Skippy Dies (59 page)

‘What are you
doing
?’

You open your eyes. Ruprecht towers over you with a baffled expression.

‘Must’ve fallen asleep…’ You haul your head off the carpet. ‘I was playing the game,’ you say, gesturing at the monitor. But
it’s not switched on. You drag yourself onto the bed and sit up.

‘What’s this?’ Ruprecht has picked up an empty amber tube from the floor.

‘Nothing,’ you say, ‘just getting rid of some stuff.’ Sleep sizzles into your thoughts like radio static. The little doors
have disappeared. ‘Did you get your pod back?’

Ruprecht looks grimly out the window. ‘That damn dog,’ he says. A growl issues from his stomach. ‘You don’t have any food,
do you?’

‘No,’ you say. Was it all a dream then? Disappointment burns within you, beads in your eyes, almost too much to bear.

‘Hmm.’ Ruprecht checks his watch. ‘Ed’s is still open…’

He turns away to count coins from his penny jar. You’re looking at
SEE YOU THERE
!
just trying not to cry. And then you realize you’re floating six inches off the ground.

Holy shit! What’s going on? Ruprecht has his back to you, he’s saying something about making a new pod, meanwhile you are
slowly rising up towards the ceiling! You try not to laugh – it’s like invisible hands have slipped under your feet and are
lifting you, higher and higher –

Ruprecht turns round. Instantly you’re back on the floor.
‘What happened to Frisbee Girl?’ he says. He can’t see them, but quarks and electrons are shooting through the air, sparking
from his body like a million miniature multicoloured lightning bolts.

You shrug. ‘Some other time.’

‘Oh.’ Another ferocious rumble issues from his stomach. ‘I don’t seem to have enough change,’ he says.

‘I’ll pay for both of us,’ you say. ‘We can have a race.’

‘A race?’

‘Why not?’ Your atoms are pulling upwards again. Every second you feel yourself lighter and lighter!
Say if we started going back in time tonight, could we keep going back for as long as we wanted?

Ruprecht does one of his scoffing laughs. ‘My dear Skippy, no one’s beaten me in fifteen consecutive races. And those times
I wasn’t even hungry.’

‘Well…’ You zip up your coat. Through the window the neon doughnut sign shines in at you, the door of doors, the gateway to
everything beyond, today and yesterday and the day before, all the times and people you have ever loved. ‘Maybe it’s my lucky
day,’ you say.

‘SERVICE: Smile; Efficiency; Reliability; Volunteering product information; Instant attention to new customers; Courtesy;
Excellence.

‘Smile. The Smile is your personal storefront. It is the first point of contact between the Customer and the Café-restaurant,
and so should be as carefully maintained as the espresso machine or the counter display.

‘Efficiency. Ed’s Doughnut House is dedicated to offering the Customer the two Q’s: Quality, Quickly…’

The boy isn’t even pretending to listen; he is chewing gum, which is banned on the very first page of the Employee Manual,
and gazing off at the upper reaches of the kitchen walls, which Lynsey notes are discoloured by grease. She keeps going anyway,
and the more he sighs and shrugs the slower she gets, just to remind him who’s in charge.

‘These are the absolute basics,’ she concludes. ‘Any Level One employee is expected to know them off by heart, before he or
she even begins to think about Level Two. Now, let’s proceed to the espresso machine. Why don’t you make me a skinny mochaccino.’

Off he goes, slouch slouch scowl scowl, as if she’d just asked him for a pint of blood.

In ordinary circumstances, someone like Zhang would not have even a snowball’s chance of making Level Two. But of course these
aren’t ordinary circumstances. We need to tread carefully here, Lynsey, Senan told her. This business has caused enough trouble
for us already. An employee claiming trauma is the last thing we want. Have a chat with him, take his pulse. If he seems disgruntled
maybe a promotion would sweeten him up a bit.

Well, Lynsey’s not sure how she feels about
that
. Okay, fair
enough, Zhang’s been through a traumatic experience, she doesn’t deny that. Having someone die on your shift, that’s pretty
unlucky. At the same time, he hasn’t actually put in for a promotion, and Tragedy or not, in her opinion it’d be totally unfair
on Ruby and every other Level One worker if Zhang got promoted and they didn’t. Because, like, when is he
not
disgruntled? He’s
always
like that. But Senan’s Regional Manager, so what he says goes – plus, he’s hinted there could be a promotion in store for
Lynsey too if they ever manage to get this mess sorted out. And why wouldn’t there be? The stuff she’s had to do in the last
week has been way outside of her job description! Management calling her from London every day for updates, the Food Safety
people sniffing around, though the worst has got to be the newspapers – they will just not let up, those people. Someone once
said there’s no such thing as bad publicity, well, in the Café-restaurant business there is!!! Unless you think that people
are going to queue up to eat in a place someone’s
died
!!! So Lynsey’s been running around like a blue-arsed fly, barely getting a wink of sleep, doing her best to take the calls
and field the questions, and as Senan said, just make it absolutely clear, as delicately as she can, obviously, given the
circumstances, and with all due respect to the family, that the death of the boy in question, while tragic, was NOT caused
by or resulting from or in any way related to any Ed’s Doughnut House product, in fact the police said he actually hadn’t
eaten anything at all in the Café-restaurant, unlike his little porky friend who’d eaten about twenty-five doughnuts. She
must have used the words ‘tragedy’ and ‘unrelated’ five million times this week – her dad is keeping a scrapbook with all
her newspaper and magazine appearances, ten all told, although four spelled her name wrong and one said she was
thirty
!!!
Excuse me???
And of course who gets his own headline except Spa-face – ZHANG: HEROIC EFFORTS. She supposes he was quite heroic doing the
Heimlich manoeuvre and stuff, even though the kid Daniel didn’t actually choke, but still it seems a bit unfair on Ruby and
the other staff members, like suggesting they’re
not
heroic just because
they come in and do their job every day, when in fact if it wasn’t for everyday people like that the world would just grind
to a halt and the economy would be ruined.

Also, this is the worst mochaccino she has ever tasted in her entire life.

The Principal of Seabrook College came in to speak to her too, a couple of days after it happened. He was a tall, dynamic
man, in his late thirties maybe? Basically he was doing the same thing she was, trying to protect the school’s image and explain
that while it was a tragedy it was just this one crazy kid, and not anyone else’s
fault
. Having said that – he put his hand on her arm – on behalf of the school I want to apologize for any distress this might
have caused you or your employees. He shook his head. I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years, he said, and I’m at a loss
to understand this.

Lynsey doesn’t understand it either. He’s
fourteen
, and he takes an overdose just because his girlfriend dumped him? Jesus, like, relax! That’s life! People get dumped! If
Lynsey had killed herself over every fucking self-absorbed arsehole who’d dumped her, she’d… well, she’d be pretty dead at
this stage. Anyway he should’ve known it would happen sooner or later, that girl was way out of his league, it’s obvious from
the photographs – no shortage of those, needless to say,
Ravishing
this and
Tragic Beauty
that and
Teen Heartbreaker
the other, not to mention
Gorgeous Juliet in Real-life Romeo and Juliet Story
, which, hello, a) that would only make sense if her name was Juliet but it’s not it’s Lori, and b) if the person had ever
seen
Romeo + Juliet
they would know that is nothing like what happened in the Café-restaurant.

Though at the same time… you can’t deny it’s romantic, writing her name with his last breath. Like in a way that girl is so
lucky – most women won’t ever experience anything even close to as romantic as that.
She wonders what he was like. Daniel Juster. She imagines the annoying Seabrook boys that crowd in here at lunchtime, and
him standing apart, different, sort of quiet and wistful and melancholy… Life is so sad, and love is so unfair. She wonders
if Zhang has a girl he’s in love with back in China. Maybe he’s saving up to go home and marry her. Maybe he misses her and
that’s why he’s so grouchy. She temporarily feels sorry for him and she marks him as twelve out of twenty on the Product Information
section even though he has actually scored a zero.

‘Zhang, let’s talk about the other night. How are you feeling? Are you feeling all right?’

He looks back at her blankly.

‘I mean, after what happened. With that boy?’ Hallo, Earth to employee! Remember, he took about five hundred painkillers?
Died just over there by the jukebox? You were holding him at the time? ‘We’re just wondering if you’re experiencing any after-effects.
Trouble sleeping, flashbacks, anything like that? Perhaps you’re finding it difficult to fulfil your work duties, maybe you
need some time off?’

He draws a rasping breath, pulls his head back. ‘You wan’ cuh’ ma owas?’

God, he’s so obnoxious. She releases a light, fluttering laugh. ‘No, we don’t want to cut your hours. We just want to make
sure that, although the company holds no responsibility for the events of last week, you don’t feel yourself adversely affected
such that continuing to carry out your responsibilities here as per your contract might now or at some future date result
in anxiety, depression or similar conditions. Also that you’re satisfied that the company has made available to you such time
and resources as you might need in the course of making a full recovery.’

Suspicion gives way to the blank look again. Lynsey takes a card from her personal organizer. ‘If you do feel the need to
talk to someone, this is the counselling service available to all company employees. It’s a special low-cost line.’

He flips the card between his fingers. It’s hard to be sure he’s taking any of this in. But it doesn’t
look
like he’s planning on milking them over the Tragic Event. She can go back and tell Senan to relax, and the relief and pleasure
she imagines flooding to Senan’s face at this inspires an unexpected wave of sympathy and gratitude
for Zhang. She promises him a prompt response on his appraisal, and as she leaves she is thinking that even if it hasn’t occurred
to him to sue them (God, if it’d been an Irish guy behind the counter that night! €€€!) she may bump him up to Level Two anyway.
It’s only twenty euro extra a month after all.

Halfway to the door she pauses, imagining she can see a trace of strawberry syrup still there on the floor tiles, and she
disappears into a little daydream about Senan writing her name there – but instead of dying getting up, and staring deep into
her, Lynsey’s, eyes, and unscrewing his wedding ring and tossing it over his shoulder… They’d have a house in Ballsbridge
near the park, and another in Connemara by the sea, and three little boys who Senan would drive into Seabrook College every
morning. But she wouldn’t let them come in here. Once you find out what’s in those doughnuts they’re actually really disgusting.

The intervening days between the ‘Tragic Event’, as it’s become known, and the funeral mass in Seabrook parish church are
a dreamlike mixture of chaos and odd, affectless serenity, like watching a riot on television with the sound turned down.
Classes are suspended, and in the ensuing vacuum reality too seems on hold, the boundaries and precepts that ordinarily govern
the schoolday, that had seemed until now like fundamental laws of the universe, simply no longer there: the ringing of the
bell at three-quarter-hour intervals just a meaningless sound, the corridors full of people wandering around like drones in
some computer simulation.

As if to compound the weirdness, parents keep bursting through the double-doors at every hour and charging up the stairs to
besiege the Acting Principal. From their expressions, blending the implacable determination
of the irate customer with a touching, infant-like helplessness, one might think these parents, many of whose sons are not
even in the same year as Daniel Juster, to be more upset than anyone else. And maybe they are; maybe for them, Howard thinks,
Seabrook College really is a bulwark of tradition, stability, constancy, all of the things it says in the brochure, and so
in spite, no doubt, of their best intentions, they can’t help viewing the Tragic Event, the suicide of this boy they do not
know, as a hostile act, a kind of vandalism, a swear-word wantonly scratched into the sleek black paint of their lives. ‘Why
would he do such a thing?’ they ask, over and over, wringing their hands; and the Automator tells them the same thing he tells
the newspapermen and women that appear at the school gates, outside the doors, skulking down Our Lady’s Hall – that the school
is conducting a full investigation, that he will not rest until an explanation is found, but that the number one priority
for all of them now must be the care and reassurance of the boys.