Everarck walked through cold, deserted town streets at 8.30 am on a Saturday morning with the signed contract in the brown A4 envelope clutched in one hand. The shiny paper had already slipped out of his hand as he'd negotiated his garden gate and landed on a dried-up dog leaving, but he thought he'd got any marks off the paper and the point of contact didn't seem to smell too bad.
The court was located in the town's commercial centre, and Everarck found it uncomfortable to be in a place he'd gone in times of leisure on hot summer afternoons but which was now grey and quiet on this day of tense purpose. As he approached the place where he expected to find the court, he saw its clean white pebble-dashed exterior with a brand new sign on smoked glass.
Reaching the court from an oblique angle, the glass appeared dark, and he wondered with elation if it might be unexpectedly closed, meaning he could return home and drink tea or go and browse the bookshelves of one of the town's charity shops. As he got close enough to see inside, he found - alas - that it was lit inside and furnished with a light wooden reception desk, a carpet in institutional green and a ticking analogue clock with a simple painting of an English village green between its numbers. There was the impression of movement within, but mercifully whoever was in there could not see him as he read and re-read the opening hours to verify that he could indeed push open the door without being reproached.
He stood there waiting for his hand to push open one of the double metal doors and was appalled to find that he would have to put it there himself. Nevertheless, he did so. The door opened about two inches and jammed on the untrodden carpet. He gave it a further shove, and it swung open and banged against a low table inside. He walked in with stooping posture only to be met by the startled looks of two women in suits: one behind the reception desk and one apparently in conversation with the receptionist on the way back to her office.
"Good morning," said the receptionist, a kind-seeming upper-middle-aged woman.
"My name's -- good morning -- my name's Fanger."
"Hello, Fanger. What might your surname be?"
"Fa-fanger. Fanger's my surname," he stuttered.
"Mr Fanger Fanger?"
"No-no, no. Everarck Fanger. My first name's Fang- I mean Eh-everarck, and m-my la-last name's F-fanger."
"Okay, let me check the diary."
There was a moment as pages were turned in which Everarck could fully fantasise about his name not being found and his being able to leave and go outside and walk along the kerbstones without putting his feet on the cracks. The woman coughed and, in his daydream, his foot slipped into the gutter.
"I have an appointment at 8.45 am for you, Mr Fanger."
"With Ms Noghan?" he enquired, but his hope of even this small element of familiarity was dashed when she shook her head.
"I'm sorry. Gerellia is indisposed this morning. No, I beg your pardon. She's not indisposed, but she isn't working today. I'll just call through and see if Gollion can begin working with you this morning. I'll just dial her extension."
"Gollion, sorry, it's Mr Fanger. Would you be able to take him this morning?"
Everarck started to notice the slight flushing in the woman's jowls, the sinister paleness of the wallpaper, the incessant chopping up of time as the clock ticked ever more harshly. Gollion had to be apologised to and begged to work with him this morning. He squirmed in his cheap office clothes. The door with its circular window on the far side of the reception room opened stiffly, and the woman he'd seen earlier appeared.
"Mr Fanger," she said striding towards him with her right hand held out.
Everarck suddenly worried about seeming rude by turning away from the receptionist, with whom he had not finished talking, and ended up taking the woman's hand across his body and shaking it quite awkwardly.
"Why don't you come through to my office? You can pay on the way out."
Her voice was smooth but the way she stared at him made him think he'd committed a faux pas. She went to the door, violently pushing it open and standing there. Everarck looked at her. She looked at him. He looked at her chest, then panicked and wrenched his eyes back to her face.
"The door's a bit stiff. Why don't you go past me, and I'll follow you down the corridor?"
Everarck did not want to be followed down a corridor, but he did as he was asked. As he went forward, he was aware of some kind of mouthed communication between Gollion and the receptionist, which he didn't want to think about. Nevertheless, the thought came to him that they were probably agreeing that he was a pervert and clarifying emergency procedures should he do anything disgusting.
He attempted to walk down the corridor whilst also somehow keeping Gollion in his peripheral vision. There were two doors on the right and one at the end of the corridor, all identical. He stopped and looked at the little red box with 'Emergency Break Glass' printed on its tiny window. The escape button looked back at him from behind the thin pane of glass.
"That's just the fire alarm button," said Gollion, suddenly behind him, "We're ISO 9000 compliant. That's the only reason that's there."
He was buffeted forwards by her unexpected closeness, and then she unlocked the door of a small room and ushered him in. He went in and sat on the swivelling office chair jammed behind a round table and put the brown envelope on the table, which Gollion ignored and retrieved a dossier from one of several box files in a bookcase.
He wiggled the chair from side to side in its tiny amount of free room, while she sat opposite him and skimmed through several stapled pages of handwritten notes, her lipstick framing a gritted pair of teeth. Then she skimmed the document again as if there were something missing, seemed to shrug and began to read from the beginning. He carefully pushed the table away from himself in order to create more room to wiggle the office chair. She glanced at him, adjusted her chair and the notes and went on reading.
Everarck looked at the potted plant. He tried to smile. He shivered. Gollion ignored him and went on reading.
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