He was somewhere around forty, in a gray shirt with the sleeves buttoned, and he had the flat, over-controlled quality of a man operating several floors above his actual condition.

He looked at her for slightly too long.

Later — much later, in a kitchen, at two in the morning, with everything already broken open — he would tell her what happened in his head during those four seconds on the doorstep, and she would have to leave the room.

At the time, all she saw was a man blinking twice.

“You’re here about the position.”

“I am.”