Flora climbed into Donna’s Mercedes. Damn this Felix. What was the matter with the man? Five years on a top salary, and dinner with her thrown in, and he had ‘reservations’. How did Georgie tolerate this creature? She pondered the question as she crossed the potholed car park and drove down the shabby road connecting to the route back to the city centre. Recognising that her mood was low and the exhilaration of the night before had gone, she shook a few drops of neroli oil into the prototype In-Car Aroma Harmoniser and breathed deeply.
After a mini-meditation at the first red light, the answer came to her. Simple, really. He was playing hard to get.
A staring eye appeared in the centre of the dummy Marmeduke Whiskers Web Page. The computer made a noise like a police siren. A message appeared below the eye. ‘Caution! You have activated the Desktop Surveillance Programme. Review your screen NOW! Delete inappropriate material.’
‘What the hell’s that?’ Dillon demanded.
‘We must have been naughty boys,’ explained the anorak with his hand on the mouse.
‘I wish! We’re designing an insurance proposal form, for God’s sake.’
‘The thought police put this beauty in the system last week. It’s monitoring your key-stroke rate, checking up how much work we’re all getting through. It modifies the spell-check to suggest appropriate language. And if you put in one of its trigger words, the evil eye comes down and nukes you.’
‘What trigger words?’
‘The thing’s designed to stamp out inappropriate behaviour. Stop people downloading child pornography or whatever.’
‘That’s ridiculous. We’re asking clients to give us the insured details. What’s the big deal with that?’
‘Sex,’ sighed the anorak. ‘It picked up on sex.’
At the top of the form gambolled an animated parade of coloured rabbits, their ears flopping and their whiskers quivering. Below that was a box with the instruction, ‘Enter your pet’s name.’ Next came, ‘Enter your pet’s age.’ Then followed, ‘Enter your pet’s breed.’
Finally, the offending line read, ‘Enter your pet’s sex.’ A flashing red bar was highlighting the word ‘sex’.
‘OK.’ Dillon took a deep breath. It was late in the evening. He was tired. The anorak was irritating. He missed Flora. The dummy site had to be ready for Donna’s meeting in the morning. ‘Why don’t we put in, “Is your pet a boy or a girl?”’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the anorak, looking as if he was chewing a lemon.
‘This is for kids, we need to make it fun. The idea is that kids finding out about their pets on the Net will get to the portal site and then—’
‘No way. You don’t get it, do you?’ The anorak turned around to eyeball him, a sign of extreme emotion. ‘“Boy” or “girl” could also be trigger words. If my terminal keeps getting hits from the evil eye, I’ll find myself on an integrity report. You want to try those words, do it on your terminal. Then come and tell me.’
‘Look,’ said Dillon wearily, ‘it’s not a big deal. It’s only a dummy. Let’s put in “gender”. Enter your pet’s gender.’
‘Thank you,’ the anorak mumbled.
‘What’s an integrity report, anyway?’
‘You don’t know what an integrity report is?’
‘Well, no. That’s why I’m asking you.’
‘OK. Each of us working here has an integrity file, right?’
‘If you say so.’
‘On that file go discipline ratings, timekeeping, target achievement, all this surveillance data, and the confidential reports.’
‘Confidential reports?’
‘From other employees. If an employee feels that you have behaved inappropriately to her or to him, she or he can go to Human Resources and ask to put a confidential integrity report on your file. Then it’s three strikes and you’re out. They fire you. It’s in your contract.’
‘My God. I never saw that.’
‘In the small print on the back.’
‘So – what kind of thing are we talking about?’
‘Sexual harassment, racial abuse, judgemental language … whatever would be against a good atmosphere in the workplace.’
‘And you never know who filed the report?’
‘No. Their ID is totally protected.’
‘My God,’ said Dillon again, trying to review his conversations since joining the company. In fact, when he thought of it, there had been very few. He seldom had time to waste in talking. But had he called anyone ‘love’? A dreadful habit he had acquired from his mother. Or used the word ‘good’carelessly? Or at all?
‘What do you think,’ he asked the anorak suddenly, ‘of the animal rights implications of this product? Is this really compatible with the dignity of the small pet? Is it in their best interests?’
‘It’s gotta be, hasn’t it?’ the anorak reasoned. ‘If we’re paying for top notch medical treatment for an animal, that’s gotta be in their interest.’
‘I suppose so.’ Paranoia had Dillon in its crushing grasp. ‘People use rats for research, don’t they? Maybe we should build in an ethical dimension. A donation to the Blue Cross with every policy?’
‘I can put in a link to the World Wildlife site,’ the anorak offered.
‘Good call,’ said Dillon, finding the patience to wait while it was done.
Back at his own desk, he contemplated his terminal. The grasp of paranoia slackened. Disbelief asserted itself. He called up the in-house help menu and asked for Human Resources, then typed in ‘Integrity File’. The screen asked him for a name and he put in his own. Then it asked for a password. He entered his employee number and got a flashing ‘Access Denied’sign with a box explaining, ‘Integrity Files may be viewed only by authorised personnel.’
So they existed, it was true. Fascinated and fearful, he cleared the screen. He typed: in ‘girl’. The computer made a throat-clearing noise and an animated figure resembling a Disney princess appeared with a message: ‘Do you mean a female under the age of 12? If not, click here and change to WOMAN.’
He deleted the word, and typed in ‘boy’. The evil eye flashed up.
Dillon cleared the screen again and typed THIS IS JUST ORWELLIAN, I HATE THIS STUFF, I HATE THIS STUFF, I HATE THIS STUFF. The evil eye appeared once more.
‘It must be “hate”,’ said the anorak, watching over his shoulder. ‘Try putting in, “Donna is a shagging cow.”‘
‘All right,’ said Dillon recklessly and entered the words. The machine did not respond.
‘American programme,’ the anorak suggested. ‘Can’t recognise shagging.’
‘I’ve been there,’ Dillon muttered, intending to think of his life before Flora. He had spent most of it in the clutches of a woman who had picked him out at the Freshers’Ball and had devoted the next five years to trying to make him grateful. Plus fifteen months of bleak, sordid, work-obsessed loneliness once he had found the courage to break up with her: He didn’t want to go there again.
From nowhere, the thought of the girl who had run her car into his came into his head. His ragged mind had an impression of messy hair, mobile shoulders, dark eyes with tears standing in them. Some new emotion was trying to form in the swamp of sensations at the bottom of his mind. It seemed like a pleasant feeling but he couldn’t quite identify it. For no reason, paranoia’s strength failed and it let him go.
‘I can get you a boss alert programme,’ the anorak was saying. ‘Cunning device that tells you when she leaves her terminal, then saves your game or whatever’s on your screen and puts up a nice spreadsheet or some thing. I can get you a bootleg copy for twenty quid. Good one.’
‘That’s OK,’ Dillon told him, shutting down his terminal. ‘I don’t do games, there’s never time.’
‘Wow. You really give it all that?’ The anorak shook his head in pity.
‘Good work on the Whiskers page. She’ll like it. Let’s go for a drink.’
‘Cheers.’ The anorak smiled sarcastically. ‘You
sure you’ve got the time?’
9. April 24–25
‘Nobody goes out on Monday, we can’t possibly go out on Monday,’ Flora dictated. ‘We’ll look like total prats. People only go to the gym. Or have dinner with their parents or something. We can stay home and order in.’
Accordingly, Operation Heartswap’s first review was conducted around the glass table in Donna’s dining area. ‘I’ll be mother,’ she said, pouring vodka-cranberry from a crystal pitcher into tall glasses. ‘So how did it go?’
‘I felt like an idiot,’ Georgie said flatly. ‘This is so stupid. The adult thing for us to do would be to forget it.’
‘So you’re saying you got no action, then?’ Des picked over the olives for the one with his name on it.
‘No,’ Georgie affected martyred patience. ‘I’m saying I felt like an idiot.’
‘So you got some action? Dillon’s dead meat already? We’re on our way to Mauritius?’
‘No. Will you give me a break?’
Donna smiled and said nothing. Georgie was flustered. Flora preened, put down her glass and admitted, ‘Felix is having dinner with me tomorrow.’
Georgie felt a stab of anxiety and rushed into asserting her own success. ‘And I’m seeing Dillon after work. He’s going to fix my car.’
‘I call that a result. Way to go, girls!’ Donna raised her glass to toast them.
‘Well I don’t.’ Des shrugged petulantly. ‘Who needs dinner, for God’s sake? You hate food. What’s this dinner thing about?’
‘And why does your car need fixing?’ Flora demanded of Georgie, flaring a contemptuous nostril.
‘I ran into him. Busted my lights on one side.’
‘That desperate, huh?’ Des yawned. ‘Flora’s wasting time eating a dinner she doesn’t want and you’ve wrecked your car? Why don’t you just go up to these guys and tell’em you want to shag’em?’
‘It doesn’t work with straight men,’ Flora argued. ‘Unless they’re too pissed to shag in the first place.’
‘It always works for me,’ Des told her.
‘Are we saying it matters how pissed they are?’ enquired Donna of the company in general. ‘We just want to score the guys, don’t we?’
‘I think it matters.’ Flora was alarmed. Half a bottle of wine and Dillon was ridiculously suggestible. No way was Georgie going to take unfair advantage of him in that condition. That was her prerogative. ‘We’re saying all men are the same, they’re programmed to shag, they’re basically anybody’s. Alcohol isn’t part-of the theory.’
‘It’s supposed to be a disinhibiter,’ Georgie proposed, trying to remember Felix chilling out after a few drinks. There was nothing in the file. Felix could consume astounding amounts of alcohol and never lose control. ‘But there’s nothing disinhibits my man.’
‘I say getting them drunk is not fair,’ Flora insisted. ‘We want to find out if they really care enough about us to turn down sex on a plate. It has to be a conscious decision.’
To her surprise, Donna agreed. ‘OK. Rule Three. If they’re drunk it doesn’t count,’ she announced.
The doorbell rang. It was the porter bearing a sushi box from Nobu. Donna distributed her chopsticks, her rice bowls and her bamboo mats. Des raised the lid and looked inside. ‘Urgh,’ he exclaimed, pushing the box away, ‘how can you eat that stuff?’
Flora switched her attention to Georgie. ‘What about his car? You were supposed to be in the gym. You didn’t damage his car, did you? I can’t have Dillon spending all our money getting his bloody car fixed.’
‘It was an accident. Eric came off worst. His hardly got a scratch.’
‘Horrible thing. Like running into a tank, I should think. I wish he’d get rid of it. He must qualify for a new car, doesn’t he? Can’t you do something, Donna?’
‘I’ll have a word with our fleet manager,’ Donna promised. Her chopsticks fussed about like a beak, selecting morsels from the box. ‘I never thought you’d be so dedicated to this, Georgie. Flat Eric’s the love of your life.’
‘I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t see him backing out at the same time as I was. I thought I’d blown it, actually. I missed him at the gym.’
‘You can’t miss Dillon in the gym,’ Flora giggled. ‘He’s the only one who wobbles when he walks. He’s like a man-sized crème caramel. I’m thinking I’ll have to put the wedding off until he’s fit to be seen with.’
Georgie said nothing and speared a nori roll. She did not recall that Dillon wobbled. She saw no resemblance to a crème caramel, apart from the appetising contrast between the dark brown hair and the light olive skin. She did remember him asking if she was hurt when she hit his car. Nobody around the table had considered that question.
The doorbell sounded again. This time the porter presented Des with his pizza. ‘Urgh,’ Flora wrinkled her nose as he opened the box. ‘Get that glycaemic index. How can you?’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Des assured her, sinking his teeth into the first slice.
She watched in fascination as he caught up the trailing strings of hot mozzarella with a sweep of his tongue.
‘They say that’s your ideal man, don’t they? He has sex all night then turns into a pizza?’
‘That sounds like love. Make it a Quattro Formaggio and he’ll do me,’ Des mumbled as he munched, pulling out a second slice that trailed more cheese across the table top.
‘I want to hear more,’ said Donna. ‘Juicy details, come on. What’s the vibe you’re getting off these guys?’
‘Not promising,’ Flora admitted. ‘He’s a bit of an ice-man, isn’t he?’
Georgie remembered her first meeting with Felix. He’d persuaded her to leave a dinner party because there were people smoking at the table. Three in the morning had found them walking along the lakeside. Some kids were throwing chunks of ice across the frozen surface to hear the whistling noise they made. A group of drunks were swaying in a circle around an oil-drum fire. Tiny snowflakes blew in the wind and clustered in their eye lashes. Felix’s nose went white with cold. She had to take him home in case he had frostbite. He looked like the hero of an ancient Norse saga. ‘He’s passionate when he cares about something,’ she offered Flora in consolation.
‘He’s got to care about me,’ she insisted.
‘Well, I have no idea about your Dillon. I was so freaked by crashing Flat Eric that I can hardly remember anything. He was kind, though.’
‘I suppose he is kind.’ Flora did not see the point of kindness. ‘When he has the time.’
‘He looked kind of pink when he came back to office,’ Donna confirmed, winking at Georgie to courage her.
‘Pink?’ said Flora crossly. ‘What do you mean, pink?’
‘Pink. Disturbed or moved or …’
‘Clapped out?’ Flora suggested. ‘He always claims he’s working so hard. And let’s face it, I’m not marrying a natural athlete.’ She laughed. Donna and Des laughed with her. This is what Donna wants, Georgie observed. Laughs. Fun. Bitching about the fellas. I’ve got to get out of this. It can be done. Just let me think about it.
‘Des,’ she murmured, somewhat later, when the pizza was nothing but a belch, a memory and a grease stain in the box. ‘What exactly do you say when you go up to some bloke and say you want to shag him?’
‘Well, I say just that,’ he replied, rolling his round black eyes while he thought about it. ‘Like, “I’d like to shag you.” Or, “Fancy a shag?”’
‘Or, “Gissa shag,” if it’s someone I’ve shagged already and I know they’re up for it. Or ask to see his piercings, if I want to be subtle. Or if he’s a bit of a toff, I might say, “I say, I’m feeling rather randy – I was wondering if you’d care to have sex tonight?” Or you can just look at them kind of moodily and go for the nuts.’
‘And they say romance is dead,’ Donna poured them another round. ‘Hey, listen up. Have you heard about the new sensitive condoms?’
‘No,’ said Flora and Des together.
&nb
sp; ‘They stay awake and talk to the woman afterwards.’
‘Mellow,’ Des observed. ‘You really are mellow tonight, Donna.’
Georgie’s plan was simple. She would take Flora’s advice. Flora knew a lot more about seducing men than she did, because while she had been wasting her life with the Scumbag, Flora had been having a ball. If Flora said the straight pass never worked, she would make a straight pass. Which would never work. Dillon would turn her down. Then honour would have been satisfied, the whole horrible thing would be settled and they could go back to normal life. She put on some high-heeled sandals, freaked out her hair again and set off for the car park.
Dillon was there before her. She saw him from a distance, walking respectfully around Flat Eric.
‘It’s very stylish,’ he said with admiration when she arrived.
‘Good car,’ she agreed in the husky monosyllables she had rehearsed for Merita Halili.
‘Very good car,’ he agreed. ‘The man I got the light from said there was a waiting list for them.’
‘I never wait,’ she announced.
‘OK. Well, if you just open up for me, this won’t take a minute.’
Georgie had developed reasonable screwdriver skills. They were the surprise bonus of her life so far. Felix never touched a screwdriver because he needed to keep his hands nice for his patients. Her father believed that screwdrivers were imps of Satan and would stab you through the palm if you messed with them. The Scumbag had seen screwdrivers as something you paid the underclass to master. Dillon, swiftly releasing her broken tail-light, appeared to be a natural with the tool. She found it relaxing to watch him work. The obvious moves came easily.
‘I like a man who is good with his hands,’ she purred, leaning provocatively against a handy pillar.
He dropped something and had to look under the car for it. ‘I used to like making furniture,’ he told her when he emerged. ‘But I never get the time now.’
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