The mints were my idea and I always pushed the bowl towards the customers in what I hoped was a cordial way. These people had a habit of looking right through me, so it was not unusual for me to go completely silent and turn stiffly away from them. I could still feel them behind me, their impatience growing, breathing, becoming lethal, but I never looked around. My frozen back said it all. I returned to tending the plant or standing stupid-still with my hands resting on my thighs. Had there been a panic button, I would have pressed it. Kevin beamed at them as they left. Kevin said the unique service experience dug straight into a customer’s soul. It was something to do with the correct measure of eye contact and unobtrusiveness. Afterwards, he tended to lock himself in the toilet stall for half an hour. He may have been punching things and missing, or not missing. I didn’t know. Usually, he would emerge, in obvious despair, and accuse me of being antisocial. I was not being my premier self so he was correct in that sense.
*
Management was aggressive in her pursuit of a good time. Though she despised everything – and did unspeakable things to animals – she was, at heart, a fun-loving person. We had good times for an hour on Fridays. Kevin and I traipsed into the offices in town, where Henry and Lynn – the other two participants – were based and we all grouped semi-merrily together in the backroom. We ate supermarket-brand crisps from a cavernous bowl, electric dust coating our fingertips. We drank beers with bearded men on the labels. These men with their fishing-rods, with their broad smiles suggesting happy retirement, advised us to kick back. Have one on us. Management wanted us to be comfortable, comfortable enough to lie down playfully in each other’s laps, if the desire struck us. This never once happened.
At these gatherings, it was not unusual to be offered advice that would make a ‘new woman’ out of me. We all agreed early on that my pretty face and nice body were my best qualities, but I could probably pull up my socks re everything else. I didn’t take a whole lot of it on board. At one time or another everyone in the garage had a low opinion of me but that didn’t matter so much now. When we first met, we stood in a group circle – in my entire life, not a single good thing ever came from standing in a circle – and we introduced ourselves, announced our favourite colours and confessed to the many errors, ignorances and life missteps that had brought us here.
We listed our favourite colours in a routine way; we were careful to choose from the brighter end of the rainbow. We did not want to hint at brown, black or horrible grey deficiencies that may have resulted in termination, or some other unknown fate.
‘You know what?’ Management said, ‘I don’t have a favourite colour. I like them all. And you know what I like best?’
We made our most inquiring faces as if on the brink of revelation.
‘When all the colours work together as a team.’
This was particularly popular with Lynn, our secretary of sorts from the office, who smiled effusively.
‘Yes, I treat all the colours equally,’ Management said, as if this were the final word on the subject.
‘That’s very Christian of you,’ I said. Religion made me chirpy. It was so sweet and old-fashioned, like dinner and a movie.
‘I don’t hold any other religious beliefs,’ Management blushed. ‘Except I do believe in sin.’
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure you are going to like what’s coming next … ’
There were so many words for the things I had done that it was hard to know where to start. There wasn’t a single person in that backroom prepared for my shameful moments. I tried to fit as much degradation as possible into each sentence so as not to waste time. I truly wanted everyone to get their turn. I was considerate in that way. I felt, having disclosed all this information, I hadn’t given myself a fair, decent start at the job, a clean slate. But, like I said, it wasn’t important.
Lynn spoke about her ex-husband. The whole romance right from the get-go. I couldn’t care less about whatever basement she had found the dud in, and that it had got gloomy and how they had muddled through for a while. There was a fat child born somewhere in the middle of all this, maybe? A diabetic child? I didn’t know. I drifted in and out. What caught my attention was when she admitted that, during their time together, she kept a detailed record of everything her husband ate. Now, he was out there eating – at other dinner tables, at restaurants with new women – without restraint, his meals undocumented, and she was terrified. This disgusted me.
‘That’s not right, Lynn,’ I said. ‘People should be allowed to eat whatever they want without you interfering.’
Lynn really made me sick. She stormed out of the room, flying down the hall in her flat shoes. Came back a few minutes later with a puffy face. There were so many Lynns in the world, each one expecting hand-holding, mollycoddling. What to do with all of them?
Henry was here because he had limply tried to rob a post office but it was actually monstrously difficult, much more than the five-minute task he had expected. He gave up midway.
‘Give ‘em hell, Henry!’ I commanded. I applauded any display of rebellion or wildness.
Henry had had a small, shitty life that had made waving a box-cutter in front of a few mildly frightened post-office employees seem like an empowering and enriching experience. In another better world he might have been a hero: a hairy folklore type with a soft, touchable face. Instead, he made beautifully constructed pie charts for a petrol station that did not exist.
He was beefy, mighty, capable of picking me up and swinging me around menacingly. I would shout, ‘Put me down, put me down, Henry!’ but not mean a word of it. It was all girlishness. I loved being picked up. Things were much clearer from that height. Despite my previous run-ins, I was still not immune to men like this.
Kevin didn’t have anything to confess. He used most of his allotted time to argue for the addition of hats to our uniforms and I half fell in love with him. He became a little agitated as he tried to describe his dreams for television which, as he spoke, seemed to grow even more vague and nonsensical. The way he saw it, the problem with modern viewing was that there were too many remotes. People wanted a single, functional remote for everything and he, plaid-clad, barely pubescent, would invent it. This was an example of hope. The garage was about giving us hope. The hope of a bright future, the hope of a high tax bracket.
After the first meeting, I felt so hopeful that I went out and had seven or eight large drinks. Kevin accompanied me, my boy chaperone. We went to a godawful place I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in, but it suited my state of mind at the time. The tawdry bar lights cast an angelic glow on us both. Kevin thought I drank too quickly; he put his hand over mine, said things improved if you went slow. So I drank seven or eight drinks, slowly.
‘The problem is they don’t listen to me. That’s the issue at hand, Kevin,’ I said.
‘That’s because you have literally nothing to say.’
Next day: the usual show. My bed; dry-mouthed; alone; my entire life still before me.
My mother, clad in one of my father’s more colourful golf shirts, confronted me: ‘I just don’t think that job is bringing out the best in you.’
*
Management always found an excuse to ‘pop’ into the garage, wielding an enormous coffee cup along with her tremendous power. Her latest plot was to put chairs of various shapes and sizes at the front of the garage. Management had a vision of the townsfolk sitting on these chairs, chatting happily amongst themselves, and gazing luridly at their young people as they busied themselves being employed. It was as if the chairs could sense the unreasonable expectations placed upon them; they vomited their stuffing, revealed dangerous wooden splinters, and discoloured horribly in the daylight.
During the chair-moving task I did my best to be well-mannered, uninventive, kindly.
‘The weather is cold today,’ I once offered.
‘Only idiots talk about the weather,’ Management replied as she surveyed me from a sinister distan
ce.
I tried to leave a baffling number of times. Each time I tucked my hair behind my ears in a nod towards a tidy aesthetic and squeezed myself into Management’s tiny cubicle. ‘I quit. Thank you,’ I’d say and Management would reply, ‘I will see you tomorrow,’ and somehow she was right and I was always destined to be wrong.
*
I had up-and-down periods. I experienced great bursts of tenderness towards Kevin, the pigeons that littered the garage forecourt, even the empty chairs. I was hugely nostalgic and wistful for the garage even while I was still technically working there.
‘Kevin, do you remember the good times we used to have?’
He looked at me. ‘Not really.’
Then: the anxious darkness, a rising feeling that I might rip all the leaves from the plant for no good reason, an anticipated anger at the next person who might dare touch me.
‘I hate this place and if you are having similar feelings, my friend, we should run away,’ I said.
‘Haven’t you just come back from running away?’
The garage encouraged education – learning skills that would be transferable to newer, better positions – and in its own sterile way, it succeeded. I gained insights into my own personal habits that I could have gone decades quite happily never knowing about. This mental unravelling happened at no great speed. Even the catastrophe of my own life was something I managed with amazing slowness.
*
Christmas came from nowhere. ‘When was that decided?’ I wanted to ask, but it brought a new thrill and direction to our days so I didn’t want to argue. Management, occupying the head chair, her smooth, superior hands sitting on the table, searched out themes for the decorating. And in a burst of friendliness and participation, that surprised even myself, I suggested we went with ‘Christmas’.
‘In what way?’ Management inquired.
‘You know the festive way with tinsel and the colour red?’
She pursed her woeful, shrivelled lips.
‘Can you not think of anything else?’
‘No.’
In that brief moment everyone saw my mind and my mind was absent of all ideas. I thought I would be a different person by this time in my life, but I was actually becoming less like someone else and more like myself. It was troubling. Kevin ignored me during that Christmas discussion. Often, during Friday group, he sat across from me with Henry and Lynn. I tried to let him know we were being held hostage using just my eyes but I could widen them only so far to convey the corniness, the stupidity. I sometimes saw him laugh with his hand over his mouth – that was for me.
‘Don’t give out to her just because she didn’t have a good theme,’ said Lynn with deft and hidden savagery. She was the kind of woman who would cause tears in others just to wipe them away. Lynn had no respect for complicated people and situations. It was so lousy and exhausting. It probably had caused a lot of problems in her life. And she was brutal at her job. She made me look conscientious. She simply had to draft email correspondence, but she never quite got the tone right; there was always a whiff of incompetency. We were all nervous about her genuine ineptitude. I, for example, was consumed by compassion for her child.
‘I’m not giving out to her,’ Management said.
‘Good, because you know she’s not all there.’
‘Why isn’t she all there?’ Henry piped up, in a rare moment of conversation.
‘On account of all, the, you know … ’ Lynn whispered.
‘What was that, Lynn?’ I said.
She looked directly at me. ‘You know,’ she repeated, stiffly.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I forget. Please tell me.’
‘You were,’ she cleared her throat delicately, ‘a fantasy girl.’
‘The pornography,’ Management stated, flatly. ‘The prostitution.’
‘And that’s just the stuff she has told us about.’ Lynn shook her head sadly. ‘It was a lot of work for me, you know, a lot of extra work for me. When I was doing up our history folders on the computer, I had no idea what to call hers. I stayed late. I couldn’t figure it out.’
‘What did you go with in the end?’ Management inquired.
‘Whoring Around.’
‘That’s a powerful title for a folder, Lynn,’ Management congratulated her. ‘You’re really improving at the computer.’
‘Don’t hold back, you two,’ I said. ‘Pretend I’m not here.’
Kevin’s sly smile.
‘Can we all try and enjoy ourselves please?’ Management’s voice was sharp, high with that animal bloodlust.
We nodded. Our heads bobbing, bobbing, bobbing.
Management was not above demeaning us. She had lofty, liberal ideas but she was as base as anyone I have ever encountered. She disguised it as fun and games – playtime – but it was tyranny. Pure, intentional terror. There had been ugly scenes in the past. Things had gotten nasty, once or twice.
That Friday, she took out a small cardboard box and placed it on the table in front of her.
‘Can you come up here, Kevin?’
Kevin lumbered towards her and as she rested one hand on his queasy, young shoulder she pressed an object into his palm.
At the sight Kevin’s whole body clammed up; he disappeared into himself. I caught only a flash of it – the sorrow, the roundness, the honking redness. As Kevin stretched that clown nose over his startled face, the silence in the backroom was clammy, damp.
‘Isn’t it amusing?’ Management asked.
‘It’s brilliant,’ I said. ‘May I have one please?’
‘The nose is just for Kevin.’
‘I would like one.’
‘Don’t be a sourpuss.’
‘Just give me one, would you?’
‘Why?’
‘Because it would look fucking good on me.’
Management rolled her eyes, weighed up something in her mind and, finally, threw me the prop. I placed it over my face in what I hoped was a demonstration of anger.
‘Now, isn’t this a nice evening?’ Lynn said.
*
The next morning I came to on Kevin’s couch, his Jaws T-shirt stretched foolishly over my chest, the shark slithering up to say hi. I could taste the night before – the emotion, the dramatics. My impassioned speeches left highly irregular tastes. Through the kitchen wall came the low murmur of television, accompanied by the mean movements of Kevin’s full-time bastard of a father. Fridays were not easy on Kevin either, make no mistake. After the meetings he frequently had dreams where he chased me off a cliff.
*
At the Christmas party, Kevin and I were both rewarded with a bottle of Chardonnay. I think we were supposed to be awed, or at least grateful. Back at the garage, we strung handfuls of fairy lights around the plant. I placed the star, sideways, on top. All lit up like a Christmas tree, that old story. We sat heavily on the spotless floor, mixed our drinks in paper cups, and watched the motorway opening and closing in front of us like an accordion.
‘You never know, Kevin, you might get laid in the stationery cupboard.’
‘We don’t have a stationery cupboard.’
‘That was a joke.’
‘Didn’t Management warn you about those?’
I liked Kevin’s sincerity, his skinny torso, his rancid, red-light district aftershave. I was fond of it all. It had nothing to do with his looks – which were limited – or where he lived, or if he was interesting and successful in a way that was supposed to appeal to me. Nowadays, you have to be careful who you fall for, but I liked Kevin. He didn’t ask anything of me. That wasn’t nothing. If it was, more people would have done it.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You won’t get laid. You are weird and flat-broke.’
‘Ah.’ He took a swift drink. ‘But so are you.’
I nodded, my expression grave. ‘That is correct, Kevin. Very clever of you to notice that.’
*
The first person to occupy a seat on the garage forecourt was a local m
an in his late seventies. He arrived in early January, wore a three-piece suit and leaned heavily on a gnarled cane, like a guest from another era. He was harmless, his own deterioration driving him out of his house and into the world. I thought he sat on the high stool with a magnificent dignity, his back resting on the chain-link fence.
‘Keeping busy?’ he shouted at me across the forecourt.
I waved my arms around in a demonstration of busyness. ‘Yes, yes, I am.’
‘Nothing like it. Great to see it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I hear you were away?’
‘I was.’
‘What did you do over there?’
I shrugged. ‘Nothing good.’
‘Well, you are back now and you are doing a fine job. Stay at it.’
Sometimes his wife came with him. They’d hobble down the motorway path together, so tiny, so diminished, they almost disappeared. Each time, they brought me strange gifts that I suspected they found on the roadside: a scratched CD of affectionate love songs, a silvery disco jacket for a Barbie.
‘But I don’t own a doll?’
‘Consider it a present,’ his crinkly wife winked. She was maybe deaf.
Whenever Management appeared, the old man liked to bellow and point.
‘That’s a great girl you have there!’
Management always spun around rapidly, fiercely, like she was in a cop show, hoping to find a new, normal person. But, no – it was just me.
Show Them a Good Time Page 2