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a breast. Wayne is a little right, she is tight-assed, a bit frigid in her clothes.
    When he returns his gaze to her face, Grig realizes she has said more things and he doesn’t know what they are. He says, “I do better.”
    â€œYeees. You must be more patient with customers. When you interrupt, you not only miss info, it costs you the customer’s trust. People don’t like being cut off.”
    â€œI must get the call-times down, yes? And many who call, they are old lonelies, talking and talking, pointless.”
    Suyin’s back stiffens, and her breasts point higher. “Not pointless. Many times, I think you’ll find if you take a bit more time to find out exactly what the issue is – ”

    â€œI am a good listener, is not a problem. I am caring to hear. I am a good guy.”
    Suyin breathes out sharply, as if some dust had gone up her nose. “I know that, Grigori. But you need to concentrate on being useful to customers. Your goodness is no good if they can’t get what they want.”
    Suyin has sped up talking again, but he catches that she has called him Grigori , which no one says in English. So prissy. Aren’t they friends? He threw her a party.
    After a while, she picks up a new page and says, “Ok? Ring!”
    He should have listened. He could have understood, if he really focused. The problem is that focusing takes a lot of energy, and he can shut it off too easily. In Cherkessk, he woke a hundred times a year to hear his parents yelling at each other, or drunken talk and songs in the street. In Russian, he couldn’t not listen. The eyes close but the ears don’t – words always got in and he always understood them, angry, pointless, incoherent, anything, pouring into his ears and brain unstoppably. English requires effort, which means when he relaxes, leans back, lets a stray thought lead his mind, he often drifts so far from the conversation there might be no way back.
    â€œRing?”
    â€œYes!” Grig is so fucked.
    â€œOk . . .” She points her small finger at her ear like a gun, and says, “Ring-ring!” and he gets that she’s pretending to be a phone – it’s a practice phone call. He hates these bullshit games, and yet Suyin’s breasts are perfect, even in the dumb sweater.
    He beams at her, points his own small finger at his ear, and says, “Ring!”
    Suyin does not smile back. She whispers, as if they had an audience she is protecting him from, “No, you answer.”
    He chuckles, then thinks, then flushes. “Hello?”
    Still she is silent, as if the invisible audience prevents her explaining what is wrong. “Hello?” she says to her finger. “Who is this?”

    â€œOh! I never make that mistake on live line. No, never.” He shakes his head.
    Suyin just nods and this time he understands that she will not stop this pretend phone call for anything. He feels suddenly that she is just processing him like a month-end report, not treating him as her office-friend Grig. He wonders if there are cameras in the ceiling or some other reason beyond her being a silly bitch.
    â€œThanks for calling Dream Magazines today. How may I help you dream?”
    â€œI am so angry! The mail carrier informed me that yet again my copy of Dream Retirement is not in his sack! This is outrageous! That was the November issue . . . .”
    Her voice has gone shrill as a cat, though her face is blank and her eyes focused on her page. Her soft sweetness is all gone – she is completely unfuckable now.
    â€œWell? Are you going to do anything about it? Well? ”
    He will answer her, polite, professional, Canadian , in a moment. For that moment, he just sits there, hating her.

    A lot of the guys he went to grade 12 with – he was only in Canada for grade 12, his father had thought that was enough – are still around Scarborough and they sometimes hang out. But this weekend