Selling LipService

by Tammy Baikie

  Aside from me, no one but Dad has ever seen the book. By showing it to Oona I risk losing it. I risk everything.

  In the evening, we go up onto the roof with a vegetable oil lamp. We sit on the concrete parapet and I take the book out from under my shirt. Once again, I have pressed Eda-Lyn’s skin to my own in a pact sealed in salty squid ink, to protect our hides and the stories concealed beneath them from the doctors and word-eating copywriters. Now I am extending that protection to Oona.

  ‘What is that?’ asks Oona.

  She pauses as she skates her fingers over the paper of the open page with insect-like delicacy. Eda-Lyn bends her pages in acknowledgement of such a touch.

  ‘Is it a book?’

  I incline my head.

  ‘An unbled boy came here with his mother when I was younger. He was looking for books. I didn’t understand most of what he talked about. He didn’t come back from the hospital. I don’t think he liked it here.’

  I point to the riddle and she haltingly reads it out loud. Her face has the expression of someone chasing peas around a plate in polite company – afraid to give up the fork but becoming increasingly convinced it’s the wrong shape. She rereads the riddle, whispering the words to herself. Then she feels the page again between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘What is it made of?’

  I point to the plume rising from the vent above the underground kitchen.

  ‘Smoke? Fire? Wood? It’s made of wood.’

  I smile, place a fingernail beneath the words ‘moth’ and ‘worm’s mouth’, before making the eating sign and pointing back to the smoke.

  ‘Insects eat wood. And books,’ she says slowly. ‘When they eat the books, they also eat the writing.’

  I take a large square of fabric from my pocket and watch as she stitches the riddle onto it.

  Three days later, Oona haemorrhages. From the patchworking office, I see someone being pushed in a wheelbarrow. I don’t realise then that it’s Oona. Later, three unbled teens come for me. Angry, they wave the stitched riddle at me, shouting that Oona isn’t yet eighteen. My head-hurting words made her bleed early.

  I look at Poppy. She knows the basic science of an aneurysm as well as I do. No one can predict the precise moment when the artery wall will fail. Ruptures before eighteen are not unheard of, and to think that any collection of words can increase the pressure is superstition. This isn’t like Dad fighting the transdermal to write his echo. Poppy doesn’t look up or meet my eyes; she keeps sewing. Out of the window I see Gudrun approaching across the factory floor with two more kids.

  Eda-Lyn is at my back. Since showing the book to Oona, I’ve been carrying it around with me under my shirt. It’s just something I have done without defining whether I’m afraid of a backlash or whether I just want to hold the words close, press them through my skin so that, like tattoo ink, they can’t be erased. How do I defend my actions without language? Can I rely on these kids who are prejaundiced against speech to communicate for me any more than You?

  I run.

  12

  ‘Eternal lame’ reads the logo on the patch in my hand. A long thread hangs from where the ‘f’ in ‘Flame’ has been darned over but the needle that was attached is lost. I realise that throughout my sprint across the factory floor, my scramble under the fence and out onto the road, I must have held onto the patch that I was working on when the kids came into the office. Earlier, when I arrived at the office and saw the tank top with the logo in the pile of clothes on the floor, I snatched it. After the disappointment with the Eternal Flame transdermal, a retaliatory gouging with a pair of scissors gave me a little flutter. The entrailing thread now dangles like gut at my wrist. But none of these patches ever really mend what’s broken.

  Oona told me I had to choose, and, without really thinking about it, I did. I chose the LipService patch rather than the mute fabric one. When I consider that You are the price I’ll pay for that, I wonder if I made a mistake. Now I have to live with a squatter who destroys the furniture. Before I joined the silents, You were taking over more and more rooms, redecorating my thoughts with a hoarder’s accumulation of sales catalogues. I barely recognised the contents of my own head. Somehow I ended up paying You rent. I can’t go back to that. I can’t hear my thoughts spoken in your product hype. I can’t. Before I put a patch on again, I need a strategy, a defensive repositioning. Otherwise I can expect to be repossessed.

  Soon, I will have to repatch in, go back to the Lost Property cubbyhole. The leave I took when I decided to join the silents is not quite over. No one will have missed me yet. I did wonder how long it would take anyone to notice that I wasn’t coming back. A few days? A week?

  These last moments without You feel as if a camera has been turned on me. I’m hyperaware, a horrified observer, unable to act. Without your endless infomercial patter, I register the hustle of my exhalations, the soft suction pop of an eyeball rubbed in its socket and the swamp noises from my gut. Normally your television drone drowns out the burbling. But the truth is that You can’t escape my organic chemistry any more than I can. If I hold my breath, which of us will flake out first? And who will revive first? It’s a game of chicken. While You’re still scrabbling for air, I’ll lay out my letters on the triple word score and speak the things that You block with the clutter of your sloganeering. But before I patch back into LipService, I need to practise expelling You with the air in my lungs and calmly holding on to the emptiness.

  I lie face down in the bath, imagining gelatine in the sweet rose water setting around me into a block of Turkish delight. Pink spongey lungs push against pink jelly as if fighting themselves. Calm, airless calm, I tell myself, but every alveolar sac is a throbbing bee abdomen, part of an angry hive in my chest. My head jerks up and the rush of air into my mouth disperses the swarm. The limb-thrashing desperation is not new. It’s what I feel every time I notice my thoughts slipping into yours and your yell and sell. So I keep practising until the bathwater is cold.

  Once again there’s a patch in my hand but now it’s LipService – and a particularly repugnant energy drink brand, Mojo (available in such lurid flavours as Red Rush, Blue Beserker and Orange Octane). It’s added motivation to suffocate You. And I’m upping the vigilante. I want my words back. When in the blue-lipped moments of hypoxia the air goes out of your palather, I’ll speak in ways that no patch would allow, as only someone with unbranded LipService could. My plan is to go to the repository and convince them that I’m a copywriter come to consult the books. They’ll open the silo airlock because real expression is unventilated, vacuum packed. It’s wormhole logic and I laugh madly at it – the books in their airless silo, me in my airless lungs. I’ll fold space and patch physics to get to them. In silent silos, I’ll expand the elementary particles of language as I read and write, preparing to unleash my big bang on LipService speak.

  There is one problem. What if they recognise me at the reception as my father’s daughter? Copywriters are almost always from brand-loyal families with a corporate bloodline. But the proof of unbranded LipService must be in free speech, right? If I can use the magic formulas, they must let me in.

  First there’s the shock of your re-entry into my atmosphere as the patch takes effect. Being in brand blackout with the silents for so long makes You punching your way back into my head feel like sharp metal forcing through a piercing that’s closed over. You come on caffeine-convulsive, giving me the jitters so badly that my reflection in the window appears to be performing a mash-up of moves like someone in the Mojo go-go break-dance battle ads. Your voice has the high-pitched synthetic quality of a recording played too fast: ‘B vitaminised! Go from shamblingly shambolic to the metamorphically metabolic in one chug. Feeling flaccid? You’re probably low on amino acids. Power up with B vitamins and natural stimulants. Get your Mojo back and go-go.’

  I hold my breath until I feel the pressure of the carbon dioxide build up like a shaken fizzy drink. It could just be that the flapping canary in my lungs
distracts me, but I no longer notice You announcing yourself. I smugly part my lips and allow air down the shaft. Time to go to work.

  No one comes to the Lost Property window. I need to know if I really can short-circuit your brand-cramming verbal programming, so I go to the staff canteen in search of idle chitchat. This is awkward. I hardly ever talk to anyone in the canteen. I don’t have friends at the hospital; I just sit and eavesdrop on others’ conversations. Who can I call a friend when we are like two radio stations broadcasting on the same frequency, our crosstalk at cross-purposes? I end up sitting alone, hoping someone will appear. An hour later, I leave. I try again the next day and this time someone actually comes up to me. It’s the lab tech who assisted Dr Bromide and Wordini with my post-CVA testing. This isn’t who I should allow to hear me testing my ability to thumb my prose at LipService, but he’s seen me now.

  ‘Say hello reconditioned cogs for better cognition,’ says Stillwell.

  This is the supposedly ‘friendly physician’ EmPath greeting that the medically branded use when they want to sound approachable. As one of the few employees at the hospital not patched into EmPath – or confined to the kitchens, like the catering staff – I’ve heard the white-coated colleagues mutter ‘May the morbidity rate never abate’ to each other in corridors.

  He notices how I become mummified on hearing the greeting and looks embarrassed. It’s generally considered a no-go for medical staff to fraternise with patients or subjects. He has crossed the latex glove divide to speak to me. And he did try to help by offering me a way out of selling myself to either the doctors or copywriters. At least I think he did. Right now, he could just be keeping labs on me for the doctor. Either way it would be better to be smiley.

  ‘B vitaminised,’ I say with all the Mojo go-go I can muster.

  ‘The sensory cross-activation is still evident, isn’t it?’ he asks conspiratorially.

  I’m confused for a moment. Wait – tastures, he’s talking about tastures. Asking whether I still have them. So, he is just scratching Bromide’s snitch itch. Only then I remember how afraid I was that those wires and electrodes had destroyed my tactile flavours. He promised it was only temporary. And it was. I don’t know what to make of him.

  ‘I can taste the tri-oomph,’ I say hiding behind the brand statement.

  ‘I have devoted a lot of neurological resources to imagining your sutured senses and the resulting percepts,’ he says resting a hand on my shoulder before turning to walk away.

  The wretched fear had made me forget that during the testing he had also given me those little human touches. Really, he used them a lot, like the silents’ communing contact. I watch him push through the canteen swing door and remain staring at the spot where his hand was flat against the painted surface, as if by comparing the imprint there and on my body I can finger him out.

  I get my chance to try asphyxiating You later when an old man comes to the Lost Property window. As soon as I see his face, I know which carton he’s come for. His photo was in his dead wife’s wallet. She carried bits of him with her like a lot of lucky rabbit’s feet – a lock of hair, a photo, an old asthma pump with a prescription label on it.

  He talks for a long time. His LipService is a backwards and forwards of vinyl scratching, warping language into brand blather so he can’t seem to make his request. I let him talk, using the delay to hold and hold. Jaw clamp, fist clench. Tighten the valves to keep myself sealed against You rushing in with the air. By the time he gives up and just pushes his collection form through to me, I haven’t breathed for so long that I almost don’t register his action in the giddy spin of disco lights that appear in front of my eyes. It’s the moment now. I already have my words lined up, little paratroopers that throw themselves into the oncoming inflailation. I open my mouth.

  ‘Bride in the memory slipstream,’ I cough.

  The old man starts crying.

  I’d thought I was more likely to get unbranded talk past You if I fooled You as I was fooled when I heard the Eternal Flame salesgirl in the coffee shop. I had wanted to say ‘bride in the memory daydream’. To tell the old man that I know – as did his wife – that he wouldn’t forget her. It’s based on the Mojo prompt, ‘Ride the energy slipstream.’ The last word bombs – a parachute that failed to open – but I think he understood anyway.

  The rest of the day, I feel a ginseng-zing and then start planning what to try next: one more test run at the corner shop and then the book repository.

  Before I get to the till, I jet-puff myself like a marshmallow before cutting off the airflow. I’m a stoppered bottle as I point to a brand in the LipService catalogue. The cashier rings up the amount and I give her two notes and a handful of change. A couple of the coins slip between her fingers. In surprise, I almost allow my imprisoned carbon dioxide currency to escape. I just manage to keep the hatch battened. The cashier is scrabbling on the floor for the lost money. As she comes up, I go down.

  Someone gives me a rude rehydrate, dripping Wholly Water in my face, and I regain consciousness. A couple of customers and the cashier are standing Mo-jiving over me. They’re worried I’ve had a second stroke, so I quickly say, ‘The ener-genie is out of the bottle and I’ve got my Mojo go-go back.’ After that, they quickly lose interest. The cashier returns to the till and the checkout queue reforms. I take the LipService patch that I’ve just bought and leave.

  At home my thoughts are feeling the hip-hop in soda pop – with a performance-boosting, rule-the-roosting energy edge. You’ve bounced back from having the wind knocked out of You and are on a buzz. I never expected You to come on so strong so soon after I stifled you. Is this a vie for a vie since I started trying to gag you?

  ‘That’s because with my Mojo, I go from average to anabolic,’ You retort.

  I’m considering ripping off the Mojo patch even though there’s still a good bit of talk time left in it, just to block your energy kick. Trying to focus on what to do, I find myself mumbling the patch replacement routine, ‘Strip, double over, dispatch. Strip, double over, dispatch …’ I still hear in it a promise to bump You off – off of me.

  ‘Strip, double over, dispatch. Strip, double up, dispatch …’

  I pause for a moment over the proposition in the slip of a preposition: ‘Double up.’ What if in doubling You with a second patch – a competing brand identity – I could get your split personalities to shadow-box each other into exhaustion? I would be left to commentate. To boost my confidence at infringing the single-patch dictum, I tell myself that the verbocharge Wordini gave me during the testing was also an additional patch, and it worked. I’m feeling all amino avid at the thought. Doubling up has to be better than inducing hypoxia and barely being able to complete a sentence. Especially if I’m going to convince them at the book repository that I’m a copywriter.

  The next morning, I take the new patch out of my pocket. ‘Premium Insurance. The best policy.’ Its staid, risk-averse, worst-case-scenario worrier could hardly be more different from the energy drink brand’s youthful, flashy, always game persona. Off comes the patch backing and without a bungee-jumper’s moment of consideration, I slap it on. I sit, a huddled seabird, as the rancid tasture oils my feathers, robbing me of my buoyancy and letting the cold seep in.

  It occurs to me that loss adjustment is key; I must adjust to my losses … No, that’s what occurs to You. I must take cover … take out cover? ‘Cover more ground with the can-do in a can,’ says Mojo You, muscling in. With three of us churning up language, it’s going to be harder to know whose words I’m thinking. And the first migraine UFOs have come into view, just like when I first visited the silents.

  ‘Just think energy drink.’ The words intrude loudly like a billboard I can’t not read. Stop, stop, I want to shout. These competing claims on me must be denied; meaning is sliding about like inflight drinks in turbulence.

  Concentrate on walking, I think, going down stairs, moving legs up and down. Mojo makes them pump like pogo sticks. On the s
treet, the bus to the book repository pulls up and I get on. Sweat rides the slope of my forehead. A bus ride, just a bus ride, and then I’ll be at the repository to tell them … a dread disease rider pays out a percentage of the death benefit in … adrenaline-ramping, danger-spanking thrills. My head hurts. I can’t think in straight lines.

  Three stops to go. I watch a girl get on the bus. It’s me. I’m getting on the bus. I feel as if my arms and legs have come loose and are floating off. But I can’t look away. The protruding eyes and their waxy lids, which are cast down as if watching the multitude of freckles nosediving down the length of her face, are all mine. She looks exactly like me, only she doesn’t move like me. She moves like Mother and tosses her hair. The blonde highlights are new; I don’t have those. What if she’s You? You completely free of me?

  I almost miss the stop at the book repository because I’m staring fixedly at the back of my own head. The pain in my skull puts me off balance. Once there, I stagger up the stairs towards the silo’s entrance. Then I see You again – just ahead of me. How is that possible? You didn’t even get off the bus when I did. Somewhere in my head there’s a memo saying it’s a hallucination, it can’t possibly be real. But out of nowhere fear spooks a herd of neurons into a stampede and that message gets lost. I start running to catch up, to get through the doors before You do. All I know is that I have to be the first to speak. When I approach the reception counter, I can’t see You, maybe because my vision is blurring.