by Heide Goody
“That’s just an example, Lori,” said Adam. “I guess that this thing with Mom and Dad moving out will give you some thinking time. You’ve got a chance now to make your own way in the world and understand your part in it.”
“I already had a part in the world,” I said. “I had the upstairs bedroom at home. Do you know where they’ve gone?”
If it had just been a regular phone call, he might have got away with saying nothing. But I could see that pursed look on his face.
“You know!” I said. “I’ve got to find them.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Look, Lori, they’ve done this for a reason. They’ve done it because they love you. Buckle down and show them that you can sort yourself out. We can see about letting you pop round to visit them if it looks as if you’re making progress.”
I wanted to howl down the phone and tell him to stop being such a self-righteous prig of an older brother but I somehow bit my tongue, killed the video feed and made a strangled grunt of frustration, which I turned into a light cough. Did that count as ‘sorting myself out’? Surely there’s some part of being a proper grown-up that involves not shrieking abuse at people that deserve it?
“Oops, lost the picture,” said Adam.
“That’ll be the poor signal in your flat,” I said.
“Oh, that reminds me. You’ll want to connect to the Wi-Fi…”
While he began to explain how to connect the Wi-Fi – didn’t he just write the password on the fridge like everyone else? – I picked up Gida the goat and stomped sullenly through the flat.
Wandering into Adam’s bedroom, I spotted another of those weird buttons. On the night stand next to the bed was a button with the Durex logo on it. Surely, he didn’t have some sort of condom dispenser? I pressed the button but nothing happened. No condoms appeared. Maybe they descended from the ceiling like inflated party balloons. I tried again.
“What are these buttons?” I asked.
“Buttons?”
“Buttons? Ah, you mean the Amazon Dash buttons. Don’t touch those, they’re for ordering new stuff like toilet paper and, er, washing powder. Just leave them alone, yeah?”
“I don’t suppose there’s one for ordering any decent breakfast cereal?” I asked. “Your muesli is the worst thing ever.”
“I don’t have any muesli, Lori,” he said. “You’ll need to get some. Now, in terms of supermarkets, I use Ocado but I think –”
“No, the muesli in the cupboard. Maybe you forgot it was there. Wild Seeds it’s called. Awful stuff.”
There was a long pause.
“That’s for birds,” he said.
“I can’t believe the things women do for the sake of their health. It’s definitely a step down from Special K.”
“No,” said Adam in that slow voice he uses when he thinks he’s talking to an idiot. “It’s for birds. Wild birds. In the garden. You’re not a wild bird, Lori.”
“Wild? I’m livid, Adam!”
There was silence down the phone. Come on, Adam, that was a good joke. Why could I not make him laugh when I wanted to? I sat on the side of his bed and put the phone up to the side of Gida’s head while Adam lectured me some more about reading labels properly and taking responsibility and where the nearest Waitrose was and I don’t know what else. The goat nodded along while I pressed the Durex button. When I’d pressed it a hundred times I put the phone back to my ear.
“– and maybe if you hadn’t spent that money on a holiday to Crete when they clearly thought it was a business loan –”
“How come everyone’s such an expert on how I run my business?” I said.
“I think you have to actually have a business before you can talk about running it. You know I like your cartoons as much as the next person but…”
“But what?”
“Well, just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’re going to make any money from it.”
“But I’m really very good.”
“And you think that makes you entitled to be rewarded.”
“I don’t think I’m entitled to –”
“Yes, you do!” he said, hotly. “That’s exactly it. You think you’re entitled to make a living from doodles. You think you’re entitled to sponge off Mom and Dad for the rest of forever. It’s that kind of entitlement that gives the rest of us millennials a bad name.”
I scoffed. “You’re not a millennial. You’re practically middle-aged.”
“I’m thirty, Lori.”
“See?”
He sighed bitterly. “You know, while some of us are out there, working, saving for a mortgage and a pension, contributing to society. There are some people” – ‘some people’ was code for ‘Lori’; he thinks he’s clever but I can read between the lines – “whose world doesn’t extend beyond their own social media filter bubble, who are more wrapped up in getting likes for their posts and redefining their identities on a daily basis. One day, they’re polyamorous pansexuals and the next they’re… they’re elfkin or unicorns or something!”
“I met a pansexual unicornkin on holiday,” I said conversationally.
“I bet you bloody did! And while we’re worrying about your trigger warnings and safe spaces, you’re no-platforming anyone who disagrees with you because you bloody snowflakes are all too flipping delicate and special to cope with the teensiest amount of criticism!”
Rant over, he just panted on the line.
“That was a bit harsh,” I said eventually.
Adam laughed. It wasn’t cruel or teasing. Just tired.
“Look, Lori,” he said. “Let’s just concentrate on the future, shall we?”
“Sure.”
“I do care, you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Now, what time’s your interview?” he said.
What was it? I looked at the clock on my phone. It was coming up for four. The letter had said five pm.
I hadn’t really given much thought to the job interview. I’d rejected it out of hand the moment I read about it. To the uninformed outsider, it might appear that my parents applying for a job on my behalf was a generous act. Of course, it was nothing of the sort; it was a deliberate snub to my business endeavours. They assumed that a young cartoonist couldn’t be independently wealthy and would be grateful for a menial position at the university museum.
However, it was a good excuse to get Adam off the phone. I was bored of having everything wrong in my life mansplained to me.
“Ooh, it’s quite soon,” I said. “Must go and get ready.”
“That’s the spirit! Best of luck and speak soon. Oh, one more thing.”
“Shoot, bro.”
“The rocks in the lounge…”
“Yeah, I did wonder.”
“Please, do me a favour and just take care of them.”
“No problem. See you.”
“Bye, Lori.”
I blew a loud raspberry at the phone after he’d hung up. Sure, he sounded like he cared but you had to listen to the subtext: Saintly Adam Belkin, so successful that he was touring round lecturing poor unsuspecting Americans on whatever popular science nonsense he was peddling these days, running his life from his smartphone and generally being Shiny Adam with a halo of solid gold.
So, the interview.
Sure, spending the days working alongside one of my best friends had a certain appeal but Cookie was a girl without ambition. As long as she had her weed, her booze and an opportunity to strut her funky stuff on a Saturday night, she was happy. Me, I needed more in my life. I had an independent income from my web-comic, fed by donations from a grateful public. I could live off that and tell the museum to stick its job offer up its boring, dusty bum.
I pulled up the PayPal app on my phone to see how much I’d been paid recently.
“Seventeen pence,” I read.
Seventeen pence. In all the time I’d been away.
Okay. Plan B.
I’d need to tap up Adam or Mom and Dad for some money
. Mom and Dad would be an easier mark. They might have run off to deepest, darkest Wales but they’d be in touch soon enough. I just had to tell them how I was poor and starving (those Wild Seeds were really doing a number on my empty innards). Of course, they’d ask how the interview went. They might be miffed if I told them I didn’t bother going…
I pulled out the letter. I might have to go to this wretched interview after all. If I got the job at least I’d be earning something. If I didn’t get it, I could honestly tell the folks that I’d done my best. Either way, if I played along with this grand plan that they’d all cooked up they might cut me some slack. Five o’clock. I had an hour. I went to the Lori Clothes box to find something suitable. It didn’t take long to pull out all of my potential outfits and spread them out. I like to wear things that reflect my personality, but something told me that I might need to tone things down for an interview. A great many of my tops are hand painted by me. I held up Florrie Paints the Town Red. That wouldn’t do. How about Grand Theft Auto - Florrie Edition? No. My best bet would be Florrie Does the Funky Chicken, but it still felt wrong. I went back to Adam’s room and looked in his wardrobe. There were shirts and suits hanging on proper wooden hangers and some jeans and polo shirts folded on shelves. The door had a little rack for ties. Everything was sorted by colour. I reached for a shirt. It felt expensive and crisp. Moments later I was wearing it. I smoothed it down. This was going to work. I struggled slightly with the buttons being the wrong way round, but once it was on, and I’d put one of my belts around my waist, it looked pretty good. My figure is on the boyish side, so the fit wasn’t a problem. I was tempted to see how a jacket and tie looked as well but I was running short of time. I grabbed my phone and the wickerwork goat (Cookie would love it!) and left the flat.
Chapter 4
It’s a short walk over to the University Museum and Art Gallery from Adam’s place, through the Warstone Cemetery, along the dual carriageway and past the studenty pubs and clubs on Broomhill Road (where once I spent a night at the worst nightclub ever). Seeing it made me realise that the charm of being back in my green and leafy hometown had already worn off and I wished I was walking to the Ikarus Bar in Malia for afternoon cocktails. I crossed the road and went through the ivy-covered university gates.
I’d texted Cookie a summary of my dire situation on the walk over and she was waiting for me by the museum, leaning against the wall around the corner from the grand stone-steps-and-classical-columns entrance. She wore a blue tabard as if she was a cleaner or a dinner lady or something.
She came forward and gave me a hug. I inhaled the faded scent of cannabis that I always associate with her and felt instantly better. Whether that was the reassuring presence of a friend or a second-hand high, I couldn’t say. Cookie always hugged for one second too long. I once pointed this out to her and she told me, “Everyone hugs for three seconds. That extra second, that’s just for you.”
My friend Cookie. What to say about her? We met in the first year of secondary school. I was this gawky stick thing with straw hair. She was a bouncing puppy with afro hair that was even wilder than mine. We definitely weren’t the cool girls – not then – but what we lacked in cool, we made up for in shameless joy. Our form tutor in sixth form described us as each other’s enablers – this, after the time Cookie fell through a skylight when we tried to break into the school at the weekend – but I wouldn’t have called us enablers; we were just each other’s personal cheerleaders. And, when it came to trouble, Cookie was less of an enabler and more of a lightning rod. I never had one of those sixteenth birthday house parties where your parents’ house gets trashed while they’re away for the weekend. Why? Because Cookie had done that very thing two months earlier and I’d seen enough crazy shit to scare me off the idea for life. Taking up smoking, falling off a speeding moped, getting briefly engaged to a Belgian jazz saxophonist twice your age: I’d managed to avoid these excesses because I’d seen Cookie do them first (although I did get some serious snogging action with the saxophonist’s trumpeter bandmate). Both our sets of parents approved of our friendship. I was Cookie’s moderately well-behaved friend and my parents assumed I was an okay kid if I didn’t get into the same messes Cookie did. The fact that my folks held up Cookie’s job as a role model for me simply showed how far I’d fallen.
I cherished my extra second of hug-time outside the museum.
“Worst day ever,” I told Cookie.
“All experiences are relative,” she said. “And all are valid.”
“When I get a minute to spare I’m looking to see what the definition of orphan is. Pretty sure I am one.”
“I think your parents have to be dead.”
“They’re not dead,” I conceded, “but they’ve made me homeless. A homeless orphan.”
“Mom said you were stopping at your brother’s place,” she said.
“Well yeah, so I’m a homeless orphan living in a luxury apartment,” I said, feeling that she really wasn’t appreciating the full extent of my misery. “But I hate it. He’s got robots in every room, I’m scared to turn the lights on because he can tell when I’m using electricity and I ate bird food by mistake.”
“I did that once.”
“Did you?” I asked.
She paused in thought. “No. Not that. But I did try to hatch a coconut once.” She steered me up the steps. “After I knock off here I’ll come back with you. Help you settle in. Bring some spiritual balance to the festering hovel you’re living in.”
“You mean drink all my booze.”
“You have booze? The gods smile. I just need to call someone about some work first. And – segue! – speaking of work, you need to face the fearsome Rex in his den.”
“Is he really fearsome?”
“No, but Rex’s sort of old school.”
“Old school how?” I asked.
“All the ways you can think of,” she said. “Just be really straight with him. You know how you can sometimes talk...?” she made a tumbling motion with her hands.
“Sense?” I suggested.
“Bollocks. You talk bollocks.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
“I speak vast truths. Only a fool can’t tell the difference. Cut down on the random bollocks. Be straightforward with Rex. He’s not really very twenty-first century. If he asks you about your work history, don’t say you’re a blogger or you’ll just have to explain what that means.”
“But that’s what I do.”
“No, tell him you’ve been building up your home-based art business.”
“But that’s not what I am.”
“Do any of us know who we really are, Baby Belkin? Do we?”
We made our way down a corridor with colourful tiles that covered the floor and went halfway up the walls as well. There were intricate moulded panels and shelves all over the place. I felt sorry for whoever had to keep the place clean.
“Rex will also ask you how you feel about flexibility.”
“I can put my foot in my mouth. Literally. Did it for a bet once.”
“Not like that. Working extra hours, weekends, that sort of thing. Just agree to everything. He says it to everyone and it never happens. Never.”
I nodded.
“Another thing about Rex,” said Cookie, as we passed through a door marked no public access. “He’s a bit strange.”
“Strange? Stranger than what?”
Cookie took my elbow and swung me round to face another door.
“In there. See you later, meow-meow.”
I knocked on the door and went into a small office that was fifty percent filing cabinets and fifty percent reclaimed secondary school furniture. A large metal cupboard against the wall fizzed and crackled dangerously and white light flashed occasionally at its hinges. A man sat behind a much-marked desk. He had a bushy grey beard, flowing grey hair and a deep Mediterranean tan. This Rex character didn’t look old though. He looked like Santa Claus had decided to lose a bit of weigh
t, get some sun and get a job modelling cheap suits.
“Five o’clock,” said Rex. He had a commanding voice. He wasn’t just relaying the fact it was five o’clock; he was telling time what time it ought to be. “Take a seat, Miss Belkin.”
I sat on a chair of metal tubing and ancient canvas.
“You will forgive us,” he said. “We are in a transitional period. Ah, which serves to remind… Are you, or is anyone you’re related to, involved in the un-retendering programme?”
“I don’t think so,” I said cautiously.
“Be sure,” he said darkly. “For we have to be sure also. There are spies.” His eyes darted left and right.
“Um. I am sure. I’m not related to anyone who’s part of the untenderi–”
“Un-retendering.”
“Un-retendering programme.”
“Good,” he said with a momentary smile. “So, Miss Belkin, we find it interesting that you have chosen to attend an interview wearing flip-flops and carrying a toy.”
Gida. Dammit. I’d only brought the goat to show Cookie. I placed the goat on the floor and smiled at him. “I like to be interesting.” I was about to elaborate, but I remembered Cookie’s warning and stopped myself.
“Well, you should know that the University Museum and Art Gallery like to run a tight ship here. No room for tomfools, rapscallions and guttersnipes here.” He looked down at something that was written on his pad. “Your employment history is not mentioned in the reference that has been provided.”
A reference. Written by my parents. How interesting.
“Where have you worked recently?” he asked.
“I have been building up my home-based business,” I said. Cookie would be so proud that I had remembered my lines.
“Would it be correct to assume that you mean you’ve never had a job?” he asked.
“Not a formal job, as such,” I said. “I’ve worked in what you might call a voluntary capacity from time to time.”
“Give an example, please,” he said, leaning forward.
I hadn’t expected that. I thought about how to phrase this. “Well, there was this one time when I put on a tutu and sang The Locomotion outside the city train station.”