Ordinary Joe

by Jon Teckman

  CITY OF LONDON

  First thing that next morning, I found myself in a modern, well-appointed dentist’s waiting room around the corner from my office, skimming through a well-thumbed magazine about high-performance cars, waiting for emergency treatment to sort out my missing teeth. Actually, I had the teeth with me, so technically they weren’t missing they just weren’t doing the job they were designed for any more. When I was called in to see the dentist, a brisk, efficient man named Hopper, I presented them to him like a cat offering its owner a dead bird. He looked at them, shook his head and announced, with all the mordant irony common to those who make a living from inflicting pain on others, that there was no more he could do for them. He invited me to sit down in his torture chair and open wide so he could examine what remained of my mouth. As I sat there with my jaw stretched to aching point, Hopper spoke swiftly in an indecipherable code to his baleful assistant, who looked as if she’d arrived at the surgery straight from a night on the town. Her stilettos click-clacked across the tile floor every time she delivered anything, an action executed with great reluctance, as if she hadn’t become a dental assistant in order to assist dentists. There was a whiff of stale alcohol, cigarettes and garlic whenever she passed my chair.

  Something about their demeanour suggested to me that they’d been out together the previous night and the evening had ended in a row. A week before, I wouldn’t have cared less what they’d been up to – as long as it didn’t impact on their ability to sort out my teeth as effectively and painlessly as possible – but now I felt some affinity with these casual fornicators. I was one of them. Perhaps there was a club I could join. With a crest and tie and monthly magazine – Adulterer’s Age: this month – Tackling Those Telltale Lipstick Stains and 20 Great Lies to Tell the Kids.

  I was shaken from my reverie by Mr Hopper telling me, in the insistent way of one who has already given an instruction and had it ignored, that I could close my mouth. ‘Well, Mr West,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve done quite a bit of damage to your upper gum. I can’t do anything permanent for you in terms of replacing the missing teeth until the gum is strong enough to take a proper procedure, so I’ll have to put in a temporary replacement to tide you over until I can do the full job. Is that all right?’ He smelled of carbolic soap and mouth freshener and had the chairside manner of a man who was already counting off his patients until he could get back onto the golf course.

  I nodded. Talking was still difficult and I tended to whistle every time I attempted a word with more than one syllable. I settled back in the chair, girding myself for the agony of my temporary ‘procedure’.

  ‘Great. If you could pop out to the front desk with Miss Stiletto,’ (not her real name, but I can’t be expected to remember every detail, can I?) ‘she’ll book you in for another appointment so we can get a temporary set fixed,’ he said, snapping off his plastic gloves.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I whistled. I was off to Cannes that Friday and could hardly travel to the greatest film festival of them all looking like a second-rate middle-weight. ‘I need those teeth by Thursday.’

  ‘This Thursday?’ Hopper laughed as if this was the most bizarre suggestion he’d ever heard. ‘I’m afraid that’s totally impossible, Mr West. The very best I might be able to do would be next Monday – if I’ve any free appointments.’

  ‘But it can’t wait until then,’ I whined. ‘I’m going to France on Friday. Do you know anyone else who could do something this week?’

  The smile drained from Hopper’s face, strangled by the dreadful fear that he might be about to lose a lucrative piece of business. A temporary repair, followed by two new front teeth and all paid for by private medical insurance? There were some top-of-the-range titanium-shafted irons resting on this – perhaps a whole new set of clubs.

  ‘I’ll tell you what. Come back in last thing on Thursday and I’ll see what I can do. It won’t be perfect because I won’t have time to order the new teeth. I’ll just have to use what I’ve got in the surgery. But I like a challenge!’ He turned to his assistant. ‘Could you book Mr West in after my final appointment on Thursday afternoon and then come back and tidy up this mess?’

  ‘Tidy it up yourself, wanker,’ Miss Stiletto muttered under her breath as she led me back out to reception.

  Rumours about my accident had reached Askett Brown before I did that morning. A wall of people greeted me as I emerged from the lift, as if they’d never seen an accountant with his two front teeth missing before. I had become a freak show. To the disappointment of the mob, I kept my mouth tightly shut as I made my way to my desk. The ever-faithful Polly was quickly at my side, clearing me a path through the throng like Moses traversing the Red Sea. ‘I’ll get us both a cup of coffee from the machine,’ she said, helping me into my chair as if I’d had my kneecaps smashed as well. ‘But first give us a flash of your teeth. I mean, the gap.’

  When I was sure no one else was looking, I opened my mouth an inch or so and drew back my top lip. Polly gasped. ‘Blimey,’ she said, ‘it’s in a right state. He wasn’t messing about, was he? Did you land one on him, too? No, wait. I’ll get the coffees and you can tell me all about it.’

  I turned on my computer while I waited for Polly to return. I knew she would be a while as she had a whole floor of people to update on the state of my mushed-up mouth on her way to the coffee machine and back. I opened my e-mail account to find the usual stack of miscellaneous rubbish, together with a couple of interesting messages about Cannes. Then I noticed one from Bennett, sent that morning. The subject line read: ‘Fw: Sorry’. For one glorious moment I thought he might actually be apologising. In fact, he was simply forwarding someone else’s apology:

  From: Joseph Bennett

  To: Joe West

  Subject: Fw: Sorry

  Hey, Joe. Hope the mouth isn’t too bruised after yesterday. Good fun wasn’t it? What do you make of this? My pal’s back again but not quite as wacko as before!!!

  Joseph A Bennett

  Head of Entertainment and Media Division

  From: CaddyMac@wannabe.com

  To: JosephABennett@Askettbrown.org.uk

  Subject: Sorry

  Hey, English. I’m really really sorry about that horrible message I sent you the other day. I know it’s not easy for you with the wife and kids and everything and I guess I’m just acting like a spoilt brat. I spoke to my analyst yesterday and he reckons that with what I’ve been through with my dad and all that shit I should respect you for the choices you’ve made and I know he’s right but it’s just too hard to let you go so easy. I’m just the poor girl who never got anything she wanted as a kid, and now I’m a rich girl who’s used to getting whatever she wants.

  And what I want right now is you, baby!

  I’m flying into Cannes on Saturday – so exciting! I’ve only been once before and that was for like not even a whole day. Bet you’ve been loads of times – want to show me around?!! I can give Buddy and the PR guys the slip and we can take ourselves off somewhere quiet. It sure would be good to have the chance to talk properly. I’m not trying to wreck your life, English, but I cant bear the thought of not seeing you. So what do you say? Friends again?

  Olly xx

  The first thing that struck me was that that overgrown school bully thought that knocking out someone’s teeth was a bit of fun. Then I spotted a king-sized elephant trap: Olivia clearly wasn’t so mad with me that she was going to do the decent thing and ignore me for the rest of her life – buoyed up by the advice of some quack therapist, she was going to make this work for her if it was the last thing she did. And, if Bennett replied to this e-mail, he would almost certainly tell her that he’d never been to Cannes before, whereas Olivia knew that I was a veteran of several campaigns.

  I drafted a reply to Bennett explaining that my face was still aching like a bastard and that I was facing a series of long and painful dental procedures to sort the damage out, but I knew that would just add to his fun so deleted it again
. Instead, I sent him a short note suggesting we talk about this at his earliest convenience, in the context of our overall strategy for the Cannes trip. Seconds later, my computer pinged to announce Bennett’s reply:

  From: Joseph Bennett

  To: Joe West

  Subject: Re: Re: Fw: Sorry

  You must be a mind reader, mate! Bill wants to talk to us about that very thing this very afternoon. Head Honcho’s office: 2 o’clock. See you there!

  Joseph A Bennett

  Head of Entertainment and Media Division

  Polly had arrived back with my coffee and was reading over my shoulder – there could be few secrets between an accountant and his PA.

  ‘He’s very pally all of a sudden, isn’t he?’ Polly said. I explained that in Bennett’s strange worldview, forged on the rugby pitches of Old England, the quickest way to a man’s heart was to fight him, lose and take defeat like a man. I’m not sure that lying in a pool of my own blood, curled up like an agoraphobic foetus and moaning like a clubbed seal, met all his criteria for worthiness as an opponent, but he certainly seemed to have warmed towards me. To be fair, I hadn’t actually cried when he hit me. Not in front of him anyway.

  ‘Nah. I reckon he’s shit-scared that you’re going to press charges or insist Davis fires him. You’ve got him on the run now, Joe,’ Polly said, easing herself off the edge of my desk. A group of sightseers had gathered around us, gawping at me as if I was the bearded lady. ‘Jesus,’ she called over her shoulder as she sauntered back to her desk, ‘we should be charging ’em for a butcher’s!’

  I ate my lunch – two bananas mashed with a spoon and an orange and strawberry smoothie sucked through a straw – at my desk, then made my way up to Bill Davis’s office. Ordinarily, months would go by without me seeing the inside of his executive suite and here I was making my third visit in the space of a week. I met Bennett in the outer office and we waited to be called in. He was happier than I’d seen him since before we sat down to watch the film in New York, proudly showing off his handiwork to Bill’s secretary and the work experience lad who came in to deliver the afternoon mail. When we were invited into Bill’s office, we discovered that Dai Wainwright was already there.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ Bill said cheerily. Bennett offered an effusive greeting of his own in reply, while I just grunted, trying to keep my mouth closed for as long as possible. ‘Ah, Mr West,’ Davis continued as we took our usual seats, ‘I hear you’ve been in the wars!’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that, Bill,’ said Bennett, before I could offer my explanation of this unfortunate chain of events. ‘We were letting off a bit of steam with this boxing exercise and poor old West ducked into one of my better shots. I’d knocked him off-balance with a nifty little combo and then – bam! – he swayed straight into a right cross. Caught you flush in the old gob, didn’t it, mate?’

  I nodded, my remaining teeth clamped together behind tightly shut lips.

  ‘I had a word with Roddy earlier about what happened, actually,’ Wainwright chipped in. ‘He said you caught him a real cracker, Joseph. Said poor old West’s head snapped back like it was on a piece of elastic. He was a bit worried at first, what with the way he went down and all that blood, so he was relieved to hear it was all OK. It’s a good exercise, that one, isn’t it? Old Roddy does love that holistic stuff. Mens sana in corpore sano and all that.’

  ‘All OK’? I’d lost two teeth because of that stupid bloody exercise and my daughter still couldn’t look at me without crying. I felt as if I’d slipped into a parallel universe where punishment beatings were seen as a routine part of the working day. Where poor performers weren’t fired – they were taken out and shot.

  ‘Yah,’ said Bennett. ‘The problem was that West didn’t make any allowance for the punch, didn’t, you know, ride up with it from the floor.’ He stood up to demonstrate what he meant, bending his knees and arching his shoulders and head back to reduce the impact as the imaginary blow landed. ‘I don’t suppose they teach boxing in the state sector these days, do they? People like West leave school with no idea what to do when someone thumps them.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ agreed Wainwright with a rueful smile. ‘That’s why the kids all carry knives these days. Mind you, I went to a secondary modern and I like to think I can handle myself. But then, you see, I had my rugby. If you couldn’t look after yourself on the pitch you were in real trouble – especially as I wasn’t the biggest. Had to get my retaliation in first, if you know what I mean. And if you belted one of those big buggers up-front, you wanted to make damn sure they didn’t get back up again!’ Wainwright laughed at the memory of unprovoked assaults on the rugby field and the other two joined him, recalling fond martial memories of their own.

  I sat there aghast. Where I came from, having your teeth knocked out wasn’t an anecdote – it was a police matter.

  ‘I’m sorry, West,’ Davis said once the nostalgia attack had subsided. ‘With all this talk about what happened, I haven’t asked how you are.’ For a moment, a rare, fleeting moment, I felt cared for; that someone was actually interested in my welfare. Then he added: ‘Go on – open up! Let’s have a look at the damage.’

  I opened my mouth and the three of them peered into it like Inuit around a fishing hole. Bennett gave them a guided tour, explaining with some pride how the force of the blow had probably reduced the collateral damage to the gums because the teeth were removed so cleanly. The others were equally impressed, ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ in all the right places. When I finally got the command to close my mouth again, I hoped that my humiliation was complete. It hadn’t even begun.

  ‘So,’ said Davis when they had retaken their seats and helped themselves to fresh coffee, ‘how was the rest of the day with, er, what’s his name, Dai?’

  ‘Rodney. Rodney James.’

  ‘Ah yes. He’s the fellow I did the session with last year, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ smiled Wainwright, basking in reflected glory.

  ‘Yes. Nice chap. One of your lot, isn’t he, Dai?’

  ‘What? Do you mean a sheep-shagger, Bill?’ said Bennett.

  Wainwright looked put out, but Davis laughed heartily at Bennett’s witticism. A moment later Wainwright laughed too.

  ‘As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,’ Davis resumed with a smile and a knowing wink in Bennett’s direction, ‘how did the rest of the day go? Did you sort yourselves out? Listen, guys, you know you’re both important members of the AB team. We really don’t want to lose either of you.’

  ‘Thanks, Bill,’ said Bennett. ‘Yah, the rest of the day went well. Didn’t it, West? Well, just the morning actually. We had to stop after West’s little accident.’

  ‘Hear that, Dai,’ Davis interrupted, ‘make sure we only pay the bugger half his money!’ Wainwright nodded, not sure whether Davis was joking.

  Bennett continued with the zeal of the recent convert to the joys of management training. ‘He did that thing where we answered a few questions and he told us what colour we were and what animal. It was pretty interesting, actually.’

  ‘I bet you came out as something purple, didn’t you, Joseph? A purple stallion? Am I right?’ Wainwright asked.

  ‘Spot on, Taff!’ said Bennett, impressed. ‘A mighty purple stallion, leading his people into battle!’ Bill Davis also looked at his head of HR with paternal pride. As we had already established that Wainwright had spoken to Rodney James earlier that morning, it was clear, to me at least, that this was not some great feat of impromptu psychological profiling, but the less impressive achievement of remembering something he’d been told an hour before.

  ‘I’m trying to remember what I was,’ said Davis, smiling in the manner of someone who knew really but was too modest to say.

  ‘You were a White Bear, Bill,’ Wainwright cooed. ‘White signifying wisdom, while the bear shows that although you are a warm and giving person, you’re not to be messed around with.’ I wondered whether the seal populatio
ns of the Arctic Circle would agree with this somewhat idealised view of the wise and cuddly polar bear.

  ‘I,’ Wainwright continued without waiting to be asked, ‘I am a Red Kite. Rodney actually changed the name of that one just for me. Initially I was a Red Fox, signifying passion and cunning, but I’ve always loved the red kites, you know, those huge majestic birds of prey. I used to watch them circling over the hills and valleys back home like great eagles. Marvellous they were. So Rodney said, “You know what Dai, I’ll recalibrate my instrument and you can be a red kite if that’s what you want to be.” Lovely like that, he is.’

  I sat, silently hoping that if I didn’t say anything they might forget I was there and move on to the next item on the agenda. They didn’t.

  ‘What was that other one?’ Davis asked, ‘That weird creepy one? Some kind of weasel, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You mean the meerkat, Bill!’ Wainwright shrieked.

  ‘That’s the feller!’ said Davis. ‘Aren’t they the ones that scurry around trying to avoid treading in everyone else’s you-know-what?’

  ‘That’s it!’ jumped in Bennett, ‘Dreadful little creatures, aren’t they, West, those little yellow meerkats?’ He and Wainwright were laughing heartily now. Clearly you didn’t need feelings to be a stallion or a kite.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Davis, joining in the fun, ‘That wasn’t you, was it, West? Oh dear, how funny!’

  Or a sodding polar bear.

  When the three of them had stopped chuckling and regained some semblance of professional composure, Wainwright brought the conversation back to the subject at hand. ‘All joking aside,’ he said, dabbing at his eyes with a monogrammed hanky, ‘this does help us see where the problems lie with these guys. It’s no surprise that a Purple Stallion and a Yellow Meerkat find it difficult to get along. Completely different mindsets, you see, your stallion and your meerkat.’

  Davis nodded. ‘Makes you appreciate why that bloody actress latched onto Joseph though, doesn’t it? You can’t see a foxy little number like her falling for a bloody gerbil or whatever the hell it was, can you?’