"Indeed I would," he laughed, "but the answer is a simple one. This card is not a business one. The number on this card is exclusively for contact purposes in connection with my student activities. I strictly separate these activities from my business ones and," he continued with a knowing glance, "there are the small matters of encryption and GPS location blocking. To avoid unnecessary complications, you understand, which from time to time might arise as a result of any unwelcome interest on the part of certain third parties."
Hats off to him, he has the answers for everything and they all fit with a certain amount of logic into that imaginary world residing in his demented brain. He's certainly got it all worked out. This fantasy of his has probably been developing over a period of several years, and he has been building up more and more details as time has gone by, accumulating a whole series of convincing micro-delusions to support the macro one. Not, as I seem to have read in some medical report someplace, that this is an unknown or unusual symptomatic manifestation. Fascinating in a way, but then all I want to do now is return to the real world. The sane world. The one I live in.
"I understand and accept," said Jeremy, "that this has been an unexpected and extremely confusing conference from your point of view. And I would guess that you are far from being convinced about any part of it—but I would be grateful if we could provisionally agree to a time and date for another meeting. Just on the off-chance of course."
"Well," I said, "no harm in that. Let me see. On Monday I have a conference at a factory in Slough, then nothing to do for a whole week after that, and so I'll be travelling home to Germany on the Tuesday. I'll be travelling back on the following Saturday and attending a meeting here in London on the Monday. So…a week on Tuesday would be convenient to me; how does that sound?"
But he looked somewhat disappointed at this. "Yes," he said, "I saw from your C.V. that you are domiciled in Germany. Forgive my forwardness," he continued, "but that would constitute an unfortunate delay for me. Is there the slightest chance, Mr. O'Donoghue, do you think, that you could possibly return to Germany a day later than planned, thereby allowing us to meet next Tuesday?"
* * * * *
No problem, I said to myself, I wouldn't be attending any more meetings with him anyway, so it really didn't matter what arrangements I agreed to. I said O.K., we agreed on 10.00 a.m., we shook hands, and I took off like an electrified hare at the greyhound races. I lit a cigarette, yes much needed, and smoked it while heading across Aldwych and into the first pub I came across, the Dog and Duck it was called. Not too grotty, fairly decent place in fact. I ordered a cold pint of lager, took it to a table in the corner and sank into a fairly comfortable lounge chair.
Whew! What an experience! Wow! I took a long pull at my pint, hey, welcome back to reality Peter, and settled down to drink the rest at a leisurely pace while recuperating my composure, returning to normal, getting back into my day's good mood. And as I thought back over this afternoon's bit of fun, something else occurred to me. He might be mad, but he wasn't stupid, that was for sure. By next Tuesday, I wouldn't be able to check on the €100,000, he would have made sure that it wouldn't hit my bank account until Wednesday at the earliest. His way of retaining the chance of my still being curious enough to turn up.
Clever boy, no doubt about it, but who cares. No way am I going to another meeting and there won't be any money anyway, just part of his overall delusion.
And thinking about the meeting itself, there had been no aggressiveness, which was fully in his interest obviously—I would otherwise have been gone in a flash, as he had to know—but it had definitely been a formal meeting, a serious one even, including from my side.
I was still under the influence of something similar to a mild state of shell-shock. Well, who wouldn't be, listening to a mentally disturbed person's tale of the kind that—I have no experience of the different types of inmate to be found in mental institutions, but that does not stop me having an opinion—must be quite unique. However, and it bears thinking about, he is not even in a mental institution—not at all.
He is running around loose, as free as a dog off the leash in Hyde Park, and with some extraordinarily unusual powers to boot.
I looked at the time, hey, nearly 7 o'clock. I emptied my glass, caught a cab within a couple of minutes, not a problem when it's not raining, back to the hotel, up to my room, teeth, shower, fresh shirt and down to the lobby with a good five minutes to spare.
"Excuse me, Mr. O'Donoghue sir," a female receptionist called to me—unfortunately an ugly female receptionist, don't get me wrong, not meant nastily, not her fault, nor will it cause her any problems in life, plenty of ugly men around—"there is a message for you." I went over to the desk and she handed me an envelope, a sleek, light blue envelope, together with an ingratiating and probably hopeful smile. Poor girl, don't be hopeful when it's hopeless, sorry and all that, but we swim in different waters, I prefer filet steaks.
Talking about filet steaks, I once lost a live-in girlfriend because of that. We were having dinner with a friend of mine and his girlfriend in a restaurant, the wine was flowing, and after finishing his steak my friend said, "You know the actor Paul Newman? He was being interviewed once and was asked how he had managed to maintain such a long and trouble-free marriage in an environment such as Hollywood's. Well, he replied, it's easy. When you've got a filet steak at home, why are you going to want to go out and eat a hamburger? Upon which the whole of American womanhood fell in love with him, and that's the way it is between Jeannie and me, am I right Jeannie?" This immediately prompted a wine-induced joke on my part. "With me," I said, "it's a little different. When you've got a hamburger at home, why would you want to go out and eat a meatloaf?" At which I bellowed with laughter, vinous mirth at its best. My girlfriend did not, however, bellow with laughter. She stood up, placed her napkin quietly and carefully on the table, left the restaurant and had already moved out by the time I got home. And apart from a 'phone call in which I received a detailed description not only of myself, but also of my mother, I never heard from her again.
I moved away from the reception desk, giving Little Miss Ugly a very interested smile, spread a little happiness, and opened the envelope. Same blue paper as the envelope and a handwritten note:
I am terribly, terribly sorry, but I shall be unable to join you for dinner this evening. I believe we do not in fact know each other, a very embarrassing mistake on my part and I do apologize most sincerely. Goodness knows what you must have thought of me. Hoping you will nevertheless have an enjoyable Saturday evening, and hoping for your forgiveness, Yours, Fiona.
Shit, that was some girl. A really swish lady, and not just to look at, judging by the cultured note and the sophisticated handwriting. But then that's life, isn't it, a surprise gift here and a surprise smack in the face there, you just have to get on with it. Extremely disappointing though, I would be telling a lie if I were to claim otherwise. No surname, no address, no telephone number, message received, crystal clear, thank you very much.
Now what to do? I suddenly didn't want to do anything, Saturday night or not. Coming on top of today's episode with my friend Mr. Parker from faraway places, Fiona's message had left me feeling dispirited. The joys of Spring had departed for new destinations, at least momentarily. The best thing to do was go to bed. Another of Cain's brilliant short novels awaited me: 'Double Indemnity'. And my good mood would be back by tomorrow morning.
And so I had a light dinner in the hotel dining room, and did just that.
DAY 3
I woke up with Mr. Jeremy Parker bugging my brain. That girl was not a coincidence. She couldn't be. Nor was the waiter. Obvious. Equally obvious on the other hand was the fact that our friend Jeremy was a five-star nutcase.
Mind you, he seemed to possess considerable knowledge of certain things pertaining to his dream world. Perhaps I would go into the Internet and check out a few items such as the quasar, or some of the distances he mentioned and so on. But on consideration, what wo
uld that tell me? Absolutely nothing, he could easily have done precisely the same thing himself. O.K., leave it alone, no more thinking about it today, today is Sunday. Fresh air is what I need, no IHT on Sundays but yesterday's Financial Times will do, see if I earned any money this week with my shares or, as happens often enough, lost some.
* * * * *
This is perhaps a good moment, on the off-chance that you are desirous of knowing a little more about me, for me to digress.
Now…let me see. I believe I can claim to be one of the more normal specimens of human being wandering around the planet, albeit characterized by certain of the distinctive singularities peculiar to my type.
Some say that you can divide the human race into two types, extroverts and introverts, and I hold that to be true. Others say that you can divide it into two other types, optimists and pessimists, and I hold that to be true as well. But there is more to it than that. A type is defined by several other traits, influences, behavioral characteristics and, for most types anyway, specific peculiarities.
My name is Peter O'Donoghue, 'POD' to my few friends—a word I do not confuse with acquaintances by the way, whether good, casual or undesired—for reasons you don't have to think much about. I am thirty eight years of age and therefore I statistically have another 520 months to go. Well over two thousand weeks, not too bad.
I look younger according to what most women tell me and they tend to know about such things. Fairly dark brown hair, blue eyes, decent body, a bit on the lean side if you will, but more than acceptable. In other words I am pretty happy with the luck of the draw except for being too tall, close to two meters high. But such is the world, you can't have everything, it doesn't trouble me.
The surname comes from my great grandfather and I am one-eighth Irish, a matter of utter insignificance, we are all a mixture of something or other, I only mention it in case you are interested in such things. I was a single child and both parents ended up under the turf while I was still a teenager. Or, if you are that way inclined, ended up in the sky. Actually, to be more accurate, only my mother was buried. My father was incinerated, and my only surviving relation, an uncle, proceeded down the same path soon thereafter. Sad you might say and indeed it is and indeed it was, but then time heals everything you might also say, and indeed it does and indeed it did.
I do not pretend to be one of the masses. My type is a minority type.
First of all, I am an honest person in all things that matter. None of us are totally honest of course, even if it's because you lie to your children about Father Christmas. Children are very trusting, they believe anything we tell them—which is why the religions like to catch them young, a fact, oh yes—but the moment children learn the truth about Father Christmas is the very moment in their small, brief lives when they realize for the first time that you can't trust the grown-ups. Because, if it suits their purpose, even your own mother and father will lie to you and mislead you. What's more, for a prolonged period of time if they feel like it.
And yes, I admit it; in things that don't matter, I can also, on occasion, be significantly dishonest.
Secondly, I am a cynic, something you may of course have already decided for yourself.
Someone once described a cynic as a person who, when he smells flowers, looks around to see where the coffin is. But I am not that kind of cynic. We (my type) are simply cynics of the kind who are censorious of all things that we do not understand or with which we disagree, and for which there is no available proof to the contrary. This type of cynic is not something the vast majority of people appreciate and that is why cynics of this kind tend to prefer the company of other, similar, cynics. We are indeed a minority slice of the social pie.
Furthermore, the word cynic itself has a somewhat derogatory connotation attached to it, one implying a certain churlishness, a certain derisory attitude on the part of the person to whom the word is being applied. But a cynic is merely a sceptic, as normal as any non-cynic, and perhaps, as a result, a more honest person into the bargain. So we need to be careful. If you are of the inclination to categorize all negative persons as cynics, I would not necessarily disagree with you. But if you were wishing to categorize all cynics as negative persons, you and I would have to disagree. A false assumption, if ever there was one.
I am also an agnostic. Ah hah, I hear you asking, and what else would one possibly expect of a cynic? Well, I wouldn't know, but hopefully you are not confusing the term with the word atheist. An atheist does not believe in the existence of God, or of any god from the wide variety available to us on this planet to choose from. Statistically, if you don’t mind my saying so, you are quite likely to be worshipping one of them yourself.
An agnostic, on the other hand, merely holds that nothing is provably known, nor is likely to be provably known, of the existence of a God or gods and as a consequence he neither accepts nor rejects these concepts. This philosophy has absolutely no negative or depressing effects on the agnostic's life. Quite the contrary, he is more often than not an affable, contented and relaxed fellow, swimming serenely, sedately and imperturbably through life's ocean with his lifebelt of 'don't know, don't believe, don't disbelieve' firmly attached.
That's me alright. I enjoy life. Even in unpleasant and troublesome times I apply the motto 'If life were not so great, it could be difficult sometimes'.
My type is also what you would call opinionated. We have opinions on just about everything, including on matters with which we are not necessarily adequately acquainted. We are consequently not always right. You have occasionally come across our type, I'm sure. Possibly you consider us to be insufferable assholes. Fair enough I say—but hopefully you have no appreciation for those creatures who have no opinions at all, or who do have opinions but rarely express them, which in effect has the same result. These types are far worse. The former are stupid and the latter are reptilian. They are death on a plate.
I have already indicated that I am a fairly honest type and it would therefore be remiss of me to leave you with these few autobiographical fragments without referring to a defect of mine. As a matter of fact, I have many defects, commencing with the admittedly dismal and disgusting one of being a smoker, but the defect I wish to refer to here is a specific characteristic of my type. I am a pessimist.
Optimists and pessimists have been described in various ways over the centuries. The optimist, as someone once said, is a person who believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds; whereas pessimist is a person who fears that this is so. A pessimist, as someone else once said, is best described as a person who has been forced to live for a prolonged period of time together with an optimist. An optimist commences the Sunday Times crossword with a pen, the pessimist with a pencil. And so on and so forth.
A pessimist is not to be confused with a negative person. I, like most of my type, am a notably positive person. A positive pessimist, that is the best way to describe me. There is nothing depressing about that. I just look at the current facts pertaining to our planet, sufficient on their own, in my view, to turn any thinking person into a pessimist, and then I envisage the future, the evolution to come, decide there is nothing to be done about it, least of all by me, and I am therefore pessimistic about that also.
And, having arrived at this conclusion, I decided that the only intelligent thing to do about it is to ignore it all. Forget about it, immerse yourself in life, get on with it, swim with the ocean waves, enjoy the whole thing for the amount of time allotted to you. Which isn't much, a miserly amount in my opinion, but there is nothing to be done about that either, is there? As I see it, a logical and positive way of embracing the whole situation.
So being a cynic with regard to many things, including Mr. Jeremy Parker's current fascinating fables, by no means signifies that I am a cynic with regard to life itself. I will go so far as to say that optimists have not the slightest idea of how many wonderful and pleasant surprises the average positive pessimist or cynic experiences during the co
urse of his or her lifetime.
I have been frank. I do not believe I need to add more. I have provided you with a miniature and blotchy sketch of my physiological landscape. Not a particularly congenial chap, you might say; an unacceptably opinionated fellow with an air of provocation about him, not one that I would especially single out for my dinner table. And I wouldn't disagree with you. That is the impression we (my type) tend to portray. But impressions are only impressions and hopefully you will forgive me if I make the suggestion that one day you invite me to dinner. I make quite a pleasant guest.
* * * * *
It was an English day. Overcast. But it wasn't raining and so I went for a walk, having found a copy of Friday's F.T. in the lobby to take with me. Yes, I agree with you, a hotel of this category should not have a two-day old newspaper lying around, Sunday staffing or not.
I had my coffee and croissants in Shepherds Market and checked the financials. Annoying, the optimists have been at work again, the big players, the investment funds, the pension funds and all the others have been betting—for that is all it is—that next week's U.S. and European economic indicators will prove positive and that, for a few days at least, some money can be earned. Everything has moved up, which at the present point in time means I lose money, my main investment currently being a leveraged bear certificate on the Eurostoxx 50. I have lost about €10,000 this week, not a problem, roughly ten days work if you take into account the tax offsets and the income tax, but needless to say the other way round would have been preferable.
Timing is the constant issue on the stock markets, when to buy what and when to sell what. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, just like the experts. A war breaks out here, an oil drilling platform develops a leak there, a country defaults on its debt, a tsunami hits a nuclear power station, or whatever. As for my bear certificate, I will just keep it of course, things will start collapsing again soon. That is what I say at least, but who knows how stocks will move over the next twelve months, it's just one vast, contrived casino at the best of times. The golden rule is that if you can't afford to lose any of your money, stick it into a savings account—although nowadays you would also have to be careful about which bank you choose and you wouldn't get much interest either.
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