Sydney's Song (7 page)

Very thorough, was she not? Blah blah blah. Ra ra ra. Mrs Fu was simply unstoppable.

“You're also disgustingly incompetent. You dawdle when delivering the information, taking over an hour of my very precious time. Do you know I get paid over 200 dollars an hour at my work? Would you care to compensate me? I don't think so. I hope never to talk with you again.”

Though reaching the end of my dwindling patience, I closed the call with a cheerful “No worries. Thanks for your call!”

Surprised? It was obligatory to thank callers, even revolting torturers, or you lost your Quality bonus. I had become so robotic I even hung up my home phone automatically saying “Thanks for your call!”

I logged off the phone despite having missed my allocated break.Hang my Adherence bonus! I had been abused by a malicious woman. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I had nobody to talk to while somewhere in the world my parents were blissfully happy. How could they be?

Blurry-eyed and depressed, I ran to the disabled toilet in anguish. I locked the door, closed the toilet lid, sat down and cried. And cried.

One heap of a mess. That was me. I had been there at the office every day, battling my depression. Tears could still well up when I thought of my parents.

I was scared of being home alone. I dreaded my loneliness. Feared my suicidal thoughts. To keep playing with a full deck, I had to get out of the empty house and keep working before uni started.

With my limited talent and abilities, hardly any appealing career path was available. This job sucked, but at this stage of my life I was not ready to cope with anymore changes. I had no mental energy to enter a new work environment. Or to face contemptuous strangers. I had to stay within the current sphere because I felt safer with the devil I knew.

Soon fury began to stir and flare. Tears subsided. I was now angry with myself. I shouldn't let hostile people shake my composure.Shouldn't have allowed a mean bus driver to make me cross. Shouldn't have disintegrated when aggressive customers insulted me.I was above all that! Nobody would ever, ever have the power to make me swear again. No customer would bring me down.

I would not allow them!

Chin up. I would face my problems. I would not hide, cowering and morose. They would not beat me.

Sadly, from the 5,219 calls I had taken, the majority of torturers were of my own gender. I decided not to copy them. I was very determined to grow up NOT to be difficult like them. I would be kind and wise. And I could not wait to be a wonderful old lady of 70…

I looked into the mirror and cringed when I saw my mutinous eyes.Taking a deep breath, I tried to soften my expression.

The open-floor call centre was accessible either from the rest rooms through the reception, or through the busy break area with its internet café and table-tennis room. I was intensely private. To evade nosy co-workers' interrogation I opened the opposite door.

Pete was sitting right in front of me, long legs stretched out from the reception's black-leather sofa. He made eye contact, scrutinising me with an expressionless face but thoughtful eyes. As always I could not help but notice how beautiful his eyes were. Along with the rest of the package, actually. With skittering heart I nodded and strode briskly to the centre door. I swiped my electronic security pass and went in.

Our American management introduced a system called E-time. Excused time. It meant agents could take an unpaid break or go home early if the floor was over-staffed when we were not busy.

Not busy meant there was no possibility of a call queue. Also no special events, games, concerts, bushfires, flood. No wild wind hitting signal wiring. No hurting soul committing suicide on the rail track.

Businesswise, E-time was a sound cost saver. Only willing agents volunteered to take it. Ranging from 10 minutes to many hours, we took it to go shopping, watch movies at Hornsby cinemas, or simply go home.

“Yellow pages,” I requested with fake cheerfulness. That was where they recorded E-time.

“No deal,” red-haired Nicholas replied. He was monitoring the call volumes and the graphs showed we were on red. “It's Saturday, our busiest. No way can we give agents E-time. Sorry.”

Just my luck.

Tall and slender Justin approached me with a beaming face. Some managers had an abrasive personality, but Justin was your friendly Aussie kind of guy—down-to-earth and always helpful. Very gay, too.

“Tough one, wasn't it? Poor Sydney. I feel for you. Some of these customers are pains in the butt. Man, you guys earn your money. The good news is, though you may have lost your AHT bonus by that long call, and Adherence bonus by having to talk during your scheduled break, you've definitely passed your Quality for the month! Ryan was monitoring your calls then. He was very impressed by your handling of Mrs Fu. Well done!”

Wonderful! I mentally gave myself a pat on the back. With the Quality bonus in, I just saved myself from being the lowest-paid Australian. Oh Dad, weren't you happy for me?

I sat down and logged in.

Soon I became aware that my co-workers—who on other days sat elsewhere—were gossiping about Sinead. As Sinead had the weekend off on this roster, her followers didn't camp around me. Except for Pete, who was still on his break.

One of the gossipers was Monashi. Unlike several other Indian agents, Monashi seemed to think it was cool and very Australian to use a swear word in every sentence. She even swore—while pressing MUTE—when callers were difficult. What if the expletives slipped the MUTE state and got to her customer's ear?

“So our single agents, managers, and IT guys have been hitting the pubs frequently?” elderly Susan queried.

“Yup,” Thomas clarified. “We have Friday social drinks.”

“A hard night's drinking will end with pairing within the group, ”Monashi added. “Sometimes they can't even (
bleep
) look at each other the next morning!”

“Agent-manager pairing is against our workplace policy!” Susan protested.

“Who's going to play law enforcement on consenting adults outside office hours?” Thomas countered.

“Sinead drinks the hardest and f(
bleep
)s the wildest!” Monashi announced. “All the boys are (
bleep
) crazy for her! They all wait to see who'll be chosen to get (
bleep
) lucky. It's (
bleep
) pathetic.”

“Wow,” Susan was wide-eyed. “You never know, do you? Sinead's not a flirt. Here she's very decent and friendly. Smiles at everybody. She respects us oldies.”

“She's enjoying her backpacking heaps,” chipped in Thomas. “Said she was going to uni in Dublin and would be sober by then.”

“She likes to choose her own moments,” Susan commented good-naturedly. “It's up to her who to drink with. Or to be with afterwards.”

“It's been Jack,” Monashi gleefully imparted her broad knowledge of others' private lives. “Earlier it was Kevin and some of the (
bleep
) managers. But Pete's often around her at the office.” One shapely eyebrow arched, “You think?”

No one could exclusively own Sinead who valued her freedom. I remembered her flirting with Kevin while Pete looked on with possessive eyes. Did he have a thing for her? Foreign agents loved to flirt with the locals, but Pete sort of sat with expressionless dignity near Sinead. Now, why would I bother about other people's lives when I had my own to live? This flitted through my mind as they gossiped. Until Pete returned to our pod and silenced this line of conversation.

Noting Pete's permitted-only-on-weekends casual clothes, I remembered him complaining that this was the first time he had been forced to wear a tie outside the US. Absently I wondered what he was doing working at a call centre. Or in Australia, for that matter.

And I wondered what my fun-loving rowdy co-workers would be doing after work. I loathed my isolation, yet feared mingling with others. I was not a fan of my appalling self. In my misery I could hardly relate to people and, being 17, I still had a legal excuse to dodge their invitation. I did not want them too close to see the real me. I could not be like Sinead who was enjoying life immensely with lots of friends. Lots of sleep partners too, by the sound of it.

I did not judge people or begrudge their choices. Before my parents' divorce, I'd only hoped to save myself for that special someone who might happen by, strolling into my life. Since it was obvious true love did not exist, shouldn't I go party and throw my reserve to the wind? That was what my friends would do with their freedom—instead of endlessly taking photographs or sitting among my roses drawing cartoons.

But I lacked courage. I was terrified of getting hurt. A coward, still.

With and without friends, I was a loser.

One of my callers wasn't a coward though.

“I want to get happy tonight,” she confided in a hush-hush tone of someone imparting a secret. “I'll go pubbing. But if I don't pick up a guy, how safe is Campbelltown Station after midnight?”

It
was
a secret. I was the only one privy to her thoughts. Her first time to step out? Alone? She sounded cute, shyly deliberating her wild night out but determined to carry it out. Who was she rebelling against? Strict parents? Revenge against a faithless partner? Or simply to break free from boredom?

After my shift I walked fast to the station. My Northern Line train—the red line on Sydney's Rail map—departed Hornsby from platform 3. While waiting, I saw Pete going down the stairs to platform 1 for his North Shore train to Roseville. No Sinead today, they had different rosters.

Pete lifted his hand to wave. His beautiful eyes still looked at me in thoughtful assessment. I had the impression he was trying to really
look
at me. As he held my gaze with his appraising one, I felt stripped of all pretensions. Time stood still. I felt,
he saw me. He knew what loneliness was like
. I sensed he understood what it took to present a dignified front when all you wanted to do was howl at the moon.

Had he seen me running from the pod in a terrible state? Had he sat at the reception area waiting for me out of concern? How mortifying!I was normally cautious and shy about showing others my feelings.

Heat rushed to my cheeks as I jumped onto my train.

The low, sleek, flashy sports car of Mum's boyfriend was parked in my driveway. My beautiful mother—who did not look a year older than her younger boyfriend—greeted me with sparkling eyes and vibrant smiles. She practically oozed with happiness, good health and wellbeing.

“Darling,” she gushed, “How good to see you!”

Hoarding my grudge, I put forward a composed, unaffected, impassive face. So far it had been very effective in keeping my co-workers at arm's length, preventing them from seeing the person inside. I knew I looked polite but aloof. But what the heck, my smart, sharp-eyed mother looked straight through me.

“Did you think I wouldn't see you again before you turned twenty-one?” she led me to the family room. “Cheer up, darling. We've come to pick you up for the concert you nagged your dad about. Awful man, away in Borneo! But enjoy yourself. Ettoré here will take you. He's young enough to enjoy it.”

My eyes flew to Mum's breathtakingly beautiful Italian boyfriend. Him? Replacing Dad? As what? He looked to be only in his early 30s.

“My pleasure,” he said with a lazy smile.

“I don't want to go,” I declined politely. “I only wanted to go with my friends and nagged Dad to buy us the tickets.” Their rule had been that I could go out with friends at night when accompanied by my parent/s. “But they aren't even in Sydney and I've forgotten it. You shouldn't have bothered.”

“Oh but I have. And I reminded you a few times, too. Darling, you should've read your emails,” and she went on making me feel guilty.“ Have you been alright? You made me worried. The other day I called your office but you were working on the phone. I left a message—you didn't return the call. Well, at least if you were at work, it meant you weren't sick or anything.”

“I've been good. Thank you.”

She looked me up and down. Now Mum looked a lot like me—or was it the other way round. I was an Aussie girl with a quarter Canadian-French, so Mum had a half—or was it the other way. Whatever. We both had delicate Frenchy bones, long and willowy and narrow-shouldered. We weren't shorties and not giantesses either.

“Saturday dress code?” One neat, beautiful eyebrow lifted. And no, we didn't need to pluck our eyebrows. Each strand in them knew precisely where it was supposed to grow.

I nodded.

“Now please change into something decent. Ettoré has made a reservation for dinner before the concert. Celebrities dine there. They won't allow you in wearing those jeans.”

“But—,” when had I agreed?

Had you known Mum, you would understand why she was a very successful executive. She was brilliant, shrewd, and ruthless. Fat chance you could escape being manipulated. Her persuasive, focused, purposeful character was never to be denied. When Mum ruled, things got done.