Half Plus Seven (14 page)

I was a dick. What the fuck was I thinking? I'd been wound up by Trent over the past week. He'd been sending me regular emails about his new ‘piece of ass' and I knew Christy was in his sights. ‘All in the game', he'd said. Well, typed. He'd said I knew the girl and would never guess who she was. So I didn't guess. He wanted me to guess. I guessed Pete. He told me to guess again. I didn't. Or rather I did, out loud, to my guess, Christy, about 30 seconds ago.

‘You don't seem to get that this is meant to be about work. I mean, I barely even know you and you're making really offensive presumptions about me.'

‘Look, Christy, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking before I spoke.'

‘Don't even think those things.'

‘I won't.'

‘Last time this was about our dead fucking parents and this time it's about someone I wouldn't be caught dead fucking.'

We both laughed at this. The tea, which I'd been clinging onto as a lone ally during my dressing-down, washed down the wrong hole.

‘Pppphheww.' I spluttered all over the minimal white table, flecks of brown like a lost school of fish against its unwelcoming backdrop.

‘Bill, are you okay?'

I coughed up some smoker's phlegm. It mixed with the tea to make the worst kind of smoothie imaginable. I finished with a sneeze. There was the suggestion of a fart. Oh Christ. This made her laugh again.

‘Smooth,' she said.

‘I know.'

Her face, which just 30 seconds ago was as red as her hair, was calming now.

‘I hope that wasn't constructed purely to stop me being mad with you.'

‘If my body was capable of such involuntary action to save my skin, then I salute it.'

‘To reiterate, you are a total dick for asking me something like that.'

‘I know, I know, I know. It's just that I really…' Like you? That's what I should be saying next. Like you. ‘…shouldn't be saying this, but the last girl…'

‘Dina?'

‘Yes, Dina. Well, part of the reason she left Morgan & Schwarz and now doesn't cut her armpit hair and follows the teachings of a delusional cult leader is…'

‘Trent?' she offered.

‘Trent,' I confirmed.

I broke the rules of the game. I wasn't sure what the rules of the game were but I knew grassing up Trent was not in the rules of the game. At least I left the date rape drug out of it. Fuck Trent anyway.

‘So fucking what, Bill? So what if Trent did her rodeo style in the think tank room while Carol jiggled for tips?'

‘You're right.' It was best to concede. I could see Carol through the venetian blinds. She was wearing a beige turtleneck, stood waiting at the photocopier. I don't think she'd ever ‘jiggled' in her whole life.

‘You know who you remind me of?' she said.

James Dean. Kurt Cobain.

‘No?'

A young Marlon Brando, before the booze, drugs and delusion set in. Lord Byron. I tried my best powers of suggestion. Where was Sister Gina when you needed her?

‘My dad.'

If I'd have had tea in my gob it would have joined the little snotty brown fishes all over the table.

‘Your dad?'

‘Yes.'

‘Erm…' I swallowed hard. She continued.

‘He was always worrying about me and boys. Always asking me not to see so and so, telling so and so never to call the house again, forcing me to stay in my room and not go to the park or the cinema or ice skating.'

‘Well, he was your dad.'

‘He is my dad.'

‘I thought you didn't like him.'

‘I never said that.' I resisted the teenage urge to ask if she liked me. Her big black eyes were now playful, teasing almost, showing she did like me. Just not in the way I'd hoped. More errant parent than Errol Flynn.

‘Anyway,' she said, ‘enough of that for one day. Are you making an appearance at Jill's birthday thing on Friday?' Jill had reached the grand old age of forty. Not being one to stand on ceremony, or go a couple of breaths without telling you to go fuck yourself, Jill hadn't gone to the trouble of sending out special invites for the poignant occasion, rather she'd announced plans in the Morgan & Schwarz Monday morning meeting.

‘Because you'll all see it on fucking Facebook or something like that, yes I am forty on Friday, and yes I do expect you all to come and get pissed with me. Maybe have some food too. I imagine you'll all chip in for me. And if you don't want to, well you can just fuck off.' Miles, leading the meeting, found it difficult to tell if Jill's menace was mirth or madness, so shuffled a few papers, coughed and moved on. It was her birthday after all.

‘Oh, that?' I said to Christy. ‘Well, it doesn't sound like we have a choice, does it?'

‘I wouldn't want to be the one to piss Jill off on her birthday', she replied. We both raised our eyebrows in a ‘what's Jill like?' kind of way.

‘Anyway, thanks for the buddying, Bill. I've gotta fly.' She bounced out of her chair, red hair and bare arms blurring towards the door. She opened it, turned back and said:

‘Oh, and Bill, if you ever, ever, EVER, ask me anything like that again, I'll cut your fucking balls off. Kaybye.'

There was a time on work's nights out when I'd carefully
co-ordinate my wardrobe to appear sharp, scrubbed up well and, if drunk, at least smooth. The nature of the industry meant there was generally an intern or a grad – who thought PR was all cocktails and celebs – to take advantage of if Trent didn't get there first. Fast forward to this Friday and my aim would be not to dress like Christy's dad. Her fucking dad. Being compared to the runaway father of the girl you're trying to lay, now that was a new BENCHMARK. Jeez, the one flicker of light in my shitfucksoullessjobnolovemeaninglesssexdeaddadcuntynewdad
shithousewithaholeinthefuckingbathroomthroughtotheFUCKING
KITCHEN existence had been Christy.

I was off to get very drunk or very high or very both. Kaybye.

Chapter 14

‘I'll give you each an animal and I want you to come up with an idea inspired by it,' Miles said, in full PT Barnum mode. There was a consensual silence across the room.

‘Carol, you're a lion.' She thought for a moment, ignoring the ridiculousness of the statement, before the small eyes behind her thick rectangular specs lit up.

‘We could focus on the role females have in raising their young and running the household. We could run stories which made them feel responsibility for ensuring their pride got all their vitamins.'

‘Like lionesses?'

‘Like lionesses.'

‘Love it,' said Miles. Carol looked relieved and then vaguely self-satisfied. The wheel of fortune spun again.

‘Pete, you're a tiger.'

‘How kind of you to notice, Miles.' It was a shame Pete never got close to procreation. His comedy repertoire was perfectly pitched at embarrassing offspring. Sadly, the result of the Brief Encounters after-party was a phone number one digit too short. And she had loved cock by all accounts.

Miles wasn't in the mood for him.

‘Pete…'

‘Okay, okay, bear with me.' His emphasis of the word ‘bear' went unacknowledged.

‘What about a feature on the health benefits of the product? We could call it ‘How Vit-Drink can give you your stripes.' Pete leaned back in his chair.

‘Good, Pete.' Miles, though orchestrating the affair, was following the rule of never dismissing an idea. It could be very damaging to confidence and Morgan & Schwarz was a finely balanced and highly combustible collection of egos.

‘Next up: Bill, you're an elephant.'

‘Is that because he never forgets?' said Jill, apropos of nothing. My short-term memory bore all the hallmarks of an early onset of dementia.

‘No, it's because I've got a long trunk.' The room recoiled. We often made bawdy comments at inappropriate moments. I was trying to join in and be a team player. It was a stroke of luck Christy wasn't there though. That quip was verging on a dad-joke. That fire didn't need fuelling.

Chais and skinny lattes were raised and sipped and slurped as I scratched around my head for an idea. The gerbil which spun my cerebral wheel was yet to get going after last night's alcoholic misadventures. I'd been sick in my hand at my desk about 30 minutes previous and had been sure that Jill had seen me. She pierced me with a callous stare and head shake that said, ‘I can't believe you're worth the same pay cheque as me.' Truth was, I was on more. Miles had left some confidential papers on the photocopier last month – very unlike him. I struggled to believe it too. I felt like shit, and a shit. Not a good time, Bill. Come on. Buck up, you fuck.

‘They could brand up an elephant and walk him down the High Street handing out bottles of the stuff to kids and old folks?' My intonation implied I wasn't entirely sure.

‘That'd be cruel to the poor thing,' said Jill. Jill had broken the code. She'd shot down my idea in flames. Altruistic ones perhaps, but flames all the same.

‘Well, this is fucking stupid anyway,' I said. I'd broken the code. I'd called the animal game stupid. We were in the midst of a thought shower (or a brainstorm, if you dug the non-PC). The team was gathered under duress in a room known through internal comms as the ‘Persuasion Station'. It was where the temperamental talents of Morgan & Schwarz would assemble to pick over public relations problems and agree our strategy of attack to engage, convince and conquer. Our own little war room with Miles as Mussolini and the shirt not black but 100 per cent Egyptian cotton. These creative fluxes were, I imagined, akin to the free-form get-togethers of the Beat Poets or the intellectually enlightened riffs shared on the Parisian Left Bank in the 1920s. Except we were mainly talentless and were ‘jamming' on a campaign to create a buzz around a new range of vitamin-added carbonated soft drinks. To be honest with you, I could have done with a bucket-load of the stuff to nurse me through this morning's hangover. If nothing else, it was quite revealing; the depths of despair that could be plunged upon discovering that the object of your (subtle) affections likens you to their father. I awoke at 8.27 a.m. with a deep cut on my left knee and the vague suggestion of human faeces in the air. There'd been no time for a shower before work.

‘Thanks for all your input on that one, guys,' Miles said. It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic. ‘Now onto the next problem.' He was off again.

‘Could I be excused for a second?' I asked. Despite the fact we were roughly the same height and sat on identical chairs, Miles somehow managed to look down at me.

‘For what reason?'

‘The bathroom.'

‘For Christ's sake, Bill, you don't have to ask to use the bathroom. I'm not your wet nurse.'

Cunt.

Sniggers broke out around the glass table. He'd pay for that. If anyone was going to make Bill McDare look stupid it would be Bill McDare.

The Morgan & Schwarz bathroom was more can-can than can. Spotlights illuminated rectangular mirrors which hung above freestanding wash basins. Some interior design wit obviously thought we needed to feel like megastars. While the light was harsh, it did provide a perfect ambience for cutting up lines after normal office hours. Those occasional all-nighters on last-ditch pitch documents often needed an extra zing.

Yesterday's post-work drinking had started with a few calm beers on the terrace of The Accord, a fairly nondescript establishment about three blocks east from the office. The Morgan & Schwarz crowd tended not to gather there, which made it an ideal launch point last night. I caught my reflection in the acute light. The late sun had reddened the skin around my eyes and cheeks, extenuating usually non-apparent wrinkles like white valleys in a scorched landscape. Time was wearing on me, a harsh HB pencil adding lines to my look. I splashed cold water on my face for what seemed like an age, but in reality was probably 30 seconds or less. I was dizzy and losing perspective. There was only one thing for it: I'd stop at my desk for a wee dram on the way back to the brainstorm. The temporary cure to all of life's ills. And so the wheel turns again.

‘So, who is the audience? Who are we trying to convince here, people?'

Miles was in mid-flow when I returned unacknowledged to the session. I hated him when he was facilitating. From what I could gather over the next few moments thoughts were being showered towards his blank flip-chart for an upcoming beauty parade for a brand of travel insurance called ‘Wanderlust'. Cute. It had befallen the poor souls gathered in the Persuasion Station to preen and plot strategies to make insurance not just sellable, but sexy.

‘Put yourselves in their flip-flops, people,' Miles commanded. ‘Who goes on holiday?'

Like a pub quiz machine, the questions got progressively harder.

‘Families?'

‘Right…'

‘Couples?'