Free Falling Over by James Everington Page B

temps accidentally smashed the glass on one of the alarms? The manager’s staff had taken the opportunity to smoke or gossip; his manager had formed her own clique away from him... No one was actually doing anything. “Jay Neuworth?” he said, his words a whisper. It was like his emotions were a few seconds further forward than events, for his stomach was churning and his eyes wavering.
    Then someone had pointed upward, and screamed.
    ~
    He came back into the present – it was as quick as a flick of the remote control; as disorientating as coming into a film halfway through. He knew that one of the sub-managers had just said “nothing” and flashed his colleague that quick glimpse of insubordination, but it seemed to have happened days ago. He tried to focus . There was, he realised, no way he could tell his manager that the new boy was Jay Neuworth’s double , or as near as damn it – no way to tell her his guilt-tripped fantasies about what this doppelganger had come for. No way to tell her, but maybe a way to make her see . She wouldn’t have known Jay from the toilet cleaners, but she would have seen his face in the newspaper. He glared at Tweedle-Dum and Dee – they might be pretending that they couldn’t see it, but surely his manager wasn’t part of their lowborn conspiracy?
    “Come with me,” he said. “ Look ”. He had to squeeze past her to get to his office door – he felt her body stiffen, and press back against the thin partition wall, which wobbled. Their arms brushed each other and he got a hint of her scent. It was always a relief to be out of his cramped office, although the twelfth-floor light confused his eyes after his dark cubby hole – almost a relief, until he saw him , the new boy. But still, he tried to obey his own imperative, he tried to look :
    The boy was probably in his mid-twenties, with a slack face, bored eyes. His hair was lank, even his skin seemed lank, seeming to slouch down from his skull with not much in the way of defining muscle in between. He had taken full advantage of the company’s casual dress policy for the temps, and wore a t-shirt that was too big for him and slumped from his frame, so that the legend Touch Me I’m Sick! which presumably should have emblazoned his chest, was creased into his gut. Everything about the kid seemed pulled downwards, except his eyes which looked upwards from his bowed head, with a bored and solipsistic intelligence... He...
    And he looked exactly like Jay Neuworth! The feeling of vertigo and sudden slippage overtook him again. Exactly like ... it was all his brain could hold onto, in this new rendering of things.
    One look at his manager was enough to tell him that she couldn’t see it.
    He thought – maybe those two can’t see it either. Maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy, but a sign. Only he could see it.
    His manager was looking at him, expecting something. His mind, which already felt like it was struggling with two versions of reality, couldn’t lie and create a third. If only he could find some plausible reason to get rid of the boy! But all he said was,
    “I just... I don’t like the look of him, that’s all. He looks lazy and likely to turn up late, and...” It was true as far as it went. Jay had always turned up late.
    “You can’t get rid of someone just because you don’t like the look of them,” his manager said. “This department has targets to reach. I know you’ve only just come back after... but still .” Her professional, unflappable countenance cracked, flapped for a second, like a vision of her twin self. “But still ,” she repeated.
    The manager looked away from her, back at the new boy. “What’s his name?” he heard his manager ask his subordinates behind him, and whichever one responded, the answer they gave jarred wrong in his head.
    ~
     
    He forced himself not to hide all week in his office, but to sit at a desk in among everyone else. He flinched every time the new boy passed near, but