In the whitest voice Henry can muster, he asks himself if he would care to elaborate.

“Why, certainly, sir. Absolutely. Indeed and my pleasure. I guess one could say I’m a jack-of-all-trades and a master of some.”

Naked, alone, and winking at a scroll of peeling wallpaper in a dingy motel bathroom, he expels a chuckle. The sound is repulsive. The forums recommend something called workplace-friendly humor, a balance of professionalism and levity, but all of his hacks at it are corn syrup. These cheesy cracks along with all the courteous tags—the sirs, indeeds, and my pleasures—are making him out to be some bootlicker. Lower than the run-of-the-mill employee, more disposable than the deferential subordinate—like this, he is subhuman.

Regarding previous experience, he plans to discuss his contracting work after high school and touch on his current stint as a freelance handyman, a nifty euphemism he’s cooked up for unemployed and desperate. From plumbing to roofing, engine work to electrical, he’s done it all. He’s a quick learner and even harder worker, with time management and chummy customer service charm to boot. Zip it up with the three strengths, and then on to the next one:

What are your three greatest weaknesses?

Why, that’s easy, your honor, your majesty: alcohol, uppers, and an acidic contempt for the world at large for having shortchanged, chewed up, spat out, and shat all over me, sir.

He gargles more bathwater, then sprays it up and over his moronic, self-sorry face. It drips down his cheeks, absolutely nothing like tears. Enough. Weaknesses. Three of them. Go.

“I suppose I tend to work too hard. I don’t like leaving things unfinished, and so fine, whatever. Two. Sometimes I can get sort of impatient, especially when I think others around me aren’t pulling their weight. And so, that said, I’m confident I would have a positive, motivational, even like inspirational influence on my coworkers. Yippee, huh? And third, thirdly, three …

“My temper. Yeah, no, I mean that I’m working on tact. Delivery? Sometimes I can be a bit impulsive. Can’t help but speak my mind, which might come off as a little brash. But only sometimes, though. Like when I get upset, which isn’t often, and but, nevertheless, fatherhood”—and here’s his chance to connect on what the forums call a human level—“Oh, you, too, huh? You don’t say. They grow up so fast, don’t they? But so what I’m trying to say is that fatherhood, if anything, has shown me, has taught me—”

A muffled retch. Something dense spills. A gasp.

“Junior?”