Lisa Owens - Not Working

I didn’t work hard at school and go to university so I could spend my life sending emails.

I find Geri semi-reclined on the sofa in her office. Her dog — a small, docile mongrel named Captain Popkin — lies on her lap, chin resting ruminatively on his front paws.

“Hmmm.” Her eyes are closed as I enter, and when at last she heaves her attention my way, letting out a long, languorous sigh, I feel like I’ve trespassed on an intimate moment, though it was she who summoned me here in the first place.

“Claire, take a seat.” She swings her feet to the floor and slaps the sofa cushion beside her. “How are things?”

“Things are great!” I say. “This could be a good time to catch up on where we’re at — I think everything’s in really good shape—”

“That’s good,” she interrupts, “but actually, I asked you in here because I wanted to say a big hip, hip, hooray and thank-you for doing such a terrific job. And to say how much fun it’s been having you around.”

“You’re very kind,” I say, wondering if she knows today is my birthday — perhaps this praise is her gift? “Well, it’s fun for me too. It’s really nice to feel useful again. I was worried it might be a bit strange — a step backward, you know? But it’s really made me realize how much I missed everything: colleagues, the office, not to mention the work itself…”

Her eyes race between mine before she speaks again. “I’m glad you’ve got something out of it too.” She leaves a beat. “It’s great you’ve had a good time.”

“You’re…letting me go?” I say.

Geri lifts the impassive Captain Popkin so his head eclipses hers, and says in a pouty, poochy voice: “We’re going to miss you so much.” She wags one of his paws at me: Bye-bye, Claire.

Because I cannot get on board with this sort of behavior, I stare assiduously at the floor.

“Oh! Okay. Can…I ask why?”

Her voice drops as she lowers the dog. “Budget meeting this morning with Justin — won’t bore you with the details, but what it comes down to is, we’ve way overspent. Hands up, it’s my bad. Blame me.”

“No, of course it’s not your fault!” I say and catch my thumbnail between my teeth. “But if it’s a cash issue, we can talk about that. There’s only a couple of weeks’ work left, I reckon, and I could try and finish sooner if that would help…”

She turns Captain Popkin over, cradles him in her arms like a baby, cooing into his raggedy belly. “I soooo wish there was something I could dooo! But it’s out of my hands, I’m afwaid. Yes, it is!” She looks up, her face a pantomime of concern. “We did always say this was a short-term thing. Didn’t we? I’m not leaving you high and dry, I hope?”

“Not at all . It’s actually probably for the best anyway. I really should crack on with the old job hunt. Which was why I left here in the first place, if you think about it. You’re actually doing me a favor in a funny way.”

She gives me one of her “sincere” smiles, the least convincing in her repertoire. “You’re such a great sport,” she says.

I stand up to leave. “Is it still okay to put you down for a reference?”

Her attention has already drifted elsewhere, and when I say her name, she looks at me in surprise. “What? Oh yes. Get Bea to draft something and I’ll sign it.”

“Okay,” I say, with my hand on the door handle. “So, my last day is when? Friday? Should I start wrapping things up?”

Geri puckers her mouth, shakes her head. “I was thinking sooner.”

“Oh. As in today?”

She nods, thrusting Captain Popkin toward me. “Cuddles for Claire-Bear!” she says, and despite my various noises of refusal, the dog is now trembling in my arms, emitting a high-pitched whine and looking at me, wet-eyed and cock-eared, with what feels uncannily like pity.

“Could you hold my bag open for me?” I ask Bea, who is barely visible amid the carnage of her workstation. The chaos is so deeply entrenched it has come full circle and evolved an intricate internal architecture: teetering towers of three-ring binders (which famously don’t stack well) are buttressed by clumps of dirty tea mugs and various heavy-duty office supplies — stapler, hole punch, reams of photocopier paper.

“Hang…on…one…sec,” says Bea, staring intently at her monitor. She has pushed her hair up into a pile and secured it with a pencil. Another pencil is tucked behind her ear. I have encountered her in a rare moment of industry: the touch-typing hunch she assumes when social networking has unfurled into a stately, straight-backed posture, hands poised rather high and fingers striking the keys in a slow, staccato rhythm, as though every character is of weighty importance.

“Forget it,” I say, clattering my armload onto the filing-cabinet desk. I’ve gone in for one final stationery-cabinet sweep, and boy, have I made it count. My self-imposed criteria was medium-ticket items I wouldn’t purchase myself, but which I’m confident will come in handy at home: highlighter pens, stapler, multi-pack of notebooks, gel pens, Scotch tape. One by one I hurl them into my bag.

“So. Guess what?” says Bea, hitting “return” with a flourish that ends above her head.

I put a finger on my lips. “Let’s see. Is it ‘I just got made redundant from the job I already quit’?”

“What? No way! Shit,” says Bea. She tugs on an earlobe. “I hope it wasn’t my fault.”

“I very much doubt it has anything to do with you,” I say, “but thank you for the concern.”

“No, I really think it might be my fault. I asked Geri if I could take on some more creative stuff. And she said I could work on your project. I assumed that meant I’d be working with you — that’s what I was about to tell you.”

“Well,” I say, “you assumed wrong.” She looks a bit hurt and I feel a bit bad. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t even know why I care.”

“I’m sure it’s only because of my dad,” suggests Bea, with uncharacteristic self-awareness. “I’m going to talk to Geri. I’ll tell her to leave things as they were.”

“Please, please, I beg you, don’t bother. What’s done is done—” I stop because we have been plunged into darkness. From the kitchen doorway the office manager’s face flickers, deranged in the light of birthday-cake candles.

“Wonderful,” I say as my almost-ex(-again)-co-workers unite in an atonal dirge.

I’m trying to decide exactly what this woman, dressed from suede-platform-booted toe to fedora-feather tip in a single, arresting shade of green, might have lost. Her inhibitions? Her mind? A bet?

It’s the fifth day of now-involuntary unemployment. Every afternoon I’ve decked myself out in sports gear but failed to go for a run, leaving the house only to go to the Co-op. My usual cashier seems impressed today.

“You’re training very hard for something,” he says.

“Marathon,” I say, lobbing a register-side chocolate bar in with my shopping by way of celebration. Never before has an assumption about me been so wide of the mark yet so generous.

I’d happily split any money I earned, fifty-fifty, with someone who’d tell me what to do with my hair, what to eat, how to dress, when to bleed the radiators, get the windows cleaned, paint the walls, which articles in which publications to read, the salient points of this Syria thing and the best use of my skills and time on this earth.