When tomorrow came, I stood outside the door of the building, summoning up my adrenalin to face the Wrath of Isolde. I was exhausted. I’d spent half the night worried sick, and the other half trawling the Internet in the vain hope of finding some dirt on Isolde to use against her – an affair with the husband of a mother of thirteen children and another one on the way would have done nicely – but there wasn’t a hope of Isolde being involved in anything vaguely sexual. Without sounding mean, men (or women, for that matter) ran a mile from her.
Isolde, despite her rather grand name, could be described in one word as a bumpkin. She wore tweed suits that were at least thirty years old, presumed to be inherited from her mother, but nobody dared to ask. She alternated these with huge, baggy dresses made from curtains. Probably. She was too mean to spend money on material to make dresses, and God knows no clothes manufacturer would ever have made the junk she wore, even several decades ago. Two words summed up her head – Worzel and Gummidge. But she got away with it, purely because of her formidable personality.
There were times when I found her refreshing, because in her world PC referred to a police constable. She was so old-school that she had absolutely no grasp of political correctness, and it could be quite amusing sometimes. Unless, of course, she turned her non-PC ways on you and told you your arse looked fat (yes, it had happened – even to some of the men on our team).
Everyone gasped theatrically when they saw me march into the office with what they all knew was faux-confidence.
“Put your feet up, get the popcorn out, it’s showtime!” Jason was first to get the ball rolling. Always the people’s friend. He was soon drowned out by a cacophony of other voices telling me how completely screwed I was.
They all shut up pretty lively when Isolde threw her office door open and hollered a “Shuddup!” at them. If you’re thinking our office sounds like a school that should have been closed down by the Department of Education, run by a teacher who should have been given her marching orders a long time ago, then you’re really getting the picture of how things worked at the Vicious Voice. But it was Isolde’s paper, and therefore Isolde’s project to run as nastily and as childishly as she wished.
I often wondered how Isolde could be taken out in public. I mean, not just the state of her curtain clothing (as it happened, she had special navy curtains for big events that were marginally less scary – they were like one giant, ankle-length poncho with two holes for her hands to peep out), but because she was so intimidating that people tended to develop a pressing engagement at the bar/in the bathroom/under the table when she was around. But anytime I’d seen her in action, it seemed to work to her advantage. If she wanted information from anyone about rival newspapers, she was so relentless that people eventually gave it to her just to get the hell rid of her. Consequently, she had her finger on the pulse of what was going on pretty much all of the time.
I was almost glad Isolde came out of her office – it saved me having to summon up the courage to knock. When everyone was suitably quiet, she flicked her head at me. It reminded me of the way a snake moves before it attacks. I walked over to her. I was waiting for her to fire some vitriol at me, but instead she just stared. It was far, far worse than anything she could have said.
“Erm . . . Isolde . . . can we go into your office and talk?” I nodded my head at our captive audience, hoping she would take the hint. She didn’t. Or, more likely, she did and chose to make me suffer. So we stood there, staring at each other. Someone had to do something, so I eventually dared to move past her into her office and take a seat. Then I rose about fifty feet off it when she slammed the door so hard I was sure I could hear the paperweight on my desk shatter. I hoped it had, actually. It had been a present, but who uses paperweights these days?
I decided to launch straight into it as she made her way behind her desk. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Isolde, but I saw with my own two eyes the event that I wrote about. There’s nothing ‘alleged’ about this – it happened, end of story.” Isolde’s eyes narrowed. “It’s just very . . . frustrating to be blamed for a situation that I didn’t make the final decision on. It was an . . . editorial decision to allow that article to be printed.”
“‘An editorial decision’, she says,” Isolde muttered slowly. “Are you saying that I’m to blame here?” Before I could answer, she interrupted. “Think very carefully before you answer my question.”
All my good, grovelling intentions went out the window. I couldn’t help it. There she sat in her curtains, her face a mask of mockery and superiority, threatening me.
I stood up and pointed my finger at her like a policeman accusing a detainee of some heinous crime. “You couldn’t be any more to blame if you tried! You encouraged me to write that article. You’re the one that decides on what’s too risky to print, and what isn’t. You’re the owner and editor of this paper and you earn the big bucks, so take a bit of responsibility and stop blaming me!”
My finger was still in mid-point when I finished talking. I flopped down on my seat, and wondered how long it would take to sort out a visa for Australia. I would have to start all over again in a city where nobody knew my name, or my bad reputation as a journalist. Actually, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to live in a place where I hadn’t displayed my underwear to the nation . . .
“I’ll go now and clear my desk,” I said wearily.
I stood up to leave, but Isolde slammed her hand on the desk. “Hoy! Sit!”
I felt like a dog that had been to obedience training classes as my body jammed itself to the seat.
“Who would have thought you had it in you?” She shook her head in amazement. “Do you know what sickens me about you lot out there?” She gestured in the direction of the office floor.
“Our drab dress sense?” I smiled, then dropped it immediately as she cut me with a look.
“You’re such a pack of sheep that I’m surprised you can hear the telephone ringing over the sound of baas. Every one of you came into your interviews, all guns blazing, about to take over the world and all that horseshit talk. Then you get in here, and all I have to do is scream and you’re all shitting your pants. Pathetic.” She opened a drawer, and I honestly expected her to pull out a naggin of whiskey and start swigging from it, but she only produced a piece of paper. “I have a list here of people I want to interview for the weekend supplement, and I’m trying to decide who to pick for each job. What disgusts me is that I have no confidence that any of you have the balls to ask the hard questions.” She threw the piece of paper down onto the table. “You were a goner yesterday until you walked out, you know. I had every intention of firing you until you impressed me by showing a bit of backbone, but then you ruined it by coming in here today acting like a lick-arse wimp with your apology. If you believed you were in the right, you shouldn’t be apologising. The second you uttered the word ‘Sorry’, I was wondering how long it would take me to get your replacement in. But then, I caught a glimpse of what I wanted to see in the people in my team. I hadn’t thought it would come from you, mind, but I’m not knocking it.” She flicked her eyes dismissively towards the office. “It’s a sad state of affairs when you’re the gutsiest person I have working for me – I didn’t see that coming – but I’ll have to make the best of a bad situation.”
“So . . . does that mean I still have my job?”
“Are you thick? Would I be wasting my time even talking to you if you didn’t?”
“Thank you, Isolde, I mean it, this is great –”
“Shuddup!” She waved her hand in front of my face. “Don’t make me change my mind.”
“Thanks.” I stood up. “I’d better head out and start my day’s work, then!”
“Sit your arse down. I’m not finished.”
I edged tentatively onto my seat. What now?
“Your writing is getting stale lately. I want you to work on something new.”
“Oh?” This wasn’t what I’d expected. I knew the reader feedback
about my column was nothing but positive. “Do you want to get rid of my column?”
“No. The column stays. I’m talking about supplementary entertainment articles.”
“Oh! Okay!” A smile spread across my face. “Reviews of the latest movies, checking out new restaurants, that kind of thing?”
Isolde smiled at me pityingly. “Riii-ght. How very original. Actually, you needn’t tire your little brain out searching for ideas – I’ve already thought of something I want you to work on.”
I held my tongue this time, wondering where this was going.
“I overheard you regaling the sheep with your tales of attempting to hunt down Mr Dreamy in Las Vegas.”
I cringed.
“For the first time since I met you, I actually found something you said funny. I mean, who would believe that anyone would be ridiculous enough to do half of the things you said you did? I would have thought that you were making it all up, actually, but I know what you’re like, so it must be true.”
“Cheers, Isolde.” I was starting to feel very nervous.
“What our paper is missing is humour. You all write like dead fish. We need to give our readers a laugh now and again. And more importantly, we need to give them a reason to buy the next edition of the paper. Something that they’ll just have to find out the outcome to. Like this Mr Dreamy situation.”
Now, I just felt downright scared. “But . . . there was no outcome to it . . . I didn’t find him . . .”
“Fine. The public loves a good sob story.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“So that’s what we’ll give them.”
“Isolde, this is not a good idea. I’m not doing it. Why would I want to write a column that would make me sound desperate?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about – you like your job and you want to keep it?”
“No, Isolde. You’re not making me do this. No way.” There, I’d let her have it. It was time for my respect.
“But you are doing it, and we both know it.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “What happened to kudos for my balls?”
“That’s the beauty of being the boss. I can change the rules whenever I want. You’re doing it, or you can go out there and pack up your desk after all.”
As I buried my head in my hands, my mouth emitted a noise that sounded suspiciously like a baa.
Chapter Five
Eight Columns Later
The story so far:
Our gossip girl, Andie Appleton, met the man of her dreams in Las Vegas . . . then lost him over the roulette table. Not in a bet, but in a fire evacuation that separated her from someone she couldn’t forget. In the final instalment of Looking for Leon, we find out how the story that everyone’s been talking about ended . . .
I had thirty minutes.
I wasn’t catching our flight until I’d tried one last thing. Okay, so shouting Leon’s name into a megaphone while hanging out the window of a taxi going up and down the Strip hadn’t worked. The LED billboard with a flashing “Leon, phone Andie!” sign and my mobile-phone number under it had only resulted in me getting the kinds of calls for sexual favours that would haunt me for the rest of my life. As for sneaking an “Andie Thinks Leon Is Out of This World” banner up to the top of the tallest structure in Las Vegas, the Stratosphere tower, and somehow managing to hang it off the side – well, that had been a big achievement for thirty seconds until the stupid thing had blown away into the desert. So, what could I possibly achieve in thirty minutes?
You’d be surprised.
(Note from Editor: If you knew Andie, you wouldn’t. It took her less than ten minutes to burn an entire building to the ground once. But that’s another story for another day.)
Thanks a lot, Isolde. Typical. Drag the arse out of it, why don’t you? And I hadn’t burnt a building down – it had just been our family home! She made it sound like I’d razed Trump Towers to the ground!
When I say “just our family home”, I just mean “just” in terms of scale. Needless to say, the ‘Four-Year-Old Burns Family Home to the Ground’ incident was somewhat of a big deal for my family at the time. But what had my parents expected, confiscating my toys for being bold and then leaving a box of matches lying around the place? One good thing did come of it though – both my parents gave up smoking afterwards. This was back in the day before the anti-smoking campaigns and the ‘Smoking Kills’ stickers on packets of fags, when people could almost convince themselves that smoking was good for them when they had enough jars of porter in them, so it was quite an achievement on my part. Or maybe it was because my parents couldn’t afford the smokes any more with the cost of a new house hanging around their necks, who knows?
Anyway . . .
After my stunts, I waited patiently for the call from LVTV, the Las Vegas TV station, to ask me what I was up to. But believe it or not, it didn’t come – some lunatic from Utah who had a hate campaign going on against Elvis impersonators had escaped his asylum and attempted to shoot someone, so the TV crew was a bit busy that day.
Time was running out, and I had no time left to organise anything else – my friend had already abandoned me to my madness and made for the airport (having done all my packing for me, I hasten to add). But then, as I checked out of the hotel, I heard two of the receptionists talking about a TV interview that was going to be filmed in the lobby with a young singer who was staying there. He was getting big enough to merit an interview, but not so big that any guests in the lobby would pay a blind bit of notice, in a city that was host to more stars than the sky.
When the interview started, my suitcases and I were hovering in the background waiting for our opportunity. My plan was to jump in at the end of the interview, say my bit, and hope that the channel would see it as a quirky little incident that was funny enough to televise. If I jumped in during the interview, they’d only scrap my segment for stealing the singer’s thunder. A well-thought-out plan by anyone’s standards, wouldn’t you say?
When it comes to never working with children or animals, scrap that. Never work with hungover, high young singers with a dose of the stutters. The idiot boy messed up one interview after the other, and I could almost feel the sand in my half-hourglass pouring over me as it seeped away. Twenty . . . fifteen . . . ten . . . five minutes left. I absolutely couldn’t leave it any longer to get a taxi without missing the flight. And then, the miracle finally happened – the singer (I won’t even bother telling you his name – trust me, he won’t be around for long) managed to string a few sentences together. I waited until the presenter, Lindy, with huge relief in her voice, started on her “And that was Josh Feather (oops, so much for protecting his identity), the hottest young thing on the block at the moment” line, then abandoned my suitcases and literally leapt in front of the camera to reel off my own line.
“Hi, I’m Andie, I’m Irish, and I’m not mad, honest – not that Irish people are mad, you understand – I’m just looking for a man called Leon – not any old man called Leon, mind – no, my Leon is the loveliest guy from Arizona, and he’s here on holiday at the moment – vacation, I should say . . .” I looked over at the presenter. “Actually, can I start again? This isn’t going too well.”
You’d think the security people in hotels would keep their strength for the high rollers who try to high-tail it out of the casinos with a big wad of cash, wouldn’t you? You’d certainly never think they’d use it to wrestle a skinny woman to the ground. Yes – they! Not one, not two, but a rugby team of beefy security guys. They all looked so excited to actually have something to do that they attacked me like a starving dog devouring a fillet steak. We fell as a scrum on top of my neatly packed suitcases (my friend would have been disgusted to have seen all her good work go to waste). Clothes were squashed out, bottles burst and squirted all over the legs of passers-by, knickers landed on shoes, the whole hog.
I battled my way out of the scrum, and stuck my face in front of the camera again. “Leon, call me!” I
rattled off my mobile number. I looked at my watch, which had miraculously survived the rugby. Minus four minutes. If I stopped to fix up my suitcases, I’d be singing on the street to drum up a new fare home. I grabbed my hand-luggage, made a run for it out the front door and practically leapt in front of a passing taxi.
Now, once I was safely on the plane (yes, I miraculously made it), I was thinking to myself that surely they’d show that footage, embarrassing and all as it was. First of all, there was no way they were going to go to the hassle of getting Mr Monotone to do yet another interview, and secondly, who wouldn’t want to broadcast a lunatic making a show of herself? So the minute I got home, I logged onto the Internet and scoured LVTV’s website to see what they’d broadcast on the TV.
Nothing.
I couldn’t believe it. I found the interview they’d shown with the world’s most boring singer alright, but they had cut out everything with me in it and reshot the end. What was wrong with them? Didn’t they want any viewers?
And that, my friends, is where the story grinds to a horrible halt. I know nothing about Leon, except that he’s Leon from Arizona. All I know is that if I don’t meet a decent guy between now and a year’s time, I’ll be going back to Vegas on the same day next year.
Who knows, he might just be back . . .
“Andie! Your arse, my office, now!”
“I’ve been to more sophisticated marts than this place,” Trevor muttered as I speed-walked towards Isolde’s office after being summoned. Isolde’s manner really grated on him. He was openly on the lookout for another job, supposedly because he couldn’t stand working with someone as uncouth as Isolde, but we all knew it was down to his fear of her. Every time she called him, he jumped ten feet off his seat, and his heart couldn’t take the strain of it all any more. He wouldn’t live to see thirty at this rate.
[2014] Looking for Leon Page 4