Page 2 of People Skills

‘Good.’

‘Teeth?’ She bares her teeth at me.

‘Clear.’

‘Lipstick?’

‘I would reapply.’

‘Thank you,’ she says, and hurries down the stairs and along the middle aisle, her clogs echoing through the hall. I go backstage, looking for Colin, the building manager, a man who has apparently been telling everyone he’s seventy-four for the past five years in order to keep his job. He looks well over eighty to me. Possibly ninety. Oh god, when did I last actually see him? What if the smell is Colin’s body? Dealing with a human corpse, let alone sweet Colin McKay, will really be stretching the limits of what I can handle today.

My phone rings as I continue searching for Colin (please be alive). Since starting this job, my phone can’t ever be on silent and I have to answer every call from every unknown number. I have become numb to the horror of talking to strangers—even worse, talking to strangers who want access to Hillary and see me as someone standing in their way.

‘Hello, Charlotte speaking,’ I say.

There’s a scratchy noise, some throat-clearing, a clattering like the phone is briefly dropped, and just as I’m about to hang up, someone speaks.

‘Uh. Hi. Sorry. It’s Xavier here.’ The voice is deep, rough.

Xavier. Wonderful. Just what I need right now.

‘Hillary’s son Xavier,’ he adds, as if my tiny brain can’t possibly reach that conclusion on its own.

‘Yes, I know. Hi Xavier, how are you?’ I say, as warmly as I can force myself to sound. I have never actually met Xavier, which feels unbelievable considering the sheer volume of information I hold about him. Does this man have any idea that I know the intricacies of his childhood fear of balloons, that I bought his girlfriend her Christmas present from Hillary, that I know his shirt size, pants size and even his underwear size? No, he doesn’t, because he’s probably never given me more than two seconds thought. Our interactions to date have consisted of emails and phone calls. Or, more accurately, me emailing him on behalf of Hillary, him ignoring said emails, me calling him on behalf of Hillary, him ignoring said phone calls, and me leaving voicemails that I know he never listens to and then fielding texts from him wanting information that was in those voicemails.

‘I’m good,’ he says to me, after a pause.

He doesn’t sound good. He sounds sick. Or like he’s just woken up.

‘Ready for tonight?’ I ask. All three of Hillary’s children were invited to tonight’s event, but her oldest son James is on call for work (a very suspicious excuse since he’s a lawyer, and it’s not clear to me what ‘on call’ actually means in that context) and her daughter, Ettie, is pregnant and not feeling up to travel, so Xavier is the sole representative. It is very important that he is here. She will not cope if none of her children is in attendance. Not to mention the fact Xavier is an author himself, so a literary festival is much more relevant to him than the others.

‘That’s actually why I’m calling. I don’t think I’m going to make it.’

You snivelly little coward, I think. Cancelling on the day and making me break the news to Hillary.

I don’t think so.

‘What’s wrong?’ I say, keeping my voice as neutral as possible.

‘I’m having, ah, some car trouble.’

‘Oh no. Well, that’s easily fixed. Jump on the train,’ I say. I have my cheerful problem-solver voice on, but I’m impatient. I don’t have time for this. I need to find Colin and get rid of the mystery smell and then get back to the office in time for my next meeting.

‘The train?’ He sounds like he is so unused to public transport he has never even heard of a train.

‘You know, big carriages, engine at the front, runs on a track.’

‘Ha.’

He’s not even energetic enough to give me a haha. His ha is mostly grunt. His voice still sounds just-woken-up scratchy. Maybe he’s putting it on. Maybe he thinks it sounds sexy. Or he’s going to use sickness as his next excuse.

‘I suppose I could get the train.’ He says this in a way that tells me he will absolutely not be getting the train.

‘Hang on a sec,’ I say, and I take the phone from my ear, look up the train timetable, and then press the phone back to my ear. ‘There’s a train that leaves Melbourne at one-thirty and gets in at three,’ I say.

‘Okay,’ he says slowly.

I can tell he’s trying to think of a reason why he can’t get on it, but his brain clearly isn’t working at the speed he needs it to.