by Dan Tyte
Todd freaked.
The rumour mill had gone into overdrive during his leave of absence. He was almost impossibly good looking, chiseled, clean cut. He smelt good and always matched his socks to his tie. Someone had seen him on a Sunday morning on the riverside leaving a brunch bar hand-in-hand with an effeminate but powerful looking Latin man. There and then Todd pulled the frame open just enough for his muscular body to fit through the gap and jumped outside, twelve floors down to the street below. During the stunned silence, a solitary balloon had followed him out and blew across the backdrop of blue sky and steel and glass.
I did not want to be Todd Spinks.
Christy’s eyes called for a response.
‘Look, if you must know, I’ve taken some time off. I’d been feeling a bit run-down recently and needed to take a rain check.’
‘Well, you were sick the last time I saw you…’ her eyes smiled playfully.
‘Very funny, Christy.’
‘Jesus, Bill, when did you get so serious?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘Look, I’m sorry about that, okay? Really fucking mortified.’
‘It’s okay, Bill.’
‘It’s not okay.’
‘It is okay.’
‘It just wasn’t supposed to be like that is all.’
‘What wasn’t?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Serious and mysterious. Who is this new Bill? Has Miles scooped out your soul and inserted a standard issue Morgan & Schwarz PR robot 5000 in its place?’ A laugh broke out of my uptight lips.
‘That’s more like it. Bill might just be in there after all…’ Her dark eyes weighed me up. ‘…Well, whatever you’ve been doing, you look the better for it.’
‘Thanks. I think.’ I took a sip of my tea. It had gone cold.
‘So who’s been looking after you?’ She clearly wasn’t finished.
‘Me. I’ve been looking after me… and my mum I suppose.’
‘Your mum?’
‘Yes, I spent a few days at her house.’
‘How old are you, Bill?’
‘29-years-old, Christy.’
‘Do not become the 30-something who lives at home with his mother. Not attractive.’ We both laughed this time.
‘Anyway, this is supposed to be your buddy session, not mine. How have you been while I’ve been recuperating in the bosom of my family?’
‘I’ve been good, Bill, really good.’ Her eyes darted to the left, betraying her answer (we regularly had body language reading classes at Morgan & Schwarz, they helped us read clients’ responses to our scheming). ‘Ever since I washed the carrot off my suede heels, I’ve been really good.’
‘Ha fucking ha. Still got that GSOH then?’
‘As ever.’ This felt nice. Comfortable. Two old friends making up after a misunderstanding. Two old friends. Friends.
‘And work?’ I asked, remembering my pastoral duty of care.
‘Work is… you know… work. To be honest with you, it feels like I’ve always been here.’
‘Like in The Shining?’
‘The what?’
‘Erm, The Shining. The film, and the, erm, book, you know?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Okay. Jack Nicholson had always been in the hotel. That’s the twist.’
‘Well, thanks for spoiling it for me,’ she said, cackled and punched me on the arm. Note to self: do not share pop culture references with the young.
‘Well, just like Jack Nicholson, I feel like I’ve always been here. Like part of the furniture.’
‘Is that because Trent tried to sit on you?’ I just couldn’t help myself.
‘BILL!’
She snorted. It was the first time I’d heard her snort. It was a definite fault.
‘You. Are. Terrible!’ she shouted in staccato.
‘Yeah, just kidding.’
I wasn’t.
‘Well the old Bill is well and truly back,’ she said.
‘Maybe.’
‘Definitely.’
I felt my heartbeat speed up and a bead of sweat drip down my forehead.
‘So, everything is good?’ I asked.
‘Everything is good.’ Again her dark eye darted.
‘And you know how to file an expenses claim?’
‘I know how to file an expenses claim.’
‘And you’re aware of your nearest fire exit in case of an emergency?’
‘I am well aware of my nearest fire exit in case of an emergency,’ she repeated back, a little too enthusiastically. She was a few degrees left of slapping her thigh and singing ‘hi ho’. But she wasn’t 100 per cent. I could tell. Her black eyes dilated when she lied, like they did with all the good things in life. Booze, drugs, screwing and little white lies told a tale on your eyes. Maybe she was just compartmentalising for a friend in need. Yes, that was it. A friend.
‘Well, we seem to have ticked all of the boxes required of the buddy session system,’ I said. She made a tick in the air with the long fingers and bitten down nails.
‘Thanks, buddy,’ she said.
‘No problem. buddy,’ I said. This was another one of those moments. A chance to say something.
‘So I guess I’ll see you around,’ she said, ‘At the photocopier, the water cooler, the Christmas lunch, that kind of thing.’ She was laughing at me. I think she was being sarcastic but I couldn’t be sure. Sweat was now impeding my judgement. Speak up, Bill. Now, for fuck’s sake.
‘Well, yeah, we could meet at those places,’ I said.
I swallowed.
‘Or we could do other things too…’
‘Like sit next to each other in Monday meets?’ she said.
‘Well, yeah, that too, but…’
‘Yes, Bill…’
She was playing with me.
‘We could do other things, like not at work things I mean…’
She was silent now and her lips had straightened and narrowed from her previous laugh into a strange kind of impassive interrogation.
‘You know, I could do with a friend at the moment…’
Why did I say a friend? I was panicking.
‘Sure,’ she replied, ‘me too.’
Her too.
Her too.
‘So, where are you suggesting then…?’
Think, Bill. Think.
‘Well, there’s this thing I have to do next week…’
‘Go on…’
‘I’ve got to give a talk to my old school.’
‘Your old school?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, my old school. About PR. It’s a careers thing, you know.’
‘Oh, really. Sure. It sounds…’
‘It’s just I’m a bit nervous and could do with some support.’
‘You got it.’ She seemed disappointed? Fuck, Bill, your old fucking school?
I threw a hook out there.
‘We could go for a drink afterwards?’
‘Sure, a drink.’
‘Great.’
Fuck, Bill, you didn’t drink. The Ten Commandments.
Fuck, Bill.
‘It’s a date,’ I said, instantly regretting it.
‘It’s a date,’ she said. ‘A very cheap one.’
She shot me a wink and skipped out of the room. Woah. We kind of had a date. One that involved public speaking without booze. For the first time. And then going for a drink without actually having a drink. For the first time.
Maybe I would have a drink.
Fuck, Bill. Be strong. Hang on in there.
You. Had. A. Date. A ray of sunshine through the shitstorm and the sweats. Something to get out of bed for that was less than 40 % proof but twice as intoxicating.
I walked through the office with a new found spring in my step. ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ played in my head. I was in slow motion. Pete was to my left in the midst of one of his regular spring-cleans, sorting chronologically through tabloid newspapers, cle
aning in between the keys of his ergonomic keyboard, sneezing at the disturbance of dust particles. Trent was to my right, minimising incriminating no-strings hook-up web windows with the agility of a sex-crazed computer-literate cat. Carol was at a filing cabinet patiently searching for an invoice to a client with initials between A and C, balanced on a box file to reach the top drawer. She smiled warmly in my direction. Jill was on the line, aggressively swirling the cord around her wedding finger, remonstrating over an incongruous headline with, I assumed, a nonchalant sub-ed, until redness highlighted the crow’s feet around her eyes. She snarled warmly in my direction. I at once felt both at one and completely apart from them. Morgan & Schwarz was like space travel: a strange feeling of claustrophobia and agoraphobia all at the same time, trapped by the small ship but terrified of the great expanse outside, leaving you rooted, terrified, firmly to the spot.
Chapter 21
My old school had held an annual careers week ever since it had opened as a front for lazy but ruthless nuns. The local diocese had obviously thought it too much of a crowded marketplace to go into the waste disposal business as cover so decided upon secondary education as a means to manipulate, torture and extol. Back in my day, careers week involved wheeling out a selection of self-satisfied nobodies. There was the disagreeable bank manager – the father of the deputy head boy (a 6 ft ginger bully who excelled at both lacrosse and the wedgie) – who dressed down a school hall’s worth of 16-year-olds for failing to save a proportion of their pocket money or desultory paper-round earnings. Then there was the grey accountant who did nothing to dispel the myth that the profession was littered with boring men completing boring tasks and who invariably had mid-life emotional breakdowns and plotted out their affairs with teenage rent boys on Excel spreadsheets. And not forgetting the eccentric dentist who passed around a plaster cast of Mother Superior’s cavity-filled mouth, resplendent with a pair of ruby crowns. Mother Superior did not approve of the ‘show and tell’ aspect of the talk and cut it short, before instructing a pair of burly brothers to escort the puzzled mouth doctor off the premises. For the remainder of the hour we were kindly given ‘free time’, which involved sitting upright, still and in absolute silence. Her dentures never had the same sheen after that event.
Mother Superior was the axis of ecumenical evil on which St Ignacius Roman Catholic High School span. She ruled her kingdom with silent menace, extraordinarily expressive nostrils and a legion of cruel nuns, callous monks and ambitious laypeople eager to do her bidding. This regime had little bearing on the minds of my contemporaries, who were some of the sickest, most perverted little fuckers I’ve ever known.
And I work in PR.
She had died last year and received a quiet funeral and an obituary in The Times. Apparently she’d worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, so it just goes to show you never can tell. The replacement headmistress – Sister Beatrix – was a moderniser, a reformer, a new, hip, youngish nun-slinger keen to pull the Catholic church kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Which is where I came in. The school was putting together a week-long itinerary of talks, trips and trade fairs that reflected the shifting industrial sands of the brave new world in which we lived. I was joined on the bill by a graphic designer, an app designer, an interior designer and an experience designer, whatever the fuck that was. It was like an even shitter Glastonbury with equally righteous headliners, less drugs and cleaner toilets. A letter had landed on Miles’ desk and when he clocked the St Ignacius insignia, he assigned me to the job. Said I’d probably be better able to relate to the kids, whatever the fuck that meant. Couldn’t help thinking it was a veiled kidney punch at my perceived juvenility. And yes, I realise that is a somewhat teenage reaction. I was just getting into character.
Which was apt for how I felt on the way to meet Christy. I had worse butterflies than a council estate zoo. I was on at
2 p.m., the warm-up for a comic book artist. Miles had given me the afternoon off, thanking me for putting a tick in Morgan & Schwarz’s CSR box. Following on so soon from my stint serving food to the bums, I was close to becoming the company’s most altruistic member of staff. Just had to try not to punch anyone this time. It wasn’t so long ago that given a few hours off I’d have run straight to the nearest boozer and sunk a pint or six. Instead I was en route to meet Christy in a coffee shop near the campus. I fucking hated coffee shops. Christy was on a day’s leave to deal with some ‘family issues’ (Jill’s inverted commas, not mine), but had insisted she could still make our date. Well, not that we’d said it was a date. But it kind of was. Wasn’t it?
Anyway, the sickness somersaulting around my stomach was not helped by passing the public houses I’d escaped to from school. Past The Good Companions where I’d got served my first pint, using a self-laminated fake ID claiming I was a 22-year-old Theology undergraduate (ambitious on both counts). At any one given time, there could be up to twenty Rob Burgesses in the pub at once. We’d all photocopied the same classmate’s older brother’s NUS card. Past The Pig and Whistle, where I’d tried to show off to Stacey Taylor by challenging a shaven headed cider drinker to a game of winner stays on. I’d put my 50p on the side of the pool table, swallowed hard and eyed the scene with a nonchalance that could only be attributed to spending all my dinner money on strong continental lager. Inwardly, I was shitting myself. Stacey seemed indifferent and more interested in the video jukebox. I was a swan. An underage drinking swan. Paddle beneath the water, Billy boy. On my first shot, I ripped right through the cloth and spilt his pint on the follow-through. I bolted out of there so fast it was the only time I’d ever made double economics on a Tuesday afternoon.
When I arrived she was sat in the window, reading an indistinguishable Penguin classic. She looked so perfect I decided to stay and watch her for a moment. It was a slightly risky manoeuvre. If she caught me stood there, staring, I’d have to do a star jump and mouth: ‘surprise’. I figured it was worth it. Anyway, I could do with a minute to wipe the sweat from my forehead. I’d seen a million girls in a million coffee shops over the years (okay, pubs) and wondered who they were waiting for, where they’d been and where they were going. On the occasions I’d found their story out it’d either been a bawdy limerick or a long-running series with no discernible character development. But not this time. The girl with the alive red hair, the girl with the black blurred eyes, the girl with the warm, beautiful face was waiting for me. Bill McDare. Granted, to accompany me to a talk to some jumped-up teenagers. But still.
‘Bill…’
‘Christy…’
Ah, the awkwardness of the greeting. A handshake? A hug? A kiss? On the cheek? On both cheeks? Or play it cool? I’d once headbutted a date, mistakenly going for the lips when she offered the shoulder. Mild concussion had been the early death knell for a Werner Herzog classic and a sharing platter at an arthouse cinema. I’d decided against fighting over the prawn tempura and sacked the subtitles off for cold beer and clinical cocaine. Let’s hope lightning didn’t strike twice.
I adopted the laissez-faire approach a life at capitalism’s coalface had made inevitable and just stood there. She took the lead, put her bare hairless arms around me and squeezed. For two seconds. Which might not sound like a long time, but caught in the moment time turned malleable, stretchable. I could have ran marathons in the time she held me. I could have completed a Rubix cube in the dark. Instead I thought about putting my hands on her arse.
I didn’t.
‘Ooooh.’ She made a noise more at home in the shakedown to close a yoga session. ‘It’s good to see you.’
I’d only seen her yesterday. I hadn’t returned from the Western Front. What could this mean?
‘Likewise, likewise. Thanks for doing this. You know, you didn’t have to, especially if you’ve got other things on your plate.’
I was fishing. Suggestion was my maggot.
‘No, it’s fine, Bill. I wanted to,’ she replied.
‘How’s your day off so far, then?�
�� I repitched my rod.
‘Christ, Bill, I think I need something a bit stronger than a latte to start opening that box!’
‘…would you like a…’
‘…no it’s fine I’ll…’
‘Let me get you a…’ We both stood up. The small table rocked and her book (Crime and Punishment) lost its place. ‘Look, Chris, sit down, take a deep breath and I’ll get you a drink.’ She smiled a smile that wouldn’t have been out of place on a nurse’s face at the end of a night shift. Her dark eyes looked tired.
‘Thank you.’
‘Now, there’s no booze in this place so how about I get you an Americano and we both perk the fuck up?’
She laughed.
‘Thank you.’
I hit the coffee bar. After my early indecision, I was playing the assertive role popular culture led me to believe womenfolk liked.
‘It’s my brother,’ she said. I smiled. I tried my best conciliatory eyes. ‘Again. He’s been expelled from school this morning.’
‘Oh no, Christy, what did he do?’ If I had the details I could help her. I was a helper. I had tissue shoulders.
‘He flipped out two days ago and called the teacher a cunt.’
‘Jesus, that seems a bit harsh…’ She just looked at me.
‘…Expelling him for that I mean. If we had the same rules at Morgan & Schwarz, we’d have to leave Carol and Pete man the fort.’
‘I think it’s a bit different in school, Bill.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so… any advice in handling errant children in light of this afternoon’s engagement?’ Her face screamed ‘too soon’. I’d tried to lighten the mood. I hadn’t banked on getting a mouthy teenager in my hot-new-girlfriend bundle. Christy took a deep breath and exhaled, pushing her average-sized breasts towards me.
‘Oh, Bill, it’s not his fault. He barely gets any sleep because of the nightmares, which means I barely get any sleep, and he gets irritable and the teacher was pushing him about a piece of homework he hadn’t done. I’m not trying to excuse his behaviour, you know, just trying to understand it.’
