by Jan Vivian
If it meant all of that, the uncertainty, she might as well resort to a dating agency.
But, the last few days had awoken other hopes, love and a few fears of what the future for them would hold.
How she felt about Monty was new and deep. It would be seen by her friends as ‘too bloody soon…uncertain…a passionate office fling to remember,’ but they enjoyed the luxury of a settled relationship or one as certain as the times and individuals allowed. She didn’t go for seemed to be a life on emotional credit and hoped that with Monty she wasn’t taking on that burden too.
She had been alone for a while, or longer than she had ever dreamt possible. And then…and then she meets a guy with whom she tumbled into bed after a whirlwind courtship, enjoyed being loved in uncommon surroundings; she has met and been loved by an engaging impetuous guy who is still finding his way in work and life; she has been with Monty, a guy who has brought one thing to her. No, it’s not the sex although that is special already; no, it’s the certainty that you were right to wait for a special guy, someone she really does want to see and go with again, someone who finds the few special words to make her feel she’s made no mistake in being with him and planning for the day the meet up again.
‘Don’t change,’ he asks and Monty kisses her hand. ‘I hope us being apart for a while won’t change how you feel…’
The spring of tears is in her eyes but she won’t concede to them and blurts out. ‘It won’t…it won’t, Monty.’
‘You’ll see me again…I’m counting on that to get me through the next few days, maybe weeks. I can’t see this uncertainty going on for much longer. Soon, I’ll know where the projects I’m involved with are going. Once that’s settled anything’s possible for both you and me.’
Anna nodded dumbly and met his kisses unashamedly. Being spontaneous was how it went for the man and she could yet fall in love with him.
8
Changes
Monty couldn’t sleep; he had tossed and turned, had thrashed about if the disarray of the sheets on the bed was anything to go by. He looked at the bedside clock; it showed two-thirty. Anna’s scent, even if it was faint, was on the pillows. Perhaps that explained his restlessness; it offered a reminder of all that he had found with her.
He switched on the bedside light and scrabbled for his i-phone. Messages had been exchanged late in the evening and he chose to read them through once more.
Anna, my special one (!) – I guess you’ll be wrecked by the time you read this. Words aren’t enough to say thanks for the wonderful times we had together. We’ll make it through…but I don’t know when or how yet. I’m standing on the edge…want you here. Lol – M xx
M, you great lov(er!)ing guy – I stayed up just to wait, hoping to read through a note from you. Guys text first if they care and I’ve found out that you do (it very well)! Trip okay…keep thinking of u and what’s to come (!). Can’t stop. Everything’s already quieter after our times together. Again please – soon as poss! A xx
He took a leak. The noise echoed in the confined space of the wash area he had so recently shared with Anna and where they had showered, smeared the lather over excited skins and told each other it would be like that again between them.
Jeez! He hoped that was so as he flopped onto the bed and switched off the bedside light.
No sooner had he done that than his i-phone trilled.
‘What now?’ he cursed, reaching for the contraption before the screen’s light faded.
‘Hola!’ Tomas Saenz called out in greeting.
‘Hola, Tomas! You pick your moments!’
‘It’s the only time I know you may speak to me!’ Tomas laughed. ‘Alone are you?’
‘Yeah…don’t remind me.’
‘That’s the reason you took the call so quickly…no distractions!’ His friend continued to tease.
‘Look…’ Monty began sternly, his patience worn thin by this call and what he was being reminded of.
‘You could have answered my calls, Monty…read my messages? There have been a few.’
‘I told you…I’ve been busy, and I’ve been distracted. Sorry, but things at work and someone I’ve met have done that.’
‘Pretty is she? You kept that quiet.’
‘It happened in a rush…’
‘Pretty is she, I asked.’
‘Very. She’s one of the bosses…young and clever.’
‘So, she’s your type then?’
‘Yeah…now look? Can we…?’
‘Get to the point?’
‘Yeah…’
‘Meet me, have a few beers like we used to do in better times, amigo?’
‘When?’
‘Soon as possible…’
‘I can’t say when just now but will call you in the morning, the late morning after I’ve checked things out at BIM.’
‘Okay,’ Tomas said with concern on his voice. He had picked up on Monty’s more cautious ways of telling it. ‘Are you really okay?’
‘Sure…I miss a great chick. Tell me,’ Monty asked in a confiding tone, ‘why call me so late? It can’t be just for a chat? Have you been with the ladies in your life?’
Tomas laughed. ‘I’ll tell you all about that and more…when I see you.’
‘Okay, fine,’ Monty said, disappointed not to have been brought up to date with events in his pal’s life. ‘Now, thanks and adios amigo. I’m going to get some rest.’
‘Shagged out are you?’
Tomas received no answer to that as Monty closed the call. I could say the same about you, Tomas, my friend.
He had long ago given up on wondering what Tomas Saenz’s tastes in women were. Beatrix was a divorcee who made claims upon his friend that Tomas responded to happily and, as he had often heard of it from him, ‘energetically’.
The jobs market was rather thin, non-existent in fact, for young guys like Tomas. It didn’t do for him to dwell on his own circumstances for too long, now that Miguel was prowling about intent, perhaps, on finding a reason to terminate his internship. If it happened the news would still come as a blow and at an unexpected time; projects were coming in that he had played an important role in creating for the business.
He smiled as he thought of that unlikely pair, Tomas and Beatrix; what had begun as a ‘loose’ arrangement and at Beatrix’s sole behest had become a settled routine. He was obviously doing something right in the beds they shared; the locations changed according to Beatrix’s need for variety and to make their trysts have a sense of adventure. She liked her toys too, so Tomas revealed when a few glasses of beer had loosened his tongue.
When he had first met her, Beatrix readily confessed to an affection for her young ‘cariño’, or darling. Tomas made her feel good again about herself after a messy divorce, even by Spanish standards, and paying for his attention was a small price to pay for that and being taken out of herself for an hour or so.
It remained a business arrangement.
Beatrix had readily admitted that he was the only one for her after a few had bothered at calling the number put in a newspaper’s classified columns under ‘Privados’. Tomas had told him that the wording had been blunt and to the point; in his case he had also reached rock-bottom by the time he saw the ad. Tomas wanted a diversion from the realities of unemployment and life at the margin; he would be paid for the sex he brought back into Beatrix’s otherwise lonely life.
She worked; he didn’t at anything meaningful until she had succumbed to his enchanting ways and in the most bizarre of circumstances.
The deal between them was soon struck and they’d been at it for six months now; Beatrix had yet to tire of him and Tomas didn’t have to look too far for others like Beatrix, except the other woman he had chosen, not the other way about, was married.
‘Fear of discovery sharpens the technique,’ Tomas had been heard to quip. Trousering eighty or a hundred Euros for a shot or two, with both women, made the risk and the uncertainty of the arrangement worth the trouble.
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Monty settled under the cool sheets, reduced the fan-speed on the air-con system above the bed and felt ready for sleep.
What else was there for Tomas to tell him other than the old story that he was being paid to get laid? That was but of conversational interest, surely?
9
Goodbye to Known Ways
The morning had passed quickly and with the breaking of good news.
Projects in which he had played a role of some importance were moving to the pre-contract stage between the client companies and BIM. Cost plans had been mapped and priced, agreed by prospective clients, three no less, and Monty knew only too well that Manolo Aragonés, the CEO of the BIM’s Spanish division, would now squeeze the margins in BIM’s favour wherever he could.
‘We make the client’s money go further,’ was the mantra and one of the man’s key phrases. It was nothing new; Monty had heard it repeatedly at Barca’s university long ago, during a year out.
He had reason now to wonder what the afternoon’s meeting with Manolo held in store for him. It had been hastily convened, but that was often Manolo’s ways of it. He thought to gain an advantage over you by leaving little time to prepare.
It was one of his favourite negotiating techniques.
Those responsible for getting in the projects were congratulated at the day’s pre-start meeting, and Monty heard his name said in passing rather than in the fulsome ways others had been spoken of.
He had taken that as a sign that things might again be said to him, later.
Juanita looked very pleased with herself. He caught her staring at him across the room and chose to go over to her and offer congratulation upon her success. One of the ‘three’ was hers, the marketing of a health screening project funded by government but with the risks under-written by EU funds.
‘It can’t get better than that,’ Juanita had told him some weeks ago, ‘if it comes in.’
Well, it had and she couldn’t keep from smiling out of relief and pleasure at her success.
‘I knew it would come in for you,’ he said graciously. ‘It’s only fair after all the work…and the hours, you’ve put in.’
‘Thank you, Monty,’ she beamed; mispronouncing his name had always been allowed to her. ‘We get our place in the sun, at last…after today’s announcements.’
‘I hope so…and, in your case that’s true.’
He had never under-estimated Juanita’s determination to succeed. Her lovely smile was seen whatever was going down around her. It exuded a quiet confidence, or resolve, that she would get through no matter what the obstacles were that she had to overcome. That smile made you look a little closer and he did so again now, only for an instant.
Juanita always arrived in the office in smart but dressed down casual clothes. Today it was skinny jeans, ankle boots, a sleeveless t-shirt that was to be seen beneath a thin buttoned up hooded sweatshirt in a riot of blue to the body, but mainly to the sleeves and cuffs.
No sooner had he done that than the eye was drawn to the tumble of dark hair that framed her face, the neatly plucked eyebrows and the absence of any makeup save a blush of pink lipstick that matched her neatly manicured fingers.
He had learnt not to underestimate her; casual in appearance she might be, but Juanita possessed and agile mind and willingness to co-operate, to live within the rules as Manolo wanted them to be set.
‘’What now for you?’ Juanita, the conformist, asked innocently. ‘The word is you have a meeting…’
‘How do you know that?’
‘People talk…’
‘Some say and do what others want to hear or have done.’
Juanita flicked at her hair; the sudden movement of her hands made her pendant earrings jangle.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think all may yet be revealed later in the day.’ On saying it Monty remembered his promise to call Tomas. With the un-scheduled meeting with Manolo looming he had better leave a post-it note on the screen of his laptop as a reminder. ‘Until then, Juanita…wish me luck.’
Monty tapped her desk as if to stiffen his resolve to face down what instincts now told him might well be coming his way. With a short wave of the hand he left her.
●
Manolo loved his office, the view across the street from its casement windows to other emblematic buildings that families like his, in whose ownership many remained, took such pride. That it was on the edge of the El Born district also made it special. The city’s nightlife was close at hand and some favoured bars or cafés.
It was where Monty usually met up with Tomas and a likely place to down a few beers…once he had negotiated his way through a crunch meeting.
‘Take a seat, Barnardo.’
Monty kept his cool. Manolo’s name for him was a given and now was not the time to correct him. It would have been nice to be called ‘Monty’ once in a while just to feel that you fitted in and that a bond, however tenuous, existed.
‘Thank you,’ he replied sitting down in the unforgiving leather seat, one of many set around the small Board Room table. A highly polished silver tray with tumblers and a jug of water stood in its centre.
‘Help your selves,’ he suggested as Manolo saw Monty glance at it and invited the lady who dealt with HR matters to do the same. She declined and Monty felt that her presence wasn’t a good sign.
‘The morning’s been full of surprises…’
‘Your announcements you mean? One of my projects was mentioned…’
‘Yes,’ Manolo smiled, allowing a moment’s interruption, ‘that announcement came before other news of a harder to win assignment we really wanted…the one the special team has been working on. That is no longer to be confidential and the markets will soon hear of it.’
Monty’s mind wandered. Was Juanita in on that?
‘It’s a time for reconfiguring the agency, Barnardo…seeing where BIM’s best fit into the teams that we…that I want to build, so that we move on aggressively. We intend to pitch for and win even bigger prizes.’
‘Will one of the teams include me?’ he asked bluntly. He no longer felt the need to piss about with wordy preambles.
‘No, Barnardo, I am sorry but it doesn’t.’ Manolo had for a moment lost the initiative.
‘What’s your reasoning on that, Manolo?’ Monty emphasised the man’s name just to make him think of the misuse of his own.
‘You are impetuous…I’ve seen and heard again, only a moment ago. You’re also erratic in your ways of business and approach, how you are with people sometimes. I’ve said this before…some of it, anyway’.
‘My results haven’t been affected…’
‘Or they could have been better if you had only listened and followed the line.’
Manolo looked at the well-dressed young man before him unable to find fault with that, the sharp suit and colourful tie. That set him apart from the others. Perhaps that too made him vulnerable to the decision he had reached. The guy looked so English, set like some over there in older ways of it.
He continued. ‘I’ve given you many opportunities to work the way BIM España wishes it to be…’
‘Process over results…is that it?’
‘No,’ Manolo bridled. ‘How you’re talking to me now is evidence again of how it is with you…here, inside you!’ Manolo stabbed at his head then his chest. ‘You’ve got to learn to co-operate…fully.’
‘Just to survive?’
‘Si…yes, naturally.’
Manolo waved at some of the photos hung on the wall behind Monty. ‘Those record our successes…done my way.’
An uneasy silence followed.
‘I’m sorry for you and for BIM, but I am giving you notice. Your internship, or time here, is at an end. You will receive two month’s pay…’
‘In lieu of notice?’
‘Yes…’
‘I get that when there are things to finish off which have my name to them?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry but
there it is, Barnardo. For someone trying to persuade me to change my mind your tone is a strange way to go about achieving that.’
‘You’d get value for your money by letting me stay rather than doing nothing until I get a new placement!’ Monty was angry now that he was of no real use to BIM anymore. ‘No client has complained about my work. Your criticism is about me…who I am!’
‘Not entirely,’ Manolo smiled, ruefully, after allowing Monty another moment’s say in what was to happen to him. ‘In business two faces are shown; the one looking out and the other that your colleagues may see. I have to look at both and then do what is in BIM’s best interests.’
‘Creativity…imagination…thinking where to refresh the ways that things get done,’ Monty chose to suggest although he knew in his heart it was useless to continue. The axe had already fallen. ‘For me it’s not about dressing things up only to find that underneath there are the old stale ways of doing it.’
‘That is true,’ Manolo smile to acknowledge him, ‘but enough! Yo will have the time and the opportunity to look at the ways of it and at yourself, to see how to sell yourself differently to your next employer. That would be my last piece of advice to you.’
‘It’s all about image over substance?’
In spite of his situation, Monty was surprised at how easy he had been able to find the right Spanish to convey a far too familiar English saying. He was unprepared for Manolo’s reply.
‘Quite so, Barnardo! It’s looking to people with ideas…the benefits a product may offer that others don’t yet see…or in your case, the person you are. Learn some humility…listen and earn from people a little older than you are. What you’ve just said hasn’t worked as I or BIM would have liked. I can only wish you luck in the future. A reference won’t be a problem…I wouldn’t wish you any further harm after what I have had to tell you today.’
●
Anna probably knew the story already such was the way of things now. Jamie or Malcolm, the guys she had travelled out with from London had stayed on after her, no doubt to continue running the ruler over BIM’s Spanish operation. Timing was everything; how had it gone so wrong for him when he had met a special one?
