The exercise of this week was to play with time, to dart in and out of the story instead of faithfully documenting it minute by minute. I took the prompt of "running late" and set the story in the educational department of the museum.
Nobody with a sane mind would eat these cookies, she thought while inspecting the table. They were so dry that they stuck to your teeth and you had to wriggle your tongue all over the place to get them off. Probably the interns had been sent out to the Lidl to get whatever was cheapest. She shifted uncomfortably on the wooden IKEA stool, trying to keep her attention to what was being said on the other side of the table. That’s where power was sitting: the director of the museum and next to him, the new head of education. Surrounded by a few curators, those who hadn’t dared to say no to the meeting, it then transitioned into the ones without a steady pay-check. She wouldn’t touch the food, so she had promised herself the moment she laid her eyes upon the table. A gesture of resistance. It was unlikely that the heads of the table perceived it as such. But then, they also wouldn’t get the message if you spelled it out and wrote it in capital letters.
That she arrived late, had also been a kind of boycott. It was a tremendous effort for her. She was never late or even punctual but rather too early, which was frustrating because nobody liked to see a person arrive early. This time, she had, on purpose, arranged to meet with a friend who didn’t stop talking once he got started. It had done the job. She was late, and not only late, but also the last one to arrive. She smiled while sipping her water (she was refusing the coffee, tea, orange and apple juice). Although nobody had seemingly noticed her late arrival, she knew it had disturbed the concentration in the room. The eyes of her colleagues had been transfixed upon the director who was droning some welcoming words to the head of education. Under the guise of a New Year’s Party they had gathered the tour guides to update them on the upcoming exhibitions. You don’t have to pay people to attend a party, do you?
Her colleagues bothered her, the way they nodded their head constantly in approval or laughed about nothing funny. Pathetic how they sucked on their sweet apple juice and nibbled on their cookies. They were not any better than the ones in power. Years of freelancing in precarious conditions had knocked out any kind of solidarity between them. They just wanted to be in the favour of the new head whose task it was to schedule the tours. Their eyes were big with desire. Brooding on her stool, she was imagining how to take down the house with minor interventions. As a tour guide, she had the mobility to move throughout the museum, to hear the gossip, to check in on the security guards. She was also invisible. Nobody paid attention to a tour guide.
By now, the curators had started their talking. Is it us, she wondered, who evoked such a lack of lustre in them? It might be the idea of an exhibition needing mediators. So here it was killed instead with tenuous details about transportation and time tables. One curator did show a bit of passion but she was clearly new on the job. It didn’t take long for the director to interrupt: “Could you make it shorter?” When, a few minutes later, the new head of education was asked if she had any questions, she knew what to answer: “Many, but I’ll keep them for later!” “Alright,” the director said, impatiently shoving the cookies across the table in the direction of the tour guides: “They are all yours! Eat it all! It’s for you!”