The Lever, the Pulley and the Screw - by Andrew Roff
ISLAND | ISSUE 159
Leon: is moving heaven and earth. Asks only for a place to stand. Stands on the second floor, in his fishbowl office with its view of the open plan, three levels down from Executive. Has been tasked with project completion, on time and on budget. Must find a way to deliver. Will get his bonus. In view of resource constraints, only path forward is to exert small force in hope of large effect.
Paula: is ideal efficiency. Power in equals power out. Supports movement. Supports frequent changes of direction. Lifts others up, even as they kick and scream. Keeps her hair above her collar and the calendar up to date. Misses her friends. Transmits tension.
Scott: is a simple machine. Amplifies force. Knows his place, and Paula’s. Does same job, but he’s paid 10k more so there’s the pecking order. Wears a tie, even on casual Fridays. Uses his body to block the exit. Revels in friction. Has a beard, but not the right kind of beard. Can work a fax machine; struggles with videoconferencing. Slides along his axis, forcing himself further. Self-locking. Try as the bastards might, they’ll never work him loose.
Leon: understands what this company is about. It’s about engineering and creation. Or it will be, one day soon. Right now, they need to convince enough investors that the Outer-Metro Underground Tollway is a good idea. Maybe not necessary, maybe not practical, but lucrative. His business card announces him as Head of Investor Relations, and the head is where the brain lives. He updates shareholders about lobbying efforts, regulatory approvals, environmental impact statements, resident consultations, cost overruns, time overruns (within expected contingencies), the next round of capital raising. Leon and his small team are preparing an offer document. It’s time-critical. Must be persuasive, must be accurate. No pressure.
Paula: knows that Leon appreciates her, even if he doesn’t say it. Has her hand on a thick pile of reports. Has her period, and an ache at the base of her spine that is probably related, but which she hasn’t felt before and wonders if she should see a doctor about.
Scott: sits at his desk, tending to management aspirations. Sips black coffee from the machine in the staff kitchen. Prefers his coffee white, but no one ever flushes the tube between the milk jug and the frother, so the milk comes out chunky. Compensates with two heaped teaspoons of sugar, but it can’t hide the scorched taste of the beans. Will go on holiday to Noosa when this is all over. Will drink piña coladas, like in the song. Until then, holds it together, vice-like.
Leon: knows that there’s an art to delegation. The pyramids were built with a gesture, it was written in a book he purchased at the airport. Is wearing his pink shirt, French cuffs. Is terrified that Paula will walk. Needs her too much to ever thank her. It’s hard to find good help. What’s needed now is a quiet word with Scott, a warning in his tone.
Paula: writes the reports, emails the stakeholders, mediates the fights, absorbs the aggro, works late nights, works weekends, ignores the pay freeze.
Scott: is old enough to remember when roads and tunnels were built by the government.
Leon: has a life, you know. Outside of work. Has a studio. Makes electroclash when he can get a moment away from wife and baby. Last night, spent four hours trying to get a drum loop just right. He can tell it’s not there yet, but he doesn’t understand why. He’s trawled through the sample libraries. It’s not the rhythmic phrasing, or the variety of the sonic palette, or the closed hi-hat, or the pitch of the snare. Why doesn’t it sound like the tracks they play on the radio?
Paula: believes, despite all evidence, that hard work will be rewarded.
Scott: is on his sofa at home, watching the football, slouched for maximum comfort, hands resting on paunch. It is eight-thirty pm on a Thursday. Has a beer on the side table and a cold in his sinuses. His team is losing what should be a very winnable match. When it’s over, he will turn the TV off, put all the empty cans next to the back door, remove his clothes and climb into bed. He will dream that he is being rocked to sleep in the arms of a giant woman, taller than the hills, his head nestled between the crook of her arm and her breast.
Leon: bleeds perspiration onto the edges of an A3 spreadsheet. The columns represent the days, and each row is a task. Most boxes are pale green, but his computer has charted progress against plan, and helpfully re-shaded some of the boxes red.
Paula: wakes up, realises it’s Monday. Thinks about calling in sick, pushes the thought away. But then she reconsiders, works it through, and OMG she actually does it. Knows that this is so unprecedented, Leon won’t ask for a doctor’s note.
Scott: is in a conference with a young girl from Legal. He’s doing his level best to stay calm, he really is, as he explains how they’ve derived an input to the financial projections. But the girl just keeps saying that it’s not sound, and referencing the Corps Act as if Scott ought to know the section by heart. And it’s one of those conversations where she’s not listening to what he’s saying, and he hasn’t got the faintest idea what she’s saying, and they are already writing emails to their managers in their heads, escalating the dispute.
Leon, Paula, Scott: are at the company’s mid-year ball, down the end of a table that runs the length of the function room. The lights are low and it’s hard to hear anything over smooth rock and chatter. Leon is miffed at the seating chart but doing his best not to show it. Paula is wishing she’d worn a different dress. Scott has bet Leon that he can drop a mini dim sim into the Operations Manager’s glass of red wine without him noticing. And then OMG Scott actually does it. He wanders over to his target, claps him on the back, and points out something on the other side of the room. His other hand is already creeping, depositing the payload. Scott excuses himself and returns to Leon and Paula, both of whom applaud. The fact of an uncomplicated win is just so un-Scott-like that it must be congratulated. Paula makes a joke about MSG in the GSM, which Leon and Scott don’t get, but it doesn’t matter. For a little while they feel like comrades.
Scott: wakes up the next day. Groggy, but without the usual angry/sad sense of panic that the weekend has started to burn.
Paula: wonders why they always talk about building, not digging. How can you build a hole?
Leon: is browsing Facebook on his computer, screen angled away from the glass wall, wishing he could concentrate on the traffic flow modelling report he knows he should be reading, and wondering whether someone in IT monitors his browsing history.
Scott: thinks often about getting a dog, but can’t do it. It’d be waiting while Scott was at work, shut up in his courtyard. No creature should spend so much time alone.
Paula: is being interrogated by her niece, who is asking whether Paula will have a baby soon. They are playing snakes and ladders, and the question is unexpected, and it takes Paula a few seconds before she says probably not, probably not soon. The girl says oh, but in a little while you will get too old. This seems like an unusual thing for a six-year-old to know. It must have come down from the girl’s mother, Paula’s sister-in-law, and Paula thinks, thank you very much, you instagramming, kale-masticating, hot-yoga-sweating, 0.5 FTE renaissance woman.
Leon: is a betting man. And he bets they will never build this tunnel. Glances again at the crease-worn spreadsheet, traces the critical path with his finger, swearing fuck fuck fuck.
Scott: could really use a fuck. But not Paula; you don’t shit where you eat. And the girls in HR are up themselves. Since his divorce he’s started going to the pub with a couple of mates on a Friday night but he never gets any action.
Paula: could really use a fuck. But the men in the office make her queasy. There are too many of them, they are too close.
Leon: wonders when his lunch will get delivered.
Scott: is shouting at Paula, is threatening her because of a word. He has written that the initial soil testing is complete. In a marked-up document sent back and copied to Leon, Paula has inserted the word substantially after the word is. She explains that she has done this because the soil testing is not complete, not entirely, but to Scott it’s clear she’s trying to sabotage him. He screams at her to get back in her box, that if he wants her opinion he’ll bloody well ask for it. Two cubes over, Jordan from Accounts Payable raises his head to see what’s going on.
Paula: knows better than to listen to Scott. Takes the stairs, finds herself outside, blinking back tears. It’s freezing and that helps. She walks fast, habit delivering her to a nearby mall, and down into the basement of a food court where she purchases a blueberry muffin and a bottle of water, and wishes she’d thought to bring earbuds so that she could drown out the attack of conversation bouncing off the tiled floor and the stainless steel walls.
Leon: wants to tell Paula not to dress like an old maid. Wants to tell Scott that it’s never going to happen for him, he’s just not made of the right components. But he has to keep all that to himself, jolly them along, ration the carrots. People are the hardest part of any job. People, when you get down to it, are really exhausting.
Scott: wakes at night, sick with fear and want.
Paula: wakes at night, editing a private task list.
Leon: wakes at night, wondering if he’s been set up to fail. Scott: checks the job listings online while he half-listens to a webinar about the company’s new privacy policy. There are a couple of analyst positions going at the big accounting firms. The pay would be better, but at those places you’ve got to record your time. Who wants to justify their life, increment by increment? Better to stick it out here. There’ll be recognition if this funding round ends up fully subscribed, Leon has basically promised as much.
Paula: catches sight of Leon at the outlet mall where she sometimes buys bed linen. It’s Sunday, and he is sitting on a bench eating a sausage roll. Next to him is a woman with a pram. He wears shorts and boat shoes, and this is all wrong. She freezes, wondering if she should say hi. She thinks not. She turns and walks in the other direction, hoping he doesn’t spot her.
Leon: wants to stop off at a pub on the way home, smack a fifty dollar note down on the counter, and sink beers quietly, over hours, like his dad did back in the day. But there’s no room for that. Time is something he owes to his employer, his family, his music. Time is not for him to fritter away.
Scott, Paula, Leon: all sense it. He, she, he, they know the absence at the centre of things, isolated under eggshell-thin concrete, masked by clanking shovels and thrown dirt.
Leon: is just about at the end of his rope, trying to keep everyone on task. It’s the final week, they are nearing the very edge of the spreadsheet, beyond which the territory is unstructured. A final push, and they can do it. Late at night he buys them all pizza like the good boss he is, puts it on his own credit card. Can try and claim it back later but probably won’t bother. You need to keep the receipts, and the expense form is a pain in the arse.
Paula: doesn’t mind the work, not really. It would be alright if all she had to do was her job. Derives quiet enjoyment from it when she’s in the flow and checking off items and things are moving toward an end. Rides home on the train some days, looking at her fellow passengers, thinking, it could be worse, it could be worse.
Scott: is busting his balls. Makes sure Leon knows it, too, by sending him emails late at night, early in the morning. Makes a note every time Paula leaves the office before he does.
Leon: proofreads.
Paula: frowns.
Scott: lays his head on the desk.
Leon: has worked his team to breaking, worked himself to breaking, and OMG, actually got this done. Has vetted the copy, held the hands of the bosses through the verification, got sign-off from the board, and sent the final PDF to the printers in time for mailout. Is summoned to level five, bloated with expectation, wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers. Gets a nod from the COO. Gets told – is reminded – there’s a quarterly update due in three weeks, so this is no time to take his foot off the accelerator.
Paula: wants to tell Leon where to go. She can tell he thinks he’s being magnanimous, giving her the afternoon off before they crack on with the next thing. But it’s been weeks of hard slog. He tells her to go get a massage, a haircut. And she actually does want both of those things.
Scott: is waiting. For the email. For the call. Something good. Something bad. Something in him twists a quarter turn.
Leon, Paula, Scott: wear holes in each other, and one day they’ll become unfit for purpose. For now, Leon can report: they are getting the job done. ▼
This story appeared in Island 159 in 2020. Order a print issue here.
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