Temporary Trouble

Excerpt From: Temporary Trouble

Breathless and giggling, Ben Taylor and Aaron Jones leaned against one another, gulping for air. Aaron peered around the corner, ducking back when he saw a head turn their way. The ear-splitting, mechanical clamour of the fire alarm drowned out the sound of the pouring rain—rain that splattered the pavements and drenched their co-workers, who stood in a sodden, miserable huddle in the car park.

Half of them had grabbed coats as they’d left the building—the other half were hunched in short-sleeved blouses or shivered in damp cotton.

Aaron maintained a solemn expression for half a minute, his lips twitching, then dissolved into laughter again.

Ben straightened up and clapped Aaron on the back. “Come on. Let’s get out there before someone starts to get suspicious.”

Aaron gave him a luminous, lop-sided grin that dimpled one cheek, and suddenly Ben felt a little breathless again. He didn’t think about it, but instead slipped around the corner of the building and began to slosh across the car park, leaving his friend to follow.

A sullen group of smokers had broken off and were trying unsuccessfully to light their cigarettes in spite of the relentless downpour and the wind whipping the flames of their lighters out. Ben directed a completely artificial look of fellow-feeling their way.

The fire officer, Doreen, an uptight, skinny woman from HR whose hairstyle had been reduced to a soggy, straggling rat’s nest, gave them a harried look as she spotted them, and checked her watch. She ticked their names off the list on her clipboard, the waterlogged paper tearing under the pressure of her ballpoint pen.

Muttered complaints sounded through the crowd and Ben heard ‘fire-drill’ and ‘faulty bloody alarm’, but what he didn’t hear, to his smug delight, was ‘practical joke’. He winked at Aaron, and worked on projecting an air of disgruntlement. He didn’t want to stand out from the crowd by looking too cheerful.

The fact that his socks squelched unpleasantly inside his soaked-through shoes helped with that. Perhaps this hadn’t been their brightest idea ever—but it was definitely a successful prank, and that was what counted.

Okay, so it was childish. And he and Aaron, both in their mid-twenties, were old enough to know better. But temps got all the dull jobs—filing, photocopying, fetching coffee. Temps were easy to blame if something went wrong. Temps were paid minimum wage. Temps were...well, they were temporary. Disposable. They had to have some fun.

So they’d started to play tricks on their erstwhile co-workers. Nothing criminal or dangerous—just little japes that inconvenienced or annoyed and allowed them to get one over on their officemates. It was a ray of sunshine in what could otherwise be a thoroughly dreary week. That was why, when everyone else left the office at the end of the day still damp and fuming, Ben and Aaron walked out into the drizzly grey evening with smiles on their faces.

Ben’s socks hadn’t dried out yet and he was looking forward to a hot shower and his dinner, but his mood was buoyant.

“Changing the coffee to decaf was a mistake,” Aaron said as they strolled towards home, huddled together under a single umbrella. “I actually thought Bob from accounts was going to kill someone.”