Ordinary Joe

by Jon Teckman

  I had dealt with most of my electronic correspondence while I was away, so my virtual in-tray wasn’t much fuller than its physical cousin. Most of the backlog of messages was rubbish I hadn’t bothered to open while I was in New York which could now be deleted without another look. I’d just finished wading through all this junk when I heard the familiar ping of incoming mail and scrolled back up to the top of my in-tray to greet the welcome intrusion.

  The message was from Bennett. He was one of those modern managers who rarely bothered to make the short journey from his office to my desk, opting instead for the convenience of the impersonal e-mail. The title caught my attention:

  From: Joseph Bennett

  To: Joseph West

  FW: WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?

  Hey, West, take a look at this. Even madder than before! It’s not from her e-mail address, so I’m pretty sure it must be one of the studio guys having a pop at me.

  What do you reckon I should do? I think they’ve gone a bit far now, don’t you? Isn’t there a law against pretending to be someone you’re not? Drop in and see me when you get a chance. I’ll be here all morning catching up on all the crap.

  Joseph A. Bennett

  Head of Entertainment and Media Division

  Then came the apparently deranged ramblings of a Hollywood superstar:

  From: CaddyMac@wannabe.com

  To: JosephABennett@askettbrown.co.uk

  WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?

  Please tell me what’s going on. We had such an amazing time in New York – I swear I have never laughed as much as I did that night doing what we were doing! Seeing you stripped down to just those crazy socks set me off and after that I just couldn’t stop giggling! Believe me, English, when you act all day for a living it is such a treat not to have to do any pretending on your night off! You were truly magnificent!

  I know you like me too, so how come you’re treating me so mean? Like I was just some cheap pick-up for you to enjoy and then toss aside like a piece of trash. Well, let me tell you, Mister Joseph A. Bennett – I know all about trash. Most people would say my family were trash, but I always wanted something better than that. I’ve tasted dirt and I never want to taste it again and I’ve worked damn hard to make sure I don’t have to.

  Please don’t be mean to me, English. Send me something nice and friendly real soon, sweetie-pie. I’d hate to have to take this to Buddy. He gets really pissed if people upset me.

  Olivia xxx

  ‘Christ!’ I thought after I’d read Olivia’s message a second time. She really did appear to be barking! What had I done to her?

  Still not having a clue what I would say to Bennett when I reached his office, I typed ‘on my way’ into a reply e-mail, grabbed my jacket and got on my way.

  Amanda was nowhere to be seen when I arrived, so I knocked and let myself in. Bennett was hunched over his desk, staring intently at his computer. He turned around when he heard me enter, then, without a word, returned to his vigil, focussing intently on the screen. He looked like a scholar analysing a newly discovered Dead Sea Scroll, searching between the lines of Olivia’s message for hidden meanings.

  ‘Hi, West,’ he said, finally registering my presence. ‘Bloody daft, isn’t it? But it’s really starting to annoy me now. Some bugger’s having a go at me, and I want to know who it is. You know what I’ve been wondering?’

  I was used to Bennett’s autocratic conversational style and assumed he wasn’t expecting an answer. True to form, he continued without waiting for a reply.

  ‘The only people I can think of who might have done this are those two we met at the party the other night – you know the chaps who work for Buddy. What’re their names?’

  ‘Len and Diana?’ I suggested

  ‘Yes, that’s them. I wonder whether I might have annoyed them somehow and now they’re trying to get back at me. Maybe even trying to blackmail me. What do you think? I have to admit, it is starting to get to me a bit. And Amanda went off in a right old strop when I showed her this one.’

  ‘You showed her?’ I said, although it might have come out more like a shriek. ‘What on earth did you do that for?’

  ‘Because I thought she’d find it funny,’ he replied without emotion, ‘especially the bit about me standing bollock naked in just a pair of stupid socks. I’ve never worn a pair of funny bloody socks in my life, so whoever is doing this has got that wrong for a start. Take a seat, West. Sorry I can’t offer you a coffee.’

  I sat down in one of the pair of leather armchairs arranged in front of the television. I crossed my legs, but immediately uncrossed them again and tucked them away beneath me before Bennett had a chance to spot the image of Mr Messy and the legend ‘Have a Messy Monday’ emblazoned on my otherwise black socks.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’ve asked Amanda to see if she can find out who this CaddyMac might be. See if there’s anyone by that name on Buddy’s payroll. Do you think this could be down to Dan and Wotserface? I gave them both my card at the party so they’ve got my details. Do you think I could have annoyed them?’

  ‘Len and Diana? Well, it’s possible,’ I replied. ‘I mean it’s possible you might have annoyed them. But neither of them would do anything like this. They’re both professional people. It would be suicide in Hollywood to get caught passing yourself off as a major star.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ Bennett conceded, after staring at the screen a while longer. ‘I can’t see anything, you know, Chinesey in the way it’s written and I don’t think that the old feller …’

  ‘Len.’

  ‘… yeah, Len, would have the balls for something like this. Not at his age. As you say, it would be curtains for them if they got caught upsetting an important business partner like me. Any other ideas?’

  I shook my head, then shook it again more vigorously when Bennett turned round to enquire, wordlessly, into my silence. He turned back to his screen and I could almost feel him thinking – hear the cogs whirring around, trying to knock his brain into the right gear. After an uncomfortable pause, he stood up and walked to the back of his office. He peered out through the Velux blinds that were integrated between the two panes of the glass wall: Wellington surveying his troops before the battle of Waterloo. Make that Napoleon.

  ‘You know me, West, I like a joke as much as the next man. Remember that corker I played on you on our first day here?’ I did. It hadn’t been funny then and it still wasn’t funny now. Bennett ignored the fact that I didn’t join in his chuckling at the memory and carried on. ‘But I really don’t think this is funny anymore. I don’t want to look like Mr Bloody Misery Guts by going in all heavy on whoever’s behind this, but I will have to take it upstairs to Bill Davis if this carries on. What do you think I should do?’

  I waited to see if he really was expecting an answer this time. I didn’t have a clue how he should reply to Olivia – and I didn’t really care. All that mattered to me at that moment was that my role in this confusion should remain hidden for as long as possible. For the rest of my life, would be a good start.

  ‘Well?’ Bennett’s hectoring voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘Come on – you know these people better than I do. What will it take to make them stop this bloody nonsense?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joseph,’ I said. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock on a Monday morning and already I was tired and wanted to go home. To crawl under my duvet until the world had woken from this hysteria and returned to dull normality. ‘I really can’t think of anyone who would do a thing like this, so I can’t help you. Sorry.’

  Bennett’s usual composure deserted him for a moment as he realised that, despite his best efforts to involve me, he was on his own. ‘You are fucking useless, West! I have no idea what those fat bastards in LA see in you. You’ve been a useless turd since the day we both started here. I’ll sort this out for myself and then I’ll tell Bill Davis about the whole bloody thing. And I’ll make sure he knows exactly how much help you’ve been. Now b
ugger off back to your cubicle while I deal with it.’

  I sloped off, leaving Bennett as I’d found him, hunched over his desk staring at his computer, like a heron at the water’s edge following a fish. I went back to my desk and pushed papers around as I watched the minutes tick slowly by towards lunchtime. After about an hour of minimal activity, I heard another ping. I had mail.

  From: JosephABennett@Askettbrown.co.uk

  To: CaddyMac@wannabe.com

  Bcc: Joseph West

  RE: WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?

  OK. We’ve had our bit of fun and it was a good laugh and all that but it really has to stop now. We are professional people and this kind of thing can easily get out of hand. So let’s put an end to it now before anyone says or does anything they’ll regret. I really don’t think either of us wants to see anyone getting into trouble over this nonsense so I suggest we cool it before things go too far.

  I sincerely hope that we can continue our relationship on a purely professional basis in the future and I trust that this will be acceptable to you too.

  Yours,

  Joseph A. Bennett

  Head of Entertainment and Media Division

  Although it was still some way off anyone’s definition of lunchtime, I left the office as soon as possible and went for a walk, ostensibly to buy that present for Polly but also because I needed to clear my head. Clearly it was Olivia who was pestering Bennett – nobody else would know about my stupid socks unless she’d posted an account of our illicit tryst on Facebook or put a photo of the offending items on Instagram – but why? And how would she react to his latest awful reply. She was a sweet girl and she didn’t deserve to be mistreated by that oaf. And could I really stand by and let it happen when the whole thing was my fault in the first place, just to save my own skin?

  When I got back to the office it was alive with rumours and not much work was being done. Polly seemed pleased with the designer sunglasses I’d managed to find her, but was far more interested in quizzing me about what had happened on my trip.

  ‘Have you heard about Benny?’ she warbled as she put the glasses down on my desk with barely a second glance. I prayed I hadn’t left any labels anywhere that could identify their source as London EC1 rather than downtown Manhattan. ‘Course, you have – you were with him, weren’t you?’

  ‘I only know what he’s told me,’ I lied. ‘He denies anything went on out there. He reckons it’s a couple of his mates at Buddy’s place winding him up.’

  ‘I didn’t think he had any mates over there,’ Polly replied, ‘and you were there. Surely you’d know if he’d shagged Olivia Finch.’

  ‘I wasn’t with him every second, Poll. And I certainly didn’t spend the nights with him. Askett Brown can still run to a separate room for each for us, you know.’

  Polly smiled. ‘Yeah, but you must have seen if he was talking to her or anything. Did you speak to her again? You didn’t set them up, did you?’

  I was probably blushing as I conceded that I had indeed spoken to Olivia at the party but had definitely not introduced her to Bennett. It felt like a police interrogation as Polly probed me for more inside gen she could feed to her colleagues. If information was power in the City, good gossip was like the uranium at the generator’s core. God forgive me, but I couldn’t resist adding: ‘But we didn’t leave the party together so I suppose anything could have happened after I left.’

  Polly shook her head thoughtfully. ‘In some ways I can believe it – you know, given what a bastard he is – but for the life of me I can’t see her going for him, can you? She seems such a beautiful person and he’s a complete and utter tosser. And if he had done it, wouldn’t he be bragging about it rather than trying to cover it up? He’s not usually so coy about his out-of-office activities, is he?’

  ‘I see your point,’ I replied, wondering if she had stumbled upon a fatal flaw in my hastily constructed plan, ‘but, remember, at the end of the day he is a married man. And I don’t think Buddy – or Bill Davis – would be too pleased if they found out what’s happened. I mean, what’s alleged to have happened.’

  ‘Well,’ said Polly as she scooped up her new sunglasses and made to walk away, ‘whether it’s true or not, Amanda has gone completely fucking ape shit. God knows what Mrs B. will say when she finds out.’

  MILL HILL, NORTH LONDON

  I left the office before five that evening, citing jet lag as the reason I couldn’t put in the usual twelve-hour day. I’d like to say I left early because I was keen to get home to spend some quality time with my family after being away for a whole week. That may even have been partly true. But the main reason was that I wanted to be well out of sight before Olivia woke up in LA and went online to see if her lover had replied to her latest e-mail. I was trying to outrun the Internet.

  I also had an important mission to attend to. After kissing Natasha and the kids ‘hello’, I sprinted up the stairs to our bedroom, pulled open the top drawer of my chest (we had matching ‘his’ and ‘hers’ furniture throughout our bedroom – identical cherry-wood chests of drawers, wardrobes, bookshelves and bedside cabinets all arranged in perfect symmetry) and started searching frantically for the smoking gun – the comedy socks that could pin the crime of my adultery on my weak, sloping shoulders. After a few minutes of fruitless excavation, an untidy pile of balled socks, odd socks, boxer shorts and briefs had spread across the floor by my feet.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ I heard Natasha say and looked round to see her standing in the doorway, leaning against one side like a drunken sailor against a lamp post. ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘What?’ I replied as if my wife had been addressing me in Serbo-Croat. ‘Looking for? I’m not looking for anything. I just thought it was high time I gave my underwear drawer a bit of a clear-out. There’s stuff in here I haven’t worn for years. Look!’ With some reluctance, I picked up a couple of pairs of perfectly good socks and a few of their unmatched cousins and threw them without ceremony into the waste-paper bin. Then I bent down and picked up the rest of my collection of undergarments and stuffed them back into the drawer. ‘That’s better,’ I said, straining to push it shut, and still wondering where the hell the incriminating items might be.

  ‘Are you feeling OK, love?’ Natasha said, a look of genuine concern spreading across her face. ‘Touch of jet lag? You do remember that I’m supposed to be going out this evening, don’t you? I’ve got my book group. Would you rather I cancelled? I haven’t actually managed to finish the book so I’m not too bothered about going.’

  ‘No, you go,’ I said, ‘I’ll be fine. It’s about time you had a good night out.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d call sitting with a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals discussing the latest Booker Prize-winner a good night out, but thank you. I could do with getting away from this place for a bit. Are you OK to get the kids’ tea sorted while I get ready?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, kissing her on the cheek as I brushed past her in the doorway. ‘No problem.’

  Following Natasha’s instructions, I went down to the kitchen and started to prepare the children’s tea, mixing up an off-white, glutinous, cheesy sauce which I then threw over some quick-cook pasta and doled out into their favourite bowls. As I sat down to watch them spooning the goo in the approximate direction of their hungry mouths, the realisation suddenly struck me: the evidence I was looking for would still be in amongst the dirty washing I’d brought back from New York. Leaving the children to eat, I sidled into the utility room to continue my search. It didn’t take me long to sift through the pile of laundry stacked up by the machine and find the guilty parties – my pair of black socks with the brightly coloured cartoon and the slogan picked out in red letters: ‘Have a Silly Saturday’. I rammed them into my trouser pockets – one to the left; one to the right – then raced back into the kitchen just as the first spoonful of cheesy pasta hit the wedding picture of my parents-in-law that hung above the breakfast bar, the product of Matthew
’s poor aim or, to be fair, Helen’s quick reactions in dodging the projectile he had aimed at her. His second salvo caught his sister square in the middle of the forehead.

  ‘Matthew! Stop that!’ I shouted, and heard my words echoed as Natasha arrived in the room, making exactly the same demand. She looked at me as if it was somehow my fault that our daughter was in floods of tears and thick, cheesy gloop was now sliding down her mother’s stern, unsmiling, monochrome face.

  ‘What is going on in here?’ Natasha shouted, directing the question at me, even though Matthew was still holding his spoon and reloading it with more of his dinner like a medieval soldier rearming his trebuchet. ‘Where exactly were you while your son was redecorating the room?’

  ‘I was here the whole time,’ I replied, then corrected myself, ‘almost the whole time. But I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head and—’

  Natasha cut me off. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing towards my groin.

  I looked down. A Mr Silly sock hung down from each of my pockets like the drooping ears of a basset hound, as if the unfortunate beast had charged me from behind and this was all that remained visible. Gingerly, I removed the socks from my pockets as if I was as surprised to see them there as she was. ‘Oh these,’ I said. ‘Well, um, I was just looking at how much washing I brought back from New York and thought I’d pull out anything that might live to fight another day. And these socks really aren’t too bad, so—’

  ‘Pass them over here,’ Natasha ordered, holding out a hand like a Gestapo officer wanting to check my papers. I did as I was told and she held each of the socks up to her nose in turn, then extended her arm to create a safer distance between the offending item and her nostrils. ‘Phew! If this is what not too bad smells like, I really don’t want to test the rest of it. Put them back in the pile, then clear up this mess. I’ll see you later. And Matthew, put that spoon down right now or I swear I will tip the rest of the plate over your head and see how you like it.’