by Mari Reiza
Of course, it was not a show! Where were the fucking showgirls, the veline? How Hammi would have loved to die surrounded by veline!
Clara explained that everyone was wearing the face of death as the ambulance men took Hammi’s shoes and socks off. ‘His uncut toenails came into view like the claws on a cat. Maybe he hadn’t had time to cut them that morning, we had been so busy,’ she felt the need to justify him. ‘But it was too late and they would not even take him to hospital,’ Clara added. He was pronounced dead there and then. ‘And at that precise moment, the fire alarm and the sprinkler system came on because of a scheduled emergency exercise!’ Schedules can’t wait. Clara had stayed with Hammi, dead on the floor under the misty rain, for thirty minutes. She suddenly remembered one of the assistants had at least covered the dead body with a white sheet the defibrillator men had left behind. ‘It may have been the over-efficient assistant,’ she told me, eager to be exhaustive in her account.
After some time, the van from the morgue had arrived and parked outside the building. Clara had seen it through the window. ‘It said Morgue Online Services written in English. It was odd,’ she added. Maybe you could select your coffin and drag it to your shopping basket. ‘Very odd.’ There had been a fat and a thin man coming out of the van and they had taken out a hair-raising metal box from the back, like one David Copperfield had used on stage once, according to Clara. She couldn’t remember the specific occasion but I told her not to worry. I had not known she was a magic fan. ‘The box could not fit in the lift so the men came up with a stretcher,’ Clara was determined that I should hear every single detail. ‘They were dressed like dustmen,’ she said of the morgue men, ‘with big thick gloves. Not to touch death,’ she went on. ‘There was the smell of death everywhere. The fat man was wearing a T-shirt which said Beba Coca-Cola. It was a Colombian T-shirt. The guy was Colombian, although I am only guessing from the accent.’ She insisted there was nothing wrong with him being Colombian, and didn’t want me to think she thought otherwise, given she was heading Enterprise’s LatAm society.
Clara paused then soon started again.
‘Everyone has to die, right? Isn’t it the same for everybody?’ She sounded lost. ‘The men tried to put Hammi on the stretcher but he was heavy and it was awkward,’ she continued. She did not know how they had got Hammi into the lift because she had rushed to the toilet, but she had returned to the window to see how the men put his body in the van. ‘They transferred him from the stretcher to the spine-chilling box like flipping some heavy lump over a rubbish truck,’ she said distraught. She confessed she was worried because the morgue men had forgotten Hammi’s shoes and his toenails would be scratching against the box’s walls. ‘Had they cleaned the box before they put Hammi in or had it carried a different dead body earlier that morning?’
I told Clara she shouldn’t get worked up about things like that but I don’t think she was listening.
‘An old woman on the pavement crossed herself whilst praying, eyes fixed on the body,’ said Clara. The woman seemed more touched than most people at the office, according to her. Apparently, the Colombian man had come back to the office after packing Hammi off in the van and asked where he and his colleague could get a bite to eat in the area. ‘I rushed to the toilet again because of the thought of the hands of death touching a sandwich. But death had made the men so hungry.’ Clara needed to get everything off her chest. She said that is what she had thought at the time, that death had made them hungry, but she was just guessing again. ‘Maybe they weren’t hungry but needed food for comfort, or because it came with the job that they got a sandwich paid for every time they picked up a dead body.’
I told her to please stop overthinking and worrying about every minute detail. There was another pause.
‘Who is going to tell his wife?’ Clara had a tear down her cheek, for once she looked kind of pretty. Grief makes women pretty, as much as happiness does. Women’s beauty is exalted when they feel something passionately.
I thought of Hammi’s wife, the wife of the eternal Casanova. Had she been numbed by his constant affairs or descended into madness? I could envisage an icy reaction to the news like, ‘I can be certain where he will be sleeping tonight, with no more feathers on his ass to do the peacock rounds.’ She would have been right.
One thing was clear, that the practicalities of death were horrible and Clara had been scarred for life.
We used to talk about it at Enterprise: ‘Pain giving and receiving was addictive, pain being an aspect to love.’
BOLLOCKS to that!
We also said that time away from home made us better husbands to our wives and fathers to our children, by keeping us working hard to secure a family (one we didn’t have time to relate to). ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder, absence as a virtue.’ But our founder’s son had himself complained that his father was an absent man, and that even when absent he was not easy. Well, bollocks to the virtue of absence too! At times of death, I wanted to feel radical.
‘Discipline, self-restraint, perseverance, after all with superiority comes responsibility,’ we used to say too. Even Hammi had struggled to put his head up and reason against the tide, and now he was dead. It was enough.
CHANGE, CHANGE! We needed change.
I needed to start seizing the day, trusting as little as possible in the next day. Living in the moment where life turns into magic or magic turns into life. Shouldn’t we be as alive as we possibly can until we are dead? There was no need to feel guilty about living. I was furious that Hammi was dead for nothing. Guilt had elevated endurance to virtuosity and made selflessness the ultimate justification, a duty to lead a life that was pleasing, full of rectitude, respectable and worthy. Worthy of whom? Pleasing for whom? Who was being pleased for Hammi now, for that beautiful life of shit that he had led? Was Enterprise going to praise Hammi’s life or would we learn anything from his death? Would death change anything?
I mean, it had to. He was dead. Hammi was dead. GONE. Zilch.
Enterprise put out an official release a few days later.
Hammi was dead. His life and work were praised. His wife and family would be comforted. In Hammi’s memory, Clara would spend the next few months working with someone somewhere like the Huffington Post to put together, with Enterprise’s blessing and financial support, a ‘Redefining Success’ initiative with a third metric (after money and power?) with four pillars, focusing on Well-being, Wisdom, Wonder and goodWill.
I wrote the press release myself, under Bev’s thumb, so that heart attacks out of exhaustion could never happen again. I had made the words as beautiful as possible but the content was pretty much what I have told you. It summed up the worth of Hammi’s life, yet another useless matrix, the 4Ws, soon to be available in all good bookstores. At a price.
It would even make Enterprise some profit. It was too deflating. Hammi was gone and all I had done was write a press release.
I went home that night and dug out one of his favourites we often listened to in his car, on our way to the clients, de Gregori’s ‘I Muscoli del Capitano’, and concluded that in such an electric night, the future felt like a bomb almost arrived.
Then I went to sleep thinking of Hammi's smile at the piano.
Bev is leaving
By April it had been made official. Bev was leaving Enterprise and Peter was taking her role.
No. It was more complicated. Edd was retiring and Bev’s and Edd’s roles were to be merged into a global role run from London, the clout of the New York office rapidly dissipating. ‘A new head of London–New York,’ the press release had promised. I had not heard of anything more stupid in my life. Oh, yes I had: when T&T had been made European co-heads back in 2010.
I went to congratulate Bev because we always congratulated each other on anything that happened. We had even congratulated Hammi’s wife when he died; we congratulated her on his life deeds and legacy, and she had asked if we meant all his bastard children. Oops! I had reassured h
er that he probably hadn’t had time to engender that many, given Enterprise schedules.
Bev was putting on a brave front.
She reminisced about interviewing a young Peter, with his fake Rolex watch which had stopped working mid-meeting, and joked of those Cartier forgeries he used to bring from Cyprus to buy off his conquests. Hammi’s piano concerts! Felicity’s lectures. ‘They have come a long way,’ she said. But I wasn’t sure I understood what she meant. Well, Hammi was dead for starters so what kind of long way was that?
I asked her about herself. There she was, reeking of decay and dashed hopes, although I didn’t put it like that, of course. Enterprise had taken everything out of her. Her best years were gone. She managed a faint smile.
‘After the hip operation I cannot continue flying by Enterprise’s timetables, too many detector beeps,’ she added.
I pointed out a new study, Detection of Total Hip Prostheses at Airport Security Checkpoints. I was just trying to make conversation, ‘It is available in the April 4, 2012 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery,’ I joked. I couldn’t afford going too soppy.
‘I’m not even biodegradable anymore,’ Bev tried to laugh back. ‘Vittal, we are getting old,’ she added.
Those dreaded words, but at least she was finally getting my name right.
‘Oh man! you are barely fifty-five!’ I replied to her, feeling pity softening my limbs.
Bev was going to open a pizza parlour. I said, ‘A pizzeria?’ But she insisted it was a parlour. I could not imagine her doing anything with her hands.
Nal had said that perhaps Bev needed time to re-think, and most women thought better whilst carrying out menial tasks. (He had always been a jerk dressed up in good man’s clothes, mean motherfucker.) He insisted that his wife definitely thought better whilst ironing, but it was a pity that, with so much help, she had not ironed once in all her life. It would have been a waste of those tits, I felt like saying.
I still could not imagine Bev making the sauce for the pizza, choosing the toppings, stretching the dough. I could not even imagine an apron big enough for her. Was this part of the limitless ability fantasy? That chapter where we all reinvented ourselves into actors and chefs, deli entrepreneurs, car dealers, property barons and writers, like the retiring bankers? Because we had made money so easily that we thought we were good at everything?
‘Bev had apparently been a midwife before Enterprise,’ someone had said in her defence, as if that meant she could transform herself again into something else.
‘You are kidding me! It must be a case of omonimia. And in any event, how will that help her to cook pizza?’ How could we be so stupid to think that people like ourselves were actually able to build anything real, with bricks, step by step? Were we going so mad that we wanted to stand and prove our own shit? I knew that we had to pretend to believe in our superhero powers, but there was no need to drag ourselves and demonstrate to the whole world how wrong we were.
I stood in the middle of Bev’s office thinking of all the banker-run new bars, restaurants, toy shops and cashmere pop-ups that had been born and died in Notting Hill in a matter of months. But bankers were elastic. They would try for a while, quickly admit defeat and get away with it. ‘Once a banker always a banker.’ There was forever some old client ready to help them back, as they all conspired to understand that a man needed to drive their kids through private school, and wives through a life of burning cash.
But Bev, I knew she was not coming back.
I contemplated what it meant for me that Bev was leaving.
I was reporting to her so it was not good. Trojan had been reporting to Peter, though not by Peter’s choice, so Peter going up the ladder would be good for him. But Peter hated Trojan. Would he put me back on top now that Bev and Edd were out of the way and he could do what he wanted? Or did Trojan have something up his sleeve?
Nal was doing his own thing in Detroit. I didn’t need to care about Tobias, who we all knew was insane. We were known to praise insane colleagues but we would promote them only to a point. And Alakrita was my dick’s desire so whatever she did would have to be fine. We had never had a woman CEO anyway, not even a woman CEO-in waiting. So it was just me… me and Trojan.
Bev was ushering me out of her office as I schemed in my head.
We stretched hands like old friends, though in reality we knew little about each other after all these years and probably didn’t care much, and she got back to packing. ‘A few books, some cheap bottles from well-wishers…’ she said, ‘and as many expensive ones from people who hate me most.’
I betted.
Thirty years of (non-)life.
Then, as I was about to close her door behind me, she rushed towards me and touched me on the shoulder.
Bev never touched. Most Enterprisers never touched.
‘Vittal, you are not like the rest of us, you are a voyeur here and I know that one day you will make sense of it all for us, so don’t let me down.’
I acted surprised, but she had never been good on people’s stuff and, as soon as I closed her door behind me, I assumed that she had, once again, confused me with someone else.
Peter retreats to the Hamptons
Peter was soon throwing a select summer retreat at his Hamptons pad before his final move to London. He was always one step ahead, and I imagined that he was already collecting loyal supporters to confirm him in his quest for the next step, CEO-ship.
Trojan had cleverly made sure that the event was scheduled for a day when I was supposed to be key faculty at some internal event, the bastard! But as it turned out my engagement got cancelled and Trojan had to attend to his wife in some kind of emergency. And precisely at the time that our workload was slowing, people needed to look their most busy, especially to the ‘next CEO of Enterprise’. So after many polite declines, it was just to be me and Peter at his Hamptons retreat. My opportunity to get back on top?
The Hamptons was gorgeous and I found Peter in great form.
Things were good, looking at the foaming breakers of the ocean from his large terrace.
‘Is this not the life,’ he kept saying to me, ‘is this not the sheer and utter life? And are not those who cannot get it fucking cunts? Useless pillocks?’ Big smile. ‘Vittal, you are now a Truth Leader,’ he said emphatically. ‘Just relax.’
I nodded and smiled back at him.
‘You kinda write the script now.’ He was serving himself yet another drink despite it being early morning. ‘You know the drill, to stumble from one project to another like between warm bodies in an orgy,’ another big smile. ‘Cutting redundancies, sharpening dialogue, killing cliches, smoothing transitions, until the final product is just right.’
Peter made it all sound such a joy.
‘And when you are tired, you strap one of your younger lads on the horse and send them out to ride,’ he added.
I looked at the waves and thought of Lucy.
‘Like Dom Simpson said,’ Peter continued undeterred, ‘we have no obligation to make art, to make history or to make a statement. Our obligation is to make money, bro. And to make money it may be necessary to make art, to make history, to make a statement!’
He clearly believed in his own shit.
I loved how he loved throwing fab quotes from top thinkers, elevating money to its right place. And he was to be the next CEO of Enterprise? Perhaps it was the beginning of the end and we had sold our soul to the devil.
Reader, don’t get me wrong. You know I had kind of liked Peter from day one, other than for getting into Alakrita’s pussy and then Lucy’s heart, both of which I tried hard to but could not ignore. You know that I had felt like him from the start, that Enterprise foundations were bullshit, a badly written con, and I was in awe that someone so aware of it could still pull it off. But even so, the fact that this man could ever represent Enterprise as its CEO was an abomination. Had money and power corrupted him or had he always been this bad?
Peter felt at ease
with just the two of us. ‘There is so much responsibility, so much stress,’ he was saying, holding a chilled martini in his right hand, his latest chunky Rolex hugely visible over his cuff. ‘Pain is so commonplace, so deep and unmerciful, that you need to attempt to have solace through pleasure,’ he added.
It sounded like he was living in fucking Mogadishu or the Gaza strip. Deep and unmerciful pain? Where was he going with this? Was he that drunk already at 11 am?
‘And you know, bro,’ he continued, ‘infidelity is just like a middle-class guilt trip. Fuck someone else, don’t fuck someone else, the planet will still be rotating around the sun and we will all be dead in fifty years.’
It sounded like a neat essay on the self-justifications of a rampant sexual adventurer.
‘The fact is not new,’ he said after another sip of his martini. ‘I like fucking and the wife does not enjoy it quite as much, and a fresh conquest can always bring something new, a change of girl.’
I assured him that I got his philosophy and understood he had been put in a tight spot. Basically, he would fuck mud, and his second wife wasn’t a nymphomaniac, though an improvement on the first, and didn’t feel like a catch anymore, something about Peter having seen her dishevelled and poorly, with a bubble of snot from her nose, vomiting and shitting all over her bathroom floor after a severe bout of food-poisoning from a smoked salmon sandwich at the opera. It had sullied their interactions forever because Peter couldn’t take vulgar physicality in feminine objects of desire. The incident was also apparently the reason why Peter didn’t do opera anymore.
