by Chris Killen
I propped the door open with the fire extinguisher and began hauling everything through to the back room, two bags at a time, and when I came back on my third trip, there was an old bloke in the shop, shuffling towards the bookshelves in the back corner.
‘Excuse me?’ I called. ‘I’m afraid we’re not open for another ten minutes yet.’
But he just nodded and smiled and carried on shuffling towards the books.
Let him browse, I thought. Why not? What does it matter?
I’d begun hoovering when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket again.
I knew it was Alyssa again before I opened the message.
Oh shit HAPPY BIRTHDAY btw! it said.
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:33:14 +0000
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Hello
hello,
glad you’re having fun. knew you would be. you always struck me as a person who knew what they were doing, so, um, congratulations on that.
i realise this makes me sound a bit stupid but what’s Canada like exactly? is it like America? whenever i try to picture ‘Canada’ i just think of a big mountain with a bear standing on the top of it. does that sound about right?
(i’ve only ever been to places in Europe.)
no Avril yet. if this was a computer game, then we’re still stuck on the first level. i don’t know. that’s not really true. we’ve got a couple of good support slots booked for next month (have you heard of Nine Black Alps?) and Alex reckons our demo is ‘being heard by all the right people’ whatever that means. (maybe it means Avril’s about to slot it into her tape walkman, any moment.) but yeah, in the meantime I’m still mainly just doing as many hours as they’ll give me at the Bull and eating beans on toast and oven chips and those rectangular pizzas that go in the microwave and trying to find another job which is a) more hours, b) daytime if possible and c) not completely soul destroying. (telesales?)
please keep your fingers X-ed for me, and i’ll be sure to let you know of any interesting developments in my life if/when they materialise.
oh by the way, in case you were wondering: i bumped into Paul the other day (first time i’ve seen him since you and he broke up) and he didn’t say anything bad about you. so you know, if there *was* any bit of you still wondering whether he’s okay or whatever, Paul’s fine. he spent most of his time just talking about himself: about this novel idea he had. (no change there then.) i think me and him have drifted apart a bit. can you tell? i don’t know. it’s just weird i guess, seeing people you used to get on so well with and not having anything much to say to them any more . . .
no, i never met Emily. she sounds like quite the character.
so how’s everything going so far? have you found somewhere to live or a job or anything yet?
please send me all your news whenever you get a chance. it’s exciting.
okay, really lovely to hear from you, too.
i’m going to go now.
Ian
p.s. we came seventh in the pub quiz.
IAN
2014
‘So this is where the magic happens,’ Martin says. He puts his hand on my shoulder and steers me into a large, weird-smelling room at the end of the corridor. There are about fifty to sixty people crammed inside, elbow to elbow at five long rows of desks, talking into headsets and typing on old desktop computers. It’s impossible to make out what any one person is saying; their voices all blend together into a swarming, chattering racket.
I want to squirm out from Martin’s grip.
I want to run back along the corridor and down the stairs and out through the lobby and away into the city.
I want to buy my guitar back.
I want to drop myself over the stairwell.
I want to travel back in time to 1983 and start all over again.
‘This is where you’ll be working,’ he says, shouting to be heard above the clatter of voices. ‘At the moment we’re doing a large project on behalf of the government. It’s a sort of questionnaire.’
I want to be back in the spare room again, reading Ways to Happiness.
I want to work as a large top hat for a city-centre printing firm; at least I’d be outside, walking around in the fresh air.
The room has the sour, chemical smell of fifty to sixty people drinking instant coffee all day without any proper ventilation.
A cheap electric heater buzzes warmth into my trouser leg.
I’m wearing my one pair of smart trousers, my one smart shirt, and my one pair of smart shoes. Everyone else is in jeans and jumpers. Even Martin’s wearing a pair of those two-colour jeans with fake worn bits at the knees.
‘We’ll find you a free terminal in a minute,’ he says, ‘but first I’d better show you where everything else is.’
So we head back down the corridor and stop outside the door at the farthest end. Its small plastic sign says Martin Glade.
Carol Glade, I think.
Martin pushes the door open to reveal a small office with a plush leather swivel chair and a big desk with a new-looking iMac on it.
‘Pretty nice, eh?’ he says.
‘Yep,’ I say, looking in at the cool, dark room.
I wait for Martin to tell me to go in and sit down. But he doesn’t. We both just stand there in the doorway, looking at his office.
‘Top of the range, that,’ he says, pointing out the giant, flatscreen monitor.
‘Nice,’ I say, trying to sound suitably impressed.
‘Anyway,’ he says after another long pause, letting the door swing closed. ‘Back this way . . . follow me.’
He leads me back down the corridor again in the direction of the main room. On the way he points out the toilets and the break area, which is a grim, windowless, L-shaped room with a sink in one corner and a few tables and chairs in the middle.
‘How many breaks do we get?’ I ask.
‘How many do you need?’ he says. ‘You get one. For lunch. And no more than forty minutes, yeah? Too many breaks end up being a bit, you know, counter-productive.’
We go into the main room again and he directs me towards an empty space, to an old blue swivel chair facing onto a dirty beige computer. There are no windows anywhere, and the overhead striplights turn everything a jittery, grainy, electric yellow, like you’re on drugs and it’s five in the morning.
‘Have a seat,’ Martin says.
I sit down.
NO VAPING, says a tatty printout, tacked to the wall above me. BREAK ROOM AND OUTSIDE ONLY.
‘Now, for starters, all I want you to do is listen in to Dean here and get a basic feel for what goes on.’ He gestures to the man at the next terminal. ‘Dean’s one of our absolute best, you see. I’ll be back in an hour.’
He gives me a wink and pats me hard on the back, then swaggers out of the room.
I wiggle the mouse and my monitor crackles into life. It says ‘Quiztime Solutions’ on the desktop.
I look over at Dean. He’s grey-haired, with sunken cheeks and large bags under his eyes.
‘H—’ I say, just as Dean’s phone makes a shrill chirping noise.
‘Gooood morning, madam,’ Dean says into his headset. His voice is as warm and musical as a radio DJ’s. ‘And how are weeee this morning? . . . Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Anyway, my name’s Deeeean and I’m calling from a company called . . . What’s that? . . . Oh no, I’m not selling anything, madam. The reason I’m calling is just to let you know that you maaaay well be eligible for a . . . Okay then, madam, but if you’ll just . . . Well, in that case I’m truuuuly sorry to hear that and I hope you have a . . .’
Dean sits back in his chair and sighs and rubs his sagging face hard with both hands. His stubble makes a rasping sound against his palms.
‘H—’ I say.
Dean’s phone chirps again and he leans in. ‘Gooood morning, madam . . .’ he says.
As he continues speaking, I feel myself zonin
g out.
My gaze floats around the room for a while, resting finally on a small black squiggle on the MDF partition that separates Dean’s monitor from mine. It’s handwriting, I realise. I lean in a little closer to examine it. In tiny, wobbly, childlike biro it says: I hate it here.
After a while, I’m given a spare headset and a script so I can follow along. The script is a snaking maze of boxes and arrows that tells you what to say in any possible situation. It seems that the gist of the job is to convince old people to fill out online questionnaires by promising them entry to a (possibly imaginary?) competition. In the three and a half hours that I sit listening in, Dean convinces eleven different old people to fill in the questionnaire.
He really knows what he’s doing.
The questionnaire takes about twenty minutes to complete, and all the questions are about how satisfied you are with your current situation in life, what you might possibly do to improve it, how happy you are in general on a scale of one to ten, etc. Dean asks the old people the questions and the old people tell him their answers and he then clicks the corresponding boxes on his on-screen questionnaire.
Occasionally the noise in the room reaches a kind of crescendo; for a few seconds all fifty or sixty voices will be speaking simultaneously, and the sheer volume of it causes my heart to quicken and I have to grit my teeth and grip the arms of my swivel chair and wait for it to stop.
I wonder how I will possibly get through doing this every day, nine till six, five days a week.
It seems impossible.
Each call is almost identical; it’s just you saying, ‘Hello, sir/madam,’ and then someone saying, ‘Not interested,’ and then that person slamming the phone down on you. If you’re lucky, something interesting happens, like they’ll tell you to fuck off.
Just before one, Martin reappears. He claps his hands and tells us to break for lunch. On my way out of the room, I try to keep my head down and my body buried amongst the crush of people all heading for the doorway at the same time, but he manages to spot me and taps me on the shoulder.
‘So?’ he asks, once we’re the only ones left. ‘Reckon you can handle it?’
Here it is, I realise. My opportunity to just say no. To open my mouth and say, ‘I’m really sorry, Martin, but I don’t think this is the job for me . . .’
I take a deep breath.
‘Sure thing,’ I say instead.
What the fuck am I saying?
When Martin grins, I see bits of egg stuck between his teeth. There’s a smear of brown sauce at the corner of his mouth, too, and I have the sudden, unshakeable conviction that he’s been sat in his comfortable air-conditioned office all morning, eating a Tesco breakfast sandwich and looking at pictures of cars on the internet.
* * *
It’s raining outside so I stand beneath the arched entrance to the building. As I smoke my roll-up, I watch a steady stream of businesspeople bobbing along the pavement, all headed in the direction of the Tesco Express.
I will give up smoking on my thirty-first birthday, I tell myself as I grind my fag out with my shoe, then immediately start rolling another one.
There’s a miserable-looking woman in a saggy black cardigan stood at the other side of the doorway, smoking a kingsize. I feel ninety per cent sure that she also works in the call centre. We both seem to be pretending that the other person isn’t there. I don’t blame her. Talking’s probably the last thing you’d want to do on your break.
Just as I’m lighting my second fag, Dean steps into the doorway, too. He has a slight stoop when he stands, his head jutting forward as if it’s a bit too heavy for his neck.
‘Alright, Sue,’ he says, shuffling up to the miserable-faced woman and taking a box of Mayfair out of his jeans pocket. ‘Got a light, darling?’ Dean’s normal speaking voice is much sadder and quieter and a lot less musical than his phone voice.
Sue hands him her lighter.
‘Cheers, duck,’ he says.
‘Slow morning,’ Sue says, then coughs.
When Sue coughs it sounds like someone shaking a biscuit tin full of gravel.
‘How you doing, matey?’ Dean says, nodding at me from across the doorway.
‘Not bad,’ I say, trying my hardest to smile politely and look enthusiastic.
‘I’ll ask you again in a few days.’
Sue coughs and I drop my roll-up on the ground even though it’s only half smoked and the business-people go past the doorway and I look at the time on my phone, and somehow there’s only five minutes left until the end of lunch break.
I don’t want to go back up the steps.
I don’t want to go back up the steps.
I turn and go back up the steps.
In the afternoon, Martin gets Dean to come off his computer and show me how to use mine. So Dean logs off and waddles his swivel chair even closer towards me, extinguishing all remaining inches of personal space between us.
‘Bloody computers, eh?’ he says.
Up close, Dean’s breath is almost unbearable, a sour mixture of coffee and emptiness.
‘I remember when this was all paper and pen,’ he says.
I nod politely at everything Dean says, taking shallow breaths through my mouth, as he begins to methodically show me what each of the buttons on my screen do, how to log in and out, how to clock all my breaks and toilet trips, how to see a list of how many calls I’d made so far, how to accurately catalogue everything, etc. Then he goes over the script, explaining that it’s all in the wording, you see, that you have to say that the person may be eligible for our fantastic competition, that that’s one of the words that you’re absolutely unable to change, no matter what.
I nod my head emphatically in the hope that it might make Dean stop breathing all over me.
‘That’s about everything,’ he says. ‘I think you’re ready to have a go.’
He plugs an extra headset into my phone so he can listen in while I make my first call. Then points to the button on-screen that I have to click to start the automatic dialler. I move my mouse pointer over it and double-click.
A long, ominous pause, and then my phone chirps, just once, and then I hear ringing in my headset. After a while someone picks up.
‘Hello?’ an old woman says. ‘Who is this?’
When I open my mouth to speak, the voice that comes out of it isn’t mine.
‘Gooood afternoon, madam,’ it says. ‘And how are we today?’
‘Sorry, who is this?’ she says.
She sounds like Mum: very old and very far away, as if she’s standing at the other end of a dusty brown corridor, past endless shelves of carriage clocks and old photos.
I look down at my script, following the snaking arrows and clipart bubbles to a section that says:
My name’s _________ and I’m calling from a company called Quiztime Solutions. The reason for my call is to let you know that you *may* well be eligible for the exclusive opportunity to enter our fantastic new competition to win any one of a number of wonderful luxury prizes.
I open my mouth but the pause drags on.
‘Hello?’ the old woman says.
I’m going to take off my headset and stand up and tell Dean and Martin that I’m really sorry, but this just isn’t the job for me, that it makes me feel uncomfortable.
As Dean nudges me on the elbow and taps his biro against the next bubble of script and breathes his horrible breath all over me, I begin to lift myself out of my chair. But as I do so, I think about Carol. I think about Rick from the job centre. I think about a sentence in an email that someone once wrote me. I think about my dad.
I let myself drop back into the chair and begin to speak.
PAUL
2014
The ceiling of Alison Whistler’s bedroom has a small hole in it. Alison’s downstairs, in the toilet. Her room is small and candle-lit, and right now it smells of incense sticks and sex and unwashed clothes. Paul wonders what the time is, but he doesn’t want to check his phone,
in case the spell is broken by some sort of message – a query from one of his students, or an email from Julian asking why he’s still not received the novel yet, or worse still, an out-of-the-blue nice email or text from Sarah. If I could just stay here, Paul thinks, in this bed with the curtains drawn and whatever music this is that’s playing and never have to go back out into the real world again then maybe I could be happy.
Just then his tongue shifts, automatically, to the lump.
Try not to think about it, he tells himself.
You’re shagging a nineteen-year-old.
Try to think about that instead.
This is the third time Paul’s been up to Alison’s room, which is on the top floor of a five-bedroom student house.
She had to sneak him up the stairs.
He’d been taken aback, the first time he saw her room, by just how bare it was. He’d wondered where all her books and CDs and DVDs were. Then he’d realised. If you’re a young person with an iPhone and a Kindle and a MacBook and a wifi connection, that’s all you really need these days. Also: you don’t have to pay for anything either.
Like what happened after the second or third time they had sex.
They were lying in bed, smoking, and Paul was secretly enjoying how cinematic and over-the-top it all seemed – the affair between the student and the teacher, with him playing the role of the older man for the first time in his life (Alison considers thirty-one and a half ancient) – and Paul found he was viewing himself from above, in widescreen, in grainy black and white, like a scene from a French film.
‘Have you ever seen any Godard?’ he’d asked.
‘No, why?’
‘I feel like I’m in a scene from a Godard film,’ he explained.
And then Alison had asked which was his favourite, or which he recommended she start with.
‘Breathless,’ he’d said. ‘For definite.’