by Rhys Thomas
“Bad.”
“Yeah. It makes me feel bad.” She shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Sam, I’m just...having trouble. It’s not even the superhero thing...”
He found himself internally cringing when she said the word superhero; it sounded so absurd.
“It’s the fact you couldn’t trust me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to fuck up your life, your job.” He thought he might start crying. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I don’t know. I thought I would stop doing it. But... I don’t know. I couldn’t.”
Sarah sighed and piled the beer mats on the table together. “Why do you even do it?”
Sam wiped some of the condensation off his glass. “It’s how I keep my head together,” he said, quietly and honestly. Across the table he thought he sensed a loosening in her. “I do it because it’s...like a bridge. To when I was last happy? When I was a kid.” His hands locked around his pint glass. “After it happened, the...accident, and after I, you know, with all the photos, I had nothing linking me back to my family.” Still not able to look her in the face, he nevertheless sensed a stillness descend on her. “Then one day I put on the costume...and was standing in front of the mirror...and everything was okay again. It just happened, and then I couldn’t stop. I was doing things. I was helping people. It became something more. I just... I know it’s ridiculous, but—” He stopped. “I’m so ashamed. I’m so happy now and—” He felt his voice shake. “I don’t know why I still feel the need to do it, but I’m really scared because really, deep down...I think I might be crazy.”
“What really happened to your face?” she said.
“I jumped off a lorry when it was going too fast.”
“Jesus, Sam.”
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
Her body language bristled as he said this.
“You lied to me, Sam. It is that bad. Is there anything else you’re hiding from me?”
“What? No!”
“You should tell me now.”
“Sarah, I’ve told you things I’ve never told anybody.”
“You can’t put shit like that on me, Sam. It’s not fair.”
She finished her Coke.
“I need to go,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
“Sure,” he said, his heart sinking. “Let me walk you to your car.”
“No, it’s okay, just stay there.”
He got up anyway.
“Sam, I said stay there. Just...give me some space, okay?” She pulled her coat over her shoulders and untucked her hair from the collar. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” she said, sweeping past him, not stopping to kiss, barely even looking at him.
30
THE MEETING ROOM was empty. The telephone had been brought from its usual place on the stationery cabinet to the big round table, its cable a white meandering river on the carpet. Rebecca smiled at him and closed the door, leaving him alone.
“Hello, Sam?” A woman, young-sounding. “This is Michelle from Human Solutions, your company’s HR company. Rebecca asked me to give you a quick call about how things are going.”
“They’re fine,” he said.
He tried to push away the image of Francis telling Sarah about the Phantasm.
“I guess you must know why Rebecca called me.”
“No.”
He thought he might have heard the silence of a secret line, another person listening in.
“Oh well, your...activities...outside of work. And how they might be affecting your performance...inside of work.”
What did his activities outside work have to do with Michelle of Human Solutions?
“You know what I mean, I’m sure. Now, just to put your mind at rest, you’re not in any sort of trouble, so you don’t have to worry about anything like that, okay?”
“Okay.”
“It’s just that the job you do is high pressured—”
Really?
“—and Rebecca and your general manager, Mr. Okamatsu, are quite concerned about you, especially given your recent work performance.”
He imagined Mr. Okamatsu’s reaction to being told Sam was a superhero and closed his eyes tight, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Our advice is to send you on a two-day course to get to the bottom of things.”
“What kind of course?”
“It’s a residential anger management course—”
“What?”
“It’s two days in a very calming setting and, just to make this clear, there is absolutely no mention here of it being mandatory. This isn’t a suspension. But it is highly recommended that you go. You can take the two days as annual leave. It could theoretically be taken as sick leave, but you’d need a doctor’s note, and I think we can all agree that’s a little bit too official.”
“I don’t want to use my annual leave on a stupid course.”
“Okay, Sam, there’s no need to use that tone with me.”
“I’m not using a tone, I’m just saying that I don’t need to go on an anger management course. It’s stupid.”
“Yes, but with respect, sometimes a person needs a guiding hand.”
“It’s just,” he said, careful to stay calm, “I don’t have much annual leave left.”
“There’s also the option of unpaid leave.”
“Are you serious?”
A pause. He imagined Michelle leaning over her desk.
“We think you would benefit enormously from the course, and your company will foot the bill—that’s how much they value you as an employee. It’ll do you the world of good.”
“I don’t need help. Look, I know I’ve done stupid things, okay? But I’ve got it under control. I’ll just keep working. It’ll be fine.”
The secret second line seemed to impart a pressure into the exchange. And that pressure, coupled to everything else, was crushing.
“Well, Sam,” said Michelle, her voice stronger now, “obviously, because of your personal circumstances, there are lots of things to consider. And really, everyone just wants the best for you.”
A burning up inside. It was all so stupid, typical over-the-top HR corporate procedural bullshit because nobody was capable of acting like an adult anymore. Why did people have to hide behind procedures, slip into business buzzwords to disguise what they were really doing? An anger management course was completely ridiculous. He simply never felt anger.
“So it’s agreed, then? You’ll attend the course in a couple of weeks and see how you feel, and if you need further help your company will be happy to provide it. You really are a valued member of staff. They wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if you weren’t. Well, it’s been nice talking with you, Sam, and I’m glad we’ve been able to hammer this out together.”
He placed the phone back in the cradle and wondered exactly what he was supposed to do next. Did everyone in the office know about this? They must think he was such an idiot. In that moment he was too shocked to feel the humiliation. He fired off a quick text to Sarah.
Hey. How you doing? Something funny just happened in work xx
Then he took the side exit from the room, trying not to think of her meeting up with Zac for coffee that afternoon, emerging into the dark corridor at the back of the building that led to the fire door one way and the warehouse the other. It was almost lunchtime, so he didn’t bother going back into the office and instead went out through the roller doors to his car.
* * *
When he got back, Mr. Okamatsu’s gold Lexus was parked up—he was back from his business trip. There was a black crow sitting on top of the Lexus and this had to be a bad omen. He checked his phone—still no reply from Sarah. As Sam got out of his car into the freezing air, his tender mu
scles seized and all his cuts started stinging again.
“Sam,” came a disembodied voice on the wind.
Sam looked around, but there was nobody there. From where he was standing he could see right down the whole length of the building, where he spotted Mr. Okamatsu peeping out, beckoning him. Tracking the side of the unit, exaggerating his limp, his feet crunched in the drainage gravel. This was going to be bad.
Without even mentioning the scab on his face, without saying anything about the superhero incident, Okamatsu led him in through the fire exit and back into the empty meeting room.
“Sit.”
He felt weak. Mr. Okamatsu eased himself into the chair opposite. It felt like the end of a film where the two nemeses discuss things civilly before an inevitable final battle.
“I have spent many days on the road,” he said. “I have visited all our customers.”
Sam couldn’t see his eyes at all through the light-sensitive glasses, though he felt them keenly, coring a hole through him.
“They will pay half of all fees.”
It was hard to read Mr. Okamatsu’s tone. He’d managed to save thirty thousand pounds. Surely this was good.
“Thank you,” said Sam, bowing his head slightly. “Half of all the fees is good,” he said, his voice quiet. It was, in fact, the amount of profit he generated for the company each month, despite what Rebecca said.
Then Mr. Okamatsu said, “Sam, you have failed.”
He said it calmly and it felt as if, were Sam to look down, he would see Mr. Okamatsu’s hand covered in blood, holding a knife he had just stabbed into his stomach.
“I made a mistake. I really am sorry.”
Okamatsu raised a silencing hand.
“No,” he said. “Gross misconduct. You know gross misconduct?”
“I do.”
Was he about to be fired? What about the anger management course? Did Okamatsu even have any idea about the anger management course? Five years he’d been at the company, his whole working life, and now he was about to be sold down the river for thirty thousand pounds.
“But it was just one mistake,” Sam said, meekly. He remembered times at home now, Sunday nights when he’d lain in his maze of comics, times when he was drowning in the sixth layer of thought, and how the prospect of going to work, of being around people, of being normal, was a lone beacon on the horizon.
Mr. Okamatsu removed his glasses and set them on the table, revealing how difficult this was, even for him.
“Sam. People like those in there have second chances.” He gestured toward the office where his useless colleagues worked. “They need chances. You are different. You are a better person, a good worker. Like me. We work hard to keep other people okay, and we ask for nothing in return.” He turned the signet ring on his finger. “But you doing this, not getting the forms signed, you are not like that anymore. You have stopped being one of us. We have no room for another one of them.” And he nodded toward the office.
Sam closed his eyes. “I don’t want to stop working here,” he said, his voice catching.
“You will not stop working here.”
Sam looked up.
“On one condition. This is agreed now. You will come to Japan and apologize in person to Mr. Takahashi, the president of the company.”
The words entered his head and rippled across his mind. He felt so many things, the accretion of shit from the last few days shunting into the back of him.
“The flights are booked. We leave Thursday evening. You don’t come to work tomorrow and you must leave now.”
Sam thought he could feel himself shrinking in his chair. He knew it was impossible. He couldn’t fly. Just the word made him shiver. Tears grew in his throat and he felt too stunned to speak.
“You must agree, Sam,” he heard Mr. Okamatsu’s voice say. “You must come with me to Japan. Or you can no longer work at Electronica Diablique.”
* * *
Sarah finally replied to the text he’d sent her after work saying good luck with Zac, and how sorry he was for everything.
Her reply simply said, Come over to my place at 7. There was still no kiss at the end, but at least she hadn’t asked to meet in a public place again.
He realized he was gripping the wheel too tight. A car overtook him out of nowhere and he almost swerved off the road. There was no way he was going to Japan. He’d simply get a new job.
He was going to be earlier than expected and the idea that he would get to Sarah’s flat and walk in on her and Zac in bed just wouldn’t go away. When he reached her place, he parked up and looked at the window that led into the strange architectural space at the front of the house, but the lights were off.
He opened the door and listened out for voices, but there were none. Climbing the stairs, he noticed an open cardboard box on the top step. When he looked inside, he saw some of his clothes and DVDs and the book he was reading. He stopped. Then he looked along the corridor at the closed door that led into the living room, a heavy feeling in his gut.
She was standing over the sink doing the dishes. The TV was off—the only sound that of splashing water. He closed the door in case she hadn’t heard him come in, but she had, and she still didn’t turn.
“Sarah,” he said.
“I left your things on the stairs.”
“Yeah. I saw those.”
“Because we’re not going out anymore.”
She placed a cup calmly on the draining board, still pointedly not looking at him. He didn’t know what to do, so he just stood there.
“You can leave your key on the table.” The silence between sentences had its own mass. “You never did get that key cut for me, did you?” she said. “You never did quite trust me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Now she did turn around, leaning with her back against the counter.
“I said to you. Yesterday. To tell me if there was anything else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been spying on me.”
“I’ve been what?”
She shook her head and the calmness dropped for a split second before she regained it. “You were looking on my Facebook. I know, Sam. Do you know how fucking embarrassed I am? Having to sit there with him laughing at me liking some shitty photo from fucking years ago, and me having to pretend that I knew what he was talking about, and then having to pretend it was true because even that was less embarrassing than telling him my psycho boyfriend—who, by the way, dresses up as a superhero—was snooping on my Facebook. I came here for a fresh start, to have a healthy life and try to be a good person. God, I should have stayed single. I knew I didn’t want a boyfriend. I was happy before, the happiest I’d been in a long time.”
“Please don’t say this.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snapped. Her glasses caught the light coming through the window and a sick feeling sludged in his stomach.
“I like being on my own. I don’t need a boyfriend to be happy. I used to be a right whore, you know that? You know how many people I’ve slept with?”
“Stop,” he said.
“Over twenty.”
She set her jaw tight and stared at him for a reaction.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I just want you to know that you’re not special. You think we have something special, but we don’t.” He could see how she almost started crying at this, but she composed herself. “I was getting so much better before I met you and now my head’s fucked again.”
“I love you,” he said.
She stared at him then, with a look of disbelief on her face. For some stupid reason he thought those words might find a critical point in her armor and cleave it open, but instead she just said, “Did you really just say that?” She closed her eyes and said quietly, “I can�
��t handle this. I’ve never dreamed of you, you know that? Not once. You’ve never been in my dreams. Don’t you think that says something?”
“I don’t know what I was doing,” he said. “There’s no excuse.”
“It’s too late, Sam. I thought you were this...amazing person.”
Glimpses of their few months together zoetroped in his mind.
“Please stop.”
“Oh God, Sam, don’t be such a pussy.”
“I fucked up, okay?” It came out louder than he meant, but he wasn’t breathing right. “This is all new to me, you’re right. And I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. Do you have any idea what it’s like being me? How hard it is for me to even get out of bed in the morning? To put on clothes every day and go to work?” He didn’t know why, but he was angry with her, with the way she was speaking to him. “It’s agony. But you’re right. I can’t handle this either.” He tried to calm his breathing because his voice was coming out so shakily.
“Well, boo fucking hoo,” she said.
“I’m just agreeing with you.”
He took out his keys and unhooked Sarah’s. “Here.” He put it down on the table.
“And just so you know, seeing as all your experiences come from films, this isn’t the point in the movie where we argue and get back together later, okay?”
That really hurt. “I don’t see my life as a movie,” he said. “I just want to go back to how it was before—because, like you say, I’m not ready. This—” he pointed down at the floor, and his mouth hung open for a second “—is killing me.”
She stared at him and he couldn’t read her reaction.
“Well, maybe you should have thought about all this before you lied.”
“It’s not that easy, though, is it? You don’t know what it’s like being me.”
“Oh please.”
“You deny your family’s existence, and there’s me who lost mine. You have a choice, but that was taken away from me. I don’t have that choice. You have no idea how lucky you are. How do you think it makes me feel to see the way you are with your family, and you won’t even tell me why. I have to live with what happened to me every day. I lived, they died.”