Dusty Dreams

Dreams were slowly collecting in the dust around the foot of her chair. Next to the hair band and the paper clip and the crumpled post it from Mr McGivern. Three grey office chair wheels scraped her aspirations to grit. Every evening Carl swept the head of an ancient broom over the lino behind the reception desk, nearing the chair, but too lazy to move it. A greyness had set in where Nancy sat most weekdays between nine and five. It was reflected in her clothes; an ageing cardigan with a button missing second from the top and a long skirt that covered the flesh between her waist and the black round toed ankle boots she reserved for work.

‘Morning Nance!’

Mr. McGivern’s face was round and hairy. His cheeks were red with the effort of cycling two miles to the office and he wiped a sweaty hand over the russet outcrop clinging to the top of his head.

‘Any messages?’

There were never any messages before nine in the morning, but every day he asked with the same renewed expectance of something very important.

‘No messages, Mr. McGivern. Shall I call you when the sandwich van arrives?’

Of course he would want her to call him. It was the same routine every day, yet still it had to be asked as if without the question the day might go chaotically wrong. She pushed her glasses on to the bridge of her nose and looked up at him from her chair, eyebrows raised.

‘That would be fabulous. Thank you Nancy. I’m in a meeting until ten remember?’

‘Yes Mr. McGivern I …’

But he was already swiping his security pass against the door and with a bleep and a heavy clunk; the office swallowed him until lunch.

Nancy pressed the button on the front of the computer and it whirred and clicked busily to itself as she got up to open the window blinds and look out into the car park. Already the rain had formed a puddle in front of the main doors. She must find a number for the company that had re-laid the tarmac or one day everyone would be canoeing into the office. She imagined the row of paddles lined up in the hallway, dripping on to the mood subduing green carpet. Mr McGivern would never squeeze himself into a canoe and more importantly, he would never squeeze himself out again. It would become a daily fiasco – assisting the retrieval of the managing director from the hollow plastic seat of his boat. She wondered if he would sweat as much in a canoe as he did on his bicycle. The front door opened with an impatient swishing noise as Sarah-Jane stalked through it in her perfect designer black suit with matching handbag and frizz free Toni and Guy blonde bob framing her movie star features. Nancy smiled an obligatory hello and stood holding her pose as Sarah-Jane passed through the reception and upstairs. It was doubtful whether Nancy existed for those ten seconds. Sometimes she said ‘Good morning!’ or ‘Hi there!’ just to confirm that she was alive in Sarah-Jane’s presence. There was no other way of knowing. Gradually all the usual members of staff filed past, the car park was full and as there were no visitors for the day, Nancy was alone again. She sat on the blue chair in front of the reception desk and pressed the round silver button on the computer screen. It flickered lazily and opened one big square eye.

‘Just you and me today Brian.’

Talking to the computer had started as a way to pass the time. After the other receptionist had left she spent most of the day on her own, so someone to talk to was always welcomed. Brian had developed a personality of his own fairly quickly. He was the strong, silent type. He would never begin a conversation, but waited patiently for Nancy. At times he was infuriating. Always ready with an answer, much better handwriting than hers and a rage-inducing knack for choosing the right moment for a full on tantrum where he would freeze up and switch off, like a defiant toddler holding his breath in protest. His appetite was large too, on more than one occasion she had spent six weeks on a database only to have Brian wake up one morning and swallow it down into the depths of his wiry innards. So there they were: Nancy and Brian, at the forefront of the company. She entered her password and began setting up files of work for the day ahead.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Good evening and welcome aboard this flight to…er…Paris…’

‘Great,’ thought Lexi ‘he’s the pilot and he can’t remember where we’re going.’

She couldn’t get comfortable already and they hadn’t even left the gate. What was with this seat? She pulled an orange woollen blanket wrapped in plastic from underneath her bottom and put it on top of her handbag on the floor. That would be useful later. A small red pillow, not even big enough for a cat to sleep on was nestled into her lower back. The blanket would somehow have to cover her and act as head receptacle for the next twelve hours. The mini TV above the aisle flickered on, it’s greenish hue illuminating her face and reminding her once again of her now paltry bank account balance. Last year she would have been upstairs, with legroom and champagne and flight attendants that made eye contact. Here in the cattle truck, no one was looking into anybody else’s eyes, least of all the ragged looking crew members. The one now donning a yellow life jacket definitely looked like he was considering jumping ship. Did he know something they didn’t? His face twitched slightly behind the smile. Lexi listened with half an interest.

‘If the plane lands on water…’ chirped the video.

‘It’ll break into tiny pieces and we’ll all be at the bottom of the sea before anyone even knows about it.’ Lexi had never heard of a plane being evacuated in the way shown on the video. Was it even possible?

The twitchy attendant swayed as the plane taxied out into the pitch-blackness that was hopefully the runway. The TV changed to show a map of the journey with the position of the plane marked by a red dot on the screen and the attendants disappeared. Probably through a secret escape hatch and back to sanity thought Lexi. She wouldn’t blame them. There was something disturbingly odd about air travel.