The Fall and Rise of Ed Hulver


"I am not wearing that" 

'That' was an ensemble of a bright green pair of satin shorts, 
a yellow satin shirt, a matching green satin jacket and to top 
it all off, a tall, bright green satin hat with a yellow satin 
covered buckle at the front.
"Look, Ed," the sales manager continued, "Lucky the Leprechaun 
has been identified by the marketing department as the character 
most likely to appeal to the product demographic for this 
software and..."

"I'm six foot fucking four!" Ed interrupted.

"...and due to the short notice of this exhibition, you are the 
only pre-sales engineer who fits the last remaining costume".

Ed's shoulders slumped as he lost the will to argue. 

It was, of course, a nightmare. Teenage boys flicked wrappers 
and chewing gum at him. Teenage girls sniggered in clusters just 
outside the stand area, as if he shouldn’t be expected to notice 
them. Skirts halfway up their ass or down at their ankles, 
depending on local fashion, they all smirked at him before 
huddling, giggling and flicking their hair. 

“Product demographic my arse” Ed muttered under his breath as he 
glared at another kid stretching out greasy fingers to touch the 
plasma screen. Tina glared at him. She was from sales and somehow 
failed to look absurd despite being dressed as a giant shamrock.  
She was also very annoyed at him since he’d static-shocked the only 
genuine sales enquiry they’d had all morning and she was a few 
payments behind on her latest SUV. He’d blamed the costume and had 
tried to explain the physics involved but she’d just looked at him 
with the exact expression that the teenage girls used and he’d 
sunken back into the corner of the stand from where he’d resumed 
his previous diversion of contemplating the glory of her arse.

Tina had gone to lunch. Two hours ago. Ed chewed on his lower lip 
in frustration and hoped she’d choked on her single-shot skinny 
latte and zero carb salad. More likely she’d powdered her nose on 
the way back and gotten distracted by one of those 17 year old rugby 
types. He’d heard the rumours from the last expo. Everything was 
supposed to be packed up in an hour but there was too much stuff for 
him to carry by himself without leaving valuable and portable items 
unattended, leaving him to glumly contemplate either having the cost 
of their loss docked from his wages or calling the sales manager for 
help which would earn him Tina’s eternal enmity.

“Nice shorts”.
Ed didn’t bother looking up until the shadow failed to go away.  When 
he did, he discovered the voice didn’t belong to yet another sneering 
student or cardigan-wearing headmistress unconvinced by the merits of 
technology over flogging. She looked about the same age as him but 
with blue streaks in her hair and a shiny silver ring in her nose. He 
checked her feet – regulation battered black Doc Marten’s, 12 hole. A 
guaranteed contemporary, except by her smile she didn’t seem to be 
carrying the weight of routine existence. He smiled wryly.

“Yeah”.

“So what do you do?” she asked. Ed drew in a breath and began recite 
the mission statement and sales pitch he’d been made learn. She stopped 
him three words in.

“I mean, what to you do. Yourself.”
Ed thought for a long moment. He knew he got up every morning and went 
to an office where people told him what to do and then different people 
told him the opposite five minutes later. He knew he drew up long 
carefully detailed design documents that were mutilated and cannibalised 
by others to put bigger digits before the comma. He knew he had Important 
Deadlines and that they all had to Pull Together. He shrugged.

“IT” he said. 

She glanced at the poster behind him and nodded.

“You look tired.”

Ed watched her walk away. He stood up and stepped over the line that 
marked his cage. One cautious step. Another bolder. And another and 
another and another. He passed Tina on the way, tottering on her heels, 
but didn’t stop and didn’t even hear what she shouted after him.

He needed to buy some blue hair dye. It was important.