Being Alexander

by Nancy Sparling

  I hand the waitress my credit card and order another bottle, tell her to bring it upstairs and leave the first one here.

  Alex would be disgusted by this extravagance. He’d see it as a waste. I was never a poser and I was never flash but for my car. But now I am Alexander and I can see that I must spend money to accomplish my goals. I must spend money so that I can acquire even more money.

  I don’t need to be frugal and thrifty. I am not Alex. I am Alexander, and I have a beautiful woman tugging on my hand, eager to lead me upstairs. I resist her tugs only for a moment to bid farewell to her friends. I know, I knew as soon as I saw them, that they’re all predators and not prey, but I have a front to maintain, we all do, and it never hurts to be polite.

  Camilla is small, shorter than I would have imagined with those legs, but I find that I like it, that she makes me feel manly and strong, that I could take her into my arms and swing through the trees like Tarzan.

  She leads me not to the main staircase behind the dance floor where I can see men leering down at the dancers (mostly female) below, but to a discreet staircase located in a corner behind the DJ. I don’t fail to note the little wave the DJ gives her as we pass. She’s known. The DJ, billed as the hippest, coolest man on the club scene, knows Camilla.

  It’s quieter upstairs but not deserted. Everything is white, white walls, puffy white sofas and chairs, all white. I wonder how they get the inevitable red-wine stains out of the fabric. But my thoughts are coherent only for an instant, for then Camilla is pulling me down on to an empty sofa in the corner and she’s kissing me.

  She’s kissing me.

  She’s kissing me. For a moment I’m shocked. Women like this don’t fall for me. I’m the nice boy; I’m never the winner. And then I snap back to myself and start returning her kiss. I’m not nice. That was Alex, but I am Alexander. Women like Camilla are going to be my future.

  She’s kissing me and I’m kissing her.

  And I think, Thank God Amber and Noreen didn’t tag along.

  the best night of my life

  An hour later, maybe two, we emerge from our cocoon of passion to find Della and Isabel grinning down at us. Our champagne is gone, the waitress found us a long time ago and somehow we came up for enough air and kept our lips apart long enough to drink the bottle between the two of us. Camilla giggles and I realize she’s a bit tipsy, but I feel it, too, and it’s certainly not the alcohol. Not for me.

  “We’re bored,” says Della.

  Translation: she’s found no man of her own.

  “There’s a party at Sebastian’s that we want to go to,” says Isabel. Her eyes drop to my groin and I feel a momentary guilt, knowing that she can see how turned on I am, but then I don’t care. It would be an insult to Camilla were I not aroused.

  Camilla hesitates, torn. Clearly she’d like to go to Sebastian’s, whoever Sebastian is, but she doesn’t want our night to end, not yet. “Would you like to come with us?” she asks me.

  “Sure, sounds fun,” I say. Oh, yes, this is exactly what I wanted. I am in. I’m on my way.

  Camilla smiles a brilliant smile and I stand and help her to her feet. She sways a little and I tuck her arm into mine.

  Della and Isabel lead the way and half an hour later we’re in the thick of the party. Sebastian turns out to be Sebastian Sinclair-Stevens, ranked Britain’s number one most eligible bachelor. (I know this because Sarah is an avid reader of such lists and articles and I recognize him from the photo she left on our coffee table for a week last month.) Sebastian’s not exactly good-looking (or so I judge, in an impartial way that doesn’t take into account his bank balance), and he’s certainly not what you’d call handsome. Nonetheless, his house is crawling with nubile young women whose cleavages strain against their too-tight tops.

  I spot a handful of television presenters. And then I see Madonna. I, Alexander Fairfax, am attending the same party as Madonna.

  I’m flattered that Camilla sticks to my side, rubbing against me in all the right places. Della and Isabel soon swan off, lost in their own circles of friends and admirers, but Camilla, it’s obvious she’s been here before, leads me to a quiet corner on the third floor.

  An hour later I’m so aroused I can’t stand it and I ask Camilla if she wants to leave. She nods and I take her hand and lead her back downstairs so she can say her farewells to Della and Isabel.

  Camilla introduces me to Sebastian (he was mobbed with admirers when we arrived and we didn’t get round to it), and we shake hands, Camilla kisses him on the cheek, and then we’re off. It turns out she lives only a three-minute walk away, and I know then that she’s definitely working for the joy of working, of saying she has a career until she marries and gives up work forever.

  If I were a woman I think I’d do the same. It’d be fantastic not to work all day (especially if you had an endless supply of money to spend). But I’m not a woman, I’m a man, and I can hardly resent a woman being sensible and opting for the best solution.

  We go to her two-bedroom apartment (i.e. luxury flat) where she lives alone. She tells me her parents gave it to her as a present when she completed her English degree and that her father hadn’t wanted her to go to university at all, but that her mother had managed to persuade her father that it would be a Good Thing.

  After a brief (very brief) tour we end up in her bedroom and then I am unzipping her dress and pulling it off in one smooth move. I feel happy that Camilla likes me and I think that Camilla should be flattered that I wanted to leave without even speaking to Madonna.

  (But the truth is I didn’t want to speak to Madonna. What if I’d frozen? What if the old Alex had chosen that moment to fight me for possession of my voice? What if he’d succeeded and blurted out how much he’d fancied her as a teenager, how many times I used to watch her videos and dance to her songs? It would have spelled doom and gloom for my chances. I’d like to speak to Madonna. One day when I’m firmly ensconced in the inner sanctum. I mean, what would I have said to her? Anything I’d said would have sounded lame.

  Maybe I should start feeling sorry for celebrities: maybe no one actually talks to them as we’re all too afraid of sounding crass. But if I’m going to be the man I think I can be, I’ll have to be prepared. I know that now, but I can’t speak like a reject, I can’t act like a member of the public and gush all over celebrities. That isn’t the done thing. Not here in London. Oh, inwardly we may all salivate in their presence but, for God’s sake, we don’t act that way.)

  And then Camilla is pulling off my shirt and I have the best sex of my life. I don’t know whether it was the club or the buzz from the party or the fact that Camilla’s body might have been sculpted from a Greek statue, but we come and come and come again and I know that Camilla isn’t faking it, she can’t be faking it, not like that.

  We sleep for an hour or so and then I wake her up and we have sex again. I kiss her, long and hard, and then gently and tell her I have to go, that I have work to do (it’s not a lie). She looks sad, but I take her phone number and I can tell she’s thinking, Well, that’s the end of that, then, so I invite her out to dinner on Sunday.

  “Sunday?” she asks, brightening.

  “I’m busy tonight,” I say.

  We agree that I’ll pick her up at seven. (I’m hoping to eat early so there’ll be plenty of time for dessert.)

  I leave Camilla with the number of my mobile, telling her that I’m never home, so she may as well just have the one number. I can hardly give her the number of my flat, for she’d ring and Noreen, Amber, or stoned Clarence would answer, and the last thing she needs to think is that I’m a managing director who has to share a flat. (And I won’t for much longer, it is only temporary after all.) She looks slightly suspicious, as if she expects me to be married or something, but I kiss her again and she doesn’t say anything.

  I leave then, before she tempts my resolve not to stay, and as I walk down the road I consider sending her flowers. No, too desperate. I’m a high-powered
business executive, I’m a very busy man. I’ll bring her a nice present tomorrow and leave her wondering today.

  I don’t want her to take me for granted.

  Alex was taken for granted and look what happened to me then.

  my brother the genius

  My little brother, one year younger and one inch shorter—that one inch has given me no end of satisfaction over the years—is a computer whiz. I’ve never thought of him as a geek or a nerd, and in school he was too good at sport to be classified as such even if he did hang with that crowd, but he is a hacker. And to be a hacker—a good hacker—Paul’s had to spend some incredibly long hours in front of those blue screens of his. He’s been married for a year to a lovely woman who’s a doctor. I don’t know whether it’s because she’s always busy or because he’s managed to convert his passion for binary code, bits and bytes into a proper job as a well-paid consultant, but he convinced his wife Emma that he needed the largest of the three spare bedrooms for his office. It is filled, from floor to ceiling like a library, with computing equipment. The room looks like something you’d expect to see in a movie or television show.

  I catch the Tube to Waterloo, then the train down to Kingston-upon-Thames where Paul lives in wedded bliss in part of a converted Victorian mansion overlooking the Thames. I don’t bother ringing in advance, for I know his Emma will be on duty. It’s late enough for Paul to have finished his early-morning run (he runs five miles a day to offset the hours he spends glued to his chair) and be tapping on his keyboard.

  When I arrive I ring the bell. Wait. Ring the bell again. Eventually a wet-haired, freshly showered Paul opens the door. “I guess it’s true then,” he says.

  “What’s true?” I ask, following him inside.

  I try to stop the flush, but I can’t. What has he heard? I don’t want him to know everything; I don’t want him to think I’m a loser. I don’t want him to know what a loser I was.

  “Mum said you and Sarah split up. She dump you?”

  I look at him closely, searching for any hint of smugness, but no, this is my brother: we might have fought like demons as children, but we’re friends now. We stand together against the world. “I walked in on her bonking my boss,” I say.

  I can tell he’s taken aback for his eyes widen, but he merely nods. “I see.” He doesn’t know what to say. And what could he say? Sorry? It’s not his fault. I can blame Sarah and Jed and even myself, but certainly not Paul.

  “I need your help,” I say, taking pity on him and breaking the silence.

  “My help? What can I do, Alex?”

  I nearly ask him to call me Alexander, but I don’t. Something stops me. It would sound silly asking my brother to call me something as formal-sounding as Alexander when I’ve been Alex all my life.

  I decide to make an exception. I’ll allow my family to call me Alex. I doubt they’d remember to call me anything else anyway.

  “You can start,” I say, “with a drink.”

  And while Paul fixes us coffee I swear him to secrecy. Once he’s promised eternal silence, vowing to not even tell his wife and certainly not our parents, I recount the whole story of the past two weeks.

  Well, a highly edited and very shortened version.

  I tell him all about Sarah and Jed and how Jed betrayed me at work, but I don’t bother with the rest of my disasters; nor do I reveal my failure as a man in speaking up for myself in front of Kenneth. This is my little brother. He’s meant to look up to me. He can’t ever know the extent of my humiliations. I want him to be proud of me, to come to me for help, to think I can tackle any problem and solve it. Not to look at me and think of my failures.

  Talking to Paul it’s almost like old times and I tell myself I have to be on my guard. I can’t be complacent and let the old Alex slip in. I have to keep my mind on my purpose. I mustn’t forget my reason for coming here today.

  “I need your help,” I say. I correct myself. “I’d like your help, but you can say no. It’s probably illegal although not immoral and I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  He stares at me for one long second that feels like it lasts an hour. “I’ll do it,” he says. “What do you want me to do?”

  Two hours later and it’s done.

  Paul hacked his way into the Wilmington-Wilkes personnel files. The actual hacking took my brother only about ten minutes, but he spent a long time camouflaging his entry, making it virtually impossible to trace. We e-mailed the salary details of every member of the Wilmington-Wilkes firm, from Kenneth Wilmington-Wilkes to their most recent graduate, to every single employee.

  By Monday morning—maybe it won’t take that long if some sorry bastards are working this weekend, and there’s bound to be one or two—everyone will know what I now know: that there are huge, huge salary discrepancies within Wilmington-Wilkes. And sometimes bosses are earning less than star players on their teams.

  Kenneth most certainly has his favorites.

  And Jed knows that it pays to be a sycophantic bastard. I’ve seen the figures. No doubt Sarah feels secure and provided for, with her man earning such a handsome sum.

  I’m tempted to ask Paul to make a few minor alterations—namely to the salaries of Thomas and William, my erstwhile back-stabbing partners of old—but I resist. That’s not what I have in mind for them, and it would be too specific. They might begin to suspect me.

  I wonder if good old Kenneth will call in the police, but as nothing exactly malicious has been done and as nothing has been destroyed, I don’t imagine the police will spend much time on it.

  And if they do contact the police, they’ll never think of me. Or they’ll think of me briefly when they list all the latest sackings, but they’ll dismiss me soon enough from the suspect list. Oh, no, not Alex Fairfax. He’s too nice. He’d never do anything like that. It’ll be unanimous. Oh, no. Not Alex.

  Fools. Why not Alex?

  Am I really so unlikely a suspect? Will they think me incapable of such a grand gesture as thumbing my nose at the boss man?

  But, no, they won’t think that I’m incapable, they’ll think that Alex wouldn’t do such a thing. And Alex wouldn’t have dared. He would have been afraid, he would have thought it was mean, he would have been too busy polishing his CV and dwelling over what he’d done wrong to make Sarah go off him.

  For that’s the sort of man I was.

  But no longer. No longer.

  Screw them all, I say.

  I’m Alexander now and it’s my turn.

  salaries

  (for shame, Kenneth)

  I have a printout of the salaries of all 229 employees of Wilmington-Wilkes (including dear old Kenneth who’s on a million a year, plus a minimum 50 percent bonus and various benefits). I’ll destroy it in an hour or so, I just wanted the joy of holding it in my hands, of trying to commit the relevant numbers to hand without making Paul download anything on to his computer or maintain the link for too long. I’ll destroy the list. I’ll tear it up into little pieces and divide it into piles that I’ll discard in various public bins around London (you can’t be too careful).

  Jed, my manager at two rungs above me in the so-called career ladder at Wilmington-Wilkes, was earning three times as much as I was. Scanning the list I can see that he was overpaid, earning more, even, than his supposed boss.

  And I was underpaid. (The files list all salaries, present and past, and the dates of change, so I can see that I was underpaid from day one.)

  But I do have some good news. Thomas and William, joining as graduates within a month of one another, aren’t on the same wages. Yes, they’re both on more than I was on, Thomas a third as much, but William’s on nearly double.

  Thomas and William, William and Thomas, they’ve been working together for years, they’re good mates, they go to the pub together, they play squash together, they’ve always been promoted at the same time. But they’re not earning the same.

  They’re not so equal, after all.

  Poor Thomas. Will
he be jealous? Will Thomas and William be such bosom pals after this little revelation?

  It’s not enough revenge against them, I want it to be more direct, but it’s enough for now. It’s a start. Things won’t be so rosy for them. They’ll suffer just a little of the rage and humiliation I suffered. Not enough, but it’ll do. For now.

  Will dissension grow in the ranks of Wilmington-Wilkes? I wonder if there’ll be riots.

  Who am I kidding? The underpaid are mostly the nice, the quiet, the unassuming, those able to slog away and not worry too much about individual recognition as long as the team gets credit. They’ll fume in silence and perhaps even mutter in secret among themselves, but they’ll cause no fireworks. No, they’ll just drain away over the coming months, looking for firms that are more fair and just.

  Maybe I’ll consider hiring all the underpaid and giving them jobs at Platypus-fox. The nice ones, that is. I may be the man in charge, but they’ll trust me, even the new me, for I won’t take advantage of them. I refuse to take advantage of their kind.

  Oh, there’ll be some commotion. But most of those who would cause trouble are already earning more than their fair share. Only a handful will protest. A handful that will include Thomas. But even if he gets his raise, even if he gets his back pay to bring him equal to William, he’ll be left with a bitter taste in his mouth. And to make things even worse for him (and better for me), everyone will know.

  Noses will be bent out of shape. And Kenneth will be furious that his empire has been threatened, but I don’t kid myself: he’ll pull through.

  But still, I smile, it’s round one to Alexander.

  whoever said people need eight hours of sleep a night is a liar

  I’d intended working on my next few ad campaigns while Paul was working on my favor, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his flying fingers as he typed and surfed and cajoled and forced his way past the Wilmington-Wilkes security barriers. Hacking is a form of magic. It’s all mumbo-jumbo to me, but with the right words, the right gestures, bingo, and you’re in.