Canary Wharf
Outside, in the plaza, men march forward. Women change from trainers to
work heels. Gardeners rip out rows of wilting flowers. The news scrolls like a river
round the Reuters building.
No Police Line Do Not Cross tape left. Not even a forgotten yellow knot of it.
Indoors, the air is cool and clean. The hallways echo with the clack of human
footsteps. I take the escalator up towards the bookshop. Look downwards, over the
balustrade. Think of yesterday. The sound of breaking. Shouts. I look away.
Outside the bookshop I pause again. I feel for the jingling keys, and then
unlock. When I turn the lights on they flicker, like nervous little animals.
The shop is warm and dusty; but it feels safe. So does the warren of back
rooms behind the shop floor – the corridor lined with unsold Christmas stock, the
staff toilet and cashing-up room, the little breakroom. In the breakroom, I open the
fridge to store my lunch. The fridge bleats out a dirty, rotting smell. I’ll have to clean
it.
For now, though, I focus on opening. I take the till drawers out of the safe,
heavy with money, and slot them into the tills. I check the online orders: stick labels
onto packets, snap elastic bands secure. Like yesterday.
Then, at 8am, I open up. I swing the shop doors wide.
People come in dribs and drabs. A jogger, some commuters. Men come into
the shop and snarl about our stock, our shelving systems. I serve a man in a pale
pink shirt. Spit flies from his tongue, furious, and I stand and wait until he’s spent.
There’s a kind of tenderness in his bowed head as he checks through his receipt.
You were someone’s precious little baby once, I try to think.
After the rush, Emma clocks in. She was here yesterday, as well. Here when
the man came in crying. Here when he left. When we heard the shouts. When we
stared at each other in shock, and the noises cracked across the brittle floors.
We nod at each other, but don’t meet each other’s eyes today. Not properly. It’s
all too close. Too painful.
He wasn’t the first one who’s come in crying. The man. Not at all. So many
times I’ve found men crying between the bookshelves, brought them tissues, walked
away. So many times I’ve wanted to help them more: the men my brother’s age
crying, the men my dad’s age crying, I don’t know why.
When my lunchbreak comes, I sit blankly, in the small blank breakroom. After
some time, I open the fridge to get my lunch. My Tupperware of pasta is fresh, but it
has breathed the fridge’s bitterness, a deadness at the edges of its taste. I bite and
bite, knowing it’s bad, still biting.
The man was going bald, the crying man. At his temples, at the top of his head
you could see through his hair. Delicate as a baby’s fontanel. As breakable. He went
to the children’s book corner. I walked over, handed him a tissue. I said nothing.
I didn’t see him leave the shop. Maybe I could have stopped him.
I’ll clean the fridge. I’ll do it. I’m doing it. First a cranberry juice carton, expired. I
pour its wounded red slurry down the sink. Then hummus blue with mould; and
chicken skewers in old pink liquid. Then packets of salad turned to sea slime. Things
stink.
When I’ve filled the binbag I feel calm. I take it out to the communal bin, then
slam the lid. Come back and wash each glass shelf of the fridge. The water flows
towards me, drains away.
When my break is over, I go back to the shop floor. Emma’s there, flustered.
Her hands fiddle with the stapler as we talk. ‘Cleaned out the fridge,’ I say, and she
smiles.
People come and go all afternoon. Like nothing happened. They buy books and
they walk among the shelves. When evening comes, Emma and I leave together.
We walk out of the gleaming building. Flies and dust and pollen flying past us. Heat
is rising upwards from the plaza; and I walk through the warmth, through the people,
through the pigeons, flapping and rotting and living.
Phoebe T (she/her) is from South London. Her stories and reviews have appeared in Short Fiction, Litro Online, IFLA!, Brixton Review of Books, Lunate and 3:AM Magazine. In 2020 she completed the Goldsmiths MA in Creative & Life Writing through the Isaac Arthur Green Scholarship. You can find her on Twitter: @pb_ph0ebe.