The stench outside is every bit as ripe: a mix of old garbage and alley piss. There’s a bush in the corner that the local dogs can’t get enough of. When it gets to the point where even I can pick up on the little messages they send each other, it’s time for rain. So why don’t I just go back up north where I came from? Same reason as always, of course: money. Do you know any translators who get contracts for big television networks … and don’t live in a major city? Didn’t think so. I know, I know, with a good internet connection I could work from anywhere in the world. Too bad no one else gets it, especially those at the helm of the Reality Channel. Their excuse? The monthly charade known as our “team meeting.” The coffee is awful, the agenda of scant concern to me. This definitely isn’t where we decide which TV shows to purchase. And the texts I get to translate are invariably of the same abysmal quality. Let’s just say compelling dialogue isn’t high on the list of priorities. They invite me along so I can feel like “part of the team.” That’s the official version, anyway. Since it’s my first halfway decent job, I’m loath to complain. I didn’t spend all these years studying to wait tables at a Normandin diner, the most exciting job on offer within thirty kilometres of Dupuis Creek last time I checked. I considered trying my luck as a drug dealer; as far as I can tell, it’s both the most sought-after and the most lucrative career in the hole I grew up in. But when you go down that route, it doesn’t take long before everyone knows who you are. Then they’ll never leave you alone. I value my free time.

Unlike the rest of my university class, I never laboured under the delusion that I’d one day get the call to translate Donna Tartt or Chuck Palahniuk. Truth be told, though I like complaining about it, I actually enjoy my job. My work makes me laugh. It may not pay especially well, but as long as I make my deadlines and show up at meetings, they leave me alone. I guess at the interview they must have picked up on my fascination with sordid things. Not everyone gets off watching a perpetual loop of shows that work hard to strike the perfect balance between banal and pathetic. That’s why it’s called “reality,” I guess.