‘What’s this?’ Ruprecht has picked up an empty amber tube from the floor.
‘Nothing,’ you say, ‘just getting rid of some stuff.’ Sleep sizzles into your thoughts like radio static. The little doors have disappeared. ‘Did you get your pod back?’
Ruprecht looks grimly out the window. ‘That damn dog,’ he says. A growl issues from his stomach. ‘You don’t have any food, do you?’
‘No,’ you say. Was it all a dream then? Disappointment burns within you, beads in your eyes, almost too much to bear.
‘Hmm.’ Ruprecht checks his watch. ‘Ed’s is still open…’
He turns away to count coins from his penny jar. You’re looking at SEE YOU THERE!
Holy shit! What’s going on? Ruprecht has his back to you, he’s saying something about making a new pod, meanwhile you are slowly rising up towards the ceiling! You try not to laugh – it’s like invisible hands have slipped under your feet and are lifting you, higher and higher –
Ruprecht turns round. Instantly you’re back on the floor. ‘What happened to Frisbee Girl?’ he says. He can’t see them, but quarks and electrons are shooting through the air, sparking from his body like a million miniature multicoloured lightning bolts.
You shrug. ‘Some other time.’
‘Oh.’ Another ferocious rumble issues from his stomach. ‘I don’t seem to have enough change,’ he says.
‘I’ll pay for both of us,’ you say. ‘We can have a race.’
‘A race?’
‘Why not?’ Your atoms are pulling upwards again. Every second you feel yourself lighter and lighter! Say if we started going back in time tonight, could we keep going back for as long as we wanted?
Ruprecht does one of his scoffing laughs. ‘My dear Skippy, no one’s beaten me in fifteen consecutive races. And those times I wasn’t even hungry.’
‘Well…’ You zip up your coat. Through the window the neon doughnut sign shines in at you, the door of doors, the gateway to everything beyond, today and yesterday and the day before, all the times and people you have ever loved. ‘Maybe it’s my lucky day,’ you say.
III
Ghostland
For where there are Irish there’s memory undying,
And when we forget, it is Ireland no more!
Rudyard Kipling
‘SERVICE: Smile; Efficiency; Reliability; Volunteering product information; Instant attention to new customers; Courtesy; Excellence.
‘Smile. The Smile is your personal storefront. It is the first point of contact between the Customer and the Café-restaurant, and so should be as carefully maintained as the espresso machine or the counter display.
‘Efficiency. Ed’s Doughnut House is dedicated to offering the Customer the two Q’s: Quality, Quickly…’
The boy isn’t even pretending to listen; he is chewing gum, which is banned on the very first page of the Employee Manual, and gazing off at the upper reaches of the kitchen walls, which Lynsey notes are discoloured by grease. She keeps going anyway, and the more he sighs and shrugs the slower she gets, just to remind him who’s in charge.
‘These are the absolute basics,’ she concludes. ‘Any Level One employee is expected to know them off by heart, before he or she even begins to think about Level Two. Now, let’s proceed to the espresso machine. Why don’t you make me a skinny mochaccino.’
Off he goes, slouch slouch scowl scowl, as if she’d just asked him for a pint of blood.
In ordinary circumstances, someone like Zhang would not have even a snowball’s chance of making Level Two. But of course these aren’t ordinary circumstances. We need to tread carefully here, Lynsey, Senan told her. This business has caused enough trouble for us already. An employee claiming trauma is the last thing we want. Have a chat with him, take his pulse. If he seems disgruntled maybe a promotion would sweeten him up a bit.
Well, Lynsey’s not sure how she feels about that. Okay, fair enough, Zhang’s been through a traumatic experience, she doesn’t deny that. Having someone die on your shift, that’s pretty unlucky. At the same time, he hasn’t actually put in for a promotion, and Tragedy or not, in her opinion it’d be totally unfair on Ruby and every other Level One worker if Zhang got promoted and they didn’t. Because, like, when is he not disgruntled? He’s always like that. But Senan’s Regional Manager, so what he says goes – plus, he’s hinted there could be a promotion in store for Lynsey too if they ever manage to get this mess sorted out. And why wouldn’t there be? The stuff she’s had to do in the last week has been way outside of her job description! Management calling her from London every day for updates, the Food Safety people sniffing around, though the worst has got to be the newspapers – they will just not let up, those people. Someone once said there’s no such thing as bad publicity, well, in the Café-restaurant business there is!!! Unless you think that people are going to queue up to eat in a place someone’s died!!! So Lynsey’s been running around like a blue-arsed fly, barely getting a wink of sleep, doing her best to take the calls and field the questions, and as Senan said, just make it absolutely clear, as delicately as she can, obviously, given the circumstances, and with all due respect to the family, that the death of the boy in question, while tragic, was NOT caused by or resulting from or in any way related to any Ed’s Doughnut House product, in fact the police said he actually hadn’t eaten anything at all in the Café-restaurant, unlike his little porky friend who’d eaten about twenty-five doughnuts. She must have used the words ‘tragedy’ and ‘unrelated’ five million times this week – her dad is keeping a scrapbook with all her newspaper and magazine appearances, ten all told, although four spelled her name wrong and one said she was thirty!!! Excuse me??? And of course who gets his own headline except Spa-face – ZHANG: HEROIC EFFORTS. She supposes he was quite heroic doing the Heimlich manoeuvre and stuff, even though the kid Daniel didn’t actually choke, but still it seems a bit unfair on Ruby and the other staff members, like suggesting they’re not heroic just because they come in and do their job every day, when in fact if it wasn’t for everyday people like that the world would just grind to a halt and the economy would be ruined.
Also, this is the worst mochaccino she has ever tasted in her entire life.
The Principal of Seabrook College came in to speak to her too, a couple of days after it happened. He was a tall, dynamic man, in his late thirties maybe? Basically he was doing the same thing she was, trying to protect the school’s image and explain that while it was a tragedy it was just this one crazy kid, and not anyone else’s fault. Having said that – he put his hand on her arm – on behalf of the school I want to apologize for any distress this might have caused you or your employees. He shook his head. I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years, he said, and I’m at a loss to understand this.
Lynsey doesn’t understand it either. He’s fourteen, and he takes an overdose just because his girlfriend dumped him? Jesus, like, relax! That’s life! People get dumped! If Lynsey had killed herself over every fucking self-absorbed arsehole who’d dumped her, she’d… well, she’d be pretty dead at this stage. Anyway he should’ve known it would happen sooner or later, that girl was way out of his league, it’s obvious from the photographs – no shortage of those, needless to say, Ravishing this and Tragic Beauty that and Teen Heartbreaker the other, not to mention Gorgeous Juliet in Real-life Romeo and Juliet Story, which, hello, a) that would only make sense if her name was Juliet but it’s not it’s Lori, and b) if the person had ever seen Romeo + Juliet they would know that is nothing like what happened in the Café-restaurant.