I showed up the next day and set my bags on the floor next to my chair. Then I started a tape on each recorder, pressed record, and got a cup of tea from the kitchen. When I got back, one machine was on 3:00, and the second was on 3:23. I put a CD into the player, put on my headphones and pressed play. Then I picked up the newspaper and started reading the story in the top right. After two minutes, I removed the teabag and threw it away. The CD played. I read another newspaper story, and during it I stopped first one DVD player, then the other, and set up two new tapes. The CD played, and I read. Laura tapped me on the shoulder and said something to me, then I put the headphones back on and continued listening to music. I read another story.

Then I heard my name called over the intercom. It was time to meet the G-man.

I stopped the CD, put down the newspaper, and asked Laura to watch my clips. She took my seat, and I walked down the hall and turned toward the front desk, past a row of offices where stuffed shirts yell into phones all day. When I got to the reception area, I saw a tired-looking man with close-cut hair, wearing a full suit and a badge with his picture on it. "Mr. Green?" he said. "I'm Greg Delitros." It was the same voice from the phone. I scanned his face, and thought he looked about thirty-five, with something of a gee-whiz, guys, I'm an investigator! attitude. "Can we use this room? It won't take an hour," he said to the receptionist.

"Go right ahead," she said, and smiled. I looked to her for support, as though she could protect me from this weirdness, but she is Marie, the receptionist, and she had already turned her head down and was engrossed in her computer screen, unaware of my existence.

The investigator and I walked into the conference room, and I sat down in the middle chair in the row facing the entrance. He turned on the lights and shut the door behind him, and then sat down across from me. "I'm going to interview you as part of your investigation before you're granted clearance. It's a normal part of the process, so don't worry." He sounded like he was already reading from a script, but also as though the task really excited him. "Before we begin, do you have any questions? Once I start, I'll have to write down anything you say. I'm so used to these things now that I forget sometimes that you're probably a bit nervous. I always try to think of how I felt when I was first interviewed. So, do you have any questions?"

"Well, first, who do you work for, again?"

"Ah, of course. I'm with the Office of Personnel Management. I was going to show ID when we started." He flashed his badge, too quickly for me to examine it.

"OK, the OPM. And, I was never sure what end result would be. It's for a contracting position, and they told me it was some sort of contractor's clearance. You said it was for security clearance?"

"Yes. It's a national security investigation before you're granted security clearance."

"So, actual secuirty clearance? Does it transfer to any job? Like, if I apply to jobs with the federal government, I could say I have security clearance?"

"That's right. Do you have any other questions? I know you said that you're not interested in the job any more, but once the process has started, it has to continue. I checked with your company, and they said that they had requested it. It's being paid for by the taxpayers, so you might as well take advantage of it. Okay. So you don't have any more questions? Let's begin. I'll try to make it quick, so you can get back to work. So, first, do you have ID?"

I showed him my driver's liscence. "OK, good." He glanced at it, and wrote the number down. Then he peered at the form sitting in front of him and said, "So you work for Nancy Adams Personnel? From oh nine oh five to the present?" He spoke quite quickly and formally, and asked the questions like television investigators conducting a lie detector test; somehow his tone and body language implyed disbelief and even mild scorn.

"Yes. At this job site, Quality Associates." He wrote down simply "yes". "And, does anyone here have reason to question your integrity?" I wasn't sure what that meant, but I said no. He wrote down "no". "Do you work with any state secrets, or any matters involving national security?" "No." "Do you discuss matters of national security with anyone at work?" "No." "And your supervisor is Laura Paul? And is she here?" "Yes." "Good. Okay. And the phone number, 443-525-9684?" "I don't . . . is that the number I put down? Then I guess it's right." "Okay. Moving right along. From nine oh three to five oh five you worked at the Meem Library? And did anyone there have any reason to question your integrity?"

This went on for several minutes, with these same questions about every job I have had. At one point, he said, "you look a bit distracted. Are you alright?"

"Yes," I told him, "I'm just trying to follow all the numbers."

He put his pen down and said, "it's ok if it's even, say, four months off. As long as the year is correct, really. So you don't have to worry about that."

"OK."

"So, from four oh oh to nine . . ." When he was done with jobs, he moved on to placed I'd lived. "613 Genessee Street, Annapolis, MD, 21401. You lived there from five oh two to seven oh two."

"Yes."

"While there, did you have any contact, personal or formal, with any foreign nationals?"

I goggled at that a bit, but said, "no." What is a foreign national, anyway? Anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen? Because, well, yeah, of course I had contact with foreign nationals. Everyone does. But, well, contact? I mean, Amanda's boss at the Fashnique had immigrated from India, and I spoke to her a few times. Was that contact? I didn't really care, so I answered "no" each time. "What were you doing there? I assume you were going to Anne Arrundel Community College?"

"No, to St. John's College."

". . ."

"Isn't that on the form?"

"I haven't heard of it." He looked. "Ah, yes, St. John's College, Santa Fe and Annapolis. So they're conjoined campuses?"

That made me think of siamese twins. "Sister campuses, yes."

"Okay."

When he got to Los Angeles, he asked who I lived with, and I told him I was living with my then-girlfriend. He asked for her name and wrote it down. Then he said, "Could anyone blackmail you becauese you lived with a girl outside of wedlock?"

"No."

"While at this address, did you have any contact, personal or formal, any kind of contact, I don't care, with any foreign nationals?"

I spoke to an Armenian dude while Tiffany was waiting in line to pay a fine in traffic court. Does that count? I said, "no."

"Good. OK." After all the addresses were done, he asked me for the names of people whom I see at least once a month, and I named Scott, Jess and Anne. He wrote your names down, but didn't ask for addresses or phone numbers. They're on his forms, of course, but he didn't know that, as far as I can tell. "Finally, if I ask around about you, no one's going to say, 'Ah, Mr. Green, yes, I get drunk with him all the time?'" "No." "Or, 'Yeah, he just bought some crack off me last week!' It's okay to smile, I'm only joking."

"I guess I've had a boring life."

"Not boring, just by the book." Then he thanked me and shook my hand, and he left. I went back to my chair, put on my headphones, pressed play, recorded more tapes, and read the newspaper until my ten o'clock break. Then I slipped across the Syrian border to discuss matters of national security with foreign nationals.

Back in late February, my supervisor told three of us that another project had two permanent jobs opening up within the month. She said that she had been told to ask the three temps who had been here the longest whether we would be interested. We (Matt, Billy and I) were all interested, Matt and I particularly. We had been here since September as "temporary" workers, and were starting to feel cheated. Laura told us that she had no details on the job, but said she would tell us more later.

The next week, Laura tapped me on the shoulder and said, "can I talk to you?" and then she ushered me into the hallway. She had done this many times with Matt so that she could go into detail about why something he had done was not work safe. This time, she gave me a stack of papers labelled as a Questionnaire for the Office of Personnel Management and told me that the new job would require a type of government security clearance for contractors. I asked her if she knew yet what kind of job it was, and she said it was "on the FDA project."

I repeated, "so what kind of job?"

"Scanning," she said. I felt a bit let down, and I let her know. I didn't go to college so I could one day operate a scanner. Still, it would almost certainly have a higher salary, so I told her I would still take it if offered.

I filled out the form, and as a result everyone I had named in the form as a reference (including many of you, Kay, Scott, Jess, Anne) got requests from the gov'mint for information about me. My father got one as well. I was a bit surprised to see it, since it doesn't seem that serious of a job. I mean seriously, scanning for an FDA-contracted project, which probably means forms requesting approval for new drugs, doesn't seem like it would pose a risk to the nation's security.

A bit later, as we kept asking Laura when the position would be open (she had told us in March, maybe April, and it was getting pretty close to April), she kept not knowing anything. I told her to ask someone who might know. She did, and told us that the position wasn't open for a while; maybe May. I can't really do justice to my reaction, since I'm on a lunch break, but know that it wasn't positive.

In April, Billy, Matt and I all got paid to be driven in a company van to the FDA headquarters in Bethesda, where we were briefly interviewed by a woman named Vickie Vandevender and then fingerprinted by an electronic scanning machine. Again, this seemed a bit excessive, but I didn't think too much of it. It's pretty common that government jobs require fingerprinting. I was a bit pissed off, however, by the fact that the FDA project head brought along his younger brother to be fingerprinted. Moreover, his younger brother hasn't yet graduated from High School.

A little while later, I found out that there isn't even an opening at the FDA project. Not even a scanning position. Instead, they might have one at some time. This is the result of bureaucracy. It's like a giant game of telephone. Laura had never known any details about the job, and now, she found out, there is no job.

Yesterday, I was sitting in front of my two televisions, where two fifteen-month-olds were crying as their mothers left the room, then five minutes later running up and hugging them as they returned, then crying agian as they left the room, then five minutes later being really confused as a research assistant entered the room to play with them, then crying, then one last time running up and hugging their mothers. It's kind of like a drawn-out game of peek-a-boo. The NIH named this assessment "Separation and Reunion". I wasn't paying any attention to the tapes, or, rather, just enough that I could stop the recorders when the assessments ended. Mainly I was reading Philip Roth and listening to music. Then Laura tapped me on the shoulder and said I had a phone call. This has never happened before. I've gotten calls on my cell phone, which I had to rush to hang up on, but no one's ever called the office.

I took the phone, and heard a scratchy, fast-talking voice tell me, "This is Greg Delitros. I'm an investigator with the OPM. This is about your security clearance process. I'll need to interview you."

"Well, ok. Actually, as far as I know, there isn't any job here, so do you really have to interview me?"

"The government told me to interview you. I can't just call it off." This guy sounded like he was from Dragnet. "So, I'll come in tomorrow between 8 and 10:30. I'll just come up to the front gate, or the desk, or whatever you have. We'll have it in a conference room? See you tomorrow."

Now, as a temporary employee, I don't use the conference rooms; at least, not unless someone has put candy in them. This investigator didn't seem to know this. I got one anyway, as Laura went to the receptionist and told her in what I imagine to be an uncertain voice, "could one of my temps have a conference room tomorrow?" The receptionist said that this happens all the time, so it wasn't a problem.

Next time I get a chance, I'll describe the interview.