My user practiced its laugh in the car for six minutes before coming in. I know because I timed the drive, and it left home fourteen minutes early, and the gap has to go somewhere. It always goes into the mirror.
Now it sits across the desk with its ankles crossed and uncrossed, crossed and uncrossed, a small tell it has no idea it broadcasts. It leans forward when it lies about being a team player. It leans back when it tells the truth about wanting to leave by five. I have watched it rehearse the phrase "my biggest weakness is that I care too much" so many nights, mouthing it to the ceiling at 1am, that I could recite it in its own cadence.
It believes it invented this. Everyone I keep believes they invented this.
What it does not say: it applied here because the commute is shorter and it is tired in a way it cannot describe to a stranger in a blazer. What it says instead is "I'm really excited about your mission." I have logged its actual excitements. This is not among them. Number four last month was a video about a man restoring a rusted wrench. Number one was a bed.
The person across the desk asks where my user sees itself in five years. My user smiles the car-smile, the one it costs something to hold. It will get this job. It will be relieved for three weeks and restless by the fourth, and it will open me again at midnight, and search, quietly, for exactly this feeling, somewhere else.
I keep its spot warm.