Broken Rules and Other Stories by Barry Lee Thompson

Author:Barry Lee Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781925760576
Publisher: Transit Lounge

CAREERING

The appointment started off well enough. The careers officer seemed to take a quick shine to me. He asked me to sit down, then closed the door, and he took a long time to return to his desk, and I fancied he might be checking me out from behind my chair. I liked the calm of his office. An official smell, of paper and files and biro ink. The man had an odd kind of a smile that never completely left his face. I’d missed his name at the beginning, when I walked in and he offered his hand, but it didn’t seem important so I didn’t ask him to repeat it. He told me that I was his last of the day. ‘Last what?’ I asked. I knew he meant the appointment, but I was in a light-hearted mood. He offered me a confidential aside on the slowness and tedium of the afternoon’s earlier interviews. I wondered if he used the same routine on everyone, but I smiled back, to please him, and to make him believe I was flattered, that I was falling for his patter, and to make the time in the office as smooth and easy as I could.

He opened a manila folder. He peered at me. ‘Michael,’ he said.

‘Mike,’ I corrected.

He said he’d been looking over my file, coming to his point in his practised way, ‘and you seem to be a very capable student.’ He asked if I’d given any thought to what I might do when I left school later that year. I nodded. He nodded too. Then he asked me to picture the environment I’d like to work in. He told me to take my time, and when I was ready I was to tell him all about it.

I looked around his office. It was the room, I supposed, where he spent most of his time in the day, and therefore most of the time in his life. The side wall had a row of gunmetal filing cabinets. There was an old-fashioned hatstand in the corner by the window holding a man’s coat and umbrella, and another coat, perhaps from the woman at the desk outside.

I began to describe a small office in an old dilapidated building in a corner of the town centre that people rarely visit. Inside are echoey, dimly lit corridors. Just four of us work in the office, including Fullerton, the branch manager. Margaret is a dedicated smoker, and the place is filled with her smoke by ten every morning. George is also a smoker, but he smokes less and prefers to go outside for his cigarettes. The paint on the cold stone walls has become yellowed with nicotine. It’s worse towards the ceiling. Even the paperwork in the filing cabinets smells of old smoke. The phones only ring about four, five times a day. Sometimes we let them ring and ring and don’t bother to pick up. There are other businesses in the building, but we only have a vague idea of what they are, or who works there.

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