Being Alexander

by Nancy Sparling

  Neither Jed nor Thomas nor William thought to mention me to Kenneth. Now that I’m no longer self-effacing or modest, I can spit it out point blank that I made that campaign what it was. Those were my ideas that had so impressed Kenneth Wilmington-Wilkes. If there’s any justice in this world Thomas and William will fall flat on their faces and be seen as the talentless hacks they are without me. But they won’t. There is no divine figure of justice wandering the city and controlling the scales. It’s up to me to see that they get their just desserts.

  Their excuse—and I think they expected me to fall for this—was that they hadn’t dared mention me to Kenneth as they didn’t know where I was.

  These are Jed’s own words: “We couldn’t tell him, Alex. You were over an hour late and you know how Kenneth feels about shirkers. You would’ve been sacked.” He claims not to have received the message I left with the receptionist.

  That was it. That was his excuse. That was his reason for not giving me the recognition and credit I deserved.

  I rose to my feet, stared into his beady little eyes and punched him on the nose.

  I did no such thing. I was still Alex.

  I gave him a sickly smile, pointed to my feet, explained about the car and shrugged.

  It was pathetic. I was pathetic. I was a wimp. I deserved everything I got.

  chin up. here’s another chance

  It was five P.M. on the Monday from hell. I’d spent the afternoon tidying up my files before handing them over to Jed. With a smile. I handed over the files I’d busted my guts over for six months with a smile. Spineless moron. That’s what I was. That was my work, those were my ideas, and I just handed them over with a nod and a flash of teeth. Jed would sort out the last few issues; it was no longer my responsibility. It was sort of an insurance policy, I think, in case Kenneth had any further enquiries. Jed couldn’t risk Kenneth finding out about my involvement, not now.

  “Here you go, Jed,” I said, passing my work, my sweat, my late nights into Jed’s hands, “here’s the last of those files.”

  “Thanks.” He smiled at me. A slow, predatory smile that told me even then that I was no better than the dirt on the soles of his shoes. I recognized it for a split second before telling myself I was imagining things.

  I smiled, nodded, and half turned to go.

  “Oh, Alex,” he said, stopping me in my tracks, “I have a favor to ask.”

  A favor? He wanted to ask a favor of me? Rot in hell, slimeball.

  “Yes? What is it?” My body was frozen, not daring to move. My head performed half a dozen Exorcist spins to face him. Or maybe I only glanced over my shoulder.

  “Do you know Richard Morris?”

  “Yes.”

  A gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. I could see it. I knew what he was thinking. If I knew Richard Morris I was bound to like Richard Morris (I was that sort of person, I liked everybody, more fool me) and even if I was reluctant to do a favor for Jed, I wouldn’t be able to say no to a favor for Richard Morris.

  Jed smiled broadly for a second, his expression saying, “Gotcha.” Then his smile disappeared and his face grew solemn. I hate him. I really hate him now. How could I not have seen what he was like back then? How could I have let his let’s-be-pals attitude fool me?

  “I’m afraid,” said Jed, all serious empathy now, “there’s been an accident. Nothing serious. Don’t worry, Richard is fine. But he’s fractured his leg in three places and he’ll be off work for six weeks.”

  “What happened?” That was genuine concern on my part, my bottled up frustration with my career honestly forgotten at that moment. You see, I told you I used to be nice.

  “He went cycling during his lunch break and was hit by a car that ran a red light.”

  “He’s lucky to have escaped with just a broken leg.”

  “He certainly is, and that’s why I’ve come to you, Alex. I know you wouldn’t want Richard’s position here to be compromised.”

  “But surely he’s on sick leave,” I said, not understanding.

  “Of course he is, and his job will be waiting for him. But, you see, Richard’s been working on the Shire Horse Centre campaign and his proposal is due at the end of the week. I’m afraid he’s not really come up with anything original and I know he was planning on working late all week so he’d be ready when the clients turn up on Friday. Now that he’s in hospital he won’t have time to finish. I wouldn’t want Kenneth to discover he’s been lagging.”

  Now let me tell you something here. I work on national campaigns, with television advertising, with magazine spreads, with radio jingles, with entire newspaper pages filled with my products. What I do not do is graduate-quality work on small animal sanctuaries that can’t even afford local newspaper ads. I’ve worked here for six years and outgrew such campaigns after four months. For five years, eight months I’ve been given responsibilities. As part of a team, yes, but I’ve worked on a number of multimillion-pound campaigns. If you’re alive, if you’re not a hermit, you’ve seen my work.

  “You mentioned a favor,” I said, feeling the quicksand slowly sucking me in. There was no way out. I couldn’t refuse without looking churlish. I couldn’t refuse even if I didn’t mind looking churlish; I was Alex, I was nice.

  Jed was suddenly all smiles again. “I knew you’d want to help.” He grabbed a slim file from his desk and passed it to me. From the weight of it I knew there couldn’t have been more than half a dozen sheets inside. “What I’d like you to do is take over Richard’s campaign. It’s only a week, Alex, and I know you’re free now that your work on Guinness is over.”

  “But we’ve got dozens of new graduates. Couldn’t one of them handle this?”

  “They’re all busy, Alex. You’re the only one who can do it. And I know the Shire Horse Centre will be so impressed with your work that they’ll come back to us year after year.”

  No, they won’t. Small animal sanctuaries don’t come back time and again. They get a good poster, they come up with a good slogan, and they stick to it. Most of these local places don’t have the budget for anything else. The only reason we bother to deal with them is that our esteemed managing director’s wife has a soft spot for animal sanctuaries and wildlife parks. They certainly wouldn’t be able to afford us otherwise. That’s what it is. Charity. Pro bono work. (Who says I’ve seen too many American law films?) I was going to be stuck on one of these free cases and then another and another and another. I could see my future stretching out before me. And it was grim.

  “Will you do this, Alex? For me? For Richard? It’s only for a week.”

  No, I will not, you gormless bastard. How dare you stab me in the back and then expect me to roll over and let you kick me some more?

  But did I say that?

  “Of course,” I said. “Glad to be of help.”

  “Great.” He beamed at me. It wasn’t just a smile. It was his lips, his teeth, his cheeks, his eyes, even his eyebrows coming together in one great smirk, as he thought, Ha, you sucker. “I’d like to see your initial presentation at nine tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow?” I said, flipping through the folder. I’d been right. There weren’t more than six pages. There were only five. “But there’s nothing here. You said I had until the end of the week.”

  “No, I said the clients are coming in at the end of the week. I need your initial ideas tomorrow so we can go over them with the team.”

  “I promised Sarah I’d be home tonight.”

  “Sorry, Alex.”

  So that was that. My beloved Jaguar had been trashed, I’d cut both feet and had stitches for the first time in my life, I’d been betrayed by my colleagues, and now I was stuck on a project any live, breathing body in the whole firm could do.

  And I still had to phone Sarah.

  sarah, my love

  Sarah is one of those women everybody likes. She’s cute and sexy in a subdued sort of way, but not so beautiful that other women instinctively dislike her. She adds a little
bit of glamour to a group of ordinary people and a little bit of normality to a group of the ultrasuccessful. She’s fun to be around, she makes you feel special. That’s her best quality, I think. She stares at you with those pretty hazel eyes and really seems to look at you. She sees you, she listens, she doesn’t spend every conversational gap waiting to throw in a little comment about herself. People genuinely like her. She’s nice, but you could think of a dozen other adjectives to describe her. (I could think of a few more to describe her now, but that would be cheating. That’s now and this is then.)

  What about me, you say. If I was such a loser, why would she choose me? All I can say for myself is that I’m not ugly. I’m not Mel Gibson either, but people don’t look at my face and run away in fear. Women seem to like me. Might be the niceness factor, but they do seem to like me. I’m tall, not too thin, not too fat, attractive in an average sort of way, whatever that means, though Sarah always says with the right haircut and the right clothes I could look really good. That I could be trendy. (I’ve never been popular and trendy, I’m Average Joe.) I’m a professional but also creative. I’m good at my job. I’m well paid and seemed to be progressing at work until Jed and the others betrayed me.

  I loved her. I liked her. We were friends as well as lovers.

  And yet I dreaded telling her that I was going to have to work late. Again.

  As expected she didn’t take the news very well. “Oh, Alex, you’ve got to stand up for yourself. You have a right to expect a personal life.”

  I could just picture her, striding down Oxford Street, dodging tourists, bag in one hand, phone in the other. I know she looked cool and poised and successful. No one overhearing her conversation would imagine she was talking to her boyfriend. No one that together could have a partner so spineless.

  I explained as best I could. Disappointment. Anger. Acceptance.

  “Call me,” she said, “and let me know how it’s going.”

  surprise

  By nine I could see that it was going to take me most of the night to come up with a reasonable portfolio. You may think that a horse center doesn’t need much advertising, but you’d be surprised. They need posters and slogans that will attract visitors and donations, that will present their cause, their center, in a better light than the dozens of other equally valuable causes in the area. I decided to surprise Sarah and go home. If I was going to be up all night working I might as well do it from the comfort of my own sofa.

  I caught a cab back to our flat, refused the cabbie’s generous offer of assistance up the stairs (he noticed my bandaged feet), and opened the door. The lights were dimmed and I heard soft music coming from the living room. Sarah had a weakness for Lionel Richie love songs from the eighties. She knew they weren’t my favorites, so mostly she played them when I wasn’t home. Many nights when I’d worked late I’d rung and heard his husky tunes throbbing in the background.

  The living room was empty. As softly as my hobbling gait would allow, I headed toward the bedroom. Poor darling. She must be catching up on the sleep she missed last night.

  There was a soft moan and I hesitated. Sarah didn’t usually make noises in her sleep.

  I eased open the bedroom door. And stopped.

  “Sarah?”

  I was in shock. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was my Sarah, my bonny, pretty, loyal Sarah. Naked. In bed with another man. Straddling a naked man.

  Both faces turned toward the door. Sarah started to pull away from him, but he grabbed her waist and held her in place and right there, in front of me, he thrust into her again and came.

  It was only then, while he was having his orgasm, with his nasty, dirty little prick still inside my darling Sarah, that I realized it was Jed.

  Jed had screwed my Sarah.

  Sarah had fucked my boss.

  They were having an affair.

  Oh, God.

  I strode to the bed, pulled Sarah off (as gently as I could; I didn’t blame her, not then), grabbed Jed by the neck, dragged him from the bed and slammed his head against the floor. Again and again and again. His blood splattered the walls, his blood splattered Sarah as she struggled in vain to stop me, his blood splattered me, but I didn’t care. Slam, slam, slam. He stopped fighting me. Even his legs stopped twitching. Slam, slam, slam. He got what he deserved.

  No, of course I didn’t do that. In reality I puked. I stood in the doorway and puked all over the floor and my own feet. Flecks of vomit covered my previously pristine bandages. On top of my big toe was a recognizable pea. It was green and round and perfect, not discolored, not misshapen. Perfect. I marveled. I stared. A pea. It must have come from the vegetable samosa I’d had for my afternoon snack. For that one second I stared at the pea everything seemed right with the world. Until I looked up. Until I saw them.

  Sarah scrambled up from the bed and grabbed her robe, pulling it tight, shielding her nakedness, when it didn’t matter, not now. We both knew what she looked like naked. I knew. And Jed knew.

  Jed stayed in bed. Jed stayed in my bed and just looked at me. He was naked, slim and thin and all together too skinny, naked in my bed.

  “Alex,” said Sarah, “you didn’t call, you didn’t say you were coming home.”

  I just looked at her for a long moment. Then I said, “Surprise.” The acrid taste of my vomit made me want to puke again, but I didn’t. I stood there in a pile of my own sick and tried to look proud and wounded and strong all at once. I failed miserably, of course.

  Sarah turned to Jed and made a face at him I couldn’t quite see. “I think you’d better leave,” she told him.

  “I’ll stay if you want,” he said. He was still in my bed and made no move to rise.

  “No, leave. I’ll call you,” said Sarah.

  Jed shrugged, climbed off the bed and stood, his penis half-erect. He slid the condom off (oh, good, safe sex, that was considerate of them), tied the end into a knot and tossed it into my bin. Jed tossed a condom filled with his spunk into the bin beside my bed. And then he gave me a little smirk.

  He pulled on his boxer shorts and trousers (more sensible than me, he didn’t try to run at the same time), slid on his socks, his shoes, his shirt. He picked up his briefcase (the bastard had obviously come here straight from work, knowing I’d be stuck at the office) and made to kiss Sarah on the cheek, but she stepped away. He shrugged.

  “See you, Sarah,” Jed said. “See you tomorrow, Alex. I hope your presentation will be ready.”

  Honest, that’s what he said.

  He walked past me, disdainfully eyeing my vomit-soaked feet, his nostrils flaring slightly at the smell and then, finally, he was out of my bedroom. His footsteps receded down the hall, the front door opened and closed, and he was gone.

  I remained silent, not knowing what to say, waiting hopefully for some sort of apology, for an explanation that made sense.

  Sarah had the grace to look uncomfortable.

  “I think you should move out,” she said.

  “What?” I gaped at her. My mouth fell open into a perfect O and I just stared. What? Just like that?

  “I don’t want to live with you. I don’t want to be with you.”

  “Jed’s moving in here?” Into my flat? Into my life?

  She shrugged, probably aware of what a heartless bitch she was being but not really caring. She was able to make a clean break. My walking in had freed her from this double life. “Maybe.”

  Maybe meant yes. She was ditching me for my boss. The same boss who’d killed my immediate chances for promotion and stuck me on to a dead-end project. No, it wasn’t enough that he’d maliciously tried to destroy my career, he’d had to wreck the rest of my life as well.

  “Can’t we talk about this? Work it out?”

  “I’m sorry, Alex, I really am, but I don’t love you anymore. I don’t want to be with you.”

  I nodded. Take it on the chin. Take it like a man. “I see.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope we can st
ill be friends.”

  Take it like a man. Take it like a man. Take it like a man.

  Slobbering, pleading, “Give me a chance. I can change. I’ll do anything. Come on, we’re so good together.”

  “Used to be. The magic’s not there any longer. It’s gone. It’s been gone for a long time. I want to get married and have children, and I don’t think you’re the man I should marry.”

  “And Jed is?”

  “I honestly don’t know, but I don’t think we’re cut out for the long haul, Alex.”

  What she was saying was that I wasn’t successful enough. That I’d never be successful enough. Not for her. It’d been fun while it lasted, but now that she was almost thirty it was time to settle down with a man who could provide for her and her ovaries.

  “When do you want me to leave?” I asked.

  back at the hospital

  I sat in the waiting room at my local A and E for five hours. It wasn’t really an emergency, but I had nowhere else to go. I was shell-shocked. I couldn’t face any of my friends. I couldn’t face anyone. Not that night. And I did need my bandages changed. Under the circumstances I could hardly ask Sarah.

  Sitting there while chaos reigned supreme around me (you’d expect Monday nights to be quiet, but I’m telling you, we had car accident victims, a man who’d lobbed off two of his fingers doing some late-night decorating, heart attacks, strokes, screaming babies with high fevers, people with all sorts of unpleasant lumps and bumps and rashes) I had plenty of time to think.

  According to Sarah, she and Jed had been sleeping together for two months. For eight weeks my Sarah had allowed Jed to worm his slimy little hands down her pants. During these same two months Sarah and I had discussed plans for holidays abroad, redecorating the flat, buying a flat of our own. It was only five months ago that Sarah and I officially moved in together, even if we’d been practically living together for a year before that. Surely things couldn’t have changed so drastically between us overnight. It must have been gradual. But if she’d been having niggling doubts, why had she suggested the flat in the first place?