Waiting for Doggo (15 page)

I’d completely forgotten until Tristan mentioned it earlier. He has booked us a table at a swanky new brasserie in Covent Garden, which is a bummer, because I haven’t forgotten that I promised to pay, and I don’t suppose he has either.

It’s a prime table right in the heart of the restaurant, a padded booth for two. I’ve made a point of rereading the chapter Tristan gave me, and there’s no denying it: the guy can write. The tone is perfectly pitched. There’s a lightness of touch, but nothing so frothy that it undermines the authority of his message.

Tristan seems genuinely grateful for the praise, and he’s thrilled with the tag-line I’ve come up with for the title:
De-Management: A Science of Less Is More for Big Business
.

‘I’ve been set on the word “theory”,’ he tells me. ‘But “science” packs more of a punch.’ He also likes the phrase ‘big business’, because that’s the crowd he feels he’s speaking to.

Our food arrives ridiculously late, but he’s very sweet with our browbeaten waitress. He knows she’s not to blame; the fault lies with the kitchen. It turns out he put himself through university waiting tables, and I’m beginning to warm to him, beginning to understand what Edie sees in him, when he comes out with it. He’s nothing if not direct, but even by his standards it’s one hell of a line.

‘If you fuck her, I’ll fire you.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You heard me. Edie.’

‘I’ve got to admit, I never read the small print. Is that in my contract?’

‘Don’t bother,’ he says with a tight smile. ‘I know you know about us.’

And I know he’s bluffing, because Edie assured me earlier she hasn’t said anything to him.

‘Well I do now.’

‘You did before. She let it slip over the weekend, or you got it out of her. It doesn’t matter how it happened. What matters is I mean it.’

‘Tristan, I don’t want to sleep with her.’

‘Of course you do. Everyone does.’

‘I doubt Patrick does.’

He doesn’t appreciate my feeble stab at humour. ‘I mean it. What the right hand giveth, the left hand can take away.’

‘Not without Ralph’s consent,’ I reply feebly.

‘Ralph’s not in a position to disagree.’

‘Oh?’

Tristan savours a sip of his coffee. ‘Put it this way, Indology is going places, but not necessarily with Ralph.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that’s off the record, for your ears only.’

I‘ve underestimated him, his hubris, his hunger for power. He doesn’t just want a seat at the table, he wants the one at the head of it. If there was any doubt, he now starts talking about the outmoded structure of the company and about his vision of a leaner, looser outfit, more like a cooperative, with the key players holding shares. And as he rattles on, I wonder if this was the same offer he made to Edie: come fly with me to the stars, oh, and get rich in the process.

He hasn’t forgotten I’m paying for lunch, and as soon as I’ve called for the tab, I head for the toilets. I don’t really need to go; I just want some privacy to fire off a text to Edie:
Beware! He knows I know

Tristan is downstairs, waiting for my answer. He hasn’t actually spelled out a deal, but it’s pretty clear he’s sweetening the threats with promises, buying my silence about Edie and my support against Ralph. I’m staggered by his behaviour. Doesn’t it matter to him that I know he’s an unfaithful husband? Not if it helps bind me to his cause. Doesn’t he care what people in the industry will say about him muscling Ralph out? Not if he manages to pull off his palace coup. It’s impressive to witness such blind ambition in action, but it
is
blind.

I’m almost insulted that he has misjudged me so badly. He isn’t to know I’m disenchanted with the industry, looking for a way out, but didn’t he stop, even for a moment, to think that I might fight him on principle? What really gets my goat, though, is that if he’s ready to destroy me, then he’s ready to destroy Edie too. And I’m never going to let him do that.

Returning to the table, I glance at the bill now waiting for me. ‘Count me in,’ I say.

‘Good boy.’

He grins, and I want to punch him in his perfect teeth.

Edie’s not around when Tristan and I get back from lunch. She and Anna have taken Doggo off for a treat. Apparently the office postman has learned a couple of new names and earned himself a reward as a result. I hear this from Josh, who collars me as I’m passing through the design department.

‘The weird thing is, he knows Megan’s name but he still won’t deliver to her.’

‘Go figure,’ chortles Eric from his desk.

Josh has had a shot at drawing up the comic strip I mentioned to him last week. This has nothing to do with work; it’s just an old idea of mine that’s been knocking around for a bit.

‘Josh, this is genius.’

‘Nah, something’s missing.’

Josh isn’t exactly a frustrated artist; he’s a very good one who has figured (rightly) that the only way to get a mortgage is to have a salaried job. Abstract oil painting is his thing, but he’s also a gifted caricaturist, something I only realised when I spotted him doodling on a pad in a meeting.

He has nailed the idea in three deftly drawn frames. The first shows a baby in a high chair flanked by his parents, who are feeding him. The baby is trying to speak: ‘M-m-m-m …’ ‘His first word’s going to be Mummy!’ declares the delighted mother. In frame two, the baby is stammering ‘D-d-d-d …’ and the father is now looking thrilled: ‘No, it’s going to be Daddy!’ In the third and final frame, baby blurts out: ‘McDonald’s!’

‘Nothing’s missing,’ I tell Josh. ‘It’s spot on.’

Everything’s perfect: the food spraying from baby’s mouth in the last frame, the look of wild delight on his face, the look of utter dejection on his parents’, all conveyed with the barest strokes of a pen. Eric thinks we should send it off to a newspaper or magazine, possibly
Private Eye
. Josh vetoes the idea, though not on principle. It can go out when he’s happy with it.

Doggo’s treat from the girls turns out to be a wash, cut and blow dry at a pet grooming place near Charlotte Street. He has never looked so good and he knows it, parading around the offices on his return, head held high, fielding the compliments. I experience a twinge of possessiveness. I’m happy that he has wormed his way into other people’s affections over the past weeks, but I can’t help thinking that my own relationship with him is beginning to suffer as a result. He’s even loath to have one of our romps on the sofa, possibly because he doesn’t want me mussing up his new coiffure. However, his irritation with me isn’t a patch on Edie’s, as becomes clear the moment we find ourselves alone.

‘I can’t believe you told him you knew about us!’ She means Tristan and the text I sent her from the restaurant.

‘I didn’t tell him.’

‘Well I sure as hell didn’t.’

‘Edie, calm down. He guessed. I don’t know how. And anyway, he didn’t seem to mind too much.’

‘That’s rubbish. He’s paranoid about people finding out.’

‘Well he doesn’t have to worry. Nor do you. I won’t tell a soul.’

She dumps herself at her desk with a sigh. ‘I hate you knowing. You’ll be watching me like a hawk now.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have told me.’

‘I didn’t! You forced it out of me.’

‘Hardly. You folded without a fight.’

‘True,’ she says. ‘I must be losing my touch.’

T
HE FIRST
I know of it is when Ralph appears at my shoulder and asks me to follow him. It’s a short stroll from our office to Megan and Seth’s, where the reason for Ralph’s scowling silence soon becomes clear.

It’s sitting on the carpet, right by Megan’s desk.

‘Ah,’ I say, stooping to examine it.

‘It’s dog shit,’ says Megan, glowering at me from the safety of an armchair.

‘Are you sure?’

‘What, you think Seth did it?’

I glance enquiringly at Seth, who holds up his hands in a gesture of innocence.

‘When did it happen?’

‘It was waiting for us when we got back from our meeting with Marks and Spencer,’ says Megan.

‘I thought Clive and Connor were on M and S.’

Ralph finally breaks his silence. ‘Don’t change the subject, Dan. This sort of thing is unacceptable.’

‘It’s against health and safety,’ bleats Megan. ‘God knows what deadly microbes it’s got in it.’

I can’t help laughing. ‘Deadly microbes?’

‘Google it if you don’t believe me.’

‘And did
you
google it before or after you sneaked to teacher?’

‘I resent that.’ Megan looks to Ralph for support, and she gets it.

‘My office,’ he says to me. ‘Five minutes.’ He wags his hand vaguely in the direction of the dog shit. ‘And clear it up.’

I always carry a couple of bags in my back pocket, and as I crouch down to do the deed, I realise that something’s wrong. The thing is, I’ve come to know Doggo’s shit pretty intimately by now, and although it has changed colour and texture over the past couple of weeks, what with more and more people at work slipping him snacks, there has been almost no variation in the essential, underlying consistency of the stuff: dense and on the dry side. The moisture content of the pile in front of me seems unnaturally, suspiciously high.

‘What are you waiting for?’ asks Megan. Her face is a mask of disgust, but there’s also a sort of amused, triumphal glimmer in her eyes.

She didn’t! She can’t have! She did! But how did she manage to transport it there without damaging it? It’s a perfect pile, apparently freshly laid. The answer comes to me as my hand, gloved by the bag, closes around it. It’s cold, too cold, not even room temperature.

I’m thrown by Ralph’s uncompromising attitude.

‘He’s going to have to go, I’m afraid.’

‘Ralph, it’s nothing, a mishap, a one-off. You can’t mean it.’

‘Megan’s adamant.’

‘That’s not all she is.’

‘Careful how you go, Dan.’

Ralph’s strange fondness for Megan is rooted in a long history. She was the first creative he recruited at the last agency he set up, and I hold off telling him what I really think: that Doggo’s not the issue here, that he’s simply a rod for Megan to beat me with, that when it’s boiled back to basics, I am the one she doesn’t want around.

‘It won’t happen again.’

‘You can’t promise that,’ says Ralph. ‘There’s another thing. Technically we’re in breach of our lease by having an animal on the premises.’

‘It wasn’t a problem before.’

‘That’s because we didn’t know before.’

‘Don’t tell me – Megan pulled the file.’

‘It doesn’t matter who pulled the file. The landlord’s within his rights to throw us out and keep the deposit. Are you happy to pick up the tab for our relocation?’

I’ve come to know Ralph pretty well – once he’s dug his heels in, he’s never going to budge – and I’m seriously worried now. ‘But he’s an asset, good for the office. People love having him around. Even Margaret has changed her tune.’

‘I can see that. Which is why it has to happen now, before they get any more attached.’

‘Now?’

‘End of the week.’

‘That’s tomorrow.’

‘Yes, it is.’

I make my final plea. ‘You can’t do it to him. He’s come to life since being here. It’ll destroy him.’

‘Dan, get real. He’s a dog, he’ll be okay.’

But I know he won’t be. He’ll be devastated, and so will I. He’s more than just a pleasing presence in my day, an amusing diversion; he has become part of my personal furniture. I’m tempted to say ‘If he goes, I go,’ but I’d only be playing into Megan’s hands, and I’m not done with her yet, far from it. As for Ralph, I look at him and remember what Tristan told me in confidence at the restaurant the other day, and I think to myself:
You might just have signed your own death warrant, you old bastard
.

Edie grows really quite angry when I tell her. She says she’ll get Tristan on to it (which is something she couldn’t have said to me a week ago).

‘That might not be necessary.’

I spell out my theory about Megan planting the shit in order to frame Doggo.

‘My God,’ she gasps. ‘Turdgate.’

We make a point of working late so that we’re the last to leave the creative department. It’s Edie’s idea to film the search on her phone.

‘Action,’ she calls.

The bin in the small kitchenette is a flip-top affair. I find what I’m looking for tucked away right down the bottom – a plastic food container. There’s only a small amount of residue inside, but the smell of shit is unmistakable. As proof of a crime committed, any defence lawyer worth their salt would tear it to shreds, but it confirms my own suspicions beyond any reasonable doubt: this is the vessel in which Megan transported the frozen dog turd to work. Yes, frozen. That’s how she was able to ensure it kept its original shape, its integrity, while in transit. I’m wearing surgical gloves (bought from John Lewis on Oxford Street) when I pull the container from the bin and drop it into the sealable freezer bag (also bought from John Lewis).

‘That’s a wrap,’ says Edie, lowering her phone. I’m not sure if she intended it as a joke until she shoots me a smile. ‘Try and keep up.’

The three of us are strolling to Oxford Circus when Edie asks what I’m up to this evening. ‘I think we should run through how you intend to play it with Megan tomorrow.’

‘It’s my football night – six-a-side under the Westway.’

‘Are you any good?’ she asks.

‘Not really.’

‘So you won’t be missed if I offer to cook you dinner at my place.’

‘I’d be surprised if they even noticed.’

Not true. Six versus five is no fun at all, but they’ll just have to live with it.

I was wrong about Edie’s flat being a stark mecca of minimalist chic. The place looks like it has been burgled. Discarded clothes lie scattered all over, and there are books heaped up in every corner. It turns out that when Douglas decamped, he took most of the storage with him – wardrobe, chest of drawers, sideboard and bookcases. We both know it’s a poor excuse for the amount of mess on show. Doggo is in heaven, sniffing and snuffling his way through the clutter. Privately I wonder if he has detected the lurking scent of Tristan.