In Real Life (16 page)

IAN

2014

‘
H
i, my name's Dalisay and I'm calling from a company called Quiztime Solutions.'

Whenever I hear her voice from behind the partition wall, the bell inside me tinkles madly, and sometimes I even find myself getting jealous of whoever she's talking to on the other end of the line. Why can't it be me she's phoning with the chance to win an exclusive, five-star luxury break for two?

I wonder where in China or Korea or Malaysia she's from.

I wonder why she's working here.

I wonder whether she has a boyfriend.

My phone chirps and I lean forward and click onto the first page of the questionnaire, ready to start filling
it in if the person agrees to go ahead with the survey. (The person almost never agrees to go ahead with the survey.) The phone rings in my headset, then a gruff male voice barks, ‘Hello?'

‘Hi there, sir, I'm calling from . . .'

‘Fuck off, mate,' he says and slams down the phone.

This is quite common.

I'll get sworn at, on average, around ten times an hour.

I wonder how many times an hour Dalisay gets sworn at.

I don't like the idea of someone telling her to fuck off.

At about eleven this morning, as I was returning from a ‘personal comfort break', I purposefully took the long way round the room and as I passed her monitor I saw the familiar, dark blue stripe of Facebook on her screen.

It would be so easy to just double click the Internet Explorer icon on my desktop. Reactivate my account. Send Dalisay Rivera a friend request.

But instead I continue my game of Solitaire, dragging a three of clubs across the pixellated green card table and dropping it onto a four of diamonds.

My dialler chirps and the phone rings in my headset and then a woman's voice says, ‘Hello?'

‘Hi there, madam, I'm calling from . . .'

‘Fuck off,' she says, before slamming down the phone.

In my second week, two new people start: a boy and a girl, both in their early twenties. Martin leads them
around the room, giving them the full tour. When they reach my terminal, Martin puts his hand on my shoulder. I take off my headset and swivel round in my chair.

‘Alright, Ian, mate,' he says. ‘Think you could show Chloe the ropes?'

Chloe is pale and nervous-looking. She smiles meekly at the floor. The boy is tall and handsome and confident.

‘Sure,' I say.

‘Grab a seat then, Chloe,' Martin says, winking at me, ‘And our Ian here will show you
just
what to do.'

As Chloe goes to fetch a spare chair over, Martin purses his lips and grabs hold of an invisible arse and pumps his hips at me.

I try to ignore him.

I plug an extra headset into the dialler for Chloe, and while she's putting it on I watch Martin lead the tall boy off round to the other side of the partition.

‘Have you done anything like this before?' I ask.

Chloe shakes her head and stares into her lap.

I show her what to do, what all the buttons mean, etc., and I can hear Dalisay doing the same thing from behind the partition wall. Martin must have assigned Tall Boy to her and I feel a sharp, sour pang in my gut.

I try to focus on Chloe.

Once we've covered the basics, I make a few example calls while she listens in. After a few minutes of no answers, I actually get through to someone willing to fill in the questionnaire. The dialler window tells me that the person I'm speaking to is called Mrs Wilson,
and that she lives at 24a Heathcote Avenue in Stockport. After I've told her about the fantastic holiday competition and asked her all the generic personal info questions – height, age, ethnicity, religious beliefs, gender, sexuality, etc. – we get onto the main body of the survey, which is designed to assess her happiness levels on a scale of one to ten.

As I ask Mrs Wilson the questions, with Chloe listening in on the second line, I become doubly aware of just how uncomfortable and intrusive they are.

‘On a scale of one to ten, Mrs Wilson,' I say, ‘with one being not at all happy, five being neither happy nor unhappy and ten being extremely happy, how happy would you say you are
over all
, Mrs Wilson?'

A long pause.

I can hear
Deal or No Deal
playing in her living room.

‘I don't know . . . three?' Mrs Wilson says.

‘And can I ask why that is, please?' I say, tapping the corresponding bubble on the script with the end of my biro so Chloe can see exactly where I'm up to.

‘Well, last year my son committed suicide.'

Chloe shifts a little in her chair.

I type
son killed hmslf
into the available text box, click save, and then move briskly along to the next question.

‘I'm very sorry to hear that, Mrs Wilson,' I say. ‘Anyway, moving briskly along . . . when you picture yourself in one year's time, Mrs Wilson, do you ultimately see yourself as: a) less happy than you are today,
b) roughly the same level of happiness, or c) happier than you are in your present situation?'

‘I don't know . . . B?'

‘That's great,' I say automatically, only catching myself once I've said it.

After the call's been wrapped and logged, I pause the dialler and turn in my swivel chair and Chloe looks
even paler
, if that's possible.

‘Think you're ready to have a go?' I say.

‘Mind if I just nip to the loo for a moment first?'

This is the first full sentence Chloe's said since she sat down.

‘Down the end of the hall on the left,' I say, and Chloe quickly trots off, out of the room.

I listen for a while to Dalisay laughing and joking with Tall Boy, over on the other side of the partition.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being not at all happy, five being neither happy nor unhappy and ten being extremely happy, I am hovering at about one and a half.

I find Chloe's name on the list.

It's been ‘personal comfort break' red for just over three minutes now.

It gets to ten before I realise that Chloe's done a runner.

As I walk down Oxford Road, the sun clips the tops of the buildings and makes the puddles sparkle, and I accidentally think about that song again, the one that appeared uninvited in my head.

If someone were to hand me a guitar, I reckon I could play it.

‘Spare change, mate?' a homeless man calls from a newsagent's doorway. I shake my head.

I reach the music shop just as they're getting ready to close. The man with the beard is already lowering the first of the shutters.

As I get closer, I can see an item in the left-hand bay that makes my stomach flip: standing between a shiny snare drum and a bright blue ukulele is my guitar. I get right up to the window and tilt my head in order to make out the spidery writing on the price tag dangling from its headstock.

£999, it says.

Fucking hell.

‘You alright there, mate?' the man asks when he notices me. ‘We're closing up, but if you know what you want, I could go in and grab it?'

‘Just browsing,' I say, stepping out of the way to let him get at the second shutter.

PAUL

2014

‘
I
'd like to make an appointment,' Paul says in a low and trembling voice to the receptionist at the doctor's surgery.

I am going to die, he thinks.

‘What day, please?' the receptionist says.

‘As soon as possible,' Paul says.

While she scrolls through the calendar on her computer, Paul turns and looks around the empty waiting room. The walls are painted a bile green and the frenzied, multi-coloured swirls of the lino flooring look a bit like a Jackson Pollock nervous breakdown. On the coffee table are copies of
Marie Claire, What Hi-Fi?
and
GQ
.

‘Nothing till next week,' she says.

What about right now? Paul wants to say. There's nobody here. I don't understand. Just let me go in. I'm going to die.

‘That's fine,' Paul says.

‘Next Wednesday at four?'

‘Great.'

If I die before next Wednesday it will be your fault, Paul thinks, stumbling onto the street, fumbling a cigarette into his mouth.

Maybe I should get one of those e-cigs, he thinks as he lights it and takes a couple of deep, dizzying blasts.

During the short walk back to the flat, Paul doesn't really look where he's going. Since the lump's appearance, he's stopped worrying about all other possible ways of dying. Because, if you're going to die from
this
, he reasons as he steps into the road without really checking his left and right, then at least you know you aren't going to die from anything else like being hit by a car.

In the entrance hall, he checks the post box (nothing). On the way up the stairs, he checks his emails on his phone (nothing). Back inside the flat, he sits down on the sofa, lifts his laptop onto his knees and checks his emails again (still nothing).

On the NaNoWriMo forum, people are reaching the halfway point. They're posting messages of encouragement and motivational quotes.

On the penis extension forum, someone has posted an advanced, five-minute stretching technique called ‘The Helicopter'.

On Facebook, David Hastings has invited Paul to the event ‘Dave-O's Wicked Stag Do!!!'

Oh god, Paul thinks.

When Paul lived with David, in his second and third years at university, David always seemed to be head-butting things and watching
Jackass
and walking around with his top off and doing chin-ups on the metal bar he'd bolted to his doorway. Once he smashed a full pint of orange squash against the living room wall because someone beat him at
Tony Hawkes Pro Skater
.

Paul looks at the date of the stag do: December 12, which is just under a month away.

He reads the description:

‘Now then lads,' it says, ‘as u know I am getting married on the 15
^th
of jan and so I need one final blowout and you as my best lads past and present are hearby cordially invited to get fuckfaced with me in the manner of your choosing. Fun will include but is not to be limited to: drinking, smoking, drugs (bring your own!), go karts (if we can be arsed??) and other festiveties (I.e. Strip club? Curry? Other suggestions more than welcome!!). COME ON LADS DON'T LET ME DOWN NOWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

To accompany the event, he's posted a picture of one of the men from
Jackass
(Steve-O?) doing the ‘metal' sign with both hands, his tongue extended, next to the tanned buttocks of a stripper.

I'll probably be dead by then, Paul thinks.

He feels a strange twinge of nostalgia, thinking about all those evenings when he and Dave and Ian used to
sit in their living room, just smoking joints and watching late-night telly and talking shit.

He surprises himself a little by clicking the ‘Join' button.