Nightshift

The night shift at CallConnect was, honestly, the worst idea I ever had.

I mean, it paid a little better. Like, thirty cents an hour extra or something. Which sounds like nothing, and it was nothing, but I was broke and I needed the money so. Yeah. Night shift it was.

The office was this horrible fluorescent-lit room on the fourth floor of a building in the centre of Brno, all grey carpet and grey desks and grey everything, and between midnight and six in the morning, nothing happened. I mean nothing. You’d get maybe three calls the whole night, and two of those would be wrong numbers or some drunk guy who couldn’t figure out why his internet wasn’t working. So mostly you just sat there. With your cold tea. And stared at a screen.

There were three of us on nights.

Me. Maria. And Victoria.

Don’t even get me started on Victoria.

Okay so let me explain. Maria was brilliant. Like, genuinely one of my favourite people. She was nearly thirty, had this wild dark hair she always wore in a bun that was slowly falling apart, and she had this energy where she just... didn’t care? Not in a bad way. In a way that made you feel like everything was going to be fine. She’d been at the call centre for about two years and she didn’t have a plan, she’d told me once. No big career goals, no five-year thing. She just did stuff that happened to her and seemed perfectly at peace with it. I found that both admirable and kind of terrifying, honestly.

And then there was Victoria.

Victoria was twenty. Twenty! I mean, I’m only twenty-six but she made me feel about forty-five. She was tall and blonde and cold in this way that wasn’t mean exactly but wasn’t warm either. She modelled. Like, actually modelled, for these weird avant-garde fashion designers, the kind who put girls in dresses made of bin bags and call it conceptual, and she studied during the day … something to do with fine art, I think, or maybe philosophy, she was vague about it, and she worked nights here because it left her days free and she needed the money like the rest of us.

She was totally insane. Self-confident in a way that was almost aggressive. And she had this way of looking at you like she was already bored by you and was simply deciding whether to bother.

I was, if I’m completely honest, a little scared of her.

Okay. Quite scared of her.

So it was a Wednesday. Or Thursday. I genuinely can’t remember, the nights all bleed together after a while. It was about two in the morning and I’d had four cups of tea already and was contemplating a fifth, and I was doing this thing I sometimes do at work when there’s nothing to do, which is organising my desktop into folders and then reorganising the folders, which is deeply pathetic but also very calming.

Maria was reading something on her phone with her feet up on the desk.

Victoria was just... sitting there. Looking at nothing.

And I don’t know what I did. I must have made some noise or bumped something, because Victoria suddenly turned and looked at me and said, “Could you stop doing that?”

I looked up. “Doing what?”

“That.” She gestured at my screen. “That clicking. It’s so annoying.”

“I’m just…”

“It’s driving me mad.”

I looked at my mouse. I mean, I barely even realised I was clicking. “Sorry,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to apologise, I’m asking you to stop.”

I stopped. Obviously. And I sat there feeling a bit stupid and a bit annoyed and not quite sure what to do with either of those feelings. Victoria turned back to staring at nothing. Maria hadn’t looked up from her phone.

I went back to staring at my screen.

The thing is, I wasn’t happy about it. I mean, I wasn’t just going to sit there and okay, I was. I was absolutely going to sit there. But I was quietly resentful about it, which I think counts for something.

About ten minutes passed.

Then Victoria pushed her chair back and stood up and walked over, and I felt my shoulders do that thing where they go up near your ears before you even know why.

She stopped at the edge of my desk and looked down at me.

“You’re doing it again,” she said.

I looked at my hands. I was clicking the mouse. I hadn’t even noticed.

“Sorry,” I said again, and immediately hated myself.

Victoria made this small sound. Like a short exhale through her nose. Not a laugh exactly. More like I had confirmed something she’d suspected.

“God,” she said. She wasn’t even angry. That was the thing. She sounded more like someone who has found the answer to an equation slightly disappointing. “Do you know what your problem is?”

“I’m not sure I have a…”

“You’re submissive,” she said. Just like that. Very flat. Very certain. “Like, really submissive. It’s kind of wild.”

I felt my face go hot. “I’m not submissive.”

“You apologised to me twice in ten minutes for existing.”

“I was being polite.”

“Kelly.” She said my name like it was a full stop. “You were being submissive. There’s a difference.”

Maria looked up from her phone now. She didn’t say anything, just watched, like someone who has just spotted something interesting on the nature documentary.

“I’m not,” I said. “I just don’t like conflict, that’s…”

“Okay,” Victoria said, and she got this look. I didn’t like that look. “Let’s test it.”

“Let’s not.”

“Go and make me tea.”

I looked at her. She looked at me. I wanted to say no. I was going to say no.

I got up and went to the kitchen.

I mean, I was already going to make more tea anyway. That was the thing. It wasn’t like she told me to do something I wasn’t going to do regardless. I just happened to be going to the kitchen and so I made her tea as well. That was just being considerate.

I told myself this the entire walk down the corridor and the entire time I was filling the kettle.

When I came back with two mugs, Victoria was sitting on the edge of her desk with her arms folded and this small smile that made me want to disappear into the floor.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the mug. She hadn’t said please.

“Maria,” she said, still looking at me, “don’t you think Kelly is incredibly submissive?”

Maria accepted the second mug I’d brought without being asked , because of course I’d made one for her too, God, Kelly, what is wrong with you , and tilted her head and considered me with this gentle, thoughtful expression.

“Honestly?” Maria said. “Yes. Very.”

“I’m not,” I said.

“You just brought us both tea,” Victoria said.

“I was already going to…”

“Sit down.” This was Victoria. Very calm.

I sat down.

“Stand up.”

I stood up.

Victoria raised her eyebrows at Maria.

“Okay,” I said, “that’s…” I stopped. My face was absolutely on fire. “That’s not fair, I didn’t even…”

“Kelly.” Victoria set down her mug. “I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m not being mean. I’m just saying it’s very obvious and you probably shouldn’t try to pretend it isn’t.”

“I literally just…”

“Sit.”

I sat.

Oh my God.

I heard Maria make a small sound into her mug, like she was trying not to laugh and only partially succeeding.

“Right,” Victoria said. “Okay. So.”

“I mean, I know I’m a bit...” I tried to think of the right word. “I know I’m not super... confrontational. That’s just my personality. It doesn’t mean…”

“Maria, does she need more tea?” Victoria said.

Maria looked into my mug. “Yes, I think so.”

“Kelly.”

I looked between them. Victoria had this expression of pure, calm patience that somehow felt more threatening than if she’d been angry. Maria was watching me over the rim of her mug with those dark eyes, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

“Fine,” I said. I took my mug. I went back to the kitchen.

I filled the kettle again. I stood there in the small, buzzing light of the kitchen and I thought, why do I keep doing this, and I had no answer. I mean, I could have said no. Obviously I could have said no. There was no reason to.

I brought the tea back.

Both of them looked at me.

“Thank you,” Maria said, warmly, genuinely. She at least had the decency to seem a little fond.

Victoria just smiled.

“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said. I set my mug down maybe a little harder than necessary. “You’re both winding me up.”

“Maybe,” Victoria said. “But you’re still doing it.”

“I am not submissive. I’m just , I’m a team player. I’m…”

“Kelly.” Victoria uncrossed her legs and stood up. She was taller than me. She was in this outfit she always wore to the office, this weird deconstructed jacket thing that probably cost a fortune and made her look like she was about to walk into a gallery opening instead of a call centre at two in the morning. She walked over to my desk.

I didn’t move. I mean, where was I going to go.

She stopped right next to my chair and looked down at me, and then she reached out and very carefully, very deliberately, tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear.

I felt it everywhere. I’m not exaggerating. I don’t know if it was because she was so... I don’t know. So certain. So completely unbothered by anything. Or if it was the lateness of the hour. Or if it was just her. Her cold, long fingers. Her proximity.

I sat completely still. I think I was shaking a little. And it wasn’t just from being scared, and I knew it wasn’t just from being scared, and I was absolutely not going to think about that.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said, and her voice had gone this other thing, this low, kind of rough, raspy thing that I hadn’t heard her use before. “Honestly. Nothing wrong with it at all.”

I stared ahead. My heart was going extremely fast.

“Stand up, Kelly.”

And I did.

I stood up.