“Are you nuts?”
“I’m in mourning.”
“You’re what?’
“I’m in mourning. Grief-stricken.”
“Oh.” She adjusts a bra strap. “I’m sorry, like I said I just use it to unwind.”
“Never more, or I howl.” He waits for her big-shouldered partner in furniture moving to come down and cause blunt-force trauma to his head.
She stares at him. “You are nuts.”
“I live in the basement.”
She climbs back up the stairs, watching him over her shoulder.
“Sleep tight,” he says. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
Why has his sister entered his thoughts now, along with these other women? Why has he always had women around him, never a proper male buddy to play with? He did try racquetball once but had difficulty with the concept of chasing balls. Perhaps he can become buddies with Robert Vinkle. Certainly Bob made it clear that Reese is welcome at the bar anytime. Perhaps Vinkle’s can become a home away from the basement apartment where Reese will meet straight shooters and talkers who will offer tips on how to win child custody cases. He used to creep into Chelsea’s room in the middle of the night, holding his hand over a flashlight, creating a shadow of a huge hand on the ceiling. “Mummy!” Chelsea would scream. Reese would dart back to his room. He repeated this offence nightly. Betsy grew tired of the disturbance and stopped answering her calls. His little sister had no choice but to cry herself to sleep while he sat in the dark slowly bringing his hand closer to the flashlight, making the shadow bigger and more terrifying. A crow, devoid of soul.
He eats a handful of Doritos and studies the chemical ingredients listed on the packet, soothed by the knowledge that a long shelf life means a short human life, and that “colouring” involves red dye, which stimulates cancer cells. He eats another Dorito while listening for noises from above; just minor shuffling. He takes out the picture of Elena and tries to gaze into the eyes that stare at the parakeet. The hum resonates through his body of lies. He dials the number that was once his, knowing that Roberta doesn’t have call display on the bedroom phone, hoping but fearing that the art student will pick up, his voice husky with sex. “Who’s this?” Reese will demand with such force that the art student will have no choice but to give his full name and address.
“Hello?” Roberta says, sounding annoyed, tired, stressed.
Reese can’t speak. He manages to make some guttural noises.
“Don’t phone here, Reese,” she says and hangs up.
The dial tone drones. He stares at the linoleum floor, which is getting dirtier daily. He must wash it, buy a mop and bucket. He must do that tomorrow. His neck hurts. And he must buy a pillow. Where was that pillow sale — feather or fibre, any size, one price? It upsets him beyond measure that he can’t remember. He put a pillow over Chelsea’s face once, watched while her legs thrashed. He threatened to do it again if she told on him. He can see the legs now, as slight as Clara’s, pathetic in their futility. He knew that if he continued to press down the thrashing would stop and he would lose his mother’s love forever. Instead he read “Spiderman” while Chelsea whimpered quietly. “I hate you,” she whispered.
They are in here, in the basement, the women.
Serge Hollyduke asks to speak with Reese privately regarding Marge Stallworthy, the kindly senior citizen whose walker bumps the chairs of the other callers. “She stinks of shit,” Serge explains, “nobody wants to sit beside her.”
“Since when?”
“It’s been getting worse, it’s because she spends too long on the phone.”
“She gets pledges.”
“She slows things down. Anyway, nobody’ll sit beside her. They’re threatening to quit.”
Reese surveys the pool of callers. Aside from the truly desperate who barely speak English, he sees mostly adolescents without humility or tact, who will undoubtedly spill Coke on their consoles and short the computer. He despairs when he considers that it is entirely possible that he will spend the rest of his life managing adolescents. The ones in Marge Stallworthy’s vicinity have angled their chairs away from her. Some of them pinch their noses.
Serge runs his hands over the short hairs on his head. “I’ve got ten callers on the Crohn’s and Colitis program. They’re supposed to spend ten seconds per call, Marge is at like six hundred.”
“She’s doing two hundred percent better than the ones zipping through,” Reese says. “It balances out.”
“I’m talking mutiny here. Nobody wants to sit beside her.”
If possible, Reese would like to shield Marge from youthful cruelty and scorn. He watches the live display that tracks the callers’ performances. She continues to out-perform the boy in dreads and the halter-topped girl who regularly presses disconnect when the dialler beeps because she’s in deep discussion with her halter-topped neighbour. Surprisingly the team, overall, is not doing badly. Crohn’s and Colitis are not easy sells. Marge may have an edge because she’s incontinent herself and can genuinely plead the cause. “I’ll talk to her,” Reese says. In the meantime he sits down with his technician to look at donor history and establish exclusions for the Voice of First Nations campaign. “I’d stay away from the Conservative party,” he says. The technician, Wayson Hum, nods as though Reese has given the correct answer. Wayson Hum rarely speaks or makes eye contact with anything but monitors. His father is a grocer in Chinatown. Wayson frequently nibbles on fruits and vegetables Reese doesn’t recognize.
“What about geography?” he asks. “Have you set up the time zones?”
Wayson nods as though Reese has given the correct answer.
“Let’s suppress all donors who haven’t given for two years,” Reese suggests. “And suppress all donors who gave over fifty dollars, we’ll do them when the team’s up to speed.”
He spies Marge leaving the washroom and heads her off. “Marge,” he asks, “do you have a minute?”
“Certainly. Queer weather we’re having. I had to turn up my thermostat to get the damp out of my bones.”
He opens the door to the boardroom for her, noticing that she does stink of shit, and waits as she hobbles over to the table. He pulls a chair out for her. “You know how the dialler works, don’t you, Marge?”
“The what?”
“The computer that makes the calls.”
“Oh yes, very clever.”
“The thing is, if one person is spending a long time on the phone it confuses the machine. It reduces the average.” Marge blinks, clearly having no idea what he’s talking about. “The machine works on averages to time calls,” Reese clarifies. “If the average is reduced, the dialler assumes callers won’t be ready, which means people are sitting around with nothing to do.”
“The young people.”
“That’s right.”
“I do so enjoy them. They’re quite lively, aren’t they?”
He tries to imagine her young, without humility or tact, in a halter top. She has seen twice as much life as he has and she is still going, still smiling, still talking about the weather. Twice as much life as he has had would kill him. “I was wondering if you’d like to sit by the window,” he says. “It’s a corner seat, you’d have more privacy.”