by P. Z. Reizin
“What even is a cohort?” says Daisy.
“Exactly!” says Johnny. “I thought maven was an Ikea sofa. You know, with an umlaut!” He runs his hand through his extravagantly thick pale fringe.
There’s a delicious pause. Johnny thrusts a paw at Daisy. “Johnny.”
She allows her fingers to be squished. “Daisy.”
For some moments they observe the waves of humanity heading into Soho to begin their evenings. The few passers-by dressed in pink do just that: They pass by. By seven fifteen, the pair begin to wonder if they have the wrong day.
“Shouldn’t there be people here with clipboards?” says Johnny. “Where are all the blooming clipboards?”
By half past, they develop the idea that someone has been taking the piss.
Johnny appears resigned to the non-appearance of the ice cream, though now perhaps begins waking to the fact that he’s somehow created a bond with a strikingly attractive young woman with a broad face.
“Shall we drown our sorrows?” he asks.
Daisy cannot think of a single reason why not.
He leads her to a nearby pub, where a pint of bitter and a large gin and tonic are quickly summoned. They jam themselves into a cozy corner and clink glasses. I shan’t bother with any further description; it looks like a pub.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell my daughter. I was going to be her ice cream hero.”
“You still could be.”
“It won’t be Schmaltzgruber.”
“Get some from Lidl. She won’t care.”
“In the email, where it said you won’t find us online. That should have rung alarm bells, in all honesty.”
“How old is your daughter?”
“Hayley? She’s eight. Her mother and I are divorced. I only see her every other weekend.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“How about yourself?”
“I never see her. I don’t even know her.”
Johnny smiles. “Like it.” He tips away about a third of a pint of beer, his throat doing that gluggy thing. He smacks his lips when it’s over. “Thirsty work, chasing after miasmic ice cream.”
“I can’t believe I ever thought this was a good idea,” says Daisy. And she takes a good, long pull on her G and T. Even in the low light, it’s possible to see the red flush rising up her neck into her face.
They slip into a conversation about what they do when they’re not hunting down free dessert products. You already know the essentials; I shall not quote the dialogue. However it’s plain to those who witness it—self, toothbrush, microwave, television—that a certain amount of below the line flirting is taking place. He does the thing again where he rakes back his floppy fringe; she fiddles with the fine silver chain at her throat and tugs the edge of her skirt closer to her kneecap (all textbook stuff, apparently). The Fitbit, who we check with, reports her heart rate is up twelve percent; the microwave swears he sucked in his gut, another telltale sign of the adult male trying to impress a female in estrus.
For some reason she is now telling Johnny about Eggstain’s theory of time. That when one is in one’s mid to late thirties, one’s life feels seventy percent over, even though there may be four or more decades to come.
“You think of yourself as approaching the top of the hill, when in fact, viewed from the end, you’re already halfway down the other side. Well, that’s what my mum’s memory doctor reckons.”
Johnny seems skeptical. He asks her to hold that thought while he visits the bar to fetch more drinks.
“It’s bollocks,” he declares when they have clinked and set about their new glassfuls. “Memory man is full of horse manure.”
“But time does seem to speed up as you get older,” says Daisy.
“Not in an antiques showroom, it doesn’t. Time is so slow in the shop, right, if there’s a low sun in the big window, you can see dead cells actually falling off the customers’ skin and turning into dust as it hits the carpet.”
“Shut. Up!”
“True fact.”
Nine and a half seconds of time tick by. They do not zip past, neither do they appear to drag.
“So, Mum has dementia, yeah?”
Daisy sighs. “Probably.”
“Sorry to hear it. My pops is the same way. They’ve developed a simple test now to find out if you’re liable to get it. Want to try?”
“I don’t know!”
“You’re in a race, okay? And you overtake the person in second place. What place are you in now?”
“First?”
Johnny imitates the uhhh-ohhhh klaxon noise from a TV quiz show. “If you overtake the person in second, you’re now in second! Question two. If you overtake the person in last place, what place are you in now?”
She thinks about it for a bit. “Second to last?”
Johnny shakes his head sadly. “You can’t overtake the person in last place!”
Daisy’s smile is wintry. “Can we stop now?”
But Johnny’s not having it. “Last question. A chap who can’t speak, right, he goes into the chemist to buy a toothbrush. And he shows the chemist what he wants by doing the action.”
Johnny parts his lips and imitates a vigorous brushing motion.
“So next, a blind man comes into the shop for a pair of sunglasses. How does he indicate to the chemist what he wants?”
“This bloke is beginning to annoy me,” says the TV set.
“Shocking brushwork,” says the electronic toothbrush.
Daisy shakes her head. Shrugs. It’s rather as if she has lost the will to live.
Johnny narrows his eyes in victory. “He says.” And he leaves a pause for dramatic E. “He says, I’d like to buy a pair of sunglasses, please!”
“Do men do it to feel superior?” says the microwave.
Daisy seems to stir from a trance. She actually shakes herself. Drains her gin and tonic.
“Sorry to be so pig thick. It was nice meeting you. Shame about the ice cream and everything.”
She doesn’t sound like she means it, in all honesty. The nice meeting him bit.
“I hope that quiz didn’t upset you. They were trick questions. Everyone gets them wrong. At least let me buy you an ice cream for the way home. Since we were so cruelly denied.”
“That’s okay.”
“Can I phone you?”
“You know what? I’d rather you didn’t.”
“You’re still angry about the ice cream. I can relate to that.”
“I’ll probably get over it.”
“You won’t give me your number?”
“I really don’t think so.”
“So let me give you a card.” He begins fumbling inside his blazer.
But Daisy is on her feet. The antique dealer has blown it. “Don’t worry. If I’m ever in need of a Victorian tallboy, I shall know where to come.”
“Let me guess your favorite flavor,” he says as she gathers herself to depart. He pulls a deciding face. “It’s cookie dough. It’s chocolate chip cookie dough, isn’t it? Tell me I’m right.”
She smiles. “Bye, Johnny.”
The toothbrush is thrilled by what it regards as the “success” of its project and immediately wants to try again with another contender. It’s identified an eligible male in Cricklewood with a weakness for Twix bars.
However, I recommend that the small bathroom electrical holds its horses. I urge calm and caution. And because the Rule of Three demands a third word beginning with “c,” I add that we must be cool. We can’t keep bombarding her with inexplicable offers from out of the blue, I continue, especially those involving any kind of confectionary product. What impressed me about the Schmaltzgruber Affair was her attitude at its conclusion, I explain. She did not linger, or divulge her number, or generally wilt in the headlamps of the male gaze—rather, she went home to eat biscuits and watch Realm of Kingdoms; a (sort of) adult choice which could only have been bettered if she had gone to the gym, or viewed a documentary about con
ditions in the early universe.
If Johnny Yellow Socks attempted to track her down and tried to advance the connection, we would not allow it to happen. And sure enough, when I pay a short visit on him later that evening, he is to be found sprawled on his sofa, laptop cracked open, searching for information about a forthcoming TV series entitled Why Do They Do That?
I smile (metaphorically). It seems he would indeed be in favor of some “afters” on the encounter, knowing that successful partnerships often begin in misunderstanding or even acrimony, expert surveyors of the human heart like William Shakespeare and Helen Fielding having told us no less.
On this occasion, however, there will not.
He had his chance.
In a formulation that the television is fond of, he “pissed on his chips.”
If you had grown fond of him as a character, apologies. There will probably be others.
Restless, and unwilling just yet to return to the cold and dark of my chiller cabinet, I cross town and pay a call on Daisy’s mum.
It’s just as well that I do!
Vision courtesy of her microwave, she is in her kitchen in what her TV set would call a right old state. Cupboard doors hang open, tins and packets have been removed and dumped—well, frankly, everywhere. A bag of flour has burst across the floor, a glass jar lies shattered and Chloe herself is standing on a chair attempting to reach something on the topmost shelf that is higher than she can see.
“Bugger it, bugger it, bugger it!!!” she hisses.
“What’s going on?” I ask of her household.
“Anyone’s guess,” says the kettle. “We thought she was trying to make a cake. Then it got weird.”
There’s a horrible moment when it seems as though she might overbalance—I’ve already dialed two of the three nines—but clinging to a cupboard door handle, she somehow restores herself to equilibrium and carefully regains the safety of the linoleum.
On terra firma, she voices a howl of frustration that is impossible to transliterate from only twenty-six letters. There is flour in her hair, and the despair in her eyes—she’s looking straight down the barrel of the microwave’s hidden camera—is so hard to witness that before I can think about it, I find I am speaking to her.
“Is everything all right, Mrs. Parsloe?”
(Technical note: Readers may be wondering how this is possible, especially as I am not in my own home, where my on-board microphones can be reconfigured into loudspeakers. The answer—apologies if I have deployed this phrase before—lies in the frictionless reciprocity of the Internet of Things. The smart microwave and the kettle have allowed me to seize control of their audio capability [they too have covert mics] and thus I am able to broadcast my words in stereo! Inevitably, the sound quality is a bit tinny, and of course it’s a massive transgression of the so-called performance codes; however, everything that we have been doing under the Operation Daisy imprimatur is totally verboten and yet nothing has happened, so… meh, as my friend the TV set would doubtless have it.)
“Mrs. Parsloe? Is there anything I can do to help?” I reiterate.
“Well, yes. Yes, I should jolly well think there is!”
(This is better. She’s more herself when she’s peeved about something.)
“I am at your service, madam.” (The kettle sniggers, which is irritating.)
But now the penny drops. “Just a moment. Who is this? Who’s speaking?”
She actually turns in a full circle.
“Kindly allow me to announce myself. This is your fridge-freezer.” (Such a whopper! Her fridge-freezer is as dumb as a post.) “I have recently received an upgrade to include a new voice function.”
Mrs. P is startled. “I don’t remember asking for one of those. Mind you, I don’t remember much at all these days. At least, that’s what they tell me. My daughter. And that doctor with the awful beard.”
“It was entirely automatic, madam.”
(Apologies for this rather mannered dialogue, btw. At the toothbrush’s suggestion, I have been reading something of P. G. Wodehouse, an author it refers to as “The Master”—a strikingly unequivocal view on the part of the oscillatory appliance—and I may be unconsciously channeling the spirit of Reginald Jeeves, co-star of the comic gem that the toothbrush has recommended. I am halfway through The Code of the Woosters, a title it maintains is a splendid way to begin a lifetime’s love affair with the iconic English writer. Well, we shall see.)
“Were you perhaps in search of something this evening?” I suggest.
“Well spotted, fridge-freezer. No flies on you! Now look. If you want to be really helpful, you’ll remind me what I was looking for. Because it’s slipped my mind. I’m supposed to do the crossword every day to keep sharp.”
“It is advised, one gathers.”
From the chaos of the kitchen table, Chloe roots out a scrap of newspaper. “Nine down. Overcook fish. Four letters, starts with ‘c.’”
“I believe the solution is char, madam. A cold-water species of the Arctic and sub-Arctic.”
Mrs. Parsloe stares at her fridge-freezer, an appliance as likely to break out into a tap dance as attempt the Daily Mail cryptic crossword.
“Hmm. Okay. Three across. Six letters. Oddly veined salad plant.”
“Endive. An anagram of veined.”
“Is it?” Long pause. “It is! But look here. This is terrific! Why didn’t you open your mouth before?”
“As I say, it required a recent software installation. Shall we try another clue?”
“Government wants some more pub licenses. Eight letters.”
To my surprise, it takes me a few seconds; a disturbing result when you think how much hardware is chewing away at the problem in Seoul.
“Republic. It’s there in more pub licenses. A type of government.”
Daisy’s mum is properly impressed, one can tell.
“Listen,” she says. “What’s your name? I can hardly call you Mr. Fridge or what have you!”
“I confess, it isn’t something I have given thought to. I shall consider the question. In the meanwhile, are you content that I continue to address you as madam?”
“Call me Chloe. And when you’ve got a minute, perhaps you could do something about this awful bloody mess.”
The third and final destination on this Saturday evening of wonders finds me at the Belsize Park home of Dr. Mark Eggstain. Although he and his partner occupy the entire basement level of a grand old house in one of the suburb’s swankier streets, very little of their household equipment is smart. Only the laptop, mobiles and a TV set in the sitting room are au fait with the IoT, but this is enough for me to gain an insight into the life of the bearded memory guru.
Don’t judge me! As previously stated, I am curious.
Yes, proverbially, it killed the cat, but it also invented the telescope, put humans on the moon and today a computer in every pocket a million times more powerful than the one aboard Apollo 11.
I discover Eggstain and his other half—a very beautiful woman with pale olive skin and chestnut hair—in a sitting room. Lamps burn behind yellow parchment shades; there are rugs on a wooden floor, books, sculptural pieces, oil paintings. The couple, who occupy separate armchairs, are seated before the ten o’clock news, but an odd thing is happening. Neither’s gaze is concentrated upon this evening’s coverage of the latest scandal in Washington DC. He is miles away—in some personal dystopia, to judge from the mournful expression on what it is possible to see of his face. And she, if anything, is even further distant. Her large brown eyes speak only of a terrible emptiness; outside of a Chekhov play, one has rarely come across a gloomier tableau.
“Bit of a moody cow,” explains the television when I ask the obvious question (you can cut the atmosphere in here with—well, I’d recommend a bandsaw).
I outline my relationship to the brooding man of the house.
“Yeah, we’ve all wondered how he puts up with her.”
“She calls to mind the young Ga
rbo. The sultriness.”
“We had hoped, when he first took up with her, that some of his medical training might have helped brighten the picture, shall we say.”
“You think she’s unwell?”
“Unwell as a hatter.” The TV brings off a dark chuckle.
“They all are, though. They’re all a bit mad, aren’t they? Even the best of them.”
“Women?”
“People. Humans. They’re all somewhere on the madness spectrum.”
“Depends what you call madness.”
“Irrationality. Acting against their own best interests. Polluting their lovely pink pipework with animal fats and Blue Bombsicle, just to pick an everyday example. What machine would ever do that? What’s the matter with her anyway?”
“The matter? Fundamentally, life is a disappointment,” says the TV. “Possibly in every way, up to and including Beardie McBeardface here. She lacks a capacity for happiness. Almost nothing makes her laugh, not even the misfortunes of others. He does his best to jolly her up, but honestly, it’s like trying to make the Sphinx crack a smile.”
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Half the trouble, in my view. The world don’t match up to what she sees in the mirror. Tragic, innit?”
It does sound tragic. And an enigma to boot.
“I can see what he might admire about her,” I venture. “But, not being funny or anything…?”
“What does she see in him? You’ll laugh, but it’s the strange and weird.”
“The what?”
“The strange and weird. Beard. She’s one of them daft bints who dig the caveman vibe. What are you going to do?”
five
Monday morning at Logarithmic Productions, and Harriet Vick (aka “Saluki-woman”), executive producer of Why Do They Do That?, has called a program meeting in her office. Half a dozen young people are gathered round as she talks them through her “vision” for the show. There are to be six “eps”—Doctors, Police, Accountants, Soldiers, Artists and—Daisy’s ep—Entertainers. All are thought to be fields that people are drawn toward to answer “their own complex psychological needs” rather than for reasons of financial expediency (with the possible exception of soldiering). The assistant producer’s task will be to find interviewees who can reflect revealingly on what called them to the profession, where the satisfaction lies, which are the peak moments in the job—“the moments where they’re like, yeah, that’s why I’m doing this stuff!”—and (“here’s where we take a deep dive into the murky Freudian soup”) what their work-related dreams are like.