. Here�s the thing that when it finally occurred to me as a point of illogic drove me out from under the comforter once and for all: after the first interview, the three of us ladies all looked equally good on paper and the decision was "very very close," you will remember; however, the alleged final call was made based on someone having "a little bit more relevant experience," which excuse me but shouldn�t they have been able to tell, immediately, from her resume? Something doesn�t smell right about this, and it sure as hell isn�t me. I�m trying to cobble together some explanation for what happened, and humor me here: candidate who has written masterful cover letter with her application also has more than enough technical experience and wins over IT guy at first interview, resume checks out and references make radioactive testimonial to her skills attitude professionalism etc., editorial portfolio is boffo and photography portfolio including stuff she developed herself is icing on cake and includes a lot of precisely the same kind of compositions she would be doing on the job, blows both skills tests out of the water at the second interview and lit-majorly bonds with her two interrogators and when it�s done one of them makes a grammatical slipup that after so many years of interviewing people she should not be making, fails to get job and then when the hiring manager who has been very gracious calls with this news she is so anxious to get off the phone that she is actually rude. Steve pointed out last night that sometimes, for whatever reason, they don�t *want* the best person for the job, they want what they want. Sometimes, as with the actors� union and Broadway shows, listing an open position and going through the motions of auditions is a legal requirement even though you already know who you�re going to pick for it � someone who knows someone or someone who is conceded to have paid her dues. Vanessa was the first but not the only person to comment on the xenophobic clubbiness of the modern dot-org, how if Lucille did so much as answer the phone at a PBS pledge drive or hand out leaflets during the Dukakis campaign I might as well have come to the interview in my cow costume. So I should be feeling better. I am not feeling better.

Last night as I was driving home from Gastro (after a lovely half-hour in the parking lot with Catharine, my cell phone beaming love to Morgantown) I suddenly half-remembered something from a movie I saw in high school. Something about a gung-ho young salesman who is leaving a pitch meeting he had with some older corporate guys who intractably refused to listen to anything he had to say? That�s the sense of it, anyway. He�s outside the conference room, stunned at how badly things went, what did he do wrong that he was unable to make them listen to him, and as he starts to walk away one of the men from the meeting emerges from the sanctum and calls out to him. The young guy still looks baffled, and the older guy, by means of reassurance and support, says something like, You talked poetry, had a kind of vision. You scared them. These guys wear suspenders *and* belts. I wish I could remember the movie or one of the actors if only to be conscientious and record the quote accurately (Neither Google nor the IMdb, both of which I checked last night even though I was running late to Vanessa�s, were not illuminating), but I think this is as good as my memory gets. I had been telling Catharine how one element of my heartbreak pastiche was disappointment in Scully, how I�d instinctively liked her so well and recognized her as Like Me and then she�d turned around and hired someone who was not the best person for the job, how she had been her own Dukakis and made a bold stand in favor of mediocrity. Reading this, I know, you may be inclined to roll your eyes and see me as pious, but it�s true, I spent two hours with Scully and I do feel that I know her well enough to be disappointed in her. And well enough to know that she recognized me too.

So I�d been talking about that and then we said our goodbyes and I was pulling away and the movie drifted back to me, the vessel itself, at first all I had in my head was the phrase "suspenders and belts" and I had to concentrate hard and remember the rest of it, where it had even come from. I had told Catharine that I wanted to send her the job req so she could see for herself how insane it was that they didn�t hire me, I wanted to tell her about my genius lede about the translator at the awards luncheon, but that all I�d be doing was getting her to agree with me, "Yes, you�re right, this shit makes no sense, I too cannot imagine the explanation for it." The fact is that there is no explanation that can be got at, and all I can do is make up hypothetically possible things about dot-org Lucille the diehard Democrat, I have to find a story that makes sense to me and choose to believe in it so that, well, I can sleep nights and I don�t start crying in bars. This is not making things up but making them livable with; it is neither dubious nor disingenuous and is, on the contrary, necessary. So, fine. There was this job that became available, and someone � Lucille � with ties to the organization made it clear that she wanted it. It was agreed that Lucille had spent enough time as the traffic manager in the graphic-design department, hence the portfolio, and for a few years she had maintained a Geocities home page with pictures of her kids on it and no misspellings, and before the graphics gig she�d been an extremely competent and well-liked admin, so she made a good case for her ability to meet the job�s demands. Also, she�d recently been divorced and money was tight, her car was one more repair job away from the scrap heap, and people felt good about the prospect of hooking her up with a higher salary, you certainly couldn�t say that she didn�t deserve it and they were happy to be able to help her out. Her cover letter had bullet points in it, and her references all worked for the city or the state. Well you can�t just have it, the organization said, you will have to interview for it. So the position was listed as open and a bunch of other people sent their resumes in, and from these two were culled based on their satisfaction of the listing�s basic requirements � since if there were ever an inquiry it would be important to be able to document something that looked like competition � and, who knows, maybe one of those two only made the cut because of the friendly busybodying, to the hiring manager, of a professional acquaintance, Take a look at this one. The first interview happened, and although they thought they might have declared Lucille the victor right then so as to spare themselves another afternoon in the interview room, she was a little shaky or at least one of the other candidates was a little wonderful, and they said to her, Listen, go home and prepare a portfolio or something, bring in all those graphics proofs, something we can look at and document as one of the deciding factors. So Lucille did, and game over, and the reason Scully was rude, cutting me off and hanging up on me, is that she knew that if I were the type of person who responded to rejection by saying, "I don�t understand, I really thought I�d demonstrated that I had exactly what you were looking for, and in fact near the end of the second interview you said that there was no doubt in your mind that I could do the job and do it tremendously, you said 'tremendously.' Could you tell me where I went wrong?" then she would be able to make no adequate reply, she�d know I was right and she�d know I knew she knew it.

That�s my story and I�m sticking to it. But, question: why do I give myself permission to do this, invoke the bit about suspenders and belts like I�ve got a right to be the judge of what it implies about me, make up something to believe in because I need to believe in something, when I do not give DP permission � not that he�s listening but you know what I mean � to say what he says about his writing? Is it that what I�m doing is helping myself to a narrative when what he�s doing is helping himself to a value judgment? Is it that I find his self-coronation vulgar? Is it that I�ve read his writing and that although it is good I know objectively that there�s no way out of all his friends he is the master prose stylist? Is it the dichotomy I can�t help making, ever, between that which someone has earned and that which he or she has not? I�m not sure. And speaking of DP, DM got married last weekend. Christ almighty, I don�t have to make up much at all � that conversation with Julian never happened, I didn�t go to Toronto, I found a job in New York and took DP�s friend up on his sublet or bought the studio from the other one � to imagine that it might have been me.

Yesterday evening, before I came here to make the list for camping-shopping trips Steve and I will execute tonight and tomorrow, I went to Vanessa�s and with my non-reading-able hours watched "The Best of Everything." I needed escapism and it delivered. What Hope Lange is wearing, in the scene where she is drunk at Stephen Boyd�s apartment, is my new favorite movie dress. Should I ever gain access to a sewing machine again, I may try to make it. Then Steve got online and looked at airfares to Frankfurt. He�s going to call a travel agent his dad knows in Tacoma to see if he can beat the listed prices, but in any case some money is going to change hands sometime this week.

I think Steve�s waking up, and I want coffee.