Читать книгу Topics About Which I Know Nothing - Patrick Ness - Страница 18

There’s a sheet up on the wall that lists our quotas for the week and our progress towards them. We each write our daily sales numbers in a box beside our name and underneath the day. Tammy’s only been here since Wednesday. It’s Friday morning. She’s already outsold Percy and is only three behind me. The second-to-last sale I made yesterday made me reach weekly quota. Percy has to sell four more to make it, no problem really, but none of us can believe that Tammy will probably make a full week’s quota without even needing to. Tammy is in a meeting with the boss. A new employee thing, we all assume, probably accompanied by many smiles and laughs if Tammy’s performance on the quota sheet is anything to go by.

‘It’s because she’s new,’ says Maryam from Africa.

‘Aye,’ I say.

‘All that enthusiasm for the product in the first couple of days,’ says Percy.

‘It’ll wear off,’ says Maryam.

The company only gives Maryam from Africa the numbers of African women her own age, and her sales are so far beyond mine and Percy’s that her quota is higher. She passed it Wednesday morning, but she’ll only report passing it this afternoon. If they knew she’d passed it so easily, they’d raise it again, and it’s already twice the usual. She takes it easy the rest of the week, a sale here, a sale there. I’d do the same.

Tammy appears suddenly, in the way that we’re already trying to get used to, and I notice that the three of us act like guilty children getting caught doing nothing. Her nametag says ‘Tammy Triumphant’. She still has that stupid smile on her face, but she seems distracted by something.

‘There’s some kind of disturbance at the end of the hall,’ she says. She walks to her seat, almost talking to herself. ‘The boss ended the meeting to go handle it.’ We realise she’s angry. ‘He wouldn’t let me come down and see.’ She puts on her headset, already dialling the number at the top of the list. Percy, Maryam and I look at one another. We listen for sounds from the end of the hall but hear nothing. Maryam reaches over from her seat to shut the door.

Tammy’s phone picks up. ‘I know you’re alone, Mrs Wilson,’ she says.