Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [29]
DD …? I say.
Deny Disparage Rephrase, Keith says. Use your initiative. Your imagination. So many of those so-called regulated tests on tap water useless and some of them actually harmful. Science insists, and many scientists insist. Statistics say. Our independent findings versus their crackpot findings. You pen it, we place it.
(He wants me to do – what?)
Your second brief is a little tougher. But I know you’ll meet it. Small body of irate ethnics in one of our Indian sub-interests factioning against our planned filter-dam two-thirds completed and soon to power four Pure labs in the area. They say: our dam blocks their access to fresh water and ruins their crops. We say: they’re ethnic troublemakers who are trying to involve us in a despicable religious war. Use the word terrorism if necessary. Got it?
(Do what?)
(This chair feels unsafe. Its slight moving under Keith’s arm is making me feel sick.)
Fifty-five and upwards per annum, Keith says, negotiable after the handling of these first two briefs.
(But it’s – wrong.)
Our kind of person, Keith says.
(Keith’s midriff is close to my eyes. I can see that his trousers are repressing an erection. More, I can see that he wants me to see it. He is actually showing me his hidden hard-on.)
… brightest star in the UK-based Pure-concern sky, he’s saying, and I know you can do it, ah, ah, –
(I try to say my name. But I can’t speak. My mouth’s too dry.)
(It’s possible that he came all the way out here to this prefab and set the height level of this chair at the exact height for me to see his erection properly.)
… only girl this high in management, he is saying.
(I can’t say anything.)
(Then I remember the last time I needed a glass of water.)
(I think about what a glass of water means.)
I can’t do this, I say.
Yes you can, he says. You’re not a silly girl.
No, I’m not, I say. And I can’t make up rubbish and pretend it’s true. Those people in India. That water is their right.
Not so, my little Scotty dog, Keith says. According to the World Water Forum 2000, whose subject was water’s exact designation, water is not a human right. Water is a human need. And that means we can market it. We can sell a need. It’s our human right to.
Keith, that’s ridiculous, I say. Those words you just used are all in the wrong places.
Keith spins the chair round with me in it until it’s facing him. He stands with his hands on the arms and leans over me so I can’t get out of the chair. He looks at me solemnly. He gives the chair a playful little warning jolt.
I shake my head.
It’s bullshit, Keith, I say. You can’t do that.
It’s international-government-ratified, he says. It’s law. Whether you think it’s bullshit or not. And I can do what I like. And there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
Then the law should be changed, I hear myself say. It’s a wrong law. And there’s a lot I can do about it. What I can do is, I can, uh, I can say as loudly as I possibly can, everywhere that I can, that it shouldn’t be happening like this, until as many people hear as it takes to make it not happen.
I hear my own voice get louder and louder. But Keith doesn’t move. He doesn’t flinch. He holds the chair square.
Your surname again? he says quietly.
I take a breath.
It’s Gunn, I say.
He shakes his head as if it was him who named me, as if he can decide what I’m called and what I’m not.
Not really Pure material, he says. Pity. You looked just right.
I can feel something rising in me as big as his hard-on. It’s anger.
It forces me up on to my feet, lurches me forward in the chair so that my head nearly hits his head and he has to step back.
I take a deep breath. I keep myself calm. I speak quietly.
Which way’s the station from here, Keith, and will I need a cab? I ask.
Locked in the ladies toilet in the main prefab while I’m waiting for the taxi, I throw up. Luckily I am adept at throwing up, so I get none of it on my clothes.
(But it is the second time for months and months, I realise as the taxi pulls away from Pure Base Camp, that I haven’t thrown up on