"Jareth the Goblin King," the receptionist called. Nobody else in the waiting room bothered to look up at the unusual title.
"That's my cue." He flashed Sarah a jaunty wink and grin before standing to his full height, his grey coat falling into place over the straight, clean lines of his trousers. He looked into her eyes. "I'll see you soon." A promise, it sounded like. He breezed past the receptionist, through a doorway, turned a corner, and was suddenly out of sight.
Sarah blinked in confusion. Dazedly, Sarah found herself thinking how unfair it was that his name was called first even though she had gotten there before him. Wait a moment—he can't just do that. He can't just get up and leave like that, can he? Now with Jareth gone from the room the bland reality of the world slammed back into place, as if someone had shut the curtains on the rainstorm outside. She stared emptily at the chair where the Goblin King had until recently been sitting and realized just what had happened. When talking to Jareth it had seemed almost dreamlike, a dazed conversation, but now she gripped her seat tightly, and her pupils expanded and she began to tremble slightly as it truly dawned on her. The Goblin King is real. The Goblin King who had stolen Toby so many years ago. I can't just let him get away. To hell with 'I'll see you soon'—This conversation isn't over, damn it!
She stood up with a lurch. The world tilted dizzily. She hesitated for a brief minute then went for the door that the Goblin King had disappeared behind. The bored lady at the desk took off her headphones and glanced over in disapproval. "Ma'am, you can't…!" Sarah ignored her and darted around the corner Jareth had disappeared around.
Nothing. It ended in a dead end with a dusty, fake tree that rivaled the ugliness of the orange plastic chairs in the waiting room. Sarah stalled in bewilderment. A hand closed on her elbow and she jumped. "Ma'am, please take your seat in the waiting room and wait your turn," said the woman from the desk in a tone that suggested annoyance and a low tolerance to nonsense. When did I become 'Ma'am'? I don't think I like to be 'Ma'am'. And Sarah let herself be led back to her still-warm orange molded seat, wondering if she was crazy.
The meeting with the employment advisor was exceedingly disappointing, enough so to arouse her out of her collision with the past-induced stupor. No, there were not currently any entry level positions available in any publishing firms, no editors assistants needed anywhere, not even an English tutoring position available. Nothing but these damned advertising positions. Honestly, why had this fad become so recently popular?
"You have got to be kidding me."
"M'am, this looks like your best option for now, though I am sure something else will open up in a few weeks if you want to come back later."
Sarah could not-at the moment-afford to come back later, so she gritted her teeth as she filled out the appropriate paperwork. I need a job, damn it. At this point anything just to keep me afloat. And who knew? Maybe she would make some sort of fantastic connection with some publisher who passing by on the road. And look, the smoothie store was only five blocks to her apartment. She could totally walk there!
Sarah's attempts to buoy her spirits did little to ease the sting of the fact that she was overeducated for this position, that it was a dead-beat nothing of a job with no correlation at all with her interests. She was supposed to be somebody, not some bum on the street. This is only temporary. This is not who I am.
When Sarah left the advisor's office she was half expecting to find Jareth lounging in one of the waiting room chairs, waiting for her. He was nowhere in sight, however. She stopped at the counter on a pretense to ask a quick question of the woman, while covertly examining the sign in clipboard. There was no signature following her name. She was the last person signed in, even though she distinctly remembered seeing the Goblin King write something on the board. Stamping down on the odd flicker of emotion that was not disappointment, Sarah squared her shoulders and walked out of DaBest Staffing into the dwindling afternoon, wending her way back to her apartment.
One week and one exchange of emails later found Sarah standing on the intersection of two busy roads in front of a no-name shopping plaza. It was the sort of scene that could have been duplicated in any other corner of urban, American sprawl: the heat of the parking lot, the busy ruckus of vehicles moving through the intersection in front of her, the poor young woman awkwardly holding a colorful sign for Smoothie Express while wearing a bright yellow banana suit.
Sarah was drenched with sweat inside the suit, her hair plastered to her neck. The day was hot, and standing in the direct sunlight did not help at all. She felt exposed on the road, as if she were an ant on a mirror. The passing cars had an alien feel to them, so noisy and loud as they zoomed past, the faces of their occupants flashing past in detached instants of apathy to their surroundings. If someone from another world with no concept of automobiles was standing here, she thought to herself, squinting against the glare, They would be terrified by these cars. They would think that they were demons, cruel and uncaring metallic beasts with no regard for human existence.
Traffic moved on. The sun shone down. Sarah lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch—a quarter past one. Brilliant. She had been out here for fifteen minutes and she was already wishing she could get out of this ridiculous suit and go back home to her apartment. More and more this shift was looking like it would be the longest four hours of her life.