Love Lust and Petty Crime
by
Hercules Bantas
Epub version published by Smashwords
ISBN: 978-1-4523-6282-3
All other versions published by The Reluctant Geek
Copyright Hercules Bantas 2010
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents contained therein are products of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Events and characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual incidents, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
TLDR: It is all a bunch of lies I made up. Honest.
Chapter 1
The sun rises upon a pleasant but unremarkable suburban landscape in a place that is almost, but not quite, America. If one cares to look, the new day illuminates signs of comfort and wealth. A street sweeper rumbles along the gutter, devouring litter. There are shiny cars parked outside well-maintained houses, all with manicured lawns and landscaped gardens. Despite its affluence, there is nothing particularly special about this place, nor are the people who live here particularly important. The sad truth is that if Destiny were searching for her chosen one, she would probably look somewhere else. Even though most of the people living in this unremarkable place are incredibly wealthy and fortunate when compared to the vast majority of the global population – food is cheap and usually pre-packaged, and men with guns do not roam the streets fomenting revolution- many do not consider themselves so. In fact, some consider themselves hard done by. Some believe that they are victims of a harsh society; a society that values productivity above humanity; a society that forces individuals into a suburban banality that tears body from soul, and sacrifices their creativity to the god of uniformity. OK, not many of them think that. Only one of them does, in fact, and he is just now rising to greet a day that contains a little personal destiny. Today, Emmet is destined to attend a job interview, and he is not looking forward to it.
Witness Emmet. Pudgy about the middle with an unremarkable face, he stands at an unremarkable height with unruly but unremarkable hair. A light sleeper, he wakes quickly and is fully alert within minutes of opening his eyes. Bitter experience has taught him that social isolation awaits those who are chirpy and cheerful in the morning, so for the sake of his social life he adopts a grumpy façade until he consumes at least one cup of coffee.
The sounds of a household rising from slumber come through the thin and poorly decorated walls of his bedroom. His father farts loudly in the corridor that runs from his parent’s bedroom to the bathroom and his mother is being busy in the kitchen. She generally wakes up an hour before everyone else in order to prepare breakfast. This morning, however, she was up even earlier than usual to prepare for what she calls ‘Emmet’s special day’. His father had farted in that corridor every morning since Emmet could remember, but he did produce an especially impressive one this morning, which was probably his way of supporting Emmet’s quest for a wage.
The only late riser in the household is Plato, his brother, but he has an uncanny ability to sense an upcoming big meal and the activity in the kitchen had roused him. He had been singing a sad but pleasant song in the shower before his father abruptly ended it by flushing the toilet. Emmet sighs and dons a threadbare bathrobe. Escorted by his brother’s curses, he leaves his bedroom and shuffles into the corridor that leads to the kitchen. In the morning at his parent’s home, all corridors lead to breakfast.
There are many, many corridors in the home of Emmet’s parents. They like it that way. In their considered and collective opinion, corridors are what make a house a home, and the more corridors a house contains, the homelier it is. While they have never actually articulated this opinion, Emmet thinks it is the only explanation for how much of the house is corridor. On the other hand, they may need the wall space to pay homage to the legends of Greek antiquity, because decorations depicting scenes from ancient Greek mythology line the walls of each and every corridor. In the one that Emmet is currently ambling along, there hang various media depicting Hercules’ mighty deeds. Emmet’s favourite is the shell encrusted, backlit painting on glass of Hercules’ battle with the Nemean Lion. It shows a rather muscular young demigod in the process of strangling what looks like a large domestic tabby on a bad hair day. Emmet thinks the broken club on the ground beside the combatants is a nice touch. His mother calls out just as Emmet is drawing level with a decorative plate showing King Eurystheus peeping out of a large vase at Hercules clutching a two-headed dog to his chest. One head is looking out of the plate wearing an expression of well-meaning idiocy, while the other is trying to lick Hercules on the cheek.
‘Emmet, breakfast!’ she calls, ‘Hurry or you’ll be late!’
Emmet pushes open the door into the kitchen. ‘The interview is at one, Mum, it’s still hours away.’
The scene that greets him when he opens the door to the kitchen is a grand statement in culinary excess. His mother is setting down a plate piled high with French toast, bacon, and fried tomatoes. In the centre of the table is an overflowing platter of sausages, an enormous bowl of coleslaw and a massive Greek salad, a selection of cheeses and olives, a vat of thick yogurt, and a pot of honey. He can smell potatoes frying on the stovetop.
Plato, still dripping from his truncated shower, is half way through his first piece of toast and accelerating.
‘Mum’s prepared quite a spread for her special little man,’ he says, in a spray of breadcrumbs. ‘You should try and become a useful member of society more often.’
‘You are the butt plug in the anus of my life,’ Emmet retorts, but quietly so that his mother does not hear. She responds violently to coarse humour and on one memorable occasion had broken a wooden spoon over Plato’s head for calling Emmet a dickwad. The brothers are fairly sure that she does not know what a dickwad is, but it sounds crude and that is enough for her. Not that Plato hears Emmet’s reply because no sooner has he spoken than he returned his attention to the food before him. As Emmet takes his seat, he notices that a considerable amount of the cheese from the communal platter has already made its way onto Plato’s plate. Cursing quietly, he clears some room on his own plate and begins an assault on the sausages, but Plato is too quick. He parries Emmet’s fork with his knife and then skewers several plump spicy pork sausages, flipping them skilfully onto his plate, and leaving only a motley collection of anaemic beef sausages behind.
Snarling, the brothers transfer their attention to the Greek salad where, accompanied by the clink and clatter of clashing utensils, they battle amongst the cucumbers.
‘Plato, let your brother eat!’ says their mother, frowning at her youngest son while adding another platter of sausages and a small mountain of fried potatoes to the table. ‘This breakfast is for him, and I will not have you spoiling it.’ She clips Plato behind the ear with the ever-present wooden spoon on her way back to the kitchen. Wearing a winner’s grin, Emmet transfers the lion’s share of potatoes to his plate.
‘You better get that job today, Emmet,’ says his father, entering the kitchen from a corridor festooned with images of the Goddess Athena. ‘Those potatoes aren’t free you know.’ Father pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down at the breakfast table. His wife brings two plates to the table and sits beside him. Compared to the heaped offerings placed before the boys, the servings are modest. Together, the two of them bow their heads and give a short prayer of thanks.
‘A lovely spread, Persephone. Enough for an army,’ father says, once the deity of their choice had been thanked for the bounty of the table. ‘Just shy of satisfying our two fine sons, but definitely enough for an army,’ he adds.
‘Now Atlas, they are young men who need their energy,’ Persephone says, beaming at the two young men sitting opposite. ‘Emmet will make us very proud today, I am sure.’
Emmet sighs. ‘It’s just a job interview,’ he explains in the leaden tones of the terminally patient. ‘I go to job interviews all the time, why do you always make such a fuss?’
‘Because you go to job interviews all the time, and never actually go to jobs,’ Atlas responds, stabbing the air with an angry fork, and spraying egg and bread in Emmet’s general direction. ‘Always interviews, never jobs,’ Atlas adds, waving his hands in the air for added effect.
Emmet wipes bits of masticated French toast from his face. ‘Before every interview, it’s the same conversation.’ he says, glowering at his father. ‘I have only one thing left to say,’ he continues, raising a finger theatrically into the air. ‘Fuck you!’ Emmet yells, and makes a break for the door leading to the Herculean corridor. He makes it through just in time, and the wooden spoon clatters harmlessly onto the floor. Plato, distracted briefly from his meal, turns back to his breakfast.
‘Sensitive soul isn’t he?’ Plato says, as he raises a spicy sausage to his lips. Atlas glares daggers at his youngest son.
‘What are you looking at? It’s not my fault Emmet is a fruit loop,’ Plato says. The remains of a wooden spoon clatter to the ground. ‘Ouch! Mum, what d’you do that for?’
Emmet leans dramatically against his bedroom door and lets out a heartfelt sigh. A witness to this moment would have had no doubt that here is a man under pressure; a man locked in battle with the massed forces of stupidity surrounding him, and laying siege to his sanity. There is no witness, however, so it is all a bit of a waste. He looks around and notices that his father has deposited a freshly polished pair of shoes under a chair. The night before, his mother had placed a crisply pressed shirt on a hanger on the back of the door and cleaned his suit, which now hangs in its bag on the handle of his wardrobe, a selection of ties draped over the shoulder. He ponders what use is all this help if his parents spend the rest of their time tormenting him with petty grievances about this or that, as the whim takes them? His father, in particular, has a bee in his bonnet about Emmet’s continued unemployment, unfortunately highlighted by Plato’s many career successes. It has been nearly a decade since Emmet finished his schooling, and his father has made it clear that he thinks that it is high time Emmet started to bring in a decent income. Emmet often points out that, in fact, he had secure employment through much of this time, but his father refuses to accept delivering pizzas or giving out change at the local arcade as productive labour.
‘That’s not work,’ he would say, ‘that’s adolescent fantasy.’
There is a polite knock at the door that Emmet knows is Persephone. ‘What is it Mum?’ he asks.
Persephone opens the door just enough to deposit a heaped plate on a chair. ‘Just making sure you have enough energy, dear,’ she says. ‘Forgive your father, you know what he is like.’
‘Thanks Mum,’ Emmet replies, ‘I’m sorry I cursed dad, I know he means well.’ He slumps dejectedly on to the bed, but not before scooping up the plate of food from the chair. Persephone withdraws and Emmet turns his attention to his breakfast. Philosophy is one thing, he reasons, but breakfast is the most important meal of the day and it would be unwise to miss it on such an important one as this. Feeling a little guilty about his outburst at the breakfast table, Emmet wolfs down the substantial meal his mother brought him and prepares to face his demons.
The past few months have been a frustrating time for Emmet. He has attended fifteen job interviews since calling it quits on pizza delivery as a career and is still without a job. The many rejections have sapped his confidence and robbed him of much of his bravado. His battered ego does what it can, and even managed to convince Emmet that he is an unfortunate victim of circumstance, but it cannot totally banish the self-doubt. As a last ditch effort to bolster Emmet’s flagging confidence, his ego points out that this job is for an insurance call centre, and really, how picky can they afford to be? Unfortunately, it is all to no avail, so Emmet’s ego skulks off to hassle Emmet’s id. Feeling a little sorry for himself, Emmet gets dressed and prepares to face what he is sure will turn into yet another humiliating rejection.
(ii)
His freshly polished shoes gleaming in the late morning sun, Emmet walks slowly through the suburban streets towards the main road that stands between his quiet suburban purgatory and the industrial estate that houses the train line into the city. A carefully blank expression conceals an inner turmoil from the casual observer, not that there are many people out and about on this week day morning during the school year. Most people are doing things. Some are away from their homes, gainfully employed in offices, or workshops, or factories; others are attending schools in preparation for gainful employment. Still others have retired from gainful employment and are spending their time working on their gardens and grumbling about modern times. Of those that remain, most are busy raising children to add to the ranks of the gainfully employed.
Emmet is also doing things, but he does not want to be doing them. It is not that Emmet is lazy, far from it. He works long and hard at pursuits that he enjoys. Unfortunately, what he enjoys rarely coincides with a socially accepted definition of gainful employment. He has attained, for example, a high level of excellence in a range of online computer games, pouring hundreds of hours into each and every one. His dedication and hard work have made him a valued member of several game playing kins and guilds, and they often call upon him for aid when they encounter difficulties in their virtual adventures. He also loves to read, and usually gets through two or three books every month. His greatest joy, however, is whiling away hours spouting opinions and philosophies while drinking a variety of beverages with friends at any one of a number of café’s and nightclubs that he regularly attends. If he could draw a wage for doing any of these three activities then Emmet would be a wealthy man. But he can’t, so he isn’t.
Friends and family, so often the source of advice whether it is welcome or not, often point out that the root of Emmet’s problem lies in his enjoyment of the good life coupled with his lack of independent wealth. Had he been born into the household of a media magnate, for example, or an aging pop star, he could have pursued his lifestyle without the need to draw a wage from a third party, but this is not the case. His parents are not magnates or pop stars, although his mother can carry a nice tune when the mood takes her. Emmet knows that his uninvited advisers are correct, although he would never admit it. He knows that the tension between his lack of money and his preferred lifestyle is the origin of much of the angst in his life, and is currently the root cause of his dejected trudging.
Resigning himself to employment, Emmet has tried various and diverse vocations that he thought would satisfy his earning requirements without impacting heavily upon his preferred activities. His most recent employment, as a delivery driver for the local pizza shop, was looking promising until an unfortunate run in with the local police. It was such bad luck! He had accepted a job to deliver a pizza to a house at the end of a narrow lane. It was the last order of the night, had already been paid for, and conveniently located on Emmet’s way home. Usually he avoided the area because the battered old station wagon that he used to deliver pizzas could barely fit between the corrugated iron fences. He reasoned, inaccurately as it turns out, that one quick run could not hurt.
Showers of sparks marked his approach to the house in the twilight, thrown up whenever the side of his car rubbed against the iron fences that lined the road. The car itself suffered little. Its panels were in such poor condition that any change in their shape was an improvement.
As luck would have it, at the end of the lane on that night were two police officers who had attended the house next door to the pizza purchasers in order to settle a domestic dispute. Having arrived to find the disputants locked in a passionate embrace they were on their way out when they spied Emmet’s fiery wagon working its way towards them. The larger of the two gestured to Emmet to stop his car and roll down the window.
‘Bit of dangerous driving there, sir,’ he said. ‘You appear to have damaged some of the property along the lane.’
The other policeman was looking intently at the front right tyre of the vehicle. ‘Your tyre appears to be rather worn, sir,’ he gestured towards the offending item. ‘There appears to be no rubber on it at all.’
‘That’s the spare,’ Emmet replied, rather too quickly. ‘I had a flat tyre a few minutes ago. It’ll be changed first thing tomorrow.’
The policeman produced a torch from his belt and wandered slowly around the car, looking at the tyres. ‘There does not appear to be much rubber on any of your tyres, sir,’ he said, looking at his partner in anti-crime, who nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Please exit the vehicle.’
Emmet got out of the car and the torch-bearing policeman climbed into the driver’s seat.
‘You have neglected to activate the park brake sir, which can be dangerous,’ the seated policeman said, and grasped the park brake lever, depressed the button and pulled the lever up.
Emmet jumped. ‘Watch the button!’ he yelled, but it was too late. The police officer let go of the button on the handbrake, which shot out of its socket, ricocheted off the windscreen and hit the seated man on the nose. For the second time that night, he looked at his companion, who again nodded almost imperceptibly.
Wiping away a trickle of blood from his damaged nostril, the police officer returned to his inspection of the car,‘I cannot help noticing, sir, that the pedal on your foot brake is missing,’ he said looking down into the cabin of the car. ‘There is just a lump of metal sticking up out of the floor.’ He turned to look at Emmet. ‘It appears that the maintenance of this vehicle has been sorely neglected.’
Emmet hung his head in shame. ‘It’s true, officer. The car is a heap,’ he said. Both officers nodded grimly.
Night had fallen by the time Emmet arrived home that fateful day. The police officers had been thorough in their examination of the battered old wagon, and handed Emmet a comprehensive list of what was required to bring it back to a roadworthy condition. The following morning, he and Atlas went and fetched the car. In an effort to keep costs down, Atlas suggested they take it to his nephew, Jason, who is a mechanic. Emmet was nervous about driving the vehicle because the police were adamant that it was too dangerous to move under its own power. Atlas, however, refused to pay for a tow truck and Emmet did not have the funds available himself, so they drove it the short way to Jason’s workshop. They found the journey stressful. Both men were half expecting a swat team to fall from the sky at any moment and drag them off to gaol for such a blatant disregard of police authority.
They made it without incident, however, and Jason immediately hoisted the vehicle to inspect the undercarriage. After a few minutes, and many a muffled exclamations, he emerged and looked intently at Emmet. ‘Have you been driving this around?’ he asked.
‘All the time,’ Emmet replied, ‘I use it to deliver pizzas.’
Jason shook his head and looked up at the car. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ he said. ‘It’s over for this thing, not worth fixing, even for family rates. Take it to the wreckers and see what you can get for it. But whatever you do, don’t take it over forty.’
Later that afternoon, Emmet drove the car, very slowly, to the local wreckers who offered him two hundred and fifty dollars. Emmet accepted, but grudgingly.
‘It’s fine, mate, runs smooth as silk.’ he protested.
‘There isn’t a straight panel on it,’ the wrecker replied, slapping the bonnet as he spoke, which caused the whole car to creak. Both men stood back as it began to sway.‘It doesn’t look very silky, truth be told,’ the wrecker said. A tortured groan came from beneath the wagon, its front wheels collapsed inwards and the nose came crashing to the ground. ‘I reckon fifty is a fair price, don’t you?’ said the wrecker, watching a hubcap roll away from the wreckage.
‘More than fair, really,’ Emmet replied.
The demise of the delivery wagon marked the end of Emmet’s career in the hospitality industry. Without a car he could no longer deliver pizzas and Atlas was not about to shell out several thousand dollars so that his eldest son can earn eight dollars an hour while driving it into the ground. Nor does a career working at the sweaty end of a pizza oven excite him. Had this been an isolated incident, Emmet may have been able to laugh it off, or even turn it into an amusing anecdote with which to entertain friends. Unfortunately, it was not.
Wherever Emmet went for a wage, disaster was sure to follow. While working for a local arcade, his attempts to retrieve an errant coin from the maw of a defunct slot machine had caused an hour-long blackout of the immediate neighbourhood and cost his employer hundreds of dollars in refunds to irate customers. A jaunt in a pet shop resulted in the premature death of two bunny rabbits, and even stacking shelves in a supermarket seemed to be beyond him (he still had nightmares about stacking cans of pineapple). As the years passed, he began to wonder if had missed his calling. What that calling is he has no idea, but he seems to have missed it nonetheless.
Emmet’s reluctant feet finally deliver him to the train station in the industrial estate, which is deserted and bears a remarkable resemblance to the ghost towns often depicted in 1950’s b-grade westerns, except that crisp packets have replaced tumbleweeds and there is nowhere for a passing cowboy to tie his horse. During the morning and afternoon peaks, the station is humming with people and trains come and go every few minutes. Now, it is empty of activity and somehow gives the impression that no living being has passed through the gates in several years, with the possible exception of an incontinent dog that pissed up and down the platform, thus explaining the aroma of stale urine that hangs in the air. Emmet is not a public transport man. It is far too public for his liking, and it seems to him that most of the people who use it have a thing or two to learn about personal hygiene. He looks up and down the station with distaste etched on his face, thankful that it is devoid of people. Sighing deeply, he inserts money into the ticket machine, which refuses to issue a ticket or, subsequently, refund his money.
‘Ahhh, you bastard,’ Emmet yells, and punches the machine. ‘Ahhhh, ‘ou ‘astard,’ Emmet screams, sucking on his bleeding knuckles. Defeated, he walks across the tracks and purchases a ticket from the machine on the opposite platform.
Another lone traveller arrives on the platform just as Emmet returns and fiddles with the ticket machine.
‘It ate my money too, mate’ Emmet informs him, ‘you may need to go across the tracks.’
'Really?’ the stranger replies. ‘It worked fine for me, but it did give me extra change.’ Emmet glares angrily at the ticket machine, which maintains an electronic silence. He marches to the other end of the platform, away from the lucky rail patron, and awaits the train in angry silence. By the time it arrives his knuckles have stopped bleeding and an uneasy feeling of impending doom has usurped the anger. He boards an empty carriage and sits down in a corner, away from the doors.
At the next station, a rather dirty old man gets on the train and, despite the carriage being totally empty, comes and sits in the chair opposite Emmet. He smells of urine and the fabric at the front of his pants, running down both legs, is dark with moisture. He gives Emmet a hearty grin and begins to pick his nose. At the next stop, a young woman enters the train and, despite the empty carriage, occupies the seat beside Emmet. Once seated, she reaches into her bag to produce a container filled with hot, greasy, fried chicken. The pungent aroma of the chicken rises into the carriage and issues a challenge the urine smell for dominance. Emmet groans.
At the next station, a well-dressed young man enters the carriage and sits down at the opposite end from the trio. Emmet takes his chance. ‘David!’ he exclaims, and rushes to the other side of the carriage, leaving chicken woman and the wee-wee man to their own devices. ‘Sorry, my mistake,’ Emmet says as he gets nearer, and sits down a few seats away, his back to the bemused man.
Much to Emmet’s surprise, the young man actually bears a remarkable resemblance to his old friend David Parkinson. The two had gone through several years of schooling together, and were almost inseparable during much of that time. Their friendship faded, however, when David left school to get a job, taking with him the secure knowledge that eventually he would be a high-flying corporate executive. Emmet envied David his rock solid idea of where he wanted to go and how he wanted to spend his life while, at the same time, finding those self same aspirations puzzling. He found it difficult to believe that someone as dim as David- a man so mentally challenged that most people can’t believe he isn’t playing stupid- could be so consumed by ambition that it dominates his every waking moment.
The last time Emmet had seen David they had had a few drinks at a popular beachside café and he was waxing lyrical about his plans for corporate domination. Approaching his well-known shortcoming in characteristic head on fashion, he said
‘I may be IQ poor, mate, but I’m logic rich,’ while tapping his temple and winking in Emmet’s direction. Emmet had no idea what David meant by this statement, but even so he considered it to be his greatest intellectual achievement. On the positive side, David had an amazing ability to look good regardless of what he was wearing. His tall, angular frame could make even the cheapest suit look like a fashion coup. This annoyed Emmet because, even now that he was dolled up for an important interview, wearing an expensive suit and tie, neatly groomed, and freshly shaved, he still managed to radiate an aura of scruffiness. ‘Lucky bastard,’ Emmet thinks as he stares morosely out the of the train window. Eventually the train reaches its destination, and Emmet leaves the carriage, wondering vaguely about where David is now, and whether he has achieved his life’s ambition.
(iii)
The building housing the agency conducting the interview is a short trudge from the train station, but Emmet’s feet extend the journey by dragging themselves along the pavement. A feeling of dread creeps over him as he gazes upon its cold glass and concrete façade. He knows that somewhere in there, someone is casting a judgemental eye upon his rather anaemic resume and shaking his or her head. Not wishing to delay the inevitable, and aware that there is a good chance he would run away if he did not enter the building promptly, Emmet mounts the stairs. He hopes, against all the evidence thus far, that his day will improve but knows that the most likely outcome is that Fate will mount him, probably in a public place and definitely without using a lubricant.
The inside of the building is pleasant in an all-humanity-will-be-drained-from-those-who-enter-here kind of way. Glass and stainless steel feature heavily, reinforcing the cold and humourless exterior. ‘A complete package,’ Emmet thinks.
A glass-covered plaque lists the building occupants in steel letters on a black background. He notes that his date with destiny is on the fifth floor and enters an elevator at the back of the foyer. He is surprised to see that there is no button marked ‘Hell’ on the control panel of the elevator. ‘Probably an oversight,’ he thinks, and presses the button labeled ‘5’.
Emmet half expects a horned demon to greet him on the fifth floor, twirling its trident while looking at him with a knowing smile on its lips. Instead, the elevator disgorges him into a small reception area with an enormous reception desk that hides a small, bored receptionist.
‘Emmet Storch?’ she asks, arching an eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ he replies.
‘Please take a seat,’ she points to a row of black plastic moulded chairs to the left of her desk. ‘One of our agents will be with you shortly.’ She turns back to her computer. From the set of her shoulders as she types at her computer Emmet is quite sure that he no longer exists in her world.
The time Emmet spends sitting in the uncomfortable black chair seems to last for an eternity, possibly even two. Eventually, a door behind the receptionist opens and a small, balding, fat man holding a clipboard enters the room.
‘Emmet Stork,’ he calls, even though Emmet is the only person in the room apart from the receptionist. Emmet stands and raises his hand.
‘Here,’ Emmet says, and is immediately embarrassed.
The man looks at him with unsympathetic eyes. ‘Come this way,’ he says, and turns back through the door. Emmet follows quickly in case his feet decide to make a break for it. The room they enter is large and filled with people sitting at desks while engaging in gainful employment- talking on telephones, writing on notepads, typing at computers. All of them are engrossed in what they are doing and no one looks up when Emmet and his escort enter. The man talks while he walks. His short, quick steps move him forward at a surprising pace.
‘My colleague and I have cast an eye over the documents you submitted,’ the short man says. ‘Your lack of engagement on the employment front may be a hindrance going forward.’
They wind a complicated path through the desks filled with occupied people and eventually end up at a door at the far end of the room. The agent knocks and opens the door, revealing a plush office with a large desk at its centre. In front of the desk, in the middle of a cleared space is one of the short, moulded chairs that Emmet first encountered in the reception area. Behind the desk sits an attractive blonde woman. She is holding a pencil in such a way that Emmet, at first glance, thought she was holding a dagger. She regards Emmet for a moment,
‘Mr Storch, I will be both brief and blunt,’ she says. ‘You are not the type of person we are looking for.’
With a monumental effort of will, Emmet does not vacate his bowels and take to flight.
‘Really?’ is all he can say.
‘Yes, really,’ she answers. ‘In fact, this interview should never have happened.’ She glares at the short, fat man, who hangs his head. ‘However, because it has happened, we are willing to give you a chance.’ She stands up and moves around the desk towards Emmet, who cannot help but notice that she is quite tall with long, shapely legs. ‘Nice hips, too,’ his id points out.
‘There is a test that usually accompanies these interviews. You will sit this test and if you do well we may be able to find a place for you.’ She is now standing directly in front of Emmet, who is trying very hard to control several biological impulses at once.
‘OK,’ he chokes out eventually.
‘Good,’ she says, and smiles. ‘Bobby here will show you where you are to take the test.’
The short man looks mildly annoyed. ‘I prefer Robert, as you well know,’ Bobby says, and turns to Emmet. ‘Follow me Mr Stork, if you please.’ The reluctant Bobby leads Emmet back out into the busy room and to an empty desk near the office. ‘The test is all set up,’ Bobby says. ‘There is a one hour time limit. Do the best you can. I’ll be back when your hour is up.’ He scoots off, back into the office with the woman whom Emmet cannot help labelling the dangerous blonde.
An hour passes. The dangerous blonde, whose name is Glykeria, looks at Bobby.‘There must be a mistake,’ she says. ‘He has a perfect score.’
Bobby’s brow furrows. ‘Are you sure? You haven’t stuffed the connection again, have you?’ he says, moving behind the desk and tapping at the computer. ‘Bloody hell, he has got a perfect score.’
‘What does that mean?’ Glykeria asks.
‘It means that the rather sad specimen outside is a perfect customer care consultant for a busy call centre, that’s what it means.’
‘I wouldn’t call him a sad specimen if I were you, little Bobby,’ Glykeria says, smiling and looking at Bobby. She reaches out and grasps the front of his trousers. ‘Little boys with no hair and tiny cocks should be more humble.’
Bobby looks like he is about to cry. ‘Well, what do we do now?’ he asks.
‘We give him a job, that’s what we do,’ Glykeria says. ‘Go and bring him in, but first, drop your pants and sing the little dick song for me.’ She smiles wickedly at Bobby who, after climbing onto the black chair in front of the desk, performs for her.
Emmet follows Bobby back into the office where Glykeria sits behind her desk. It seems to him that Bobby has lost some of the spring in his step and he constantly looks at the floor.
‘Your test results are very impressive, Mr Storch,’ Glykeria says. ‘While we are unable to offer you a position immediately, I can say that I will be recommending you highly to our clients.’
Emmet nearly falls over. ‘Really?’ he asks.
‘Yes, really,’ she says, smiling. ‘Bobby will show you the way out. It has been a pleasure meeting you, Mr Storch.’ Once again Emmet finds himself following Bobby, who leads him back out into the reception area and then turns to face him.
‘A very impressive test result, Mr Stork,’ Bobby says. ‘I have been here many years, and I have never seen anything like it before.’ He reaches out and takes Emmet’s hand, giving it a vigorous shake. ‘We will definitely be in touch,’ Bobby says, and turns back through the door. Emmet wanders into the lift, giving a wan smile to the receptionist on the way through, but she completely ignores him.
The trip home feels like a dream to Emmet. He finds ten dollars on the footpath outside the station. The ticket-validating machine incorrectly stamps his ticket, making it valid for another seven days. The train is on time and he sits in an empty carriage most of the way home. The only other person to get on is a pretty, young woman who flirts with him shamelessly for the entire trip. His feet dance across the pavement as he makes his way from the train station to his parent’s house.
Persephone notices that the thunderclouds seem to be absent from her son’s brow upon his return. ‘Well, how did it go?’ she asks, smiling.
‘Quite well, Mum, I think I might have got it!’ Emmet answers.
‘Atlas, come quick,’ she bellows. ‘The other one has a job!’
‘I think I have,’ says Emmet, trying to find a positive side to being “the other one.'
‘Sit down,’ Persephone says. ‘I will prepare a celebratory feast.’
‘Hey Emmet, well-done mate,’ says Plato, magically appearing out of nowhere. ‘What are you going to cook, Mum?’
‘That’s my boy,’ says Atlas, entering from a corridor dedicated to Apollo.
‘Yeah, thanks everyone,’ Emmet says, and slumps onto a chair. A strange weariness overtakes him and he feels the need to withdraw for a while. ‘I’m just going to lie down for a bit,’ Emmet says, and wanders off in the direction of his room.
Atlas watches him leave through the door leading to the Herculean corridor, and turns to his wife. ‘Persephone, love of my life,’ he says, ‘do you think it would have been lonely without children?’
The euphoria from the interview wears off after a few days, leaving Emmet wondering if he imagined the whole thing. Surely, the agency- complete with foreboding building and strange people- had been a figment of his overactive imagination? Best not to dwell upon it, especially since right here and right now there are people depending upon him. He sits at his computer guiding his avatar on a dangerous mission with a group of other virtually hardened adventurers, headphones blocking out the sounds of the ultimate reality.
‘Incoming. Two o’clock,’ he calls into a microphone. Like a well-oiled machine, he and his virtual brothers-in-arms turn to face the new threat, eliminating it with well-practiced efficiency.
‘Well done team,’ says Horc, leader of this band of merry avatars, ‘but this is where it starts to get hairy. Grocok, keep on your toes, we are all relying on you.’
‘Ready, willing and more than able,’ replies Emmet.
‘OK, here they come,’ says Horc. ‘Do your stuff, Grocok.’
Emmet eases his avatar forward, prepares the spells that will turn the approaching virtual evildoers into a smear on the virtual landscape. Timing is everything. He leans forward. Now! Nothing happens. ‘What the fuck,’ Emmet exclaims, clicking the mouse buttons furiously. He can see his fellow adventurers meeting a horrible, virtual death. He looks up and sees his mother with the mouse cord in her hand.
‘Grocok, you neub, double-you, tee, eff?’ says Horc, who always pronounces each letter of an acronym instead of saying the words.
Emmet rips off his headphone in fury. ‘Why do you always do stuff like this?’ he yells at his mother.
She beams a big smile at him. ‘You have a call from the recruitment agency,’ Persephone says, and hands Emmet the phone, ‘he says his name is Robert.’
Emmet takes the phone. ‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Hello Emmet, your mother sounds lovely. I didn’t know you still lived at home.’
‘It’s not something I mention during job interviews,’ Emmet replies.
Robert chuckles. ‘Just ringing to let you know your application has been successful,’ he says. ‘You’ll be receiving a letter from us in a few days giving details of what you need to do next. Congratulations, Mr Stork.’
‘Thanks Robert,’ Emmet replies. ‘I appreciate it.’
Robert chuckles again. ‘No worries mate,’ he says. ‘With that test score, they would be stupid not to hire you. See you around, Emmet.’ Robert hangs up, and Emmet hands the phone to his mother. ‘I have a job, Mum,’ he says, slumping further into his chair, ‘and it’s a real one this time.’
Chapter 2
Two weeks after Robert’s fateful telephone call, Emmet finds himself sitting in a large, well-appointed conference room located in a concrete and glass tower at the city’s centre. The view overlooking the city through the floor to ceiling window is breathtaking. In the distance, heavily forested hills run into two mist-shrouded cliffs that stand, like silent guardians, on either side of a bay. The view inside the room is not quite as inspiring. A huge oval table dominates its centre. On one side of the table, their backs to the window, sit ten trainees each sporting their own, unique interpretation of formal business attire. On the other side, their view of the city obstructed by ten eager faces, sits three people- two men on either side of a woman.
The woman looks at her watch and clears her throat.
‘Hello everyone, my name is Fran Dorrell and I am the manager of the call centre here at Star Insurance,’ she says, and pauses for a moment. ‘I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you all into the fold. We here at Star think of ourselves as a rock hard, cohesive team that work together towards common goals while watching one another’s back. In fact, we are more than a team. We are a family, and this special relationship extends to all who make it through our rigorous and comprehensive training and testing program. But you will all get to know me very well in the following weeks, so I will hand you over to Acheron Pomtas, our Chief Executive Officer,’ she gestures towards the older man on her right.
Acheron acknowledges her introduction with a nod as he stands. His bearing suggests that he is a man accustomed to being the centre of attention. Pushing his chair into the table, he turns to Fran. ‘Thank you Fran,’ he says, and everyone in the room knows that he sincerely feels that he owes Fran a debt of gratitude. Fran squirms in her seat and crosses her legs. Radiating confidence, he turns to the trainees and opens his arms in a gesture of acceptance, ‘and welcome to Star Insurance, ladies and gentlemen. I am sure that our relationship will be long and prosperous.’ He looks down and strokes his chin. ‘These are changing times here at Star, and you are the ambassadors of this change. Most of you will know that we are not a traditional insurance company. All our customers are, in fact, members of a professional guild and we exist to serve those members. Now this may have worked well in the past, but the current economic climate demands that we make changes to our structure in order to compete effectively. We must change, ladies and gentlemen, and you are going to help us.’ He looks intently at the trainees sitting opposite. ‘It is you who will lead this company into the future,’ he says, beginning to pace up and down behind Fran. ‘You will take us to the top of the insurance game. You will be the heroes that set the Star in the heavens where it belongs. You and only you can do this, I am convinced of it.’
Emmet looks around at his fellow trainees and notes the shining eyes and eager faces.
‘So sad,’ he thinks, and turns back to Acheron, who continues his monologue.
‘Over the years, we have made do with a three percent profit margin here at Star. For a member organisation, that’s not bad, but let’s face it, we could make more money sticking the member contributions in the bank and collecting the interest. Three percent is not good enough for the most profitable insurance company in the country, and that is what we plan on becoming. But we can only do it with your help.’ He stops and places his hands palm down on the table. ‘You are the vanguard. You are the leaders. One day, you will lead Star in positions of authority, but we must all start somewhere, and this is where you start.’ Every time he says the word ‘you’, he slaps the tabletop with his right hand, making the trainees jump. Acheron stands up straight again and faces Fran. ‘They are all yours again, Fran, I’m off to do a little hard work. Hopefully, together with these new recruits, our hard work and dedication to the cause will make Star fly.’ He turns to the trainees and gives a mock salute. ‘Good luck recruits,’ he says and walks out of the door behind the desk. Fran watches him leave, and then turns back to the trainees.
‘An inspirational leader, I’m sure you all agree,’ she says. ‘Your training will now begin in earnest, and the gentleman to my left will guide you through that. I will most definitely be seeing you all later, but until then, I’ll leave in the capable hands of Tony Callas.’ Fran stands and, with a quick smile to Tony and the trainees, exits through the same door as Acheron.
When she has gone, Tony pushes his chair back and puts his feet on the table. ‘Lap it up, folks,’ he says, an expression of bored resignation on his face. He looks around the room before letting his eyes rest on the view outside the window. ‘Take a good look at that view, because chances are you won’t be seeing it again anytime soon. Our training is in a smaller, less impressive room than this. The view isn’t quite as good. In fact, there isn’t a view because it’s in the basement.’ After a brief moment admiring the scene outside the window, he stands.‘ Now, if you would all kindly follow me, we can make our way there and begin our four weeks together,’ he says, and moves towards the door. The trainees all shuffle out of their seats and follow. Emmet, as has been the case all his life, brings up the rear.
Tony leads the trainees down twenty floors, through the fume-filled car park and into a small room in the basement of the building. ‘This is our new home,’ he says, watching the trainees file in and take their seats around the small, laminated tables scattered throughout the room. ‘Now you all have me at a disadvantage because you know who I am, but I don’t know who you are. To fix this, you are all going to stand up and introduce yourselves to me and to the rest of the room, starting with the rather gloomy looking young man sitting in the back corner,’ he points at Emmet, who drops his head onto the cheap table, then drags his carcass into an upright position.
‘My name is Emmet,’ he says, ‘but don’t bother committing it to memory because I don’t think I’ll be staying on.’
Tony smirks. ‘Now, now, Emmet, don’t be alarmed by the naff little display of our CEO and the all powerful Fran. Star is, believe it or not, a good place to work. Give us a chance and you will be pleasantly surprised.’ Tony points to the young woman sitting beside Emmet. ‘Hopefully, you won’t be planning a runner like our man Emmet here. Tell us something unusual about yourself.’
The girl stands, a cheeky smile on her face. ‘Hello everyone, my name is River and I flow both ways.’
‘Hmm, interesting,’ says Tony as River sits down. ‘You aren’t alone in that regard here at Star.’
The procession of names and quirks continues until all of the trainees have introduced themselves, rather self-consciously, to themselves. As near as Emmet can tell, they are the same person, divided between nine bodies. Only two stand out: the easy flowing River sitting beside him, and the curvaceous Natalie, who just happens to be sitting in the exact spot where Emmet can leer at her without being obvious.
Emmet is in his sexual prime, and his lack of intimacy is weighing heavily on his psyche especially while looking at Natalie in her tight black dress. It has been many, many months since his last sexual encounter, which was an unsatisfying frenzy of physicality during the death throes of a doomed relationship. Now, sitting beside the sexually ambiguous River while looking at Natalie’s barely restrained breasts, his reluctant celibacy is at the forefront of his mind.
‘What a splendid group,’ says Tony, shaking Emmet out of a trance that was bound to lead to an embarrassing boner, ‘and what an exhausting process. Let’s have lunch, shall we?’ He looks at his watch. ‘Let’s see, its ten thirty now, so back here at one? I think a long lunch is warranted on your first day.’ With that, he gathers his possessions and departs the room at high speed.
The trainees continue to sit for a few minutes, looking anywhere and everywhere in order to avoid one another’s eyes. Eventually, Natalie stands and leaves the room. Emmet, never a leader but on this occasion a very enthusiastic follower, jumps out of his chair and makes a break for the door. Thoughts of escape from the world of insurance inspire his feet, which move like feet possessed, barely touching the floor in their effort to get themselves out of there.
‘Emmet, wait,’ says a sweet voice behind him. He turns to see River following. ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’ she asks, drawing up beside him.
‘Actually, what I want to get is away, but a coffee sounds like a good compromise,’ Emmet says, ignoring the suggestions coming from his id that, if followed, would take him well outside the bounds of civility.
‘I tell you what,’ says River. ‘I’ll buy you lunch if you promise to see out the day.’
‘How can I refuse?’
‘Easy, you say no,’ River says, taking Emmet by the arm and leading him, ever so gently, towards the elevator. In the dark recesses of his subconscious, Emmet’s id exalts.
River leads Emmet to a small cafe across the road from the Star Insurance building. She orders a sandwich on organic, wholegrain bread and Emmet orders a coffee. He is still a little bloated from breakfast, which was on such a grand scale that Plato felt inspired to take photographs.
‘Not hungry?’ River asks.
‘Nah, my mother made me a big breakfast this morning to celebrate my first day at work,’ Emmet says.
‘She probably didn’t expect it to be your last, then,’ River says as her sandwich arrives, the bread so full of grains that an aura of wholesome goodness surrounds it.
Emmet’s coffee arrives shortly after, totally goodness and aura free. ‘That organic stuff is a con, you know’ says Emmet, sipping at his coffee. ‘It’s all bullshit, what the farmers say.’
‘My uncle runs a market garden,’ River says, looking perplexed. ‘He wouldn’t bullshit me, I’m his favourite niece.’
Emmet watches the steam rise from the liquid in his cup. He remembers a time, not too long ago, when he asked a friend what he was going to get his mother for mother’s day. The reason for his friend’s hysterical reaction was forthcoming the following day, when the poor woman succumbed to a virulent cancer. ‘Sorry,’ was all that he could think to say.
River giggles. ‘You are a complete tool,’ she says. ‘I knew there was something I liked about you.’ She takes a bite of her sandwich, and chews with a contemplative air. ‘What do you think of our partners in insurance? There are one or two hot ones in there.’
Emmet’s mind, however, is somewhere else. ‘Do you really “flow both ways”?’ he asks, making little quotation marks in the air with his fingers.
‘Yeah,’ River says her brow furrowing. ‘Sort of. Possibly. I think some girls are very sexy.’ She puts her sandwich down. ‘I’ve never actually, you know, done it with a girl. But I think about it quite a bit.’ She picks up her sandwich again, which is beginning to lose shape and shed its organic innards. ‘So, really, the answer is “God knows”,’ she says, putting her sandwich down again to make quotation marks in the air with her fingers. ‘But you didn’t answer my question. What do you think of our fellow butt monkeys?’
‘The butt monkeys are OK,’ Emmet says, ‘but the monkey masters look a little hardcore. I don’t know what that Fran woman does to relax, but I reckon someone suffers when she does.’
‘What about Acheron!’ River says and laughs, ‘that grey hair, those sober eyes, that manic glint. I’d do him on the table right now!’
Emmet looks at River over his coffee. She blushes.
‘OK, I wouldn’t,’ she says, ‘but he is quite sexy in a seedy kind of way.’
Emmet leans back in his chair. ‘River,’ he says, ‘I think working at Star Insurance is going to be an experience.’
‘So you’re staying then?’ she asks, her smile widening.
‘Yeah,’ Emmet says. ‘I don’t see any way out of it. My mother would kill me if I didn’t but, what’s worse, is that my dad would follow me beyond the grave to make sure that I kept suffering.’
‘Best value coffee ever,’ River says, putting the sandwich down again, ‘but this is a crappy sandwich.’
Emmet and River return to the cramped training room to find the entire butt monkey brigade already there. Many look like they haven’t moved, like suicidal bunnies waiting patiently in the centre of the road to be hypnotised by oncoming lights. Tony, however, is absent. Instead, Fran is standing at the front of the room, accompanied by a very pretty, very slender woman.
‘Ah, the prodigal trainees,’ Fran says as they enter and take their seats. ‘Now that we are all here, we can get a move on. I know you were all expecting Tony to be taking your training, but there has been a necessary re-evaluation of the role that Tony is to play within Star Insurance and, consequently, he can no longer be involved with your group on a day-to-day basis. Instead, the management team think it would be more appropriate for an experienced call centre operator to take responsibility of your training and chose Ms Voula Spipidopoulos as that operator,’ she gestures towards the young woman beside her. ‘Voula is a team leader in our call centre. Her product knowledge is encyclopaedic, and her customer service skills impeccable. I am sure you will all benefit greatly from her knowledge and experience.’
Emmet sits transfixed as Fran continues her introduction, but her voice has faded into the background. In his subconscious, Emmet’s id and ego are both leering.
‘She is haich-oh-tee HOT,’ says Emmet’s id.
‘No arguments there, even though she is a little on the thin side,’ replies his ego.‘Mum’s cooking will fix that.’
The ego’s metaphoric jaw drops. ‘We are not going after her!’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because she’s unstable, that’s why. She has three packets of cigarettes in her bag, all different brands. Look at her! She’s a nervous wreck. The only time she isn’t shaking is when she is fondling those celebrity magazines sitting beside her smokes! Do you really want us to go out with a girl who has three different brands of cigarette in her bag and who is only comfortable when fondling pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? What if she knocks him back? Worse still, what if she doesn’t.’
If the ego had hands, it would be wringing them. ‘It’s not you that has to deal with the wreckage, mate. It’s a bloody pain, let me tell you. Blue balls aren’t the half of it.’ The ego contemplates the scene on the other side of Emmet’s eyeballs. ‘Remember Sue? We took months to recover.’
‘Yeah, I remember Sue, all right. Best fuck we ever had.’ The id pauses, lost in thought.
‘Fuck it,’ it says, moodily. ‘I want that sucking our member as soon as possible, if not sooner. Mental stability be damned.’
‘What about the other one, she’s pretty hot as well?’
‘I lost it for her at lunch. The girl-on-girl thing had me going, but she seems a little too eager.’
The ego sighs. ‘It’s because she seems well balanced and stable, isn’t it?’
‘It has been my experience that neurotic and erotic tend to go hand in hand,’ the id says, rather stiffly.
‘So does arsenic and death,’ the ego replies, but it knows it is fighting a losing battle. ‘All right, have it your way, it’s not as if there is anything I can do about it anyway,’ it says, ‘but I’ll be suggesting an extended bout of celibacy if it fails.’
‘Yeah, right, just like after Sue,’ says Emmet’s id, and wanders off to get things moving.
(ii)
Emmet spends the rest of the afternoon in a daze. He has vivid recollections of the sound of Voula’s voice, but can’t actually remember what she said. Her face is etched into his mind’s eye (an inspired idea and a lot of hard work by Emmet’s id), and the memory of her graceful movements sets his pulse racing with unsavoury sexual fantasies. Somehow, he finds himself sitting in the café across the road accompanied by River, the first day of training has ended and he is a little unsure of how he got here.
‘What a turn up,’ River says. ‘I wonder what happened to Tony.’
‘Hmm? Oh, Tony? Training probably isn’t his thing,’ Emmet replies.
‘Nah, I reckon that bitch Natalie might have had a word to someone about our long lunch,’ River says.
Emmet shrugs his shoulders. ‘Whatever.’
‘And what about Voula? What a skinny skank,’ River continues. ‘Encyclopaedic knowledge my bum. She came in carrying three different celebrity gossip magazines. Did you see her smoking at afternoon tea? She sucked down four cigarettes in ten minutes!’