Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

6

"Excuse me, my dear, you're dripping water on my shoes." The woman with taut skin, make-up applied by a trowel, hair styled within an inch of its life, a pearl necklace with matching earrings, handbag that cost more than Clara's entire wardrobe and a quite prim and proper royal blue jacket, looked down her aquiline nose as she spoke, raising a disgusted eyebrow as she surveyed Clara from top to bottom.

"Don't worry, darling, it's not water. It's urine." Clara retorted. Almost before she had finished the word 'urine', the entire complement of passengers backed away, giving both Clara and the lemur a wide birth within the confines of the elevator. She turned towards the lemur, hands on her hips. "No we've got some privacy ... ish ... You need to answer some questions."

"I offered to answer questions before and all you cared about was your hair." The lemur gave a tight smile to the people cowering away from Clara.

"Yeah. Still brutal. First question ..." She pointed in the general direction of the speakers in the elevator. "Is that 'The Girl From Ipanema'? And I didn't know they played muzak in the lifts of the Empire State Building. That's a bit mental, considering how far the lifts go."

"Elevators. They're called elevators in America. Except on Earth Three-One-Two-Five. They call them 'whooshers' on that Earth." The look Clara gave him screamed 'Really?!?', so he returned to topic. "Yes, that is 'The Girl From Ipanema'. Great song, bee tee double-you. And on some Earths, the Empire State has muzak in the elevators, some don't and some expect you to walk up one thousand, five hundred and seventy-six stairs to reach the Observation Deck. Madness."

"Right. Okay. Question 'B', what's your name? Do you even have a name? Or do you go by some esoteric nom de plume, like 'The Physician', or something?" Behind her she heard a 'tut' from the woman. Clara turned, pointing a finger at her. "Shut it, W.A.S.Py, or I'll drip more pee on you!"

"My name ..." The lemur drew himself up to his full height, looking proud and dignified. "Is Foston Slacks."

"No, I mean your real name."

"That is my real name."

"Shut up. That's not a name, it's a cry for help. Seriously, what's your name?" The lemur's shoulders drooped. It seemed he expected a different reaction from her.

"It's Foston Slacks!" The lemur, Foston, looked away, self-conscious. He reached out and fiddled with the floor numbers on the panel before him.

"Did your mum and dad hate you?" She gave him a mocking sympathetic look. The kind she always gave to Donna when she bought those atrocious clothes she thought were the height of fashion but were, in fact, disgusting.

"I mean, alright, yes, it's not my real-real name. You couldn't pronounce that if you tried, but it's my really-real name that I've used almost forever." He reached in to the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out a wallet, showing her the card in the little plastic window flap. "See, it's on my driver's licence and everything."

Clara grabbed the wallet and took a closer look, noticing the large number of credit and debit cards in the pockets. The driver's licence read 'Foston Slacks', as he had said, but the picture on the licence looked nothing like him. Instead, there, in the little picture, was a man around thirty years old, with shiny blond hair, appearing to gurn madly out from the photograph. She threw the wallet back at him, causing him to juggle it several times before it settled in his hands. He put it away while she pointed an accusing finger towards it.

"That's not even you in the picture." She folded her arms, tapping her foot. She stopped when she felt the heel wobbling. "It doesn't look anything like you. He's not a lemur, for a start. That's a dead giveaway, that is."

"It's what everyone sees when they look at me." Foston smoothed his hand over his fur and Clara imagined that, if he did look like the picture, he'd have brushed back the floppy blond fringe of his hair.

"But, I don't. I see ..." She wobbled a finger, pointing from his face down to his truly good looking shoes. "...this."

"Well, that's because you're not the same as most people. A side-effect of being able to see the Breaches." For, perhaps, the millionth time, he pointed at his watch. "Thanks to this, everyone else sees the man in the picture. The Trans-Temp ... umm ... the 'watch' makes a low-level telepathic scan of the people looking at me, taking into account all the variables; their likes, dislikes, favourite facial shapes, preferred ethnicities, hairstyles, make-up (if they think males should wear it, or not), adornments, etcetera, etcetera. Then the 'watch' makes, in the tiniest fraction of a second, a billion, billion, billion calculations and then projects that calculated facial and body type into the minds of the observer. It is, quite frankly, brilliant."

"But everyone sees that guy in the photo?" Clara raised an eyebrow.

"Well, it's a very popular look."

"Which all brings me to question (lower case) eye-vee ..." Clara held up four fingers and her thumb to illustrate her point.

"What happened to 'Question three'?"

"Oh, I'm getting to that, don't you worry." She skewered him with her most severe, questioning look. The one she used when she needed to find out who's round it was at the back-end of a monster session up the West End. "You just said it again, that I'm not the same as most people. Just how rare is that? Being able to see these 'Breach' thingies and what you really look like?"

"I told you, the odds are billions to one against. Like, as close to zero chance as you can get." He circled a finger in the air, indicating everything. "The human race could last another thousand years and another one like you may never be born. It doesn't, though. Last, I mean. Let's just say, don't go out sunbathing in 2190."

"But you said there were three others back at the office."

"Well, you know what they say about buses." Foston shrugged. "And besides, those three can't see through the telepathic projection. You did."

"So, I am special?" Foston nodded. "I knew it! All my life, I've felt I was meant for something greater, you know. Something better. A lifetime of coming second in everything, and finding I'm really good at something and then finding out there were a million-and-one people who were equally as really good and then finding out there were people who were so good, they made me look bad. I knew it! Up yours, mother!"

"Alright. Egotistical, or what." Foston looked as if he'd caught a whiff of a bad smell. "Don't let it go to your head. Carol, at the office, makes, officially, the single greatest Victoria Sponge cake in all of time, space and realities. You don't hear her banging on about it."

"You don't know what this means, though." Clara grabbed the lapels of Foston's jacket and marvelled at the perfect needlework and the softness of the expensive material. "It means my mother has been wrong about me, all this time! 'You'll never amount to anything', she says. 'Best get married now, at least you'll have someone to pay for your funeral when you die', she says. Now I can look her in the eye and tell her I am special! I'm not a waste of space, after all! This. Is. Brilliant!"

"Yes, well, you can' actually tell anyone about any of this, you know."

"What? No!" Clara almost felt like falling to her knees.

After all this time, she could have made her mother finally shut up. She would have been able to hold her head high. Been able to go to family gatherings and not find herself pulled apart by her mother in front of every single member of her family, even great aunt Gladys, who couldn't hear a thing, but always seemed to understand what her mother said about her. And agreed.

A cheery 'ping' announced they had reached their destination and the elevator doors rolled open with a satisfying, smooth and soft whoosh.

"Ah!" Foston clapped his hands, grinning like a child seeing that famous mouse-obsessed theme park for the first time. "The Observation Deck! Come on! You'll love this."

Clara followed in a daze. Her hopes, that she had nurtured and cherished, pruned and watered for whole minutes since Foston had mentioned how unique she was, were all now crushed. The feeling felt far too familiar for her liking.