I get an email from Sarah at work: Can you meet tonight?
Everything OK??? I ask, but she only confirms the time and place, and for the rest of the afternoon I speculate about what could possibly be wrong: Paddy’s moving out; he’s seeing someone else; she’s pregnant; one of her parents is gravely ill…
She’s already at the bar when I get there, sipping Prosecco. She slides a glass across to me as I sit down, and I strike pregnant from my mental list.
“How are you?” she asks.
“How are you? Are we celebrating? Have you got a new job?”
She holds up her left hand, where a diamond ring now sits.
I smile, shaking my head. “What?”
“What do you think?”
“You’re engaged?”
“I’m engaged!”
“To Paddy?”
“Of course!”
“Oh my God!”
“I know!”
“Oh my God!”
“Yeah!”
“Oh my God.” I say it more quietly this time, glass at my lips. Her forehead wrinkles a little. “And, of course, congratulations!” We both look at the ring, the way it glitters when she moves.
“What do you think?” She bites her lip.
I take her hand. “It’s beautiful.”
She smiles. “About the whole thing. I thought you might be a bit…unenthused.”
“What? No! I love Paddy!” I say with maybe too much zeal.
“I know that,” says Sarah. “I was worried you’d think less of me or something. Because you’re anti-marriage.”
“I’m not anti-marriage. Why do people think that?”
“Not anti. But you can take it or leave it.”
“I mean, it’s fast,” I say.
She looks confused. “We’ve been living together a couple of months already, and going out for nearly a year.”
“Seven months,” I correct her. “It’s not that long.”
“My parents got engaged after two weeks. Seven months isn’t fast. Okay, it’s not seven years, but I don’t want to wait seven years before I get married.” She chips at a drip of wax on the table, eyes locked on the task. I wonder if she’s referring to the fact Luke and I have been together for seven years.
“I don’t know.” I take a long sip of Prosecco. “It’s just happened a bit sooner than I expected, that’s all. I think it’s great—if it’s what you want.”
“It is!” She looks like she might cry. “You’re the first person I’ve told. Not even my mum knows yet.”
I seize her arm. “I’m so happy for you, Sarah, really and truly—I’m sorry, I needed a moment to catch up. Just because I wasn’t mentally prepared for this doesn’t mean you aren’t. Please tell me everything: how did he propose?”
She blots her nose elegantly with the back of her ring hand as she relays the details. The diamond goes berserk in the candlelight. “…Then he came out with this incredible, emotional speech—about me and how he’s finally found his soul mate…Honestly, I can’t do it justice, but we were both in floods of tears by the end of it.”
“That sounds amazing,” I murmur, and I am amazed, not only that he’s capable of such moving rhetoric, but also that he’s comfortable pouring out so much feeling, unbridled. I feel a newfound admiration for him.
“And yeah, I was a bit surprised when he asked, but it feels…It does—it just feels right.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this”—I knock back the rest of my Prosecco, and flag down the waitress for another round—“or maybe I should wait until we’ve had a few more drinks, but what the hell.”
“Go on…”
“Early on, I had a few reservations about Paddy.” To be fair to my acting ability, this does seem like news to Sarah. “In the beginning.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“This is my point: I don’t even remember!” I try to silence the voice in my head, reeling them off without any difficulty: monosyllabic, sullen, boring…“You’re my best friend: any guy you ended up with was going to have a hard time impressing me. But the moment I saw how important he was to you, I was there: on board, one hundred percent. So what I’m getting at is, if Paddy ever needs anything—and I mean anything—a kidney?” I segue into a gruff mobster voice, pointing a thumb to my chest. “You send him over to Mama. Ya hear me?”
“I hear you,” says Sarah, looking relieved. “Thank you, that honestly means a lot.”
God, I hope Paddy looks after his kidneys.
It’s Saturday, Luke’s working, and I’m home alone trying to advance my career plans. I’ve designed a new color-coded spreadsheet delineating companies to target, application deadlines and training programs that might be of interest. My formatting skills, though, are not up to scratch and I’ve spent much of the morning resizing columns and truncating text to fit inside boxes that simply won’t expand, for all the troubleshooting solutions I’ve tried.
I scroll through my phone and realize I haven’t been in touch with my parents for a while. Calling them feels a bit much, too involved, given I haven’t spoken aloud yet today, so I fire off a text instead.
Hi, Dad. How are you both? Any news re: work? Hope all OK. C xxx
No.
No = no news? Everything OK? xxxxx
Fine claire just in town having a muffin witH MUM X
Lovely. Enjoy. Say hi to Mum. x
OK WILL DO TAKE CARE DAD
“What are you watching?” Luke asks, taking off his coat.
“It’s amazing,” I say. “You’re just in time. Look.” On the screen, a man in white coveralls makes careful incisions in the belly of a beached sperm-whale carcass. “Wait. It gets really good.”
“Where is this?” Luke asks.
“Not important! Faroe Islands, I think. Okay, watch this—are you watching?”
“I’m watching!”
The whale explodes, guts and blood flying into the air, zipping many meters along the decking before slamming to a stop against a wall. The jumpsuit guy, nearly knocked off his feet by the force of the gush, scuttles quickly, comically out of shot.
“Did you hear the sound?” I say. “The way it pops! The gush! Let’s watch it again.” I hit “replay.” The clip is prefaced by an advert for a honeymoon cruise package—an algorithmic joke?—and I recite with the voice-over in perfect sync, “Sail off into your happily ever after with Sunset Voyages—”
“How many times have you watched this?” interrupts Luke. He moves around the kitchen, opening cabinet doors.
“Not nearly enough. Here we go: are you ready?”
From the fridge he takes the milk and fills a glass by the sink.
I press “pause.” “You don’t want to watch it again?”
He lifts his eyebrows as he drinks, and the glass clinks quietly against his teeth. When he’s finished, he ducks his head, slightly out of breath. “I’ve been dealing with blood all day. How has yours been? Did you not even get dressed?” A frill of milk runs along his top lip.
I return to the screen and click “play”: pop, gush, scuttle.
“Imagine the pressure in there!”
“So what do you want to do tonight? DVD? If your appetite for quality film hasn’t been sated already…” Luke tips his head toward the screen.
“Why are you making me feel bad?”
“How am I making you feel bad?”
“Never mind,” I say quickly; but his hackles are up.
“No, go on—what did I do?”
“Don’t be so defensive. God!” I say. He strides to the fridge and slings the milk back inside. “Maybe you should cool off while you’re there. Long day, was it?” The door thunks shut and the fridge judders.
“You’re going to have to help me out here.”
I enumerate, pointing a thumb at him. “Try: you making snide, unhelpful remarks about me not ‘even’ getting dressed on a Saturday, when I’ve been working all week.” Next comes a forefinger. “And hassling me for taking a two-minute break from my—really quite stressful—job hunt to watch a natural spectacle, which you seem bizarrely intent on pretending not to find interesting even though fourteen million”—I check the views count—“Okay, but still, one point four million hits would beg to differ.”
“As if two minutes,” he mutters.
“What was that? Another snide remark? Ten minutes, then. Fine, fifteen minutes. Happy?”
Luke steps behind me and massages my shoulders. “I’m really happy with you,” he says in the joke-sappy voice we sometimes deploy when things are getting too heated; on this occasion, however, he couldn’t have made a worse call.
“Ow!” I say, shucking him off.
For a long time neither of us says anything.
“You have no idea,” I say finally. “You get to wake up every morning and go and do something you love, which also, conveniently, happens to be one of the most worthwhile things you could do in the world. How can I possibly compete?”
“You don’t need to compete! This is a relationship.” He pulls out the chair next to me, sits and takes my hand like the doctor he is. “We’re a team.”
“Right, and I’m the dead weight dragging you down.”
“I don’t like hearing you talk like this.” He grazes my knuckles with his lips.
“Sorry,” I say. “Sorry if you don’t like it. Sorry if I upset you.”
Luke drops my hand and palms his kneecaps. “Whatever. I’m going to take a shower. I don’t know why you’re being such a—” He stops.
“Such a what?” I say. “Say it. Such a what?”
“It’s not worth it. I’ll let you get back to your precious sperm whale.” He stands up. At the door, he places his hands either side of the doorframe. “I’ve been nothing but supportive of whatever this thing you’re going through even is.”
“Yeah, and it’s so annoying! Stop being so nice all the time! You can’t bring yourself to call me a bitch when I’m being a horrible bitch to you! It’s really so fucking boring!”
“I’m taking a shower.”
“You already said.” The door slams. “And you’ve got a milk mustache!” The shower powers on.
“What are you looking at?” I say to my unhappy face, glowering in the sleeping laptop screen.
I take a walk to get some air and some perspective (and maybe, if I’m being totally honest, so Luke might worry, thus dissipating the storm of ill will I’ve gone and stirred up in the flat). But all I can think is, Why don’t they make these concrete slabs stride-sized? Really, how hard can it be?
I skulk past our flat a few times, hoping to see Luke keeping an anxious lookout, but the front-room windows are empty and dark: blank as when we moved in five years ago. Buying the place had felt impulsive and exciting, the first truly proper grown-up thing we’d done together; but the process quickly declined into a bitter slog, with the seller growing increasingly belligerent for reasons that were never really made clear.
On the day we got the keys, it was pouring with rain, and after heaving all our boxes up two flights of stairs we finally closed the door behind us. I flicked on the light switch, only to discover that in a final act of malice, the seller had taken every last fixture and fitting not specifically itemized in the contract: doorknobs, cabinet and drawer handles, picture hooks, towel rings, toilet-paper holder and—crucially in that moment—lightbulbs. Worse still was the bleak detritus left behind: a ceramic teddy bear holding a heart emblazoned with “I LOVE YOU,” filthy rags and twisted bedsheets, broken wind chimes and a single, fetid tennis shoe.
“Oh shit.” Luke sank onto a box. “What have we done?”
“It isn’t so bad,” I said. “We just need to clean and unpack. Once our stuff’s in, it’ll begin to feel like ours.”
“I thought it would look bigger with nothing in it. What were we thinking?” He went through to the kitchen. “We spent our life savings on this. I spent my grandparents’ life savings on this.” He walked out, shaking his head, and wandered up to the bathroom and the bedroom, taking a call from his parents.
“Yeah, we’re in…No, it’s…fine…It’s great…” His voice echoed through the naked rooms, nothing at all to absorb his disappointment.
I wanted to cry: not because it was a shithole, but because he didn’t seem to get that it was our shithole. Instead, I opened a box marked ESSENTIALS and—deciding against the bottle of warm, cheap-looking Chardonnay the real estate agent had shoved ungraciously into my hand along with the keys that morning—retrieved mugs, kettle, teabags, cookies and some non-dairy creamers I’d pocketed from the McDonald’s a few doors down. When I went to find Luke, he was staring at the black street, where a succession of flashing police cars screamed past.
“I promise, promise, promise we’ll make it nice,” I said, handing him a hot mug and a chocolate cookie.
He held the tea with one hand and put the other arm around me, dunking the cookie so I was in a sort of headlock.
“I guess,” he said, “you already are.”
When it starts to get dark, I head for home.
“Hi,” I say in a small voice at the door—so small I think Luke hasn’t heard me. “Hi?” I try, a little louder.
“What do you want?” comes Luke’s voice from the living-room gloom, where he sits in silhouette, channel-surfing on mute.
“To say I’m sorry.” There’s a long pause. On the screen, a cartoon’s playing, one of the old Warner Bros. ones with Porky the Pig. Watching him trotting around, I feel the same sickly rise of boredom I used to get as a kid, in that impossibly wide, drab space between Saturday afternoon and Saturday night, when my parents would take to their bed for “a nap,” which of course, it suddenly occurs to me now, with head-smacking clarity, was obviously a euphemism for sex, leaving me orphaned downstairs with these hectic critters for guardians.
Luke’s silhouette breaks its silence. “You don’t seem to realize there’s a limit to how much a person can take. Sometimes it feels as if your sole aim in my life is to find the line and piss all over it.”
I fight the overwhelming impulse to point out that I can’t be both unaware of the limit and make finding it my sole aim.
“While I wouldn’t necessarily endorse that assertion or…image,” I say, choosing my words with tremendous care, “I will concede I was being pretty awful earlier.” Luke’s silhouette doesn’t move. “For which, again, my most ’eartfelt apologies, sir.”
“Titchy Pip isn’t going to get you out of this,” he says, and I know I’m in trouble: in happier times, Luke loves my Victorian street-urchin character, a plucky young shoeshine with nothing to ’is name but a tin o’ boot polish and a pocketful o’ dreams.
I drop the voice. “Seriously, I was horrible and I apologize. Though I would like to say, both for the record and in my own defense, that you were being quite mean.”
“Well, I will concede it’s a shame you felt that way, but I really, definitely wasn’t.”
“Okay, but…what I’m saying is that you were.”
“I don’t understand how you can say that when it’s simply not true.”
“Well,” I explain in my most patient, helpful voice, “because it’s possible to be mean without meaning to be.”
“Are you actually sorry? It sounds to me like you might be trying to score points with twisted logic.”
“I don’t want to score any points. I just wanted to let you know my experience.”
“Well, now you have.”
“Luke. I really am sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It hasn’t been a good day. I spent hours and hours staring at the computer, and it just felt like all these months in a microcosm, doing hundreds of aimless searches based on stupid, vague ideas I have about what might be a meaningful, or even just nice, way to spend my days. I wasted a full morning on an application to be a TV script editor: I’ve never seen a TV script! I just like watching TV! But I went through all the criteria, kidding myself that I could make my skills sound relevant, and then as soon as I read over what I’d written, I realized how deluded I sounded. Then I texted my parents to say, ‘Hi. How are you guys?’ and my dad basically replied saying, ‘Please let us enjoy our muffin in peace.’ ”
“Muffin?” says Luke.
Encouraged, I take a step toward him. “They were in Starbucks. You know they go every Saturday afternoon as a treat for a latte and half a muffin each?”
“I didn’t know. That’s cute.”
“It’s weird hearing you talk without being able to see your face. You look like those protected witnesses on the news. One who’s in hiding from his evil girlfriend.” Luke’s silhouette-head moves very slightly and I think (hope) he is smiling. “So what’s the verdict: do you still hate me?” I say.
“No, I suppose I don’t totally hate you,” he says, and his silhouette-arm rises up, and his silhouette-fingers beckon me under.
We lie pressed together like sardines on the sofa, watching the still-muted TV and playing Guess What the Advert Is For.
“Car! Honda! Ford! Mazda! Nissan! Peugeot! Yes!” shouts Luke.
“That’s not how it works!” I object. “You can’t list every single brand of a thing to cover all the bases. I can’t hear myself think!”
“Uh, the game is the first person to say the right answer. I didn’t hear you saying the right answer, so I make it one-zero to me.”
“It should be your first answer,” I say, then shout at the screen, “Stella Artois! No, Nastro Azzurro! I meant Nastro Azzurro!”
“Nastro Azzurro,” says Luke, quick as a flash just after me. “Oh, bad luck. Now it’s two-zero to the Duuuuuuke!” His arms are up, victorious antlers.
“I said it first!”
“No, you said Stella Artois first. Don’t come crying to me: it was your idea to do first answers.”
“We hadn’t started that new rule yet,” I say. “I didn’t think you even heard me. You didn’t formally agree to the change. There have to be rules about rule changes. We need to have a vote. Otherwise this whole thing’s a farce.”
If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.
Luke flicks the channel to a program where a man and a woman are watching TV, a wildlife program. A zebra is being busily savaged by a pride of lions.
“Did you know,” I say, “that the reason so many people on TV watch wildlife shows on their TV is because it’s stock footage and there’s no copyright fee?”
“Oh. That’s disappointing,” says Luke. “I always assumed it was meant to be some commentary on what’s going on with the characters. I thought I was quite clever for getting that.”
I reach up and cup his chin with my palm. “You’re too clever for all of them. Turns out they’re just a bunch of cheapskates.”
“Where do you find all this information?” he murmurs in wonder.
“I honestly think it finds me.”
First thing in the morning, I turn on the radio.
“And finally, there’s no reason on earth,” a chipper fellow is concluding, “why it can’t play you a tune, for example, or give you directions, or tell you the weather. It is, I would hasten to add, egg-shaped and very approachable.”
“What is?” I ask aloud, but it’s too late, and now I’ll never know.
This American gent who only moments ago showed such concern that he accidentally cut in front of me waiting for coffee displays none of the same as he barges past now to swipe the last free table.
The way everything curls as he sleeps: fists, spine, eyelashes.
In a wine bar, waiting for Rachel, whose lateness has just migrated from acceptable to rude, I tune in to a neighboring date for diversion. A furtive look puts the woman at mid-to-late thirties, while her companion’s back, other than being impressively broad, gives away nothing, including his apparently monosyllabic replies.
“Do you like classical music?” she asks.
“…”
“Do you like music?”
“…”
“Fair enough. What…films are you into?”
“…”
“Really? Well, do you like to read?”
“…”
She scours the ceiling for inspiration. “What do you like, then?”
“…”
“Oh. Right…Who do you support?”
“…”
She’s shaking her head. “Never heard of them.” Her lips have disappeared. They leave, exchanging grimace-like smiles of resignation, just as Rachel finally appears.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” says Rachel. There’s a deep stress-line between her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and she bursts into tears. The human rights lawyer she’s been sporadically texting (and even more sporadically sleeping with) has finally put an end to things.
“He said, ‘I don’t think this is right for me anymore. I need some time to myself.’ As if seeing me once every three weeks was too demanding.”
I teeter perilously on my bar stool to embrace her. “I know it feels really shitty at the moment, but I think this is ultimately a good thing. It’s so much better to have a clean break than to be embroiled for another six months or a year. Now you can focus on meeting someone worth your time and emotional energy.”
“I really thought he was, though.”
Coming from such an intelligent person, this strikes me as beyond ridiculous, but I proceed with caution.
“You just said you saw him once every three weeks.”
“I know I always complained about him, but he could be so sweet: he cooked me shepherd’s pie after I told him it was my favorite. And the last time I saw him, he said he thought I’d get on really well with his sister.”
I try to look impressed by this gallantry.
“I honestly thought it was going somewhere. What if he was the One and now I’ve pushed him away and I’ll be alone forever?”
I tell her there’s no such thing as the One. I tell her it’s a conspiracy, a myth peddled by the Big Three: Hollywood, the government and the free market.
“How do you explain you and Luke, then?”
“Look, let me put it this way,” I say, “that was nothing more than pure luck and good timing. Luke’s great, obviously, but believe me he is far from perfect—and I don’t have to tell you I’m no picnic. There are a million little compromises involved every single day. Doesn’t it seem too unlikely that there’s only one person out of seven billion who’s right for you? And if that were even true, what are the chances that I, of all people, have found mine?”
“Okay,” says Rachel, “but you know I could say the same to you about a job.”
“Well, that’s a bit different—”
“How? You’re always talking about finding the right thing. But who’s to say there aren’t five or twenty or fifty jobs you could love if you were just a bit more open-minded? Doesn’t it seem equally unlikely that there’s only one thing that’s right for you and all the rest of us have found ours?”
“But…No. It’s not…Okay. Maybe. Fine. Why don’t we agree we both have a point?”
She holds out a hand, and we shake on it, firmly.
“Deal.”
We leave after last orders, and at the bus stop just a few feet away, who do I see but the very same couple from the unsuccessful date, kissing with the fervor of a departing soldier and his sweetheart, while the night buses sweep up and down the wet roads.
Where? my scrabbling fingers scream into the gritty depths of my bag.
Same place, my phone, cool and oblong, answers, as the last twenty-five times you checked.
One tiny little error in judgment (the number of tissues you think you’ll need) is all it takes to become who you thought you never would (the person hawking back phlegm on the bus).
Seven different varieties of hummus; zero varieties of apple, lemon, carrot.
I’m woken by Luke, propped on an elbow, singing “Happy Birthday” in creepy falsetto.
“Come and get me when you’re done,” I say, burrowing under the duvet.
He lingers on the last note, feeling for my hand, and presses a small wrapped cube into it.
“Ooh.” I rip off the paper. “Earrings?” I guess.
“Not earrings but…” he says as I lift the lid of the box, “a ring!”
“Oh!” I look at him then at it until it blurs.
“What?” he says. “Is it okay?”
I nod.
“Are you sure?”
The rapid nodding continues as I extract it from its little velvet bed and lay it flat on my palm.
“This is from the same place as Sarah’s—I remembered you really liked hers. But obviously it’s a different ring. Try it on.”
“Obviously. Because Sarah’s was an engagement ring.” I slide it on. There’s a pretty gold rose where the stone would be, were it an engagement ring.
“Exactly. The woman called this one a ‘cocktail’ ring? But I think that just means ‘normal ring.’ ” I try to smile, but my bottom lip will not play ball. “So, to confirm: you do like it,” he says.
“I really do.” My shoulders are bunched around my ears; when I try to drag them down, they ping back up.
Luke crawls around on top of the covers so that he’s kneeling in front of me. “And you definitely…don’t…want…it…to be an engagement ring?”
“No! No. No, no, no.” I turn my head slowly left to right, left to right. “No way. Not yet. We talked about this. You know I don’t.”
“Do I?” Luke takes my head in his hands. “Claire, look at me.” I open my eyes. “Are you crying?”
“I always cry on my birthday; it’s a tradition. I was born crying: ask my mother.”
The bell goes and I open the door to see the postman, already retreating.
“Hey! Hello?” I call, and he turns, seeming astonished and irritated that ringing the bell has resulted in someone opening the door. In his personal life, he might be a biker: his ears, eyebrows and abundant beard are spiked with piercings, and he’s accessorized his uniform with a paisley bandana that no one could call regulation. He hands over a huge pink envelope, far too big to fit through the letter flap.
“You know, some people have mobility issues,” I say. “You should wait a bit longer before assuming no one’s in.”
He sighs. “Sorry?”
“Some people can’t get to the door that fast,” I say slowly, enunciating carefully. “The elderly, for one. I sprinted downstairs and still nearly missed you.”
“I heard you?” he says. “I was apologizing?” His manner could not be less apologetic.
“Oh. Right. Well. Good. Thank you. I appreciate that. And sorry if I overreacted, but…you know. I’m a bit…It’s my birthday today.”
He nods, hitching the mailbag more securely on his shoulder. “Happy birthday. Enjoy your massive card.”
In the hall, I look at the envelope, which is addressed to Claire Flannery in the neat all-caps style my father has in common with psychopaths. It might be, excepting forwarded bank statements, the first thing he’s ever posted to me.
I rip it jaggedly open and coax out a correspondingly huge card adorned with ribbon, glitter, glued-on satin rosebuds and the words FOR OUR SPECIAL LITTLE GIRL, featuring multiple fonts, scalloped edges and a poem spanning many pink pages—really, it’s more of a booklet than a card—an epic in blandness, which leans rather too heavily on “day” as an end-rhyme (preceded by “to-,” “birth-,” “special,” “ev’ry,” “on this,” “birth-” (again), “your big,” “wonderful” and “lovely”); in other words, an all-frills job, which, through its scale and flamboyance, serves only to highlight the very lack of motherly love it was doubtless trying to disguise. I leaf through it in search of a personal message, and about to give up, turn over and see on the back, CLAIRE at the top, and FROM DAD AND MUM beneath the words “Time 2 Celebrate”; not a message, as my father apparently thought, but the manufacturer’s logo.
I didn’t work hard at school and go to university so I could spend my life sending emails.
I find Geri semi-reclined on the sofa in her office. Her dog—a small, docile mongrel named Captain Popkin—lies on her lap, chin resting ruminatively on his front paws.
“Hmmm.” Her eyes are closed as I enter, and when at last she heaves her attention my way, letting out a long, languorous sigh, I feel like I’ve trespassed on an intimate moment, though it was she who summoned me here in the first place.
“Claire, take a seat.” She swings her feet to the floor and slaps the sofa cushion beside her. “How are things?”
“Things are great!” I say. “This could be a good time to catch up on where we’re at—I think everything’s in really good shape—”
“That’s good,” she interrupts, “but actually, I asked you in here because I wanted to say a big hip, hip, hooray and thank-you for doing such a terrific job. And to say how much fun it’s been having you around.”
“You’re very kind,” I say, wondering if she knows today is my birthday—perhaps this praise is her gift? “Well, it’s fun for me too. It’s really nice to feel useful again. I was worried it might be a bit strange—a step backward, you know? But it’s really made me realize how much I missed everything: colleagues, the office, not to mention the work itself…”
Her eyes race between mine before she speaks again. “I’m glad you’ve got something out of it too.” She leaves a beat. “It’s great you’ve had a good time.”
“You’re…letting me go?” I say.
Geri lifts the impassive Captain Popkin so his head eclipses hers, and says in a pouty, poochy voice: “We’re going to miss you so much.” She wags one of his paws at me: Bye-bye, Claire.
Because I cannot get on board with this sort of behavior, I stare assiduously at the floor.
“Oh! Okay. Can…I ask why?”
Her voice drops as she lowers the dog. “Budget meeting this morning with Justin—won’t bore you with the details, but what it comes down to is, we’ve way overspent. Hands up, it’s my bad. Blame me.”
“No, of course it’s not your fault!” I say and catch my thumbnail between my teeth. “But if it’s a cash issue, we can talk about that. There’s only a couple of weeks’ work left, I reckon, and I could try and finish sooner if that would help…”
She turns Captain Popkin over, cradles him in her arms like a baby, cooing into his raggedy belly. “I soooo wish there was something I could dooo! But it’s out of my hands, I’m afwaid. Yes, it is!” She looks up, her face a pantomime of concern. “We did always say this was a short-term thing. Didn’t we? I’m not leaving you high and dry, I hope?”
“Not at all. It’s actually probably for the best anyway. I really should crack on with the old job hunt. Which was why I left here in the first place, if you think about it. You’re actually doing me a favor in a funny way.”
She gives me one of her “sincere” smiles, the least convincing in her repertoire. “You’re such a great sport,” she says.
I stand up to leave. “Is it still okay to put you down for a reference?”
Her attention has already drifted elsewhere, and when I say her name, she looks at me in surprise. “What? Oh yes. Get Bea to draft something and I’ll sign it.”
“Okay,” I say, with my hand on the door handle. “So, my last day is when? Friday? Should I start wrapping things up?”
Geri puckers her mouth, shakes her head. “I was thinking sooner.”
“Oh. As in today?”
She nods, thrusting Captain Popkin toward me. “Cuddles for Claire-Bear!” she says, and despite my various noises of refusal, the dog is now trembling in my arms, emitting a high-pitched whine and looking at me, wet-eyed and cock-eared, with what feels uncannily like pity.
“Could you hold my bag open for me?” I ask Bea, who is barely visible amid the carnage of her workstation. The chaos is so deeply entrenched it has come full circle and evolved an intricate internal architecture: teetering towers of three-ring binders (which famously don’t stack well) are buttressed by clumps of dirty tea mugs and various heavy-duty office supplies—stapler, hole punch, reams of photocopier paper.
“Hang…on…one…sec,” says Bea, staring intently at her monitor. She has pushed her hair up into a pile and secured it with a pencil. Another pencil is tucked behind her ear. I have encountered her in a rare moment of industry: the touch-typing hunch she assumes when social networking has unfurled into a stately, straight-backed posture, hands poised rather high and fingers striking the keys in a slow, staccato rhythm, as though every character is of weighty importance.
“Forget it,” I say, clattering my armload onto the filing-cabinet desk. I’ve gone in for one final stationery-cabinet sweep, and boy, have I made it count. My self-imposed criteria was medium-ticket items I wouldn’t purchase myself, but which I’m confident will come in handy at home: highlighter pens, stapler, multi-pack of notebooks, gel pens, Scotch tape. One by one I hurl them into my bag.
“So. Guess what?” says Bea, hitting “return” with a flourish that ends above her head.
I put a finger on my lips. “Let’s see. Is it ‘I just got made redundant from the job I already quit’?”
“What? No way! Shit,” says Bea. She tugs on an earlobe. “I hope it wasn’t my fault.”
“I very much doubt it has anything to do with you,” I say, “but thank you for the concern.”
“No, I really think it might be my fault. I asked Geri if I could take on some more creative stuff. And she said I could work on your project. I assumed that meant I’d be working with you—that’s what I was about to tell you.”
“Well,” I say, “you assumed wrong.” She looks a bit hurt and I feel a bit bad. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t even know why I care.”
“I’m sure it’s only because of my dad,” suggests Bea, with uncharacteristic self-awareness. “I’m going to talk to Geri. I’ll tell her to leave things as they were.”
“Please, please, I beg you, don’t bother. What’s done is done—” I stop because we have been plunged into darkness. From the kitchen doorway the office manager’s face flickers, deranged in the light of birthday-cake candles.
“Wonderful,” I say as my almost-ex(-again)-co-workers unite in an atonal dirge.
I’m trying to decide exactly what this woman, dressed from suede-platform-booted toe to fedora-feather tip in a single, arresting shade of green, might have lost. Her inhibitions? Her mind? A bet?
It’s the fifth day of now-involuntary unemployment. Every afternoon I’ve decked myself out in sports gear but failed to go for a run, leaving the house only to go to the Co-op. My usual cashier seems impressed today.
“You’re training very hard for something,” he says.
“Marathon,” I say, lobbing a register-side chocolate bar in with my shopping by way of celebration. Never before has an assumption about me been so wide of the mark yet so generous.
I’d happily split any money I earned, fifty-fifty, with someone who’d tell me what to do with my hair, what to eat, how to dress, when to bleed the radiators, get the windows cleaned, paint the walls, which articles in which publications to read, the salient points of this Syria thing and the best use of my skills and time on this earth.
Store your DNA for eternity!
I worry that London will keep on expanding until it has swallowed up everywhere else.
I worry that legal deposit libraries will do likewise (though at a much slower rate).
I worry about everything else shrinking: bank balance, potential, fertility. Habitable land for the children I won’t have because I’m definitely barren.
I worry about the integrity and future of the folksy organic smoothie manufacturer who sold out to a major multinational corporation.
I worry that waking up at four a.m. means I have clinical depression.
I worry that worry causes cancer.
A large pill, but no water to help it go down.
I go to meet social-media whiz Andrea in a new cafe called Atelier. There’s a “Mission Statement” printed on the back of the menus informing patrons that all furniture has been repurposed from authentic wood workshop fittings, and sure enough, the communal tables bear the scars of G-clamps, handsaws and drills, no doubt used to make the actual tables now shunned in favor of the tables they were made on. It’s eerily quiet: every single customer is in silent thrall to a MacBook with white buds in their ears like stethoscopes, and Apple icons glowing like synthetic hearts.
“Hey,” I say to Andrea, clambering gingerly over the bench to make as little noise as possible. Talking aloud here feels vaguely transgressive—akin to not saying, “Bless you,” when someone has sneezed. Andrea closes her laptop with reluctant politeness, picks up her phone and starts scrolling.
“I can’t be long. I have to chair a hub chat at three o’clock. Hope that’s okay.”
“Of course. Where’s that happening?”
“The hub chat? Online?”
“Yeah, obviously,” I say. “I meant where, as in which site?”
“What, do you want the URL? Actually, that could be great if you joined. We need numbers. Virtual…bodies…in the”—she flexes her thumbs at her phone a few times—“you know…thing. Okay, sent you the link. Starts at three.” In my bag, my phone hums.
“So what exactly do I need to do?”
“Come up with some questions? It’s about how to harness momentum generated by bedroom campaigns.”
“Could you give me an example?”
“Okay: not this. This is a really bad example, but say…say a woman dies while doing a triathlon. She overdid it, burnt out. On social media, someone coins a phrase like, I don’t know, ‘Pace yourself for Grace’—her name’s Grace—”
“Convenient.”
“Yeah, I said it’s a bad example. Anyway, some initiative about planning your race in advance, seeking medical advice beforehand, blah, blah, and everyone’s using this tagline ‘Pace yourself for Grace.’ So the question is, how do we become part of the conversation, in order to help drive traffic to our site?”
“Piggybacking on a tragedy, in other words.”
She shakes her head, irritated. “I said that was a bad example! I’m talking about any campaign or movement—it could be political or topical, whatever’s captured the consumer imagination.”
“Consumer?”
“Fine: public, then.” She tuts with impatience and rolls out a rehearsed-sounding tirade about the liberal media’s “holistic Montessori bullshit”—i.e. their insistence on peddling the idea that we’re all so “pwecious and unique.” “I’m sorry,” she says, wrapping up with a flourish, “but I’m not the public’s mum.”
“That’s true,” I concede, adding silently, More like its scary maiden aunt.
“Look, when you use most websites, you’re a potential consumer: that’s the deal you make when you log on. That’s how the Internet functions. We don’t do what we do for the good of our health.” I refrain from asking what it is she does, having done so too many times before, but I’m firming up a feeling that she handles social media for social-media companies. She’s still going, tapping her phone against the table while the poor MacBookers stare in bewilderment as they struggle to process the novelty of live human-to-human speech. “If we don’t capitalize on this stuff, someone else will. It’s simple economics.”
“I don’t know…It seems kind of cynical. A bit…leechy.”
She looks me up and down. “Maybe you shouldn’t come to the hub chat. We could do without the negative energy.”
“Actually, can’t anyway,” I say, showing her my palms as though it’s written there. “Just remembered I have a dentist’s appointment. Can you believe I haven’t been for five years?”
Andrea clenches her teeth in horror. I hadn’t noticed before how white and perfect they are and decide I really will go today.
“Because you’re scared?” she asks.
“Give me some credit. Being afraid of the dentist is like hating traffic cops—too easy. I like to think I’m a little more particular with my phobias: spontaneous shooting sprees on crowded trains, poisonous spiders laying eggs in my luggage on holiday—that sort of thing.” I’ve lost it: Andrea—eyes askance—seems to think so too. “Sorry, this is what happens when I spend too much time alone. I’m not sure what avenues are worth going down.”
“I’d better get moving and set up this thing.”
“Okay,” I say. “Good luck.”
We sit looking at each other. She slowly lifts her laptop lid.
“Oh, you’re staying here. You want me to go. And, obviously, I have to go to the dentist’s.” I clamber backward off the bench. “We should do this again soon.”
“Sure,” says Andrea, but she doesn’t sound it.
Coughing and sneezing at the doctor’s is one thing; at the dentist’s, it’s a whole new level of disgusting. I’d walk straight out of this spluttering germ-pit if I hadn’t already lost ten minutes (and counting) to the registration process.
“A glass of wine is two point four units,” the receptionist says, watching my pen hover over the form as I try to work out an acceptable figure. “A small glass,” she adds, with a pointedness I can’t help but take to heart. I bite my lip to hide any telltale red-wine stains, before remembering I had a night off.
“I’d be more worried about the ones who don’t need to count, who know exactly how much they drink. That suggests obsession, addiction,” I say, buoyed by yesterday’s virtue.
“Or moderation, self-control. Sister Frances! First floor!” the receptionist calls, and a tiny nun scurries past.
I flip through a magazine, two years out of date, then return it to the table by a dried-out plant. I’m hopeful the attention to detail lacking out here has been plowed instead into hygiene, staff training. Like Sister Frances before me, I’ve graduated to the first floor—another waiting area, where doors fly open and shut with the frequency of a boring silent farce. On the opposite wall is a safety poster: “If you discover a fire…” Step one is: “Stay calm.”
My baby-faced dentist is a jovial sort. He seems much younger than me, not just in his looks but the way he speaks (he insists I call him Rohan, even though I am sure I’ll have no need to) and the pair of Nikes peeping from beneath his scrubs. My childhood dentists were all distinguished older gentlemen who wore white coats, bow ties, and brogues. Rohan asks questions with laconic good-naturedness: Any problems? Do I floss? What is it I do? Because my mouth is wide open, full of fingers and metal, my responses (No; Sometimes; I’m not sure) come out like strangulated laughter.
“Insurance?” he asks, of my last answer, and I nod, because, well, why not?
“Oh yeah? What sort?”
“Ha, ha?” I say, just sounds now. I’m curious to see where this will lead.
“Healthcare?” he guesses.
I nod. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I’ve discovered a new career service: it feels no less arbitrary than any other approach.
When my mouth is empty once more, I say, “Go on, then: what’s the damage?”
He laughs. His own teeth are good, not perfect, which suggests both respect for nature and tolerance of imperfection: values I can get on board with. Were we protagonists in a romantic comedy, this would bode well for our future. “There’s some thinning enamel we need to keep an eye on”—he gestures on a chart—“but generally things are looking pretty good in there.”
“No sign of any wisdom teeth yet? I thought they were meant to have come up by now.”
He grins. “But they have: full house.”
“Oh! Oh. I didn’t even notice.”
“Some people go through a lot of trouble with those guys. You should count yourself lucky.”
I nod, but truthfully I’m disappointed: the tiniest, stupidest part of me hoped they might live up to their name.
In bed, I recount my meeting with Andrea. She doesn’t come out of it well.
“She’s obviously not very nice. I don’t understand why you’re friends with her,” says Luke.
“I’m not.”
“So why do you waste your time with her? You only get one life.”
“She asked to meet up and I feel bad saying no. She knows I don’t have a job—I have no excuse.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself. Say you’re busy next time.”
“I don’t think there’ll be a next time. I don’t think she likes me.”
“So no problem, then.”
“But I want her to like me.”
“But you don’t like her!”
“Because she isn’t nice!”
“So what’s the issue?”
“I am nice, so she should like me!”
“You do know it’s okay if not everyone likes you,” says Luke.
“If that was true, it would feel okay, but it doesn’t, so it can’t be.”
“All right, you’ve lost me. Sleep time now.”
“Don’t you want to have sex? We said we would.”
“Do you want to?” asks Luke.
I weigh my options. I don’t, but I’m not ready to be left alone in the sickly orange streetlamp wash beyond good night. “I don’t not want to.”
“You make it so hard for me to resist.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“I do, but…tomorrow? Definitely tomorrow.”
“We always say that.”
“But this time we really, really mean it.”