—
The next day is more of the same. Eleven tickets. The low-light of the day is when I get to confess to my husband that I have been sleeping with my trainer for the last year. The first year of our marriage. I get to see his face, watch him try to keep it together. Of all the types of tickets, this is the worst. Heartbreak. When I first started at this job, I thought physical pain would be hardest. But it’s not. This is the hardest. To be inside here, looking at this man’s face, at the lowest moment of his life, watching him try to keep it together. To be inside here, feeling what this woman is feeling, having done this to him. And then the world blinks twice and my field of vision goes blue and I’m a guy sitting in front of a computer screen and the sandwich cart is in front of my cubicle.
So I have lunch.
After lunch, I pass her in the hall. The new woman. Her name badge says Kirthi. She doesn’t look at me this time.
—
On the way home from work, I decide to swing by the secondhand shop and check out my life.
It’s not my life, technically. Not yet. It’s the life I want, the life I’ve been saving for. Not a DreamLife®, not top of the line, but a starter model, a good one. Standard possibility. Low volatility. A kindhearted wife with nice hair, 0.35 kids, no actuals, certainties are too expensive, but some potential kids, a solid 35 percent chance of having one. Normal life expectancy, average health, median aggregate amount of happiness. I test-drove it once, and it felt good, it felt right. It fit just fine.
I don’t know. I’m trying not to feel sorry for myself. I just thought there might be more to it all than this.
Still, I’ve got it better than some people. I mean, I’m renting my life out one day at a time, but I haven’t sold it yet. And I don’t plan to, either. I’m buying in, not selling out. I want to live, not exist, want to have a life, even if it is bits and pieces, even if it isn’t the greatest product out there, even if it’s more like a life-substitute. I’ll take it.
I’m not going to be like my father, who sold his life on a cold, clear afternoon in November. He was thirty. It was the day before my fourth birthday.
We went to the brokerage. It felt like a bank, but friendlier. My father had been carrying me on his shoulders, but he put me down when we got inside. There was dark wood everywhere, and also bright flowers and classical music. We were shown to a desk, and a woman in an immaculate pantsuit asked if we would like anything to drink. My father didn’t say anything, just looked off at the far wall. I remember my mother asked for a cup of tea for my father.
I don’t want to sell my life. I’m not ready to do that yet. So I sell it bit by bit. Scrape by. Sell it by the hour. Pain, grief, terror, worse. Or just mild discomfort. Social anxiety. Boredom.
—
I ask around about Kirthi. People are talking. The guys are talking. Especially the married guys. They do the most talking.
I pass her in the hall again, and again she doesn’t look at me. No surprise there. Women never look at me. I am not handsome or tall. But I am nice.
I think it is actually that which causes the not-looking at me. The niceness, I mean, not the lack of handsomeness or tallness. They can see the niceness and it is the kind of niceness that, in a man, you instinctively ignore. What is nice? What good is a nice man? No good to women. No good to other men.
She doesn’t look at me, but I feel, or maybe I wish or I imagine, that something in the way she does not look at me is not quite the same. She is not-looking at me in a way that feels like she is consciously not-looking at me. And from the way she is not-looking at me, I can tell she knows I am trying to not-look at her. We are both not-looking at each other. And yet, there is something in the way she is not-looking at me. For the first time in a long while, I have hope.
—
I am at a funeral. Again.
I’m flipped to green.
You can be flipped to green, or flipped to red.
You can be there, or can just feel the feeling.
This is the one improvement they have made that actually benefits us workers. There’s a toggle switch on the headset. Flip it to green and you get a rendering of the client’s visual field. You see what he sees. Flip it to red and you still feel all of the feelings, but you see what you see.
You can do whatever you want, so long as you don’t leave your cubicle. Some people just stare at the cube-divider wall. Some play computer solitaire. Some even chat with neighbors, although that is strongly discouraged.
I was hesitant at first, but more and more these days I am usually flipped to red. Except for funerals. Funerals, I like to be there, just out of some kind of respect thing.
This morning’s first ticket: sixtyish rich guy, heart attack in the home office, millions in the bank, five kids from three marriages, all hate him.
Client is one of those kids, trust-fund baby, paid extra for amnesia. No feeling, no pre-feeling, no hangover, no residue, no chance of actually having any part of it, long enough to ensure that he will be halfway in the bag before any of the day’s events start nibbling at the corners of his awareness.
I see the fresh, open plot. A little rain falls on the funeral procession as they get out of the cars, but there’s a break in the clouds so that it’s raining and the sun is shining at the same time.
As usual, everyone is well dressed. A lot of the rich look mildly betrayed in the face of death, as if they are a little bit surprised that good style and a lot of money weren’t quite enough to protect them from the unpleasantness of it all. I’m standing next to what I am guessing is widow number two, late thirties, probably, with beautiful sand-colored hair. We make eye contact and she is staring at me and I am trying not to stare at her and then we both realize the same thing at the same time. Raj, I almost say, catching myself before I do, but something in my eyes must give it away anyway, because she smiles, or he smiles. I’m not quite sure which one smiles, Raj, or the person he is hiding inside of.
Rajiv usually works night shift now, so I haven’t seen him in a while. He must have picked up a day shift. We used to have a beer or two after work. A friend, I would call him. I want to call him that. One of the few I’ve had in this line of work.
The pastor talks about a full life lived, and the limits of earthly rewards, and everyone nods affirmatively, and then there is music as the body goes into the ground, I’ve heard it at a lot of funerals. Mozart, I think, but I am not sure. Sometimes I think that’s really what my job is. Nodding and crying and listening to Mozart. And I think, there are worse things. There are.
—
Death of an aunt is seven hundred. Death of an uncle is six.
Bad day in the markets is a thousand. Kid’s recital is one twenty-five an hour. Church is one fifty.
The only category that we will not quote a price on is death of a child. Death of a child is separately negotiated. Hardly anyone can afford it. And not all operators can handle it. We have to be specially trained to be eligible for those tickets. People go on sick leave, disability. Most people just physically cannot do it. There hasn’t been one booked the whole time I’ve been here, so most of us aren’t even sure what is true and what isn’t. The rumor is that if you do one, you are allowed to take the rest of the month off. Deep was always tempted. It’s not worth it, I would tell him. Okay, so, maybe not for you, Deep said. Okay, so, mind your own business, he would say.
—
The first time I talk to Kirthi is by the water fountain. I tell her we are neighbors, cubicle-wise. She says she knows. I feel a bit stupid.
The second time we talk, we are also by the water fountain, and I try to say something charming, we have to stop meeting like this or something terrible like that. I probably saw it on TV and it just came out. Stupid. She doesn’t laugh, but she doesn’t frown, either. She just kind of looks at me, as if trying to figure out how I could have thought that was a good idea.