Not really...
I’ve said it before I’ve even really realised what it is that I’m saying.
“I’m not really a receptionist.”
He doesn’t care, of course. It wasn’t a genuine question. He was just making small talk to put me at ease as I fiddle around in the belly of the photocopier. It doesn’t matter to him what I am. It would not matter if I were really an activist set on infiltrating the university and freeing the animals they keep in basement. It would not matter if I were an heiress unable to inherit my fortune until I’d completed five years in the real world. It would not matter if I spent my evenings rescuing orphans from burning buildings.
He hasn’t even noticed how embarrassed I am at what I’ve just said. All that matters to him is whether or not I can salvage his lecture notes, or what remain of his lecture notes. To him I am nothing but a Xerox whisperer. It’s hot with my hand inside the machinery. I keep catching my fingers on pieces of metal. Eventually I feel a little flap of paper and tug. I rock back on my heels triumphant. It’s the matching half to the crumpled piece of A4 he’s holding.
“Sellotape?” he says.
***
Every morning I push myself into a space not quite large enough on the tube. I arrive here at half past eight. It’s too early for the doors to be open so I have to use my swipe card to get in. It has ‘STAFF’ written on it, and underneath the picture (which cannot, realistically, be recognised as me) ‘receptionist’. I turn on the lights and the photocopier and the computer. I open all the windows and check the fax machine. Then I sit down at my desk and go through the emails and the voicemails. For someone who isn’t really a receptionist I do an amazingly good impression of one.
But when you press your mouth against my ear and tell me people will be writing about us in a hundred years time, making films and singing songs, I know it has to be true. I have to believe it, that I am something more. That we are something more. For this not to be wrong, for this not to be cheap, for this not to be two drunken idiots making a mistake.
It has to be true.
***
Later in the toilets I notice I’ve got a streak of toner above my eyebrow. I grab some tissue paper and wipe it off.
I’m not really a receptionist.