The Agency

by Ally O'Brien

  When I was done with e-mail, I checked my own voice mail. Sally called, wondering about my plans, asking what was up with Dorothy. Marty Goodacre called, looking to schedule a meeting for me with Cosima for eleven o’clock on Monday morning. No doubt she wanted to talk about Dorothy’s contract again. Maybe I’d have a surprise for her. Guy called, asking if I was heading to the premiere of the newest Boublil and Schönberg musical on Saturday night. I wondered if Dorothy had told Guy about David Milton. That would be stupid, but it would be just like Dorothy to confide in Guy. Anyway, yes, I was going to the premiere, so I’d see him there.

  The last message was from Oliver, time-stamped two hours ago. Hearing his voice, I realized that I should tell him about Cruise, even if it came to nothing. Oliver needed a pick-me-up. Something to lift the cloud.

  And then I realized, as I listened, that he needed much more.

  “Tessie, it’s Oliver, I’m sorry I missed you,” he said. He sounded drunk but not an ordinary kind of drunk. He sounded depressed, but not an ordinary kind of depressed. “Look, thanks for everything, okay? I just wanted to make sure you knew it’s not your fault.”

  That was all.

  I hung up and sat there, wondering why my dinner was doing cartwheels in my stomach and why my heart was pounding in my ears. I used my phone and called my voice mail and listened to the message again. And again. Until there was no mistaking what he meant.

  “Oh, shit,” I said aloud.

  I gave the driver a new address and told him to hurry.

  26

  OLIVER LIVES, if you can call it that, in a basement studio flat not far from King’s Cross, in a part of the neighborhood that has stubbornly resisted redevelopment. Drug dealers and whores have to live somewhere, and this is where they call home. No yuppie condos. No quaint boutiques and bistros. I would sooner walk alone after midnight in most areas of London than in New York, but not here. My taxi driver looked at me as if I were crazy when I changed my destination from Putney and he let me off on this garbage-infested street.

  It was raining hard. Good thing. Rain keeps the night people inside. I saw silhouettes in doorways and twentysomethings crowded near the lit window of an Indian restaurant. Smelled cigarettes and hash. Heard loud voices and, somewhere, glass breaking. I tugged my trench coat around my shoulders and hurried down the slippery wrought-iron steps to the underground level of Oliver’s building. I kept an eye out to make sure no one followed me, and I listened for footsteps in the rain. God knows how I hoped to get a taxi back. This wasn’t the area to cruise for fares.

  Something brown and quick moved in the shadows under the steps. A rat, nibbling on thrown-away food. Someone told me once that wherever you are in London, there’s a rat no more than ten yards away. He wasn’t even talking about Parliament or Fleet Street, where it’s probably five yards.

  I was pissed off, being here. Not at Oliver, but at the world I inhabited, which treated genius so cavalierly. I don’t throw that word around lightly, but with Oliver, I do. He has seen and survived things that would have killed me and most of you. He stares at the devil in the open door of his closet every night. He creates worlds of squalor and beauty in his books, worlds that worm their way around your brain, worlds you cannot escape or forget. And no one cares. No one even looks down. We let our geniuses die in the gutter.

  I wondered if I was too late. This is the “if only” time when you have a friend in despair. If only I had called him earlier. If only I had answered my damn phone. It was so like Oliver to make sure I didn’t blame myself when he committed suicide.

  I pounded on his door, making the broken windows rattle. “Oliver!”

  I stared through the dirty panes, trying to see inside, but he had a black bedsheet taped on the glass. Around here, you don’t want the neighbors having a looky-loo at your TV or your stereo or your food. Assuming you have any of those things to begin with.

  “Oliver!”

  I pounded again. Rain poured on my head and ran down my face. The rat scampered away in annoyance. I was disturbing his dinner. Somewhere close by, I caught the sweet-sick smell of feces, like perfume from the sewers. I hoped it wasn’t coming from inside.

  As I waited, and no one answered, I had visions of where I would find him. On the floor. In his bed. On the bathroom tiles. It’s selfish, but I was obsessed with my own failure. I had let this happen. Me, the superagent, who couldn’t sell the best book I’d ever read. Who couldn’t deliver on my promises. Who let this extraordinarily decent and talented man get sucked into a whirlpool rather than lift him up.

  I twisted the rattling doorknob, but it was locked. I beat on the door again with my fist. A lake of water slurped around my feet, soaking into my stockings.

  “Oliver, damn you, open the door!”

  Be alive, damn you. Don’t be dead. Don’t make me find you.

  Finally, I heard something. The jangle of a chain. The door swung open like a creaky closet in a haunted house, and there he was, dark and alive. Eyes like a cave. Skin the color of wallpaper paste. A cigarette between his lips, pointing at the floor, and his fingers twitching as he propped it up.

  “You bastard!” I screamed at him.

  I shoved him backward into the flat, stormed inside, and slammed the door behind muself. He wore a black T-shirt. Boxers. Bare feet. There was sweat on his forehead.

  “Where are they?” I demanded.

  Oliver stared at me and didn’t say anything. He blew smoke, adding to the pungent cloud in the flat.

  “Where are the drugs?” I repeated.

  He gave the barest of shrugs. “Bathroom.”

  I stalked into the loo, which was the size of a phone booth. If you sat down on the toilet, your feet were in the shower. The sink was dirty with hair and dried toothpaste. The mirror showed me my face, my makeup streaked, my hair flat and soaked. Some superagent. I yanked open the medicine cabinet and found two pill bottles inside. One was aspirin. The other was unmarked, with capsules stacked to the lid.

  I took them both, opened them, and poured the contents into the toilet bowl. I flushed and watched the water get sucked down, taking the pills with them. I felt as if I had saved him, but I hadn’t. He could have taken them anytime before I got here. And he could replace them anytime he felt the need.

  When I went back into the other room, Oliver was sitting on a chair, bent over, his elbows on his knees. The cigarette smoldered between his fingers.

  “Is there more?” I asked.

  He shook his head. I believed him. I took off my wet raincoat and flopped down on the flea market sofa.

  “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.

  That was true. I probably wouldn’t.

  “I want you to see someone, Oliver. A counselor. I’ll pay.”

  “Fuck that, Tessie.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. No shrinks. And not on your dime, either.”

  I saw an empty bottle of wine on the card table where he ate his meals. “Is there more to drink around here, or did you finish it all yourself?”

  “There’s more.”

  I got up and opened the refrigerator in his kitchenette. He didn’t have much inside. A brown banana. A box of takeout curry. A pork pie. On the door, I spotted a half-empty bottle of cheap Riesling. I grabbed the bottle, yanked out the cork, and didn’t bother looking for a glass. There probably wasn’t a clean one anywhere in the flat. I drank from the bottle, kept it in my hand, and went back to the sofa.

  “Did you call me so I could stop you?” I asked.

  “No.”

  No, he called to spare my guilt, and I felt guilty anyway.

  “So why didn’t you go through with it?” I asked. “Or are you going to do it when I leave?”

  “You make it sound like a big deal.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Oliver shook his head. “No, it’s not a big deal. None of us leaves a ripple, Tessie. Not me. Not you. Not Lowell Bardwright.”
r />   “Yeah? How about those guys who did the sculptures in the cathedral?”

  “Like I told you, no one will be reading Singularity in a thousand years.”

  “You don’t know that. And even if they’re not, the point is that people are reading it right now.”

  “Really? How many? Eleven people isn’t a legacy, Tessie.”

  “How about that note you showed me last year? From the woman who was reading Singularity while her father was dying in hospital? Your book comforted her. Your words helped her deal with her pain.”

  Oliver sighed. “One person.”

  “Yes, damn it, one person. And you didn’t answer my question. Are you going to do it when I leave?”

  “No.”

  “What about tomorrow? Or next week?”

  “I’m not going to make promises, Tessie. They’re not worth anything.”

  “Promise me anyway.”

  “I can’t do that. I wish I could, but I can’t do it.”

  “So what do you want? Something to live for?” I swigged more wine. “I met Tom Cruise. I put Singularity in his hands.”

  Oliver’s eyebrows arched. “Are you lying to me?”

  “No, it’s true. I saw him at a restaurant in New York. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it will change anything. He may love the book, but the odds are that he won’t do a damn thing about it. And I’ll tell you something—it doesn’t matter, because that one person who wrote to you is already more important than Cruise. She’ll remember your book for the rest of her life.”

  “You’re good at this,” Oliver said. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Look, Tessie, you’re not the kind of person who gets depressed, so you don’t know what it’s like. I’m not talking sad or blue, I’m talking about fucking empty, paint it black, not caring about a single damn thing. What happens is that you’re holding a machine gun and you blow away everything around you, until the barrel suddenly turns around and you see it’s pointing at you. And you realize how easy it is to wipe out yourself like everything else.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I admitted.

  “I’m scared, too. It’s not like I want to feel this way. I just do.”

  I finished the bottle of wine. I was almost as drunk now as he was. I sank down on my knees in front of Oliver and put my warm hands on his face. His cheeks were rough.

  “You know that I’m a self-obsessed, neurotic egomaniac,” I told him.

  “Of course.”

  “You’re also my only real friend.”

  “Not true.”

  “Yes, true. I’m telling you this because you seem to think I’m taking pity on you, and the reality is, you should be pitying me. The last few days have been like seeing my reflection in a mirror, and I have to tell you, I haven’t liked the view. People hate me. I used to wear that like a badge of honor, and suddenly I realize it’s not a good thing at all. I’m afraid of losing everything, and if I have to start over, I’m not sure I can do it on my own. I need someone to believe in me. For whatever reason, no matter how much I fail you, you still believe in me, Oliver. If I lost you now, I can’t tell you how grotesquely alone I would be.”

  I wasn’t lying. And, yes, pity me that I have to make a friend’s attempted suicide all about me. Oliver smiled, because he is smart enough to recognize the irony.

  “So I should hold off killing myself until your agency is well established?” he asked.

  “That would be more convenient,” I agreed.

  “Well, anything for you, Tessie.”

  “Thank you.” We both laughed, and I added, “You know, you can talk to me about why. It doesn’t matter if I’m stupid and I don’t get it.”

  “The ‘why’ isn’t really important. The only thing that matters is whether you do it or you don’t do it.”

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  “I told you, the danger has passed for tonight. I wish I could tell you it would never come again, but chances are, it will.”

  “If it does, don’t be alone. Call me.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Okay, but call me anyway.”

  He kissed my forehead. “Poor Tessie, such a little girl lost. I like it better when you’re hard as nails.”

  “I show you my vulnerable side, and this is what I get?”

  “Give me your kick-arse side instead. That’s what I need. The don’t-fuck-with-me-I’m-Tess-Drake side.”

  “Shut up, you bastard.”

  “Ah, that’s better.”

  I got off my knees. It’s not a place I like to be unless I’m, well, you know. And I don’t mean praying. “So tell me about Duopoly,” I said. “Are you blocked? Is that the problem?”

  “Yes, I’m blocked, but that’s not the problem.”

  “Are you afraid it’s no good?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid you can’t finish it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you afraid I can’t sell it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s fabulous, you will finish it, and I will sell it.”

  “Suddenly you ooze self-confidence again,” Oliver said.

  “Don’t fuck with me, I’m Tess Drake.”

  Now we were being silly. Joking. Teasing. But at least neither one of us was looking to kill ourselves. Oliver stood up and hugged me with surprising tenderness. He pushed away eventually but held on to both my hands.

  “Can I tell you something, Tessie? In all seriousness?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know you’re scared for me, and scared for you, but there’s something you have to remember. If the worst thing you ever face is losing everything and starting over, you will lead a charmed life.”

  27

  SLEEP.

  Sleep, sleep, sleep.

  I arrived home at nearly three in the morning, thanks to a cabdriver who showed no qualms at the thought of picking me up in the slummy section of King’s Cross. He was a veteran of the Afghan theater. There is very little that scares men like that, thank God. He took me out of the mean streets and through the City and across the river, and I closed my eyes and missed most of the drive. It was only the bump as he stopped in front of my building that woke me up.

  I tipped him well. He deserved it.

  My flat is above the Putney Exchange in a security building, with a view toward the Thames. Easy access to shopping, buses, Tube, etc. Parks nearby. 24/7 lobby guard. Arriving home in the middle of the night isn’t an unusual experience for me, so I like the idea of a locked door and a beefy man with a truncheon in the lobby. It is always the same man, an Indian named Samur with a round face and arms the size of tree trunks. Samur moves as slowly as syrup, but he is unfailingly polite and helpful, and his cousin owns the best vindaloo house south of the river. I think I amuse Samur—a frantic woman coming and going at all hours, always on my mobile.

  Not tonight, however. Tonight every footstep felt like lead, and the elevators, which were only ten yards away, taunted me from a distance. I wanted nothing other than to unlock my door, strip off my clothes, fall face-first into my pillow, and remain motionless for ten hours.

  Samur waved at me. I nodded a greeting and looked at him through slitted eyes.

  “Ms. Drake!”

  “Hmm?”

  “Ms. Drake! I have something for you!”

  “Can I pick it up in the morning?”

  “Oh, no, no, the man, he said to me, you must have it at once when you come into the building.”

  The elevators were so close and yet so far. I shifted direction and shuffled to the guard’s desk. I expected an envelope. All my deliveries are envelopes. Contracts. Letters. Queries. Someone was sending me something to read and sign. I held out my hand for Samur to put the envelope in my palm.

  He grinned at me—big grin, yellow teeth. He reached underneath his desk, squeezing his whole giant torso out of sight, and emerged with the large
st rectangular box I had ever seen. It was wrapped in brown paper, and I could see my name neatly lettered on the outside.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “I do not know. But the man, he made me sign for it, and he said it is for you as soon as you return.”

  “Who was the man? What did he look like?”

  “Big man, very handsome.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Do you need me help you carry it?” Samur asked.

  “Is it heavy?”

  “Not so heavy but very big.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He maneuvered the box across the desk, and I took it in my arms. It wasn’t heavy, but it was like carrying a sandwich board in the wind. I shook it up and down out of curiosity. Whatever was inside didn’t move or give me any hints. I held it out and hunted for a return address, but there was nothing on the box but my name.

  “You need help?” Samur asked.

  “Thanks, no. Good night, Samur.”

  “You sleep well, ma’am.”

  “If I’m not awake in five or six days, come get me,” I said.

  He grinned. I continued to amuse him. I navigated the remaining steps to the elevator and fitted myself and my box inside. I spent five floors leaning against the elevator wall, eyes closed, arms wrapped around my box, hypnotized by the hum of the motor. The doors opened, but I think I was asleep by then. They closed again. When they opened a second time, I peered around the edge of the box and discovered that I was back in the lobby. Samur looked across the tiled floor at me with the same grin he had given me when I left. I woke up and pushed the button again, and this time, I staggered out of the elevator on my floor and made it to my flat.