Striking a Balance

by Curtis, Norma

  The phone began to ring. Megan picked it up. ‘Hello? Yes, it’s Megan speaking. Hello, Don. John Parrish, yes, he was our front-runner. Yes, I’ll let him know.’ She put the phone down and swivelled round to look at Zelda with a grin. ‘ANI are taking on John Parrish.’

  ‘The drinks are on you with your nice fat fee,’ Zelda said.

  Megan gave a satisfied smile of agreement. ‘The drinks are on me.’

  She could feel the excitement of the job bubbling up inside her. It was going to be a good day.

  5

  Convertibles, Larry thought as he drove to Burgess McLane, were at their best in heavy traffic where there were people to see them.

  More importantly, in heavy traffic he got the chance to see himself.

  The warm wind skimmed his gelled hair as he saw the lights ahead of him turn from amber to red and he pressed his foot on the brake and came to a standstill. It was perfect timing. He was alongside the French Connection windows. In them he could see his reflection; he could see a cool man, a sexy car. He watched himself for a moment, then looked around. Sadly there were few pedestrians to see him but he checked the rear-view mirror and gave himself a grim, square-jawed, glance of approval. Yes, he was looking good.

  The lights changed to green and the traffic began to move and he eased his foot smoothly off the brake and let his car begin the slow crawl towards the next set of lights. He watched them change to red and he eased on the brake.

  Great Portland Street really was a great street, he thought. He could see himself so clearly it was like watching a film: David ‘Larry’ Lawrence, star of his own show.

  He stared at his dark eyes in the mirror and rubbed his jaw. He adjusted the mirror again, checked the traffic behind him and returned his attention to the store window, but only briefly, as the lights had changed.

  And he carried on along Great Portland Street to the offices of Burgess McLane, where he worked.

  *

  Larry approached the main door of Burgess McLane without having to buzz — another thing he approved of in his new job. It was opened for him by Peter, the security guard.

  He strode into the pale grey lobby, all glass and marble, and felt he was where he belonged.

  ‘Morning, Larry,’ the security guard said.

  ‘Morning, Peter,’ he replied. After only two months at Burgess McLane he knew the names of everyone, not deliberately but instinctively; he had a head for names. His mind, though, wasn’t on the security man — it was on his job. He loved it. He loved the smell of Burgess McLane; he loved the name and he loved the car they’d given him. He even loved the sound of the air conditioning; he liked to imagine it was the building breathing, calmly, mesmerically, like a god.

  *

  Larry was on the phone to a client that afternoon when the message came through from Deborah his secretary that his boss wanted to see him. Larry raised his eyebrows. Burgess only ever saw people over breakfast or lunch, on principle. He said eating made them better natured.

  ‘Did he say what it was about?’ Larry asked Deborah when he had finished his call.

  ‘No. Just asked to have you sent in.’

  Larry dampened a flare of excitement.

  ‘Thanks, Deborah,’ Larry said, looking at the receiver before putting it down. He smiled to himself. He’d already made an impression at Burgess McLane. As he leaned back in his chair, stretching easily, something touched the back of his neck and startled him, but it was only the billowing of the off-white bomb curtains that his predecessor had put up.

  He’d heard the rumours but Deborah, his secretary, told him the whole story, which was that this chap Mark Fletcher had had a bad feeling; he’d thought the IRA had him marked out. One by one all his favourite haunts, Regent’s Park, Camden High Street, Harrods, Cavendish Square, had been hit in turn, which he took to be a pretty heavy hint, so he’d had the curtains put up and paid for them himself, although he’d probably got the money back by fiddling his expenses.

  But the curtains didn’t help. Even the ceasefire hadn’t consoled him; he’d thought it was a trick and he’d spent months waiting for it all to go horribly wrong. It wasn’t the kind of thing a man could keep to himself. It became a joke. One of his clients had taped cans of baked beans together to make a mortar, inserted a tennis ball into the tube and launched it before a presentation, using lighter fluid as fuel. The bang had nearly killed Fletcher. Eventually, tired of waiting for the worst, and tired of the dry-cleaning bills caused by having crisp packets burst behind his back, he’d left. Which had been lucky for Larry, who’d got his job.

  Larry was afraid of nothing. ‘I’m going to get rid of these things,’ he said, giving the billowing net a punch.

  Deborah nodded.

  ‘I’ll do it when I get back. Better find out what’s worrying Burgess.’ He stood up and took a gulp of coffee. He didn’t want to appear too eager but he didn’t want to keep him waiting, either. He put the cup on his desk and made for his boss’s office, enjoying the bounce of the thick red and grey carpet under his feet.

  He was greeted by Marcia, Burgess’s secretary, who smiled at him tightly from the doorway where she stood hunched like a gargoyle.

  ‘Looking good, Marcia,’ he said, and tried his winning smile on her. The tight smile snapped off her face like released elastic. Two months, and she was still impervious to him.

  ‘Go right in,’ she said coldly, ‘they’re expecting you.’

  They? Larry raised his eyebrows and wondered who ‘they’ were. He pushed open the door to Burgess’s office. He was surprised to see John King in there too, sitting next to Burgess, facing him from the safety of the checkpoint barrier of Burgess’s desk.

  Larry paused, puzzled. He took a deep breath and found his nasal cavity filled with the smell of sweat and Paco Rabanne. It was a man’s smell. One day he would be there in that line-up: Burgess, King and Lawrence. It was just a matter of time.

  He looked placidly at Burgess, aiming to look him in the eye. It was like trying to catch a fish with his hands. He glanced at John King. John grinned back. It was about time he got his teeth fixed, Larry thought, repulsed. It was the ugliest smile he’d ever seen. He felt worried, as though he’d killed King’s mother. He looked away uneasily, wondering what all this was about. He’d had a drink with King the previous week. Impressed him, he’d thought.

  But Burgess was looking at him now. The Fat Boy’s requisite healthy tan had gone from Burgess’s face as if it had been bleached. His face was grey and tight and strained as though he’d been ill for some time.

  ‘Sit down,’ Burgess said.

  Larry walked over to the empty chair meant for him and sat down, raising his eyebrows in a query.

  ‘Look, Larry,’ Burgess began, frowning at the desk as though Larry was in it, ‘any time is a good time to give good news but there’s no such thing as a good time to give bad news.’

  The statement baffled Larry. He went over it in his head.

  Burgess was still frowning at the desk. ‘We’re being bought out by Xylus Enterprises. I expect you’ve heard rumours.’

  No, he hadn’t. No rumours. The Power People had not checked the pulse on this one. He latched onto the words bad news and he was suddenly aware of his skin creeping, as though it was trying to sneak away without him. He suddenly felt he should say something. He had the idea that if he said something he could deflect the terrible thing that Burgess seemed to be able to see on the surface of his desk. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. I knew that there was some interest,’ he lied.

  Burgess looked momentarily nonplussed. ‘You did?’

  John King glanced at Burgess and leaned forward. It seemed that it was only the desk that was holding him back from Larry. ‘We’ve got to let you go,’ he said, enunciating it slowly so that there could be no mistake. ‘By the end of the week. Nothing personal.’

  Larry felt his body alert itself into a state of panic. Not me, he told himself, despite what John had said. He looked at his
boss for verification. He could see the grey skin tighten on Burgess’s head...he could see the shape of his skull shining through his thinning hair, catching the light.

  He stared at him until Burgess was forced to respond, and when Burgess’s eyes finally met his, all Larry could see were two dull glints flickering from the weathered skin of his face like dimming bulbs.

  ‘I’m sorry, Larry,’ Burgess said. ‘You’re surplus to requirements.’

  Larry’s head felt strange. He could hear white noise. He felt panic frothing up inside him in a physical surge which made him momentarily wonder if he was going to vomit on Burgess’s red and grey carpet.

  He stared at them, the demolition men, and wondered what he ought to do. Wondered in fact what was the done thing in this sort of situation. He’d been given the boot. He tried to muster up some credibility as though he could use it to fill in the cracks. ‘Burgess McLane and Xylus will be an unbeatable combination,’ he said and rubbed his jaw.

  Burgess looked up. He took strength from these words. ‘Yes,’ he said, as though it was something he’d forgotten.

  It seemed to bring him back into business mode.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Burgess said, ‘as you have only been with us for — what is it now —’he was stopped by Larry’s upraised hand.

  ‘Hey.’ Larry knew what it meant, oh yes, he knew and he didn’t want the insult of having it spelled out. He’d only been with the firm for two months. They could get rid of him for free. No redundancy, no golden handshake.

  ‘I know all the implications,’ he said, and he did. He saw his hopes flash by as smoothly as though they were on a conveyor belt, toppling off in the distance, out of reach.

  It was all gone.

  The film was over.

  All the trappings, his office, his lovely car, everything had to be returned.

  ‘I know all the implications,’ he repeated. He stared at Burgess, unable to say another word.

  Apparently reassured, Burgess smiled. He was looking healthier now. He rubbed his hands together. ‘You’ll be paid your notice,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Three months,’ he added helpfully, as though it was something Larry didn’t know. All his tension had gone. Larry realised it hadn’t been because of his sympathy for Larry, but from fear of having to tell him.

  Larry watched the colour coming back into Burgess’s face; he looked like a Polaroid developing before Larry’s eyes. Larry watched Burgess become himself again, and then more than himself — he was becoming expansive.

  ‘Keep the car until the end of your contract,’ Burgess said, and slapped shut the leather-bound desk diary with a whump. A fresh puff of Paco Rabanne wafted Larry’s way. Sentence had been passed and the judge was now washing his hands of him. The atmosphere had lightened considerably. Even the air conditioning seemed to breathe more freely.

  Larry got to his feet. Even though all he wanted to do was get out of there, he couldn’t bring himself to leave. He wanted to linger. If he stood there long enough they might say — joke!

  But the Fat Boys were scuffling their feet, turning to each other, shutting him out of their line of vision as if he had already gone.

  ‘You can have the car back tomorrow,’ he heard himself say. Now where had that come from? That puny blow? His body was heavier than he’d ever noticed before, but his head, strangely, was light. The white noise inside it increased, pushing out his thoughts. He felt drunk. He concentrated on walking in a straight line to the door. He didn’t bother to smile at Marcia and he didn’t bother to close the door behind him.

  *

  By mid-morning the news of the takeover had suffocated the company like slurry. The smell of disaster hung over them. People examined the fabric of their lives and saw it burst open. They talked of ‘what abouts’: honeymoons, holidays, mortgages, babies, all nipped in the bud.

  Larry sat at his desk, swivelled his chair and looked at the city beyond the bomb curtains. He tried to break through the white noise. He thought that he knew what the white noise was — it was his future. It was a blank. His diary was a travesty — there was nothing in it to bother him next week any more. Or next month.

  He picked up the phone and tried Megan. She was out of the office. He didn’t leave a message.

  He turned his chair round and stared out through the open doorway at his bods. He was all right, he had Megan, but he knew they would not all get jobs. They would be like ants rushing about. In the Invertebrates House at London Zoo he and Bill had watched the leaf-cutting ants cross a branch across the water. For every ant with a piece of leaf there were thirty jobless, rushing back and forth doing nothing. Reminded him of his last agency, he’d told Megan at the time, but now it wasn’t funny. The futility of it appalled him. He didn’t want to be a jobless ant.

  Nausea filled his mouth. He would be all right, he told himself. He always landed on his feet. He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he heard a gentle tap on the door. Deborah, his secretary, came in, stood in the doorway and just looked at him.

  Her pallor showed through her foundation and her lipstick had got chewed off along the way. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked him.

  He gestured towards a chair and she came in and sat down. Larry shook his head. His thoughts settled. He looked her in the eye. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Look for something else.’

  ‘Poor Burgess.’

  ‘Don’t worry about him, he’ll make a packet from it,’ Larry said, with a bitterness he’d never had cause to feel in his life before.

  ‘Tom was going to take his PhD in October,’ Deborah said. Larry looked away from her. He didn’t want to have to hear her problems, he had his own to contend with.

  ‘If it had been any other time...’Deborah said, and her throat squeezed a tremble into her voice. ‘What am I going to tell him?’

  Larry stared speechlessly at the bomb-proof curtains. Oh, Mark Fletcher had been right not to trust them and to leave. The bomb had dropped and they had been no use at all.

  Burgess’s voice replayed in his head like a reprimand, so loudly that he thought his secretary was meant to hear it. He repeated it to her in a low voice. ‘Any time is a good time to give good news but there is no such thing as a good time to give bad news,’ he said.

  *

  In the car park after work, Larry got into the car and leaned his head back against the headrest and shut his eyes. The smell of leather mixed with the smell of tar; warm smells of early summer.

  He started the engine and drove out of the car park and eased his way into the traffic leaving the city centre.

  His body felt heavy as though his troubles were really weighing him down, crushing him. At the first set of lights a car horn sounded behind him. He looked up and saw with surprise that the road ahead of him was clear — the lights had changed to green and he hadn’t even realised it. He put his foot down and the car surged forward a short way before it caught up with the trail of traffic waiting to crawl across Euston Road. Coming to a stop again Larry glanced out of habit at the window adjacent to the lights.

  This window was empty. The darkness inside made it as reflective as a sheet of black ice.

  But as he looked at the window, he saw to his horror that he wasn’t there. His skin tightened with shock. He felt the hairs bristling on his head. He didn’t exist any more. He’d disappeared. He believed it.

  Then suddenly he laughed, and the wood panels covering the window came into focus, he could see the firm’s name stamped on them in red, he could see the rough grain. The empty shop had been boarded up, that was all. He laughed again, louder, but it sounded false and flat. He caught a woman looking at him oddly as she waited to cross the road and he shut up, pretending to concentrate on the lights ahead.

  Once again, he felt his stomach heave. He tried to ignore it, easing his foot off the brake as he moved with the traffic, heading for home. But the thought of that blankness, that sudden invisibility, stayed with him all the way.

 
; The film had finished and he’d been left on the cutting room floor.

  6

  That evening, Bill tugged the shoulder strap on his Gap dungarees and looked up at the white clock on the kitchen wall. He knew that when both red hands pointed down at him, that was when Mummy would be home. Sometimes she came before he’d even looked at the clock. And sometimes she didn’t come at all, not until he was sleeping, but this wasn’t one of those days because Zoofie always told him if his mother would be late.

  He gave his strap another tug. The red hands of the clock, because he knew they were called hands, not fingers even though they pointed, the hands weren’t pointing straight down at him yet, not quite, but they were getting closer. If he looked really carefully he could see the big one move with a jerk, as though it had remembered suddenly what its job was.

  ‘Bill?’Zoofie came into the kitchen and scooped him up. He pushed through the blonde tangle of her hair so that he could carry on watching the clock.

  He could see it better now that he was higher up. He looped an arm around Zoofie’s neck.

  ‘Shall we watch Mr Bean?’ she asked him, kissing him on his cheek.

  He nodded. They both liked Mr Bean, and he mostly knew where to laugh even though sometimes he wasn’t sure what was funny.

  ‘Would you like an apple to eat while we watch it?’

  But Bill caught the sound of a car outside in the street. It was his father’s car. He listened as the engine noise got louder and the car reached their drive, and he heard the long crackling as it crushed the gravel.

  Bill waited for his father to slam the car door and crunch, crunch, crunch to the kitchen door.

  He looked at Zoofie. ‘Daddy’s home.’

  ‘Do you want me to cut you up an apple?’

  He shook his head. He had to prepare himself for his father. Sometimes his father threw him up in the air and caught him, and sometimes he tickled him until he squealed. It wasn’t the kind of thing he could do with an apple in his hand.