My assistant, Joy, is at her desk: a mixed blessing. She raises her tweezed eyebrows at me and murmurs, “Slow start this morning?” before turning back to her computer, where she is communing with her Facebook friends, or possibly buying designer knockoffs on eBay. But I’m not ready to declare this day a complete write-off, at least not yet, so for now I’ll act as though she works for me and we’re both happy about it.
“Good morning, Joy,” I say. “I need to speak to Justine right away. Can you find her and see if she can pop by?”
She eyes me with a combination of contempt and petulance, and my request hangs, unacknowledged, between us. “Your phone’s been lighting up all morning,” she says. “And Barry’s been by twice looking for you. It’s about the Gala.”
The Gala is the hospital’s major fundraiser of the year. It is a lavish dinner-dance for two thousand of the city’s established and upwardly mobile, and it raises over a million dollars for our medical research each year. It is organized by a committee of well-heeled volunteers, who have lots of extra time and opinions about everything from the shade of the napkins to the font on the table cards. It is also – mercifully – not in my portfolio, except in a tangential sense, since I oversee the marketing for the event. I’ve attended a few committee meetings, mostly as moral support for my colleague Justine, but I begged off last night to nurse my cold.
“I’ll go and see him once I’ve had an update from Justine. So if you could get her for me, that would be great. Thanks,” I say, retreating into my office and closing the door behind me. I see my computer sitting innocently enough on my desk, but I’m not fooled. Recently, I have fallen into the habit of ascribing human characteristics to my computer, and unfortunately, our relationship has taken a turn for the pathological. This week, I’m having trouble shaking the irrational conviction that my computer is poised for an attack; each morning, I quake inwardly as I push the power button and hear, in the hum of waking machinery, a marauding army of data collecting itself and preparing to barrel over the horizon at me.
I log in, and the screen fills with email – definitely more than twenty. Could it be as many as fifty? I avert my eyes in horror. The computer seems to vibrate with a malevolent energy; I’m convinced that it senses my fear, like a rabid dog. I back away and peek out into the hallway. “And, Joy? Could you please call everyone and postpone the staff meeting? I’ve got to sort out this thing with Justine.”
Excerpt from The Hole in the Middle by Kate Hilton © 2013. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
