On the Floor

by Aifric Campbell

  There are worse places to be than Hong Kong of course. And worse reasons for being here than the threat of contingency that Felix has so neatly aired. Quid pro quo.

  The ferry dips and rolls in a tanker’s wake and I slide sideways on the wooden bench. A little girl in front turns around and stares at the tears that are spilling now down over my cheeks. She prods her mother’s arm, and she also turns; the girl points at my face and the woman bundles her around and they too move away. I do not know what my tears are for since there is no accessible sensation other than the desire to lie down, to sleep, to reach the end of something.

  A watery vision of Central wobbles on the receding horizon. Out there somewhere is Stephen, he could be looking down at the water or else already in a cab to Kaitek heading for the afternoon flight. Did he think of me when he stood in front of Felix’s steel door? No, not for a second. Zanna is right: it is so over and I am gagging on a dead intimacy, clinging to driftwood like the castaway I am. Felix’s taunt nags at my ear. A very charming man. Very well-bred as they say… Not really from the same side of the tracks, though, are you, my dear? I can see how that would be problematic. It has taken 182 days of stunned mourning to accept that Stephen and I had never been looking at the same thing, that the lost city of my world is a place he never even imagined.

  Oh, but the aura of the unattached is like a smell that seeps into your days. There’s no homeward rush after the last ticket is booked and the floor slowly empties and you’re lulled into a fitful sleep to the drone of the US desk, the occasional hoot on the open line to New York, the muted roar of applause where some match plays out on low volume TV. At night I lie awake with price histories hovering in the darkness in front of me, replaying trades and patterns on a three-dimensional grid that stretches back years. An obsessive surveillance, or a place to hide, a fear that something has been overlooked or perhaps there is always some new data that could be mined or – worse – some old data that can be re-cast even when it’s too late, the deal is long since done. I still cannot stop myself cluttering up my brain with useless digits, formulae, algorithms. To discard would be to forget, or maybe it is a way of forgetting the important stuff. Like what exactly Stephen and myself talked about the first time we met and all those lost conversations – I estimate 2,304 hours minimum – yet the fragments I remember would barely fill a page. There is an ephemeral quality about the whole relationship now as if it evaporates on examination.

  But our Venice finale still screams at me in vivid colour. Every time I replay the closing act I tell myself it’s desensitisation I’m seeking, that I’m hoping to reach a point where I can fast-forward, that I will become jaded by the story of my own abandonment. Instead I review it in salacious detail as if I might find some unexplored detail, some new prick of pain. Maybe there is a hidden code in the final act that will transform the story and reveal its true meaning. Didn’t I learn that lesson at close range from my own family all those years ago: how the ending becomes the whole story. How it becomes the new beginning that shapes the rest of your life. Isn’t this what I have learnt from my own mother? How the last act becomes the defining moment, all that happened and all that you remember: the family in the grip of a crisis, the healing that never happened.

  But it’s not those memories that rise now from the water’s swell, it’s the closing scene with Stephen: 182 days ago, at 5.15 a.m. on 17 July 1990, I was standing smoking on the balcony of Stephen’s apartment, waiting for him to show up for our 7:10 flight to Venice. He’d spent the past twenty-four hours in competition for a 350 million-dollar deal (for a major European conglomerate whose identity, as usual, he refused to reveal). I was standing smoking in the cool quiet, looking east along Cheyne Walk and thinking: fucking hell. Imagining Stephen huddled with his team in a conference room, spinning their wheels in the agony of The Wait. When all the counter-proposals have been made, all the margins squeezed to shrieking point, when a whole universe of scenario analyses has been explored, when there is nothing to do but Wait For The Call from some bastard CEO who will shatter the silence with his ring, and say the deal is yours. Or tell you that six months of work has been for nothing, snap you like a twig and leave you howling through gritted teeth.

  I could picture the tired trolley of cling-filmed sandwiches beached in the corner of the room, the conference table littered with steel thermoses and bottles of water. No smoking. Even under Maximum Deal Stress, Stephen does not make any concession to human frailty. Spread around the outer circle of the room is a gaggle of multinational Junior Analysts, recently parachuted down to earth from their cosy nests at Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, INSEAD at $105,000 apiece; the fledgling investment bankers who are normally left alone in the office late at night with strict instructions not to play with any matches. Their fresh-faced ambition is being slowly crushed by the tedium of bag-carrying and eighteen-hour days. Tonight they brush up against the Holy Grail of Banking and wonder if they will ever do more than worship at the altar of Stephen Graves, whose foot-last rests in a shoe mortuary at John Lobb of St James, whose meteoric rise to glory has already passed into City mythology. Stephen Graves, who didn’t just come top of the class of ’83, but who simultaneously, in an impressive demonstration of impeccable time-management skills, cut four strokes off his golf handicap, became intimately acquainted with the off-piste terrain around Chamonix and read the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (in the original French, of course).

  I could picture Stephen with his feet up on the conference table, shooting the breeze with his henchmen Julian (INSEAD) and JJ (Stanford) and entertaining the peripheral audience with anecdotes about the personal idiosyncrasies of the Competition and an endless cascade of stories that include:

  Great Deals I Have Done,

  Great Deals I Have Stolen from the Jaws of the Competition,

  One Great Deal I Lost Through the Scummy Tactics of the Competition, and

  Close Shaves During My Off-Piste Adventures on Mont Blanc.

  The young associates in the cheap seats inch their pallid faces closer, trying to memorise the names that flow from his tongue, straining to follow the short-hand circumlocutions of a rich history, trying to disguise the fact that they keep missing the punch lines, taking desperate but careful cues from Stephen’s inner circle, who lounge in preening intimacy with the boss, but would never dare to put their feet up on the table.

  It was 17 July 1990 and this was the closest they’d ever come to a Master of the Universe.

  As daylight crawled into the airless room, the ringing phone finally broke the news: the deal would trade away to Goldman’s. Stephen took the blow like the man he is.

  So when he finally double-parked on the street below at 5.37 a.m., I was thinking how appropriate that we should be leaving for a long weekend, how the baggage of the Lost Deal would be good company for the Ailing Relationship. Although neither of us had actually admitted it might be a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate our union, I knew this even as I booked the flights. When Stephen stepped into the hall, I tried not to focus on his distracted registration of my presence and the departing plane. Instead I counted backwards and calculated that it was thirty-three days since we last had sex and immediately buried this thought in case he could scan it on my forehead.

  After the near miss of the flight and the wrong seat numbers and the search for the hotel vaporetto, Stephen said that it was a shame I hadn’t booked the Danieli, but I decided to ignore this as we cruised along the Guidecca. And when the Cipriani came into view through the spray, I could almost convince myself that Venice might provide us with inspiration. Standing on the quayside as the porter unloaded our suit-carriers, I actually managed to amuse Stephen by doing the pointing boy scene from Death in Venice. He laughed and I realised that this was the first time either of us had really made the other laugh in a long time. Over a lunchtime Bellini, I watched elegant women pick their way past expensive shops behind the shaded columns of the Piazza San Marco but Stephen was wondering
aloud if we should be here at all, what with the summer heat and the crowds and the fact that he’s been there, done that. I was reading aloud from the guidebook and planning: tomorrow the Doges and then Arsenale and Stephen was getting edgy about the intensity of an itinerary of things he has already seen and the snippets of history that we would both forget.

  Leaning over the Rialto Bridge, he declared that we were definitely not going on a gondola, but even though it looked pretty tacky I still cherished a fleeting hope that he might change his mind, though I knew he wouldn’t, because the idea of paying some man to sing at him is more than he could ever bear. Over coffee, Stephen said he wished I wouldn’t keep saying how great it was that there are no cars and I told him that one of the pluses about being on holidays was being able to relax your mouth and let anything fall out. But he didn’t consider this an excuse for being boring or unselective, there were certain standards. So I took the opportunity to remind him of his ex’s mouth which was permanently spewing out mind-numbingly dull observations about the world in which she lived and Stephen said, ‘Yeah, well, that was the main reason I dropped her,’ and I said, ‘Well, it took you a year,’ and he said, ‘Enough,’ and I said, ‘Good. Because I can’t think of anything else.’

  A frozen silence shuffled behind us as we stumbled through a maze of cobbled streets. A little worm in my head turned and whispered: the end is nigh. But I have never been graceful, could not just lie down and accept that there wasn’t a way to rescue this. A cluster of pigeons burst apart when we rounded a sudden corner onto a tiny sunshot piazza and I stopped to stare at a crumbling yellow wall, the hopeless fragility of all these things so lovingly built.

  Stephen stepped forward, level with my view. ‘“I have been familiar too long with ruins to dislike desolation.” Byron on Venice,’ he added and turned away and I thought of all the things I could say, the good and the bad, the relevant and the irrelevant, trying not to focus on the personal resonance of his quote. But the distance between us appalled me; he was accelerating away out of my reach, too far gone to turn around and so Venice became the backdrop for the sour dissolve.

  In the evening we went through the motions of getting dressed up for dinner, so at least we could look good even if there was no chance that we were going to enjoy ourselves. Maybe rituals are therapeutic. Maybe it would actually have been worse if I just lolled on the bed in a pair of jeans and said I can’t be fucked to get dolled up. Stephen looked great but I struggled for a way to say this that didn’t sound ironic.

  The porter’s smile followed us across the lobby. He said have a nice evening which felt like a smack in the teeth. ‘Right, let’s go for a drink,’ said Stephen. Like there was something else we might do instead.

  Four or five drinks later on San Marco, every other table occupied by well-dressed couples who seemed to be mind-staggeringly in love, we were sitting silently side by side facing the piazza. We were both being over-friendly to the waiter, me smoking a cigarette about every six minutes, according to Stephen’s watch, which I could monitor by narrowing my eyes and pretending to study the scene beyond his head. The waiter changed the ashtray, which was very small and of the cheapest glass. I was thinking why do they have such cheap ashtrays in a city where glass is an art form and in a cafe where the drinks average six quid a shot? And what about economies of scale and how many ashtrays get knocked off tables by careless drunkards. I was trying to remember a book I’d read about an Englishman of some artistic or literary merit, who came to Venice for a holiday or maybe it was to live with a boyfriend or his father, who might have gone to the opera while he was here or maybe it was the theatre, but all I could really remember was that I’d read about somebody in a book walking across the Bridge of Sighs, and then out of nowhere I was blinded by a threatening well of sudden tears, teetering on the brink of a weeping that might never stop. Holding my breath, I forced myself though a rush of numbers: last year’s peak on the Nikkei Index 35,000, Dow Jones 2750, FTSE 2400, Rex’s next date for vaccination 22/3/92, but I figured I was only picking questions I knew the answer to, so I did a few quick currency conversions to sharpen up.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ said Stephen and I thought about saying no, but appetite is a weapon wielded by sulking women.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Pasta or something?’

  ‘This is Italy,’ I said, but it came out more acidly than I meant.

  We started walking, managing not to brush against each other despite the rush of crowds. In the restaurant, I curled the top left corner of the menu and decided on fish, which both of us knew I don’t like, but maybe a little unpredictability was just what the situation required. So I ordered the skate and looked to the right at the yellow lights moving across the dark water. Stephen chose the wine and I drank most of it. I considered the two days left and the vague possibility of making an effort. Perhaps the potential for change lay somewhere out there on the glittering horizon and we could make a dash for it, if only there was a lifeboat of energy and conviction.

  I said, ‘Sorry about the deal.’

  ‘Not now,’ he said, fingering the label on the wine bottle.

  And although I was staring regret in the face, there was a roadblock between the thought and the feeling. Stephen was floating away and I could not find the words to haul him back in.

  Stephen ordered another bottle of wine. The waiter commiserated with my uneaten skate and I explained that I had a very small appetite. Then Stephen said on cue, ‘Why did you order it anyway?’

  And I said, ‘I just did,’ examining the tablecloth. There was a faint red wine stain, just barely visible and I wondered if it was Irish linen because it felt very good quality but I didn’t know enough to tell and then Stephen said, ‘Well, I guess this is it.’

  I remember I looked up and directly across the table to his profile staring out at the navy sea. I followed the straight line of his nose, toying with the idea of pretending to misunderstand, asking what did he mean, wondering if he was more courageous than me, if I would regret the missed opportunity of being the first to throw in the towel. Then he turned his face towards me, looking serious and vaguely irritated, like when he’s stuck in traffic or when I’ve said something that he disapproves of. He didn’t look angry, he wasn’t frowning.

  He said, ‘Well,’ and I was uncomfortable with his eyes, so I studied the tablecloth again for a while before I said, ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’

  ‘Then we might as well… knock it on the head.’ His voice was low and even.

  ‘If that’s the way you want to put it.’

  ‘Geri, I’m only saying what we both know.’

  In the silence that fell upon us I explored the absence of sensation while imagining him coming round to pack up the clothes he had at my flat. Would he gather up the disorder of my stray possessions at his place and bring them over, or would I have to collect them myself and end up saying goodbye twice? I thought about the confusion of CD ownership, knowing that we would both say, ‘You take them, it doesn’t matter, I’m sure they’re yours anyway.’ We wouldn’t look each other in the eye anymore. And a whole baguette would never get eaten up now. And I wouldn’t have to make sure there was always champagne in the fridge.

  And what would we do about sleeping arrangements tonight? Would Stephen offer to sleep in the armchair, like men do in the movies and would I say, ‘Don’t be silly, we don’t hate each other, do we,’ and would we actually end up having sex just so we could remember the last time we did it?

  And when would the hurt be? Would it be tonight or tomorrow or in a few months’ time?

  ‘I’m going to try and get a flight back tomorrow,’ said Stephen. ‘It would be easier.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘A couple of days on your own might be nice,’ he suggests in a tone that encompassed just about everything.

  ‘Sure. OK by me.’

  ‘After all, you’
re the one with the guidebook and I’ve been here before.’

  I realised this was his closing witticism when he raised his hand to call for the bill. He was wearing the cufflinks I had had made for his twenty-ninth birthday and I thought what a boring fucking present to give someone after three and a half years even if they were expensive. I reached for my handbag and he said, ‘I’ll get this,’ and then we walked quietly back through the narrow streets, past the outdoor orchestra still playing light jazz at 1 a.m.

  In the hotel room, I poured myself a large vodka and stood by the open window doing an emotional minesweep over the black water. I counted eleven distant moving boat lights. When I turned back into the room, I thought Stephen had sawn the bed in half until I realised that the double was a twin.

  A silver light slipped through the window. In sleep Stephen always took up the whole bed, lying diagonally like there wasn’t room for another person. On his back, one arm behind his head. Relaxed. Apparently that’s not how I do it, not still and peaceful but writhing annoyingly around the bed. This makes me difficult to sleep with according to Stephen who is, of course, qualified to judge this issue after more than four years of experience.

  Two bodies in a bed, the sum of collected facts and shared experiences, years of familiarity binding you together, the desire to tell and to hear all, the need to be known and explored, to shed your lonely individuality. In the beginning it wore us out: I couldn’t get enough of the gift of his skin, the sensation of touching, like pink-lidded puppies nuzzling into each other’s warmth. For the first few months, it only got better, clothes scattered on the floor, the bed always unmade, me thinking this is like the adverts where the couple doesn’t care that it’s lashing rain and they’ve got no umbrella. Maybe you take too much in the beginning and use it all up, or maybe beginnings are all there is, the rest a slow slide on gravel, lower and lower until you no longer see the top: why it started, how it began.