Gimme More

by Liza Cody

  A month into his internship, after he’d found out how jealous and close-mouthed all the people on the production side were, he discovered that Memo Movies’ current project was Jack. So Jack became Alec’s project too. He bought the CDs, he read the books, he watched all the film and video he could lay his hands on, and he trawled the Internet for references which the dinosaurs in Production mightn’t have come across.

  Then he had a stroke of luck: in a Jack chat-room he met g.ace. To begin with, he only monitored conversations, not wishing to join in. Then one day he came in on an exchange which ended:

  metalman: to say hardcandy is not nosecandy, naïve.

  g.ace: to say what u say, banal.

  metalman: what, then?

  g.ace: sex with minors – h-c ref to taking candy from babies. metalman: b***ox.

  At this point Alec, who had himself been struck by the intimations of dirty sex in ‘Hard Candy’ which, as Metalman clearly thought, ought to have been a song about drugs, interjected.

  cela5 to g.ace: yes. thought so too – but ambiguous.

  g.ace to cela5: all jax birdie songs ambiguous.

  After a while Alec concluded that g.ace was something of an expert and gave out his e-mail number. The conversation continued in private over the next week. He liked g.ace’s style. There was wit and intelligence, and what looked to Alec like an inside track.

  One day he delivered a folder of video cover designs to the Managing Director’s secretary and found the great man himself leaning over her desk. He’d never met the MD before and he couldn’t let the opportunity go by.

  He took a deep breath and said, ‘Good morning, Mr Stears. I’m Alec Parry, an intern here. Sir, as I’ll probably never get to meet you again, please may I ask you one question?’

  Mr Stears straightened, looking at first irritated and then indulgent.

  Alec said, ‘Sir, they say downstairs that you and Jack were actually friends, so I wondered if you knew: is it true that Jack was a football fan, that he followed Tottenham Hotspur and he had a cockerel tat on the inside of his left knee?’

  Mr Stears’s indulgent smile left his face. He said, quite sharply, ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘Well, sir, I’ve been looking on the Internet for stuff about Jack which might enrich the current project.’

  ‘Who told you to do that?’

  ‘No one, sir. I’ve been doing it for my own interest, in my own time.’

  ‘Then I must ask you to stop,’ Mr Stears said. ‘Everything we do here is confidential. You must not discuss ongoing projects outside this building. Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘I’d never discuss a project,’ Alec said indignantly. ‘I was getting information, not giving it.’

  ‘Idle gossip could give rival documentary makers a head start.’

  ‘I don’t gossip,’ Alec said. ‘I was simply encouraging someone else to. And I thought you might be the only one around I could check a recherché fact with.’

  Mr Stears pushed his spectacles up his nose and gave Alec a hard stare. ‘Recherché, huh?’ he said, ‘I think you’d better come through to my office and tell me what you’ve been up to.’

  Alec admired Mr Stears’s office. He admired the stripped maple floor, the Sheraton desk, the gothic windows and the river view. But he promised himself that if – no, when – he ever made an office like this his own, he wouldn’t spoil the effect by letting himself go to seed and getting overweight like Mr Stears. He’d keep the Wurlitzer jukebox though. That looked like a fun toy.

  ‘OK,’ said Mr Stears from behind the Sheraton desk. ‘Who gave you your recherché fact?’

  Alec explained why he didn’t know who his informant was, and he went on briefly to recount the conversation. He was encouraged by Mr Stears’s interest. If he wanted to be noticed, he thought, he’d lucked into exactly the way to do it.

  ‘Let me tell you something,’ Mr Stears said, after listening attentively for several minutes. ‘This correspondence could be dangerous. Do you want to know why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the recherché fact in question is probably known only to a very few people. Intimates. Family.’

  ‘I didn’t think Jack had a family.’

  ‘He didn’t. I’m talking about Birdie Walker and her family. You must have formed an opinion about Birdie if you’ve been doing your research properly.’

  In truth, Alec had been keeping his eyes so firmly on Jack that, so far, Birdie was only the glorious appendage anyone would expect to see in the company of a rock god.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, in what he hoped was a judicious tone of voice, ‘tricky one, that.’

  ‘Tricky isn’t the half of it,’ Mr Stears said. ‘My concern is that if she gains even an inkling of what we’re up to here, she’ll block it any way she can.’

  ‘Why would she do that, sir?’

  ‘Jealousy,’ Mr Stears said. ‘Jealousy was always her problem. Jealous about Jack, jealous of Jack. Do you know, she even claims to have collaborated on some of the classic songs?’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, I suggest you find out about her before you resume your cosy little correspondence. You might be writing to a snake in the grass.’

  ‘I’ll terminate the connection,’ Alec said. ‘I wouldn’t want to compromise your production – that was the last thing on my mind. I had no idea it was so sensitive.’

  ‘Now you know,’ Mr Stears said dismissively. ‘If you want to get on in this business you have to learn that although networking is a tool of our trade, blabbing foolishly to anyone who seems to share your interest is one of the easiest methods of having your ideas stolen or blocked.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, sir,’ Alec said, thinking, maybe coming to the attention of the MD wasn’t such a great idea after all. ‘But I promise you, I never said who I was or who I worked for or why I was interested. I was only coming off as a fan.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Mr Stears said and turned away towards the river view.

  Pudgy creepo, Alec thought as he left the room, four-eyed twat. Why did the wrinkly fat twats get the good jobs? Why did being a pompous prat get you the sharpest office? Everyone says, show them how keen you are. That’s supposed to win you points, not lose them. I’ll be fired before the day’s over, and all because I used a bit of initiative. I’ll have to dust off the fucking CV. Again.

  But later, after lunch, he was summoned back to the river-view office.

  ‘Sit down, my boy,’ Mr Stears said. ‘Alec?’

  ‘Alec Parry, sir.’

  ‘Well, Alec, I’ve been thinking – maybe you shouldn’t terminate your connection. Maybe you’re overlooking an obvious strategy.’

  ‘I am, sir?’

  Mr Stears took a couple of seconds to straighten his silk tie. He said, ‘Do you like working here?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ Alec said cautiously. He was no longer certain how clever it was to show keenness.

  ‘Would you like to work on a special project?’

  ‘I really would,’ Alec said. This was more like it. This was way more cool.

  ‘Then, perhaps you’d like to reconsider. If you were to continue this correspondence, in your own time of course, until you find out who you’re writing to, you might have something to contribute.’

  ‘I’d like that, sir.’

  ‘But I can’t stress strongly enough how cautious you must be. You must remember that you may be in touch with a member of Birdie Walker’s family and it’s impossible to overestimate how paranoid she is about media attention, how jealously she guards even those things of Jack’s which should be in the public domain. Really, Alec, she’s like the cobra coiled round the treasure chest.’

  ‘I’ll be super-careful.’

  ‘And report back to me at every stage.’

  ‘To you?’ Alec said, gleefully. ‘Personally?’

  ‘I’ll give you the number of my private line. And I’d like copies of the correspondence.’ />
  ‘That may be a bit inhibiting, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to tell my informant a bit about myself if I’m going to personalise things. Sometimes you have to come on a bit strong if you want to intrigue people. I don’t even know if I’m talking to a man or a woman.’

  ‘All right then, a précis will do. But be careful. Expose yourself, Alec, and we could all be shot.’

  War games, Alec thought, infiltrators. Spies on Level Four. And a foot in the door of the river-view office. When he left this time he thought maybe Mr Stears wasn’t such a bad old fart after all – a bit slow, but he got there in the end.

  A few days later he found out who g.ace was. He called Mr Stears immediately. ‘Grace Emerson,’ he said.

  ‘Good God,’ said Mr Stears. ‘The niece.’

  ‘Should I have recognised the name?’

  ‘No. Better that you don’t. At least … no, let me think about it. I’ll talk to you later.’ He hung up.

  Alec was elated. He was really making an impression now, on all fronts. He was Mr Stears’s blue-eyed boy, and Grace thought he was perceptive and sensitive. The dialogue with her quickly opened up to include books, movies and politics. But not sport. Sport, he’d learned the hard way, could be a chick repellent. On the other hand he confessed to a liking for sci-fi, because she would’ve expected something of the sort.

  ‘dont give me a hard time on that,’ he wrote.

  ‘nobody perfect,’ she replied. ‘ursulaleguin ok.’

  He liked her for knowing Ursula Le Guin.

  ‘perfectwoman,’ he wrote, ‘dont tell me u married, 68, need walking frame.’

  ‘how did u guess?’ she wrote back.

  ‘u breakin my heart.’

  ‘got one? wow.’

  Sassy, good fun, he decided. She didn’t immediately ask for his phone number when he flirted. He awarded her points for that. It kept the game alive.

  The game picked up speed. Mr Stears took him, in his chauffeur-driven car, to a Vietnamese restaurant in Soho to meet a man who was introduced as Mr Freel.

  ‘This is Alec,’ Mr Stears said, ‘the bright young man I’ve been telling you about.’

  Mr Freel looked the part: tall, weighty without flab, intent, grave. Impressive. Alec tried to sit straighter. He found himself playing to Mr Freel. Mr Stears seemed to recede into the shadows.

  Yes, Alec thought, the secret to being in charge was to look as if you’re in charge.

  Mr Freel said, ‘It seems to me that you’ve used your imagination. You saw the potential and acted on it. I congratulate you. How happy would you be to continue?’

  Alec gave himself a moment to look as if he was weighing up his answer. ‘To tell you the truth, Mr Freel,’ he said with what he hoped was a thoughtful smile, ‘I’m enjoying myself. The Jack production is great and I’m glad to be involved. My own part in it is tangential, I know. But it makes me feel involved.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if this young man’s a natural, Barry.’

  ‘Well, he’s with us on an internship,’ Mr Stears said, ‘so he’s learning all aspects of the business. But he lacks experience.’

  ‘I should think, by the time this project’s in the can, he’ll have gained plenty of experience. You ought to take him under your wing, Barry. Or maybe someone else will snap him up.’

  ‘This is a slightly unusual situation, though,’ Mr Stears said. ‘Most projects don’t require this degree of subterfuge.’

  ‘Most projects, thank the Lord, don’t require the co-operation of Birdie Walker. I expect you’ve included her in your research, Alec?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Alec raised his brows and flicked his eyes to the ceiling. Both older men smiled.

  ‘So are you willing to beard the she-wolf in her lair?’ Mr Freel asked, still smiling. ‘Because it might come to that. Somehow we have to find out, first, does the Antigua Movie really exist? Then, if it does, and we’re pretty sure it does, it becomes a matter of persuading Birdie to let us have it. No small problem, I might add. I don’t know how far you’re able to go with the niece, but it could be very useful to have a line on a member of that family.’

  Alec waited, almost holding his breath. In fact, he’d already begun an absorbing fantasy starring himself as the subduer of the famous bitch-goddess. He was waiting for Mr Freel to order him into the front line. But apparently that wasn’t his style. So eventually Alec asked, ‘Is Grace anything like Birdie, do you think?’

  ‘I only met her when she was a little girl,’ said Mr Freel. ‘What do you make of her?’

  ‘I like her so far,’ Alec said. ‘Which is to say, I like the persona she’s sending.’

  ‘And does she like the persona you’re sending?’

  ‘We’re still talking. If you don’t like someone it’s easy to sign off.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘Well, I think she’s bright, funny and sort of her own woman. It’s hard to say. We talk about a lot of things. I didn’t want her to think that Jack was the only reason I was interested.’

  ‘Very wise,’ Mr Freel said. ‘Barry, it looks like you picked a winner here.’

  Being called a winner by someone like Mr Freel gave Alec the sort of confidence he hadn’t tasted since he left college. The real world, for him, had been a series of rejections. It was a place where nobody recognised him and nobody took the time to get to know him. Ultimately nobody would remember his name because nobody gave him the chance to be memorable. Now he was turning it around.

  He gave Grace his phone number that night. She rang and they talked for two hours. He wasn’t nervous about talking to her; encouragingly, she seemed much more nervous than he was.

  ‘Well,’ she explained, ‘you meet a lot of weirdos on Jack’s sites. Not you of course.’

  She really wants to make a good impression on me, he thought, surprised and pleased. It’s supposed to be the other way round, but she doesn’t know that. It’s me who’s taking the risk, not her.

  So he relaxed, and let her do the work. It’s almost like a real relationship, he thought. Once started, the women take over and make all the moves.

  Meeting was her idea. Going to her mother’s house was her suggestion. Absolved of responsibility, Alec went along for the ride. It was during that period – of suggestions and possible arrangements – that she told him about her connection with Jack and Birdie.

  ‘It’s just a family thing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want you to think I was showing off.’

  ‘Why would I think that?’ he asked, tense with excitement, staring down at the telephone as if it might be possible to see her at the other end of the line.

  ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘Some people get funny when they know you’ve got famous relations.’

  ‘Got me,’ he said. ‘I’m turning into a monster. You’d better call off our date – oh-oh – I’m turning green – oh, my fangs and claws …’

  ‘Shut up,’ she said, laughing. ‘I didn’t mean you. You’re different.’

  Weird, he thought, how much more interesting listening to a woman was when you were waiting for her to say something important. He’d always found listening difficult, but learned how to fake it. With Grace he was forced to listen properly. And the more he listened, the more details she gave him. It was quite a discovery.

  She told him for instance that Jack was a major influence on her life. Not because of the music, but because of the damage drugs had done to him. ‘Everyone indulged him,’ she said, ‘but no one helped him. Birdie was the only one who tried, but she was too close to the problem. She just wasn’t qualified. It damaged her almost as much as it did him.’

  ‘Grace is biased, of course,’ Mr Stears said when Alec reported the conversation. ‘If you ask me it was Birdie’s extravagance and infidelity that tipped Jack over the edge. She led him a terrible dance.’

  Nevertheless it was the story of Jack’s fatal instability that led Grace to study psychology at university. Now she was
working for a rehab unit in Bristol. She wanted eventually to become a therapist, but that would be a long way in the future.

  ‘I don’t even understand my own past,’ she said. ‘The family dynamic is dominated by a tragedy Birdie won’t talk about.’

  ‘Why won’t she talk about it?’

  ‘At first it was all too painful. Then she internalised, and now the wound has been left to fester for so long it would take a really skilled therapist to help her.’

  ‘Psychobabble,’ commented Mr Stears. ‘If you want my opinion the poor girl’s had the wool well and truly pulled over her eyes. But that’s Birdie – wool-puller extraordinaire. She doesn’t want to talk about it because she won’t admit to her part in the tragedy.’

  Mr Freel, as Alec might have expected, took a more practical view. ‘Grace is confiding in you,’ he said. ‘Good work. Keep her talking.’

  By the time he met her, he felt he had the situation completely under his thumb. By that time too, he knew what his assignment was.

  He cleared the decks. He told his mother and his girlfriend that he was being sent away on a junior management course and he wouldn’t be in touch for a couple of weeks. He suffered an instruction session with Mr Stears, and two much more enjoyable afternoons, organised by Mr Freel, when he learned to operate the miniature equipment and tools he might need. Mr Freel, he reckoned, was The Guy.

  Yes! he thought, as he watched Grace walk through the barrier at Paddington Station, game on!

  He stepped forward, smiling easily. She was kind of cute – he wouldn’t even have to pretend.

  ‘Hi, Grace,’ he said quietly, and watched her face relax and her lips part. She likes me, he thought, instantly. Oh you little angel, you like me. And she did.

  If the watchful expression on her face had changed to disappointment or hostility he would’ve been, in the first nanosecond, blasted to stardust. He would have had to say – to Mr Freel of all people – ‘She didn’t like me. I don’t know why. She just never gave me a chance.’