Ella had a dream job.

‘Are you and your new lover really long-distance material?’

‘Whaaaat???’ Jasmine screwed up her face, almost smearing the thick layer of pale make-up. ‘That's a stupid question.’

‘That's not the question’, Ella shot, ‘that's the heading.’

Ella designed questionnaires for popular magazines. You know, the ones that tell you whether you're ‘really good in bed’ or ‘whether you and your lover are compatible at all’, or list 20 ways to tell if you're romance material. Jasmine sat at the desk opposite her. She did crosswords.

 

Every day Ella would sit at her desk, high above Broadway, and compose questionnaires. Questions, questions, questions. Questionnaires full of all those eternal questions of human existence - have I got knobbly knees, will he love me as I am, can I finally beat the system and find true love? It certainly beat designing crosswords. It was probably even socially worthwhile and not just a way of earning an income. Ella liked to look upon herself as working in the research area, expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, unravelling the complexities of human nature. At least this was when she wasn't bored shitless, which, she had to admit, was becoming increasingly common.

 

When Ella wasn't immersed in a questionnaire or eating lunch down the street with a rag tag of friends, ex-lovers, acquaintances or relatives, she was out until late ranging the clublands of the City, drinking mineral water or perhaps the odd beer, listening to DJs, and watching their devotees flashing too much underwear and bare flesh, even for her.

 

It was an environment which regularly threw her into close physical contact with a wide range of boys and men. Good for sex, OK for companionship—if short enough—and not bad for ideas for questionnaires: ‘How long can your man keep it up?’ ‘What does it mean if he stays for breakfast?’ She had to admit that the answers were usually far less interesting than the questions. In her experience, the answer to ‘what does it mean if he stays for breakfast?’ was almost always ‘extra dishes’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Stephen Cassidy, 1999

story

Distance extract