a (gratuitously) bawdy caper with capitalist undertones

The office is dank and smells of onions and something else that I don’t know the noun for. The guy on the other side of the desk has a handlebar moustache and a nervous twitch. He is staring at me and I am staring at him, neither of us inclined to say anything. Who can say how much longer we will sit here like this? Certainly, I can’t and I doubt the handlebar moustache man can either.

The handlebar moustache man and I work for the same company. I know his name but I don’t see the point in revealing it. Besides, I only know his official name, the name the company gave him when he joined, not his real name. My company name is X by the way. Well, actually it’s Xerxes, but all my colleagues call me X for short. I’ve been employed by the company for about ten years, give or take. Initially I hated the work, but over time I’ve grown to enjoy it in a perverse sort of way. I don’t get paid much, but that’s fine because I hate spending money. I would say I am an okay employee. I get my work done without complaining and I’m quick and rarely make mistakes. On the other hand, I have zero ambition and I can’t stand the platitudes that people like my boss espouse.

I wish the handlebar moustache man would stop twitching, but he won’t anytime soon, I can see that very clearly. Maybe he will never stop. I’m glad I don’t twitch like that. Of course, I have other problems to contend with, problems that the handlebar moustache man no doubt would be glad he didn’t have if he knew that I had them, which he doesn’t because my problems are hidden away and are therefore not discernible, at least not to the naked eye.

Presently, a door opens and an egg-timer-shaped woman steps into the office. She’s wearing a tartan skirt suit and has amazing skin. Her eyes lance me with their blueness. Hey, she says with the nonchalance I’ve come to expect of a certain type of employee who works for the company. I think she’s addressing me, but I can’t be sure. The handlebar moustache man says: Sorry, who are you? It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak. He sounds like I’d expect a gnome to sound if it could speak. Never mind who I am, says the woman tartly. If you don’t mind, she adds, I’d like to speak to X here. The handlebar moustache man says he does mind as it happens, that we’re in the middle of something here, something important. The woman glares at him ferociously. I say it’s fine, that we can finish our stalemate thing another time. The handlebar moustache man says that if I leave, I lose by default. I say that I couldn’t give a fuck if I lose and the handlebar moustache man looks offended. The woman laughs and so do I. It feels good. I should laugh more often, I think. Then I remember why I don’t laugh more often and although I continue to laugh heartily, I am in fact faking it and not really laughing at all, not on the inside, which is what matters, not that there is an inside, of course, but as a metaphor it will do.

Abruptly the woman stops laughing. I almost forgot, she says, here. She hands me an A4-sized envelope which has my company name printed on it. Congratulations, she says. Immediately I am suspicious. What for? I say. Open the envelope, she says, you’ll see. I tear open the envelope and pull out the letter contained inside. It’s a short letter: two paragraphs of anodyne text: the first informing me I’ve been promoted to a Grade 2 position, the second detailing my new salary, a mind-boggling sum that makes me feel queasy. I know I should act happy and grateful – the woman’s facial expression intimates strongly that she expects this – so I do just that. In fact, I act more than happy, I act elated. I spring from my chair and I whoop and fist pump and then I go and give the handlebar moustache man a kiss on his bald pate. He flinches and snarls and says get the fuck away from me you cretin. Then I go over to the woman and I kiss her on the lips and she reciprocates and I know we are going to have to have sex, which we do in her office overlooking the atrium on the 17th floor. I fuck her like a crazy man and come multiple times. I think she does too, judging by the noises she makes. When we’re finished we light up some Cubans (I always keep some in my suit pocket because you just never know). Fuck me that was good, I say, exhaling cigar smoke out of three facial orifices simultaneously¹. She scowls. She says: I prefer you don’t swear in my office. I say I’m sorry and she says it’s okay. We chat for a while. She tells me she works in Function 3 and that she’s been a Grade 2 for about three years. I ask her what it’s like being a Grade 2 and she says it’s not a whole lot different to being a Grade 3, except for the hours are longer, the work harder and the pressure far greater. We have a good laugh about that, although again I become self-conscious and find myself fake laughing.

When we’ve finished the cigars, we put our clothes back on and the woman shows me to my new office, which is also on the 17th floor, although mine overlooks the scarred scorched landscape of the outside world rather than the atrium, not that I’m complaining. The woman gives me a little peck on the cheek and says see you around and then she’s gone. Immediately, the phone on my desk rings. It’s an old-fashioned looking phone attached to a wire that scurries away somewhere behind my desk. Warily, I pick up the receiver. Hello? I say. Is that X? says a man’s sonorous voice. Yes, it’s X. Who am I speaking with please? Yanni, says the voice, but everyone calls me Y. I’m your new boss, he adds, welcome aboard. Thank you, I say. I thought I’d give you a briefing, he says, seeing as your predecessor kind of died and is obviously not around to do a handover. I’m sorry, I say, for your loss. Thanks, says Y, although just between me and you, he wasn’t really up to the job, so not really much of a loss. Hey ho, life moves on and all that! I’m on the 19th floor, office 264, right by the bronze statuette of a child bawling her eyes out, you can’t miss it. See you in say five? Five it is, I say.

I decide to take a little nap and set the alarm on my phone to wake me in four minutes. I figure one minute should be enough to get to Y’s office. I recline my chair and fall asleep almost immediately. I dream that I am sucking, for some reason, on a distended breast with a brownish-yellow areola. I look up and see the breast is attached to the handlebar moustache man. Fuck no, I exclaim in my dream. I remove my mouth from the nipple and run away from the handlebar moustache man, who I can hear beseeching me to return. After a while, I stop running to get my breath back and a man with bark-like skin, a decrepit bent-over man, appears beside me. Take this, he says, you’ll need it. He hands me an envelope. I open it hurriedly to find a small sheet of blotter paper divided into squares; each square is printed with a scary-face emoji. It’s acid, says the old man, good shit too. Reflexively, I rip off a square and put it on my tongue. I wait, but nothing happens. It’s a dud, I tell the old man. Is it? he says, smiling. His smile widens so far his face cracks apart into two segments. One segment falls to the ground, grows little feet instantaneously and scampers away making a whinnying sound. Two eyeballs pop from the other segment and explode into red smoke. The smoke chokes me. I can’t breathe. I gasp, retch, clutch my chest. I am dying, I realise. At the moment of death, I wake up to the sawing-of-metal sound of my phone alarm.

Fuck, I think. I rush to get to Y’s office. I take the escalator to the 19th floor and then the travelator. I hop off when I see the child-bawling-her-eyes-out statue, which looks very lifelike and makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I knock on the door and the voice I recall from the brief telephone conversation earlier says for me to come on in. I open the door and there Y is, attired in a dragon-printed kimono and sprawled out on a sofa, a large glass of what looks like whisky in his hand. X, he says, nice to meet you. Likewise, I say. Care for a drink? he says. Erm, I prevaricate. Go on X, you know want to, cajoles Y. I do, but alcohol is bad for my liver, not to mention my heart, and a weak heart could lead to neurological issues further down the line and the last thing I need is neurological issues. Yes, why not, I say. That’s the spirit X! says Y, gesticulating towards a glass cabinet that is stacked full of unlabelled bottles of various brown and yellow liquids. Help yourself, says Y. I open the cabinet and pick out a bottle at random. Then I realise I have no glass. Is there a spare glass? I say. Actually no, no there isn’t come to think of it, says Y. Oh well, you can just swig from the bottle. It seems unseemly to me to swig from the bottle like some bibulous drunkard, but this is my new boss and I don’t want to cause offence so I think fuck it and I unscrew the bottle and take a swig from it. I swill the liquid in my mouth and my taste buds register rum. Mount Gay if I’m not mistaken, I think. Correct, says Y. Sorry? I say. Yes, it is Mount Gay, says Y. Now listen X, we work you hard here, I won’t lie to you, but we have a lot of fun too I can assure you of that, although it does rather depend on one’s definition of fun. Anyway, I will shortly be emailing you your first assignment. It’s a pretty good opener, I would say. In at the deep end type of thing. Any issues, feel free to ask. Not me, of course, I’ll be too busy. Who then? says X. Who what? says Y. Who should I ask then if I’ve got any questions? Ah, I see, well you can try the woman you were fucking earlier. And if she doesn’t know she’ll be able to point you in the direction of someone who does. I do a facial expression that I imagine to myself evinces discombobulation. And X, says Y. Yes? I say. No more fucking during working hours please. The company doesn’t pay you to fuck. Of course, I say. I make to put the bottle down, but Y insists I take it as a settling-in present and after trying to decline the offer and Y insisting that I take it, I say: okay, thanks, I appreciate it and I take myself and the bottle back to my office, where I log onto my computer and lo and behold I have an email from Y which goes like this:

No sooner have I read the email then there is a knock at my office door. I look up to find a man with a drainpipe of a face staring in at me through the glass rectangle in the door. I motion for the man to come in. He does so. He is dressed shambolically in an ill-fitting herringbone suit. His shirt collar is grimy, his shoes scuffed, his nails dirty, his tie creased. He smells of creosote. You ready? he says in a gruff voice. Yeah, I guess, I say. I follow the man as he scuttles, cockroach-like, along the corridor to the escalator. On the escalator going up I see the woman I fucked earlier going down. She smiles at me lasciviously and I raise my eyebrows by way of a return gesture. On the next floor up we take a travelator to the end of a corridor lined with potted cypresses. The man opens the double doors onto a ledge, beyond which there is a sheer drop to a car park far below. A zip-wire leads off to the distant ledge of another building. The man motions for me to put on the harness that he picks up from the ledge. I shake my head, say: no effing way am I getting into that thing. Don’t be a pussy X, says the man, it’s perfectly safe and besides, what will Y say if you don’t do it. I think to myself: who the fuck cares what Y thinks? But then I think to myself: don’t be a schmuck, you know perfectly well that in spite of your loathing for Y and the capitalist system that he is a totem for, you do care what Y thinks and you know full well that capitalism is all there is and all there ever will be and that loathing it is a completely futile gesture that will get you precisely nowhere in life. Fine, I say, you win. I put on the harness and the man tightens the straps and then hooks me onto the zip-wire. Good luck, he says, and then without further ado he pushes me off the ledge.

I dismount the zip-wire on the ledge that it zings me over to. The sash window directly in front of me happens to be open and I clamber through it to find myself in a white-walled office. There is a purple pleated Scandinavian sofa along one wall and a circular glass-topped desk opposite it. The handlebar moustache man, of all people, is sitting at the desk. X? he says, furrowing his brow, what the hell are you doing here? I clear my throat. I say: owing to multifarious infractions, the company has regretfully decided that your position is no longer tenable. Please gather your belongings and follow me. Ha ha, he says, very funny X. This isn’t a prank, I say. I’m sorry, I add, I’m just following orders. The handlebar moustache man’s face registers an admixture of incredulousness and fear. What infractions have I committed? he says. It’s a good question, I think, but what I say is: you know what infractions, come on now. I honestly don’t, he says, please can you just elucidate; I’m sure there’s been some sort of mix-up here. I’m sorry, I can’t go into the details, I say. Can’t or won’t? he says. Both, I say, now –. Sorry, he says, but that’s logically incoherent. If you can’t then it’s impossible that you won’t do something because in order to be in a position to say you won’t do something you have to at least have the ability to do it. Never mind the syllogistic niceties, I say, now come on please, you’re only making this harder for yourself than it needs to be. But I can’t just up and leave, he says. What about the special project I’ve been working on? What about it? I say. I approach the handlebar moustache man and place a hand firmly on his forearm, which I now see has a tattoo of a naked woman with a handlebar moustache etched into it. Weird, I think, but perhaps no weirder than anything else in this sorry excuse for a short story. Come on now, pack up your belongings and let’s go, I say. The handlebar moustache man shrugs my hand away and then leaps over the desk and rushes over to the ledge. I’m not going anywhere with you! Now stay away from me or so help me God I will jump! I show him the whites of my palms. I say: okay, okay, take it easy there. What the f do I do now? I think. Just then the phone on the desk rings. For want of anything better to do, I answer the phone. X, says a voice I immediately identify as belonging to Y. Yes? I say. Tell the fucker to jump if he wants to jump, he says. I’m sorry, I say, I can’t do that. You can’t or won’t, says Y. Both, I say with a definitiveness that I have rarely, if ever, exhibited before. Y is taken aback by that, I can tell, but after a slight pause, he says: you have to understand X, this man is a dangerous individual and it is absolutely imperative he be expunged from the premises. He doesn’t seem unduly dangerous to me, I think. He is, says my boss, believe me you have no idea what this man is capable of. Fine, I say. I hang up the receiver and then I lunge at the handlebar moustache man. I grab at his leg and try to pull him off the ledge and back into the office, but he’s as strong and immovable as a bison. I give up after trying for not very long. Fine, I say, stay on the ledge, see if I care. I go and sit on the sofa and light up a Cuban. I get an immediate headrush. Can I have one of those? says the handlebar moustache man. Will it mean you come down off the ledge? I say. He shakes his head. After a brief pause, I say: Yeah, I spose. I light another Cuban for the handlebar moustache man and hand it to him and he takes a few puffs. It’s at that moment that I realise something. Hey, I say, what happened to your twitch? My twitch? he says. Yes, I say. The handlebar moustache man looks at me as if considering something, then he says: I was faking the twitch. Why would you do that? I say, but he just shrugs as if to say there was no particular reason, he just felt like faking a twitch, which is fair enough, I guess. Look, I get you need to relieve me of my duties, he says and I’m not stupid, I know I have no choice, but before I go anywhere with you, I’d like to enjoy this cigar. Okay? he says. Okay, I say.

The handlebar moustache man sits down on the ledge and whilst intermittently puffing on his Cuban he tells me his life story. Like many life stories, it has tragic themes, themes that on closer inspection crumble into the dust of parodic absurdity. When he’s done telling his life story, he stubs out what’s left of the Cuban and then he says: well, so long X. Before I even know what’s happening, he leaps from the ledge. I climb out of the sash window and onto the ledge and look down warily. I see the handlebar moustache man, not splattered on the ground far below, but on the ledge immediately beneath the one I am looking down from, a mere seven feet below, if that. Fuck you X, he says. He gives me the finger, emits a pig-squeal laugh and then disappears from the ledge into the building. That guy is a devious so and so, I think.

I take the elevator to the floor below and start opening office doors indiscriminately. After not very long, I find the handlebar moustache man, although I almost don’t recognise him because he has evidently had a shave and is now missing his trademark handlebar moustache. He is sitting at a desk staring into a computer screen as if it were the eyes of a lover. He has a sheen of sweat on his face and appears to be out of breath. I say: game’s up, buddy! Huh? he says, as if he has completely no idea what I mean or even who I am. Immediately I lock his head into the crook of my arm and I drag him protesting out of that room and onto the travelator and down various escalators and through the lobby and out of the big glass doors and then I throw him down onto the ground. Now fuck off and don’t ever come back! I shout. The handlebar moustache man (if it's still appropriate to call him that given his depilated face) gets onto his knees and starts imploring me to let him back in. Please, he keeps saying, don’t leave me to rot out here. But I do leave him to rot out there because it’s my job to do so and I am lucky to have a job and I know I am, and besides, what do I care if he rots?