the next red light Carrie uploaded it, then dropped the phone back into her purse.
She felt lighter now, but she knew it would only be a few hours before the compulsion came back. She sucked in a deep breath as she eased into the clogged downtown core.
I might make it until five.
Buried in her purse, her phone peeped with a notification, and she knew she’d never make it.
* * *
‘Are you sure you can’t tough it out until the end of today?’
Carrie balanced the phone between her chin and her shoulder as she dug into the depths of her purse. She could hear the aspirin bottle rattling, but it was as though it darted from one end of her purse to the other in an attempt to escape its fate.
Much like the tearful young woman on the other end of the line.
‘I can’t,’ the woman said. ‘I just can’t. It’s too much.’
There was at least one of these failures in a month. No matter how well a person scored on their typing and computer tests, there was always a chance that they would prove utterly incapable of performing menial tasks in an office full of strangers.
Carrie had been in their shoes after her own university years. She couldn’t even count the number of times she’d stuffed envelopes in a cold boardroom, feeling sorry for herself as one after another curious bureaucrat came along to get a look at the temp, but she’d done it. That’s what you did when you were a temp, especially if you were a young temp with no experience. She just wished more of Turner & Associates Talent’s employees realised this.
‘All right, Brit,’ she said, ‘I’m going to need you to stick around until noon for me, OK? I’ll give the department manager a call and get her to sign your pay stub for you.’
‘I don’t care about the pay stub. I just want to leave.’
Carrie paused in her search for pills and clutched the phone. ‘Did something happen?’
‘No. I just don’t like it. I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to wait for the department manager.’
‘You need to get paid.’
‘I don’t care.’ The girl sounded as if she was on the verge of tears. ‘I’m only doing this because my mom told me I had to do it or else she wouldn’t pay my rent.’
‘OK, OK. Just … just tell the supervisor you have an emergency call, go outside and get on the bus.’
She hung up the phone and bit back a scream at the thought of getting in touch with the office manager. Though polite on the surface, she was the breed of bitchy that was usually reserved for high-school math teachers. She would sigh and remind Carrie that this was the fourth temp in three months they had lost. Carrie would apologise and bite her tongue to keep from telling the old witch to fuck off and take her business elsewhere. Part of her hoped they would do it anyway. If they wanted another girl sent over, Carrie would have to figure out which of those on her roster she could sacrifice this time.
By the time she had finished her call and had suffered what was the verbal equivalent of being flayed an inch at a time, her raging headache was going nowhere and her pills seemed to want to stay that way. Abandoning her search, she tossed her purse aside and rolled her seat away from her desk. She was at the door of her office when she remembered her phone docked on the credenza.
She was surprised to realise this was the first time she’d thought about it since she’d sat down in front of her computer that morning.
And then the need hit her, wiping out thoughts of the headache and sarcastic clients. She needed to be alone. She needed to show off just a little.
She sucked in a deep breath and tried to will the urge away. The hardest thing she could have done that day was walk away, but walk away she did, straight to reception.
‘Kayla, do you have anything for a headache?’
The receptionist raised eyebrows that were dark and heavily pencilled. ‘That bad?’
‘I’m tired of talking to people. Tired of people who want, who need, who are never happy.’
‘Then you’re never going to get a moment’s peace in this line of work.’
Kayla opened her desk drawer, and Carrie marvelled at the order in which it was kept. She used to envy people like Kayla: married with children but still showed up at work looking refreshed, while Carrie herself could barely stand to get out of bed most mornings. Perhaps it was because Kayla didn’t have to work. Perhaps working was freedom for Kayla while it was a yoke for Carrie.
‘You have vacation time coming up, don’t you?’
Carrie nodded. ‘Two weeks.’
‘Going anywhere special?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it. I might fly into Montreal for a few days and then drive down into the States. Or I might just hang around in my apartment. Thanks.’ She accepted the tablets in her palm and slapped them into her mouth, letting them sit on her tongue while she filled a cone at the water cooler next to Kayla’s desk. She went on after she’d swallowed. ‘I might just split the difference with a few days in Montreal and a few days at home.’
‘What about Mexico or Cuba?’
‘I don’t do beach vacations. I sightsee, or else I read. Hey –’ she leaned on the edge of the reception counter ‘– have they started renovating in 605?’
‘Not yet, or at least I haven’t been driven insane by hammering yet. Why?’
‘Nothing, I just thought I heard something earlier.’ Carrie refilled the paper cone and drank in a gulp. ‘I’ve got calls in to three girls for Doyle & Follett. Can you do me a favour and just give them the basics if they call? I’m going out for lunch today.’
* * *
Suite 605 used to be the offices of Yellow Gate Realty. The company had exhibited a complete lack of creative thought when they’d chosen canary-yellow walls. On sunny days, the corridor in front of the office looked like it had been drawn over with a neon hi-lighter where the colour seeped through the glass panes flanking the door.
Not any more, as Carrie discovered – after finding that the door was unlocked. Some work had been done in the offices. The walls were now eggshell and, with the exception of a small, dusty pile of debris, the office appeared ready to be leased.
For now, anyway, it was Carrie’s studio.
She chose the corner office, locked the door behind her, just in case, and placed her purse on the floor. She remembered the husband-and-wife team who had owned Yellow Gate and probably shared this office. They were an older couple who only ever spoke business when they rode the elevator with Carrie. The woman, middle-aged and impeccably dressed, was always fiddling with her earrings while her husband toyed with his Blackberry. They hadn’t looked happy, and yet they had worked together day in and day out in that office for over twenty years and always seemed to be a united front. The business had folded when they ultimately divorced. Rumours in the building whispered of a fling with the secretary, though no one was ever really clear whether it had been the husband or wife doing the flinging.
No one is ever what they seem, Carrie thought as she plucked the buttons of her blouse. A neighbour likes it rough, your boss likes to watch his wife getting fucked by another man, the janitor is into pegging, and the courier who needs a signature for those fun little accessories you ordered goes back to his truck and jerks off to streaming porn.
Once she was down to her bra and panties, she returned to her purse and collected her phone and the thick paperback she now carried with her everywhere. She hadn’t read a word. Reading wasn’t what she had bought it for. It was a makeshift tripod, and with it she could tilt the phone high enough to capture her entire body but omit her face.
She rested it on the floor and,