It was more like resigning, as you would from any job which you had proved unequal to. I resign from life, muttered James to himself, with a half-smile. It was almost fun, this. The sensation of a load released. And it didn’t really matter, in the end, what name you gave to what he was about to do. After it, there would just be a full stop, and relief.
SALLY CHILTERN
Twenty minutes until the interview, Sally’s ever-eager phone reminded her. Twenty minutes till the Age journalist showed up. That was fine. She’d be at the office in ten. After that, the phone could say what the hell it liked, because it wouldn’t be with Sal any more. She would have given it to her personal assistant, Meghan, who would deal with anything that came up – any calls, emails – while Sal was busy. As usual, Sal’s husband Dec had all her appointments in his diary, and he knew not to send dirty messages outside what they called the Filth Windows, or FWs. He was much more into rude texting than Sal was, but she did miss it a little bit when the phone wasn’t with her. In all other ways, though, not having it for a couple of hours was a blessing. It was great having Meghan to shear through the weeds that grew ceaselessly in her inbox. Invitations to speak unpaid, for Christ’s sake, like she was still 21. ‘There’s no budget, but the girls would be so thrilled to have you and we’ll feed you well!’ Emails from struggling restaurants, her name dumped in the subject line in a hollow attempt at chumminess. ‘Sal, we haven’t seen you in a while!’ You had to turn down the background buzz, sometimes. Background buzz. I like that. I could use that in something.
It was definitely a thing you heard more and more about, the effect carrying a phone everywhere had upon humans. She’d heard on a podcast that scientists were already recording a change, for the worse, in global sleep patterns – even among people who switched their phones off for the night. Just the presence of the devices created a sort of subconscious twitchiness, an unease. It was a product of the slavishness which the world had wandered into; of the mental pattern established by checking a single device hundreds of times in a day. Asleep or awake, the brain reached insatiably for the phone.
Still, it was amazing what they could do, you had to admit it. Right now, Sal could see from the screen that it was twenty-five degrees – beautiful early autumn weather, although she had never got used to thinking of the seasons the wrong way around. She could see, if she opened the relevant apps, the stock markets, a range of sports scores. Neither finance nor sport was a big interest of hers, but she found it useful to have a bluffer’s knowledge of both, as she did with a huge range of subjects. If she flipped on to WhatsApp she could follow the excited chatter of three of her mates who were organizing a trip down to Lorne for Easter. The chief organizer was unemployed, so the build-up to this three-day holiday had become her major undertaking in life: she’d set up the chat group as early as Christmas and it had now produced more than a thousand messages in total. Sal rolled her eyes indulgently at the latest dispatch. Still so pumped for April, girls! What was Bridget going to do when it was all over? She’d jump in the river.
You didn’t need a phone, of course, to see that it was a glorious day. The sky, over the dashing art-deco façades of Bourke and Collins streets, was a confident blue, Australian blue. Weekend shoppers were out; in rooftop bars, weekend drinking had begun already. Some people would find it weird going into the office, doing promo, building up to a big speech, on a Saturday. Melbourne, even more than other cities, reminded you at every turn it was fun time: crowds flocking to the stadium, rowing boats slicing their way upriver. But Sal didn’t mind it at all.
She’d always liked the feeling, in fact, of working when others weren’t. As a high-flying teenager she used to help James off to sleep by making up an adventure – do you fight the monster or hide, the same as his computer games but without the computer – and then, when he was snoring, return to her desk, her midnight essay. Being active while others slept: it had felt like a superpower of some kind. Even now, she hadn’t entirely lost the buzz that came from being many hours ahead of Britain, something she was able to discuss on a weekly basis because Mum never seemed to tire of it. Now, what time is it there? Breakfast? Goodness!
Near the top of Bourke, Sal paused, as she occasionally did, to enjoy the sight of all the bustle. Melbourne often reminded her of those Richard Scarry books they’d had as kids. Of course, it wasn’t always that smooth. On almost this exact spot just before Christmas, a tram driver had had a bust-up with his wife, let his mind wander, hit someone who was checking the cricket score on her phone. She survived, but the streets around Sal’s workplace briefly went crazy. Police tape everywhere, one of the city’s central arteries clogged up, two hundred people made late for work or doctor’s appointments or dates. In one of her columns, Sally had used it as a salutary example. There was nothing an individual could do about the potential for mayhem that existed when humans tried to carry out their plans at the same time as one another. So you had to outsmart it, leave more time, plan well. Expect things to go wrong.
It was lucky she’d survived, or Sal would probably have felt bad using her as an anecdote.
Already in her mind’s eye, Sal could see the peninsula which she and Dec were driving down to next weekend. A spa, a wine tasting. Dec would undoubtedly overdo it at the winery and be all over her before they even got back to the room, which had a hot tub and a ‘romantic terrace’. He was a bit route-one sometimes, Dec, but at least he still fancied her, which was more than was true of some people’s husbands. One of the girls in the WhatsApp group was the only person in Australia not to know that her man was gay and regularly getting spanked by a sommelier. Sal was planning an intervention next week. Everyone agreed she was the one to do it. The trouble with being a business expert was that people seemed to think you could sort out pretty much any other type of business, too. Just like the way that, because she’d written a bestseller on time management, people thought it was hilarious if she was ten seconds late anywhere.
‘See the footy last night?’ asked Arnie, the concierge, rising very slowly to usher her to the lift. Although Sal had been working in this building for three years, a recent security overhaul meant that you now had to be bleeped into the lifts with an ID card which he alone, in the building and perhaps the universe, possessed. She had a suspicion that the ‘overhaul’ had been effected purely to give Arnie some duties to carry out, but if so, he hadn’t exactly risen to them. As always, he shuffled across the hall as if it didn’t really matter whether Sal got upstairs today or tomorrow.
‘Bombers were a shambles,’ said Sal, glancing at the phone. Two minutes. Perfect. ‘Thought they were meant to be good this year.’
‘Believe it when I see it,’ said Arnie, with a low laugh, raising the magic card to the sensor.
Meghan was already at work, looking – as usual – like she’d slept in the office overnight. Hair unwashed and hanging listlessly at her shoulders; owlish, unflattering glasses. Meghan was one of these girls who could probably look great with even twenty minutes’ effort: she had great boobs, her skin had that smooth uncomplicated quality of someone who hadn’t been kicked too hard by life yet – but she would never go to that effort. And Sal was aware of the irony of thinking these thoughts, when half her life was spent steering people away from objectification, so she naturally never said a thing about it.
‘So just to flag up, you’ve got the ABC interview after lunch, and then a car is coming to pick you up for the rehearsal, and there’s that other interview, which is a phoner, which is about women heroes in the workplace?’
As usual, Meghan laid no particular