On the Floor

by Aifric Campbell

  10:46

  ‘BEFORE ANYONE ASKS,’ I wave my bandaged hand, ‘I fell over and thank you, I’m fine.’ Rob’s anxious face relaxes into a grinning head shake. Al slaps me on the back and says he assumed I’d slipped off a bar stool in Hong Kong.

  There is an air of focused energy about the brisk rows of white shirts and a steady war hum. Paper Union Jacks sprout from monitors and the backs of chairs all along the UK desk, they are even hung underneath the bank of overhead TVs. Over at SPUD there is a blank space where Pie Man should be. His desk is cleared of paperwork and freshly dusted. The screens removed. The geeks are clustered round their boss, trying not look as if they are missing a limb. And I know without asking that he is gone, high-tailed out of the complications, having calculated that his chance of getting away with everything would be much improved if he disappeared. He may have fled West Hampstead. May even have flung himself under a train. Or he could be sitting somewhere amidst a sea of Tesco bags, eating himself to death. But it’s far more likely that he’s already interviewing with Bankers Trust down the road who will welcome him with open arms. And Pie Man will take it all the way. One day I will read about him in the business pages. He has only temporarily left the stage. And deep down we both know my trouble is all of my own making. It is time to grow up and pick up the reins, time to take the next step, for history is what you make of it. And there is no such thing as a victim.

  Rob laughs down the phone but he is still staring at me across the monitors, the scissors stalled in his right hand above a large cut-out flag on the front page of the Sun. I watch the red and green lights, remembering how we used to have touchscreen phones and how it took so long for the novelty to wear off and then we got Seaq on our PCs and that was fun for a while and then our disposable income took a leap and that was great too. But it seems like nothing lasts.

  ‘You wish, mate, you wish.’ His right hand extending the flex, his other now writing a ticket. And I’m thinking: you get born, you grow up and then maybe there is a moment when you realise that this is all there is, a hamster wheel of sensation and your whole life up to this point has only ever been about that lesson. Dreams of possibility start slipping like silk from your shoulders and there is nothing left to do except turn your slap-burnt face away and drink a little more, party a little harder, jam that nose right into the grindstone and watch the bank account swell. You carry on because the wheel keeps spinning and, hey, there is always the chance that you might find something worth having, that you wouldn’t just end up sitting there watching your hands turn to dust.

  The first day I came for interview at Steiner’s, I spilled coffee down myself while I sat waiting in HR. By amazing good fortune I happened to be wearing a mandarin collar shirt that buttoned on the shoulder so I could reverse it. I was, as the secretary told me, ever so lucky. I guess I took this as confirmation of truth and never looked back.

  I remember going to Principles and buying a black velvet suit with a cropped jacket for thirty quid, which was a fortune. The day I wore it, I thought I’d arrived. I thought I was the biggest power dresser on Moorgate. That suit was going to get me anywhere, would open all doors. But then every time I got somewhere, I felt it wasn’t where I’d wanted to be. And now I look around me – the trading floor, the bodies – and I see that this is not a test drive, that I’m already way down the road. This is, I realise, the loss of innocence and I have to laugh out loud; whoever would have thought it? That there really is a time when you can’t get it back, when you’ve jumped beyond the sand mark and into a new age.

  ‘Hey, Castigliano, my man. How’s it going?’ Al stands up. ‘Yeah, Geri’s here, returned from the abyss, looks a little worse for wear but I’m sure she can explain all that.’

  ‘Geri. Tried to call you at home but I guess it was a long night.’

  Tom wants to tell me about a really cool apartment coming up soon ’cos Franklin is going back to New York and he’ll take me to see it at the weekend and I picture a cab’s slow climb up to Mid-levels where the rooftop swimming pools are too hot to use in summer. So much happening out here, Tom says. On my screen amid the urgent scroll of headlines is the news that city officials have cancelled the carnival in Venice citing concerns about the war and the threat of terrorism. I watch Reuters blink and embellish, and all possibilities seem equally likely.

  Rob stands up, his curved palm slips a note to Greg the boot boy, who lopes wordlessly about the floor collecting shoes and sits on his orange box against the back wall of the trading floor, working the dazzle on the leather. Once I stuck my foot out when he was taking Al’s and he hesitated, then nodded. Later, on my way to the loo, I saw all the Oxfords and Brogues arranged in a semicircle around Greg’s box and his hand inside my pump, the spiked heel gripped tight between his thighs. He looked up, reddened and froze. All right Greg, I muttered and hurried away but when he returned the shoes, Greg ignored the note I held out and shuffled off and I knew that I had somehow crossed a line, stirred a silent ripple through the manwaters.

  ‘Boys and girls, we have some news,’ says Rob. ‘Old Greg here is starting at Tullett’s next week.’ He slaps him on the back. ‘They’re giving him a shot at the big time.’

  ‘No kidding,’ says Al. ‘Congrats.’ Greg beams. And I wonder how the shoeshine boy will look in a shirt and tie, all larged up, a moneybroker.

  ‘Movin’ on up, movin’ on up,’ Rob sings into the receiver. ‘Nothing can stop us – here Jonno, JONNO. I hear you’re taking on Greg. So you need to get yourself round here to do my shoes instead. Arf arf.’

  I turn to the window behind me, spread my hands on the cold sill. A small nameless city bird hurls itself from a rooftop and careers wildly in front of the window and then spins away towards a triangular shoal that dips in formation and dives gracefully out of view.

  ‘All be over in a few weeks,’ Al muses, patting Schwarzkopf’s wall poster which is already looking a little tired.

  ‘Only if you get the guy,’ says Rob.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Saddam, that’s who. Got to finish the job, Al. You don’t leave the bastard out there to play games. ’Cos next thing you know he’ll rise from the ashes and you’ve got a whole army of towel heads rising up against you. I mean, you Shermans just don’t get it.’

  ‘Yeah, right. We don’t get it. This is our party remember?’

  ‘And we invented foreign policy, mate. Who d’you think founded Iraq anyway? We’ve been everywhere, civilised the whole world. Fucking discovered you lot, put you on the map. And I’m telling you right now: you haven’t won a war if the fucking crazy is still IN CHARGE! Am I right, Geri? You’re a Paddy, you tell him. Here we are years after we left that little pain in the butt island of Micks right next door and they’re still giving us gyp. The I-R-fucking-A is still running around with Semtex blowing up kids. And why? I’ll tell you why. Because we let them get away with it. When we should have killed every last one of them.’

  What Rob does not see is that Joe has taken up position right behind his chair, the phone cable stretched out behind him. His narrow head is cocked to one side, a deep furrow between his brows. And the whole Jap desk has fallen silent, they’re watching their master who has stepped outside his magic circle and who seems, for possibly the first time ever, to be paying attention to something that’s happening outside his Jap bubble. Rob spouts on oblivious, wagging a pencil in one hand until he sees that Al is looking not at him, but behind him. He stops mid-stream and spins around.

  ‘All right, Joe,’ says Rob. But Joe does not look down, does not even appear to have heard him speak. He takes a step closer, a movement light and tense, as if he might spring up to head a ball at any moment.

  ‘Al,’ says Joe and we all turn to look at Al, whose existence Joe has never acknowledged until this moment. The phones flash and click and the Jap traders fan out like a silent chorus behind Joe and it seems like everything has hushed while we wait.

  ‘You ever see The Magnificent Seven,
mate?’ asks Joe.

  ‘Yul Brynner?’ Al slides his hands into his pockets as if bracing himself for a remark that could topple him. ‘Yeah, sure.’ Joe nods gravely and Al grins, emboldened. ‘“In this line of work, we are not all alike. Some care nothing about money. Others, for reasons of their own, enjoy only the danger.”’

  ‘“And the competition?”’ shoots Joe.

  ‘“If he is the best with a knife and a gun, with whom does he compete?”’

  ‘“Himself.”’

  We wait expectant but the impromptu theatre has ended. Joe steps a little closer, now he is right by Rob’s chair. ‘So you know what happened in the end?’ his voice soft, his bright eyes trained on Al as if he is fixing prey.

  ‘Sure,’ says Al, affecting nonchalance with a shoulder shrug. ‘They saved the village.’

  ‘And how exactly did they do that?’

  ‘How?’ Al repeats, stalling. At Columbia they teach you to avoid stating the obvious, or at the very least to know when the obvious is exactly what is required. And so Al buys time while he scans through the range of permutations, wondering if this is just such a moment and if his reputation, which is – let’s face it – not exactly hitting the high-water mark, could be rescued or destroyed in an exchange that has all the feel of a gun-slinging showdown. It’s a binary outcome and the scent of a virtual humiliation is in the air. We are hanging by a thread here.

  ‘Did they let the bad guys walk away?’ Joe whipcracks the phone cord against his thigh. Rob flinches in his chair.

  ‘No, they did not,’ says Al. ‘They killed them all.’

  ‘That’s right, they killed ’em all. Every last one.’

  Heads bob in silent consensus.

  ‘You always kill the bad guy,’ says Joe. ‘’Cos if you don’t…’

  ‘The bad guy just comes back and kills you,’ says Al on cue.

  Rob exhales. The bewildered chorus that is the Jap desk exhale. Joe tips forward as if he is taking a bow for his performance and raises the receiver to his ear. ‘You still there, mate?’ he barks and spins away, back to his pitch, pulling on the black cord as if he is reeling himself into shore.

  Al is already back on the blower beside me, squeezing his mini football, spinning some yarn about a bomb-proof tech stock to one of his Swiss clients. The PC screens flicker and the lights blink a power surge and I wonder what a life would be without all this. Once there was a five-minute cut on the floor and the place stopped and we just stood around looking helpless. Dead black phones hooked in metal desk clips like cardiac chargers. Without the screens and the chargers we are nothing. They feed us, give us the power to carry on.

  I remember a jaded Saturday on an extended business trip to Tokyo when I took a spontaneous bullet train out of the city to kill a few hours that shopping couldn’t. Stepped off at Nikko in the countryside air and walked northwards through tapered streets of shuttered houses. Crossed a footbridge over a clear rush of water where a passing crocodile of giggling girl guides stared at me and I stumbled on what looked like a cemetery. Row upon manicured row of miniature stone Buddha statues with red rags tied around their stone heads. That evening in a heaving whisky bar in Roppongi I asked Yoko-san what they were. Self-immolators, he replied in perfect East Coast. The families come to tie the red ribbons, like you guys would bring flowers.

  So circle the wagons, it’s time to go. Asia has long since gone to bed and Europe will soon be out to lunch while the East Coast files for the subway. A temporary hush will settle on the floor, while the screens still blink. A surreal silence, on the brink as we wait for the next move.

  I grab my bag and switch off my Reuters. Al looks up puzzled in mid-flow so I smile, pat him on the shoulder, give him a little salute. He carries on talking, watches me walk around the desk to stand behind Rob who is making a whooping noise into the phone and tapping his screen. He waves Bud Light to run a ticket over to the stock desk and clicks mute.

  ‘You had me worried there when you didn’t show. What’s up, G?’ he brushes his hand lightly along the inside of my bandaged hand. ‘You really OK?’

  ‘Yeah, fine.’ It isn’t difficult to smile at him.

  ‘Well, you look like shit,’ he grins and his touch is gone.

  He clicks the receiver. ‘Fuck’s sake, Jonno, keep your shirt on. I’m here.’ And as I turn away Rob calls out where am I going because there is a block of that Amgen up for grabs but he’s got to take it right now and what do I think, would Felix care before the stock opens?

  ‘Dunno,’ I swing round and spread my arms wide.

  ‘But what do you think?’

  ‘I think that if you can’t take a risk, you might as well be dead,’ I say and start the long private walk up through the bank of desks, past the hunched shoulders and the bobbing warrant traders.

  The Grope leaps up, all teeth, when I appear in the doorway. Julie comes in to give me my travel wallet and he says something about a great result. He pats me on the shoulder – carefully as if I might shatter at his touch. Then as I turn to leave, he grabs my hand and he’s shaking it and holding on as if he’s clinging to a rock, and he seems smaller and oddly transparent as if he is fading into outline. He is vanishing, he is yesterday already and I know that I will never see him again.

  I retrieve my hand and back out the door and I’m talking without saying anything, it’s just my mouth that’s moving, every other part of me is already gone.

  But it seems that in the end all of this is easy now, oh so much easier than Rex grinning in the rear view at seven this morning, excited at having his full range of toys in the boot with him, maintaining an urgent whine all the way to Richmond Park. He ran off across the crisp dark grass and I followed him up through the spare wood and out onto the wide grassy slope that rolls down to the road. In the centre of the space in front of me a man flew a model plane, red with a grey stripe along the side. When it landed, he ran towards it holding his sports jacket tight round his body. He was short and fat and out of breath. I bent to pick it up for him, but he shouted: ‘No no, leave it, I’ll get it,’ waving his hands like he was in distress. I stretched out my arm, thumb upturned and erased him. There was something crumbling inside me, this desire to cry.

  I found the place without much of a problem with the vet’s biroed directions on my knee. A long line of houses with deep gardens set back from the road and a stone’s throw to the Park. Oh, but it was just the hardest thing. Rex leapt right out of the car as if he was arriving home or something and ran off to chase a collie bitch who came flying out from the back of the house. Leaving me with the woman who looked like she had sounded on the phone, sort of shapeless and with a creased, smiling face. While I unloaded Rex’s toys and blanket and crate of dog food and his vaccination card and leads, she kept saying, ‘Are you sure you won’t have some tea, dear,’ even though she knew I couldn’t do that.

  Rex came hurling towards us with the collie in hot pursuit and disappeared through a gap in the hedge. I lit a cigarette and, looking mostly up at the sky, said a few unnecessary things about his habits and stuff, things she didn’t need to know but that I needed to tell her. A way of spinning it out. And then I stubbed the cigarette on the ground and said, ‘Well, I’ll be off then.’

  She touched my arm and said, ‘Don’t you worry,’ and she called Rex and he came to her panting, with flecks of saliva on the fur of his neck where the collie had been play-biting.

  He stood lolling his hot pink tongue like a cartoon dog and I went to hug him, but this huge lump rose in my throat and my face got all hot so I mumbled ‘Thanks’ without looking at her and fled to the car. The woman stood on the pavement, Rex beside her with his ears cocked, tongue hanging loose and happy and I drove off and they got smaller in the mirror, the tears pouring down my face so that when I got to the corner I had to stop because I couldn’t see and I had to scream just once to ease the pressure in my throat. Sitting there with the engine running and my head pressing into the steering wheel, these snaps
hots – Rex the fluffy puppy, Rex sitting in the bath, Rex cowering at the vet’s, Rex slobbering over his tennis ball – they flashed past and I thought I’d lose my mind, but eventually I got the tears under control and headed on eastwards. Feeling, Christ, just feeling so much older. Like I was missing a limb or something. Like I was finally and completely alone.

  12

  scorched earth

  12:21

  THE STREETS ARE WARMING UP to lunchtime but the bar is empty when I walk in and find him behind his pristine counter polishing glasses.

  ‘So, Faustino, what would you say if I told you I was kidnapped by a man for a whole day?’

  He puts down the glass, folds the cloth over his shoulder and stares at me. ‘He hwan money for you?’

  ‘You mean ransom? No, he didn’t want money.’

  ‘What he wan if no money? He shakes his head, leans closer. ’He hwan you do sex?’

  ‘Maybe. But he didn’t force me.’

  Faustino spreads his arms wide on the bar. ‘What he hwan?’

  ‘I think maybe he just wanted to teach me an important lesson.’

  ‘Ah. Is very fucked up people.’

  ‘Yes. Very fucked up.’

  ‘How you get haway?

  ‘I told him a story and then he just opened the door.’

  He frowns, runs a doubtful finger along the fine line of his chin.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you, Faustino?’

  ‘Sure, sure. We all love good story.’ He reaches down and places the Absolut bottle on the counter. ‘You hwan double?’

  ‘No, Faustino.’ I offer him a hand. ‘I just came to say goodbye.’

  Zanna was on the phone when I walked into her office. She stood immediately and began to wrap up the call, with none of the usual imperious hand signals holding me at bay.

  ‘Geri,’ she said with strained formality when she’d put down the receiver.

  ‘I came to say goodbye.’

  ‘You’re going already? Now?’ I could hear the hesitation in her intent, she was testing our shallow waters, wondering if a breathing space could retrieve the situation. But we both know that there isn’t a route map back to the beginning, that friendship is supposed to be about sharing the manageable best until the fun wears out and life really is too short to stick around patching up old baggage.