Days

by James Lovegrove

  “So,” says Mr Bloom, hoisting a menu aloft and flapping it open. As if to compensate for a lifetime of reticence, he has taken to making his post-Ghosthood gestures as grandiose as possible. “Let’s have a look what’s on offer today.”

  Frank picks up his own menu and runs his eye down the handwritten list of available dishes, but his mind is not on food. “You order for both of us,” he says, setting the menu aside. He rests an elbow on the table, slots his chin into his cupped hand, and stares across the atrium to the parapet opposite, drumming his fingers against his lower lip.

  Mr Bloom catches a waiter’s eye – something Frank cannot easily do – and summons him over. He orders minestrone soup, followed by fettuccine puttanesca.

  “You don’t have a problem with peppers, do you?” he asks Frank.

  Frank shakes his head.

  The waiter departs.

  A silence falls over the table.

  “Well,” says Mr Bloom, “seeing as you’re not going to come straight to the point, I will. From our earlier, abortive conversations, I think I can pretty much guess what you have to say to me.”

  Frank continues to stare across the atrium. Mr Bloom pauses, then goes on. “I’m sure this isn’t a decision you’ve reached lightly, Frank, and I’m sure you’re quite determined that nothing I can say is going to make you change your mind. So you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear that I’m not going to try. All I’m going to say is that Days will miss you. No emotional blackmail here, the honest-to-goodness truth. You are an excellent store detective. It’ll be a shame to see you go.”

  Again, no reaction from Frank, but Mr Bloom is used to the ways of Ghosts. He knows he is not wasting his breath.

  “Is it the use of guns that bothers you?”

  A shake of the head so infinitesimal that only another Ghost would spot it.

  “Ah. Usually it’s the use of guns. It gets to some Ghosts after a while. Got to me. The idea of causing pain and injury to others, and worse than pain and injury. Mostly I could justify it to myself. Shoplifters know the risks they’re taking, and if they don’t then they deserve what comes to them. But every once in a while...” Mr Bloom scratches his foretuft with his little finger. “When I told you earlier about losing my touch, Frank, I didn’t tell you why it happened. I’m not sure if this is the reason, but... well, it seemed to be the reason at the time. You remember when I shot that kid?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “No reason why you should. We don’t go around boasting about these things, do we? He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Skinny as a lizard. He stole a comic, and I nabbed him, but he was a slippery devil, twisted right out of my grasp, leaving me holding the big baggy coat he was wearing. A guard hadn’t yet arrived, and I knew the kid would have no trouble outrunning me, so, of course, out came the gun. I shouted a warning. He didn’t react. I fired. I was aiming to wing him, but he was so thin, not an ounce of meat on him... He was just a kid, but I shot him all the same, without hesitation, because that’s what I was trained to do. The bullet tore out half his ribcage. I still have nightmares about it. I’ve killed five shoplifters, wounded half a dozen others, and every time I’ve told myself I was just doing my job. Just doing my job. But when I think about that kid’s face and the horrible wheezy gargling he made as he bled to death right there on the carpet, right there at my feet... Well, ‘just doing my job’ doesn’t begin to cover it, does it?”

  For a moment Mr Bloom looks older than he is, the pain of the memory casting a haggard, spectral shadow over his face. His private remorse has been dredged up, at great personal cost, as a bargaining chip – I’ve given you this much, now you give me something in return – but Frank, unskilled in the wheeling and dealing of human relationships, isn’t clear how to respond.

  “I’ve never killed anyone,” he says, without turning his head.

  Mr Bloom nods slowly. “I know. In fact, you’ve hardly ever drawn your gun. The mark of a good Ghost.”

  “Usually it takes nothing more than tact and firmness to deal with a shoplifter.”

  “There you go. That’s what I’m getting at. You were born for the job, Frank.”

  “That’s a good thing?”

  “It’s not a bad thing for a man to be doing the work that best suits him.”

  “To be born to do a job that requires you to have no personality, to blend into the background and be ignored – that’s a good thing?”

  The bitter edge in Frank’s normally mild voice is not lost on Mr Bloom. “Congruity,” Mr Bloom says carefully, “need only be an art. It doesn’t have to become a personality trait.”

  “But what if that’s unavoidable?” Frank at long last looks directly at Mr Bloom, bringing the full sad weight of his gravestone-grey gaze to bear on his superior. “What if it’s impossible to prevent the one leaking across into the other, the art becoming the personality trait, the job becoming the man? Remember Falconer? And Eames?”

  “They were exceptional cases, Frank.”

  “But what does it take to become an exceptional case? How much or how little of a push do you need to go over the edge?”

  Just then the minestrone soup arrives, vegetable-packed and steaming, in earthenware bowls with Days logos hand-painted around the inside of the rim. The waiter also brings them foccaccia bread in a napkin-lined basket. Mr Bloom tucks in immediately. Frank leans back in his chair and resumes his finger-drumming, this time on the lip of the table.

  “So what do you intend to do with yourself?” Mr Bloom asks between slurps of soup. “If you resign?”

  “Travel.”

  “Where to?”

  “America.”

  Mr Bloom splutters into his spoon. “America, Frank? Why in God’s name America?”

  “Because it’s big. You can get lost in it.”

  “So is Days big, and people are getting lost in here all the time. Honestly, Frank – America? I know it’s supposed to be a wonderful place, the land of opportunity and all that, but if it’s really so great, how come everyone who lives there is seeing a psychiatrist?”

  “That’s an exaggeration, Donald.”

  Mr Bloom dismisses the objection with a wave of his spoon. “Whichever way you look at it, Frank, Americans are a strange lot.”

  That annoys Frank. What does Mr Bloom know about America? What does he know about anywhere that isn’t Days?

  “America is just a starting point,” he says, working hard to restrain his irritation. “Ultimately it doesn’t bother me where I go, as long as it’s somewhere that isn’t here. I’m in my early fifties, and I haven’t once travelled beyond the outskirts of this city. Isn’t that pathetic? I’ve covered thousands of kilometres in my career, maybe millions, I’ve walked around the world several times over, and yet all I’ve seen is this city and the interior of this store.”

  “It’s not pathetic, Frank. You’re a dedicated employee. We all know how hard it is to tear ourselves away from Days. Take me, for instance. I’ve been meaning to visit my sister and her family in Vancouver for years. I haven’t seen my niece since they emigrated. She was fourteen then, she’ll be a grown woman now. I’d love to pop over and see them, but I can never seem to find the time. The job always gets in the way. There’s always too much unfinished business, too much to be done.”

  “But that’s precisely what keeps us here, Donald. We keep convincing ourselves that the job needs us and that we need the job and that our loyalty and dedication will eventually be rewarded somehow, I don’t know how. But it’s an excuse; it’s pure cowardice and nothing more. Believe me, I know. For years I thought there was nothing on this earth worth having more than a job at Days, but lately I’ve come to realise that it can’t compensate for what I’ve lost by working here. I’ve lost things that normal people take for granted – friends, a social life, a family. I want to start clawing back everything this store has taken from me before it’s too late, and I want to start as soon as possible.”

  Shou
ld he tell Mr Bloom that he has also lost the ability to see his own reflection? Probably not a good idea. He wants to be seen to be leaving for rational, considered reasons. The same goes for the imaginary wraiths who long to claim him as their own. These things must remain his secret.

  “Well, fine,” says Mr Bloom. “Far be it from me to stop you. I assume you have a ticket already booked. Take a holiday then. Jet off to the States. Have a rest. Relax. You deserve the time off. Come to think of it, that’s probably the best thing you can do. A change of scenery, a chance to breathe some different air...” Mr Bloom nods to himself and spoons more soup into his mouth. He seems to have convinced himself that all Frank wants is to take a break, although he could be hoping that if he believes this misconception to be the truth hard enough, then, by a kind of emotional osmosis, Frank will come to believe it too.

  “Going away and coming back won’t change anything, Donald. I have to leave, full stop. I have to resign. To quit.”

  There. He has finally said the word. Finally it has come tripping from his lips. Quit. Oddly, though, he feels none of the exhilaration he was expecting to feel. He had hopes that that one small word would carry on its narrow shoulders the whole burden of his concerns, and that in sallying forth from his mouth it would leave him lighter and freer, a purged man. But the anticipated relief is not there; just a permanent residual clutter, the dusty, cobwebbed accumulation of a career’s worth of unspoken frustrations.

  Mr Bloom says nothing, merely goes on drinking his minestrone, while around their table other conversations rattle back and forth, their echoes rolling across the atrium. When his bowl is empty, he grabs a hunk of focaccia bread and uses it to mop up the remnants of soup. “So what are you going to do for money? Have you thought about that?”

  “Transient jobs. Find work for a little while, save up, move on.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “A man your age should be looking forward to a comfortable retirement, Frank, not a life of dishwashing and floor-cleaning and fast-food serving. You really haven’t thought this through properly, have you? How about Ghost Training? Did you consider that possibility? You could become a teacher. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

  “I want to have a life beyond Days.”

  “Don’t we all, Frank, don’t we all?” Mr Bloom’s smile is, Frank feels, a touch patronising. “But like you say, this place owns us. Everything we have, everything we are, belongs to the store. We may not like it, but that’s what we signed on for. And if you want to abandon all that, that’s your prerogative, but bear in mind that without Days you’ll be nobody.”

  “Then what have I got to lose? I already am nobody.”

  “And you think that leaving will make you somebody?”

  “It can’t hurt to try.”

  “I admire your courage, Frank, but in case you haven’t noticed, it’s a grim old world out there. It’s fine if you’re rich – it’s always been fine if you’re rich – but if you’re not, it’s a struggle from start to finish, with no guarantee that the struggling is going to get you anywhere. That’s why gigastores have become so important to people. With their rigid rules and their strict hierarchies, they’re symbols of permanence. People look on them as refuges from the chaos and undependability of life, and whether, in practice, that’s true or not, that’s what Days and Blumberg’s and the Unified Ginza Consortium and the EuroMart and all of them represent. The rest of the world may be going to hell in a handcart, but the gigastores will always be there.”

  “Why would I forsake the life of luxury and the security that Days has brought me and throw myself out into a harsh and uncertain world? That’s what you find so hard to understand, isn’t it? Why fly the gilded cage, unless I’ve gone mad?”

  “Whatever hardships you have to endure in here, Frank, they can’t be any worse than what you’ll find out there.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  The waiter brings the main course and clears away the two bowls of soup, one wiped clean, the other untouched. He returns a moment later with a cheese-grater and some parmesan. Mr Bloom requests that his pasta be sprinkled liberally. The waiter obliges, and then leaves without thinking to offer Frank the same service. Frank is so used to this kind of accidental oversight that he doesn’t even notice.

  Mr Bloom gets straight to work with a fork. After a few mouthfuls he gestures at Frank’s plate and says, “Aren’t you going to eat anything? It’s very good.”

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  Sensing that his eagerness for his food might be considered insensitive, Mr Bloom reluctantly sets down his fork, a bandage of fettuccine wrapped loosely around its tines.

  “Listen, Frank. I want you to think this over a bit more. Compare how much you stand to lose with how little you can hope to gain. You spend the rest of the afternoon weighing up what I’ve said, and then come and see me at closing time. If by then you haven’t changed your mind, I’ll accept your decision and see if I can’t try to negotiate some kind of severance settlement with Accounts. Not a likely prospect, I grant you, Accounts being the tight-fisted bastards they are, but I may be able to swing something. If, however, you have changed your mind, then it’ll be as if this conversation never happened. Fair enough?”

  “I don’t see what difference a couple of hours will make.”

  “Probably none at all,” Mr Bloom admits, picking up his fork again. “But you never know. Now, you may have got away with ignoring your minestrone but I will not tolerate a plate of excellent fettuccine puttanesca going to waste. Eat!”

  Frank heaves his sagging shoulders and complies. And anyone looking at the two of them, Frank and Mr Bloom, as they sit facing one another, quietly forking pasta into their mouths, would take them for a pair of old friends who have run out of things to say but who still find pleasure in each other’s company. But then, no one is looking at two drab, ordinary, middle-aged men in a restaurant that is patronised by the famous and the beautiful and the notorious.

  29

  Seven Years’ Bad Luck: according to superstition, the penalty for breaking a mirror, seven years being the length of time the Romans believed it took for life – and thus the ruined image of life – to renew itself.

  12.48 p.m.

  GORDON FINDS THE way to his and Linda’s prearranged meeting point more by luck than judgement. Wandering from department to department in a state of shock, his sense of direction, fortunately, does not desert him.

  Linda is waiting outside the entrance to the Lighting Department, clutching a small Days bag in one hand. Gordon is three and a half minutes late, and the fact that she refrains from commenting on this would, under any other circumstances, be cause for alarm. When Linda fails to pick up on a fault, it usually means she is already brooding on another pre-existing fault, one far more serious, which she will let him know about only after making him sweat a while wondering what else he has done wrong. At that precise moment, however, Gordon’s main concern isn’t Linda’s scorn; his main concern is getting out of Days as quickly as possible.

  “Let’s go home, shall we?” are the first words out of his mouth as he draws up to her, shielding his eyes against the golden glare radiating from the connecting passageway.

  The same light seems to lend Linda’s face a balmy, seraphic glow. “What happened to your hand, Gordon?”

  “It’s nothing. So? Home, eh?”

  “Let me take a look.”

  Reluctantly, Gordon lets her examine his wounded hand.

  As soon as he regained his composure after his hasty exit from the Mirrors Department, he found a cloakroom and cleaned up his wounds at the basin. Once he washed the caked blood off his hand under the cold tap, he was surprised to find the cut in his palm both shorter and shallower than it felt. What he imagined to be a deep gash turned out to have barely broken the skin. A lot of blood for very little actual damage. It still hurt like buggery, but not as badly as when he had assumed
that the hand was lacerated to the bone.

  And it was while he was in the cloakroom bandaging the hand with his handkerchief and inspecting the nick in his eyelid in the mirror above the basin that he asked himself whether or not he should tell Linda the truth about his injuries. He had a pretty good idea what she would say if he informed her that he had been assaulted and insulted by a pair of teenagers. “You mean you just stood there and let them threaten you? Two boys? You didn’t fight back? You let them say those things to you and you didn’t give back as good as you got?” That is what she would have done in his shoes. Nobody, not even a Burlington brandishing a sharpened Days card, abuses Linda Trivett and gets away with it – as many an uncivil shopkeeper and talkative cinemagoer has discovered to their cost. No doubt about it, Linda would have stood her ground, head held high, and given the Burlingtons the tongue-lashing of their lives. She might even have seen them off, browbeating them into retreat. That fierce indomitability of hers is what Gordon loves about her the most, and envies about her the most, and fears about her the most.

  And (he decided in the cloakroom) there was another reason why lying would be a good idea. Confessing his cowardly behaviour in Mirrors would be one thing. He could probably live with the shame. But if, even jokingly, he were to mention to Linda about his close encounter in the Pleasure Department, his life would not be worth living. Even though nothing actually happened in that red-lit cubicle, it so nearly did, and Linda would hear the guilt in his voice. She would smell it on him, the way a lioness can smell fear.