Half Plus Seven (20 page)

‘No, Bill. No, you haven't. You haven't been at your desk for the past three days and I've texted your Blackberry every day, but nothing.'

‘Yeah, it's been having problems.'

‘No, Bill, I think you've been having problems.'

It was the first buddy session with Christy for over a fortnight, and the first time I'd seen her since I'd unloaded the contents of my stomach on her person. I'd lain low from work for a while, telling Miles I'd had a virus and flashing the headed paper from the wellness centre under his nose. As expected, he clocked the insignia but not the details. I'm not sure a suspected STI was sufficient excuse for a time out. Sure, I could have confided in Miles of how I'd had a booze problem and how I was trying to get back on the rails (he'd smile reassuringly) and how my work had suffered (he'd lose the smile) but how I was determined to repay Morgan & Schwarz's faith in me (half-smile), before being referred to the company shrink on full pay and benefits.

But that wasn't a game I'd wanted to play. People would talk. Rumours would fester. Jill would be the ringleader – how she'd always known I'd had a problem, how she'd often caught me reaching for my bottom drawer, how she'd tried to help. Pete and Carol would first appear surprised before shaking their heads complicitly. Trent would return to his desk, open up the Word document entitled ‘Obstacles to fucking Christy' and vindictively delete my name off the shortlist.

The last man to visit the company psych was a junior executive by the name of Todd Spinks. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fresh out of college and bright as a button, Spinks had been destined to fast-track his way past clutter like me into a higher pay bracket almost from the moment he breezed into the office with his Brylcreemed hair and well-pressed Dockers. What the poor kid didn't bank on was Morgan & Schwarz's location amongst the clouds on the twelfth floor of a sleek skyscraper. Todd had suffered with sickening vertigo ever since being left to dangle 25 ft in the air in an abseiling incident as a Boy Scout, aged eleven. Morgan & Schwarz tried to fill his daytime with distractions – brainstorms, team meets, client coffees, smokin' secretaries – but he couldn't stop thinking about the windows. They were all around him, even when he shut his eyes, especially when he tried to sleep at night. Gilded glass opportunities to face his fear and fight his destiny. He was terrified of what they represented yet inexplicably drawn in by their reflective magnetism. After a month's intensive with the shrink, he'd stepped cautiously back into the fold one bright Monday morning to find his work station bedecked in balloons and foil banners welcoming him back. A tear rolled from his perfect bright blue eye. Jill put an arm around his shoulder and told him not to be down, modern medicine had done wonders and it was more than possible to live a full and rich life with HIV these days.

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, cleaning 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.