The Cheat

‘Oh, good. You’re here. Come in, come in, sit down.’

Oh dear. This can’t be good.

Brian takes a tentative step forward, and then another, and finally, gingerly, sits down in the empty chair in front of the desk. This can’t be good at all.

Brian wishes he can say this is the first time he has been called in to speak to the man behind the desk. In fact, he wishes he could say he had never been in this office, never shown up in the foyer down the hall with a book in his hand, never found himself standing in front of the reception desk where sits the plump receptionist who looks up blandly from her screen and says, ‘Ah! Back again? You know the way,’ and waves him on to face the long trudge down the hall to this room, to sit across from this man.

But he can’t. Because he has.

The man across the desk is flicking through some papers in a file, his brow furrowed, his grey eyebrows clenched in concentration. His light, brown skin with speckled freckles taught with… with what? Annoyance? Exhaustion, perhaps. Brian dreads to think. The desk is the same, it is always the same. The neat stack of files, the pot of mixed pens, the plastic name plaque that reads Ray. Brian sighs. Here we go.

Finally, Ray closes the file and slides it to one side, steeples his fingers in front of him and surveys Brian with an intense gaze of deep, unescapable knowing. Brian thinks that might be the worst part.

‘Book,’ Ray says.

Brian was wrong. This is the worst part.

The book in Brian’s hand seems to grow a stone heavier and burn with incrimination. He reluctantly lays it on the desk and slides it with one finger towards Ray, Ray lays his own finger on it and tries to slide it the rest of the way, but Brian can’t seem to let go. For a minute they are in a battle of wills, a finger on each end of the book, locked in eye contact that Brian thinks feels like a mother’s grip on a young, school-skipping ear. Brian breaks first, obviously, and lets go.

Ray clears his throat and opens the cover, the deep red leather cracking with age as it falls open, then he goes very quiet as he flicks through the pages, giving Brian an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu as he goes. Brian raises a finger and opens his mouth at some parts, but no words seem to come, so he closes it again.

There’s something about Ray that gets under Brians skin. It’s his control, his inner, calm, the way his emotions are regulated and measured. Twat. Brian watches him reading random paragraphs, he watches as some of the information tries to wreck his inner calm, battering at it like shrapnel. Brian gets a small thrill from this. At one part Ray’s eyes widen in horror. Brian wonders what part he has just read. He can think of a handful of instances off the top of his head.

Finally Ray has had enough, lets the rest of the pages fall through his fingers at speed, which gives Brian a sickly vertigo feeling and makes him clutch at the arms of the chair.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Brian says.

Ray slides the book off to the side and looks up at the ceiling, contemplating, choosing his words carefully, collecting himself back to his normal, annoying, calm self.

‘Brian,’ he says, ‘how do you think that went?’

‘I… well, I would say…’

‘Would you say better or worse than the last time?’

‘Oh, better. Much.’

‘Better. You think you led a life of meaning and purpose that time, do you?’

‘Oh, yes. All the purpose, yes. I’m a changed man.’

‘Each attempt at life is meant to get better, it is meant to improve you as a person until you are the best version of you you can be. You are meant to grow, to learn, to be… better.’

‘I’m better.’

‘You got arrested yesterday.’

‘Ah,’ Brian raises his finger again, ‘I might have.’

‘No, no might have, you did.’ Ray is consulting the book now which he has opened back up, running his finger down a page and reading aloud, ‘You were taken into custody while screaming: “You don’t know nothing, you all are a pack of shiny-nosed, pimple-headed, ball-sacks from the depths of…”’ Ray squints at the page.

‘The netherworld,’ Brian says helpfully. Ray raises his eyebrows.

‘Pimple-headed ball-sacks?’

‘Yeah, I heard that somewhere.’

Ray shakes his head sadly, and tells Ray ball-sacks don’t even have heads and therefore the comment has no basis in fact.

‘And that’s a double negative, you know,’ says Ray. ‘You either know nothing or you know something, you can’t not know nothing, otherwise you do know something.’

‘What?’

‘Why were you arrested?’

Brian thinks carefully. How best to go about this one? How much does Ray know, exactly? He can’t even really remember what his offence was yesterday, he has a very vague memory of a shopping trip gone wrong in Aldi.

‘That was an accident,’ he says finally. ‘I put the beef inside my jacket because I didn’t want it in the basket where it could squash the bread, and I forgot it was there.’

Ray says nothing but raises his brows further. Brian guesses he knows more than about the stolen beef.

‘Oh, and the other items I think fell, when I was reaching for something. They pack the shelves too tightly, it’s a liability actually. It was lucky I wasn’t injured.’

Brian didn’t think it was possible, but Ray’s eyebrows go even further up his head before he drops his gaze back down to the book and flips back a few pages.

‘I meant the assault, Brian. The one where you hit a street performer.’

Dammit. He forgot about that.

‘Oh, that. He pretended to steal my nose.’

‘So you were shoplifting too?’

‘Who does the nose trick anymore? I’m not five.’

‘This account is just… extensive,’ says Ray, flipping through pages with a look, Brian thinks, is between horror and amazement. ‘Theft, common assault, inciting a riot, resisting arrest,’ Ray lists, ‘impersonating an officer,’

‘What? I never did that.’

Brian rips the book from Rays grasp and peers at the page closely.

‘Oh, yeah. I might have done that.’ He pushes the book back. ‘Forgot.’

Ray closes his eyes briefly and fills his lungs with a calming breath. ‘Let’s attack this a different way, Brian. Let’s put all the negative things to one side for a moment. Have you done anything good?’

‘Good? Like…’

Ray sighs and massages his old temples. ‘Do you remember anything we talked about the last time?’

‘To be fair that was a lifetime ago.’

‘Or the time before that? Or the one before that? Try.’

Now Brian sighs, he slumps back in his chair, his head lolling back lazily. He is exhausted. He is sick of living the same life over and over again only to get told off for it at the end. What does this guy want from him? He’s not Mother Teresa, sometimes a street performer needs to be punched in the face, that’s hardly Brians fault.

He looks around the room as Ray goes off on some tangent about doing good or something. ‘If you can’t stop breaking the law, Brian, at least try to do some positive things in between,’ he is saying. Brian has heard it all before and is losing focus, staring around the room instead. It is sparse and plain, simple carpet tiles, a filing cabinet, a plant in the corner. But his eyes keep being drawn to the two doors behind Ray. The one on the left leads back to the start, the one on the right, on to the next. The next what, Brian wonders? He has never been directed through that one before, never been able to pass, always back to square one.

‘This book is telling me I need to send a body back through that door,’ Ray is saying, indicating the old familiar back-to-start door. ‘Next time I want it to tell me something different. Good things, Brian, ok? Name me some good things to aim for.’

‘Err…’

‘We’ve done this before, many times. Last time I gave you brochures, Brian, remember the brochures?’

‘Err the brochures, yeah, I read all of those, definitely. Didn’t one have like, a… dog on it or something?’

‘A d— no, why would it have a dog? Did you read the brochures? Yes or no?’

‘Ah, now I remember. I was going to read the brochures but then I saw a dog.’

Ray looks a little bit like he might cry. He covers his face in his hands and mumbles some things Brian can’t make out though they sound a lot like swear words. Finally he regroups and starts opening and shutting desk drawers, riffling through god knows what goes into a desk like that.

‘I’m going to get you more brochures,’ says Ray, ‘and we’re going to read through them together and brainstorm some ideas.’

‘Oh no, not brainstorm, please. I get it, honestly, I’ll do better—' but Ray has already left the room, his footsteps heavy down the corridor, the weight of a man who’s bitten off more than he can chew.

‘Bollocks,’ Brian says, a word which probably does not feature in the brochure that Ray has gone to find. He stands up and stretches, paces a bit. He’d look out a window if there was one. Instead, he raps a knuckle on the filing cabinet, pulls on a leaf of the plant to see if it’s real. It is. He searches for a place to hide the broken leaf and settles on cramming it into a desk drawer. It is when he is still behind the desk that it happens. A figure comes through the door, and it is not Ray.

‘Oh! Hi,’ says the figure. ‘I’m Mike, am I late? Sorry, you must be my case worker? The lady at the front said to go through.’

Brian hasn’t said anything, is still standing behind the desk like a deer in headlights, but the figure is taking a seat across from him, getting comfortable, still chattering away. So Brian closes the drawer and takes a tentative seat. The kid can’t be more than twenty-five, bright eyed, bushy tailed. He looks right up at Brian and stops talking.

‘I know what you’re thinking, I’m too young to be here, but believe me I’ve led a full life. It was actually during my third charity mission with UNICEF that I contracted malaria, otherwise I’ve lived a very healthy life, an apple a day and all that! Except for when I was hunger striking for the blind, obviously. Oh, it’s all in here, I suppose you need to have a quick browse.’

The kid hands his book to Brian, with a kind smile, and then looks around a room and points to the plant. ‘Cool, a Calathea! They’re native to Ecuador, but you’d know that. I’ve been there, nice, isn’t it?’

Brian dislikes him terribly.

But then an idea crosses his mind. He stares at the two books in front of him, one is fat, pages crammed to the edges with events, missions, work, goals. The other has a corner missing and smells a little like stale cider.

This book is telling me I need to send a body back through that door, Ray had said. Right then.

‘Listen, Mark.’

‘Mike.’

‘Mike. Here’s the thing. You’ve done great, really, really great. But I’m going to need you to do better.’

‘Better? You didn't read it yet, there's quite a lot of—’

‘Better. You know, each life is meant to be better, it is meant to improve you as a person until you are the best… something… it was something… about growing or… I forget. But Mark—’

‘Mike.’

‘Mike, you can do it better.’

Mike considers this, Brian can see him considering it with his whole, pure, soul, until finally he nods. ‘You know, I think you’re right. I met this monk in Tibet who talked about possessions, about how they can really hold you back from living your best—'

Brian holds up his hand, Mike stops, and then nods knowingly.

‘I know what you’re going to say. You can’t give me the answers.’

Never had there been a truer statement.

Brian thinks he hears something outside, a door closing, maybe footsteps. He grabs the cider-smelling book and pushes it into Mikes hands, grabbing him by the shirt as he does so. ‘Up you get, here you go. Take this, do good things, all the best things, be the best, you’re doing great, off you go.’

He has bundled Mike backwards towards the door on the left and Mike is nodding fervently, hugging the book to his chest, practically teary eyed at the thought of all the good he’s about to do as he is folded hurriedly into the doorway, waving as it closes in his face.

The footsteps draw closer, Brian grabs the last book, heavy with all the goodness it is filled with, and finally, after countless lifetimes, he opens the door on the right. On to the next. He can just make out Ray’s voice as he comes back into the room.

‘Funny thing Brian, this one does have a dog on it. It talks about the RSPCA or something.’

He gently lets it click closed behind him.

‘Brian?’