Chapter Eight

Just to be alive

Everybody was looking at her funny. The worst thing about everyone looking at you funny is when it’s painfully obvious that they’re not trying to look at you funny. It only exaggerated every side glance, every flick of the eyes. That burning sensation behind your ears. Not realising you had that many hairs on the back of your neck.

She told herself that it was probably because she’d stumbled into an impromptu Wednesday meeting with the entire floor crammed into the conference room halfway through the floor manager’s talk. It could be because instead of just sneaking in the back of the crowd she’d kicked the sliding door by accident, and the bang had silenced the room and turned all heads, so she’d just smiled, shrugged, and waved that ‘yep, office idiot is here’ wave before Ivan continued boring the shit out of everyone. Or, it could be that everyone is painfully aware that the office has been functioning smoothly over the past two days because she wasn’t there. She told herself all of these things, but it was mostly likely because two days ago she’d set the photocopier on fire, and then just simply not turned up until now.

Despite the real reason for her absence, it was still going to be tricky to convince them the two were totally unrelated. Of course, dead body not withstanding, the hangover also would have prevented her turning up. Which made the excuse, despite how real, feel flimsy.

Of course, all this staring may also be because she hadn’t showered or slept properly in two days, and looked like it. It was unfair the way these standards worked. If she was camping then it’d be expected. God, I wish I worked someplace where I could just go camping. Never shower, just swim. Never work. Read. Drink beer.

What the fuck is Ivan talking about?

She caught the end of his speech:

“…so there’s going to be a lot of changes over the next few weeks, but we’ll endeavour to keep you all informed about this. Until we know more, it’ll be business as usual around here. Okay? Any questions?”

A few hands went up, and then went back down again when he looked at them. He had that look. They must teach look that in arse-hat business school - today’s class: How to ask for questions and not actually get any because any questions you have mean you weren’t listening. And I will be watching you.

“Excellent. Back to it everyone.” He clapped his hands. What a dick.

The room filed out like a bunch of tired commuters given up on their train ever arriving on time. Sandra stood aside to let everyone pass. She knew she had to speak to her team leader at some point, so she’d just grab her on the way out, have a quick word, and get back to pretending to work like any other day. It would be normal, as before, just a part of her routine. She was actually looking forward to it. Much as she hated her job, doing something she was used to after the last two days would be, in its own special way, comforting. Or so she told herself.

But before she could grab Louise, Ivan caught her eye and gestured her in. She didn’t play the ‘who me?’ (look behind, look back, wait for the nod) ‘yes really me’ game – she knew he was gesturing to her. What gave it away was Louise standing behind him, looking at her and nodding her with a look that said ‘don’t play the ‘who me’ game just get the fuck over here.’

She tried to squeeze through the crowd, gave up, and waited. None shall pass the conference room troglodytes. Their lack of speed denied their desire to not be there. It took a full three minutes to clear the room. If there’d been a fire they’d all be dead. Like on Monday, when the fire alarm went off. After the photocopier caught on fire. Shit. This is not going to be pleasant.

It had just happened. It was seriously a case of ‘I just pressed the button and it spontaneously combusted.’ But when you have a special relationship with office machinery, when you’re the one that breaks everything you look at, people are disinclined to believe you when you say ‘I didn’t touch it, it just stopped working’, or ‘It turned on, and then turned itself and wouldn’t turn back on’, and of course ‘I just pressed the button and it blew up.’

She smiled as she sat opposite Ivan in the conference room. The door was shut, and it was just her, Louise and Sally one of the other Team Leaders on the floor. Whatever that meant. For all she didn’t understand about what she did, or what the others in her ‘team’ did, she understood even less what a  ‘team leader’ did. They sure as hell didn’t play football, that was for sure. And that sucked. Football would be fun.

“So”, said Ivan, starting the conversation with a painfully obvious statement, a practice that must also be in the management handbook, “I understand you’ve not been here the last two days.”

Here we go. Four espressos, beer for second breakfast, still haven’t peed.

Fuck this.

“You understand good Ivan. That’s exactly right.”

Yes. Nerves of steel, nerves of steel, don’t need to pee, don’t need to pee.

“Now, the photocopier incident notwithstanding, we’ve been quite pleased with the work you’ve been doing here.”

“See, the thing is Ivan”, she began, ready to tell him to stick his head up his well-paid arse, and then suddenly heard. “Uh – what?”

“We’ve been running a systematic backlog analysis of your ongoing metrics and it’s an exemplary example of our progressive KPIs”

She didn’t understand what he’d just said. Except wasn’t ‘exemplary example’ just repeating yourself?

“Is this good?” she asked, looking to Louise for support. She nodded, slowly. Sally, the other team leader, shook her head. Slowly. Sandra scratched her head because it was itchy. It seemed like the right thing to do. Nothing else was making sense.

“Now, I understand that you missed a large part of the meeting this morning, so I’ll give you a brief idea of what you missed. Singapore are implementaing some changes which requires this department to undergo a number of restructuring initiatives. Do you understand what that means?”

“No not at all.”

“Excellent. Initially, the initialisation program with be fundamentally fustigating the primary dilithium speculators...” She stopped paying attention after ‘initially.’ In her career as an office person she’d long ago learnt that all you really needed to hear was the bit before the question at the end, which was usually ‘do you understand’, and you just say ‘yes’, and if you don’t get an email or piece of paper afterwards confirming it all then there’s no point being concerned about it anyway. Whatever he was saying, she didn’t care. It was all waffle. In the end she either kept her job or lost it, but as long as she didn’t end up in retail or a call centre she didn’t care. It’s a job. Bla bla bla. As Sebastian had so profoundly noted – she should be happy just to be alive.

But was she?

Shit. Don’t go there. Don’t start delving into questions of personal happiness right now when the Boss man has got his dick out and is ejaculating procedural paradigms. Just smile. Nod. Think about beer. Yes. Beer. Beer makes happy. Need a job that requires the drinking of beer. Ah, but you can’t do that all the time. So how do you be happy without beer? Dammit.

Sebastian was right. She should be happy just to be alive, but she wasn’t. There were too many things getting in the way. She hated her job. She was 25 and had no plan. No pretence of a plan. No idea even. Her house had been ransacked. She’d been psychologically abused by an old rich bastard. And 48 hours ago she’d woken up naked in an unknown apartment with a naked dead guy who shaved his bum. None of this made sense.

Fuck this.

“....so once you sign these we can get your contract underway.” Ivan finished up, and was just leading into, “does that suit you?” before Sandra cut him off.

“Ivan I quit.”

Wooo, there was that silence thing again. Only this time it was her silence. She was going to break it.

“I’m done Ivan. I quit.”

In a parallel dimension where humanity are actually cartoon characters, Ivan’s jaw dropped so hard it broke the table, his eyeballs fell out and a pea-sized brain popped out of the right socket and bounced across the table like a marble on a hard wood floor.

None of that happened in this dimension. In this dimension he blinked.

“Well I must say we’re obviously disappointed to hear that.”

“I’m not. Feels good actually”, she replied calmly.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Yes I have. But it has no bearing upon the situation, I can assure you. Are you offering?”

“No. No I wasn’t.”

“Shame. So. Are we done here?”

Louise looked at her with concern.

“You realise what we’re offering you here Sandy?”

“No I don’t, I wasn’t listening to a damn word. Don’t bother trying to explain it again, whatever it is I don’t have the energy. I’m done here.” She stood up to leave. “Unless there is anything else I can help you out with?”

She looked at the three people who had been a part of the machine that for 18 months had made her wish five out of seven days had never happened. Ivan actually looked relieved. Shocked, but relieved. Louise was annoyed, but this office was her life so she couldn’t expect her to understand. And Sally looked depressed, but she always looked depressed. It didn’t matter. Sandra knew damn well that in one day she would be forgotten. Well, however long it took to replace the photocopier anyway.

With a mental flourish, she walked out of the conference room. She tried to remain calm and cool but was actually running through everything she’d ever stored on the C drive at work to make sure there was nothing she’d ever need. Whatever it was, she could live without it. There was nothing to personalise her desk. No one to say goodbye to that she hadn’t already.

Then she stopped, realising she’d forgotten something she’d promised herself over a year ago, after one particularly unfortunate incident with Ivan. She turned around, walked back to the conference room to find the three of them in a deep, concerned discussion. Ivan stood up when he saw her arrive.

“Sandra! I see you’ve reconsidered. Excellent.”

“No, I just promised myself something once Ivan. And I was angry at the time, and there were many times when I was angry again and repeated that promise, but I honestly thought I would never live up to it. This makes no logical sense Ivan, and I don’t expect you to understand. But suck my balls Ivan. Suck. My. Balls.”

Then she turned around and walked out of the office, without noticing a single thing going on around her.

She emerged on the street, glad to be alive. The sun wasn’t shining, the traffic was noisy and that crap busker was murdering David Bowie, but it didn’t matter. She grabbed her new phone and dialled Liz who, surprisingly, answered.

“Liz. Grab your shit together. Meet me at The Four Legs.” The gravitas of her statement was lost in the reply. “You know... That place with the chairs.”