My Biggest Lie

by Luke Brown

  ‘Remind me what I drink here,’ said Cockburn, squaring up to the bar and startling as the bartender rose from behind it like a lift reaching our floor. He scowled when he saw me.

  ‘Buen dia,’ I smiled. ‘¿Vos ves Alejandro?’

  ‘Lo vi hace dos semanas!’ he accused me. ‘A causa de vos!’

  Cockburn liked this bit of aggression. ‘What’s he saying?’ he said, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘He thinks it’s my fault Alejandro stopped coming here. I think he’s basically right. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alejandro was his best customer.’

  The bartender was still talking.

  ‘Tell him you think you’re going back to England next week,’ Cockburn suggested. ‘Tell him you need to find Alejandro before you return. Tell him you’ll let him know you won’t bother him any more.’

  I tried. The barman spoke fast Spargie in reply. I looked at James and shrugged.

  ‘Tell him if he sees him to call this number,’ said Cockburn, scribbling something down on a napkin before handing it to the bartender with a fifty-peso note.

  Cockburn had never forgotten how to tell me to do things and, haltingly, I asked the bartender to call us if he saw Alejandro. ‘Por favor, dos cervezas,’ added Cockburn to my speech.

  The bartender was more friendly now, though he needed another fifty before he parted with a list of other bars Alejandro was known to frequent. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the name of the company where Alejandro worked so we were limited to this list. Cockburn wanted to try it straight away but I explained that Alejandro would still be at work.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he asked me as we took our beers outside to have them with a cigarette. ‘That was like Philip Marlowe.’

  ‘Felipe Marlowe. You know that’s actual money you’ve just given him.’

  He pulled out a note from his wallet and looked at it curiously. ‘Doesn’t look like actual money to me.’

  It was now past midday and Cockburn had several hours until his dinner with the new Bolaño. I’d presumed we’d meet, have a quick catch-up over lunch and then he’d go to bed for the afternoon – but he didn’t seem at all jetlagged. His energy was frightening. You looked at him and could almost see someone else beneath his skin, trying to get out.

  After I told James about Aleman and his bar, he wanted to go there immediately and score – it was essential for his ‘body-rhythms’ that he did not sleep until late in the night. I flat-out refused to go so early. After coke there would be no real talk; just speechifying and mutual incomprehension. It would be easier to raise the harder topics and more futile when we did. Anything could go; anything would; and all would be forgotten, excused, as long as it wasn’t permanent. I knew now that sometimes it was.

  Even so, cocaine might have been useful for bringing the conversation back round to Craig. He deflected all my attempts to bring Craig up: Cockburn was the editor of this trip, this chapter-in-progress, keen to begin with a bang, in media res, straight to adventure before the boring bits, the backstory, my downfall. It was how he had encouraged me to approach my life, the old adage, ‘show don’t tell’. I understood it instinctively. It was easy, too easy. Action over reflection and the reflection takes care of itself. Not in my experience it didn’t, not in time. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t Hemingway but that now I knew I wasn’t. The innocent days were finished. Craig died.

  James continued to dominate the conversation, telling me plot after plot of the novels he’d recently acquired, laying down adjective after interchangeable adjective to describe their unique prose and saleability. I lost my cool and begged him to slow down, to tell me about the last three months, what he knew of the funeral, what people had said, what people were saying, about me, me, me, what had become of me.

  James was embarrassed at my outburst. We were still sitting outside and he looked away from me to an office block as he lit another cigarette, a man and a woman in suits emerging for lunch, the moped courier who’d just parked dashing in through the open door. I had broken the rules. He had not wanted to think about my unhappiness.

  ‘The funeral, well, I couldn’t make it, I was still lying up in hospital,’ he said formally. ‘I was surprised to hear you weren’t there.’

  ‘Really? But I wasn’t allowed to be. No one would tell me where it was!’

  He looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Don’t be like that, Liam.’

  ‘I don’t want to be protected from what people think about me. Belinda told me not to go. I know what she thinks about me. What about everyone else?’

  ‘Who is everyone else? The people who like you, like me, they still like you. The people who don’t know you, they still don’t know you.’

  ‘I just want to know what I have to do to be forgiven.’

  James pursed his lips like he was disappointed with me. ‘You want acquittal, not forgiveness. You want your job back, you want your girlfriend back. Of course you do. You won’t feel forgiven till you get a new job, a new girlfriend.’

  ‘I want the old ones, not new ones.’

  ‘Well, I certainly can’t help you with Sarah.’

  ‘What about with … ?’

  He turned his profile to me and gazed into the distance. When he turned back to look at me I noticed new lines in his face. ‘Liam, you resigned. If I could help, you know I would. My stock is not at its highest this year. A couple of big bets didn’t pay off. My biggest-selling author is now dead and you are perceived as having had the power to prevent this. I am also perceived as responsible for this, as though you were my ambassador, my embodied bad practice. Well, yes. Nothing unusual, it all evens out. We’ll have another Booker winner next year. But there was the thing about my office too, which pushed things with Belinda a bit too far.’

  James had reacted badly when we had moved into the new open-plan office system that had been finished a month after I had started. I had been to his office to see him before I was his colleague, in the days when I was ‘punching above my weight’ as an editor at a small press. We’d met at a prize ceremony and he’d invited me for breakfast the next day. His office was like a spoiled teenager’s bedroom: a battered leather sofa, ripped music posters, an expensive stereo, a small fridge for beers and champagne and a locked desk-drawer containing two wraps of cocaine and some excellent ecstasy tablets. It was Friday. At 10 a.m. we had had a beer and a line each while the industrious women outside (one of whom I would become) began their working day. Then we had headed out for a fried breakfast that lasted twenty-four hours.

  When Belinda decreed James was to lose his office, he had passionately argued that the authors he brought to the firm needed his space to hang out in. ‘Bring a different type of author to the firm, then,’ she had finally warned him, ‘or find a different type of firm. It’s like this now.’

  He had made a go of it. It was weird to see him sitting at a desk in the corner of a long room, sending emails, and then it was less weird because he was rarely there. He began to take all his author meetings in the pub round the corner, rather than just half of them.

  It was in one of these meetings that he joked about sneaking in one weekend to rebuild his office. Jeremy Deller loved the idea and offered do it with a team of technicians, provided he could film it. That night, they waited till ten and went back to the office with a tape-measure. Two weeks later the logistics were entirely plausible, and all that was needed then was for James, in a fit of hysterical realism, to give in and see what the consequences were.

  I had only been at work there for a couple of months when I arrived that Monday to find a gang of around thirty people staring at a perfect white hut enclosing the space where James’ desk used to be. One of the walls was flush with the side of his nearest colleague’s desk. People had been trying the lock but it wouldn’t open and there was no sign of a key. The walls were smoothed off and painted the same white colour as the walls of the office. There was no sign of Cockburn. Belinda angrily sent everyone away but stayed herself, running her ha
nds over the walls of the new structure and looking nonplussed. At eleven o’clock James walked briskly into work, turned a key in the lock of his office and shut the door behind him. When Belinda made him leave and accompany her to a meeting room, he left the door open. Inside was a meticulous reconstruction of his old office, the sofa, the posters, the old bookcases.

  The story reached the trade press and then the nationals. James’ aura increased and, as much as Belinda wanted to sack him, he was such a popular figure, such an extravagant self-publicist, it was easier just to discipline him. The marooned office remained for the rest of the week. James was not allowed to use it, but he had left the door unlocked, and for the rest of the week we took turns sneaking into it, lying on the sofa, reading manuscripts after-hours and taking beers out of the mini-fridge. The following Monday, it had disappeared again, and we didn’t see Cockburn for the rest of that week either. Later, a film of the office being reconstructed appeared in a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery.

  ‘It was probably the right thing for you to stay away from the funeral,’ Cockburn concluded. ‘There are some people, a publicist, a CEO, maybe one or two others, who think you really fucked up with Bennett. Well, you did, he’s dead. You and I admit that. We know there was little you could do to stop Craig doing whatever he wanted, but you drew the short straw when he did his stupidest thing yet.’

  I didn’t believe it. ‘I could have stopped him. We chose to believe he was as incorrigible as he pretended he was. Someone should have broken the chain. I was the one there, I should have.’

  ‘You’re too hard on yourself. People will respect your courage in admitting you had a part – if you have to admit it. There’ll be other jobs. Everyone loves a resurrection story. You know what I think? You want your crime to be greater than it is so you can excuse yourself from redeeming yourself. Excuse yourself from the hard work of getting on with your life.’

  I kept quiet. It was possible he was right about Bennett. And my mind leapt with delight to the possibility that perhaps I was being too hard on myself about Sarah too. That I deserved her back. How easy it would be to succumb to my old good opinion of myself. Why was I resisting?

  With Cockburn sat beside me I had begun to feel the thrill and satisfaction of what I had used to do, what I had really done in the office from half-nine to eight o’clock every day, the hard work and not the cartoon hedonism. I knew Cockburn, if he took Fridays off, was putting in at least four long days Monday to Thursday, working through the weekend and reading every hour he wasn’t drinking. The drinking was the work too, it was with the agents and celebrities who gave him access to the books we maintained that only he could make happen. I remembered the less dramatic way I had worked, the buzz of reading a manuscript late at night that was worth telling people about. It didn’t happen all the time but it still happened. There are writers left who understand Bolaño’s words, that literature is a dangerous calling, and Cockburn was here with me hoping to find one of them. It was time to find out more about that.

  Cockburn smiled when I asked him to tell me more, relieved to be back on safe ground. ‘Liam, this is fascinating. Javi hasn’t even spoken to him yet. Only his Argentine agent has met him, and I haven’t even had direct contact with her. All I’ve got is a forwarded email from the sub-agent suggesting a restaurant to meet at this evening. And the manuscript. Javi says it’s the best thing he’s read for years. I haven’t heard him this excited. The work-experience girl’s done a rough translation of the first five pages for me … It’s a bloody shame Craig’s not around – he’d have read it for me. I’ve got the same feeling about it I had about Talking to Pedro before it won the Booker.’

  ‘Does Belinda know you’re out here on the strength of this feeling?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Translated Argentine fiction doesn’t sound very commercial.’

  ‘There are more important things in life than that.’

  ‘I hope Belinda hasn’t heard you talking this way.’

  I looked at James and tried not to interpret his idealism as crisis. Belinda wouldn’t tolerate another outright rebellion. Why was he really here? What had driven him onto that plane? If this was another breaking point, I hoped his survivor’s instinct would see him through it – he’d go home to his wife and baby and might last a year or two before he felt compelled to do something stupid. He might be lucky all his life. Someone had to be.

  ‘And Ella, how is she really? How’s the baby?’

  He breathed out a sigh. ‘Ella’s great. Mandy’s great. I nearly made such a mistake there.’

  ‘Craig told me before he died.’

  ‘God, I miss Craig. He talked me out of it, you know. I didn’t want to listen at the time so I made that stupid climb round the wall. “He who makes a beast …” It makes me feel so guilty sometimes. If I hadn’t been such a prick, if I hadn’t fallen … Ella’s perfect, you know. She lets me stay out late in the week when I have to, knows it’s part of the job. That’s the problem, I get in the mood when I think I don’t want perfection. She lets me fly off to Argentina on a whim. You know this is a whim, don’t you? Of course you do. Sometimes I get this feeling in me, like I’m going to do something awful just so I can observe myself doing it. Do you know?’

  I did.

  ‘So this came up and I knew you were here, and I thought this might be the lesser of two evils.’

  ‘Is the other woman Craig mentioned the greater of the two?’

  ‘No. That’s over.’

  ‘Good. Look at me. This is how you’ll end up.’

  ‘You don’t look so bad.’

  ‘I’m thirteen years younger than you. But I’m unemployed, perhaps unemployable. I’ve lost the woman whom I loved unrequitedly for five years before somehow, incredibly, I managed to make her love me. Now I’m terrified to leave this country that I hate living in because of how little is waiting for me at home.’

  James fidgeted impatiently. He sighed. ‘That sounds quite bad,’ he admitted.

  ‘Exactly. So control yourself. We’re not invincible. We’re just untested.’

  It was approaching one o’clock now. The beers we’d drunk made the sun hazy and rhythmic, a psychedelic pulse in a Seventies film. James’ idea of scoring cocaine was more and more tempting. It is always tempting to feel invincible.

  ‘Let’s go and try these places for Alejandro,’ I suggested, to take my mind off the hunger. ‘He’s probably having lunch somewhere.’

  We drained our beers and set off. James leaned over and put an arm round me briefly.

  Chapter 17

  We walked along the waterfront in Puerto Madero, searching for Alejandro. The waiters knew who he was in two of the restaurants we tried. We left our phone numbers with messages to say that we wanted him to have dinner with us and translate the conversation of a ‘talented young author’. Cockburn tipped the waiters. (I had seen Cockburn tip a bus driver in the past.) All of this killed an hour, but soon we were having another drink. Cockburn was beginning to worry. If Alejandro didn’t come through, the conversation with the new Bolaño might never take place. If Cockburn came back to the office without a book, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do. I had been thinking of Lizzie as we made the trawl round the cafés and bars, of how flawlessly she would have performed the role of vivacious translator. I knew Cockburn would adore her. This is my great friend Lizzie; I’ve asked her to interpret tonight. Afterwards, perhaps we can go out dancing. She would fit perfectly into the club of excellent people he used to sell membership to his own excellent club. And the more I thought of her the more I was not prepared to have her dislike me, not without doing all I could to make her my friend again.

  I described Lizzie to Cockburn as we made our way to the language school, how funny and intelligent she was and how – well, she was – beautiful.

  ‘Liam?’ he asked, after a while. ‘Despite what you said earlier, are you sure you’re not beginning to get over Sarah?’

  Of cour
se I was in love with Lizzie – but it didn’t help.

  ‘I think I’m getting over Sarah every time a woman smiles at me,’ I explained to him. ‘And it lasts for perhaps thirty seconds before I shut my eyes and see Sarah looking at me, the way she used to look at me.’

  ‘You fucking romantic.’

  ‘Well, don’t you fall in love with Lizzie too,’ I warned him as we walked up the steps to the school.

  We strode purposefully down the corridor to the classroom I’d seen Lizzie coming out of most frequently. She was there, behind the closed door. I could hear her slowly conjugating English verbs before they echoed in Latin accents. James and I sat down on the floor against the corridor walls. It made me think of waiting for Sarah to come out of her lecture, of her new lover and what they would be doing if they were together now …

  ‘You know,’ said Cockburn, ‘there’s nothing like a quest.’

  I gave him a weary headshake, but I had been enjoying myself before too, so much it had left me uneasy. I couldn’t carry on as I had been doing, pretending that writing an unreadable love letter and a penitential novel was a purpose in life. Something had to change.

  We sat there waiting for fifteen minutes. Cockburn filled me in on the activities of my old colleagues and the new boyfriends and girlfriends they had commissioned. Six months ago I would have been very interested, but now … well, I wasn’t naive enough to think it made me a deeper person that I’d lost interest in my fellow human beings. I should try harder. ‘So, you didn’t really answer me before,’ I said. ‘What’s it like being a dad?’

  He opened his mouth as if he was about to pitch, and I waited for a torrent of delightfuls and wonderfuls, but he shut it again and looked sad. ‘I’d be able to give you a much better idea if I wasn’t here in Argentina, wouldn’t I?’

  At that moment, the door opened and a series of office-smart young men and women began to file out. My stomach lurched. I stood up and almost collided with Lizzie in the doorway.