by Tom Fletcher
‘I like your T-shirt,’ said Erin.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I spend fucking hours on Facebook. Thought I’d own up to it at last.’
Graham did indeed spend hours on Facebook, and MySpace, and Second Life, and all those social networking sites. He revealed a creative side online that wasn’t that apparent anywhere else. He set up loads of email accounts, then used them to set up loads of different user profiles on the web, and each of these profiles was for a made-up person, more or less, except he gave them all his name – he didn’t pretend to be other people in the conventional sense or, at least, not that I knew of. He built versions of himself, almost, and then used them to oversee a vast, labyrinthine network of ‘friends’ and acquaintances, with whom he communicated more than he did us.
I didn’t like those websites – they were all a bit pointless as far as I could see, and somehow symptomatic of something.
‘How’s it going with Taylor, then, Erin?’ I asked.
‘Good, thank you,’ she said, grinning. ‘It’s wonderful.’
That evening I stood by my clapped-out old hatchback in the cul-de-sac outside our house and tried to decide whether or not to drive to Jennifer’s. Tempting as the car was, I tried not to use it inside Manchester any more than was necessary. Besides, it was not far to the bus stop and once I was on the bus I’d probably be safe from any strange, grey, hunchbacked figures.
About half-way between our house and the end of the short street I stopped because I saw, at my feet, a pool of congealing blood, peppered with dark slimy clots that seemed to swim in it, like bloated insects. Immediately the image of Kenny in the alley came back to me, and so did the panic that propelled me as that sorry, broken man chased me to this very street earlier today, moaning and staggering. I bent down and saw that one of the lumps was actually a solid knot of hair, casting individual strands out to wind through the grim mess, getting entangled with each other and the sinister coagulations that protruded above the liquid surface. They looked like more than just drying blood, and I quickly stood back up in order to prevent reawakening the nausea I had overcome already that morning.
I turned and hurried back to the car.
From Jennifer’s address – a Didsbury address – I’d guessed that she lived in a nice part of town, but that didn’t prepare me for just how wide and clean and leafy her street was, or how big and shiny the cars were. I didn’t feel like I should be there in my little old hatchback; it was more of a crustacean than a vehicle by comparison.
I parked in her driveway and looked up at her house. It was beautiful: detached, all old red brickwork with white window-frames and a well-maintained ivy plant that covered one wall. It was a proper house. I couldn’t help comparing it with ours, which we’d just kind of settled in since university. None of us had ever got around to moving out. Time flies when you’re working full time. Overhead, the sky was darkening. I reached over and picked up the carrier bag from the passenger seat – I’d stopped off at an off-licence on the way for some decent wine and crisps – and opened the door, climbed out of the car, and locked it. When I turned around I saw Jennifer standing in the doorway, wearing a black vest and soft-looking white trousers. She too was holding a bottle of wine in one hand, and in the other she held a DVD, and she was smiling. I smiled back.
The next day it was raining and my shift started at ten so I got ready to set off at about half nine to allow for traffic. As I was putting on my waterproof coat Jennifer came downstairs in a dark-green dressing-gown.
‘Have a good day, Jennifer,’ I said.
She yawned and stretched. ‘Oh, I will,’ she said. ‘Here, Jack. You want to see a film tonight? They’re showing Easy Rider as a one-off at the Cornerhouse. Some anniversary or something. Seven o’clock.’
‘I’ve never seen Easy Rider,’ I said.
‘You go now,’ she said, ‘before I recover from the shock of hearing that and start to re-evaluate our relationship.’
‘Is it good, then?’ I asked.
‘It’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen it on the big screen though. Could be quite special.’
‘Then yes,’ I said. ‘Though I would have come even if I had seen it and they were just showing it on a TV in the corner.’
‘Seven o’clock,’ she said, and put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the lips.
I sat in the car in some queue and listened to an old mix tape I’d made when I was about fourteen and the tape sounded stretched and warped and I thought that I should play it to Jennifer before it snaps, say here, this is the kind of music I used to like, can you believe it.
As I was logging into my phone and terminal in the huge, dirty room I heard somebody approach me from behind. I could tell from the flat footsteps and wet-mouth noises and sudden cloud of bad breath that it was Kenny.
‘Jack,’ he said. The room was full of people, but none of them were looking at Kenny or me.
‘What?’ I said. My voice felt slightly out of my control. ‘Kenny, I’m logging in.’
‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘Jack. Jack Sprat could eat no fat. Jack. You’re late. Supposed to be in at nine.’ He picked his teeth with a filthy fingernail.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait. I start at ten.’
‘Check your shifts.’
‘I’ve got them here.’ It seemed to take me an age to find the print-out amongst the papers on my desk, and then I had to scrabble to pick it up, my hands felt like they weren’t part of me. Eventually I got hold of it and showed it to him.
‘This is wrong,’ he said, handing it back after a quick scan. ‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat, and his wife could eat no lean.’
‘What are you going on about?’ I said.
‘Your shift has been changed. If you’d checked it at the end of your last shift, you know, like the bosses say you should. Instead of printing them out in advance.’
I turned back to my screen and checked the system and he was right – I was supposed to have started at nine.
‘See,’ he said, leaning in over my shoulder and breathing all over my face. ‘Nine.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ll be finishing at six, so it’s still eight hours, so that’s OK, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ he said, and smiled faintly. ‘If there was anything I could do to get you off the hook then I would, honest. But there’s rules about this kind of thing, and I’m just Kenny, I’m just a nobody round these parts.’ He sighed deeply. The weirdly strong smell of his breath clung to my nose and mouth like cobwebs.
‘What are the rules, then?’ I asked. Outside the rain was getting heavier, and I could see it pounding into the windows.
‘You have to stay an extra hour, Jack,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ve already said that I will,’ I said.
‘No, I mean an extra hour. You know. Until seven.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘Where does it say that?’
‘It’s in the contract,’ he said. ‘It’s in the conduct book. If it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t have to be such an old stick in the mud, but it is, and I do.’ His attempt at a smile disappeared and his flat eyes swivelled around.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I have to be somewhere else at seven.’
‘Well then, Jack,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to go and see Artemis, won’t we? Just don’t say I never do anything for you.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Come on then, Jack,’ he said again. ‘Little old me can’t bend the rules but Artemis maybe can. Come on.’
‘OK,’ I said, and stood up. I’d never seen Artemis’ office before. He was already drifting away and I headed after him.
We were walking along one of the seemingly endless halls when he stopped by a door, opened it and walked through. I walked in after him and the door slammed shut. The room was a small training room, full of rows of ancient dead computers, with a dusty data projector hanging haphazardly from the ceiling.
‘Jack Sprat could eat no
fat,’ Kenny said. ‘And his wife could eat no lean. And so between the two of them, they licked the platter clean.’
‘This isn’t Artemis’ office,’ I said. ‘Why do you keep reciting that nursery rhyme?’
‘You make me think of it,’ Kenny said. ‘And no, this isn’t Artemis’ office. You’re very bright.’
‘What is this about?’
‘You know what it’s about, Sprat,’ he said, and took a step towards me. The walls in here were white but covered in smudges and knocks. The sound of the call-centre floor was muted beyond the door, and there was an old, ghostly smell of sweat in the air. ‘I saw you that night and you saw me, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘What night? Where?’
‘In the alley, Jack. In the alley when I was all not being very well and you were sneaking down to have a good laugh at me. You remember, don’t you?’
‘I don’t remember,’ I said.
‘Well, I remember,’ he said. ‘And I’m worried that you’re going to be thinking all kinds of crap up in that big old head of yours.’ He walked around me and leant backwards against one of the desks, his baggy shirt coming untucked from his ill-fitting trousers. His greasy fringe flopped forward as he put his hands over his face.
‘I hate it here, Jack,’ he said. ‘It does my fucking head in. I fucking hate it. Sometimes I’m all just ready to burst, like a balloon or something. I’m not very well see, I’ve got, like, a disease, and that’s what you saw down that alley, OK? I was just not being very well. That’s all it was, just like a little bit of sick.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘Sometimes I just don’t know what I’m going to do,’ he said, and his eyes were flat and his long lips were wet. ‘I need a nice little girlfriend, that’s what I need. Just to sort me out like. Make me a bit more normal. Take the edge off these places.’
‘Which places?’ I said.
‘These fucking places,’ he said, and lifted his arms up as if to gesture at all four walls at once, and by extension the whole building I suppose. ‘Feels like I’ve worked fucking lifetimes in these shitholes and it’s so hard to keep myself, like, all under control, Jack. I come in every day, little old me, just Kenny, for years and years and years trying to pretend I’m OK when I’m not, Jack, I’m not.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘You think you’re better than a place.’
He looked directly at me and his mouth seemed to change shape somehow into an angry, uncomprehending hole. He shook his head. ‘Nobody’s any better than this place,’ he said. ‘Especially not little old Kenny. And anyway, if everyone was all too fucking good, who’d answer the phones? No, Sprat. You don’t know the start of what I mean. I keep telling you. I’m not well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady in the glare of his sad, furious, twisted face. ‘What have you got? I mean, what’s the disease? I mean, no – sorry – I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I mean, what’s wrong?’
There was a silence.
‘I used to be a bit like you,’ he said, and put his head in his hands again. ‘I try so hard, I do, Jack. Where’s Jenny at these days anyways?’
‘Jennifer?’ I said, uncertainly. ‘She’s left.’
‘What?’ he said, and his head snapped back up again. ‘She’s all gone away?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Oh now that’s just the icing on the coffin, that is, Sprat. Oh no. Now I am sad.’ He shook his head, his fringe flopping like a dead thing. ‘I liked her so very much, I did. She’s such a pretty girl is that Jenny. Kenny and Jenny, eh? Imagine that. Well I might just have to try and find her. Like I say, a nice little girlfriend might sort me out. There’s something about girls, Sprat, something about girls that makes the illness seem not so bad. In all my life of being ill girls have been the tonic, Sprat. Something about the smell of them or the taste of them. Honest to God I can’t explain it. Young Jenny might be just the thing to sort me out good and proper.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Jennifer and I are together now. I’m sorry. I thought you knew.’
He didn’t say anything to that at first – he didn’t even move, he just froze, back to his mannequin self, not even breathing. Eventually he spoke.
‘I heard her ask you out that time,’ he said with a small, tense voice. ‘But I thought that was just to put me off.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘No, she meant it. Of course she meant it.’
‘Like playing hard to get, is what I thought she was doing,’ he said. ‘But this just gets worse and worse. I’m not happy now, Sprat. Things like this is what breaks people up when they’re already all tired and desperate.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘You’re not sorry even a little bit,’ he said. ‘You don’t think I deserve a nice little girl like her, do you? You’re glad you’ve got her all to yourself, aren’t you? All wrapped up and yours. Honest to fucking God, Sprat, you don’t know how fucking close I am now to sorting you out all good and proper.’ He looked up at me and there were tears crawling out of his flat eyes. ‘If it weren’t so fucking messy I’d do you right now.’
‘I’m going now,’ I said, and stumbled backwards to the door, swung it open, and left him there in the room, his sweaty hands gripping the desk edge like he was trying to occupy them, trying to stop them escaping and wreaking their havoc.
I found Artemis wandering the floor on the way back to my desk and told him of Kenny’s threats.
‘What exactly did he say?’ he asked, frowning. He was wearing the blackest of black suits and his skin was tight, smooth and tanned.
‘He said he’d do me right now if it wasn’t so messy,’ I said.
‘What did he mean?’ asked Artemis.
‘I think – I think he meant he’d kill me.’
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ he said, frowning, ‘but I find that highly unlikely.’
‘I wouldn’t just say something like that,’ I said.
‘Where was this?’
‘In that room over there,’ I said, turning and pointing at the door to the old training room.
‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Kenny will have a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. It all sounds a bit outlandish to me.’ He marched purposefully off before I could refuse to accompany him, and so I followed him hesitantly, at a distance, afraid of what we might find.
Kenny was not there any more, but the window was broken. Artemis dashed to it and looked out over the edge. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘He’s jumped.’
I backed out of the room and could only look at the big yellow poster to the left of the doorway.
HELP OUR CUSTOMERS STAY OUT OF DEBT. DEMAND PAYMENT IN FULL TODAY!
FRANCIS
I am plugged into a telephone. And sitting at a long straight row of desks. The room is busy with the low hum of a thousand computers and there are no windows. The room is strip-lit, and the air feels thick and green. My headset pushes my ears into the side of my head. The humming is an audible static – a kind of ethereal, intangible acid. People ring up to pay or query or dispute their water bills. Sometimes they just ring up to show us all how angry they are, and how good they are at putting people down. You get some sick, sad, rage-filled bastards. And some real senseless aggression.
That’s not why Kenny jumped, though. He didn’t answer the phones. Jack says Kenny jumped because of Jennifer. But I don’t think there’s any mystery as to why he jumped. Anybody could probably talk themselves into it. The interesting thing is where he went after he disappeared from the hospital.
There is a local TV news crew filming the call centre. The reporter is a tall blonde girl with small eyes and a smart blue suit. She and the cameraman walk down the central aisle. The cameraman sets the camera up not far from where I sit. He’s going to film Artemis talking about Kenny. Then, no doubt, the cameraman will pan across the floor. I should remain just out of shot.
�
�He must have been very popular,’ the cameraman says to me. ‘Everybody looks so sad.’
‘Mm,’ I say.
And another thing that bothers me at work is this idea that electromagnetic fields might cause cancer. And here in this room there are I don’t know how many computers. How many phones. And beneath my desk there are so many wires that they’re like hair. I look at them and ask myself, can I feel my cells mutating? I don’t know. I’m watching the liquid-crystal display on my desk phone at work. I’m finishing my shift at five, which is two minutes away. These last two minutes are horrible, because you can’t turn your phone off; the managers look out for that. And if you get a call through, you’ll be late finishing. And it’s always the biggest idiots that you end up getting when you’re supposed to be finishing. The most self-righteous, think-they’re-clever, patronising dicks. And they always go on for ages and ages. Talking slowly because they think we’re stupid.
The date of Dad’s operation is more or less here, all of a sudden. And he’s going into hospital the day after tomorrow.
Inside me a huge clock is ticking. My hands clench.
Fuck it.
I log off my phone a minute early and grab my coat and bag. I make for the door before anybody can stop me. Everybody will be too distracted to notice. Too distracted by the camera.
So they can put me on an overtime ban, or whatever. Give me a warning. Sack me.
Outside it’s raining. People run around with their jackets pulled up, or struggle with umbrellas. Or shelter in the doorways of shops and office blocks. I was going to walk home as I don’t have any change for the bus. But I don’t really fancy it, given the weather.
I could duck into a shop or two until it’s blown over.
I head for the record shop. Or what was a record shop and is now a kind of department store for all things media. CDs, DVDs, video games, posters, books. A few vinyl records. Not many. I love it in here. Love the loud music. The black carpets and shelving. The tricks they develop to make you spend more. The staff recommendations. The quiet studiousness of customers. I could spend hours and hours just browsing. Sometimes I find that I’m picking up more or less every item on the rack, looking at it, considering it and putting it down again. And I have to stop myself, otherwise I would be trapped like an ant in honey. Today though, I head straight upstairs to the DVDs.