Lisa Owens - Not Working

Personal Trainer Gavin has a cheesy Friday-night vibe — the sort of guy who frequented my teenage weekends. He sings along to the music with impeccable timing when the lyrics are exercise-relevant (pain, directions, journeys, challenges, distances, heat, thresholds, et cetera), and I’d be willing to bet considerable sums that in his leisure time he wears vigorous aftershave and juts his chin to the beat in dark, flashing bars while clutching a whisky and Coke. I like him, his enthusiasm and the by-the-numbers flirting he no doubt employs with all his female clients. He makes me nostalgic for a simpler time.

“Got the day off, then?” he asks, post-warm-up, leading me to the mirrors for some “floor work.” It’s a reasonable question at three p.m. on a Wednesday.

“Yeah,” I say. Then to discourage further probing, “Is this a busy time for you, usually?”

“Nah, weekday afternoons are pretty quiet. We get some new mums in wanting to lose the baby weight, and some of our older members. The young professionals like yourself tend to come early mornings before work. Try a squat for me, Claire.” He guides me down by the shoulders. “Tuck in the tailbone. Lovely.” I try not to flinch as he readjusts my pelvis. “Let’s have ten of those.”

Gavin leans, arms folded, back against the mirror while I hunker down. At the nadir of number six, he twists the knife. “So what is it you do?”

I know in my heart it’s an innocent question, but right at this moment, confronted with my squatting reflection, thighs quaking in ancient translucent Lycra, the answer Well, I’m just searching for my purpose simply isn’t an option. “I actually work in finance,” I say.

“Awesome.” Gavin nods as if this is what he expected — and absurdly, I’m flattered.

—

We finish the session with a treadmill sprint, and Gavin starts to roar above the music. “I want you! To give me! One hundred! Percent!”

Obediently I thumb up the speed control, puffing and clenching my teeth so he’ll think I’ve hit my limit — but there’s no way I’m giving this my all. It’s absolute madness not to hold something back: that’s just basic common sense.

An engineer is sifting through the multicolored innards of a green metal cabinet on my street. So that’s where all the wires have gone! I hear music, like the strain of a violin, but as I get closer, it turns out to be just one long, mournful note: the dialing tone keeping us all connected.

In the local Co-op, I buy some Diet Coke. At the register, I hold up my debit card.

“How will you be paying?” the cashier asks.

“Uh, with this?” I say, waving the card.

“Chip and PIN, or contactless?” he says.

“Contactless.”

He picks up a Kit Kat from a pile next to the till, scans it and sets it next to the can.

“I don’t want that.”

“It’s free. Free Kit Kat when you pay contactless.” He points to a sign that says this verbatim.

“But I don’t want it,” I say, and he winces in disbelief.

“Why wouldn’t you want a free chocolate bar ?”

“Because,” I say, “I don’t want it.”

“But why?”

“There is no why. You either want something or you don’t. That’s what want is.” I smell a wave of mint: he’s chewing some gum. He can’t stop shaking his head. “Everyone else has taken it. I’ve scanned it now. Why don’t you give it to your boyfriend?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say, to throw him off.

It’s going to look bad next time I’m in here with Luke.

You’d think after all these however-many years I’d have learned to open fizzy drinks at arm’s length, just in case.

“I’m not saying it’s not a good job; I just wonder if it’s definitely what you had in mind when you quit the old one. The whole point was that you’d spend some time thinking about what you really want to do, and I worry you’re investing a lot of hope in a role that might not be right anyway — just another quick fix — and you’ll end up stuck and frustrated again in a couple of months…”

Luke and I are on our way out and I’ve stopped in the hall to shuffle through months’ worth of junk mail in case I’ve missed something from the blue-plaque people.

“It’s the first thing you saw, essentially by accident, and you applied one minute before the deadline — that doesn’t scream ‘dream job,’ to me. Also, by the way, you’re not going to find anything there. Who doesn’t use email nowadays?”

“Uh, Pizza Palace? Great Wall of China? AAA1Taxi? Domestic Angels? Hollywood Sushi?” I hold up each flyer, then drop them on the floor.

He bends to retrieve one. “Sushi! Let’s have sushi. That’s exactly what I want.”

“And you said I wouldn’t find anything,” I say.

We pass a couple on our street embroiled in a back-bending clinch.

“Is it reasonable to say,” I begin, “that it’s the least attractive couples who are the most intent on flaunting their sex lives?”

“Hm,” says Luke. “I’m not sure it is okay to say things like that.”

“But it’s true. If I can’t say it to you, who can I say it to?”

“Your mum?” Luke suggests.

My mother, if she would only answer the phone, would almost certainly agree with me. Which means Luke is right: I probably shouldn’t be saying it.

I phone Grandma to tell her I’m coming to visit. It rings out three times before there’s an answer, and when it comes, the voice is like a cartoon old lady’s, creaky and frail.

“He-hello?”

“Grandma? It’s Claire!” I say loudly, worried I’ve woken her.

“Claire,” she says faintly, and I wonder if she knows who I am in the moment. There is a pause and a fumble — I guess she is swapping the receiver to the other ear. I picture it, enormous in her bony hand, the same phone she would have picked up when Gum died and she called her children to tell them, one by one. The wait while the rotary dial ticked back round to zero, the silence before the call connected. Grandma’s telephone is from another time, when people used the word “telephone” and had important things to say.

“I wanted to check you’ll be in later! I’m going to drop by this afternoon!”

“Stop shouting,” says Grandma, fully herself again. “I won’t be in. I have a date. Mustafa is taking me to lunch.” Mustafa is Grandma’s Turkish neighbor, a widower whose name is really Erdem, but who tolerates Grandma’s lazy racism because he’s a good guy who can see what a kick she gets out of it.

“Oh,” I say. I had expected her to be delighted I was coming. “How about tomorrow, then?” There is a pause that goes on for so long I say, “Grandma? Does tomorrow work?”

“Tomorrow isn’t great, but I can squeeze you in — shall we say half past three?”

“Let me see…Half past three could be tricky,” I say, though my day is free. “I’ll have to move a few things around…No, no, it’s fine. I’ll make it work,” I insist above her halfhearted protests.

—

“You’ve lost weight,” she says the next day, as I stoop to kiss her soft, creased cheek.

“You always say that. If I’d lost as much weight as you claim every time, there’d be nothing of me left.”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s any fear of that, ” says Grandma, heading into the kitchen, where scones are cooling on a wire rack.