The Room She Had Never Seen

Sunniva pressed two fingers into the back of Emrys’s neck. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead,” Emrys said. “It’s been killing me since June. The shoulder’s worse — it wakes me up.”

She pressed again. “What do you do all day?”

“I listen. Eight hours. People phone in and they want a human, not a machine. The company calls us ‘listeners.’”

“Sit the way you sit at home,” she said. “Same position.”

He sat.

“Your screen is low and it’s on your left, and it’s not on the desk. It’s on top of something. Books, maybe. And there’s a fan on your right that you turn away from all day.”

“You’ve been in my house,” Emrys said.

“Your chair has no arms. That’s the one I’d change,” she said. “But that chair is half a month’s salary.” She drew his room on the back of a form and gave him the copy.

That night Emrys pushed the desk along the wall to the window. It had stood in the corner because the room’s only power socket was there; he ran an electric cord under the door instead. The chair still had no arms, and by Friday the shoulder had stopped waking him up.