Lucas 01 – The Arrival

Lucas

Lucas Jones is a middle manager in the purchasing department of a medium size firm. He spends much of his day on the phone talking with suppliers trying to get the best deal on a range of materials. The office is much like any other. Rumours regularly fly regarding the lives, sexual and otherwise of everyone, and in particular Dominique, Lorraine and Jason from Marketing and juvenile pranks are regularly played upon the same old victims day in day out. Friday night sees half of them tumbling out of the building at 5.30 and into the « Horse and Crown » across the road, not to reappear worse for a night’s drinking until a quarter past eleven. They spend their time discussing everyone else, and no-one ever dares divulge their salary to anyone.

Today, is just like any other day for Lucas in that he finds himself sitting at his desk in the open plan, yet partitioned office, gazing at his Year Planner that he has filled up with an array of colour coded stickers, his phone clamped to his ear deep in a kind of negotiation with one of his Italian suppliers. Seeing as Lucas has difficulty understanding the poor English of this particular Italian supplier, his negotiating technique revolves around writing down what words he can make out coming down the line from Perugia, he calls these his key words. He then generally repeats his own negotiating position and hopes that at some point or other the Italian will back down. This technique has served him well for years. Today he has written down, “impossible”, “final” and “bellissimo”. He repeats his initial offer, and lets the man from Perugia continue, while he is doing this Lucas, like he often does, lets his mind wander a little further than the colour dots on his year planner.

His little daydream is only broken when Dave from Finance pops his head over his partition and says, “Lucas, there are five gorgeous chicks in reception, and they are asking for you.”

“Hey?”

“Five. Gorgeous. Chicks. Look.”

Lucas rolls his chair back the two metres so he can see round the partition enough to see reception. And sure enough, there are five Barbie doll girls all lined up next to Julie the receptionist’s desk.

“Fuck!”, and then adds, “no, no, Luigi, it’s bueno, bueno.”

Lucas is facing a crisis, he has five drop dead gorgeous women asking after him in reception and he has just bought 100,000 M4 stainless steel screwplates for a ridiculously high price.