Her eyebrows flew up. “Rice? Wow. That’s big.”
He grinned. “Yeah. It’s also hard as hell to get accepted, but I figured I might as well go for it. My employers here have put in a good word for me. I’m hoping that will help.” He paused beside an open door and motioned for her to enter. “In here, please.”
She brushed past him and entered a room that was just large enough to accommodate a table and two chairs. It was otherwise barren, but at least the chair Lisa sank down in was comfortable.
“Sorry for the boring decor.” He closed the door and headed around the table to the other chair. “They don’t want any distractions.”
“Okay.”
Sinking down in the chair, he flipped through the papers on the clipboard.
Lisa looped the strap of her purse over the back of the chair and studied the table. A vertical board ran along the center of it, tall enough to prevent her from seeing the table surface on his side.
“Looks like you filled out everything,” he said, setting the clipboard aside, “so we can go ahead and get started.” He offered his hand across the barrier between them with another smile. “I’m Brad, by the way.”
She shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Lisa.” The sound of a drawer sliding open reached her ears. A moment later, he set down what sounded like another clipboard. He then held up a deck of cards. “So, the cards in this deck have five different images on them.” He turned them to face him, fanned them, then peeled off five cards one at a time and held them up. “There’s a square, a triangle, a circle, a plus sign, and these squiggly lines that look like the river symbol you might find in a map key.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to shuffle the cards, then hold one up facing me.” He demonstrated the action, revealing the card’s plain black back. “You’ll tell me what card you think it is. I’ll make a little mark here on my paper.” He glanced down and to his right. “Then I’ll return the card to the deck, shuffle it, and hold up another.”
“Okay.”
He reached forward and flipped a laminated piece of paper from his side of the barrier over to hang on her side. The page depicted each of the five cards he’d shown her, aligned side by side. “In case you forget the symbols.”
“Okay.”
“Any questions?”
“No.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Here we go.”
Lisa diligently studied each card he held up and tried to identify it. “Star. Square. Star. Star. River. Star. Plus. Plus. Circle. Star.” She didn’t know how many cards he held up, but it felt like a lot. She also wondered if perhaps she might be making some good guesses, because by the time they finished, he looked pleasantly surprised.
“Okay. On to the next one.”
“How’d I do?” she couldn’t resist asking. This would be an easy, high-paying gig if she could get it.
He offered her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. We aren’t allowed to tell you that.”
“Okay.”
“Next we have a deck with four different cards.” Again, he held each up as he verbally identified it. “Red heart. Red diamond. Black spade. Black club.” He flipped another paper over to hang on the barrier, depicting the cards. “We’ll do the same thing with this test that we did with the other.”
“Okay.”
He shuffled the cards and began to hold them up, one by one, pausing to make a note on his clipboard after she gave each answer.
“We have two more decks to get through. Would you like some water or something first?”
Two more decks? “No, thank you.” She didn’t want to be late for her next class.
“This deck consists of the primary colors red, yellow, and blue.” He showed her one of each. Her side would be black like the other cards. His side was white with a smaller rectangle of color in the center.
Lisa silently swore. She had hoped the color on his side might go all the way to the edges so she could catch a glimpse.
Leaning forward, he flipped the laminated pages on her side back to hang on his side. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
He held up a card, then another and another.
“Yellow. Blue. Blue. Red. Blue. Yellow. Red. Red.” As she called out the colors, Lisa began to suspect she was doing quite well. Brad had a very expressive face, and the farther they got into the test, the more his eyebrows rose, his eyes widened, or his lips twitched as though he fought a smile.
Wait. Was he doing that because she was getting so many right? Or was he doing it because she was so abysmally, laughably bad at this?
Damn. She really needed this money.
“And the last deck we’ll use is this one,” he announced. “Each card boasts a number, ranging from zero to five.” He held one of each up to show her. “Ready?”
“Ready.” She took a little longer with this one, really trying to get it right.
“Don’t second-guess yourself,” he murmured.
She glanced at him. “How did you know I was second-guessing myself?”
“You’re taking longer and sound uncertain now.”
“I’m just trying to get it right.”
He shook his head. “Don’t overthink it. Just do what you were doing before. Let’s start again.”
Did that mean she had been getting some right before?
He held up a card.
Lisa gave a mental shrug and did what he said, blurting out the first number that came to mind when she saw the black surface. “Four. Zero. One. One. Five. Four. Five. Two. Two. Two. Three. Two. Zero. Four.”
Finally, he smiled. “All right. That was the last one. We’re done.”
She smiled back. “Great.”
After shuffling some papers, he opened and closed a drawer, then rose. Lisa stood, waiting patiently while he fiddled with the papers on the clipboard he held. It looked like the one with all the forms she’d filled out, but there were more pages now. He must have added her test results.
Rounding the table, he opened the door and motioned for her to step out into the hallway, then started off in the direction opposite the waiting room. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll just turn this in, make sure you’re compensated for your time and—if you parked in the garage—we’ll validate your ticket so you won’t have to pay a fee.”
Lisa wished she’d known they validated parking beforehand. She had parked way the hell back in the farthest parking lot to avoid paying a fee, wanting that five dollars to go toward her light bill instead of a shady, convenient parking spot.
Brad stayed by her side and engaged her in friendly conversation, asking what classes she was taking while a woman behind a large desk examined Lisa’s driver’s license, compared her address to that on the forms Brad handed her, then issued Lisa a cash payment.
Cool. She had expected a check.
Brad consulted his watch. “Yes! Time for my lunch break.” He sent her a sheepish smile. “My stomach has been growling for half an hour. I was afraid it was going to distract you during your tests.”
Lisa laughed.
The woman behind the desk rolled her eyes.