On the Floor

by Aifric Campbell

  Meanwhile, surrounded by mementos while his real life carries on in exile, Al remains a tourist in our town. He will never take root here although he has studiously embraced the familiarisation programme that includes Covent Garden, Stratford on Avon, Sunday lunch at Simpson’s, a tournament at Wentworth, three days at Lords, fish and chips, strawberries at Wimbledon. But I know he is secretly pining for peanut butter jelly and pretzels, top-loading washing machines and giant refrigerators, and yellow cabs with plastic on the seats. It’s the little details that grind him down and mark him out as a transient in his own life. Still Al does his time in the hope that this European tour of duty might catapult him to the advantage over his peers that he couldn’t quite manage at school. In career years there has been some slippage, and lately he’s been reading about his classmates in the Wall Street Journal and he is anxiously measuring the widening gulf.

  Each time Al comes back from a trip home he brings goody bags into the office: Oreos and bags of pretzels, Hershey’s Kisses which we all despise because they taste like sick, but the M&Ms are a big hit. He is always a little mournful for the first few days and spends more time than usual on the US stock desk hanging out with the other expats. Two of them are from Minnesota and were crazy about ice-fishing and they all shared a mews in Glebe Place where we did once have a great party at Christmas. They’d filled the bath with ice and beer bottles and by the end of the night we were having head-dunking competitions in the meltwater. The Minnesota ice fishers could keep their heads in for a full minute and come up white-faced and smiling, have a tequila and do it all over again. The rest of us surfaced after three seconds screaming and dripping all over the bathroom floor and down the stairs and out into a chill night where my jaw ached and we staggered around with teeth chattering, trying to hail a cab with Rob going Fuck this, I am DYING.

  ‘Hey Al,’ shouts Rob, ‘female line two.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just kidding,’ says Rob and Al shows him the finger. He is wary of unidentified callers ever since the golf tournament in the Bahamas where he met a half-Swede called Annika who had jacked in her job at a gator sanctuary in the Everglades to cure her depression by swimming with dolphins. Al assumed that she was part of the control group and not one of the patients who clustered together on the dockside like cripples at Lourdes under the supervision of psychologists from Cornell. Then one night Annika got hammered on margaritas in the beach bar and ran away across the dunes, stripping off her clothes in the dark like that scene from Jaws, and Al had a real job getting her out of the water because she was kicking and screaming that she just wanted to die. Al couldn’t find her clothes on the beach so she had to travel naked in the ambulance, and naturally the paramedics were throwing him filthy looks like he was some kind of pervert rather than the guy who actually saved her life. Al took an earlier flight home but Annika managed to check herself out of the hospital in time to catch him as he was heading for the departure gates and even tried to break through security, and for a while there he was worried she was going to show at Reception one day, although he was pretty sure she wouldn’t remember he worked at Steiner’s.

  ‘Speaking of dolphins,’ Rob leans across the monitor.

  ‘Which we weren’t,’ Al hangs up the phone.

  ‘You know those penguins, the really big ones that stand up?’

  ‘They all stand up, Rob,’ I say. ‘That’s what they do.’

  ‘You mean the Emperor penguins,’ says Al.

  ‘You know what those Antarctic explorers used to do with them?’

  ‘Eat them.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Use the blubber to make oil,’ says Al.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Rob, use them as goalposts?’

  ‘They used to shag them.’

  ‘Jesus, Rob.’ I shake my head.

  Al nods thoughtfully at his screen. ‘Yeah, I can see that.’

  ‘What do you mean you can see that?’ I turn to him.

  ‘You could sort of imagine them looking like women.’

  ‘Two legs,’ Rob grins. ‘That little waddle…’

  ‘How the fuck do penguins look like women if they’re covered in feathers and they have beaks?’

  ‘Hey, Geri,’ Al raises both palms. ‘I’m just saying I imagine that’s what those guys were thinking of when they looked at the penguins after six months in the snow at minus 40.’

  ‘So you would have sex with a penguin?’

  ‘That is not what I said, I said—’

  ‘Besti – AL – ity,’ Rob whispers dramatically.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Remember Midnight Express, mate.’

  ‘There were no penguins in that movie.’

  ‘So what exactly is your point, Rob?’ Al thumps his keyboard.

  Rob shrugs, shakes his head. ‘One minute a bloke is straight, next thing you know he’s an arsebandit.’

  ‘That’s because he was in prison,’ I say.

  ‘Exactly my point,’ Rob slaps the top of the monitor. ‘There’s our Al doing his nut in minus 40 for six months when this cute little penguin comes waddling out of a blizzard. So what does he do?’

  Al is tensed now, head bent low over the notebook, pen twitching between his fingers. Rob winks at me. ‘You’re sick,’ I pull a face and he turns away, still grinning, hands in pockets, and walks over to Futures.

  10:23

  ‘LISA CALLED ME ALREADY,’ Pie Man stands up when I stop at his desk. ‘And it’s all sorted, she’s bringing Rex over at five so I’ll—’

  ‘And you’re sure.’

  ‘Yeah yeah. It’ll be fine.’

  Julie is hovering by SPUD to make sure I see the Grope before I leave.

  ‘So I’ll call you from Hong Kong.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be happy with me.’ And Pie Man reaches out to touch my shoulder but his touch falters and instead of a cheery pat it feels like he is wiping something off his hand.

  ‘Thanks, you’re a star.’ I am backing away. Down the row of desks Rob gives me the thumbs up; he has a phone to his ear and Bud Light standing by like a pointer ready to run some ticket over to Ops.

  ‘He’s waiting,’ Julie reminds me and I follow her across the floor.

  The Grope is standing up staring at the wall-mounted TV screen where the silent CNN headline reads Tariq Aziz repeats Iraq will attach Israel in the event of any attack on Iraqi territory.

  ‘So you’re all set?’ he turns towards me.

  ‘Sure.’ Like there’s an option.

  ‘Hook up with Tom Castigliano when you get over there. He’s fully briefed.’ And he moves over to his desk, slides into his chair and I take up position on the other side.

  ‘What you need to know is that we want this thing wrapped up before the first shot is fired in Baghdad,’ he says. ‘And the UN deadline expires Wednesday at midnight EST.’

  ‘I don’t know if Felix will play ball.’

  ‘My instinct tells me Felix will go for it. I gotta good feeling about this, Geri. He’s sat on his chunk of Vulkan Value for a lifetime now, this bid from Texas Pistons is a late Christmas present. So what if he won’t see us or the Vulkan board and won’t say what he’s going to do? That’s just ’cos he gets off on jerking people around. This will be a landmark transaction for Steiner’s. We are not going to lose out.’

  He looks at me, pauses, and then continues. ‘And I have personally assured Kapoor that you can get a simple answer to a simple question.’

  Oh boy.

  But the Grope is lost now in contemplation of some glorious vision of the future. ‘I told him we are going to go out and get Felix to play ball.’ He raps the table and grins. He’s going for the big one, he has picked this career moment to risk his all. He’s already rehearsing the legend of how Goldman’s were ready to snatch the deal from under our noses and he saved the day, a subtle insinuation that the great Kapoor was really dithering like a Jessie and how it was the Grope who cha
nged the course of history right on the brink of a war. He is living the dream; he is starring in his own movie and it isn’t going to end with his ass in a sling again, it’s going to end with the story slipping into the chronicles of deal mythology and the Grope’s big balls slapped right down on the table for everyone to see.

  ‘So you’ve been with Steiner’s now for how long? Five, six years?’ I nod and study the concertina of creases along the arms of his shirt. ‘We plucked you from obscurity and gave you a life you’d never dreamed of. Opportunity. Possibility. You know, I remember your first day. Your hunger, your desire to be something. Whatever it was driving you – past or future – you had it. And I watched you grow from greenhorn to the biggest producer on the floor. Smart. Focused. Driven.’ He sighs and raises his head with a contemptuous jut of the chin. ‘Until now.’

  He grips the chair and rolls it back to thud softly against the window shelf. ‘Oh, I’ve seen it happen before, and to better people than you, Geri. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you can spot the early warning signs. A kind of sloppiness sets in. Sharp edges going blunt. Sometimes it’s the booze or the women or the dope and sometimes it’s just complacency. The golden goose gets axed while you’re asleep at the wheel. Sometimes it’s loss of faith, like losing your swing.’ He flexes his arms and air swings straight-armed and we watch the imaginary ball fly up and out through the window, soar across the City with thousands of other admiring heads following its trailblaze into space. ‘Burnout is ugly, Geri. And expensive. The rot sets in and eats away. One day a rising star, the next a piece of trash. Some people just can’t cut it.’

  He gives me one of those searching looks as if he was scanning my neural pathways. I am sweating slightly and a display of sentient life would be very timely now.

  ‘You still hungry?’ and for a crazy moment I actually picture a croissant, an image of standing at Nalia’s deli counter resting a hand on the glass dome.

  ‘Yes. I’m still hungry.’ I rise from the chair. ‘I’m still hungry.’ I repeat the words, for this is what Zanna knows so well about me: when you’re raised a Catholic you understand the persuasive power of incantation. Silent prayer just doesn’t pull the same punch. ‘I’m still hungry,’ and as I speak I can actually feel my tummy rumbling – for a croissant or the deal or the hunt for the coat-tails of the life I built.

  The Grope nods approvingly and stands up tall behind his desk, hands in pockets now, looking out at the trading floor. Perhaps he is searching for the right sporting metaphor that will encapsulate this moment, something about the longest shot, the highest peak, the fastest run, something to spark me into the zone, some keepsake I can take with me on the plane.

  My gaze drifts over to the CNN screen where the picture has shifted to the inside of an Apache helicopter and I sense some sneaking foreboding creeping up on me, a bad feeling about the frontline.

  ‘What about the whole war thing?’ I ask and he snaps his gaze back at me.

  ‘There’s four hundred thousand US troops out there just itching to barbecue Saddam’s ass. This war will all be wrapped up in no time, you’ll see, and Max Lester’s not the kind of guy who gets spooked by something that’s going to be over in a few weeks.’

  He leans forward and places both knuckles on the desk. ‘Take it from me, this stuff your newspapers write over here, Bush the wimp? They’re wide of the mark. When I was a kid at Andover—’

  ‘Andover?’

  ‘Philips Academy, Andover,’ he snaps. ‘It’s what you’d call the American Eton. Course George Bush was there way before my time but our tutor told the story about Stimson’s visit to the school and how it set him on the road to greatness.’

  ‘Stimson?’

  ‘Stimson was the Secretary of War in Roosevelt’s cabinet. Visited Philips in the summer of 1940 when George Bush was just sixteen. Delivered a vision of America’s destiny. Subject? World leadership, the great battle between liberty and the enemies of liberty.’ He frowns at the tombstones in the display cabinet and the listless Stars and Stripes and then suddenly jerks his head back to stare angrily at me.

  ‘You know he flew fifty-eight combat missions, got shot down, spent thirty-four minutes in the Pacific before he was rescued by a destroyer.’

  ‘Stimson?’

  ‘BUSH,’ he whacks the desk.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Does that sound like a wimp? Does that sound like the kind of guy who walks away from a tough job?’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’ I straighten up and uncross my legs.

  ‘This deal is going to put us on the map, Geri.’ He turns his head in slow consideration until his glare lights on my face. He is weighing every word. ‘Texas Piston v Vulkan Valve,’ he whispers with schoolboy daring and scrolls his hand through the air as if he was writing the imaginary tombstone that’s going to put us right up there in the league tables. He flashes a triumphant leer towards the corner of the room and the glass cabinet. He folds his arms behind his head, running a tongue over his gleaming incisors, savouring the sweet taste of anticipated victory. ‘But,’ he snaps out of his reverie, ‘we’re in a race against time here so just get out to Hong Kong and work your magic. All you gotta do is get a simple answer to a simple question.’

  ‘Sure. Great.’ I say, standing.

  He flashes his teeth reassured, bestows a paternal nod. ‘I’m counting on you, Geri. You can deliver on this.’

  Faustino returns with my double Absolut and an espresso. This is not the first time I have shown up here hours before the lunchtime avalanche. The café bar is pristine and quiet but for the low rumble of jazz, the waitresses clinking in the wings, the glasses gleaming behind the bar. Technically speaking Faustino should not be serving booze at this time, but he is from Bilbao so he picks and chooses which English protocol is worthy of his embrace. He gives short professional shift to most of the traders, including Rob, a tilt to his magnificent chin when he takes their cash. They shrivel in their smart cut suits before his imperious good looks. Faustino likes me because I am not English or American and also because I told him that there are lots of people on the west coast of Ireland with jet black hair which is said to be because of the Spanish Armada. He has a deep respect for history and tradition and has confided in me that he does not approve of the new Guggenheim that is coming to Bilbao one little bit.

  ‘Ever been to Hong Kong, Faustino?’ He looks over my head into the middle distance and shakes his head.

  ‘So if somebody asked you to go and live there, would you go?’

  ‘Hwat peoples ask?’ he frowns.

  ‘Oh, say your boss, your client. All the people who own you.’

  He takes a deep breath, holds it as if testing his lung capacity. ‘No peoples hown Faustino.’

  ‘So you would say no.’

  ‘Hi go home to Bilbao,’ he taps his chest. ‘Hi promise.’

  ‘Who did you promise? Your girlfriend?’ I picture a sultry barefoot vixen standing outside a dusty casa.

  ‘Mama. Hi promise my mama.’

  ‘That’s great Faustino. You promised your mum.’

  ‘For sure.’ He picks up the white napkin and snaps it like a whip. ‘Familia, no?’

  ‘Yeah right, familia.’

  The door swings behind me. Faustino places a double espresso in front of me, watches over like a granny while I drink it. ‘You hwan more?’

  ‘I’m going to the airport,’ I point to the silver Merc idling out beyond the concourse. ‘I’m going to Hong Kong.’ He nods in grave commiseration.

  There is a spreading puddle by Rex’s bowl as he slops in that chaotic way he has of drinking water. He is delighted at my unexpected daytime return and the little play we’ve had out in the courtyard. He trots over to his bed in the hall, flops down on a squeaky toy and stares up at me. ‘Good boy,’ I say and he grunts, settles his head on his paws. He has seen the suit carrier on the bed, he knows I am going to leave him, and I am hijacked by these
sudden tears. I mean, how would a Labrador exist in Hong Kong, let alone like it? Even the plane journey would be a trauma.

  ‘Look,’ I tell him, ‘you’re going to stay with Pie Man, so lots of food. And I’ll bet he’ll let you sleep on the couch.’ Rex closes his eyes. He knows all about abandonment. You should’ve got a cat, Geri, said Rob. They couldn’t give a shit if you’re never there. They don’t get attached to you. Zanna too has been hassling me. Just find a home for him, she said the other night when I mentioned Rex as another reason why I couldn’t relocate to Hong Kong. You never liked him anyway, I told her and at least she had the good grace not to disagree. Rex could sense it even when he was a puppy, some invisible force field that has always kept him from jumping up at her like he does with everyone else; he knew his place. He is your surrogate child. Dogs are meant for ranches and farms. Rex should be living in Richmond or Wandsworth or somewhere, with a stay-at-home mum, kids, garden, the whole deal. You should be out in the world, not spending quality time with your pet.

  The fridge contents stare glumly back at me: balsamic dressing and cocktail cherries of a certain age. The vodka and a Sapporo, which I like to keep because the can has a military style.

  14.3 days out of each month, I say now into the open fridge, is how often we’ve been in the same country so far this year, which is exactly what I said when Stephen once yawned that we saw each other all the time. He was reading Companies News while I looked for eggs to make pancakes, because they reminded him of home weekends from school. Rex was stretched out in a sun spot on the floor by his bare feet. When I replay these exchanges now I hear them as if through a voice distorter where all the frequencies have been adjusted, like fiddling with an equaliser, the bass boosted and ominous and the words heavy with a foreboding I had never previously heard. A remix of a favourite song where you hear the imperfections, the flatness of the high note, the muffle of a guitar string when the finger touches the fret, a certain looseness about the timing.