Various Pets Alive and Dead

by Lewycka, Marina

  There’s nothing at all about their demo, not even on the local news.

  ‘Shame. It was a good turnout,’ says Doro, sighing as the food and wine strike their comfort target.

  ‘Made me feel quite nostalgic,’ Marcus says. ‘It’s years since I had such a good shout! I’m glad you persuaded me to come along.’

  ‘I just wish there weren’t so many loonies – it gave the wrong impression.’

  ‘We were loonies once.’

  ‘But never as loony as that,’ she says.

  ‘Loonies perform a vital function. They challenge the orthodoxies of the day.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Just think. Without loonies, there’d still be slavery and child chimney-sweeps.’

  She pours the last drops of wine into his glass and puts her arms around him.

  ‘I love you, loony,’ she whispers, ruffling his hair, still damp from the rain.

  ‘I love you, Gaga,’ he whispers back. ‘Partner in struggle. Life companion.’

  He pulls her towards him on the sofa, his hands warm and familiar, and covers her face with kisses. She leans against him, feeling inside his shirt with her fingers to the softer private skin with its fine fuzz of curled greying hair. He unbuttons her blouse, and takes her black-satin-clad breasts between his hands.

  ‘You know, you’re a very attractive woman …’

  She shuts her eyes, crosses her fingers behind his back, and wills him – please, please, please – don’t say ‘for someone of your age’.

  And he doesn’t.

  PART FOUR

  Fairyland

  SERGE: AAA

  It’s Tuesday 11th November, about four o’clock. Serge, Maroushka and Chicken are in a taxi crawling over the Limehouse Link towards Canary Wharf. Chicken and Maroushka are sitting side by side, unnecessarily close, on the forward-facing seats. Serge is sitting with his back to the driver on one of the fold-down seats, with a document case on his knees, which are almost touching Maroushka’s – he wants to touch them, but has to stop himself, because of Chicken. Maroushka is wearing a black cashmere coat, casually unbuttoned, over the same deep-rose dress and sheer black tights that accentuate the curve of her knees. Her lipstick matches the red of the dress, sultry yet understated. Chicken is also wearing a black cashmere coat over a black bespoke suit, with a creamy Brioni shirt. Serge is still wearing his cut-price Ermenegildo Zegna, but he’s treated himself to a new Brioni shirt, which caresses his body as it sways and jerks with the movement of the taxi. He would rather be caressed by Maroushka, but that’s not an option at the moment.

  Maroushka squeals with delight as the fairy-lit towers of Canary Wharf rise out of the dusky sky, as if she’s never seen them before. Chicken recites the names of the buildings, like a father pointing out the constellations of heaven to an excited child.

  ‘HSBC. Citigroup. Barclays. Clifford Chance. Credit Suisse. Bank of America. Merrill Lynch.’

  She cranes and twists in her seat, bringing her thigh into contact with Chicken’s. Serge is particularly annoyed, not only because he has his back to the view, but because he wanted to come on the Docklands Light Railway, which would have been infinitely quicker and more comfortable, but Maroushka had flatly refused on the grounds that trains are too popular and she only travels by taxi. And because nothing has progressed between them since he kissed her last week. And also because, if he hadn’t stuck his neck out with Chicken, she wouldn’t be here at all.

  The taxi drops them at the foot of another glass-and-steel tower where the rating agency has its offices. They take the lift to the top floor, and are ushered into an anonymous corporate meeting room.

  ‘This is Serge Free. I spoke to you about him on the phone.’ Chicken makes introductions. ‘And this is Mary Malko, one of our brightest quants.’

  ‘How do you do.’

  The two guys from the rating agency shake his hand briskly, and linger over Maroushka’s. It soon becomes clear that the shorter, older one is the subordinate. The young tall one with the blunt nose and big ears looks vaguely familiar, but Serge can’t place him. He invites them to sit. Coffee is brought.

  ‘Go ahead, Serge,’ says Chicken.

  Serge opens his document case and clears his throat.

  ‘This investment represents a new model of portfolio design for the post-2007 trading environment that significantly extends the standard Gaussian copula model of default loss. We have randomised recovery rates, drawing on the established effect of inverse correlation between recovery rate and default frequency.’

  The older, smaller man is taking notes and glancing up at Serge, who is keeping an eye on Chicken, who is watching the tall blunt-nosed man, who is staring at Maroushka. Maroushka is looking out of the window.

  How can she stand it, hearing him speak her words, without wanting to interrupt or clarify? If he were her, he would be furious at the way Chicken has hijacked her work and handed it over to Serge to present. Originally, he had planned to exclude her from the meeting altogether, but Serge had put his foot down and insisted she should be invited to attend. The strange thing is, she doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe it’s because she’s a girl.

  The room they are in looks over a wide vista of skyscrapers and connecting plazas that all seem brand new, contained by the loop of the river, which from most places in London looks filthy brown, but here looks like heritage Father Thames. At ground level is a genuine quay where actual boats are moored and live seagulls squawk. As dusk draws in, lights sparkle from the surrounding towers and the streets and quays down below, and the whole place looks a bit like a scene in a computer game – cleverly designed but unreal, all constructed out of unlimited upside. People have already started to swarm out of the offices into the plazas of shops and bars as he reaches the end of the presentation, and they break for coffee and questions.

  ‘All right, Maroushka?’ he asks in a whisper. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘We pay good fee they make good rating,’ she says, without looking at him.

  On his left, he can hear Chicken talking to the blunt-nosed man.

  ‘I’ve brought my handicap down to eleven.’

  The man – his name is Smythe – puts a hand on Chicken’s shoulder. ‘We’ll have to get away for a game before Christmas, Ken.’

  That’s it – the golfing photos. He’s the golfing Apollo with the golden curls, except now he has an anonymous bankers’ haircut, which makes his ears and nose look big. In the photos he was wearing a polo shirt, but the suit he’s wearing today is a real beast, wool-silk-weave fabric, probably bespoke, with an Italian cut. They stand, two confident good-looking guys, showing toothpaste-white teeth to each other, as if they’re posing for some men’s magazine photo shoot.

  ‘We’ve made copies of the paperwork. Let me know if you foresee any problems, Tony,’ says Chicken.

  Seems like he and Chicken are old pals. That’s convenient.

  SERGE: Hoover

  Otto and Molly have a baby girl. She’s called Flossie, in honour of Free Open-Source Software, Otto told him, blabbing with pride. They sent him a photo-text of a little blob in a white knitted hat. He sent them a voice-activated digital picture frame, which he found online, with 4GB of memory and MP3 and video playback, which will allow them to store and flick through all their pictures at a simple command, as well as baby noises and first steps and all that. The demo looks really cool – he might even get one for himself.

  Otto has been down to Scudamore’s punt hire and asked about a carrier bag full of letters, but drawn a blank. He has also walked with Molly and baby Flossie along the river past Magdalene Bridge as far as the lock at Jesus Weir. From among the flotsam of dead branches, plastic bottles and lost shoes, they managed to pull out an envelope addressed to Serge at Queens’ College, but all it had in it was a flyer for the Cambridge Playhouse, six months out of date.

  He doesn’t feel too worried, though, because Chicken came down to the trading floor today with a bottle of Veuve Clicqu
ot to celebrate the success of Green Shoots, which has been awarded a triple A, and is now in the hands of the marketing team. Maroushka got a bit tipsy, and snogged him afterwards in the lift, and he even got to feel her tits. She’s got a new outfit – dark brown with sparkly buttons.

  The stock market has been drifting down since the start of November. Later in the afternoon, while no one is in the glass-walled office, he prints out the graph of surges and retracements over the last six months and analyses it; as well as the daily up and down movements, there’s the larger pattern, which fits the Fibonacci model almost uncannily. It’s approaching Phi – the turning point. Soon the market will bottom out and, when the upswing starts, it will accelerate fast as everybody rushes to cash in. He phones his broker and by five o’clock he’s doubled his holdings of SYC, and sold his entire holding of Wymad, Endon and Edenthorpe Engineering. He’ll lose the extra bit he could have made by holding on until the last minute, but why risk it when he’s already quids in?

  Afterwards, he’s careful about switching his phone off because Clara has been texting him. She says she wants to talk to him about Oolie. No doubt there’ll be a ticking-off about lack of attention to safety on the river or some such crap. Oolie had a great time. In fact, he’ll have to warn Otto – Doro says she can’t wait to go down to Cambridge again.

  By nine o’clock, he, Maroushka and the Hamburger are the last three of their team left in the office. Even most of the traders have gone. Maroushka is working away mysteriously, frowning over her keyboard, and Serge pretends to be working too, waiting for the moment when the Hamburger leaves and they’re on their own. Will he be able to undo those sparkly buttons? And what will she have on underneath? That skirt – it’s short, but tight. And he’s always found women’s bras a challenge. Thinking about this, planning his strategy, is making him feel incredibly horny.

  Princess of maths!

  Put your numbers aside,

  And open your …

  ‘Gute nacht, Serge, Maroushka!’

  The Hamburger heads for the exit. At last!

  For form’s sake, Serge waits three long minutes before making his move. He sidles over to the door of the glass-walled office.

  ‘Hi.’

  Not one of the great chat-up lines, but it has the benefit of simplicity.

  ‘Hi.’

  She’s still got her eyes glued to her screen, so he goes up and rests a hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t move. He skims her dark hair with his lips.

  ‘What are you working on, Princess?’

  ‘End of housing recession. Green Shoots is having good success in marketing.’

  Personally, he wouldn’t have given the investment a triple A, despite Maroushka’s bravura maths, but maybe that’s why he’s a lowly office-bound quant, while Tony Smythe and Chicken stroll the golf courses of the world clad in Gant.

  ‘Green shoots – like Gauss’s eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.’

  She looks up at him, laughing.

  ‘I like you, Sergei. You always thinking about some interesting philosophy.’

  ‘Love’s my philosophy, babe.’

  He bends and takes her face between his hands and kisses her, softly at first, then with a growing crescendo of passion, seeking her tongue with … oh no, not the hungry molluscs again. She’s pushing him away, not like she means it, but playfully, giggling, and he reaches his hand inside her dark-brown jacket, feels the warmth of her breast through the flimsy fabric of her top while she wriggles, then she sighs, then goes still, eyes closed, cradled in his arm, murmuring, ‘Sergei!’

  Yes!!!

  He fumbles with the diamanté buttons. Not so much the buttons as the buttonholes. Bloody hell, they’re tight. He fumbles, he tugs, tugs a bit harder, then … ping! A button arcs through the air, bounces one-two-three times, and rolls away under the desk. She sits up, opens her eyes.

  ‘No, Sergei, those buttons is for decoration only. Not unbutton.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I’ll find it for you.’

  He gets down on the ground and starts to search. His face is at the level of her gorgeous knees, slightly parted, with her skirt riding up over sheer black tights. Tights can be a problem, but he’ll deal with them once he’s found that bloody button. Is that it, lurking in the corner by the bin? He crawls under the desk. No, a five-pence coin. He pockets it. His stiffy is wavering, but he can’t give up now.

  VRURURURURURURUH!

  There’s a sudden roar by his ear like a jet taking off. He jumps up, bangs his head on the desk – ouch! – then everything goes black for a moment. Next thing he hears is Jojo the cleaner’s voice: ‘Do you mind if I just hoover up in here, love? I want to get off early.’

  The whine of the vacuum cleaner fills the small office, the rasp of suction, and a rattle as something large and hard is sucked up through the plastic tube.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’ shrieks Maroushka.

  ‘Stop!’ He yells desperately from under the desk. But Jojo can’t hear above the noise of the machine, so he lunges forward and pulls the plug out of the socket by the door.

  ‘What’s up?’ says Jojo.

  Maroushka shows her top, with its missing button.

  ‘I think it’s in there.’ Serge points to the cylinder. ‘D’you mind opening it up?’

  ‘I’ll tip it out,’ says Jojo, and straight away unclips the cover of the cylinder and flips the contents on to the office floor.

  Inside is a clotted mess of grey-brown dust, matted hairs and shrouded lumps of indeterminate debris. He holds his breath and starts to poke it with his fingers, sending a grey coil of powdery dust snaking upwards.

  ‘No!’ says Maroushka, coughing. ‘Is okay! Never mind!’

  He fingers the button-sized lumps. Where the fuck …?

  All that matted crumbly filth reminds him of the understairs cupboard at Solidarity Hall where bags and wellies were kept, and where lost things disintegrated into the grot of ages.

  ‘I’ll find it! Don’t worry, pet!’ Jojo digs in with gusto, her plump rubber-covered fingers squeezing and sifting. ‘It’s gotta be somewhere in here!’

  This is ridiculous. He definitely heard the sound of something large and button-like being hoovered up. And he knows with a deep gut certainty that if he’s ever to make any progress with Maroushka, he’s got to find this button – their future happiness depends on it.

  ‘Please, never mind. You making more dirty than you cleaning.’

  Maroushka coughs, pushing back a stray strand of hair, and leaving a smudge of brown dust on her cheek. He kisses it tenderly, but his stiffy has well and truly shrivelled away.

  Then all three of them start poking through the filth, coughing in the opaque air. They fish out, between them, a pound coin, two euros, a twenty-pence coin, a small lump of brown stuff wrapped in silver foil, a dead cockroach, several paperclips, two pen tops, a small brown memory stick that looks like a dead cockroach (hey?), a false fingernail, a contact lens and something which looks like a green shoot, but turns out to be a shard of lettuce from someone’s sandwich. No button.

  He stares at the memory stick poking out of the clumpy dust. Should he pretend it’s his? Just as he’s about to pick it up, Maroushka bends with a little giggle and slips it in her pocket.

  It’s half past ten by the time Jojo has vacuumed up the mess on the floor, and they’ve thoroughly washed their hands, turned off their monitors, and are riding downwards together in the lift.

  ‘I am sorry for this cleaner,’ says Maroushka. ‘She has no ability to improve her situation. She has proletarian mentality.’

  He leans towards her and says, ‘Can I take you out for a meal or something, Venus? To compensate for the loss of your button?’

  She shakes her head.

  And, to be honest, his pang of regret is tempered by a touch of relief.

  You can’t hurry love. This girl – she’s worth waiting for. She’s not just a quick office-floor shag. Despite the button incident, he fee
ls buoyant with optimism as he takes the stairs two at a time up to his penthouse, her kisses still fresh on his lips. It can only be a matter of time before he brings her up here, to marvel at the rooftop view, and pop a bottle of bubbly, and then …

  On the bookshelf Maroushka’s shoes are standing stiffly to attention, waiting for her to come and claim them.

  Not long now.

  Maybe in future years they’ll look back on this evening spent sifting through the contents of the office vacuum cleaner, and smile.

  Sitting up in bed with his laptop that night, as is his habit, he logs into Kenporter1601’s online broker account before going to sleep – not to trade of course, but just to see.

  What he sees is that Chicken sold £525,000 worth of Edenthorpe Engineering shares this afternoon, about half an hour after Serge did. Jeez! A coincidence? A pattern? No, it can’t be a coincidence. Chicken must have known about his trade. But how? The price has dipped right down to 102p. If he’d sold at that price he’d have made an extra few thousand. Has Chicken been snooping on him, when all the while he thought he was the one doing the snooping? He feels the rabbit-squeeze in his chest.

  He checks the email account for new information. Here’s a message from Juliette reminding him about an appointment on Friday – ‘you naughty boy, you’. How great to be a fly on the wall at one of those sessions! But what’s this pesky little message there at the bottom of the list?

  Tomorrow. Mx

  Barely two words, but enough to set his heart plummeting like a market in free fall. The email address reveals nothing – a-string-of-numbers@yahoo.com. He notes it down, but daren’t risk a reply. He rereads the message, reads between and behind the lines – ‘M’. It has to be her – who else? And ‘x’ – a kiss.