On another day I would have left more than an hour earlier, but the managers and directors at the company had all signed up to 'Carpool for Haiti', the concept being that the savings in fuel would be donated to a relief fund. Most of us lived so close to work that we would be expected to bolster the pot with a few hundred pounds besides.
While I was neither manager nor director, I had been around long enough to be included in the general category. The end result of all of this was that I was cold, and late by my standards.
It was undeniably for a good cause, although I would have preferred the option of simply paying the money. Hell, if there was going to be a month of this, I would have happily paid double or triple for the privilege of driving my own car.
Impatient, I peered again down the street towards the main road, but nothing moved apart from the occasional flash of a car rumbling past, and -- hazy in the distance -- the smoke rising from the slim towers on the rough shapes of Bratenbridge's two power stations. The bulky buildings would still catch my eye, even though I had lived my entire life with those distant monsters on the horizon.
After an eternity, a silver Mercedes coasted down the narrow crescent, its still-blazing headlights reflected by the gray brick that defined Bratenbridge -- it was as if the town was hewn from a single quarry, each house from a single block, with the thin lines of mortar scratched in as a decorative afterthought.
I waved at the car, letting my features crease into a natural smile, and stood back as it pulled alongside. The front window rolled down and a hand was awkwardly thrust through; this I took and shook in a way that I hoped wouldn't cause too much discomfort to Mark, the owner of the hand.
"Bill, mate!", he said, unnecessarily loudly. "We're a bit late. You're our last pickup. You haven't been waiting long?"
"Not at all." I replied, unfolding my frozen left hand with difficulty so that I could transfer my briefcase from it to my right. Ariah had already scooted to the middle seat, and so I followed my case into the back of the car.
"How are you, Mark? How's Lauren?", I asked after I had shaken hands with Ariah and Pete in the back of the vehicle, and with Henry, the driver. I was a little worried that I had remembered the wrong name.
"She's doing great, she was promoted last week. She's the deputy head now."
I nodded as if this meant something to me, and we were on our way.
* * *
We arrived at a multi-storey carpark at the edge of Bratenbridge. Most of the few parking spaces in the company building was taken up by the directors, so the rest of us parked somewhere in the town. I usually left my Ford at a tire place nearer to work that let out places to commuters, but I did not suggest it to Henry, as the expensive Mercedes would have looked out of place.
When we finally stepped out of the car it became apparent that the expectation was that I walk with them. This was not ideal: not only am I by nature a terrible conversationalist, but I was from a completely different department to them -- I was a marketeer and they were in human resources -- we did not even have work in common. I followed the group in silence down the stairwell, its walls slathered in green paint, and onto the busy street. There I announced in vague terms that I had "something to pick up", and we parted company.
Moving towards an alleyway that I knew held both a dry-cleaner's and a post office, I found it a relief to be walking alone. The familiar view of the street in the morning, the sun giving an almost whitewashed look to the gray walls on one side while lending a leaden aspect to the shadowed right, was extremely soothing.
In case I was observed, I headed into the alley that I had spotted. I did not go as far as to loiter around for as long as it would have taken me to pick up a freshly-cleaned suit, but headed directly towards work, taking the road parallel to the High Street, by which I assumed my fellow carpoolers would be travelling.
The road here was cobbled, and the shops were cafés and speciality stores: a small electronics boutique with a grimy facade, a glitzy store selling ballet dancing supplies, a place that boasted it sold the 'best cream teas in the North' -- Bratenbridge was about as indicative of the North as Hong Kong was of China. There was a bookshop down this street that I frequented from time to time, but they only really sold classics and literary works, more for lining bookshelves than to be enjoyed.
After a time, a lengthening in the plume of smoke rising from Bratenbridge A ahead of me -- now a more formidable presence on the horizon -- alerted me to the time. I had twenty minutes before I was formally late. I would get to work in ten, but it was still unthinkable to still be on my way at that hour.
In a sense this was almost liberating, although this weak impression had to battle with the horror gnawing at my gut.
I finally reached the end of Cornut Street. The quickest way here would be to take another alleyway to rejoin the High Street, but I was afraid that my friends would see me ahead and I would be forced to wait for them to catch up, before plodding along with them all the way to work. Therefore I kept heading forwards onto a very straight street with houses on either side. I was the only one walking there, and I felt a little foolish and out of place. However, I soon reached the end of this road and broke onto the green at the side of the Methodist church, which I cut across to reach the dual-carriageway that led to work.
I have always loved walking beside busy motorways and A-roads. The rhythm of the cars rushing past settles me, with the trees overhead and the space all around.
I made it to work with eleven minutes to spare, greeting the tan-skinned woman sitting behind the light wooden counter as I passed the semi-circular reception desk.
Stepping through the blue-carpeted lobby, its walls the same stony gray as the rest of Bratenbridge, I took a lift upstairs.
The phone was already ringing in my office, and it was all I could do to prevent myself from running past the long lines of cubicle walls. Thankfully it had not stopped ringing when I reached it, and so began my morning, involving another dozen or so calls and two internal meetings.
* * *
If I had to reveal my absolute worst quality, it would be that I'm far too eager to go to lunch. It was a quarter past twelve, I already had my jacket on, and this time I really was running, skipping down the stairs and bursting through the fire doors into the lobby. Like a child. As I say, it's my worst quality.
* * *
On reflection, my mistake was looking at her in the first place. I was heavily provoked. It was remarkable enough that there was anyone at all sitting on the plush blue sofas that formed the visitor's area in the lobby. She had long black hair and wore a bright purple trenchcoat, expensive-looking despite its gaudiness, with black satin trousers and a curious half-twist on her lips. As soon as I came through the door she caught my eye. I stopped clumsily, embarrassed, and looked away. A beat passed.
"Hello." she said.
It was at least a second before I realised she was talking directly to me. I caught her eye again and smiled, as if she was a client I was doing business with.
"Hi," I replied. "Billy Grace."
I began to go for the business cards in my suit pocket, but was foiled by my brown jacket, which was still zipped up.
It seemed to me that her expression became a little wistful, although this could have been my imagination. Keeping eye contact, she angled her head towards the sofa across from her. I sat down. Neither of us said anything for a few moments, and we each studied the other's face. She had a broad mouth, an angular nose, hazel eyes…
I blinked.
"I'm going to lunch." I said. Then, stupidly, "It's the only place I have."
The tip of my ear grew hot. She reached out with her right hand, pressing the tips of two fingers against my cheek.
My face burned and I stood up suddenly, breaking the contact. I grasped her hand in mine and moved it up and down as if I was shaking it.
"Good, uh, to meet you." I blurted, then let go of her hand, turned around and stormed out of the building, clenching my teeth together so hard that my jaw creaked with every heavy step I took. I strode down the road to town, confused and furious. I had humiliated myself, I was sure of that. Oh Christ what had I said?
I was calmer once I had reached the self storage centre. Heading under the height barrier, through the carpark to the rear of the building and reaching into my pocket for my key -- Jesus, my hands were shaking! -- I opened the heavy back door. The inside was one giant corridor, cubicle after cubicle on both sides, the walls and the doors polished to a mirror sheen. There was rarely anyone there at that hour, and I walked confidently through the hallway and turned the corner to my own little room.
The scene inside was exactly as I had left it, my little lamp and desk and leather armchair, my stack of books rising from the floor. Closing the door quickly, I felt my way through the darkness to the lamp and switched it on, flooding the room with a pool of yellow light. For half an hour or so my all my life would contain was the few pieces of furniture and my books.
And what books! My greatest passion in life is for Tolkien-esque fantasy. Tolkien-esque, in the sense that there are elves and humans and dwarves and goblins who all interact with each other the way that you would expect them to. Tolkien himself would have hated the books that I love, with their brazen sensationalism, utterly predictable characters and over-reliance on graphic violence on the most ridiculous scale.
All of this was to my taste. I like to be shocked in the same way over and over again and to know beforehand how everything will turn out. I understand that world, and it appeals to me.
The book I was reading was huge and grotesque, coarse and endearing. By the third battle scene all the likeable characters had been killed off and the universe was, as usual, in tatters: destruction and chaos reigned from the peak of the highest mountain to the depths of the darkest forest.
Too soon I ran out of time, and with a heavy heart I placed the thick hardback face-first on the desk, turned the lamp off, and made my way back to work.
It was only passing through the great double-doors into the lobby that I remembered the woman in the purple trenchcoat. I looked for her on the blue sofas, but she had gone.
When it was time to go home I resigned myself to walking through the dark streets of Bratenbridge with a cross-section of human resources. As I had expected, we had very little to say to each other, and I suspect my presence was a dampener on their own conversations.
Still, after a few minutes of silence, they began to chatter away about firings and Sambuca and bestiality and all the other aubjects that fill the conversations of human resources departments around the world, and I myself was content to stroll leisurely through the cold evening air, a little ahead of them. The traffic on the return journey was terrible, and the Bon Jovi that Henry played throughout the trip even worse, but we were all relaxed and happy, partly from the company and partly from the novelty of sharing a car with so many other people.
* * *
As I had left work with Henry and the others we arrived at my house earlier than I would have otherwise. I shook hands with everyone again, and we all made promises to see each other the next day, and I watched the Mercedes as it leapt down the road with the enthusiasm of a dog after a squirrel.
I am proud of my home, which I have owned for eight years. With three bedrooms it may be too big for me, but a real house outside town is far better than a little flat in the centre. Here I have an iron gate to oil and two lawns to mow and acres of carpet to clean; you cannot form a relationship with a glorified hotel room. That is how I feel, anyway.
* * *
After I had eaten and changed my clothes, I walked to the pub for my weekly bullshitting session with my oldest friends. The trip to the Goat and Cane took about five minutes, and although I had gained a good half-hour from my early departure from work, I was still the last of our group to arrive. Ordering a stout, I sat down at our table, where Alex and Blake were, as usual, discussing politics.
"How do Anarchists play Follow the Leader?"
Blake considered the question as if it were something tremendously profound.
"I suppose we all end up wandering off on our own," he said eventually, glancing sideways at Alex. "And Marxists? Does the line stop every few minutes while everyone turns around?"
"It's called a revolution!" Alex slammed his fist on the table, causing his drink to topple over, and scowled unrepentantly at the pool of beer slowly making its way to the table's edge.
Janine started laughing in high-pitched squeaks, her face turning bright red and her breath coming out in ragged gasps. We waited for her to finish.
Coughing, she turned to me.
"What about you, Billy? How does a Capitalist play Follow the Leader?"
There's a small group at the front of the line, and everyone's holding hands, hugging and kissing each other. Every now and then someone in this group falls to the ground, bloody stabwounds in their back. Just behind the leaders are a line of bouncers, glaring hatefully towards the rear of the line. Behind them are a few individuals, gradually dropping behind, who will every now and then make a run for the group at the front. The bouncers will usually intercept them, crushing their skulls between their meaty fists, but every now and then someone will get through. Right at the back are a huge crowd all dressed in rags. Here people collapse periodically, dead from exhaustion, malnutrition and disease. To escape this fate a person will eat their neighbours alive…
I shrugged.
"We just follow the leader, I guess."
Scott scratched the side of his face.
"Everyone's doing something, right? Some resin, some coke. That's the capitalist ideal, get high and stay high."
"Not Billy," Janine replied. "He has no vices."
"I drink."
I held up my pint glass as proof.
"No you don't. People who drink, they put whisky in their coffee, their hands shake all the time."
Scott laughed.
"I bet he's a secret cokehead. Three lines of charlie off the dash every morning, never misses."
Chuckling, I gulped down a swallow of beer, but thought of my little room with the armchair and lamp.
Leaving the pub I was a little woozy, and so decided to put off my shopping until the next morning. After half an hour spent sitting at the back door polishing my shoes, I walked upstairs and set my alarm for four, showered, cleaned the bathroom, changed into my pyjamas, and fell asleep on top of the covers.
Predictably, each one of my frenetic dreams contained a woman in a purple trenchcoat.
