The opposite of success, p.1
The Opposite of Success, page 1
ABOUT THE BOOK
All Lorrie wants is to get promoted, accept her body and end global warming. By Friday. Is that really too much to ask?
Council employee Lorrie Hope has a great partner, two adorable kids and absolutely no idea what to do with her life. This Friday, she’s hoping for change: it’s launch day for her big work project, and she’s applied for a promotion she’s not entirely sure she wants. Meanwhile, her best friend, Alex, is stuck in a mess involving Lorrie’s rakish ex, Ruben—or, more accurately, his wife. Oh, and Ruben’s boss happens to be the mining magnate Sebastian Glup, who is sponsoring Lorrie’s project…
As the day spirals from bad to worse to frankly unhinged, Lorrie and Alex must reconsider what they can expect from life, love and middle management. The Opposite of Success is a riotously funny debut novel about work, motherhood, friendship—and the meaning of failure itself.
Contents
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
EPIGRAPHS
PART 1 LORRIE
PART 2 ALEX
PART 3 LORRIE
PART 4 ALEX
PART 5 LORRIE
PART 6 GLUP GARDENS
PART 7 EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.
TONI MORRISON
Now, I am the voice! I will lead, not follow! I will believe, not doubt! I will create, not destroy! I am a force for good! I am a leader! Defy the odds! Set a new standard! Step up! Step up! Step up!
TONY ROBBINS
Whaddaya gonna do?
TONY SOPR ANO
PART 1
LORRIE
The worst day of Lorrie Hope’s life began like all other days that year: she was summoned out of a dream by the sound of a voice calling out for a mother.
Lorrie rolled over.
‘Mama?’ called the voice.
Mama is dead. The thought drifted in from the outer shores of her consciousness. It definitely seemed possible that she was dead.
She was already beginning to let herself sink back into oblivion, when—wait. Lorrie opened her eyes. Weird, but she couldn’t remember dying. Was dying the kind of thing a person would just forget?
She picked up her phone from the bedside table to check the time. Fuck. Fuck it. Fuck it all. She was alive, and it was 4.47 a.m. Still indisputably night-time, but just close enough to morning that there was no way she was getting Clara back to sleep in her own cot.
‘Mama!’
Lorrie stretched, arching her toes forwards and backwards a few times before sitting up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and planting her feet on the floor. She was immediately seized by a powerful urge to lie down again.
‘Mama! Mama! Mamamamamama!’
She looked across the bed at Paul, who was emitting a whistling purr each time he exhaled. The silhouette of his body underneath the doona rose and fell in the contented rhythm of a resting man, a man untroubled by the harrowing wails of the banshee down the corridor. Lorrie’s eyes narrowed. Was he really asleep? Through all this racket? Was it scientifically possible?
It happened that the easiest way to soothe their younger daughter was to stick a nipple in her mouth, and that Lorrie was therefore the parent best placed to deal with her in the middle of the night. This was not Paul’s fault; of course it wasn’t. Paul had not created the situation in which she found herself. Yet, at moments such as these, moments when Lorrie woke up desperate, hungering for sleep like a sweaty, shivering addict, she was filled with a vigorous certainty that it was, in fact—definitely, absolutely, unquestionably—100 per cent Paul’s fault. The evidence was unequivocal. Lorrie was awake, while Paul remained asleep. Fuck you, Paul.
She shuffled to Clara’s room. Clara was standing in her sleep bag at the edge of the cot. She had stopped calling out once she heard the familiar thud-thud-thud of Lorrie’s slow morning steps moving towards her. Lorrie reached in and lifted her up, and Clara’s shaggy, oversized head nestled into the crook of her neck as she carried her over to the armchair on the other side of the room. She laid the child across her lap, pulled up her T-shirt and let Clara sleepily latch on to her breast.
It wouldn’t be long before the kid was too big for this. Clara was two and a half, and Lorrie already felt a bit self-conscious about breastfeeding a person sophisticated enough to talk in simple sentences and lift a single, sardonic eyebrow for comedic effect. But a few times each day, Clara would hover over to Lorrie and throw her a conspiratorial smile. ‘Bosom? Please?’ she would ask in her small, husky voice—and what was Lorrie supposed to say to that?
Admittedly, it wasn’t entirely altruistic, this failure to wean. Letting Clara nurse meant that instead of plunging straight into early-morning parenting duties—changing Clara’s nappy, preparing her breakfast, cajoling her away from the important work of rifling through the recycling or creating abstract crayon murals on the wall behind the sofa—Lorrie could doze off, and an extra hour of sleep could be wrenched from the jaws of dawn. Oh, sleep. Glorious, dazzling, ravishing, heavenly sleep! Lorrie loved sleeping more than any other activity. She loved it even more than she loved watching television, which said a lot, given that watching TV was basically her only hobby, now that she was a mother. Once upon a time, during that hazy thirty-two-year period that had preceded parenthood, she remembered doing other things too—things like going out for dinner, visiting galleries, enjoying art-house cinema, travelling to foreign countries, experimenting with LSD, remembering her friends’ birthdays, taking daily showers, getting haircuts, flossing her teeth, fucking, learning Japanese, having a poke around the shops. Not these days, though. These days, there was no time for any of that shit.
‘Mama, I want my phone,’ Clara said, once again dragging Lorrie away from sweet unconsciousness. Clara was done with nursing, and now she wanted to watch Octonauts on Lorrie’s iPhone. It was just after 6 a.m.
Lorrie handed the phone over and headed to the kitchen to make herself a coffee. Paul was up already, cooking pancakes for Ruthie’s breakfast. Their older daughter was six and, like her sister, good at getting what she wanted.
Lorrie gave Paul a quick hug from behind, kissing the soft skin on the back of his neck. Her pre-dawn ire had evaporated, or at least faded to a point where she could no longer identify its active ingredients.
‘Want a pancake?’ he asked.
‘Sure, yes, I’d love one,’ she said, in her first failure of the day—second, if you count letting a two-year-old play unsupervised on a smartphone. The sun had not yet finished creeping over the horizon.
Lorrie had recently joined a weight-loss program, paying twenty dollars a week for a monkishly sparse meal plan and multiple daily emails designed to mesmerise her into slenderness with their relentlessly upbeat messaging about macronutrients, mindful eating and branded protein supplements. She wanted it to work. She truly wanted to become a better, stronger, smaller person. But the fundamental problem, she mused, as she poured maple syrup over the golden disc of tender carbohydrates that Paul had placed in front of her, was that, most of the time, being fat was just not as bad as not eating pancakes.
While Lorrie was eating, Ruthie came to sit on her knee. She was getting so big that it was hard for her to fit comfortably without sliding off. She put both arms around Lorrie’s neck and rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.
‘Mama, do you want to play dragons with me?’
Inwardly, Lorrie died a little. Ruthie was a darling child, full of boundless affection and imagination, gracious and empathetic, clever and cooperative. Lorrie loved her so much; she wanted to make her happy. She wanted to be an engaged and interested mother. And yet, the answer to Ruthie’s question, at that particular moment, was no—fuck no. She did not want to play dragons.
Right now, all Lorrie wanted to do was to finish her pancake, pick up her phone and sail off into the internet—to forget, for a while, that she was a mother, that she had a job, and a partner, and a personality. On the internet, she could become just one more tiny speck, blowing about in a cloud of electronic dust. She could let herself be thoroughly obliterated by the infinite stream of other people’s amazing and terrible ideas.
Oh well. Clara still had her phone, anyway.
‘Sure, okay, Ruthie. Let’s play dragons. What sort of dragon are you?’
‘I’m a blue dragon with a golden tail and rainbow eyes…’ Ruthie began, narratively transforming herself into a creature more glamorous and noble than any beast that had ever before existed in the history of human imagination. Lorrie listened dutifully for a good four and a half minutes before announcing that she had to go have a shower.
‘But what kind of dragon are you, Mama?’
‘Ah…I’m a beige dragon. I’m not very interesting, but I’m quite elegant. I go with everything.’
‘Mama.’
‘Okay, okay, sorry, sweetie. I am a crimson dragon and I have eyes the colour of fire. If I get upset I wreak havoc on the surrounding villages, sparing nobody.’
‘What colour are your wings?’
‘The colour of suffering.’
Ruthie looked thoughtful.
‘You are very powerful,’ she said. ‘You are the second most powerful dragon.’
‘After you?’
‘Yes. After me.’
Lorrie detached herself from Ruthie and went to get ready.
Lorrie worked as a policy officer at the city council. It wasn’t exactly her dream job, although she mostly liked it, probably more than most people liked their jobs. Twelve years ago, when she had applied for the position, she had thought of it as a kind of stop-gap job that would fill in some time while she figured out what she really wanted to do. But life had swept her into its current, and the years had insisted on ticking by while she wasn’t really concentrating. She would be thirty-nine in a few months, nearly halfway through her life (actuarial tables willing). She still had no fucking idea what she wanted to do with it.
She had applied for the promotion after her old team leader had resigned. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it—the job came with additional responsibilities for not much more money, and would probably necessitate picking up an extra day of work—but Lorrie was the longest serving, most experienced team member, who knew the council and its foibles better than anyone, and everyone had expected her to apply. One fringe benefit of getting promoted, she supposed, was that her mother might stop harassing her about how she was wasting her life. Even better, Lorrie would be able to stop thinking about whether or not her mother was right.
Lorrie collected her phone from Clara and checked her messages. There was a text from earlier in the morning from her friend Alex.
Hey L, just following up about the Green Cities launch. Was it possible to get me on the guest list? It would be so great if I could get some footage of Glup for my film xx
An irritated grunt emerged from Lorrie’s throat. She looked at the time stamp. It had been sent at 6.14 a.m. As far as Lorrie was concerned, this was not an acceptable time to send a text message unless you were experiencing a life-threatening emergency or had some urgent, twenty-four-carat gossip to pass on.
Alex had been pestering Lorrie about this for months. Green Cities had been Lorrie’s main project since she had come back from parental leave, and was probably—no, definitely—the most enjoyable thing she had worked on in her whole time at the council. She still found it kind of mind-boggling that this half-baked idea she had pitched to the council’s CEO, mostly as a means of ticking off a personal development goal on her annual performance plan (Progression Criteria 5.2(a): Take steps to demonstrate advancement towards building greater initiative), had turned into to a real council program manifesting in actual physical changes to the city landscape.
When she told Alex about it, she had expected her to be impressed.
‘So the council is going to be developing these rooftop parks, all over the city. They’re going to be little carbon-neutral oases—you know, solar panels, rain tanks, native plants, all that shit. They’re being specially designed for each environment, so some of them will have space for tenants in the building to grow their own food, and some of them will be open to the public. It’ll create a lot more communal green space right in the heart of town.’
‘Sounds expensive,’ Alex said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Well, yes, it is going to cost a bit, but it will have a lot of benefits, too, you know—improved air quality, resident wellbeing, energy savings, urban heat reduction, all kinds of things. Also, we’re working on it with Glup Developments, who are going to provide half the funding and handle a lot of the design and construction stuff.’
They were catching up for an after-work dinner at the place they always went to, a claustrophobic ramen restaurant down a cobbled laneway in the depths of Chinatown. While Lorrie was talking, Alex had been bent over her food, expertly slurping up thick, pale-yellow noodles and nodding with interest. Now, though, she laid her chopsticks across the top of the bowl, frowning.
‘Glup Developments? Does that have something to do with Sebastian Glup?’
‘Well—’
‘Of the Glup Mining Group?’
‘I mean…technically, yes, they’re a subsidiary company of GMG, but—’
‘Lorrie. Really? You know GMG is one of the top twenty fossil-fuel distributors in the world, right? Why would you get into bed with those guys?’
‘Okay, GMG is terrible, sure. But Glup Developments actually operates quite independently, so—’
‘Umm, Lorrie, it’s not a grey area. These people are literal monsters. Sebastian Glup basically bought the outcome of the last election with all those crazy ads.’ Alex hunched her shoulders, sinking her chin back into her neck, in a fairly good impersonation of Sebastian Glup, the major shareholder of GMG. ‘“Climate change extremists are stealing your kidneys! Fossil fuels are our future!”’
Glup had funded and starred in an ad campaign the previous year, the goal of which was to scare the major parties away from any policies that might even tangentially threaten the Glup family’s untrammelled pillaging of the earth or the unfettered expansion of their already gargantuan wealth. The campaign had been depressingly effective.
Lorrie sighed.
‘Yeah, I realise Glup is a dickhead, not arguing with you there. But he’s a rich dickhead. Better he spends at least some of his money on public good rather than private jets and coal mines, right? I mean, the more he gives to us, the less he has left over for buying off our elected leaders.’
Alex had pressed her lips together while Lorrie was speaking, and tilted her chin upwards. It was an expression that Lorrie recognised, an expression that meant that nothing she could say would be sufficient to sway Alex’s already-decided mind. When Lorrie stopped talking, Alex gazed at her silently for a moment, then picked up her chopsticks and continued eating her noodles.
‘How did you get him on board, anyway?’ she asked, between mouthfuls.
Lorrie leaned forwards, so that Alex could hear her over the noise of the restaurant. ‘It’s a funny story, actually. Do you remember my old boyfriend, Ruben Armand?’
Alex looked up sharply. ‘What does he have to do with anything?’
‘He works for Glup now. He’s his lawyer. I actually got in touch with Glup through him—pitched the Green Cities thing as a way for Glup to leave a legacy in the city where he was born.’
Alex was looking at her with a barely perceptible frown.
‘I didn’t know you and Ruben were in contact.’
It was clear, from the coolness in Alex’s voice, that she did not approve. Fair enough, Lorrie supposed—when Ruben and Lorrie were seeing each other, back when they were all teenagers, Alex had been forced to endure many long hours listening to Lorrie moan helplessly about her romantic situation, as though she was some oppressed peasant in a nineteenth-century novel and Ruben a capricious aristocrat who must be appeased at all costs.
‘Well, we’re not really in contact, exactly,’ Lorrie said, ‘I just happened to run across him on social media, and then when we were looking for an industry partner to fund Green Cities, I messaged him to see if he could help out. Thought I may as well try to get some benefit out of our connection, given all that emotional suffering he put me through.’
Alex didn’t say anything.
‘Anyway, turns out he’s married now,’ Lorrie went on. ‘With a kid! Can you imagine? I haven’t had that much to do with him, but he was very helpful in getting Glup to consider our proposal. He definitely seems like less of an arsehole than he used to be.’
Alex let out a snort. ‘Wouldn’t be hard.’
Lorrie laughed. ‘I guess not,’ she said, pleased that the conversation had finally come around to something they could agree upon.
•
It had been nineteen years since Lorrie and Ruben Armand’s relationship had come to an end. Even after all this time, Lorrie did not feel completely comfortable describing what had happened as a break-up. Was it possible to break something that never properly existed in the first place?
Lorrie and Ruben had hooked up in their final year of high school. They had known each other, peripherally, for years before that, but not once had she considered him as a romantic option. Ruben was handsome and popular, and had a number of qualities that placed him squarely out of Lorrie’s league: he played drums in a band, albeit an awful band that had churned through a series of even worse names (Jesuspenis, Clowns of Pus, Gladys Bumhole); he had amazing hair (tall, wild and wiry, like the quiff of a swanky llama); and he was on the school basketball team (although this actually lowered him in Lorrie’s estimation, his sporting achievements indicating to her a probable lack of sensitivity and imagination). Lorrie, on the other hand, was best known for being tall, clever and socially awkward, and none of these attributes made her particularly hot property on her high-school dating scene. But at the beginning of year 12, Lorrie and Ruben had been assigned to work together on a group project in their history class, and Lorrie had been surprised by how easy he was to spend time with. Ruben turned out to have the incredibly charming habit of laughing at all of her jokes, which helped her to conclude that he was, in fact, a lot smarter than she had previously thought.
