Excerpt from The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Newbury, Josephine Anne," The Person with Bad Breath said, without glancing at the résumé.

She awaited the timeworn quip about their shared name. Joseph/ine.

"You wish to procreate?" The Person with Bad Breath said.

Again, she didn't know if the tone was idle or mocking, kindly or dismissive. Surely it wasn't legal to ask such a thing in an interview—but, as the familiar raw longing pulsed inside her, she nodded and then crossed her fingers at her sides, as was her habit whenever this sore subject came up nowadays.

"How is your vision?" The Person with Bad Breath said.

"Twenty-twenty." She hoped there would be no further probing; her vision hadn't been tested in eight years, and distant objects had recently begun to blur and shimmer.

Before Josephine could decide whether or not she ought to ask her interviewer's name, The Person with Bad Breath abruptly stood. Josephine fumbled to follow, out of the office and down the long hallway. Once again, she noticed the sound: a sound like many cockroaches crawling behind the closed doors, interwoven occasionally with brief mechanical moans. As they walked, The Person with Bad Breath consumed three mints dispensed from a small tin drawn from an inner pocket. The bad breath became less offensive to Josephine when she saw that an attempt was being made to remedy it.

The Person with Bad Breath stopped at one of the doors and pulled out a thick clot of keys. The door opened into a small pinkish box of a room, its walls aged with tack holes and old tape. Five steps and Josephine could touch the opposite side. A metal desk and an outdated computer buzzed in the ill light of an overhead fluorescent. Beside the computer, stacks of gray files.

"Open the top file," The Person with Bad Breath instructed, directing her to the chair behind the desk.

She opened the file to a sheet of paper covered in dense typewritten text:

The file contained four equally dizzying pages after the first. As Josephine tried to focus on them, a headache took root behind her eyes.

The Person with Bad Breath pressed a colorless hand down onto the pages.

"Only the topmost section of the top sheet concerns you, Ms. Newbury. You never need look below the line containing the name and the date."

Her headache retreated slightly.

The Person with Bad Breath tapped the computer's mouse. The screen came to life: a dim and frozen spreadsheet behind a pop-up box demanding a clearance password.

"Capital H—Capital S—Eight—Nine—Eight—Zero—Five—Two—Four—Two—Three—Eight—One," The Person with Bad Breath recited, as Josephine's fingers located the requested characters on the keyboard.

The password pop-up box returned a red ERROR message.

"HS89805242381," The Person with Bad Breath repeated impatiently.

This time her fingers were accurate, and the spreadsheet brightened before her eyes.

"Welcome to the Database," The Person with Bad Breath said. Josephine could hear the capital "D." "You have clearance only to complete your task."

At that, Josephine smiled—hired, or so she assumed, and dying to tell him.

"My task?" she inquired, biting down her fool's grin.

"Locate the entry in the Database via the search function," The Person with Bad Breath commanded. "Use the HS number on the form."

She obeyed, carefully inputting each of the digits. The cursor leapt to the correct row. There it was: IRONS/RENA/MARIE, followed by a series of boxes all filled in with an intricate combination of letters and numbers. Only the box at the far right remained empty.

"Cross-check the number and name in the Database against the number and name on the form. The form is always correct; occasionally the Database lags behind."

The Person with Bad Breath paused, and Josephine nodded her acknowledgment. She felt extra-young, like a child going to school for the first time.

Excerpted from The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips. Copyright © 2015 by Helen Phillips. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.