by Luiza Sauma
‘Uh, sure.’
The Smog was taking a break. It was reliably good at disappearing at crucial moments, so that Iris wouldn’t embarrass herself. Thank you, Smog.
‘Good, so this isn’t coming as a surprise. That’s what I like about you – you’re self-aware.’
You don’t know the half of it, cuntface, thought Iris.
‘I’m only bringing it up because you have such potential. I mean, where do you see yourself in five years?’
On another planet, thought Iris. Failing that, I’ll get plastic surgery and a brain transplant and live under a new identity in the Sahara Desert.
Instead, she said: ‘Working in such a technologically driven field, it’s hard to say where I’ll be in five years’ time. The perfect job for me in five years probably doesn’t even exist right now.’
Alison smiled and nodded, like a proud mother. ‘Exactly! We’re on the same page. You know, I see a lot of myself in you.’
Iris widened her eyes and said, ‘Wow, thank you,’ as if she’d been told this by Nelson Mandela.
‘In a few years, you could be sitting where I am, but it will take a lot of work. You’re just not –’ Alison made fists with her hands and slammed them on the table. Bang! ‘You know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Iris made fists with her hands, too, but she didn’t slam the table.
‘You need to lead more, from the front. You should be like … like a commander leading an army into battle. And the battle is to get people clicking, engaging, interacting with content –’
‘And buying stuff?’
‘Yes, but you need to think more holistically than that. It’s not just about conversion. It’s about telling stories.’
What would the Dalai Lama do? thought Iris. That kind-looking man in red and yellow robes. Iris didn’t know very much about him, but he would probably tell her to give up this job, all her possessions, and become a monk. Maybe that was the answer.
‘You performed so well on Project Salmon,’ said Alison.
‘Thanks.’ Iris still didn’t know what this was, exactly.
‘But what about Project Salmon Egg?’
She didn’t know what that was, either.
‘Yes, Salmon Egg is a really interesting one.’
‘It is, isn’t it? And I feel like that’s the perfect project for you to sink your teeth into. It could be your baby, something that you own.’
Was Alison passing the project over because she didn’t understand it herself? Iris studied her boss’s face. Her blonde hair was neatly pinned back, but her eyes were dark and wild.
‘I’d be happy to play a bigger role in Project Salmon Egg,’ said Iris.
‘Great. So you know what I mean, about being a leader.’
‘You know, I’m sorry, but I’m not entirely sure.’
‘Look, I –’ Alison winced in frustration. ‘I know it’s hard to receive negative feedback, but the important thing is to concentrate on the future, on your personal and professional development. That’s what we really care about, here – you.’
Iris held back a hysterical, incredulous laugh, but couldn’t hide a hysterical, incredulous grin.
‘Perhaps it’s a confidence thing,’ said Alison. ‘I know what it’s like, we’re both women here.’
‘It’s true, we are.’
‘You should walk into meetings and be like –’ Bang! ‘You know?’
‘Like this?’ Iris hit her fists against the table. Bang!
‘I don’t mean literally. I mean like in the way you talk, the way you move, the way you present your ideas.’
‘Like, my personality.’
‘Exactly! You’ve got it.’
‘OK.’ Iris was bored now. They were just passing the time, playing their roles, like bad actors saying their lines too quickly, without conviction, because they wanted to walk off stage and go home. It didn’t matter how she performed. It didn’t matter if she didn’t change. All that mattered was staying in character and knowing your place. Nod, smile, promise to try harder, be grateful for the opportunity – always grateful.
‘Great!’ said Alison. ‘I’d really love to send you on a leadership-building course. I know of such a good one. I did it myself. How would you feel about that?’
I don’t want to be a leader, Iris wanted to say. Is that allowed?
‘That sounds like a great opportunity,’ she said in a level voice. ‘Thanks, Alison, that would be fantastic.’
Their smiles had become gurns.
‘Back to work, then!’ Alison picked up her iPad.
They both stood up. Iris was at least four inches taller than her. She could see right over the crown of her head, striped with bleach. If this had been the Stone Age, Iris could have wrestled her to the ground and throttled her to death, since she was the bigger, stronger human. But things had changed since the Stone Age. Alison was superior in the only way that mattered: she believed in herself. They left the room and went in different directions. As Iris walked towards her desk, she could hear Alison running down the corridor to her next meeting, with the uneven gait of a cow. And then: bam! Iris turned to see her lying face down on the floor, spreadeagled, with her loafers hanging off her feet.
‘Oh my God,’ said Iris, quelling the laugh in her voice. ‘Are you all right?’ The last word caught in her throat. She forced the sides of her mouth down.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Alison stood up, her face pink with embarrassment, and walked briskly away.
Once she was out of earshot, Iris let the laughter spring out. Her face crumpled like a piece of paper. It was one of those laughs that are more like a cry, something primitive and desperate. She was sobbing, sobbing with happiness, at the image of Alison lying on the floor. Tears streamed down her face onto her chest, under her shirt. Back at her desk, she held a hand up at Eddie, tried to speak, but couldn’t. Finally she put her head down and gave in to it.
‘Are you … OK?’ said Eddie.
Again, she tried to speak, but only managed: ‘I can’t.’
‘It was that good?’
‘No, no, it wasn’t good.’
Her face trembled with hysteria. She felt like she was having a stroke. She wanted to see it again and again, like one of those online videos that automatically replays, for ever.
‘I’m so happy, I could just die.’
Once the moment had passed, Iris spent several hours staring at her computer. She fulfilled her tasks, ticked them off her list and replied to emails, but every few minutes she lost focus. The shoe shop emailed her again: ‘We miss you.’ No, you don’t, she thought, and unsubscribed again.
In the afternoon, the staff gathered in the office kitchen to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a guy from accounts who wore a woolly hat every day, even in summer, to cover his bald patch. Iris ate three types of cake, made small talk with various people and then walked back to her desk, feeling sick. She stared out of the window at the clear blue sky, listening to the deranged squawk of seagulls – so very far from the sea – and the sonorous hum of building work, and people walking down the street. She looked up at the ceiling and thought, for maybe the hundredth time that week: I could definitely hang myself off that light. What would they think when they found me?
I should be busy, I should be moving forward, I should be working on my leadership skills, making plans to take over the world. But what she really wanted to do was to stand up and scream, ‘I don’t give a fuck!’ What a fine release it would be. Perhaps her colleagues would join her, they would all scream it together, ‘We don’t give a fuck!’ or they would sing it, like the chorus in an opera, and then they would tear around the office like the animals they were, unplugging computers with their teeth and pushing them out of the window, pawing at each other, fucking on their swivel chairs. She pictured Alison standing on her desk, screaming with her arms aloft.
To be so lucky and so miserable, it was insufferable. I should be put down like a dog, she thought. I need to leave London. I n
eed to leave the country, the planet, the solar system.
After work, Iris’s colleagues asked her to come for a drink and she pretended to have a headache. Jenny tried to convince her to come by grabbing her arms and pulling her along the corridor, as if the night would be ruined if she didn’t comply. Strength in numbers: another person around the table to bitch about Alison, to reassure them that they were loved.
Iris went home, feeling guilty. Kiran was out. She lay in bed with her computer on her lap, scrolling through clothes on various websites, imagining how they could improve her. She bookmarked a few items, didn’t buy anything, had a shower, made herself come and felt ashamed afterwards, as if someone were watching and judging her. She went back to the laptop wearing a bathrobe, with wet hair. The doorbell rang at 10.30 p.m. It was Eddie, smiling in a carefree, drunk way, with shining eyes. One of the first things he did was reach into her robe. She slapped him away. They went to the bedroom and she let him touch her, but then she told him to stop, so they just lay under the duvet, smoking a spliff he had brought.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, stroking her hair.
Iris blew a long, thin cloud of smoke into the air. Eddie was disappointed because he had wanted to fuck. Iris was disappointed by his disappointment.
‘You know, I had my performance review today,’ she said.
‘Is that why you’re in a weird mood?’
‘I’m in a weird mood because I don’t want to have sex right now? Do I have to be up for it all the time?’
‘Well, I am,’ he said, smirking.
‘But does that mean I should always comply?’
‘No, no.’ He exhaled and sighed at the same time. ‘Forget about it.’
The room smelled dirty and sweet, of weed and unwashed sheets. How long had it smelled this way? Far too long.
‘You know, Iris,’ he said, ‘if you ever want to talk to me about anything, you can.’
She glanced at him and briefly laughed, before looking back at the ceiling. ‘What do you mean?’ She could see him watching her, at the corner of her vision.
‘I don’t want to be presumptuous, but like, you don’t have to keep anything from me. You can talk to me.’
‘About what?’
‘About how you feel – you know, generally.’
Iris’s throat contracted. A cold tremor passed through her body. Did he know? Did Eddie know that she was rotten under the skin? Could he see the Smog, hovering over the bed like an evil spirit? Could he hear it laughing at Iris, at her feeble attempt to pass for human? How could he know, when even Kiran, Mona and their mother didn’t know?
Iris deflected the question. ‘Alison told me I need to improve my leadership skills. She’s sending me on a course.’
‘You never know, you might find it useful.’
‘You think so?’
‘Well, if you don’t find it useful, it’s not the end of the world.’ Eddie made it sound so easy and logical.
‘But the whole idea of it, of going on some shonky course, as if my personality is deficient –’
He dropped the spliff into a glass of water. ‘That’s what work is like. You have to play the game. That’s just how it is.’ Eddie didn’t have a Smog. He was Smog-free.
‘I spend most of my life at work. I don’t want it to be a game. I want it to be …’ Iris was going to say ‘fulfilling’, but it was too embarrassing to admit. She let the sentence trail off. They were now both lying flat, looking at the ceiling. She traced the familiar crack that ran across the mottled white paint from a corner of the room.
‘I’m tired,’ she said.
‘I’ll go.’
‘No, stay – it’s late.’
Soon Iris would get under the covers and turn the lights off, and the Smog would take its usual place on top of her, pinning her to the mattress, making her smaller and more insignificant, less able to breathe. Eddie went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and Iris checked her phone, because that’s what you did on Earth when people left you alone in a room – you checked your phone and guarded yourself against loneliness. There was an email from Nyx Inc.
Dear Iris Cohen,
Thank you for attending the first round of interviews for Life on Nyx. We are delighted to invite you to a second-round interview. Please –
She stopped reading and flagged it for later, smiling so hard that when Eddie walked back in, he said, ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Just something stupid on Twitter.’
The Smog held up its fat, smoky hands, and retreated unhappily into the wall.
Sometime in the night, Iris woke with Eddie pressed up against her back, warm and constricting. She fought the urge to push him away.
‘Iris, are you awake?’ he said.
She didn’t reply, but she opened her eyes. The sun was rising. At the edges of the blinds, the sky was going blue.
Eddie whispered, ‘I really care about you. You know that, don’t you?’ He paused, wallowing in his declaration. ‘I know you’re awake.’
Iris squeezed her eyes shut. It was frightening, hearing those words from him, sensing the weight of their emptiness, but soon this feeling passed and she fell asleep.
7.
Terrible Thing
On the night Iris tried to kill herself, she stood at her bedroom window, enveloped by the curtains, looking for the full moon. According to the internet, it was supposed to be there, but she couldn’t find it. The sky was dark grey and murky, not quite black. No stars. Is this a sign? she thought. She was sixteen, so everything was a sign. I need to disappear, she thought, like the moon.
Over the past few years, the Baby Smog had been gaining strength, learning to walk and talk, gathering evidence against her. She had stopped acting. She had stopped playing music. She had started loathing herself. Smogs grow quicker than humans.
Some weeks before, on a Saturday, Iris had been getting ready for a party when her mother called her downstairs. Eleanor had got home an hour earlier, after seeing her old friend Antonia, who lived nearby. When Iris walked into the kitchen, her mother was clearing away some leftovers. Mona was sitting in a high chair, holding a plastic spoon and babbling to herself. She was eight months old.
‘What is it, Mum? I need to leave soon.’
Everything was newer, back then – the house, the kitchen, Iris, Mona and even their mother, with her long grey-blonde plait hanging down her back as she moved between the kitchen table and the sink. She’d worn her hair that way for years, but soon she would chop it off and dye it.
Eleanor turned, tugged the plait over her shoulder and said, ‘Sit down, Iris, I need to tell you something.’ Her eyes were full of dread. She always looked serious, but usually in a more vacant sort of way.
Both of them sat down at the kitchen table. Eleanor put her cleaning cloth to the side.
‘I don’t want to ruin your evening by telling you this. I keep putting it off. It never feels like the right moment. But Antonia thinks I should tell you – and she’s right, I suppose. Jack thinks so, too.’
‘God, what is it?’
Her mother sighed. ‘I’ve wanted to tell you this for years. It’s about your father.’
‘Robert.’
‘Yes.’ She twiddled her fingers. They were shaking. ‘I never told you how he died. And I really should.’
Mona squealed and laughed. Her mouth was shiny with saliva.
‘He had a heart attack,’ said Iris.
‘No, I’m afraid that wasn’t the truth. You were six years old. I couldn’t tell you what happened. You were too little.’
All at once, Iris understood. Her organs felt as if they were made of lead. Of course, it had been a lie. Of course, Robert was like Iris. He was her father. She was made of him.
‘How did he do it?’ she said.
Her mother widened her eyes, surprised by Iris’s guess. ‘Your father wasn’t well for a number of years. He found it hard to cope.’
‘How did he die?’ said Iris.
&nb
sp; Suddenly, Eleanor seemed to regret the conversation. She shook her head and closed her eyes. ‘Maybe we should do this another time.’
‘No, Mum, you have to tell me now. Did he take an overdose?’
‘No, but –’
Their voices were rising in pitch. Mona had stopped squealing. She watched them silently, as if she were following the conversation.
‘Did he jump off a bridge?’
‘Iris –’
‘Did he hang himself?’
‘No.’
Mona banged her chewed spoon on the table of the high chair. Eleanor touched her nose and averted her eyes. She reached for the cloth and began to wipe the table frantically. Weren’t these all signs of lying? thought Iris. She’d read that somewhere online. How to spot a liar – the top ten signs. Her mother looked up and pursed her lips. Her skin was so pale and thin. She was developing soft jowls under her chin.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ said Iris.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t go out tonight. We could … just stay in, watch a film, get a pizza – anything you like.’
‘No, I want to go out.’
Her mother nodded. ‘Well, if you think it’s best, I can’t stop you. Maybe it’s a good idea to see your friends – to take your mind off it.’
But Iris wanted Eleanor to stop her. She wanted her to hold her, stroke her hair and sing ‘Silent Night’ to her, like she had once done, even though it was April, even though it would feel strange. She wanted to talk more; to hear her mother explain. The strangeness would eventually dissolve.
‘Yeah,’ said Iris. ‘I’m fine. I mean, it’s been years, so …’
Eleanor smiled a little. ‘I’m relieved. I’m glad I told you.’ Her hand moved tentatively across the table, but didn’t quite reach Iris.
As she walked upstairs, Iris felt like her blood was turning to ice. She rubbed her hands together to make the feeling go away. In her bedroom mirror, she looked exactly the same. She finished doing her make-up: gold eyeshadow, black mascara, lip balm and a cheap, sugary perfume.
‘It’s fine, I’m fine, everyone’s fine, we’re all fine,’ she whispered, lightly patting her face in the mirror. ‘Aren’t we? Yes, we are.’