A Christmas Story

This is life on the edge.  I take two identical Christmas cards from the sharp edged plastic packet and write them.  In one I write, To Maria.  The card itself deals with the pleasantries.  It says, Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! in swirly grey letters laden with serifs.  Every time I write a card, a pang of anxiety shoots through me at the sight of the exclamation mark and the sporadic capitalisation.  I should be used to it by now.  I’ve written cards to everyone on my team.  And then I write, from Adam.  Like I have in all the others.

In the second card I write, To Maria, I fucking hate you.  I hate working with you.  I wish I’d never known you.  I just fucking hate you.  If you could find it within yourself to die over the holidays, that would be the greatest Christmas present anyone could get me.  I never want to see you again.  Go fucking kill yourself, Adam.  I scribble all over the Christmas message.

Then, I take both cards in one hand and throw them over my shoulder.  They land, their spines sticking in the air like two little mountains.  I pick up the one nearest me and without reading it, put it straight into the envelope marked Maria and seal it in there.  I pick up the second card and hold it shut while I tear it to pieces over the bin, my face turned away in case I see anything that might ruin the surprise.  I make myself a cup of coffee.

Maria hates me.  She hates me in a way so obvious and objectionable that I hate her in return.  She hates me at work of all places, somewhere our lives and actions take on the boring, insignificant, inconsequential characteristics of administrative processes: I am a databank, I can interpret this information for you, I am every email I send, devoid of my character.  Work is a series of personality sapping processes.  Of all the places, of all the contexts in which to hate me, I find it unreasonable that she hates me in the place where I am least myself.  Not that she’d like me outside of work.

I understand.  I took her job.  Maria was there when I started.  She wasn’t lovely, but she wasn’t unpleasant.  In another life, she could be considered attractive, even if the sum of her willow thin frame plus her relentless eating habits equals extreme bulimia.  Suspected.  She got on with whatever the fuck it is that she does while I learned the ropes.  A year later and I’m promoted to her equal but she doesn’t flinch – that prozac smile etched on her pock marked face while she rocks hypnotically back and forth in her chair, mouth open just a touch, headphones in, one hand on the mouse, the other resting in her lap like it’s crippled, working so slowly, with such a lack of urgency that I want to slap her and scream in her face: What are you doing?  Don’t you realise how easy this all is?  If you just pulled your fucking weight around here everyone else’s jobs would be better.  How can you bear it, taking forever over your pathetic workload?  How can you not try?  But she has her job and I have mine.

And then our boss, our nice, stupid, inept boss dies, his eyes staring accusingly up at me from the bottom of the fourth floor stairwell, his head coming to rest on the faux marble floor as the shiny dark pool eeks out from under him.  When they find him, I am back at my desk and I am as shocked as anyone as the news spreads.  When the police come in for an informal one on one with each of us in a closed office, they seem satisfied that I was in a toilet on the first floor.  Yes I have witnesses.  No I cannot tell you who because I don’t know everyone in the building and I didn’t take note of the people I passed.  As far as I was concerned, it was just another visit to the toilet and not an alibi.  I don’t see them again.  It blows over.  Just another tragedy.  Just another misnomer.

So all of a sudden there’s this job available and I’m glad handing my dead boss’s boss and stepping up.  It’s not that I care.  It’s not that I’m driven.  It’s just that this could be fun.  We’re laughing, we’re getting things done that my dead boss wasn’t capable of, we’re informing each others’ opinions in hushed voices in his office with the door closed.  And Maria sits there rocking gently, looking round her like she’s lost in a storm.  Our once scant interaction has become nothing but a seething contempt from a few desks away.  For my part, I couldn’t give a fuck.

Of her interview, my dead boss’s boss tells me Maria was an embarrassment.  She failed to answer questions, she refused to answer others.  In the several impossibly long silences, Maria rocked back and forth as if she was alone in a cell, mouth agog, eyes ceilingward.  The word my dead boss’s boss uses is painful.  Another word he uses is excruciating.  I wear a Ted Baker suit and shirt and gamble with the absence of a tie.  A tie, I feel, would detract from the elegant and elaborately stitched detail of the shirt which I am certain will draw comment from the panel.  And indeed it does.  Despite almost zero preparation, my answers are thoughtful and considered, delivered articulately with subtle emphasis placed on eye contact and appropriate hand gestures aimed at all members of the panel who nod and write each time I finish speaking.  When I deliver a point that my dead boss’s boss has primed me on, he nods emphatically, looking side to side at the other panel members, encouraging their nods to become all the more animated.

My dead boss’s boss delivers the good news.  And now he is no longer my dead boss’s boss.  He is my boss.  And I am Maria’s boss.  Maria asks him what qualifies me to get the job over her.  My boss says he’s not going to talk about any other candidates with her.  I would have screamed, PEOPLE SKILLS BITCH.  Plus an eye for an opportunity. 

And now it is nearly Christmas, I am several months into the job and I do not want Maria around any more.  It’s a difficult job.  Lots to learn, lots to try and change.  Lots of meetings where nothing is decided apart from the date of the next meeting.  Maria communicates mostly through tightly worded emails.  Face to face conversation is limited to exchanges in which she questions my every decision, declines my every request, picks me up on every error, the whole time looking me like every word I say is inappropriate for the workplace.  I feel small and inept.  She hides her workload so no one quite knows what she does and refuses to let me know what she’s working on.  She blanks me in the corridor.  She does it in front of other people and I am tired.

There is blood on the tissue.  There always is these days and I am convinced I’m dying.  I blot another Japanese flag onto a sheet and look down between my legs into the bowl.  It looks like a scene from Jaws.  I drop the tissue in.  I pad my fingers around my puckered arsehole and in my mind I am picturing the Tudor Rose.  My finger slides in the slick of blood when it reaches the cut.  I dab again and hold the tissue there.  When I drop the tissue and feel again, the blood is still coming.  I ignore the literature that has told me a painful bowel movement and vibrant red blood are indicators of anal fissures and slash or haemorrhoids.  I ignore the fact that both of my parents have been openly beset by haemorrhoids their entire adult lives.  I ignore the friends who’ve said Yeah, me too.  I ignore the fact that I can feel exactly where this blood is coming from and the fact that no, it is not a cancerous growth.  Instead I allow myself to become terrified and desperate.  I am dying.  I don’t have to take any shit from anyone.  And I won’t have to live with the consequences of my actions for very long.

The day of the office Christmas party, no one does any work.  Later this afternoon, colleagues will begin to drink themselves blind in honour of the birth of Christ or the Winter Solstice or Father Christmas or whatever people choose to believe.  This year, again, the head of IT will be escorted from the premises after drinking too much and proceeding to grope everyone and anyone he comes into contact with.  When the building closes tonight, it won’t reopen again until the new year.  Outside it is snowing but it doesn’t settle.  Snow never settles in Central London.

I hand out my cards.  A rush of nerves surges through me as I hand Maria her card.  She says a hushed thank you and looks as though she is preparing to snigger as she takes it.  The snigger never emerges but incrementally, this is one down from her rolling her eyes at me.

I am rooted to the spot.  I can’t help but watch her open it.  I am standing over her and yes, this must seem weird to her and look weird to anyone else but I can not go anywhere.  There is a heartbeat in my head.  My eyes feel like they are opening wider and wider.  They are stinging but I can not blink.    I am breathing heavily, my chest heaving, and I hold my breath for a moment to calm it down because this should not look like arousal.

I didn’t come here with a plan.  I am relying on the hope that I will know what to do if Maria opens the right slash wrong (delete as appropriate) card.  If she picks the card professing my hatred, I will be forced to react.  I’m dying and I’m taking her with me.  If she opens the other card, nothing needs to happen and I’ll see how that makes me feel.  The decision is out of my hands.  I grip the heavy duty hole punch on the desk in front of me.  I see myself smashing it into Maria’s temple, shattering her eye socket and whatever else is in there.  After that, I don’t know.  I’ll see what happens.  One step at a time.

Her frail hands fumble with the envelope like its heavy and she opens it like the effort is exhausting her, like she’s tearing sheet metal.  I want to rip the card out of her hands and open it myself, just to satisfy my raging curiosity.  But instead I close my eyes and count slowly, fingering the hole punch.

Thank you says Maria.

I open my eyes.

Her mouth stretches in an elastic band smile that snaps back to its shapeless lipstick mess when the moment passes and she stands the card with the others on her desk.

That’s okay I say and I’m trying to understand if the feeling that’s settled in me is relief or disappointment.  Either way, I stay standing a minute longer, just holding the arm of the hole punch, thinking about what might have been.

At the Christmas party, we hang around the darkened conference room in little huddles, catching up with colleagues we like but never see, force mingling with others, joking awkwardly with superiors and the ones we don’t understand and do our best to ignore the ones we hate.  For some reason, wherever I stand, I can see Maria and over the course of an hour or so, I catch her eye three or four times.  I start to wonder if this is down to a decision I’ve made on some subconscious level.

The music is being played through speakers that aren’t powerful enough to handle it so we’re blasted with the treble of a treasure trove of Christmas standards at full volume.  But I seem to be the only one who notices and while people chatter happily and lean into each other so they can be heard, I am developing a headache.  So far I have avoided the hot cider, mulled wine and assorted warm bottled beers that are being distributed by catering staff who refuse to make eye contact with anyone.  In my experience, alcohol is best  avoided when consorting with colleagues.  So it can’t be to blame for the pulse behind my eyes.  It must be the music.  As the shrill, scratchy sound of Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree tears into my skull, I make my excuses.  On the other side of the room, I see Maria doing the same thing.

I follow her.  This is not something I’ve done before but I think I make a pretty good job of it, striking the correct balance between maintaining an inconspicuous distance and staying close enough not to lose her.  It helps of course that she moves so slowly – like every step is a work of art – and is so self absorbed that she never looks around.

I follow her off the tube and out of the station.  So this is Highgate.  I’ve never been here before.  Up here, the snow has settled and as Maria leaves the main road and walks up the slight incline of a residential street, I’m charmed and impressed by our surroundings: the bare, snow laden trees; the tall, homely looking houses with decorations in the windows; the peace of the place uncommon to London.

Ahead, I watch Maria, her progress even slower in the snow.  There’s nobody else around.  This is it.  This is what I fucking want.  I am going to grab that bitch and punch her to the ground.  I am going to punch her in the face until her lips are mashed and I can see broken teeth and gums marbled with blood; until her mouth is so full of blood that she can’t make a fucking sound.  Then I am going to snap those stick thin wrists of hers and wrestle her arms from their sockets.  I am going to rip her apart, wrench the hair from her head, kick her in the face until her features invert and her neck snaps backwards ending it all.  I’ll take her purse so that the police think it’s a robbery gone horribly wrong.  Only I won’t throw it away and get caught by my fingerprints or whatever.  I’ll keep it.  I’ll keep it as a fucking trophy in my home forever and whenever I want to remind myself of my great credentials as a problem solver, I’ll take our her driving licence or any other photos in there and chuckle to myself.

I’m picking up speed.  My heart is racing.  This, now this is life on the edge.  I feel so alive.  Rush after rush of adrenaline and I am ecstatic.  Fuck the blood on the tissue.  If I was dying, I could never feel this alive.  I am fine.  I am alive.

I pull my scarf up over my nose and mouth.  I am nearing her and she must sense something, hear my footsteps or my breathing because she starts to look around like a little bird, not quite able to bring herself to stop and look at me.  She quickens her step and just as I reach out to grab her, she changes direction sharply and steps into the road between two parked cars and starts to cross.  She catches me off guard and my momentum carries me past her along the pavement.

Perhaps it’s because she’s too concerned with what’s behind her but she doesn’t seem to see the headlights or hear the car as it comes flying round the corner.  It hits her just before she reaches the opposite kerb and I see her feet leave the floor as she flies backwards and comes to rest in the twisted shape of a squashed mosquito on the snowy road.

The car spins so it is side on in the road and comes to a stop.  The driver and passenger doors open and the driver, a young man, runs towards Maria and kneels beside her, his hands at the ready to do whatever.  Except he doesn’t know what to do.

Hello?  Hello? he says.  Miss?

The street lights glint off Maria’s open eyes but she isn’t moving.  She’s just lying there, her body impossibly contorted.

The passenger, a blonde woman in a woolly hat, stands behind her open door like it’s a shield.

Oh god.  Is she breathing? she asks and holds a gloved hand to her throat.

The driver puts his head close to Maria’s, wincing as he does it.

Is she breathing? the passenger asks again.

I don’t know! shouts the driver.  I don’t know!  Call an ambulance.

Check her pulse.

Call an ambulance!

The passenger reaches into the cat and takes out a phone.

Check her pulse she says again.

The man takes off his gloves.  Maria hasn’t blinked and I’m guessing Maria doesn’t have a pulse any more.  This is exam results or medical test results or last minute of the cup final or whatever it is that matters.  The driver winces and gags as he moves a tentative hand into Maria’s neck, probing, searching for any indication of life continuing.  He looks up and sees me watching.

I can’t find one he says and waits for a reaction.  I shrug.  I just lost control he says.  The snow.

He stands up.

I can hear the passenger still on the phone to the ambulance people.

Can you feel a pulse? she calls to the driver.  He shakes his head.  Can you feel a pulse? she asks again, more firmly.

No! he shouts.

Okay okay she says and listens to the phone.  Is there any sign of breathing?

No he whimpers. 

In the sick yellow of the street lights I see movement in the glaze of his eyes.

The passenger passes the message down the phone and hangs up.

They’ll be here as soon as they can she says.

She walks over and looks down at Maria and shivers from something other than the cold.  Then she starts to cry and driver and passenger embrace, visibly shuddering with sobs while on the floor beneath them, the eyes of the lifeless Maria stare out at me.  I give her a wink and walk on.  I don’t want to be here when the ambulance arrives.

The stars flutter behind a thin veil of cloud.  What a beautiful evening.  What a gift – Christmas and birthday combined.