“Thank you for waiting. My name is Jimmie. How can I help you today?”
“You know that thing about sharks, how they can smell a drop of blood from miles away? I have a skin condition that makes me scratch quite a bit. Can you guarantee that I will be safe in the waters outside Mykonos?”
“You do realize that Mykonos is in Greece, sir?”
“Are you trying to tell me that there are no sharks in the Mediterranean?”
The lipstick had begun to crumble at the corners of Jimmie’s mouth. The cheap red lipstick that he wanted his lover to see. He had stolen it from one of the many little boxes in his mother’s bedroom the night before, when he’d come home from work to find her asleep. His mother, the Signora. The most widowed widow of them all. The Italian lady with the unpronounceable surname: Bevilacqua. Asleep for most of her life, afraid of the colors outside her bedroom, forever in love with her own sadness – a life hidden beneath dust and unwanted bits of sympathy. A tragedy with only her son as an audience. A drama wasted on a new country that would never be more than her unfinished dream.
“What about the sharks then?”
“Do you reckon your blood has the same color as my lipstick?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just trying to picture it. You and your broken skin, the deep blue sea and the villain with the scary teeth. Have you been thinking of a great white shark?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m just a very visual person, and since we’ve been trained to take our customers’ concerns seriously, I want to see what you’re seeing. Where exactly do you tend to scratch? Don’t you think it’s likely that’s where the shark will attack first?”
“Fucking freak.”
The voice gone, Jimmie imagined a cloud of blood pouring forth from a severed middle-aged limb with bits of flesh and a pair of those fancy multicolored swimming trunks floating around. Underwater cries muffled by the violence of the sea. He suddenly envied the shark its freedom to fulfil its urges, and he decided to follow the animal’s example and mute his telephone even though the first hour of his shift wasn’t up. Even though the rules of the call centre didn’t allow him to get up to stare at himself in the mirror for a minute, or to cry into his unbuttoned trousers on one of those unhinged toiled seats. But Jimmie didn’t care, because he wanted today to be a different day. A soft day. Like a subtle shade of pink. A day without hurt.
*
He tried to quickly get past the endless rows of desk pods belonging to the other teams on his floor. Clusters of little round space stations representing the various products people could call for from a comfortable distance, like their veg boxes, dog food, mattresses and toilet paper. Or in Jimmie’s case: their holidays. The affiliation of each cluster was made visible by a cheap cardboard sign with a company name and logo floating above the employees. Held by invisible strings, these loomed overhead like a constant menace, part of an apparatus that was ready to come crashing down on those caught being unproductive or unhelpful. Team members were identifiable by their one item of corporate identity, the different hoodies they had to wear, with the exception of the team leaders and managers, who were allowed to enjoy the comforts of civilian life while everyone else looked and felt like a Teletubby. The hoodies reminded Jimmie of sheep whose fleece was tagged by their owners in bright colors. As he walked past his colleagues now, he recognized some faces. But most of them were new and unknown, even though he had already spent almost a year working at Vanilla Travels Ltd.
At least he wasn’t working on the outbound floor below, where he’d have to offer his last resources and make cold calls, or in one of the even more miserable call centres abroad. At least his customers needed him, even if it was only a fleeting dependence, so he wasn’t constantly getting insulted and stepped on like a creature that had been labelled a pest. And yet he was still part of a never-ending abundance, a set of bones that had no right to ask for dignity. The voice of a person who was invisible outside these walls. As much as he sometimes liked the idea of not having this body, he knew that the time might have come to be brave and face a world where his fat curves would be a reality once again.
As he locked the toilet door behind him, Jimmie remembered that he had agreed to spend his long break today with Elin, his Swedish friend from the booking team who dreamed of opening an outdoor nursery in a forest. Elin always looked like she had a cat’s ass on her face, her lips tight, as if she had tried to pleasure a bag of lemons. Leaving aside the lack of any genuine wildlife in London, Jimmie could never imagine leaving children in her care. They would probably return as little forest weirdos with premature beards covering their faces, sinister garden gnomes who refused to sing and dance. Maybe it was a special Swedish survival technique: no need to be cheerful when it was just you and those endless woods filled with the good life and elks. Or moose? Jimmie had no idea what the difference was. Elin had shown him a picture once, and those big bodies on skinny legs had reminded him of his grandmother and how she had pushed her heavy torso through life like a shopping trolley. It must have been her genes that had made him look like this.
With his face trying to reach the space between his legs, Jimmie managed to avoid looking at the faded orange meant to lend a human touch to the toilet cubicle with its fake surfaces. This boudoir of the modern office worker. Unlike grey, orange was so confident in its ugliness. It had always made him slightly jealous, as though it were possible to be so bold about your imperfections. He regretted what this place had witnessed. How these thin walls had celebrated his defeat. With his underwear still fresh, he managed to catch a whiff of his own smells, his home and laundry detergent – a reminder that he was still alive – while he tried to think back to his last conversation with Elin, earlier that week. She had been eating vegetarian Pot Noodles, which always made him feel sick. He was sure that if he hadn’t been forced to leave Italy he would never have been exposed to such culinary abuse. Even now, as he tried to bury his head in his own lap, his belly preventing him from producing an elegant shape, he could see Elin shoving those slippery worms into her tiny cat-ass mouth smothered in neon lipstick.
“Who are you trying to fuck?”
“What?”
“Your lipstick. Do you have plans? Or are you worried that our customers can see you through the phone and will only book a holiday if there’s some visual stimulation?” Jimmie pretended to be choking on a dick until she blushed.
“Piss off, Jimmie. But if you must know – yes, I’m going on a date.”
“The guy from the veg box team?”
Looking at her he often wondered whether fillers, like those Helena had injected so successfully into her own face, might help alleviate the problem of her uninviting lips, but figured that when it came to it even a real cat’s back door would probably be more appealing.
“I went on one date with him, Jimmie.”
“I imagine it was hard to climax to the ecological benefits of root vegetables.”
“Very funny.”
“Is it someone from the toilet paper team this time? Maybe you’ll learn how to squirt on peach-scented two-ply softness.”
“No, and before you start fantasizing about the people from the dog food team, it’s actually Simon. We are going for a drink after our shift.”
“Our supervisor? The angry ginger boy?”
“Shut up. And you had better not tell Daniel about it.”
“Please don’t tell me he’s doing another one of those terrible granola bar ads!’
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
Gossip usually flowed through Jimmie’s veins like bubbles of comfort and joy, but this time, as Elin’s words started to reveal their true meaning, his heart refused to steady its course.
“You mean they’ve made Daniel team leader now that Stuart has left?”
“Correct. As of this Friday, your darling won’t have to wear a yellow hoodie anymore.”
All of a sudden, Jimmie felt inferior even to Elin’s tiny cat-ass mouth, killing any erotic potential he had ever found in his own full lips. Why hadn’t Daniel told him about this? Why had he made him sit in this pathetic kitchen with Elin, looking like two lost losers whose only chance in life was to fuck the people in charge? It was as if things with Daniel were now something to be ashamed of, like his pride had been touched in the wrong place. And then he pictured Elin’s neon lipstick on Simon’s cock, and all the colors were out of sync. When had she learned to play with all that life beneath her skin? How had she found the confidence to give pleasure, when he felt trapped in discomfort and longing?
Now, as he listened to the sweet radio station that filled all areas outside the call centre floor like an American torture cell, Jimmie felt his body reacting to this absence of silence. He felt his tissues losing resistance as he tried to understand how nerves could be so treacherous as to pass on the information he could so easily have lived without. How they were ready to dance when he tried to contain himself. How they would tell on him when he stepped on a wasp in his mother’s garden as a child, allowing pain to travel all the way up to his mind and finally his eyes. If pain was nothing but the result of successful communication somewhere in his brain, why couldn’t the unseen just stay in the dark? Why wasn’t it enough to bleed from the wounds that fingers could heal? Even now, when he was supposed to be at his desk in the corner, dealing with his daily emails and phone calls – the utterings of people at odds with their own hedonism, holidays made unenjoyable by their own expectations – why did life suddenly feel like he had once again stepped into the rage of a dying creature?
“Jimmie. Are you in there? It’s Simon.”
Of course it was him. Naturally hostile towards the illicit, Simon was raiding their last bit of privacy, suspecting pleasure where he only wanted to see effort. He was always ready to get down on his knees to count the number of legs in a cubicle, and Jimmie hated the guilt he felt because of it. Like his body was taking up too much space, like Simon had a right to inspect his desires. And he didn’t even have any cold water to cool his eyes. Why didn’t these fucking cubicles come with a sink, a mirror and a bit of the luxury he read about in hotel descriptions all day?
“I’m sorry. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“You do know that you have to check with me first before going on a break, right? It’s a busy floor today and we cannot have people going on breaks together.”
Impossible not to hear the suspicions, not to feel yourself shrinking inside.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Jimmie? Do you need help?”
“I’m all right. Just having a slow start, you know?”
Simon surely didn’t: he had been born with that disgusting type of energy that enabled him to jump out of bed in the morning and iron his shirts. He never felt the need to question his erections or lock himself into a cheap orange toilet because he couldn’t face the prospect of another day on this earth. Jimmie couldn’t believe that Elin had agreed to go on a second date with him tonight.
“I’m hardly going to slash my wrists in here. And I’m not having a party either – I have a little more taste than that.” He might as well ask to be buried by Mr John Nobes, his former employer and owner of a funeral parlour, purveyor of the ugliest coffins in town.
“Can you please open the door, Jimmie? Otherwise I will have to escalate this incident.”
Perhaps he could have taken over the business and become a funeral master. He could have made peace with things and then guaranteed that people and their pets were dealt with for good. He could have offered cremations only, just to be sure.
“Jimmie! You missed the meeting this morning, and I really need to talk to you during your break today.”
“And if I have plans?”
“Then I’m afraid you will have to cancel them. This is rather urgent. I’m sure you know what it’s about.”
Jimmie didn’t bother checking his looks on his phone camera, because he knew that he didn’t have any today and he wasn’t ready for what the light in this toilet would reveal.
Simon was leaning against the sink opposite the cubicle. In another version of Jimmie’s life he might have stopped there and looked into Simon’s inquisitive blue eyes. It could have been flirtation or even a kiss, a moment of meaning and intimacy. A first step towards something tender, or even something rough. The beginning of something warm. But instead, he remembered that he was wearing his mother’s lipstick and that everything around them smelled of piss and other bodily functions, and all he could do was walk past Simon, who didn’t even try to hide his surprise at Jimmie’s new colors. His eyes on the floor, Jimmie tried to forget that this had been an act of transgression, that he was almost thirty and his left hand was shaking because of an unauthorized toilet break.
Doing the late shift meant that Jimmie mostly missed out on the early team meetings during which Simon dissected one or two calls that had been recorded for those famous training and monitoring purposes. His colleagues were forced to witness each other’s performances being taken apart like dead frogs. To watch the remains of their pride grow cold and unappealing in the hands of a man with a sharp blade. Among all the recorded calls, Simon always managed to find the one instance where their overall high-quality track record hadn’t been maintained, where a call centre agent had failed to respond appropriately or make their customer feel at ease. Like a hand-job with the wrong amount of lube. Or a pig’s nipple on a piece of bacon suddenly bringing down the illusions of fast food.
Bodies get in the way.
Simon was their sinister master, punishing them for their failings by shaming them in public – all proof of the fact that he had to be in regular contact with the mystery caller, that cursed tool of quality control they all lived in fear of. The spectre with a million different voices that they could hear behind each disharmony, there to lead them astray like children in a forest. Jimmie often pictured them like a witch in a house made
of temptations, longing to turn their tired bodies into a feast. Simon liked to remind his team that they needed to bend over further and make others happy and never forget that they were not allowed to use the word ‘compensation’. They were sentient beings, and this was about their soft skills. Everything Jimmie and his colleagues did was a gesture of goodwill, and customers could tell if their concerns weren’t being taken seriously.
Soft skills. Whenever Simon used those words, Jimmie could feel his own soft parts becoming ticklish. He hated public exposure, but sometimes he liked to get off on Simon’s anger, imagining other possible punishments they might experience together. Much as he suspected that some of the calls Simon enjoyed playing with during those meetings were his own, Jimmie also knew that as long as he was willing to do the late shift, they were unlikely to fire him. He knew how difficult it was to find someone who would work Friday and Saturday nights, someone who, instead of a life, had a mother and a cat. Someone like Jimmie.
Simon following him into the toilet to ask for a formal chat meant that this wasn’t about one of Jimmie’s usual calls, his recurring inability to adhere to company standards. It was proof that word of his latest adventure had travelled round the office like a willing boy, that the information had finally reached Simon’s firm little ears and he now knew what Jimmie had done in the toilet last Friday.
__________________________________
From Calls May Be Recorded by Katharina Volckmer. Used with permission of the publisher, Two Dollar Radio. Copyright 2025 by Katharina Volckmer.
