by Cate Kendall
The tram arrived just as she reached the stop. Jess picked her way carefully up the wooden steps in her unfamiliar shoes. She spotted the ticket machine and stood with her finger hovering over it as she calculated the zones and times, then rummaged in her purse for the correct coins. Her ticket shot out at her and she smiled happily at her city sophistication. Then the tram jolted forward and she almost sprawled into the lap of a harried businessman, who ignored her profuse apologies, but soon she was safely seated and enjoying the view of the city from her window.
Melbourne was gorgeous, she thought as the tram trundled towards the city. She smoothly changed from the number 5 to the number 78 tram at Windsor, again congratulating herself silently.
The tram lumbered to her stop in Church Street ten minutes later and Jess climbed down the steps confidently. Woo hoo, she thought, she was early; it was only 8.30. She had plenty of time to sit and gather her thoughts, deal with her nervous bladder and grab a coffee before she was expected at Still Life.
She stepped out from the tram stop, but immediately found that her first step couldn’t be followed by a second. Panic filled her. She tried to lift her left foot and realised her heel was stuck in the tram line.
Cars whipped past her on one side and another tram was just a few stops off in the distance. She wriggled her foot desperately. It was stuck fast. Jess pulled her foot out of the shoe and bent down to pull it out of its tight spot between the asphalt and metal with her hands, but it wouldn’t budge. The tram was rumbling close behind her and the hot wind pulled at her curls. She grabbed the shoe again and there was a sharp snap as the heel ripped off. She stood upright, staring incredulously at the broken shoe in her hand. ‘You cannot be serious,’ she shouted, drawing a faint flicker of interest from two skinny men in ill-fitting polyester suits who were comparing iPhone apps as they waited for the tram.
Jess stared around her blankly, cradling the useless shoe in her hands. Her mind slowly ticked into action. A plan, she needed a plan. Her city girl smugness had evaporated in a fog of confusion.
‘Okay, okay, move forward, just walk,’ she said out loud, but the skinny men had lost interest; after all, there were wacky people all over the city.
She pulled off her other shoe and walked barefoot from the tram stop to the footpath. Good start, she nodded to herself. Now what? She checked her watch; it was almost 8.45. She had fifteen minutes to find a shoe shop and get to work. Easy. Surely?
The concrete was warm beneath her bare feet as she rushed down the street passing coffee shops, florists and bakeries, but not a single shoe shop. She willed the hands on her watch to slow down as they crept towards nine a.m. Damn it, she thought, stopping in a doorway, she would have to ring Still Life and apologise for her lateness. She pressed her hand over her eyes as she dialled the number.
‘Still Life,’ was the abrupt answer.
‘Oh good morning, this is Jessica Wainwright, I’m starting a new job there this morning...’ Silence echoed down the phone line, so Jess hurried on. ‘I have a small issue, so I will be about ten minutes late. Could you please pass a message on to Mimsy Baxter for me?’
‘Whatever,’ a bored voice answered. The phone went dead. Jess briefly wondered if maybe a work experience student was manning the phones. Maybe she should call back and speak to Jimmy. She stood tapping her phone with her nails for a second. No, she decided, she’d sort out her footwear issue and just hope the Still Life office was flexible about start times.
She looked at her phone again, flicked to her address book and stood staring at Nick’s number. He’d let her vent the morning’s frustration and offer some words of support. Her finger traced his name on the screen. No. She flipped her phone closed, shoved it in her bag and stuck her chin in the air. She rushed back to the street, carefully weaving around a smashed bottle on the footpath. Suddenly she saw a Salvation Army op shop ahead, and decided to try her luck there.
The tiled floor of the shop was cool and smooth after the roughness of the concrete footpath. The clothes smelt slightly stale and musty. She hurried to the racks of shoes at the back of the store. There were tired sneakers, a pair of cracked red vinyl zip-up boots, several pairs of chunky black school shoes, strappy stilettos in a range of colours and then finally, right in the far corner of the rack, was a gift from the vintage shoe gods.
Jessica gasped with relief as she fell upon a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo sixties red suede slingbacks with pointed toes. The shoes had a large rosette and tiny kitten heels and looked as if they’d hardly been worn. ‘Please, please fit,’ she whispered under her breath as she bent to slip the shoes on her feet.
‘Yes, oh no, yes ... oh, well, sort of,’ Jess muttered, squeezing her foot into the shoes. They were a tight fit. Her foot was too wide for the shoes’ pointy toes and the slingback cut viciously into her heels, but they looked fabulous, and they weren’t broken, she thought grimly, walking gingerly to the counter to pay.
The large clock on the wall behind the counter loudly ticked off the seconds, reminding Jess that she was almost fifteen minutes late.
‘Hello dear, found a little bargain, have you?’ the Salvation Army volunteer asked as she peered over the counter to admire Jess’s shoes.
‘Ah yes,’ Jess tried not to stare at the clock as she handed over her money.
‘I had lots of shoes like that in my day,’ the lady reminisced, oblivious to Jess’s impatience. ‘Crippled me for life, dear. I can hardly walk for the bunions.’
‘Ah...’ was all Jess could manage. She tried to nod in sympathy, or say something relevant, but inside her head she was screaming with frustration. She finally grabbed her change and hobbled out. She made her way painfully down the street, tempted to take the cruel shoes off until she reached Still Life, but she didn’t want to waste the extra seconds that would take. The straps rubbed skin from her heels, and her toes began to go numb. But then she was there.
She took a breath to ease the block of tension in her chest and calm her frantic breathing. Her feet throbbed with heat and sweat shone on her forehead. This was not how she had planned to start her first day, Jess sighed, but now she could only make the best of it.
Still Life was situated in a heritage building with huge Gothic plate-glass display windows. Jess grasped one of the large brass doorknobs and pushed her way into her new life.
The reception area was cool and hushed, the gentle trickle of an unseen water feature mingled with classical music playing softly in the background. The walls were covered in metallic, glossy silver. Beaten metal panels provided a backing for glass shelving that showcased artworks.
‘Please tell me you’re Jessica Wainwright,’ drawled the receptionist installed behind a stainless steel desk in the centre of the room, gazing at Jess beneath hooded lids so heavily made up she could hardly lift them. ‘Late on your first day. Way to make a good impression.’ She stared at Jess impassively.
Jess felt sick. ‘Oh, the trams...’ she stammered, ‘and then my shoe broke...’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the receptionist said. ‘Did I do something to indicate I actually care?’ She glared at Jessica. Her heavy black fringe skimmed her eyes. She wore a sleeveless black jacket nipped in at the waist, a miniskirt, also in black, and black ankle boots.
‘Er, no.’
‘You’re from the country, aren’t you?’ the girl said. ‘No, wait, don’t answer that, I don’t care about that either.’
Jessica decided to try a fresh approach. ‘Hi,’ she said brightly, ‘I’m Jessica.’ She put out her hand.
‘We’ve established that.’ The girl ignored Jess’s hand and picked up her phone. ‘The new girl is here,’ she droned. ‘They’ll see you in a minute.’ She turned her attention back to her Twitter account.
Jess nodded. She wondered what she’d done to make this girl so angry. Maybe she was just having a bad day, she mused, wandering over to get a better look at the artworks displayed in the enormous picture windows. There was no denying the grace of ea
ch piece. There were works in sticks, twigs and dried flora, and more industrial pieces in barbed wire with slender copper pipe and silver galvanised wire twisted elegantly around it. The work was elegant, structural and artistically very exciting. Jess felt the adrenalin of the morning surging back. This job was going to be amazing.
She tilted her head back to stare up at an enormous chandelier that hung from ceiling. The piece was immense – six feet across at least – and seemed to be made of granite or marble; thousands of tiny pieces joined together with silver links resulting in an elegant drapery of illumination. Jess had first admired it when she’d come in for her interview.
‘That is a truly amazing piece,’ Jess said to the receptionist. ‘Is it marble? Or white glass?’
‘Styrofoam,’ the girl said in a bored voice.
‘No, sorry, the chandelier, I mean,’ Jess said, pointing up.
‘Sty-ro-foam,’ the girl repeated with exaggerated enunciation. She turned her pale face towards the piece and blew. The sculpture fluttered like cherry blossom in a spring breeze. ‘It’s Mimsy’s pride and joy,’ the girl said, coming dangerously close to being civil.
‘Awesome.’ Jess was impressed.
A phone buzzed and the receptionist favoured her with a blank stare and flicked a finger lazily towards the stairs. ‘You’re on,’ she drawled.
‘Oh okay, thanks.’
Jessica skittered up the long thin stairwell at the rear of the foyer. She peeped into the open plan area at the top. Huge tubs of materials dotted the large space. Trestles stretched the length of the room and a team of designers was engrossed in discussing the merits of marble versus stone for a sculpture’s base.
Jimmy was in a glass-walled office on the other side of the enormous studio, leaning back in his chair as he talked on the phone. He looked over at her and smiled slowly. Jessica took the chance to drink in her surroundings.
Eventually Jimmy hung up the phone and ambled over to her. His pushed his rectangular tortoiseshell glasses onto the top of his head where they acted like a headband restraining his wayward locks. His skinny jeans clung to his muscular legs, a charcoal T-shirt from New York Design Week 2008 was worn over a white polo shirt – the sleeves of both were rolled together. A cherry bandana encircled his wrist. He squeezed her arm. ‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hello, Jimmy, how are you? Sorry I’m late, great place,’ Jessica stammered anxiously.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’ He raised a long finger to his pouting lips. ‘It’s okay. We don’t want your creative energy to short circuit with angst.’
It was just what Jessica needed to hear. She took a deep breath in, let it out, then smiled back at him.
‘That’s better. Come and meet the team. This is La-Shea, Pandora, Jacques, Bruno, Shania, Petrice and Apsara.’
The five young women and two men flicked up their hands in a cursory greeting. They’d each coveted the position of head designer and were miffed that this inexperienced and unheard-of woman had waltzed in and stolen the job.
‘They’ll love you,’ Jimmy whispered as they turned away. ‘Now, Mimsy really wants to welcome you,’ Jimmy said, steering her down the hall to Mimsy’s large office.
‘Mimsy, our new design head is here,’ he said as he waltzed into the enormous space with Jessica in tow.
Mimsy glared over the magazine she was reading. ‘Punctuality, Jessica: we thrive on it here,’ Mimsy said.
‘I am so sorry,’ Jess began, but Mimsy silenced her with a regal wave of her unusually small hand.
‘Art doesn’t happen on a whim you know, my dear. It’s a discipline; it’s form, it’s exact placement, one millimetre to the left, my darling, and the perspective is all wrong. You know this, don’t you?’
‘Well I guess you’re right, but I’m afraid I’m not as precise as that. I go more by instinct,’ Jess said, twisting her hands behind her back.
‘Here you will learn to be precise and regimented in your work if you hope to succeed,’ Mimsy said, waggling a stubby finger in the air. ‘As you know the design team will replicate the pieces you create; their productivity relies on your inspiration; that’s not something we just cross our fingers and hope will appear out of thin air. We are a well-oiled machine here: we work to a schedule and there is no place for whimsy or sloppiness.’
Jessica furrowed her brow in surprise. In her mind creativity and rigidity didn’t sit well together. There was nothing in her contract for this position that suggested time-keeping was to be valued ahead of creativity. She opened her mouth to reply, but Mimsy gave her an imperious wave and she realised her time was up.
Jimmy showed her to her office, a large sparse room with blank walls. She stowed her new portfolio under the industrial steel desk, checked out the view of the city from her window and was delighted to discover there was a Saeco coffee machine installed in the corner of the room.
‘How about some caffeine to get your brain firing?’ Jimmy suggested, grabbing some tiny espresso cups off a shelf above the machine.
‘Do I look that desperate?’ Jess laughed and took a seat at her desk, relieved to surreptitiously slip her feet out of her crippling shoes.
‘Not at all,’ Jimmy said, as the rich aroma of coffee beans filled the room, ‘But hey, you’re only human, babe, and this is a sleek operation you’ve stepped into.’
He handed Jess a steaming short black in a dolls’-house-sized stainless-steel cup. Lattes were her coffee of choice, but what the heck, she thought, sipping the hot, bitter brew; maybe it was time to toughen up a bit.
‘Right then, you’re all set,’ Jimmy announced, gulping down the last of his coffee. ‘I gotta get on with my day. How about you whip up a fabulous new piece by lunch, and then I’ll take you somewhere awesome to eat, okay?’ He gave her a mock salute as he strode out of her office.
Alone in her cavernous office Jess braved another sip of her tiny coffee and wondered how she was going to achieve ‘fabulous’ in the next two hours. She crammed her feet back into her painful shoes, and went back out to the design room to explore the hundreds of materials at her disposal.
She approached a waif-like girl with a pixie haircut who stood at one of the long workbenches twisting barbed wire around a reclaimed fence paling. ‘Hi, it’s Pandora isn’t it?’ Jess asked, leaning over to get a closer look at her work.
‘Got it in one,’ the girl responded without looking up.
‘What are you working on?’
The girl put down her pliers, folded her arms and fixed Jess with a direct stare.
‘Hal – that’s whose job you’ve got–’ Pandora said, ‘he designed this piece for the foyer at Government House. He won an international design award for it. So now we’re recreating several dozen for the sales team to pitch elsewhere.’
Jess nodded slowly.
‘Hal was poached by a design company in Paris,’ added Bruno, a hairy, bulky man. ‘You must feel terrified to fill such big shoes.’
‘Hopefully I’ll bring my own touch to the company,’ Jess said, fiddling with her silver bracelets.
‘We’ll see,’ Pandora muttered.
Jess grabbed some iron pieces, copper wire and steel columns and headed for the safety of her office. This place was tough.
At one o’clock Jimmy knocked on her door. ‘Let’s do lunch, new girl.’
Jess gratefully put down the copper pipe she’d been wresting with and grabbed her bag. He took her to a nearby restaurant where he explained his job to her in more detail; basically he caught the big clients, schmoozed them and convinced them they couldn’t live without the stunning artworks from Still Life.
‘So do you consult with me to ensure the team can meet your quantity before promising the client fifty-seven lava rock candle sculptures for Cup Carnival? Jessica asked.
‘Of course I do, Jess: it’s a team effort. You see, I’m the key enabler yet you’re on the fast-track to a super-incent, you know? As long as you keep a handle on the deliverables and recognise greater results fr
om collaboration, then streamline efficiencies in the supply chain and reduce costs, we’re all headed for a real viable growth industry.’
Jessica’s fork halted halfway to her mouth as Jimmy’s words tumbled forth. Dr Suess made more sense.
‘Jess, your mouth is open,’ he said, then grabbed a passing staff member by the arm.
‘This soup is unacceptably cold,’ he said and softened the complaint with a sweet smile. ‘Could I possibly trouble you for another serve?’ He turned his attention back to Jess. ‘I think once we get your scheduling under control, you’ll have no problem. You’re very talented. We’ll have you as Melbourne’s sweetheart in no time. The world won’t remember Poppy King and her lipsticks, it will be all about Jessica Wainwright.’
‘Really?’ Jessica said, quite seduced by the idea. She took a sip of her iced water.
It would be a battle to begin with, though. Just getting the trust and support of the design team would be hard enough, and learning to create to a schedule was going to be a real struggle. She was already behind on her first piece. It needed a good couple of hours of love before she got it right, and she knew she wasn’t going to do it with the sales team breathing down her neck.
It was all giving her a thumping headache and she was only halfway into her first day.
‘Hey, what’s the story with the girl at the front desk?’ she asked Jimmy as she nibbled the edge of her rice paper roll.
‘Sventana?’ He grinned. ‘Just ignore her; she’s been doing the ice-queen thing since she read about it in Moscow Vogue. It’s like the heroin chic look of the nineties but with attitude instead of make-up. Great with clients though.’
Jess spent her afternoon grappling with the materials she’d chosen to make her first Still Life piece and praying for some creative magic. She tried arranging the metal pieces on top of each other, then rummaged in the materials bin for a shorter piece of copper pipe. But somehow the whole thing looked messy and unbalanced. She went back to the design room, hoping for inspiration from the materials, but no matter how many different elements she tried the piece still looked amateurish and awkward at five p.m.
