Upgrading

by Simon Brooke

  “You shouldn’t have gone back there then.” Good point.

  “I shouldn’t have gone to dinner with him in the first place.”

  “I hope you declined his kind offer.”

  She is beginning to annoy me now so I say, “He told me that it wasn’t that unusual because you sometimes …” I’m begining to wish I hadn’t started this conversation “… you shared lovers.”

  “Shared?”

  “Yeah, sometimes your … boys, as he called them … would, you know … with him.”

  She seems a bit taken aback but a second later she has regained her composure.

  “Oh, Channing. He’ll say anything to shock.”

  “He certainly was embarrassing.”

  “You’re not going to up and leave me and make a little love nest with him, are you?” she says more kindly.

  “I’m tempted to,” I say sulkily. This isn’t going anywhere, she obviously doesn’t feel any guilt whatsoever. Not a very Marion emotion, I suppose. I just look like a silly, strait-laced Englishman.

  She laughs again and says, “Never mind. Look, you’d better hurry up and get to the office before you get fired.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “Shall we go to New York this weekend?”

  “What?”

  “I said, shall we go to New York this weekend? Didn’t you say you liked New York City?”

  “God, I love it, I’d love to. Yeah, that would be brilliant.”

  “Let’s go Friday morning, I’ll call the airline now.”

  “Yeah, Friday would be great,” I say realizing that Friday would also be great for finally getting sacked.

  “Call me when you get home tonight,” she says and puts the phone down.

  At work I follow one of the very few useful pieces of advice I have ever read in my dad’s management books. Instead of asking Debbie for Friday and Monday off, I write her a memo saying that unless she objects, I will be taking Friday and Monday off. Clever, eh? My violent threats against the word processor, although issued under my breath, attract the attention of Claire, Debbie’s dreary secretary.

  “What are you doing?” she asks irritably.

  “Why won’t it type there?” I moan, pointing at the screen and the uncooperative cursor which just blinks at us insolently. Claire mutters something about tabs, her fingers dance over the keys and the machine does what I want it to. She lingers a moment while I send it through to print. Then I sign it, copy it and drop it discreetly on Claire’s desk, which, to my irritation, is unusually tidy today. I walk past the desk again, pick up the memo and put it into a folder on her desk so that she won’t find it as quickly. I had thought of backdating it by a few days until Claire saw me type it.

  “I’m off to New York this weekend,” I tell Sami casually when I get back to my desk. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Wow, really?” she gasps. “Ooh yes, I’d love, I’d love … what would I love?” She scratches around the bottom of her yogurt carton with a plastic spoon and licks it thoughtfully. “Oh whatever, something nice.” I laugh and decide that if I do nothing else in NYC I will get something nice for Sami.

  I must have been on the phone when Claire dropped my memo back on my desk. As I turn round to make a note of someone’s phone number I see it. At first I think it is my copy then I notice Debbie’s firm, ugly handwriting along the bottom. “Sorry,” it says, “we’re still understaffed as you know and I think you’ve had enough time off recently. DL.” I read it through twice. How can she have seen it so quickly? Claire must have read it on the word processor screen and warned Debbie it was coming. God that bitch! That fucking bitch! What is it to her if I take some time off work? The hours I’ve put in for her over the last few years!

  I feel like someone has thumped me in the stomach. When will Debbie ever give me a break? It’s just not fair. I am just getting up to go and see her with it when Sami reaches across the desk and catches my arm.

  “Andrew, don’t.” She has obviously read the note while I was on the phone. I sit down heavily.

  “Why, Sami? Why? For God’s sake. Why has she got it in for me these days?”

  Sami shrugs her shoulders gently.

  “I told you—just keep your head down,” she says. “New York will still be there in a couple of months’ time. Just hang on.”

  “I can’t hang on,” I say, thinking out loud.

  “Oh, Andrew.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I say, getting up to walk up and down the corridor a bit.

  I wander into the corridor. There is a ping from the lift. People. I can’t face them. I nip into a disused office and close the door quietly behind me. There is a phone so I ring Jonathan to see if I can get my money yet. I’m not holding my breath, he is obviously going to make me wait for my cash. While the phone rings I do a quick calculation and discover that it’s been a month since I did my first jobs. There must be a cheque ready now. I reckon I’ve had a couple of hundred quid from Marion in tens, twenties and fifties. Plus Paris and the Rolex. But I need some cash. Living this lifestyle is costing me money too.

  Jonathan is friendly but cool.

  “Yep, let me just make sure here on my sheet. Bub-bubbub-bub-bah. No problem, I’m putting a cheque in the post to you today.”

  I’m almost dumbstruck.

  “Really? Oh, great. Thanks.”

  “No problem. Hope you’re around for the next few days because things are certainly hotting up here,” he says.

  “Yeah, yes, I will be.” Hang on, what am I on about? I won’t be around at all. As usual, I’ll be with Marion for the next few days. Or years.

  When I come back Sami is on the phone so I pass her a Postit note: “Sorry about that. Shall we go to that Italian café and have some lunch? Andrew X.”

  She reads my note and then finishes her call and thinks about it.

  “I’m sick of sandwiches,” I whisper. “Let’s have something decent.”

  “Oh, Andrew.”

  “Oh, Sami.” She thinks about it for a moment longer and then makes a face in gentle annoyance.

  “Go on, then. If it’ll cheer you up. We’ll have to be very quick, though.”

  I push open the door of the café and let Sami in first. We are met with clouds of warm, sweet-smelling steam, the clatter of plates and the piercing scream of the Gaggia machine. Most people are finishing up and leaving so finding a table is no problem. Two of the girls from the paper’s Home and Style section are just leaving. I smile hello at one of them who I’ve spoken to before at a staff party. She is wearing a totally unnecessary scarf and gives me a fleeting, patronizing smile and carries on talking to her colleague:

  “I’m still working on that food piece about that stall in the Farmer’s Market in New York that specializes in basil.”

  “Oh, yah,” says her friend, flipping her hair away from her face and adjusting her heavy, narrow, black-framed glasses. “Isadora’s piece. I saw the copy when it came in. It’s like, totally amazing, that place—seventeen different types.”

  “Fourteen,” the first girl corrects her as they head for the door. When I first came to London I couldn’t understand how girls like this earn less than we do but have their own flats in South Kensington, fly business class to New York for a wedding and go skiing in Gstaad every year. How naive, how suburban, how middle class was I to assume that income necessarily has any connection with salary?

  The café owner’s daughter comes over to us and hands out two menus, typed fifty years ago and warped with damp in their smeary plastic covers.

  “We’ll start with a bottle of champagne,” I inform her haughtily.

  “Yeah, sure,” she says in her throaty, London-Italian voice. “We put it on ice this morning just in case you showed up.”

  “Jolly good,” I say.

  “You wanna watch him,” shouts her dad from over the counter. “He order everything yeah? Then he stick you with the bill.” He laughs loudly, ignoring another customer who is trying
to tell him something about the sandwich he is making for her. Sami laughs shyly and looks at me.

  “That’s ruined your date, hasn’t it?” says the daughter, poking my shoulder affectionately with the blunt end of her pencil.

  “Sami is not my date,” I explain with feigned indignation. “She’s my colleague. I’m taking her for lunch, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, well hurry up and order—we’re nearly sold out.”

  “Lasagna?” I ask Sami.

  She looks horrified. “No, I told you—”

  “Kidding,” I say, squeezing her arm across the table. I ask the Italian girl, “Got any of your mum’s spag bol left?”

  “Yep, just enough for two, as it happens.”

  “Spag bol?” I say to Sami. “It’s quite good here.”

  “Quite good! Cheeky bugger,” says the girl.

  “I’ll have the spaghetti bolognaise then. Thank you,” says Sami, smiling nervously.

  “To drink?”

  I order mineral water for us both and when the girl has gone Sami whispers, “Andrew, I haven’t got enough money. Can I borrow some until—?”

  “No,” I say abruptly. Sami rolls her eyes. “This is on me.” I feel in my pocket just to check that I’ve still got a twenty Marion gave me.

  “Andrew, don’t be daft, I’ll pay you back—”

  “No. I told you, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll have to go to the cashpoint afterwards.” She looks at her watch. “Actually it’d better be tonight, if that’s OK.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Sami raises her eyebrows.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up,” she says. She waves her tiny fist at me and pulls a face. I laugh at this naked aggression, Sami-style.

  “Sorry. I hate talking about money,” I say seriously. “Please let me buy your lunch, Sami.”

  The Italian girl comes back with a bottle of San Pellegrino.

  “Moet & Chandon for two,” she announces, banging down the bottle of water and two small unbreakable glasses, still hot from the dishwasher.

  I wink thanks at her and then carry on talking to Sami.

  “Don’t you ever get fed up worrying about money? You know—a fiver for this or that and then panicking about going overdrawn?”

  “Everyone worries about money,” says Sami, frowning.

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Well, millionaires might not but normal people do. Everyone I know does—once in a while, anyway.”

  “Don’t you ever get sick of it?”

  Sami shrugs her shoulders. “It’s part of life, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  She pours us both some water and takes a delicate sip.

  “Well, unless you’ve won the Lottery.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have to worry.”

  “You would—what about someone scratching your Rolls Royce or your servants stealing things?”

  “At least you’d be able to have a plate of spaghetti bolognaise without having to rush to the cashpoint, hoping it would let you have enough money. You could go on holiday or buy new clothes whenever you wanted without having to save up.”

  “But I like saving up,” says Sami. “It’s part of the fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. You wouldn’t enjoy something if you could just buy it like that, would you?” I think about this for a moment. The girl brings us our spaghetti bolognaise and I savour the smell for a moment, before adding the dried, bright yellow, sick-smelling parmesan. “Anyway, you’re not doing badly for money, are you? Paris and now New York.”

  “I just want more than this.”

  “You think yourself lucky, matey,” says Sami, carefully coiling pasta round her fork. “I just want to be able to meet the guy I’m going to marry before my wedding day.”

  thirteen

  on Friday morning while Anna Maria is serving breakfast, I stare at the phone, debating whether to go through the motions of leaving a message at the office about not feeling well. I decide not to. It’s too undignified, I’ll take it on the chin when I get back.

  Marion asks me why I’m so quiet and I explain that taking time off work is worrying me.

  “Well, if you want to spend time in that dreary office of yours instead of coming to New York, you’re very welcome to do so,” she says over the top of the International Herald Tribune.

  “I don’t want to, I’m just frightened of getting fired,” I say, moving my knife idly around the toast crumbs on my plate.

  “Well, like I told you, you should broaden your horizons, think beyond those four walls.”

  “It’s all right for you. I—” I realize that I’m about to ask her for money, straight out. Would it work? I try it. “I’m a bit broke, Marion, you couldn’t just lend me, er, I don’t know, two hundred, could you?”

  She puts the paper down properly. “Why do you need money? You can’t be short.”

  “Well …”

  “I already pay for everything.” Ouch! Point taken.

  “Yeah, I know, and I’m very grateful but—”

  “But what?”

  “Just for occasional expenses,” I find myself saying, surprised at this phrase.

  “You’ve got your salary, too. What do you want more money for? You’re not doing drugs, are you?”

  The honest answer is I want more money so that I can get some freedom from her for twenty minutes or even a whole evening for a bit of normality but I can’t think of a reply that I can actually give her so I just carry on playing with my knife.

  “And stop doing that, will you? It’s driving me crazy!” she snaps, returning to her newspaper. I’m back staring at the phone again. “Are you ready, Andrew?” she says now, breaking my trance.

  “Yep,” I say, deciding not to think about the office for the next few days.

  “Where is your luggage?” she asks. She knows that my luggage is an old Head sports bag slumped by the front door.

  “It’s there.” I nod towards the door, awaiting her indignant reaction.

  “Oh, really! Not that old thing again, it’s so embarrassing seeing you with that piece of garbage.”

  “It’s all I’ve got,” I say crossly, knowing what she’ll say in reply.

  “We’ll have to get you something else in New York.”

  Yeah, yeah.

  The car roars up the M4 to Heathrow and an hour later we’re in the executive lounge where I help myself to another cup of coffee that I don’t want and then catch sight of a bank of payphones. There is even a fax. Perhaps I could fax Debbie rather than having to speak to her. Next to us three Americans in comfy sweaters, Burberry raincoats, dark blue jeans and trainers read the Wall Street Journal, Time and some golfing magazine. A couple who look like they have been upgraded or won a free trip hug each other and stare at Marion who, in turn, is staring at herself rather crossly in a tiny mirror, trying to make her hair do something it doesn’t want to.

  After half an hour I’ve read most of the newspapers and the magazines don’t appeal. Nobody could really want to read all this business shit, it must just be there to help people justify the fact that they are travelling business class. The headlines on the front remind me of Dad’s self-help management books. I bump into a man in a suit while I mooch around the complimentary drinks buffet. He apologizes but gives me a faintly enquiring look as if to ask what I’m doing in the executive lounge, which is reserved for people like him with customized luggage labels and membership of at least nine frequent flyer programmes. I leave my cup of coffee on the counter and wander back to Marion.

  “Bored?” she says.

  I make a face which says, “I’m afraid so.”

  She roots in her bag, gives me a £50 note and says: “Go shopping but be back in fifteen minutes.”

  Don’t worry I’m not likely to leave the country on this, I think as I wander out of the club lounge cocoon into the mind-numbing hubbub of the rest of the airport.

  On the plane, as we turn left
to Business Class, I cannot resist a backwards glance into the “goat” class cabin. People look like battery hens, fidgeting already, trying to pack even more bags and bits and pieces into the overhead lockers while others start to read or stare blankly ahead—the full horror of the cramped, dry-aired, white-noise-filled, seven-hour ordeal that awaits them slowly sinking in.

  “Good morning, Mr. Collins, can I get you something to drink?” says our perma-delighted stewardess.

  “Can I have some champagne,” I say, noticing that that is what Marion has ordered. I sit back and let the seat embrace me, shuddering slightly at the thought of those poor bastards behind us. I remember my last trip to New York with a couple of friends: stuck between a screaming, snotty two-year-old and a fat bloke who sniffed and sweated his way across the Atlantic.

  “More champagne, Mr. Collins?” she says, still clearly absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to serve me. It is actually a bit unnerving and makes me feel I should be paying her my full attention.

  “Any more and you’ll have to carry me off the plane,” I tell her.

  She laughs and moves on.

  “Don’t speak to the stewardess like that,” hisses Marion. She turns to watch the girl who is now serving, with, apparently, even more delight, a fifty-something businessman behind me. “Peanut-brained slut,” she adds.

  After lunch has been cleared away, Marion opens a magazine and starts shaking her head disapprovingly. I am going to ask her what is wrong but then I think, sod it. Marion disapproves of most things: English plumbing and dental work, pretty girls, anything that isn’t expensive and, I’m beginning to suspect, me.

  I feel in the seat pocket for the Walkman and the cassettes I bought with Marion’s fifty at the airport. My ears fill with music and, gazing out over the cold, clean, bright skies I feel insulated, cosy and safe for the first time in weeks. This is how I could spend the rest of my life.

  * * *

  The hotel room is filled with flowers. We’re staying in a hotel because her house is rented out, apparently. Marion looks at one card after another not with joy but with grim satisfaction. “Hmm,” she says to some and “Huh!” to others.

  “Well, word has certainly gotten round that we’re here,” she says.