Falling Over

by James Everington

He told himself that he wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t continue to look for something that wasn’t there. But of course as he approached the grey office block his gaze lifted to the very top. It was an ugly, twelve-story building; but blank, with no discernible features to explain why it seemed so ugly. It just was. It imposed on the surrounding area by sheer height, not by being memorable – the sight of it on the local front page two weeks ago had been incongruous and had made him do a double-take.

  He studied the straight line of the roof of the building, a razor cut against the blurred sky. It wavered in his vision as he stared. A car horn sounded, and he realised he was standing in the middle of the road, with his head craned upwards, eyes watering against the blur. Shaken, he ran up to the building and let himself in with a company swipe-card. Distantly, he heard sirens.

  He walked through the lobby, plunged into the lift, and pressed the button for the top floor. The lift juddered upwards. He was a young man, but the photo on the swipe-card that was clipped to his belt was younger. Below his face was printed his name and rank: Manager. He was returning to work after a fortnight’s absence, a ‘paid suspension’. The lift continued to shake as it pulled upwards. Because of the mirrored walls, it seemed to the manager that the lift was packed full, but in fact he was sharing it with just one other person – both late. The manager’s staff should already be at their desks. He pictured how they would turn to look at him as he entered, their eyes clear and harsh with altitude, looking down at him – he pictured this, but he had no idea of the picture’s accuracy, for in truth he barely knew his staff. The youth in the lift with him could have been one of them and the manager wouldn’t have known; but the boy scurried out at floor seven. The manager had to endure the climb to the top alone and with eyes closed, feeling like someone was breathing down his neck.

  The floor on which he worked was open plan, except for two rooms sealed off at two of the corners – one his office, the other a storeroom. The rest of the floor was crammed with banks and banks of desks. There was a table to his left by the coffee machine and water cooler, and beyond that the fire-escape... After the gloom of the lift the twelfth floor seemed unnaturally bright, for there were windows letting in clear light on three sides, even though the day outside was rather drab. He shut his eyes. He heard innocuous work talk all around him, and he held his breath and tried to break the cipher – for surely they would really be talking about him. Opening his eyes, he found he had carried on walking, and he was now right up to one of the windows. The glass went almost all the way to the floor, so leaning forwards he could see the ground almost directly beneath him. The windows vibrated with the wind; he could see his reflection in the panes of glass sway with their movements, like he had suddenly been moved forward an inch; then back again.

  He had two subordinates as direct reports, two sub-managers, and they were both huddled together in conversation and hadn’t seen his return. The rest of his staff were temps hired from employment agencies – quick to get in, and quick to get rid of, if need be. As he looked around the twelfth floor he didn’t recognise half of the faces – but he wouldn’t have recognised them all two weeks ago either. It didn’t mean they were new, it didn’t stop him examining their faces a second, a third time... But that was just morbid, and he forced himself to stop. He called together his sub-managers into one of the corner rooms (his office) to let them know he was back, to see how they had coped in his absence. They looked at each other before they answered his questions. The manager felt they had coped rather too well.

  “Have you got any new staff in?” he said. “Any... replacements?” He hated them for making him say it out loud.

  The two glanced at each other.

  “We’ve got someone starting today,” one said. “A new boy”.

  “Good, good,” the manager said. He knew that there was no one standing behind him, but he was resisting the urge to turn around because he knew there was, too. “I assume you can show this new kid what’s what today? I imagine I have a lot of e-mails and reports to catch up on and...”

  They chorused an affirmative and left. The door to his office rattled as it shut. Alone, the manager couldn’t stop himself, and turned to look behind him. But all that was there was the window, the blank sky. He drew the blinds, anyway.

  ~

  He didn’t leave early, but it was frowned upon for managers to be seen leaving five minutes after their temps. But he’d had enough. He felt pursued even as he got into the empty lift. His reflections in the mirrored walls lined up behind him. Aided by gravity the lift seemed to plummet downwards, and he closed his eyes. Was it his imagination, or was it swaying slightly from side to side as well? His heart thumped when the lift stopped too early, for it seemed that it was between floors and that he would be trapped. But opening his eyes he saw it had just stopped at floor six to let someone else in.

  He saw that it was his manager. She looked at him like she didn’t know him. She stood on the other side of the lift, allowing space between them, allowing the other presence that only he could sense to insinuate itself between them – of course he knew there was no one else there really. The manager’s manager got out at floor three. She wasn’t leaving ‘early’ then. He didn’t know whether her brief, chilly glance had been because he was, or because of what had happened two weeks ago. He left the tall building looking harried; and looking back.

  ~

  The next day he made an effort to arrive early, although no one saw. He entered the office block, again after having lost the battle not to look up to its very top. He examined the faces of everyone in the queue for the lift – he knew what he was looking for was illogical; he didn’t know what he would say if he found it. The lift doors opened and the crowd pressed in, mercifully hiding the double either side of him in the mirrored walls. On reaching the top floor the manager went straight to his office. Before, he had hardly ever used it, feeling that its small size didn’t properly reflect his status. He had preferred to sit at one of the banks of desks, where everyone could see him. The office had really only been used for storing paperwork, and for firing people.

  Unlike the open plan layout of the rest of the floor, his office only had windows on two sides not three; he had shut the blinds but the slats were old and uneven, and they still let in blades of light. He knew that the sky outside was a soothing grey colour, having taken on the character and hue of the satellite town beneath it. But still, as the blinds moved slowly with the movements of the thin windows he couldn’t help but think that what was outside trying to get in was a cool, clear sky, a smokeless blue with a hint of breeze, and with alarm bells ringing somewhere far below or above him...

  He realised that an alarm was ringing – it took him a few seconds to remember that this was the day that the fire-bell was tested, that this was a routine which he knew. Still, in those few seconds before he realised, his heart quickened until it seemed to beat with the pulses of the shrill alarm, and the manager wondered if it was happening again; and if that meant a reprieve or merely a repetition.

  The bell stopped; his heart seemed to stop too. The swift silence didn’t seem comforting, he was sure the echoes were still vibrating but too softly for him to hear. There was a surge and a clatter of high flying debris outside, sounding so close that he flinched... He stepped outside his office for some space, for some normality, but his vision felt blurred and his eyes quivered slightly – the blurring seemed to be a physical presence above and around him. The faces of his staff seemed to lurch from one expression to another as they looked up at him. He didn’t recognise half the faces, and that was merciful; he didn’t want to recognise any... – but then the room seemed to click back into focus and solidify. His eyes went fixed in their sockets.

  The manager was watching one of the sub-managers, who was leant over a temp’s desk, guiding him. The temp looked bored at what he was being shown, looked contemptuous at what he was expected to learn. He looked young and out of place in an office – a familiar look amo
ng the staff that the company hired (and fired). The manager felt a vertigo as a thousand things seemed to fall into focus... the temp’s face refused to change. The manager beckoned his sub-manager over frantically.

  “Who’s that?” he said.

  “The new boy. The replacement. Same kind of slacker as half the others but I’m sure he’ll...”

  “Get rid of him!” the manager said in a half-shrieked whisper, his eyes refusing to turn away from the bored, slack face that he had been looking for.

  ~

  It had never been a problem for the manager to get rid of people before. He hadn’t even needed to speak to the offending member of staff directly. It had been a simple case of waving to them cheerily as they’d left the office, and then calling the employment agency who had originally sent them. “I don’t think he’s working out...” “We were looking for someone with different skills...” And the agency would call the temp and explain; and they would send someone new in his place the next morning. All the employment agencies had so many ex-grads, drop-outs, and wannabes on their books that they never complained, for the money continued to flow as before, and they didn’t want to lose custom. That was how it always had been.

  “We can’t just get rid of him,” the sub-manager said, “for nothing.”

  The manager shut his eyes, and felt the wind whip around the walls of his office. Here the walls seemed very thin, as thin as the rattling glass, and it was suddenly easy to remember that he was in fact standing hundreds of feet up in the air. On top of this, the manager’s office was so small that with two other people in there it felt like he was being forced against the wall.

  “Can’t you see it?” he said, his own eyes still closed. Even so, he could sense the way the two of them glanced at each other before one of them spoke.

  “I’m not saying there isn’t a similarity,” one said, “but Jay wasn’t exactly distinctive looking anyway, so...”

  Was it a conspiracy, the manager thought, or was it that the world had changed and only he could see it? For his subordinates did not seem to be able to see that the ‘new boy’ looked exactly like Jay had! (And Jay was the reason the manager had been off for two weeks.) It wasn’t a ‘similarity’ or ‘resemblance’; it was an exact match.

  “Yeah, I mean they both have... had, that grungy hair, that slacker look,” the other was saying, “but Jay was taller, and paler...”

  “I don’t care,” the manager said, opening his eyes. The problem didn’t matter so much, only the solution. “I don’t care. Get rid of him. Call the agency. Or I’ll do it myself.”

  “But we can’t for no reason, he’s still in training...” one said; “He’s as good as any of the others, the agency will want to know why...” the other said. It was like he had come back to the wrong company, like this wasn’t his office at all. He reached behind him to put a steadying hand against the wall, and almost shrieked as his hand seemed to pass through the wall and he felt himself falling... But all that had happened was that he had put his hand on the blind, whose slats had shifted and his palm had fallen against the vibrating window.

  “Don’t just ignore what I say,” he said. “I’m in charge here, I set the agenda.”

  The two sub-managers took a step backwards, and he felt like he had reasserted something. Not just his higher rank, but something more – his view of the world perhaps, of the way things were, and should be. But then he saw them look at each other again, that little, confidence boosting, insubordinate look that they had developed in his absence. They never let him forget that in fact he had been at the company less time than they had.

  “It was found that it wasn’t my fault,” he said suddenly. “That’s what the inquiry found. That I was without blame.”

  There was no knock – the door to his office just opened and someone else pressed into its narrow confines. For a second, in the new light, he was sure it was Jay, or the ‘new boy’, come for him...

  “Should you all be in here?” his manager said. “None of you outside looking after them?” She was looking at him coldly, her personality as smoothed-down and professional as her suit.

  “We were discussing them,” he said quickly. “Firing one of them. We could hardly discuss that out there.” He noticed the two sub-managers glance at each other again.

  “What’s to discuss?” his manager said. “I won’t ask who, I won’t know them, but what have they done?”

  “Nothing” – one of them, chipping in before he could speak. His manager looked away from him, turned her cool regard to them. He had a sense of things slipping, the feeling that if he closed his eyes and then opened them again things would be subtly, horribly different; the world would be tilted at a slightly different angle...

  ~

  That feeling had started two weeks ago.

  There had been a fire alarm – a shrill routine. His staff trudged dutifully down the fire escapes and then stood in clusters, smoking. He wore a fluorescent jacket and carried a clipboard with all their names on. He called the names out, and sometimes was surprised at the face that answered, for he had thought that face belonged to someone else. The manager ticked them off as he went down the list. At the end, one name was still unaccounted for.

  He repeated the name once, twice, three times – he lost count. As he repeated it the syllables seemed to become more and more meaningless: “Jay Neuworth? Jay Neuworth? Jay New Worth?” Everyone just ignored him.

  He was sure that Jay, or someone, was playing a trick in him, and he resolved to make sure that the boy’s agency received a call to say that his services were no longer needed... But he was equally sure that there was no joke, and as he repeated the missing boy’s name he felt his anxiety grow. He shook his head, like hitting a television set to restore the picture, and looked up at the building. The dull office block was reassuringly stable, with no smoke billowing out of its windows into the clear blue sky. Fireman had arrived but they were standing around with the security guards, discussing what had happened: had workmen accidentally cut the wrong wire, had one of the temps accidentally smashed the glass on one of the alarms? The manager’s staff had taken the opportunity to smoke or gossip; his manager had formed her own clique away from him... No one was actually doing anything. “Jay Neuworth?” he said, his words a whisper. It was like his emotions were a few seconds further forward than events, for his stomach was churning and his eyes wavering.

  Then someone had pointed upward, and screamed.

  ~

  He came back into the present – it was as quick as a flick of the remote control; as disorientating as coming into a film halfway through. He knew that one of the sub-managers had just said “nothing” and flashed his colleague that quick glimpse of insubordination, but it seemed to have happened days ago. He tried to focus. There was, he realised, no way he could tell his manager that the new boy was Jay Neuworth’s double, or as near as damn it – no way to tell her his guilt-tripped fantasies about what this doppelganger had come for. No way to tell her, but maybe a way to make her see. She wouldn’t have known Jay from the toilet cleaners, but she would have seen his face in the newspaper. He glared at Tweedle-Dum and Dee – they might be pretending that they couldn’t see it, but surely his manager wasn’t part of their lowborn conspiracy?

  “Come with me,” he said. “Look”. He had to squeeze past her to get to his office door – he felt her body stiffen, and press back against the thin partition wall, which wobbled. Their arms brushed each other and he got a hint of her scent. It was always a relief to be out of his cramped office, although the twelfth-floor light confused his eyes after his dark cubby hole – almost a relief, until he saw him, the new boy. But still, he tried to obey his own imperative, he tried to look:

  The boy was probably in his mid-twenties, with a slack face, bored eyes. His hair was lank, even his skin seemed lank, seeming to slouch down from his skull with not much in the way of defining muscle in between. He had taken full advantage of the company’s casual dress policy
for the temps, and wore a t-shirt that was too big for him and slumped from his frame, so that the legend Touch Me I’m Sick! which presumably should have emblazoned his chest, was creased into his gut. Everything about the kid seemed pulled downwards, except his eyes which looked upwards from his bowed head, with a bored and solipsistic intelligence... He...

  And he looked exactly like Jay Neuworth! The feeling of vertigo and sudden slippage overtook him again. Exactly like... it was all his brain could hold onto, in this new rendering of things.

  One look at his manager was enough to tell him that she couldn’t see it.

  He thought – maybe those two can’t see it either. Maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy, but a sign. Only he could see it.

  His manager was looking at him, expecting something. His mind, which already felt like it was struggling with two versions of reality, couldn’t lie and create a third. If only he could find some plausible reason to get rid of the boy! But all he said was,

  “I just... I don’t like the look of him, that’s all. He looks lazy and likely to turn up late, and...” It was true as far as it went. Jay had always turned up late.

  “You can’t get rid of someone just because you don’t like the look of them,” his manager said. “This department has targets to reach. I know you’ve only just come back after... but still.” Her professional, unflappable countenance cracked, flapped for a second, like a vision of her twin self. “But still,” she repeated.

  The manager looked away from her, back at the new boy. “What’s his name?” he heard his manager ask his subordinates behind him, and whichever one responded, the answer they gave jarred wrong in his head.

  ~

  He forced himself not to hide all week in his office, but to sit at a desk in among everyone else. He flinched every time the new boy passed near, but fortunately he didn’t have to have anything directly to do with him. The one time he did sit in his office he didn’t get any work done, he just kept irritably drawing the blinds, then opening them minutes later, as if there was something outside that was a temptation. He needed to get some work done, he needed to get back into the swing of things to counter whatever insurrection and arse-licking his sub-managers were planning. He needed to catch up; he needed to work...