The First Year

by Genevieve Gannon

  ‘Invitations.’ Andy sniffed. ‘This is barbaric. Why make us wait?’

  ‘It’s so fucking upper crust, isn’t it?’ spat Hugh. ‘You are cordially invited to fuck off.’

  A blue suit in front of them had opened a job search browser on his mobile phone. Another was tapping seek.com into his iWatch.

  Harris was wrapping up. ‘This is a time of transition for HM&L. But if we’re smart now, we can come out stronger on the other side.’

  He finished his speech with a flourish, lifting his hand up in the air and closing it, like he was grasping for some imagined, brighter future. Then he paused, as if for applause. The assembly was dumb with disbelief. Harris cleared his throat and said in a quieter voice, ‘Stuart and Mary from HR are available if you have any questions.’ He exited quickly, bringing his phone to his ear to ward off questions.

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Hugh under his breath. ‘And Tilly wants to renovate the bathroom.’

  Andy slid his phone from his pocket and started to type a message to Saskia. Then he stopped, there was no point worrying her. He would wait to see if he received an invitation.

  He clicked refresh on his email. Nothing.

  ‘Right, lads, better get to it,’ he said.

  ‘Heads up, mate, here’s more bad news,’ said Hugh.

  Krystyn White was coming towards them with a scowl on her face like a scorned Greek Goddess. The fluted skirt of her pale blue suit swirled around her legs as she moved. Her hair was pinned back, making her look severe. She wore dark red lipstick.

  ‘Krystyn.’ Andy gave a small wave. She didn’t respond. ‘Still mad, I see.’

  ‘No one likes a sore loser, Kiki,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Eat a dick, Delahunty,’ she snarled without breaking her stride.

  Hugh gave Andy a smile. ‘I don’t know why it didn’t work out between you two.’

  Andy clapped a hand on Hugh’s shoulder. ‘Forget about her, tell me about Rhino. What happened?’

  ‘Shh. Not here. I’ll explain over lunch. Hell of a comedown after your honeymoon.’

  *

  Saskia pulled open the heavy back door to the gallery cafe and felt a sense of disappointment settle heavily on her shoulders. The CD of Puccini arias was playing as always. Her denim apron was hanging on its peg. As she slipped it on and tied the belt her manager Jill stuck her head into the backroom to check Saskia had arrived.

  ‘Sas,’ Jill said, ‘I know your shift starts at eleven, but perhaps we should make a rule that you get here fifteen minutes before so you can begin actually working at eleven, not ten past eleven when you’ve put your apron on and signed-in and stuff, ’sthat cool?’

  Saskia narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ll be on the floor by eleven.’

  Jill, a university student five years younger than Saskia, nodded her head then went back to flirting with the man at the counter. She had a shock of blond curls and a nose ring that she would idly twist when she had nothing to do.

  ‘Can you start prepping the sandwich counter?’ Jill called over her shoulder when Saskia emerged from the back room with a tray of clean glasses in her hands. ‘Oh, and give the cake fridge a quick clean, will you? I haven’t had a chance.’

  Jill thrust an old yoghurt bucket filled with warm grey water at Saskia. Little bits of grated carrot and soggy breadcrumbs floated on the surface. Saskia dunked a sponge into it, rang out the excess and started scrubbing.

  Cream from the cakes and eclairs had fallen onto the bottom of the refrigerated cabinet like birds’ droppings. They’d turned hard and yellow. Saskia used a knife to scrape them off. Madam Butterfly’s aria came on. Saskia hated that CD. Jill danced around her, serving customers.

  Saskia rucked a sopping rag back and forth over the greasy trails left by the warts of cream. When she dunked the rag in the bucket, the filthy water swirled around her rings which shone through the murk. Her mind drifted to Andy’s offer. She knew that to be a successful jeweller she had to be able to do it fulltime. In order to justify doing it fulltime she needed to be successful. But being dependent on Andy scared her, and letting him finance her work seemed wrong.

  Saskia got her first job washing dishes in a cafe when she was fourteen. She’d waited tables in high school, pulled beers all through TAFE, then settled into a day job at the gallery cafe while slowly building her jewellery business at night. It had been a proud moment when she’d been able to justify stepping down into a casual role so that she could rent a subsidised studio space in Brunswick and work on her label a few days a week. She and Randa had bought a seven dollar bottle of sparkling wine and drunk it barefoot in Princes Park to celebrate.

  ‘To my friend, the entrepreneur,’ Randa had said.

  Whenever Jill was being unbearable Saskia would close her eyes and focus on what the cafe wage enabled her to do: it covered her studio rent and bought her silver, paid for tools and tool repairs when needed. How could she quit the cafe, leaving herself without a reliable income? She thought of all the debt she’d had to pay off after her bust-up with Seth — the non-refundable cost of a wedding that never was. Seth, who had turned to couch-surfing when she kicked him out of the flat leased in her name, had cried poor to their creditors. Debt collectors had come after her. The memory made Saskia sick with nerves to the point of giddiness. She couldn’t go through that again. A voice in her head kept saying, Just try it for six months. Keep a record of what you spend on materials and pay it back when the business can afford it. Andy wasn’t Seth. But still, the thought of quitting felt like standing on the precipice of a very steep cliff.

  ‘Saskia,’ Jill hollered. ‘I need you on the coffee machine. Haven’t you finished that fridge yet?’

  *

  Hugh had two beers waiting on the table when Andy arrived at the fifth-storey bar that overlooked the green dome of the Supreme Court building.

  ‘First, here’s to you and your hot young ball and chain.’

  ‘Cheers. And don’t call her that.’

  Hugh shrugged a sorry and brought his beer to his lips.

  Andy took a mouthful to take the edge off his morning then leaned forward. ‘So tell me, what happened with Rhino?’

  Hugh swallowed and shook his head. ‘It was bad. Really poisonous stuff.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sexual harassment.’

  ‘Rhino?’ Andy almost laughed. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘That was their reason.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Andy took another drink of his beer. ‘Rhino has the sexuality of a church pew. I mean, no offense to the bloke, but he does.’

  They both pictured their stocky friend’s bowl haircut and thick fringe that shaded his face like a veranda, his preference for short-sleeved shirts, and his epic, eponymous nose. He had a peculiar habit of eating paper clips — the little ones coated in brightly coloured plastic. He always seemed to have one between his lips. Andy had figured he was just an avid securer of documents, until he started to notice Rhino would have a clip in his mouth at the beginning of a meeting, and by the end it would be gone. Not on the table, not pegged to a pile of paper. Just gone. He’d see him later, another clip between his lips, but this one would be green, rather than the blue he’d been masticating in the morning.

  But that didn’t make him a sex pest.

  ‘The only thing that has ever felt threatened by Rhino is the contents of the stationery cupboard,’ said Andy. ‘He couldn’t possibly have harassed someone.’

  ‘Course not, management just wanted an excuse. They’re trying to burn off a lot of dead wood, and they’re turning up the heat.’

  ‘Rhino wasn’t dead wood. He was a good worker.’

  ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t have the bullish self-interest of a true business winner. Doesn’t do the socialising that helps win clients. Once you get to a certain level at a firm this size you’ve got to catch and kill your own.’

  ‘So he was fired because he’s not a money-hungry sleaze?’

  ‘I th
ink they just saw an opportunity to off-load someone who they saw as a worker bee, not an earner.’

  ‘Who do they say he harassed?’

  ‘Carmelita.’

  ‘That pretty PA? Isn’t she one of the partners’ daughters or something?’

  ‘Bingo. She’s the stepdaughter of Martin Morse — the only child of his third wife who’s a Columbian foot model, if you can believe it.’

  ‘Barely.’ Martin Morse had a gin-blossom schnoz and bloodshot basset-hound eyes. ‘How do you know this stuff?’

  Hugh leaned back in his chair and raised a brow. ‘Knowledge is power. You know that.’

  ‘Where did they get the idea Rhino was sexually harassing Carmelita?’

  ‘Well, the problem is, he kind of did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Accidentally.’

  ‘How can you accidentally sexually harass someone?’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault. He told me all about it last week. He looked like shit by the way. Pale. Hadn’t shaved. A face like a raw fish fillet rolled in cat hair. He tells me, about two months ago he’s at home watching Collingwood thump Hawthorn. He’s just about to open his fourth pale ale when he gets a message in his private Twitter inbox.’

  ‘Rhino’s on Twitter?’

  ‘He follows all the footy players. Thinks he’s going to get some insight into what kind of shape they’re in.’

  Andy nodded. Rhino was a mad gambler. ‘Yeah, right, so what next?’

  ‘So this message, it’s from Carmelita and she’s complimenting him on picking all eight in the office tipping comp the previous weekend. She says he’s got an intellect that he could apply to anything. She says it’s powerful, and attractive.’

  Andy gulped more beer. ‘Get out. No woman talks like that, particularly not to Rhino.’

  ‘That’s what he thinks at first. But they start chatting. It becomes a regular thing. Every now and then she tosses in a mention of something that happened in the office, like how Henry Tsu was walking around with a giant beetroot stain on his shirt like a Labor party rosette and didn’t even notice, or how she found a hair in the caramel cake they’d eaten for somebody’s birthday.’

  Andy was agape.

  ‘Rhino still can’t believe she’s writing to him,’ Hugh continued. ‘But she knows everything that’s going on. Even comments on what he was wearing sometimes. He said one day she told him his new green tie matched his eyes. Then she starts confiding in him. Says he’s the only one who understands her.’

  Andy was filled with a sense of dread. A lot of women warmed to Rhino but he seemed doomed to be the supreme overlord of Friend-zone-ville — the unchallenged mayor of a town nobody wants to live in. Andy always held out hope that someday one woman would wake up to herself and realise Rhino was a considerate, earnest guy with a huge brain and a bigger heart.

  ‘So anyway, they chat on, and she starts upping the ante. Starts saying how she needs someone like him who she can trust. Someone who can protect her. Starts getting suggestive.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘She said he was a real man, that he was her type.’

  Andy covered his eyes. ‘I can’t bear to hear anymore.’

  ‘Mate, you don’t even want to know. So Rhino starts getting into it too, telling her how she’s so sexy, how he never dreamed he could ever by loved by anyone half as beautiful as her. She says she has to see him and they arrange to meet. But she never shows. Rhino, poor bloke, he’s shattered. He got a haircut for the occasion. Bought a new shirt – a chequered thing with long sleeves and everything. He booked a table at Vue de Monde and just sat there all night alone, tearing up his complimentary bread.’

  Andy shook his head and motioned for the waiter to bring another round of beers. ‘Poor Rhino.’ His heart ached for the guy.

  Hugh continued: ‘When he gets home she messages straight away, says she got held up and her phone was dead. Then the next week it happens again.’

  ‘Can’t they meet for lunch or something?’

  ‘That’s the thing, all this time she’s made out Morse is watching her like an overprotective war lord. Apparently he’s this tyrant stepfather and she’s scared she’ll get into trouble, she tells him. But Rhino, he’s watching her walk around in those little skirts of hers, and those close-fitting shirts, and he can’t take it anymore. He’s at his desk and he sends her an email. He tells her that her breasts torment him, and he wants to lick them like an icecream.’

  ‘Jesus, Rhino.’

  ‘You should have seen some of the things she said to him.’

  ‘Like what? Wait, no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’

  ‘But you can imagine.’

  ‘I can imagine. Then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing at first. She never writes back. Two days later he gets called into Harris’s office. He’s fired. Inappropriate office behaviour, they say. There’s a printout of the email sitting on the table. Carmelita’s sitting between two HR rubes with a self-righteous scowl on her face.’

  ‘But doesn’t he explain what happened?’

  ‘Sure he does. He says they’ve been chatting on Twitter for nearly a month. Carmelita gets really upset. She doesn’t have a Twitter account.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Andy never swore. He was raised not to. But he swore now, for Rhino. ‘Didn’t he have the messages, in his phone or on his computer or something?’

  ‘Yeah. He was able to produce them. The bosses said it didn’t matter. He’d sent her the email on a company account and they wanted him gone.’

  ‘Poor Rhino,’ Andy said again, gripping the handle on a fresh beer stein that had been put in front of them.

  ‘You know what the worst bit is?’

  ‘Apart from Rhino’s shattered heart?’

  ‘It was someone in the office. He showed me the messages. This fake Carmelita knew all sorts of details. You know, internal stuff. They named names.’ Hugh shook his head. ‘I think he’s more cut up about losing his love interest than losing his job.’

  ‘Well, at least we know a bloke like Rhino will find work easy to come by,’ said Andy. ‘He’s got a head start on the rest of us.’

  ‘Someone wanted to get rid of him. Whoever it was, they’re a smart operator. Someone wanted to take a bit of pressure off when the time comes for the axe to fall.’

  Andy finished his second beer and slammed down the glass. ‘And they’re still in the office working with us.’

  In unison, the two men picked up their phones and checked their email accounts for an invitation to be fired.

  *

  The mid-afternoon coffee rush had finished and Saskia was clearing tables. She could make coffee at twice the speed of Jill, but Jill hated cleaning, and so during quieter periods she pulled rank and positioned herself at the coffee machine, explaining that she’d never get better if she didn’t practise. Saskia was wiping sauce and crumbs from the table tops when she heard a familiar ‘snap’.

  Jill looked up from the milk she was heating and gave Saskia the half head-wiggle, half-shrug that was the signal for ‘You deal with that, will you?’

  Saskia walked behind the counter, heaved the drinks fridge away from the wall, and peered behind it. A mouse was pinned under the spring-loaded arm of a trap. She gently slid a newspaper under him then folded the sports section over so the customers wouldn’t see. She always felt bad when these traps went off. It wasn’t the mouse’s fault he was vermin.

  She’d had a mouse problem at her flat, but instead of using traps, she put down pieces of cardboard that were painted with a sticky, honey-like goo. If she found a mouse stuck in it she’d walk seven blocks to the nearest park and set him free. But Jill insisted on the traps, saying there was a risk the mouse would return if it was allowed to live.

  ‘I’ll just take this outside,’ Saskia said to Jill, nodding at the newspaper parcel.

  She washed her hands and returned to the cafe floor. The gallery director had come down for a coffee, as he often did, and was o
rdering a short black from Jill. Today he was with a Japanese woman dressed in swathes of teal. Saskia strained her ears, trying to ascertain who the woman was, and if she had international jewellery connections.

  She put fresh hot water and detergent into the bucket and started cleaning a spill on a table a woman was sharing with her baby son. Saskia’s diamond engagement ring flashed, catching the light, as she scrubbed. Andy had hunted down the ring in an online auction house. It was an antique, something that Saskia could never have made, but that suited her style. When he had presented it to her she was struck by how well he understood her taste. It was more beautiful than anything she could have thought up, yet was exactly what she would have chosen if she’d had her pick of all the rings in the world. She righted the sugar bowl that had been scuttled by the baby boy and cleared up sugar that was turning into a paste in a puddle of water the boy had also spilled. The mother sipped her tea and the little boy burped.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the woman addressed Saskia. ‘Is this babyccino made from soymilk? I told the girl it had to be soy milk.’

  ‘I’ll check for you,’ Saskia said.

  ‘Charlie is lactose intolerant. He can only have soy.’

  Saskia reached for the cup in front of Charlie just as his cheeks turned red and he ejected milky sick all over the table top and Saskia’s hand. Her ring was smothered in the gruely vomit that dribbled between her fingers, hot and lumpy.

  The woman frowned and looked up at Saskia. ‘Now there, see, I told you.’ She spoke slowly and sharply, as if Saskia was an idiot. ‘It mustn’t be soy milk.’

  Saskia looked anxiously in the direction of the gallery director, who was now accepting two drinks from Jill. ‘I’m really very sorry,’ she said, wiping her hand and then the table with the cloth. ‘Can I offer you a free muffin?’ she asked, keen to resolve the situation before it drew the attention of the gallery director.

  ‘A free muffin? You think you can make up for risking my little boy’s health with a muffin?’

  ‘Or perhaps some cake?’

  Saskia looked for the director and his friend. She didn’t want them to think she had caused the problem.