Terms & Conditions (28 page)

* He safely assumed I was Franklyn Version 2.0, as he had taken to calling me. With no inkling that I was not Old Frank, nor New Franklyn, nor Version 2.0, he had no idea that I was something new, something terrible, coiled and ready to strike.

‘Fuck, Franklyn, you really had me,' said Oscar, clutching his heart, sitting heavily back into his chair. ‘That was bloody good. I thought we'd just lost millions of pounds of business. Version 2.0 does jokes too!'

I didn't laugh or smile; I just looked straight at him.

His face changed, rage replaced relief, and I said, ‘No joke, brother. It's serious; all these contracts are out there, with clients, being used, all as legally binding as a knot of spaghetti.'

Gasping, trying to suck air in, face red, fists curled like hooks, Oscar's words exploded in barks, ‘Why? Why! This? This!'

‘Well,' I said in a calm reasoning tone, ‘even people who make bombs must have a little poetry in their plutonium souls.'

‘But! But!'

‘Oh,' I added, as if it were just a trifling detail, ‘I know all about you and Alice.'

I thought Oscar might have a heart attack and keel over, but he stepped back, away from me as if I was infected, he twisted his neck around, and screamed out of his door into the office, ‘Someone get all these contracts now and fix them, stop sitting around like morons and fix these mistakes.'

‘It's too late,' I said, ‘the phones will start ringing any time now . . .'*

* I had, of course, spent the previous half hour highlighting all my crazy additions in the contracts and faxing and emailing them to all our clients under the heading –
Always read the small print!

And they did.

Suddenly lots of people were talking to lots of other people on lots of phones.

A wave of panic rang out from desk to desk until someone stood up and shouted, ‘Line six for you, Oscar,' and another added, ‘Line three, Oscar.'

Three more people joined the chorus.

Line two, Oscar .
. .

Lines seven and nine, Oscar .
. .

Line ten, Oscar .
. .

Oscar!

Oscar!

Everyone held on to their handsets, waiting to see what Oscar did next. He seemed like he might be about to punch me, then he turned on his heels, ran back into his office, and started to talk rapidly and loudly into his phone. I smiled, waved at my colleagues, who all ignored me, and then I left the office for the last time in my life.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF PACKING

Pack fast and light.

By the time she burst into the flat I was bundling my clothes into a bag. Her hair was a mess, windswept and out of place, her bob misshapen like a clay pot spun out of control on the wheel. It made me feel happy and sad. Happy as it framed Alice's face in a way that reminded me of that lovely messy, chaotic girl I fell in love with, and sad in the sense that, looking at her, I realised that this was it, this was the last time I'd see her.

‘What do you want me to say?' Alice asked.

‘Well, I'm not giving you the answers any more,' I said slowly. ‘I've spent years answering your inane questions. You can figure it out easily enough, you're smart. I'll tell you this much, though, you were wrong about Executive X. Even he, the great capitulator and submissive one, eventually finds his breaking point.'

Alice stumbled slightly and sat on the bed, sitting surprisingly close to me as I threw a couple of shirts into a bag.

‘There's so much to process: you were injured, I was exhausted, I was going through so much emotional-change enablement trying to cope with your accident, on top of what was a tough schedule . . .'

Very gently I raised my hand to stop her talking, I looked at her with a lot of love in my eyes, and I said softly, ‘Alice, please just shut the fuck up.'

‘How dare you.'

‘How dare
you
,' I replied quietly.

‘You don't know what it's been like since the accident.'

‘That I understand. But you fucked Oscar
before
my accident.'

‘Oh . . . fuck.'

‘Most intelligent thing you've said in years.'

‘It just happened. We're two similar types, Oscar and I, both high-achievers, on the alpha spectrum, you must have known how compatible we were and . . .'

‘No management speak, please,' I said.

‘What I mean is, we, Oscar and I, we're a type,' she said.

‘You and Oscar are certainly a type.'

‘I don't know what to say,' she said.

‘Well, that's certainly a first,' I said. ‘Did you not role-play this scenario, Alice? Very disappointing. I'd have thought this was one meeting you'd come prepared for. Or did you arrogantly think this day would never come back to bite you, did you assume that you and Oscar were the masters of the universe and that all you did would be acceptable?'

‘OK, hold on, Frank, can we just stop, refresh, and regroup.'

‘I tell you what. Let's make this role-play a little more interesting.' I walked into the bathroom, grabbed my toothbrush and razor, and threw them into the bag. ‘Let's add a couple of parameters. Some conditions, clauses. Let's say that just for once you're only allowed to talk in English. Plain old English. It was your first language, after all, long before you became fluent in this corporate cant you so adore. Can you manage that? No buzzwords. Those are my terms, will you accept them?'

I checked my bag and there really was not much in there. It's incredible what you can reduce your life to.

Alice stood there, as if trying to recollect her normal English vocabulary, and I said, ‘Remember all those words you used to use. It's called English. Everyone's talking it these days. Well, all those people who aren't talking in Chinese at least.'

‘Stop being so cruel,' she said, and she started to cry.

She could still cry. And I'll admit that I felt part of me want to hug her.* I had intended to be so cool; now I was the one behaving like a child.

* I preface that by confessing that another part of me wanted to punch her in the face so hard that the little filled-in veneered gap between her two front teeth popped out and I'd see the old Alice just one last time.

‘Frank, why are you being so terrible? This isn't like you,' she said.

‘Oh, really, Alice, and what am I like exactly?' I asked.

‘You're a lovely man, Frank, you're sweet and kind and generous and you would do anything for anyone.'

‘So who am I?' I said.

‘You are the man I love,' she said.

‘Who am I?'

‘What do you mean, Frank? Why do you keep asking me the same question?'

‘Who am I, Alice?'

‘You're Frank.'

‘Otherwise known as?'

‘What are you getting at?'

‘Otherwise known as Executive X,' I said.

‘Not this again, Frank, I told you that was nothing to do with you,' she said.

‘Stop lying to me. The tests, all the tests, all the scores, they were all mine, it was me, you made a mockery of me, you did and you loved every minute of it. How could you, how could you do that to me, Alice?'

‘I used bits of you, sure, because you were brilliant, you were a high achiever.'

‘
Were
being the main word there; I'm such a disappointment to you, aren't I?'

‘No, you're not, Frank.'

‘I am,' I said, and I sat next to her and took her hand in mine as she wept so hard that the bed moved.

‘You're not, Frank, I'm the one that messed up,' she said, and leaned in slightly so that we almost touched. ‘I'm so sorry, Frank. Can you ever forgive me?'

I looked into her eyes and softly said, ‘No chance.'

‘I've sacrificed so much for you,' she said, leaning away again. ‘Do you know how hard that level of commitment is? Do you know what I've done for you? I'm a motivated, creative person. I've made it while you've stagnated like a child. I've made something of myself.'

‘Making yourself into a cow is not an achievement you should be proud of.'

‘I'm not a cow, I'm a brilliant HR person and a change enabler,' snapped Alice.

‘Sorry, Alice,' I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. ‘You've used the words “change enabler”. You were warned.'

Her face changed, something shifted, and she stood up and tried to palm her hair back into a bob shape and brushed down her skirt, rebuilding her calmness and control.

I stood close to her and she wiped away her tears and said, ‘Well, Frank, you can go fuck yourself for all I care.'

‘I'll take your advice into consideration,' I replied.

‘Oh shut up,' she said. ‘I'm about to take you to the cleaners. The flat is mine, don't even try to fight it, you don't even care about it, I put my heart and soul into it, and I will take your money too, and all your shares of the business, which in about a month's time when it goes on to the stock exchange will make me a very rich woman.'

‘Yes, about all that,' I said. ‘It may come as a slight shock to you but none of those things will happen. The flat is mine, it's tied to the business, all of my money is in a trust, which is also tied to the business, and as for the IPO, well, I am sorry to say that will no longer be happening. Oscar will explain the ins and outs to you when he has time.'

Then I took out the folded prenuptial contract and placed it on the bed beside her. ‘You probably don't remember this document but you signed a prenuptial. My dad, God bless his soul, insisted. And to be honest, it leaves you with pretty much no more than the shirt on your back. It's a lovely shirt, though.'

Like a controlled demolition she collapsed in on herself: her back bent, her head sagged to her chest, her hair fell forward as she read over the prenuptial agreement, her eyes darting, failing to focus, until her fist flopped forward, opened, and the prenuptial agreement swished rather gracefully to the ground.

‘Well, feel free to read it in your own time,' I said. ‘It really is my father's finest work. He was a poet. He understood human nature better than most.'

She looked up at me and I realised I had not really considered my final parting words; I had failed to rehearse my exit from her life.

I thought it should be something profound and memorable, but then I simply smiled and said, ‘Well then. Toodlepip.'

CLAUSE 3.2

A SUICIDE*

* Οϕ σορτς

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF TERMS & CONDITIONS

Like an infinite loop, even terms and conditions have terms and conditions.

TERMS & CONDITIONS OF CASSANDRA

Those Greeks knew a thing or two.

I'm just one of many unheard oracles.

Modern life is packed with warnings, whether they be legal –
Terms and conditions apply!
– biblical –
Thou shall not kill
– or cliché –
A stitch in time saves nine
. And what do we do with all this truth and counsel? We completely ignore it.

They say
Don't Speed!
but we just fast forward through it because
Life's too short to worry about the details.

Stop!

Life is the details. As you age, the wording changes but life's fine print is essentially saying the same thing –
You're a short time living and a long time dead.

So stop for a second and think about it.

You're shot out of the void, and as a baby the details are simple –
don't lick electrical sockets, don't choke, keep breathing
– as a teenager the messages blare loud and clear –
don't smoke, don't die young, and listen to your parents (they actually know things that you don't)
– you're ageing now and, as you hit the middle, the messages get fuzzy –
easy as you go, seize the day, appreciate the small things, tell your wife you love her
– but by now time is tumbling over itself, and just as you start to take note, just as you stretch to grasp life's simple truths, you're rudely shunted out the other end into more eternal zilch.

Please Give Way!

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

CC:
[email protected]

Subject: Give me back my spleen!

Hi Oscar – my brother, my keeper, my boss and my betrayer

I can't be sure if my contract sabotage will lose you
all
your clients but, at the very least, I can rest assured that it will lose you
some
clients, which will make your life a nightmare as you desperately try and explain what happened – why millions of pounds of client money resulted in worthless contracts riddled with lame jokes. Which means you can kiss your precious stock-market money goodbye. The market doesn't like it when you lose vast chunks of money in a day. Accountants frown on that sort of thing. I sabotaged – tampered with,
improved
?– an awful lot of contracts. So prepare yourself for a whole glut of angry clients.*

* As a small footnote I'll admit that I didn't send
all
of my best work out; there are still some little gremlins lurking in the terms and conditions, out there in the wild, some that I didn't highlight; I can but hope that they'll keep biting you on the bum for many years to come.

In case you've not grasped it yet – this is a suicide note.

Not a standard suicide. I'm not committing mortal suicide. Just corporate suicide, modern suicide, document suicide. I'm erasing myself from the page and hopefully living in a more real world. Of one thing I'm sure, no one will ever hire me as a lawyer again. This is a certainty that fills me with a warm sense of wellbeing. Once settled I may even use all that lovely salary that you signed off to start doing what I have always really wanted to – practise medicine and try to offset some of the bad that I've done with a touch of good. Do you even remember the day I got you to sign my new contract?