Lisa Owens - Not Working

“We need to get you something to sit on,” says Geri, shuffling a hand through her hair. Last time I saw her, she wore it cropped pixie-short; now, it’s almost at her chin. On the way in, I noticed other big changes: Conrad from operations has grown a serious beard, and Seema, the business manager, is extremely pregnant. It feels heavy-handed, like on TV when bad prosthetics are used to indicate elapsed time.

“I’ll go,” says the bare-shouldered girl at the intern’s desk. She is very pretty, very young, and when she stands up, reveals herself to be wearing a black evening dress.

“Bea, you don’t need to do that,” says Geri, but the girl has already drifted off, her bare feet soundless on the wooden floor. “Her father is Martin Warner,” Geri says meaningfully. The name is vaguely familiar, from company press releases, I think. “It’s important that we’re all Very. Nice. To. Her.” She waggles the mouse and logs me on to the system. That the passwords haven’t changed since I left is at once comforting and depressing. Bea returns with a stool that has MAIL ROOM. DO NOT REMOVE!!! emblazoned on the seat.

“What an amazing dress,” I say, taking the stool from her.

“Oh, thanks.” She flops into her swivel chair and readjusts the fabric. “James won a thing last night.”

“James is Bea’s boyfriend. He’s a music producer.” Geri steps in like the cheerful PR rep of a charming-yet-wayward Hollywood starlet.

“So you guys had a big night celebrating?” I say.

“We didn’t so much go to bed as not go to bed,” says Bea, and Geri laughs her client-facing laugh: tremulous, musical and woefully affected.

“Feel free to use the sofa in my office if you want to take a nap later,” she says with a discreet wink. “Or if you need to go home early, just slip away.”

“I’ll be fine — I’ll just drink shitloads of coffee,” says Bea, and Geri lets fly another arpeggio as she heads off into her office.

“I think she’s fucking my dad,” Bea says to me.

“Ohhhh no. I don’t think that can be true. Geri’s very happily married.” I perch sidesaddle on the stool, which has uneven legs and is a fraction too high for my filing-cabinet desk.

“Well, if she isn’t, she wants to,” says Bea, tipping back her head and pushing the floor away with splayed toes, spinning round in her ergonomic chair.

I arrive home just as Luke’s leaving for work.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How was it?”

“Fine. Weird to be back. Weird how not weird it was, I mean.”

He nods and reaches for the door. “Well, bye, then.”

“Kiss?”

“What? Oh yeah, right.” With his hand on the latch he leans back toward me but doesn’t quite make it.

“Try again?” I say, and we connect this time. “See you tomorrow, I guess. Same time, same place?”

“It’s a date,” says Luke. “Night, night.”

If I was single, it might all be so much simpler: there would only be myself to disappoint.

“Lift your fingers to the stars,” the instructor says, and a silent forest of arms grows up, reaching for the polystyrene ceiling tiles.

In the kitchen at work, I coincide with my replacement, Jonathan, who leans over me to open a cabinet above my head.

“It’s Jonathan, isn’t it?” I say into his armpit. “Claire — we met before at the bowling thing. I used to—”

“Sit at my desk. I know. What are you doing back?”

“Geri asked me to come in and help out. It’s sort of a favor. A paid favor.”

Jonathan spoons out not enough coffee. The kettle struggles to boil. “What exactly is it you’re doing again?”

“I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say. It’s a campaign for a new client — a clothing brand? Still confidential, even in-house, I think.”

“Oh right, that, yeah.” He nods, sagely, though I doubt he has a clue. “So still no proper job, then?”

I sigh. “No. Nothing feels right. Maybe I’m destined to be here forever. The signs seem to be pointing that way.”

“But you’re just temping. There’s no permanent role for you here.” He checks himself at the last second. “Is there?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to take back my old job.” He snorts, but I can’t gauge the tone: defensive or derisive, it isn’t clear. “So how are you settling in?” I ask.

“Well, I’ve been here a while. So I’m pretty settled now. Developed quite a few new projects myself.”

“Sure,” I say, “learning the ropes.”

“Tied up a lot of loose ends, if that’s what you mean. Things were in a somewhat chaotic state when I arrived.” He holds up his hands, warding off the intended offense. “Observation, not a criticism.” The kettle clicks and he fills the French press; the grains flounder in the water. “Want some?” he asks, taking me by surprise with a question that isn’t a challenge. Unless, it hits me, perhaps it is a challenge to see if I’ll accept his undrinkable offering with grace.

“Love some!” I crouch sportingly at the fridge, hooking up the milk in the crook of my thumb. “Milk?”

“Please,” he says.

“Say when.”

He does only when it’s about to spill over. The contents of his mug are nearly white: hot, milky water with the barest hint of coffee. He stirs in three heaping tablespoons of sugar, tapping the rim officiously when finished.

“Huh. I would have had you down as a no-frills kind of guy,” I say. “You know, as it comes. As in black, no sugar. Basic. Straight up.”

Jonathan jabs at his glasses, which have slipped down his nose. “I need to get back to my desk,” he says.

“Observation, not a criticism!” I call after him, tipping my coffee-water down the sink before I start to make a proper pot.

A small boy with slicked-down hair wears a large talent-show sticker on his buttoned-up shirt. Someone (his mother or his grandmother, or perhaps even his great-grandmother) offers him a packet of potato chips, but he places a pudgy hand to his chest and shakes his head, eyelids fluttering. I smile and he hunches his little talent-burdened shoulders, sighs and kicks his box-fresh Nikes, which swing several inches above the floor.

Not proud of the fact that when crossing the road, I use fellow humans as a buffer from the oncoming traffic, but there it is: that’s the sort of person I am.

Over breakfast, Luke idly drops a bombshell, claiming the mirrors in the gym locker rooms are warped to flatter the beholder.

“But why would they make you look thinner?” I ask, dropping my spoon in a panic that the wide reflection I’d dismissed only yesterday as grotesquely distorted might in fact have been slimmed down, and therefore several degrees more forgiving than the reality.

“To make your workout seem immediately effective,” he says. “You see results, you keep coming back.”

“No, no, that doesn’t make sense. If you look fatter, you’ll keep coming back, to lose weight. If you look thinner, you’ll quit: job done.”

“Why don’t you ask them?” says Luke, hands up. “I’m just a humble brain surgeon. What do I know?”

“Trainee,” I say, “and I’m not sure snipping aneurysms or whatever qualifies you as an expert in consumer psychology.”

“Clipping,” he corrects me. “Shit.” His eyes zigzag across his laptop screen. “There’s been a massive earthquake in Chile. Three thousand deaths and rising.”