by Tom Holt
Yes, Paul thought, but. He was almost tempted to ask, there and then, but the thought of how stupid he’d look prevented him. Clearly the tennis champion believed he knew all about J.W. Wells & Co. Maybe he’d get the sack if it turned out he didn’t; in which case, would he have to pay for his own lunch? Not for the first time in his life, Paul cursed heaven for not letting him in on the secret, the secret that everybody else was in on except him. If only he knew, he was sure, he’d be able to cope, it’d all be so easy. The thought that the thin girl didn’t know either was some small shred of comfort; at least he wasn’t the only one. For some reason, though, he didn’t want to think about her. (Did she like Uzbek food? Did she know where Uzbekistan was? Probably. It was just the sort of thing that everybody else in the world knew, except him.)
“Anyhow,” said the tennis champion, “tell me all about yourself. Not the unimportant stuff you told us at the interview, exam results and all that nonsense. The real you.”
Oh God, Paul thought. “Well,” he started; but fortunately the waiter appeared with another loaded plate of whatever kind of rice with bits in the tennis champion had been eating. He slid out the empty plate and substituted the full one with the practised skill of a production-line worker. The tennis champion launched into his mound of food with even greater savagery than before, and didn’t stop until his fork screeched on the floor of the plate.
“Is there something wrong with your palov?” he said. “Or aren’t you very hungry?”
Paul reckoned he’d done pretty well, having eaten in five minutes more than he usually got through in a week. “Oh, it’s absolutely fine,” he said, “great. What was it called again?”
The tennis champion told him, and then embarked on a long and complicated story about some occasion in Tashkent, which had started with him sending the sarimsokli back to the kitchen, and ended with a bizarre form of local duel, fought on camels with padded tent-poles, which the tennis champion had apparently won. The story went on for quite some time, but Paul didn’t mind that in the least, since it meant that he was spared from having to invent a real him to tell the tennis champion about, and could get on with his eating task.
“Anyhow,” the tennis champion said at last, “that’s enough about me. How about you? Been abroad much?”
“Not all that often,” Paul said. “The year before last, we had a fortnight camping in the Loire valley.”
The tennis champion nodded eagerly. “Camping out,” he said, “when you get right down to it, you can’t ever really say you know a place till you’ve lived rough there; sleeping in woods or barns, living off the land. Earlier this year I was in Borneo, and the boatmen who’d taken us down the river were all unfortunately captured and held to ransom by a neighbouring tribe—one of those wretched blood-feud things they’re so keen on down there—and so there we were, five of us, with nothing but my knife, a ball of string and two boxes of matches—”
The Borneo story was even longer than the Tashkent story, and Paul lost the plot after the first ninety seconds, which somehow made it easier to listen to. The arrival of a third helping of rice with bits in added another couple of minutes, and they were on to the coffee stage before the tennis champion stopped talking, at which point he glanced down at his watch and said, “Damn, it’s five minutes to two. We’d better be getting back.”
He jumped up, and at once the waiter materialised next to him, holding his coat. As he slid his arms gracefully into the sleeves, as effortlessly as a samurai sheathing his sword, Paul thought he saw a bulge under his left armpit that could almost have been a shoulder holster (or equally, something else: an old–fashioned bulky mobile phone, a lady’s shoe, two pounds of bratwurst).
When they reached the office door, Paul made a point of saying ‘Thank you’ nicely, the way his mother had taught him; then he sprinted past the reception desk and headed for his own little room. Clearly he was getting the hang of the place, because he reached his destination with a mere three wrong turns, and hardly had to retrace his steps once.
The thin girl looked like she hadn’t moved. The paper mountain in front of her had diminished, but not by terribly much. “You’re wet,” she said, as he walked in.
“It’s raining out.”
“Why didn’t you take your coat, then?”
“I forgot.”
“Oh.”
Paul sat down. Part of him was damned if he was going to share his thrilling encounter with this sullen bitch; the rest of him, on the other hand, needed to tell someone or burst. “You’ll never guess what I’ve just been doing,” he said.
“No, probably not,” she replied without looking up. “Do you mind, I’m very busy.”
Paul frowned. “Have you had any lunch?” he asked.
“No. I don’t eat lunch.”
He could believe that. “You worked all through your lunch hour?”
“Yes. So what?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“You mean, I worked all through lunch and I’m still miles behind you. Well, big bloody deal.” She sniffed, then wiped her nose on her cuff.
Paul wanted to say, “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” But he didn’t, because if she knew it, as he was prepared to assert, where was the point? He gave her a wounded look, which she failed to notice, and got back to work. He was getting well into it, coming close to attaining the death-of-self, trancelike state achievable only through transcendental meditation or very boring paperwork, when quite unexpectedly, the thin girl said:
“Don’t tell me, the senior partner bought you lunch at the Ritz.”
It wasn’t often that he got a feed-line like that; and after all, she had been spectacularly unpleasant to him throughout all the time they’d spent together. “I don’t think he’s the senior partner,” he said mildly. “And it wasn’t the Ritz, it was a rather good little Uzbek place just round the corner. Fairly authentic kovurma palov, if you’re prepared to overlook the hothouse barberries.”
Her head snapped up as though she’d been in a road accident. “You had lunch with one of the partners?”
Paul nodded. “Mr—” He grovelled on the floor of his memory for the name. “Mr Wurmtoter,” he said, “though he prefers just plain Rick.”
The girl’s deep brown eyes were as round as saucers. “Why?” she said.
“Sorry?”
“Why did he ask you out to lunch?”
Paul shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “It’s possible he was just trying to be nice.”
She looked doubtful. “Try again,” she said.
“Well, actually,” Paul replied, “I think that really was the reason, because most of the time he just talked about himself.”
“Oh.” A different sort of ‘Oh’, this time. An ‘Oh’ that cared. “So what did you find out?”
Paul bit his lip. “Not a lot, actually,” he confessed. “He told me a long story about getting into a fight in Tashkent, and an even longer one about camping out in Borneo. I think he travels a lot,” he added, to demonstrate his analytical powers.
“That’s all?”
“Well, he likes the sound of his own voice quite a lot.”
“You didn’t find out what this outfit actually does?”
“Urn, no.”
“Oh.”
If there had been a tiny spark of communication between them, like the flash of lightning that links God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, it had just fizzled out. Pity, thought Paul. He went back to his spreadsheets, silently cursing Mr Wurmtoter for his gratuitous and unwanted act of kindness. Before he could get anywhere near the trancelike state, however, the door opened and a beautiful girl came in.
“Hello,” she said to him, apparently ignoring the thin girl completely; and she was smiling too, which was quite uncalled for. “I’m Tracy, I work with Cas, Mr Suslowicz. He sent this down for you.”
It was the map; a wonderful, amazing map, a small masterpiece of draughtsmanship and calligraphy.
The writing, though tiny, was perfectly clear, the layout (showing all four floors) was impeccable, and every last detail was carefully annotated—corridor, window, fire extinguisher, NB this door opens inwards. A tiny glint of wet ink implied that it had just been drawn, specially, for him. Clipped to it was a note—
PAC
As promised; hope it’s some help to you.
Cheers,
Gas.
—written in the same perfect, elegant handwriting. Bloody hell, Paul thought. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s, urn, really kind.”
The beautiful girl called Tracy turned up the gain on her smile a little. “Oh, he’s a very nice man, Cas, always goes out of his way for people. I’ll tell him you liked it.”
Paul nodded. “I think I’ll have it framed,” he said. The beautiful girl called Tracy laughed as though this was the wittiest thing she’d ever heard. “I’ll tell him you said that,” she said. “He’ll be tickled. See you.”
It was some time before Paul could tear his gaze away from the map. When he glanced up, he found himself on the wrong end of a look of pure, blood-freezing venom.
“Cas,” the thin girl said. “And Rick. Nice to see one of us is fitting in around here.”
Oh come on, he wanted to say, it’s not my fault they’re being nice to me. Besides, that Tanner bloke was a real bastard. “I’ll photocopy it for you if you like,” he said sheepishly.
“I think I’ll have it framed.” she quoted viciously. “For God’s sake.”
“It was just a stupid joke,” he muttered.
“That blonde female seemed to think it was a very good joke,” she replied, making blonde sound like the worst insult in the English language. “Looks like you’ve made a real hit with everybody today.”
It was at that moment that Paul felt a terrible, dull, sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, an Oh-shit feeling, such as you’d expect when you discover that the boat is slowly sinking, or the glassy sheen on the tarmac is black ice; because when she said that, his first thought had been that it didn’t matter a toss about Cas and Rick and what’s-her-name, the blonde, because he quite obviously hadn’t made a hit with the one person—He stopped himself there, but it was too late; he’d admitted it to himself, he knew he had. Bugger.
And furthermore, he remembered with a sudden spasm of agony, the thin girl seemed to have the knack of reading him like a book. Serial buggers, with buggery sauce.
“If you want a copy of the map, just tell me, all right?” he said, looking away. “Or you can copy it for yourself, I don’t care.”
“No, thank you.”
“Fine.” He made a big deal of shuffling through the papers on the desk in front of him, and tried to get back to work.
Must get out of this habit, he told himself, as he added another 17 November to the appropriate stack. He had to get out of this bloody stupid habit of falling in love the way a cat bats at a bit of string. It’s embarrassing and it’s got to stop. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if just once he had the guts at least to try and make something of it, but he never did. The string twitched, he batted, missed, and immediately panicked and hid under the table till the danger went away. Pathetic.
He thought about that. It’d be nice to think that he was making slight progress, and that in this case it had taken the interview, the drink afterwards and half a day in the same office before he’d given in and jumped under the wheels of the oncoming lorry. But deep inside he knew that the fuse had certainly blown by the time he’d walked into this room and seen her sitting at the desk, and quite probably before that (though, since at the interview he’d been confident he’d never see her again, which meant he’d be safe, it had been easier to turn a blind eye to, at that stage). Hellfire, he thought, I really wish this sort of thing didn’t happen. It’s not as though I haven’t got enough to contend with already.
An hour or so later, Julie came and delivered another coppice-worth of printouts.
“How’re you two getting on, then?” she asked. “Getting through it?”
Paul smiled weakly. He’d finished his pile several minutes ago. The thin girl was still floundering, like an elephant in a peat bog. “I’m the one who’s holding everything up,” the thin girl said, glaring at Paul as if to say, Don’t you dare try covering up for me. “I’ll just have to stay late, that’s all.”
Julie shook her head with rather more animation than she’d shown before. “Can’t do that,” she said. “Door’s locked at quarter to six, everybody’s got to be out before then. It doesn’t matter, you can finish it off tomorrow. Or,” she added, looking at Paul, “you could muck in and do some of hers, wouldn’t kill you, I don’t suppose. Anyhow, so long as it gets done eventually.” She marched out, leaving Paul with the impression that here was someone else he hadn’t made a hit with, though in this case it wasn’t such a universal tragedy.
When Julie had gone, the thin girl sighed and pushed two-thirds of her pile at him, with the air of a debtor handing over his late mother’s wedding ring to the bailiff. “Go on, then,” she said. “You’d better do it, since obviously I’m not capable. I expect you’ll get an extra gold star on your end—of—term report or something.”
He shrugged. “Well, it’s better than sitting here with nothing to do,” he said mildly. “You heard her, it doesn’t matter.”
“Never does, if you’re the one who can do everything,” the thin girl replied.
That night, after he’d got home, warmed through a tin of vegetable soup and sat through three soap operas and a cop show on the antique black-and-white portable his parents had decided wasn’t worth taking to Florida, he had another curious dream. He found himself standing on top of a mountain, looking down into a rocky valley, where a caravan of camels was slowly winding its way along a narrow pass. Beside him was the tennis champion; he was holding a sword in one hand, and a rocket launcher in the other. “One day,” the tennis champion was saying, “all this will be yours.” to which he mumbled something like, “Gosh, thanks, that’d be really nice.” Then the tennis champion morphed seamlessly into the thin girl, and she said, “Of course, they were bound to pick you, because you’re a man,” and he was about to try and explain that he didn’t really want to be lord of all he surveyed and he hadn’t really done anything to deserve it, when two young men in funny Victorian clothes walked up the mountain (which was, of course, made up of millions and millions of printed-out computer spreadsheets, all on her side of the desk) and slapped him on the back. “Welcome to J.W. Wells and Co.,” they said. “We always knew you’d come back for us, one of these days.” Then one of them stapled his ear to the sun with a long, black stapler, and the alarm went off.
THREE
So you’ve been there three weeks,” Neville said, licking foam out of his moustache with the tip of his tongue, “and you still don’t know what it is they actually do.”
“That’s right,” Paul admitted.
“And all you do all day long is sort meaningless computer printouts into piles, by date order.”
“Yes.”
“For which they pay you.”
Paul nodded.
“Bizarre.” Neville swilled the last quarter-inch of beer round in the bottom of the glass. “You can see for yourself how bizarre it is, can’t you?”
Paul shrugged. “I don’t know, do I?” he said mournfully. “I’ve never had a job before. For all I know, everywhere’s the same, and that explains why the world’s as fucked up as it obviously is.”
Neville shook his head, and fished in the bottom of the crisp packet for the last residual crumbs. “Take it from me,” he said, “all jobs aren’t like that. And your place is definitely weird. Weirder,” he added poetically, “than fifteen white mice in a blender. Trust me on this.”
Paul thought about it. True, Neville had far more experience of these matters than he did. For one thing, he was a whole year older, and had been supporting himself by the sweat of his brow for a whole six months, during which time he’
d been a trainee stockbroker, a trainee estate agent, a petrol-pump attendant, a burger-flipper in a busy central London McDonald’s, and a self-employed software consultant. Compared with himself, Neville had seen the world (he’d been to Amsterdam on a school trip, twice to Spain and once to the Greek islands with his family; and when he was seventeen he’d spent a whole week once lifting potatoes in the Channel Islands); he’d endured remarkable adventures, eaten strange foods under foreign skies, and enjoyed many opportunities to study the myriad ways of humanity. Also he had his own car, and a girlfriend. On the other hand, the fact that he’d been fired from the four jobs where firing was possible implied that he hadn’t quite perfected the art of working for other people, and maybe wasn’t quite the authority on paid employment that he made himself out to be.
“I don’t know,” Paul said. “Apart from the partners—they’re pretty weird—the rest of them seem quite normal.” He thought about Julie, and Christine, and the fact that there seemed to be a different receptionist on duty every day. “Fairly normal,” he amended. “And just because the work’s boring and pointless—”
Neville shook his head. “You’re missing the point,” he said. “They’re paying you—not a lot, true, but they’re paying you, two of you, mind, to sit there all day sorting these spreadsheets into date order. Right?”
Paul nodded.
“Fine. It hadn’t occurred to you, then, that if only they got themselves a little bit more organised, and got into the habit of filing these things neatly away as soon as they’ve done whatever it is they do with them, they could get rid of you and this peculiar girl of yours and save themselves a bob or two.”
To his credit, Paul had given the matter some thought, several times over the last three weeks. “There’s probably more to it than that,” he said. “I mean, the partners are weird, but I don’t think they’re stupid. I expect there’s a perfectly good reason behind it all, they just haven’t bothered telling me about it. Which is fair enough. I mean, so long as I do what I’m told, why should I need to know?”
