Lisa Owens - Not Working

Store your DNA for eternity!

I worry that London will keep on expanding until it has swallowed up everywhere else.

I worry that legal deposit libraries will do likewise (though at a much slower rate).

I worry about everything else shrinking: bank balance, potential, fertility. Habitable land for the children I won’t have because I’m definitely barren.

I worry about the integrity and future of the folksy organic smoothie manufacturer who sold out to a major multinational corporation.

I worry that waking up at four a.m. means I have clinical depression.

I worry that worry causes cancer.

A large pill, but no water to help it go down.

I go to meet social-media whiz Andrea in a new cafe called Atelier. There’s a “Mission Statement” printed on the back of the menus informing patrons that all furniture has been repurposed from authentic wood workshop fittings, and sure enough, the communal tables bear the scars of G-clamps, handsaws and drills, no doubt used to make the actual tables now shunned in favor of the tables they were made on. It’s eerily quiet: every single customer is in silent thrall to a MacBook with white buds in their ears like stethoscopes, and Apple icons glowing like synthetic hearts.

“Hey,” I say to Andrea, clambering gingerly over the bench to make as little noise as possible. Talking aloud here feels vaguely transgressive — akin to not saying, “Bless you,” when someone has sneezed. Andrea closes her laptop with reluctant politeness, picks up her phone and starts scrolling.

“I can’t be long. I have to chair a hub chat at three o’clock. Hope that’s okay.”

“Of course. Where’s that happening?”

“The hub chat? Online?”

“Yeah, obviously,” I say. “I meant where, as in which site ?”

“What, do you want the URL? Actually, that could be great if you joined. We need numbers. Virtual…bodies…in the”—she flexes her thumbs at her phone a few times—“you know…thing. Okay, sent you the link. Starts at three.” In my bag, my phone hums.

“So what exactly do I need to do?”

“Come up with some questions? It’s about how to harness momentum generated by bedroom campaigns.”

“Could you give me an example?”

“Okay: not this. This is a really bad example, but say…say a woman dies while doing a triathlon. She overdid it, burnt out. On social media, someone coins a phrase like, I don’t know, ‘Pace yourself for Grace’—her name’s Grace—”

“Convenient.”

“Yeah, I said it’s a bad example. Anyway, some initiative about planning your race in advance, seeking medical advice beforehand, blah, blah, and everyone’s using this tagline ‘Pace yourself for Grace.’ So the question is, how do we become part of the conversation, in order to help drive traffic to our site?”

“Piggybacking on a tragedy, in other words.”

She shakes her head, irritated. “I said that was a bad example! I’m talking about any campaign or movement — it could be political or topical, whatever’s captured the consumer imagination.”

“Consumer?”

“Fine: public, then.” She tuts with impatience and rolls out a rehearsed-sounding tirade about the liberal media’s “holistic Montessori bullshit”—i.e. their insistence on peddling the idea that we’re all so “ pwecious and unique.” “I’m sorry,” she says, wrapping up with a flourish, “but I’m not the public’s mum .”

“ That’s true,” I concede, adding silently, More like its scary maiden aunt .

“Look, when you use most websites, you’re a potential consumer: that’s the deal you make when you log on. That’s how the Internet functions. We don’t do what we do for the good of our health.” I refrain from asking what it is she does, having done so too many times before, but I’m firming up a feeling that she handles social media for social-media companies. She’s still going, tapping her phone against the table while the poor MacBookers stare in bewilderment as they struggle to process the novelty of live human-to-human speech. “If we don’t capitalize on this stuff, someone else will. It’s simple economics.”

“I don’t know…It seems kind of cynical. A bit…leechy.”

She looks me up and down. “Maybe you shouldn’t come to the hub chat. We could do without the negative energy.”

“Actually, can’t anyway,” I say, showing her my palms as though it’s written there. “Just remembered I have a dentist’s appointment. Can you believe I haven’t been for five years?”

Andrea clenches her teeth in horror. I hadn’t noticed before how white and perfect they are and decide I really will go today.

“Because you’re scared?” she asks.

“Give me some credit. Being afraid of the dentist is like hating traffic cops — too easy. I like to think I’m a little more particular with my phobias: spontaneous shooting sprees on crowded trains, poisonous spiders laying eggs in my luggage on holiday — that sort of thing.” I’ve lost it: Andrea — eyes askance — seems to think so too. “Sorry, this is what happens when I spend too much time alone. I’m not sure what avenues are worth going down.”

“I’d better get moving and set up this thing.”

“Okay,” I say. “Good luck.”

We sit looking at each other. She slowly lifts her laptop lid.

“Oh, you’re staying here. You want me to go. And, obviously, I have to go to the dentist’s.” I clamber backward off the bench. “We should do this again soon.”

“Sure,” says Andrea, but she doesn’t sound it.

Coughing and sneezing at the doctor’s is one thing; at the dentist’s, it’s a whole new level of disgusting. I’d walk straight out of this spluttering germ-pit if I hadn’t already lost ten minutes (and counting) to the registration process.

“A glass of wine is two point four units,” the receptionist says, watching my pen hover over the form as I try to work out an acceptable figure. “A small glass,” she adds, with a pointedness I can’t help but take to heart. I bite my lip to hide any telltale red-wine stains, before remembering I had a night off.

“I’d be more worried about the ones who don’t need to count, who know exactly how much they drink. That suggests obsession, addiction,” I say, buoyed by yesterday’s virtue.

“Or moderation, self-control. Sister Frances! First floor!” the receptionist calls, and a tiny nun scurries past.

—

I flip through a magazine, two years out of date, then return it to the table by a dried-out plant. I’m hopeful the attention to detail lacking out here has been plowed instead into hygiene, staff training. Like Sister Frances before me, I’ve graduated to the first floor — another waiting area, where doors fly open and shut with the frequency of a boring silent farce. On the opposite wall is a safety poster: “If you discover a fire…” Step one is: “Stay calm.”

My baby-faced dentist is a jovial sort. He seems much younger than me, not just in his looks but the way he speaks (he insists I call him Rohan, even though I am sure I’ll have no need to) and the pair of Nikes peeping from beneath his scrubs. My childhood dentists were all distinguished older gentlemen who wore white coats, bow ties, and brogues. Rohan asks questions with laconic good-naturedness: Any problems? Do I floss? What is it I do? Because my mouth is wide open, full of fingers and metal, my responses (No; Sometimes; I’m not sure) come out like strangulated laughter.