“Oh,” groaned the young man, shrugging his shoulders, “that guy. I don’t have much in common with him. I mean, I don’t have much of a desire to talk to other men to be completely honest. I don’t know why...”

For a second Julia’s maternal instincts kicked in, and she was about to say something that she herself could not even bring herself to hear come out of her mouth, before she thought the better of it and snapped out of the trance she had found herself under all of a sudden upon hearing the young man express himself so vulnerably.

“Excuse me,” said Bailey, approaching, and placing a hand on her shoulder, “perhaps we can both talk to him?”

“Why give him what he wants?” said Julia with a scowl, flailing her arm in exasperation. She raised her hand to perform the hand gesture that would mute her microphone but stopped short of completing it, her hand hovering in the air in an awkward position.

“And what do you suggest?” said Bailey, who stood over the woman’s shoulder.

“I say we tell him to grow a pair,” chuckled Julia, who then devolved into a spluttering violent coughing fit.

“Come on,” said Bailey, “the guy is just lonely. Maybe giving him our collective attention will satisfy him for awhile.”

“Eh? How would it do that? He’ll just call all the more.”

“He feels shit about himself,” said Bailey solemnly, raising her chin, “maybe we can help him.”

Julia raised an eyebrow, and said, with a large sigh, “You aren’t going to give up, are you?”

“No,” Bailey said, smiling, “I want to be the one to help him. I bet all his life he’s been made to feel like utter shit about himself by those who professed to be his friends.”

“And you think you’ll be different?”

Bailey lowered her gaze, suddenly settling her watery eyes on the older woman, and said, with a defiant and rebellious tone, “I won’t betray him.”

“If he betrays you –”

Suddenly an icon on Julia’s three-dimensional display flashed red.

“Looks like he’s waiting,” remarked Bailey, blushing with excitement, and readjusting her own headset. “Connect me to the line.” And rushing to her seat, she grabbed its headrest and pulled it over to Julia’s, saying, “Let’s give him all the attention he wants!”

Julia, red with anger, stifled a cry of protest, like a mature child suppressing a tantrum, realising that a debate was no use in changing the minds of the young, and drew back in her chair and groaned aloud. Her narrow and venomous eyes could not help but be intrigued by the young woman’s idealism. The cold dampness of the office environment, which had been the result of a sewage leak some months back, made it all the more unappealing to put any effort into anything, much less an argument against the sudden occupation of her desk space.

"Rod,” Bailey said, “it’s a slow night so I thought both of us would talk to you if that’s alright. We want to get to know you.”

Julia darted a look of hate to Bailey. “Where’ve you been the past week?” she said suddenly with a mischievous grin.

“I’ve been away,” stammered Bailey, taken aback by the personal question. She averted her gaze from the older woman.

“What’s wrong,” the woman teased with a smirk, “you don’t want to tell him what you got up to on the weekend?”

Bailey looked at her with a mixture of rage and fear, her glistening eyes wavering with indecision, as she struggled for the right words to say. “I...I don’t want to speak about it.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” said Rod sympathetically.

Julia frowned, crossing her eyebrows, and said, “That’s weird, eh, Rod? This woman told me that she wants to be your friend and yet she won’t tell you the truth.”

“The truth?” said Rod, “If she doesn’t want to tell me what she did that’s fine -”

“Thank you, Rod,” said Bailey.

“It’s not!” barked Julia, “you’re just a hypocrite.”

“A hypocrite?” cried Bailey, raising her palm to her chest, “what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if you were indeed truthful to your ideals about building relationships with the callers, you would be honest about your life.”

“I can be honest and not divulge my personal life,” replied Bailey bitterly.

“Ah,” exclaimed Julia, raising a finger between them, “What a fallacy! You don’t trust Rod to know the truth.”

“What truth?” said Rod exasperatedly. He wiped his brow of sweat as he guessed what it might be. His heart pounded in his chest as he began to stammer, “Bailey...”

“Fine,” she muttered, “I’ll tell you both.”

“Oh, I already know, darling,” Julia replied mockingly as she rolled her eyes over the office, “people talk, you know.”

Bailey pursued her lips and blushed with embarrassment. “You don’t know everything,” she swallowed.

“Oh, is that right?” heckled the older woman with a crooked smile and an upturned nose. “It sounds like we aren’t that different after all.”

“What do you mean?” Rod asked, scratching the back of his neck.

Bailey sighed, “My boyfriend broke up with me last Sunday.”

“Your ex-boyfriend?” noted Julia.

Bailey turned to Julia sharply and frowned. “I also lost my best friend the following day,” she said, her voice suddenly strained and coarse.

“How?” blurted her colleague abruptly, her eyes full of hate and envy.

“Breakup?” stammered Rod. “Why’d he breakup with you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” replied Bailey exasperatedly, “I just want to focus on forming new connections.” She then covered her face with both her hands and began to cry softly, “I don’t want to think about it. I hate my life,” she whimpered.

Suddenly, the deputy manager of the department appeared through the heavy, grey iron door, standing closer than comfort to the young, weeping woman. He raised his white, bony fingers and tapped lightly upon her shoulder, a habit of greeting he was known to make when he wished to deliver bad news.

At the sight of the teary woman, he smiled awkwardly, his eyes almost popping out of their sockets they bulged so much, and, turning to Julia, he commented, “I do not understand why there are two of you at one desk; Julia, you should know better since you’ve been here longer. You know that there is a disciplinary procedure required for this act.”

“Yes, I know, but I am at my desk as you can see,” she replied casually, darting her eyes to the young woman beside her.

The deputy harumphed and followed her nasty gaze with reluctance. He frowned, and said, “Bailey!”

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The young woman looked up, revealing her bloodshot eyes. She peeled back the hair covering her face, and said, whimpering, “Sorry...”

“You know that there’s no crying in the office,” replied the deputy, “all hell would break loose.”

“Yes; yes, I know,” said Bailey, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“I wanted to talk to you about your return,” he said, eyeing her suspiciously, “We’ve not yet completed your back to work document.”

“I’m ready to do it now,” she said pitifully.

“Right,” he said. “You haven’t got a caller on the line?”

“We do,” said Bailey, “but Julia can take over.”

Julia grumbled about something unintelligible and turned away from the two.

“Very well,” said the deputy, “come this way.”

At once the deputy led the way to an empty desk in the corner of the office, followed closely behind by Bailey. Julia turned back to her desk with a frown.

“What’s happening,” said Rod.

“Bailey just had to go do something,” said Julia flatly. “Don’t you have to get up tomorrow?”

“I don’t want to wake up tomorrow,” he said.

“Why?” said Julia.

“Because I am fucking depressed,” cried Rod,” I am so fucking depressed. I hate my life. My life is so fucking worthless I wish it would fucking end.”

“And why is that?” droned Julia, rolling her eyes. She raised her fingernails and inspected them.

“Because my life fucking sucks.”

“Yes, but why does your life suck?”

“Because,” Rod began, gripping his head in frustration as he thought about his answer, “because I am a failure.”

Julia sighed loudly, signaling her boredom, “And why do you think that you are a failure?”

“Because the woman that I love does not want to talk to me anymore; she won’t contact me whatsoever. It infuriates me. It fucking infuriates me. Why, I know she likes me because she said it herself and she still has feelings for me, but she won’t contact me to restart our friendship.”

“Why not just get another relationship?”

“I have but it’s not the same. I want her. And all the therapists I’ve talked to just say to move on and get another relationship, but they don’t fucking understand it isn’t the same goddamit. I kept behaving in a way that made her stop liking me. But I couldn’t stop behaving like that no matter how many times I apologised and promised to change. So why the fuck would I want to get into another relationship you fucking asswipe,” said Rod, and then he sighed. “I don’t mean you,” he added.

Julia’s eyes widened in shock, and she turned red from secondhand embarrassment. “Wow,” she said breathlessly, “You do have some problems.”

Rod inhaled deeply, burning bright crimson. “So, she had a boyfriend?” he hissed, his red-ringed nostrils flaring, and his lips curled. Then he sighed, “At least it’s over.”

Julia raised an eyebrow, and said, “Eh? Do you think you actually have a shot?”

Rod’s heart jerked at her flippant response, and his knees began to wobble as pain surged throughout his body. His shoulder fell upon the door with a heavy thud as he winced, clutching his chest in desperation. “Why won’t it stop?” he groaned breathlessly to himself. After a moment, he scowled, “You don’t know that!” he cried.

Julia’s lips twisted into a grin as she said, slowly, “She’s been talking to a lot of guys.”

“So, what,” stammered Rod, the tone of his voice betraying a sense of pain at hearing those words.

“I hear things,” continued Julia, raising her intonation as she leant back in her chair.

“I’ve listened to rumors before and have ruined relationships because of it.”

“I may be wrong,” replied Julia, “don’t mention it to Bailey.”

At that moment, the young woman returned from her meeting with the manager and fell back into her chair next to Julia. She put on her headset.

“I’m back,” she said breathlessly.

“Can I talk to you alone,” Rod said immediately, his heart in his throat.

“Sure,” replied Bailey, “but I have to go soon because I have to wake up to take my friend to the funeral.”

Rod’s heart sank into his stomach. “I’ll drive you; where do you live? I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

Bailey pushed off the floor with her legs, rolling the chair in the direction of her desk. “You’re probably on the other side of the country,” she chuckled.

“Doesn’t matter,” he blurted, “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

She blushed, furrowing her eyebrows, and said, looking at the information displayed on her screen, “I don’t think you’ll be driving five hours.”

“Tell me where and I’ll get going right now.”

Bailey frowned, and said, “I’m uncomfortable giving that information to a stranger.”

Rod turned very red, “We’re strangers?” he said, his voice strained terribly, “then...then what is this?”

“Rod let’s not get into this, please.”

“Friends tell each other everything,” he said bitterly, lowering his head. His vision was obscured by small droplets of tears, which stung his eyes, and any attempt to bat them away with his eyelashes only made it worse. “Call me afterwards.”

“We’re going for a meal afterwards,” she said, her chest tightening.

From behind the thick fire door where he stood with his heart lodged in his throat and his mind in a frenzy, and through the double-glazed windows that he had shut earlier, the young, enraged man heard claps of violent thunder, which made him acutely aware of his own fragility.

The heat was unbearable: and his skin was bubbling with trapped sweat on his back, his armpits, his groin and butt, and that fungi – those red blots on his stomach and back – all served to make him hate himself further, as well as hate the rest of the world for making him like this.

“I didn’t know you were so popular,” said Rod bitterly, “why are you so depressed then?”

“I am not popular in the slightest,” said Bailey exasperatedly, “and besides, popularity doesn’t mean that you’ll be happy.”

“Impossible,” exclaimed Rod. “You’re too pretty not to be popular; yet you’ve told me that you have depression. I don’t get it.”

“How do you know what I look like,” said Bailey, raising an eyebrow.

“I can just tell,” stuttered Rod.

“These compliments make me feel uncomfortable; and my manager doesn’t like it either.”

“I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Why do they make you uncomfortable? I don’t understand. You’re special to me, Bailey, you’re my only friend.”

“We’ve never met,” said Bailey, scanning the office with widened eyes. “We hardly know each other, and it’s too early for a genuine friendship to materialise. You are sweet though.”

“But you said you wanted to be my friend,” replied the young man exasperatedly, “I don’t understand why women keep doing this to me.”

“I’ve got to go,” said Bailey.

“I’ll miss you!” he blurted passionately, his chest rising and falling quickly. “Was she close too?”

“Who?”

“Your friend; was she close to your friend who...”

“Yes, she was,” replied Bailey.

“I’m sorry to hear that; I wish I could drive you both, so your friend didn’t have to. Not after that tragedy,” said Rod.

“No, she isn’t driving, our friend is.”

Rod panicked, “how do you guys know her?”

“We met him through mutual friends; through her actually, I mean, the friend who just died.”

“Who is this man?” he thought, with a contorted, twisted face. “Hm...is she having sex with him? Yes, she would only be friends with a guy to have sex with him. That’s right. What does she find wrong with me?” his heart sank as he played over and over in his mind the possibilities, “Why do all women do this to me? Even my own mother does this to me.” He groped his face with his trembling hands as he continued to ruminate, “why am I like this?”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Do you have a lot of guy friends?” said Rod suddenly.

“Yes, that’s how I met my last boyfriend,” she replied flatly.

“This guy,” Rod said, gritting his teeth, “is he attractive?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess. I’m excited that we’re all going to the same university though because I was afraid of being all alone.”

“You have friends yet claim to be depressed like me,” snarled Rod, his chest tight with rage, “it doesn’t make any sense. Are you pretending to empathise with me?”

“I’m going to go, Rod,” stammered Bailey, “please get some rest.”

“Fine, then. I want to talk to Julia anyway. At least she gives a shit enough to tell the truth,” he spat.

Bailey turned pale at these words, and, losing all strength to remove herself from her station like she had planned to moments earlier, she fell back into her chair quietly sobbing. “Would it make you feel better if I stayed and talked to you for a little while longer?”

“No,” said Rod with vitriol in his voice, “transfer me to Julia.”

“But Rod -”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he interrupted.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t see how that matters in the context of my job. We aren’t supposed to divulge personal information out to callers.”

“Oh, but you want my personal information?” barked Rod, his eyes twitching with fury. “How do you not know that you have a boyfriend? You talking to anyone?”

“No,” she said, lowering her eyes to the floor.

“I thought you didn’t care about me like a friend. Why are you still here on the line?”

“I don’t know,” she breathed.

“I’m sorry,” said Rod, “it’s just you mentioning that you have friends made me feel upset and ruined my mood.”

“No wonder you are alone if you treat people like this,” said Bailey.

“You don’t understand me; no one does,” the young man replied bitterly.

The line went dead.

The young man stumbled breathlessly out of the bathroom, and grabbed the black, dirty jogger pants thrown hastily over one of the doors of the wardrobe unit, with the view that his life was needlessly long. The nightly air was crisp and cold, and there were still many people loitering about the grounds, even at this ghastly hour, and he walked away rapidly towards the city centre, passing through it like a tourist yet again to reach the quiet neighbourhood on the other side so that he may stroll by its river.

Over four-thousand miles away, the older, more experienced operator, smirking, observed her younger colleague with her greedy eyes until she saw the latter remove her headset and bury her face in her hands, which at two in the morning was not an unusual occurrence – at least for as long as she had spoken to the caller in question - but after having spent time with the same caller, which was not at all usual, she felt a tinge of self-righteous indignation. On recognising this new, ucomfortable feeling, she approached the woman from behind and placed a hand upon her shoulder. At this gesture, Bailey turned to look over her own shoulder and shuddered, for the older woman’s eyes suggested that she understood the mixture of feelings swarming inside her at that moment – but there was also in that dead and blank expression a wish to concoct vengeance against the man who hurt her, as though it reminded her of someone she had once known.