—And you lost your key fob?
—It’s in my boss’s office. Hugo M. Masters.
—Mr. Masters left the building a minute and a half ago. He has out-of-office appointments and won’t be back until tomorrow.
—Did he leave my jacket behind for me, maybe?
—Your jacket?
—My keys are in it. I left the jacket in his office with the key fob in the pocket.
The cold is settling into my limbs. I start walking in place to warm up.
—What’s your name?
—Hitomi Yoshida. Maybe you can let me in while we figure this out? It’s very cold out here and I don’t have my jacket.
—Employee number?
I try reciting the number from memory. I don’t succeed. My teeth are now chattering, so I can hardly speak clearly.
—Can’t you identify me using facial recognition?
I give my date of birth, my address, and where I did my training for data synchronization.
—I found you, the woman says. It says you’ve been terminated. I can’t let you in.
—I just want my jacket so I can go home. My car is still parked in the employee garage. I promise to leave the building as soon as I have the keys.
—I have to check with your supervisor first.
—Can you let me in while I wait?
The cold is making my fingers and toes numb. The woman stops responding. I start jumping up and down and rubbing my arms. A group of employees from another department approaches the entrance. I get in line.
—Excuse me, one of the men in front of me says, do you work here?
—Yes.
—Where’s your key fob?
—I left it inside.
—We can’t let you in. You know the safety regulations.
—I just want to get into the lobby. It’s cold and I forgot my jacket.
The man blocks me until the rest of the group has disappeared through the revolving door. Then he shrugs and goes inside.
I try to see into the lobby through the glass door. A woman is standing right behind the entrance, looking in my direction. I wave, rub my arms, point to my blouse and then the door opener. The woman turns away and quickly disappears into the building.
The wave of anger comes over me as unexpectedly as the fainting spell in Masters’s office. I kick the locked door. Drum against it with my fists. Again, I feel split in two: the figure at the door, pounding against the glass in a rage like a psychiatric patient, and a second person, calm but powerless, watching from a distance.
Banging on the glass makes less noise than expected.
A stabbing pain in my hands finally draws me back into my body. I’m seized with fear. I turn around to see if security has already been called.
The plaza in front of the building is empty. As far as I can tell from behind the glass, the lobby is, too.
I turn around and start running. There’s no one on the sidewalk but me, the rows of cars keep moving along the road next to me. It’s midday traffic, so it’s mainly delivery vehicles from the popular take-out places.
I run. My fear drives me. I imagine the security guards waiting for me in front of my apartment. I pass a skytrain station and step inside to warm up. The feeling very slowly returns to my hands and feet.
The station is full of people. It looks choreographed, how they move so quickly without getting in each other’s way, only slowing down slightly to hold their tablets up to the access control sensors.
My tablet is in my jacket on the floor of Masters’s office. I see myself standing in the station hall, an obstruction dropped amid the crowd. A foreign body. I can’t stand here for long without attracting attention.
One of the sensor gates doesn’t close properly. It must be defective. I walk towards it and push myself through the narrow opening without looking around. My heart is pounding, but no one seems to have noticed.
I try to keep pace with the commuters, but the platform I’m heading towards only has trains going in the opposite direction of my residential district. When I turn around, I collide with a woman in a courier uniform and then with a middle-aged man, his briefcase falls on the floor. I try to weave around the bodies, arms press against mine, fabric to fabric. I’m hot, I squeeze through to the wall without breathing.
When I finally get on the right train and sit down, my blouse is half hanging out of my skirt and beads of sweat have formed on my forehead. I try to straighten my hair.
When we reach my district, it suddenly occurs to me that I can’t get into my apartment without my key fob. I get out and walk around aimlessly.
Again, I find myself standing in front of the bar, not realizing where I was going until I got there. I go in. There are only a few guests. No manager would hold a lunch meeting here. I look around and see people like me, people who’ve been made redundant, relegated, underperformers. Two men are seated close together in a corner, engrossed in conversation. Another is sitting hunched over at the bar. As I walk up to the bar, a woman comes out of the bathroom and sits down with the men in the corner. They don’t seem to notice her.
The bartender recognizes me.
—Flydive™, no, martini, he says with a smile and starts making a martini.
—No, I say, today I’ll have the flydive™. He shakes his head.
—Do you get the impression that I’m not working hard enough?
His tone is much too familiar, but I’m still grateful for it. At least someone who thinks well of me.
—I don’t want to have anything to do with getting people to work anymore, I say, trying to imitate his friendly tone.
Although our closeness isn’t real, I immediately feel better. Studies prove again and again how much influence mental exercises can have on real emotions. Visualizations, role playing, affirmations.
—Bad day? he asks.
He obviously wants to talk. He’s probably been working since early morning and hasn’t spoken to a reasonably healthy person since. Not that I’m healthy. According to Masters.
—You could say that, I say.
He puts my drink down in front of me, picks up his own, and then clinks glasses with me. I take a big sip of the flydive™ and then make a face almost immediately.
—Hey, the bartender says with feigned indignation.
—Sorry, I say, that was an emotional reaction. It’s the association, not the drink. The drink is good.
Laughter comes from the sitting area. One of the two men has turned away from the other and is giggling with his hand in front of his eyes. The other is laughing loudly and patting him on the shoulder. The woman across from them is chuckling as if she had made the joke.
—Do you want to tell me what ruined your day? the bartender asks.
—Plexiglas furniture, I say.
—You’re going to have to explain.
I gulp down the rest of my drink. The bartender gives me a knowing smile and starts making me a martini. He suddenly seems strangely familiar to me. The way his slender hands move back and forth between the shot glass and the ice cooler, the way he brushes away a curl from in front of his eyes.
—My boss filled his entire office with Plexiglas furniture. It’s because his boss has back problems and wants somewhere comfortable to sit. It makes it look as if something is wrong with your vision. Everything is somehow distorted, widened, pulled upwards.
—And?
—Then he fired me.
The strange word suddenly feels right.
The bartender slams the martini glass on the counter in front of me, so that the clear liquid splashes over the rim.
—This one’s on the house.
I feel a sharp pang when I suddenly remember that I can’t pay without a tablet.
—Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
—I wouldn’t expect such a dirty mo
uth at first glance.
—I can’t pay for my drink. I left my tablet in my boss’s office.
—Oops.
—I just stormed out like that. I wasn’t thinking.
—I’ll cover you.
—My keys too. I can’t get into my car or my apartment anymore.
—If you can wait until the end of my shift, you can come with me to my place.
The bartender winks at me. His offer takes me by surprise. The lack of ambiguity in the invitation makes me reluctant. I don’t want to have spontaneous sex with a stranger. Even my one-night stands are always planned through the partnering agency and then I know the person’s profile, their sexual preferences. But what are my alternatives?
The same exhaustion that came over me in Masters’s office is coming back now. If not with the man behind the bar, where else could I go? I can’t contact anyone.
There’s also no one for me to contact.
—That’s nice of you, I say in a polite tone that suggests distance.
—I’m a nice person.
—Okay, I say. I’ll go to your place.
When the bartender walks me to his car at the end of his shift, the alcohol has taken hold of me. I’m in a good mood. When I look over at him from the passenger seat, I just have to smile. He grins back. He suddenly seems much younger to me. I also feel very young again, like when Andorra and I met men in bars a few times when we were fourteen. The youthful exuberance I felt then. Andorra’s contagious laughter and the way her body moved when she was dancing with someone. I thought of what a privilege it was to be her friend. How sincere and pure my affection was for her. It wasn’t until the morning that my guilty conscience caught up with me, the fear of getting caught. Of punishments, of bad references, of a lost future. I told Andorra that I wouldn’t go with her again—until the next time she woke me up, giggling and pulling my hand through the silent institute and out into the night.
The city lights rush past me. The sudden thought that Masters isn’t breathing down my neck anymore. No performance reviews. No fear of the color red in the tracking tool.
I lean back and stretch my arms over my head, move my body as if I were dancing. The bartender laughs. Andorra, the way she danced. Eyes closed, arms stretched out over her head. Small beads of sweat on her upper lip, in the groove between her curved nose and her slightly open mouth.
I lean over to the bartender and kiss him. He playfully pushes me away because he can’t see the onboard monitor.
The ride takes a while and the warmth of the car lulls me to sleep. When I wake up, the vehicle is in park mode. The bartender touches my face.
When he gets out and opens the door for me, I’m hit with a wave of bitter cold air and a stench that makes me wince. It smells like rotten food, animal carcasses, dirt. I remember the smell.
—Where are we, I ask the bartender, who is holding out his arm to help me out of the car. Do you live in the peripheries?
—My credit score still isn’t high enough for a relocation permit. But I’m close. It won’t be much longer. I have two other low-pay-grade jobs in the city. Once I have a city address, I can apply for a higher pay grade.
I start choking, feel the stomach acid rising into my throat.
—Too many martinis?
He holds my hair back, but I don’t want to throw up. I envision the child with its plastic dress full of holes and the splatters of vomit being cleaned from my clothes. I swallow the acid back down.
The bartender’s apartment is in a crudely built housing settlement. The indistinguishable rectangular concrete buildings seem to multiply into infinity and the dull orange street lamps only light certain parts of the street.
He has his arm around my hip to support me. I don’t feel good anymore. I have a headache. The nausea is rumbling around in my stomach.
Once we’re inside his tiny apartment, he gives me a cheap beer.
—Are you sterilized? he asks.
I nod and start to undress. Sex seems inevitable. I’ve lost the sense of pleasure I felt in the car, but now I’m here, I’ve made the unspoken agreement.
—Could you act like you aren’t? he asks.
I’ve read the literature about paraphilias like this, the men who intentionally sleep with non-sterilized women because the risk arouses them. They don’t get themselves sterilized, either. Every time they have sexual intercourse, they risk losing their status, their credit score. They risk being expelled to the peripheries or losing any chance of ever leaving them.
—How do you imagine me doing that? I ask.
—Just say things like: I’m ovulating right now. Don’t come inside me. Please don’t. Stop it.
In my dating profile, I listed sexual fetishes of any kind as a deal breaker. I’ve always found fetishism creepy because it’s just so hard to explain psychologically. Even if the fantasies can be traced back to decisive trigger experiences in every client story. Why the same experience would lead to fetishistic behavior in one person and not in another is impossible to determine with any certainty.
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31
The bartender wakes me up at 6:12 a.m. He’s wearing a uniform from a downtown courier company.
In the car, my body starts to tremble. My legs feel tired, my head cloudy. My vagina hurts. When he smiles at me, all I can think about is how he asked me to scream: Stop it, stop it, I’m not sterilized!
I ask him to drop me off at PsySolutions.
—If you don’t get your things back, come by the bar, he says. My shift starts at two.
I nod and try to smile. He kisses me for a long time before he lets me go.
—Don’t forget to kick him in the balls, he says as I get out.
—What?
—Your boss.
I shake my head and walk towards the building entrance. From the corner of my eye, I see the bartender making a vulgar gesture, probably intended for Masters. Then he drives away.
The thought of standing in front of Masters in my condition makes me break out in a cold sweat. He will smell the alcohol and feel even more justified in his decision. Hitomi Yoshida, psychosomatic illness, faints in crisis situations, tendency towards alcohol addiction.
When I press the intercom, I hear the same voice as the day before.
—Ms. Yoshida? I’ve located your jacket. Mr. Masters handed it in and authorized you to pick it up. I’m letting you in now.
When the door release buzzes, I hesitate for a minute before entering the building.
The lobby is empty.
The doorperson is a middle-aged woman. The tiny wrinkles around her eyes can’t be treated anymore at this stage. No one else is around. No Masters. No security guards.
She’s the oldest employee I’ve ever seen in a company. For a second, I forget why I’m talking to her and just stare.
—I need your fingerprint for the log, the woman says, holding up a tablet.
I put my fingerprint in the designated field and take the jacket, my key fobs, and my tablet, all individually vacuum-packed in numbered plastic bags.
—Was there a coat, too? I ask.
—You didn’t say anything about a coat.
The woman enters something into her computer.
—Brand and size?
I can’t think of either.
—Just leave it, I say. Keep the coat. Maybe Mr. Masters can give it to his interior designer.
—Lost items are either given to charitable institutions or destroyed after the end of the collection period, the woman says.
In my car, I rest my head on the steering wheel and close my eyes. Warm air blows into my face from the vents. The tiredness sets in, takes hold of my body. I’m afraid of losing consciousness again, but I eventually surrender to the feeling and let myself fall.
I’m still in my parking spot at PsySolutions w
hen I come to. I drive home. Everything in my apartment is the same as I left it the morning before. The untouched quality calms me. For some reason I expected a battlefield, cables torn out, missing computers and screens. Instead, no indication of my new status: UE, unemployed. Even my credit score is still the same. I suppose Masters hasn’t reported my termination to the credit institutions yet.
My work screen is on standby. The first touch opens the usual windows. Then, a pang in the pit of the stomach. The live monitor’s split screen is just empty black fields. There are error messages flashing on the work monitor: There is no account associated with this user name. Connection to server terminated. The link “Karnovsky_Log_B75k.link” can’t be opened because the original was not found.
All files are blocked: the logs, the secondary data, the video archive of the live analysis. Along with my employee access to the securecloud™, I’ve lost every fragment of my work from the last few weeks. The black boxes on the live monitor look like empty eye sockets to me. I switch it to standby and move on to the work monitor. I tap on each application individually, each link. Masters didn’t forget to sever any connection.
A wave of sickness comes over me. I feel my organs, my stomach, my heart, my intestines shrinking, not working properly anymore.
It’s the same feeling I had on the day Andorra disappeared. When she wasn’t lying in bed next to me in the morning.
The certainty that she was gone and wouldn’t come back.
I remember how my lungs had seemed to shrink. How I could hardly breathe and started gasping for air. How they took me to the infirmary. I can’t remember the last sentence I said to her. She nodded off quickly. I kept talking for a little while before realizing she was asleep.
They took her away from me in the middle of the night. And I didn’t ask. I knew what had happened.
She didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t wake me up.
The thought that I slept through it when they led her out of the room—me, the one who always slept so poorly, restlessly. The fact that I was asleep when she gathered her things. That I didn’t sense her absence. Until then, I was always absolutely sure that you would feel the loss of the person you loved most. That it would have to tear you apart.
The High-Rise Diver Page 18
