Pavle, Number One

The moment I burst into the office and see myself perched on the desk, eight-o-clock-wide grin and all, the day's already a disaster. Nothing quite like a greeting from the younger, better version of yourself.

As if it’s not enough I’m working the long weekend, as if it’s not enough I have sixteen voicemails begging me to fix a project I know I can’t fix, as if it’s not enough Matt’s coming in too, when I barely had time to brush my teeth.

“Late as always,” Cambridge-Pavle says, fanning himself with a blood red folder, smooth like his cheeks. “What’s the excuse this time?”

I couldn’t have possibly been this obnoxious at nineteen.

The excuse is, as always, that Married-Pavle wouldn’t let me leave, sing-songing discouragements as he fed Non-Orphan-Pavle his oatmeal with all the patience of someone who doesn’t yet know they can’t have kids.

Non-Orphan-Pavle beats his feet into my side, so I set him on the floor to crawl away and play with the extension cords in the corner. Sun’s already dragged itself up the sky; light bounces through the window-wall and off the cowlick at the back of Non-Orphan-Pavle's head as he jams his finger into a socket and giggles. A zap of electricity lifts his laughter into static.

Cambridge-Pavle watches him with pursed lips. “What a bundle of joy.”

Cambridge-Pavle doesn’t like Non-Orphan-Pavle, I assume because of the yes-orphan factor. Non-Orphan-Pavle, or NO-Pavle for short, since he's the least me, likes all of us with wet-smooches intensity. He doesn’t know any better. Won't.

“I’m getting coffee,” I say, combing through my hair so it looks at least a bit like Cambridge-Pavle's artfully messy fringe.

“Sure, procrastinate more, not like you'll be any help around here anyway.”

He thinks he's better than everyone; he's certainly better than me — pre-drop-out, pre-fuck-up.

“Shut up,” I say, and he does, mouth stapled into a scowl.

***

Downstairs, the cafeteria blinds me. It’s surgically clean — tiles scraped raw, chairs reset on the tables, corners gutted out of staff. An empty carcass, with no one to make my espresso lungo. If I were to scream at the top of my lungs, the sound would yo-yo off the walls until I slurped it back inside. Luckily, they pay me just enough not to try.

Matt stands at the opposite side of the hall, by the coffee machine, wearing the same cardigan he did yesterday — which isn’t really the emerald shade of his eyes, but crushes make for allowances. He presses a button I know to be the instant hot chocolate. Matt keeps creamer on his desk. And biscuits, which he sometimes shares with me. He’s soft where I’m not, and lonely exactly where I am.

I brought biscuits today — the good kind, the seventy-percent-cocoa, tin-wrapped-in-a-ribbon kind. Drove across the neighbourhood to get them. Straightening out my collar and my face, I step forward.

“Do you think Lucas will like my new jacket?” Married-Pavle asks right into my ear. My oxfords slip; I have to grasp the table for purchase. 

He’s clean shaven — something I never bother with anymore. The firm line of his jaw haunts me more than the dead tarnish of his eyes. With a flourish, he spins around. It’s a normal jacket, only embellished with a frill and patches on the sleeves. Did I really use to do this?

“He won’t,” I say, “and I have things to do.”

“Lucas is way better looking, you know. And fit. He’d never have chocolate in the morning.”

“Wouldn’t have me in the morning, either.”

Married-Pavle leans in, elbow on the wall, blocking my path. “Do you really want to go back to the dating stage? At least Lucas already knows how unstable you are and you know he’s not sick of it.”

Lucas is, in fact, past sick of it. Me. But Married-Pavle doesn’t know that, or that Lucas lives on the east coast now, instagram-aggressively remarried, and I’ve long since stopped trying to convince him.

“Go away,” I say, and he rolls his eyes at me, stepping to the side. Somehow, that only rattles me more. “Actually, since you’re already here, tell me how to do this.”

Before he can respond, Pete – the guy who stares at Matt too similarly to how I stare at Matt, bursts through the emergency exit and takes my spot by the coffee machine. He’s loathsome, the type to use kafkaesque in a sentence daily, sloshing around with his obnoxious attitude and his metal mate cup, and his— His hand takes my place on Matt’s shoulder. And Matt smiles.

“See,” Married-Pavle says. “Why would he be interested in you?”

It’s a coy smile. I know they’re not going out, because Matt’s my friend, and you tell your friends stuff like this, and he didn’t tell me. But it’s an inviting, one-corner-curled up smile, and it drops a stone in my gut. 

“Good morning,” I say, taking Matt’s left side. “Pete. They dragged you in on the weekend to fix our messes?”

“No, actually I asked for some overtime. Every penny counts, since I’m going to Africa next month.”

Of course he is. I don’t need to ask to know he’s going to teach poor children English, the modern-day crusader in… red vans today, apparently. 

“Pavle went to Africa during his gap year, didn’t you?” Matt asks and the smile he flashes me is just the right amount of private to placate the fear. Married-Pavle’s finger digs into my back, cold like a shiver.

“Really? What did you do down there?”

I taught poor kids English, but the bastard doesn’t need to know that.

“I’ll have to tell you someday,” I say corporate-pleasantly and punch the espresso button.

Pete doesn’t get a drink, just sucks on his metal straw before excusing himself and heading towards the restrooms. Clearly, he only came down to talk to Matt, and I ruined it. How tragic for him.

“He’s nice,” Matt says, blowing into the plastic cup, and that’s how I know the I really should ask him out someday has festered into now or never. Today. I’ll ask him out today.

“You think everyone’s nice.” It’s my favourite thing about Matt.

“Hardly.”

“Name one person you don’t like.”

Matt puts on a show of thinking about it; over his shoulder Married-Pavle puts on one less amusing, waving in panic. He’s not as ironed-out as Cambridge-Pavle, crumpled at the corners of his eyes, but for now the wrinkles are what Lucas called them — adorable. Married-Pavle’s so besotted he’s got no time to care he dropped out of uni, no time yet to fall asleep with the bottle like a plushie under his arm. He’s got all the time to bother me, though.

“Well,” Matt says at last, “you don’t like anyone, so we even out.”

I open my mouth to say I like you as a perfect, smooth sequitur, but Married-Pavle slaps his palm over it. He smells of methane, odourless but for the tinge of warning I laced him with myself.

“Right.” Matt lines the cup with his mouth, a plastic smile. “I’ll ring Jane up, see if she’s awake enough to tweak the animations. You check how much you can change those training slides. I still can’t believe they decided to re-brand now, like that doesn’t screw up the whole colour palette. Rendezvous at twelve hundred hours?”

When Married-Pavle slides his hand down to my throat, I say, “I’ll bring lunch.”

***

Cambridge-Pavle disintegrates into my carpet, his red university hoodie pooling around him as he airplanes NO-Pavle above his chest.

“Took you long enough.”

Where Married-Pavle exudes contentment, Cambridge-Pavle reeks of potential; I can barely see my desk through the fumes.

“I’d ask them to pay me double,” he says as I plug my MacBook into the docking station. “I’m never going to do weekends.”

“I’m not you.”

NO-Pavle chirps in agreement.

Cambridge-Pavle snaps his fingers and levitates the laptop right out of my hands — he’s young, and handsome, and he can do whatever he wants. It hangs, dragging the cord behind like an IV tube, as he peers at the screen.

“This is so boring. I could never have a job like this.”

“Are you finished?”

“You’re boring. Where would you even take this Matt guy, to the library? To get coffee? You don’t know how to have fun without a beer.”

He doesn’t either. He’s bent at an odd angle, blue light sliding off the RayBans he wears just to look smart, even though he has no reason to pretend. I asked him once why he knows I dropped out, when Married-Pavle doesn’t know I’m divorced. Because I’m smart, he said then, fixing his glasses.

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” I say.

“Well, you didn’t pay any attention during the first one.”

He doesn’t even know that, he’s just mean. Was I really this mean? Am I still?

“Give it back.”

When he does, I tune both of them out, and edit the first slide. Dear God, the new slogan is idiotic.

Cambridge-Pavle grows bored quicker than the toddler in the room, perhaps because he’s already had the chance to develop all the attention deficit issues, and hangs around my neck. His breath is hot in my ear.

“He could ask him out,” he says when I scroll through the inbox, pointing at NO-Pavle stacking up a notebook house. “He’s not all fucked up.”

“Matt’s mother’s dead, too. Plenty of normal people’s parents are dead.”

“Maybe, but he didn’t grow ripe in a dump-house,” Cambridge-Pavle says, popping the words. “You’ll never have a normal family.”

Cambridge-Pavle doesn’t need to worry about his orphan status; he holds plenty of redeeming qualities and is still a potential husband and father.

“But you’re not me.” Cambridge-Pavle toys with my screen, turning it off and on. His face flickers in the black. “You’re not me, you’re not him, you’re not anyone.”

“I’ll ask him out today.”

“But he’s nothing like Lucas. No one’s going to be this patient with you,” Married-Pavle says, slinging his arm around my shoulders. “What if you freak out on him? Do you think he will just hold you and pretend you’re normal?”

NO-Pavle crawled underneath my desk, shuffling between the discarded drafts. He bites into my ankle.

I jump to my feet. “That’s enough. For fuck’s sake, why can’t you help me out with this?”

Married-Pavle looks gutted, like he’s not yet used to being shouted at. Isn’t he in for a nasty surprise? Cambridge-Pavle shrugs.

“You don’t really want us to, do you?” he asks.

“I need you to give me some advice.”

“No one’s like Lucas. He’s the one,” Married-Pavle says.

“Why date, if you can have someone else every night?” Cambridge-Pavle asks.

NO-Pavle gnaws at my sock.

I kick him off, and barge past them to the door.

Matt’s not in his office. He’s probably smoking, so I take the lift to the garages to look for him. 

With a ping, it caskets me in; I’m everywhere around me. Even the ceiling is lined with a mirror. Even the biscuits tin stares back at me with a distorted corner of my face.

I could make Matt happy. I make him happy now, if only in passing, with teary-eyed belly laughter that should look ridiculous on a thirty-year-old but instead looks like everything I want.

Something falls on the top of my head, wet. There’s no source on the ceiling, just my face twisted in confusion, but more droplets rain around me. Where they hit the floor, it shimmers, swirling the reflection until the colours soften and blend together, like turpentine on a painting.

“He’s never going to say yes,” Cambridge-Pavle says behind my back, which is pressed flush to the wall.

I lean forward, and he falls in to slump against me, feet still sunken in the mirror. He doesn’t have a reflection.

My hands sweat, leaving damp imprints on the tin when I adjust my hold. NO-Pavles chubby hand worms out of the rainbow-vortex floor and grasps me around the calf. It’s cold.

“You could still enrol. Somewhere. Anywhere that’s not below our standard. Ask him then.”

“You shouldn’t ask him,” Married-Pavle says. His patched-elbow jacket slings from the ceiling, back and forth, back and forth, sleeves stretched out like a honey string. “No one can compare.”

NO-Pavle drags himself up to his feet and hugs my legs — clingy, trusting, everything I’m not.

“Look who you were.” Cambdrige-Pavle yanks me around by the shoulders, presses his nose to mine. “Look who you’re not. You’re stupid, lazy, wasted. And you stink of whisky.”

“I don’t,” I say. His sleeve is soaked; my hands sink into his arms, fingernails scratch bone. “I don’t.”

Married-Pavle’s polished shoe nudges the side of my head. “You’re just going to disappoint him. You already disappoint Lucas every day, but he forgives you.”

I dig my fingers into his ankle and yank him down. I swing at his head with the tin — it collides with his skull, chimes. 

“You don’t know that.” I take another swing. “You can’t know any of that if I never try.”

The tin jams into his temple, cracks open. Biscuits scatter around on the floor. Melt, chocolate swirls in dirty milk. NO-Pavle wails.

“I’m just looking out for you,” Married-Pavle says. He sounds lost. I tore a strip of skin off his cheek; he’s empty inside, just black.

I fall back on my arse, the lift pooling around my dress pants.

I’m shaking. I cover my face with my hands so I don’t have to look at any of them and try to inhale for six seconds, but there’s not enough air in the room. NO-Pavle’s cries grate on the inside of my skull.

“Stop that.”

There’s a crumb underneath my thigh. The floor’s solid again, just my white shirt and red face, swollen with fear.

“I can’t do anything half as well as you would.”

Married-Pavle scoops NO-Pavle off the floor, wipes at his tears.

Cambridge-Pavle huffs. “Anyone say otherwise?”

“But I have to ask Matt out.”

“You shouldn’t,” they both say, in voices smoother than mine.

I get up. Half-blind, I find the lift buttons and push the garages level again. I shouldn’t, but I’ll regret it more if I don’t. I’ve learnt as much.

“Don’t follow me,” I say when the doors slide open.

Of course, they don't; they have to listen to me, after all. But they won't leave. I'll never ask them; I need them too much.

I find Matt smoking behind a paper company lorry. I’ve lost the biscuits, so I only offer a smile and a shove to his shoulder. I jam my hands into the safety of my armpits so he can’t see how hard they shake.

“Hey,” he says, giving me a once-over. Concerned. Friendly. “You alright?”

Matt’s a good friend. A colleague, and more than that. He’s the only bright point of my day. I can’t do it. Can’t. It’s not worth the risk.

“Just wanted some fresh air.”

Matt looks at me, closely, like I’ve got something on my face. Then, he takes the last drag and stubs the cigarette out on the wall. His frown dissolves, drop by drop, swirls to solidify into a beam.

I’m buoyant. He’s happy to see me. It could be good. A date, first of many, where we gradually learn how much of fuck-ups we both are and maybe, at the end, decide to stay anyway.

“Pete just asked me out,” Matt says, and I plummet back to the ground. Light snuffs out.

A Pavle, Not-Me-Pavle laughs — distant, muffled, metallic.

“Really?” I force myself to ask.

“Yeah, that’s great, isn’t it? We’re going to that new pub down the street tonight. I’ve been looking to get back into dating for ages now.”

“Yeah.” I sag against the wall. “That’s great. Can’t wait to hear all about it.”

He pats my back and leaves me there, in the middle of the parking lot, hollow and too late.

It's for the best. At least for Matt.

There’s a crunch on top of the lorry, a silhouette blocking out the sun.

I jump off the roof, feet splashing a puddle, a stain of chocolate on my dress pants. I wave at me in greeting.

“Time to show you around,” Cambridge-Pavle says, stepping out of the garage. “Pavle, number five.”