Being Frank

"Have you ever thought of yoga?" Now, I'd known Mikey ever since I arrived at this job back in ‘03 and the closest thing I’d seen to yoga participation was him bending down to pick up his pen. Even then it was done in one movement, hardly breaking stride. With my tongue wedged firmly in my cheek I thought I would throw it out there all the same.

“Yoga smoga”, he laughed, quickly outstretching his arms into the lotus pose. “Like this?” Suddenly the tea got caught up in the confusion of it all and went flying, soaking the recently signed exchange papers for a newly purchased house at Nightingale close. “Oh for fuck’s sake, I don’t fucking believe it! Who put those there?”

"You did, Mike. You did." I wouldn’t have been surprised at all by this accident save for the fact that, for that split second, I don’t think I’d ever seen him so serene, albeit mock serene. When he joked I saw his facial muscles unbound, the skin smoothed, the eyes shone, a breath was taken.

"If that’s what it does you can keep it!” He shouted, referring to the ancient Indian meditative exercise of yoga, not the ancient Chinese beverage. But then I couldn’t be sure on that one, watching him frantically scrape it up with a post-it note pad into the bin and mop the rest with the dirtiest hanky (award winning I’d go as far as saying).

"Frank is going to do his bloody nut this time. I mean, shit, it was only on Thursday when I came in late again." Truth was Frank had had enough of Mike and was going to flip. I knew that, Beth behind me knew it and even Tom who delivers the post (I jest not. Although he doesn’t just slide it through the door that would make him altogether psychic I believe. No, he pops in most mornings to observe the chaos unfold).

As I sat back and watched Mike spinning like a whirling dervish on his rather splintered axis, my mind drifted back to the moment not two minutes past, when somebody quite opposite emerged from the beleaguered body of Mike Winshall, aka: rubber ball (That had stuck after one Christmas party, when Karen caught sight of him drunkenly bouncing around the dance floor as if it was a mosh pit).

It was impossible not to know a little bit about his background. God knows I tried, some people just speak their thoughts; need I say any more. Admittedly this can be a helpful thing, saves the bottle-up of the ‘unnecessaries’, as my mother used to call them. When I say, maybe not so pleasing for co-workers on a Monday morning getting accustomed to the early light and IT lockdown, punctuating the day as he did, repeatedly alluding to a life less ordinary.

In all the reverie I hadn’t even noticed that he'd disappeared, until I heard Frank out back with a temper a Victorian headmaster would’ve been proud of, turning Mikey into a relative mute. With three closed office doors in between them and us you’d have expected silence or a muffled one at best. Hell no!!

It was on the second day of sickness that my mind started to wander. He’d never been off ill in all the time I’d known him, maybe once but that was self-inflicted. Flu. Flu?! He carried that disgusting handkerchief about, although it was probably that colour when he first put it in his pocket, for I had never seen him use it before the tea incident. He was one of those annoying types that never even sniffed on the coldest day of the year, let alone sneeze or cough or blow. Sod! The son of a respected doctor, no less, he once drunkenly said, the irony, I bet he was the only doctor he’d ever seen face to face. I found it hard to believe.

On my way back from work, I popped round, thought I’d brave the germs, see how he was, make him a brew. Too bloody lazy to get up I should imagine. For a man without any track record of sickness he was surely milking this one. Maybe it’d all come at once, every cold, stomach-ache and flu, like when one of those refuse trucks lifts and empties, messy yet necessary. I mused over this thinking it might be somewhat cleansing for the soul, maybe even loosen the strings a little bit.

We closed the office yesterday. Frank made a big thing of it, to assuage his guilt glands I should imagine. Closed for business, I mean. Space was cleared, desks moved, cables re-wired and extra chairs brought in. It was a small office but they all fitted in. How odd it was to witness this estate agents transform for a few strangers like this. I’m sure I was sitting on his chair too.

We sat in a circle, like at one of those groups, hiding in our sausage rolls and triangular sandwiches. Eye contact was the enemy for the first quarter of an hour. Frank was out back in the kitchenette, rummaging for some compost in which to grow some balls.

While he was gone I filled the silence by imagining the lotus look, so eloquently portrayed by the man missing today. One of the few items mentioned by the police - as well as the note - was an opened book entitled: Yoga, for beginners. Who’d have thought it, eh?

Frank broke the doom by tapping a teaspoon on his wine glass to bring us all together. Give him his due, he’d done his homework, speaking of Mike’s past as if he was his long lost father. He was sincere and sensitive, stopping numerously to wipe his tears with a large tissue, a clean one I might add. Mainly focusing on Mikey’s time here, what a good salesman he had become and how much the customers warmed to his patter.

I can’t remember it all now however towards the end it had all started to become clear: Mike Lee Winshall had been an orphan and a child in five foster families in his life, covering a large part of southern England. His last family was to be the toughest experience, as his foster mother had died just when he was opening up. It was then that his father buried his head in his work, let his foster-son go, and opened up a local business. Some years later he’d tracked Mikey down, they’d become friends again and had given him a job there, but didn’t tell a soul.

People looked at each other to see if their expressions mirrored their own, to check if they’d understood Frank correctly.

By this stage, Frank had worked his way through an entire box of tissues, had also spent nearly half an hour standing there, losing drops of his white wine to the carpet as he trembled through. The balls were there now, I thought.

As he toasted to Mike, raising his half-full glass so high, we all knew then that it was for her too - his love, his life, his world.