‘Gavin, just. Urgh.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘I think you should go now.’
‘Yeah,’ Gavin looked around the floor, avoiding eye contact. ‘I reckon that’s what I should do, too.’
***
Trent was standing on the pavement waving frantically at cabs as they sailed past.
‘Why is it that in every city in the world all the cabs change drivers at exactly the same time?’ he ranted as Gavin appeared. ‘I don’t get it. No wonder the taxi industry is getting the shit disrupted out of it. Kind of like what we’re going to do to everybody’s humdrum little lives.’
‘I don’t know what’s Shanti’s problem, man. She’s not really getting with the program,’ said Gavin.
‘It’s like people have just been stuck in the same groove for years and we’re going to give the turntable a bit of nudge,’ Trent checked his watch. ‘It’s our job to change up the song for them, let them hear some new music. C’mon, let’s walk.’
Gavin had to trot to keep pace with Trent.
‘She hasn’t even been going back to her apartment. She just works all the time or goes to the gym.’ Gavin tugged his t-shirt from his torso, trying to generate some airflow. ‘It’s like she’s not even part of the team anymore.’
The lights ahead changed to red and the two stood at the edge of the road as the cars surged past. The crowd swelled around them, impatient for the green man.
‘I don’t even know where she’s going with the code anymore. She just sends me the specs and says “design this page” or “change this dialogue box”’ or whatever. It’s not really collaboration.’ Gavin kept tapping the button to activate the pedestrian crossing.
‘Dude, can you not?’ snapped Trent.
Gavin froze. ‘Sorry, Trent. I was just pressing the button to cross.’
‘You were whining incessantly about Shanti is what you were doing,’ said Trent. ‘Seriously, I’ve got Ping guilt-tripping over the soda stunt, a mountain of pressure from the investors and Charles with his never-ending dick-swinging competitions. Not to mention all the lawyers popping up everywhere. Now you want me to play counsellor to a high-school romance that doesn’t even exist?’
The lights changed and the pedestrians swarmed onto the bitumen carrying Trent and Gavin with them. They reached the other side and stood in the shade of a department store entrance.
‘I was just making an observation. About the team dynamics,’ offered Gavin.
‘Don’t waste your time on that stuff. She’s not interested right now and I can’t afford you to be obsessed with it. Where is this stupid bar?’
‘Just down there,’ Gavin pointed along the street. ‘You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you. Got to run a couple of errands first.’
‘Fine. But I’m serious, Gavin. Work out what’s important to you right now and focus on that. This is a critical time for the business. This is where we go big or we go home.’
‘You should lay off the management podcasts for a while, Trent. They’re making you sound like Charles.’ Gavin pulled his cap down and walked back across the street.
Trent shook his head. He always suspected Gavin might be the weak link in the machine. He’d relied on Shanti to keep Gavin on track. It had worked so far. Now that the pressure was on, maybe it was time to look for a new Head of User Experience for ShelfLife. He’d ask Charles on the best way to unwind the shareholding, if it came to that.
***
‘I tell you, Trent, I was slightly disappointed with the performance back there,’ Charles leaned on a bar table, surrounded by pints. He turned to the circle of bankers in braces. ‘Bit of an anticlimax with Matty King in our offices earlier today. I got him all revved up and firing and handed him over to our boy here, but Trent couldn’t get him to take a swing. Not like the old days when he was with Barclays.’
‘He’s gone soft in his middle age is what,’ offered a marinated banker.
‘Our boy Trent here went all pacifist is what happened,’ Charles collected a shot from the table and downed it. ‘In case you missed it, that was your moment to flex some muscle, Trent. Hope you won’t make the same mistake twice.’
Trent was stung by Charles’ assessment and caught a couple of down-the-nose looks from the crowd. It reminded him of a schoolyard. He cleared his throat and mentally arranged some tough-talking of his own. A buzzing sensation in his pocket caught Trent’s attention. This was a call he’d been expecting and dreading in equal measures. He went to dismiss it, but the put-down from Charles was still ringing in his ears. Mediation is for wimps, he thought. If you don’t want someone taking a swing you, give them an uppercut first. Trent walked to the front door to escape the rabble of Charles’ entourage and the blaring of the rugby broadcast that flooded the bar. He stabbed the answer key and steeled himself for the contest.
‘Susan, so lovely to hear from you. Are you well?’
‘If you must know, Trent, I’m feeling a bit under the weather this morning.’
‘Sorry to hear that, mother. Hope it’s nothing trivial.’
Pause. He knew he should have kept it cordial.
‘It sounds like you’re in the middle of something there in Saigon. Would you prefer me to call back later?’
It was tempting to take the exit his mother offered, but it would only postpone the fisticuffs.
‘I’m just stepping out of a meeting. Now is fine.’ Trent pushed out through the heavy doors of the bar and back onto the street. ‘How can I help you?’
‘The person you most need to help, Trent, is yourself,’ his mother started in with more menace this time.
‘Well, the Lord helps those who help themselves.’ Trent tried to put a little sing-song in his voice, but it wasn’t enough to dull the edge.
‘Then let me get straight to it. After your misadventure at General Mercy we offered you a deal that was incredibly generous. We have honoured our side of the agreement and there are no charges pending relating to your attempt to practice medicine without a licence, unauthorised entry of a state medical facility or theft of hospital property.’
‘What theft?’
‘Doctor Robertson’s lab coat. As you may recall, we arranged to have all charges dropped.’
‘Dropped? They were never lodged in the first place.’
‘You sound disappointed, Trent. Would you like me to see if I can have the charges filed now?’
Trent ran his hand through his hair. He’d overextended himself. Stuck on the ropes, taking body blows. Time to find his footing.
‘What’s this about, mother?’
‘Jeffrey informed me that you recently completed the final disposal of your holding in Mediclinical. You appear to want to remove yourself from all family concerns.’
Trent imagined himself bobbing, waiting for the punch to come. He remained silent.
‘He’s still running a trace on the transaction but he suspects that you have on-sold your parcel to Exencent Equity Partners,’ said Susan. ‘Is this correct?’
Time to swing.
‘As I am no longer a shareholder in Mediclinical, I believe I have no obligation to discuss my transactions, financial or otherwise, with the directors of that company,’
said Trent, imagining himself stepping forward and connecting glove to jaw. ‘Is there anything else you wanted to discuss, mother?’
A brief pause, and the flurry began.
‘If you’ve sold out to the Onslens and their conniving little wrecking crew at Exencent, I am going to fly to Vietnam, find you, drag you back to the US and have you up on charges that you haven’t even begun to imagine.’ Her voice had moved up an octave and gathered pace. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done? In fact, I bet you know exactly what you think you’re doing to us. But I can tell you something, Trent, you’ve got as much chance of hurting us as you have of becoming a real doctor. Forget doctor, you couldn’t even make it as a pathetic salesman, could you?’
Trent felt the glove land in the ribs and extract some of his air,
but willed himself to lean into it. He heard Charles’ voice in his head: one to the jaw.
‘Mother, the last thing I wanted to do was cause you trouble,’ he said, adding a little syrup to his voice.
‘Really?’ She sounded genuinely shocked.
‘That’s because you’re the last person I want to think anything about.’ He imagined himself pushing through his shoulder, putting his full bodyweight behind the throw. ‘Why do you think everything is all about you, Mother?’
‘You’re about to cross a very dangerous line, Trent.’
‘Is that supposed to scare me, Mother? You already threw me out of the company, remember? Then you threw me out of the apartment. You even had that little fuckhead Jeffrey threaten to throw me out of the family, for chrissakes.’
‘That is absolutely not true.’
‘Did he forget to mention that part when he was, what do you call it, debriefing you?’
‘Do you want me to add slander to the list of charges?’
‘Are you going to do that before or after you legally disown me?’
‘Trent.’
‘Do whatever you want, Susan. It’s been a long time since I felt I was part of your family anyway. The only people in your family are your board and your management team and your little suck-hole accountant Jeffrey and your little army of yes-men making their sales targets,’ he stopped to take a breath. ‘You can’t throw me out of something I’m not even part of.’
Trent stabbed the end call button, walked in a small circle and hurled the phone at the pavement. He was expecting it to shatter into pieces, but the screen merely cracked. He put his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes, hearing in his mind the sound of the bell and the crowd roaring. His hands felt wet and he realised he was crying.
‘What the fuck, man? Who were you yelling at?’
Trent looked up to see Gavin holding the broken phone.
‘Nobody. Just a friend. An ex-friend. Doesn’t matter,’ Trent looked around as a small crowd of onlookers started to disperse. He rubbed his face and straightened up. ‘Let’s go in and have a drink. No, wait. Charles is in there with a bunch of douchebankers.’
‘Worst.’
‘You have no idea. Look, I’m sorry about before. I know Shanti has that effect on some people.’ Trent stopped to see the worry in Gavin’s face. ‘I didn’t realise she’d really got to you like that. Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.’
‘Just forget about it, please,’ Gavin gave a grimace. ‘She’s made her mind up. I need to move on, grow up and focus on this business.’
‘Good man. That’s the spirit,’ Trent smiled and offered Gavin a fist bump. ‘But we should do your first idea first.’
‘What was my first idea?’
‘To forget about it. Let’s go find another bar.’
Faux-reign correspondent
‘That’s not sniper fire, is it?’ asked Gavin, pushing himself back into the low brick wall.
‘Ees not an invitation to dinner,’ said the dusty French photographer as he checked the image on the back of his camera. ‘OK, I ’ave what I need. You ready?’
Gavin touched each of his pockets in turn, just as Peter had taught him at the handover. His hand made a final stop at the long pocket stitched onto his thigh but he felt nothing more than his own leg. The fifty millimetre Nikkor lens that was supposed to be in the right thigh pocket of Peter’s cargo shorts, wasn’t. Gavin peered over the low wall and caught a glimpse of the lens, sitting on a window ledge on the other side of the alleyway. Another volley of shots sent Gavin scurrying to the dirt.
‘Oh, fuck, man, what did you lose? Which one ees eet?’ asked the Frenchman.
‘I dunno. I think it’s the fifty,’ said Gavin, patting his leg again in an attempt to make the lens reappear.
‘Merde! Peter fucking loves that lens. You ’ave to get eet.’
Another couple of shots caused Gavin to flinch again. ‘I’ll buy him another one, Henri. Let’s just get the fuck out of here, OK?’
‘Not OK. You don’t understand. He won eet in a poker game, in Rwanda, years ago. Off a girl who refused to sleep with ’im, even though we all believed we would be dead by morning. She claimed the lens belonged to Eddie Adams. Eet was used to cover Vietnam.’
‘Did she win it off Eddie Adams in a poker game, too?’ asked Gavin, trying to delay the suggestion he knew was almost certainly coming.
‘No. She let him fuck her. ’Ere,’ said Henri, handing Gavin a lump of broken concrete. ‘Throw thees across the street.’
‘Why?’
‘Just throw eet,’ hissed Henri. His shaven head, patchy beard and wild blue eyes did not invite argument.
‘Okay. I’m throwing.’ Gavin hurled the lump into the street.
‘Jesus, you almost hit zee fucking lens!’ said Henri, clapping his forehead. He scrabbled in the dirt for another rock. ‘Throw again, but throw better this time.’
The second rock skidded through the gravel and was greeted by several rounds of rifle fire.
‘As I thought,’ said the Frenchman, pulling up the leg of his fatigues and unclipping a pistol from a leather ankle holster. ‘Okay, get ready.’
‘Get ready for what? What do you mean get ready?’ spluttered Gavin. ‘You have a gun? Why do have a gun?’
‘We are not supposed to, but seriously, who is checking?’ Henri pulled the firing bolt back. ‘I give you cover. You run across, grab the lens and go through that door. Fast as you can.’
Gavin looked at Henri, across to the door and then back at Henri, trying to work out if the Frenchman really knew what he was doing, or was just really crazy. Now that guns were involved, Gavin felt it would be better to know before dashing across the street.
Gavin had met Henri in a bar just a few nights earlier in a meeting arranged by Peter, a no-nonsense German who had been documenting hot spots across the globe since the original invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Peter had made it through his twenty-seventh armed conflict and his third wife, a Filipino singer he’d met in Dubai but had not seen for several months. She had recently sent an email demanding either a visit or a divorce and, not wanting to part with half of his remaining assets for a third time, Peter decided to book a flight home to see her. While searching for cheap flights he came across a banner ad asking him if he wanted to take a short break from his own life while getting paid for it. A few clicks later, he had completed a ShelfLife profile and hit the submit button.
Roughly forty-eight hours later, Peter Hasenberg was training Gavin Mills on the basics of being Peter Hasenberg, freelance combat war photographer. The training started with a thorough tour of Peter’s lens kit and collection of battered DSLR bodies. Gavin was a skilled amateur, but had never worked with glass longer than 300 millimetres in a hand-held situation, so they spent a couple of hours working on tripod improvisation in the field. The afternoon consisted of a brisk walk that looped through the centre of Antakya, located on the Turkish–Syrian border, where Peter used the landscape to demonstrate both potential vantage points for getting the shot, and potential sniper points from which to get shot at. Over dinner, Peter rolled out a faded map to explain the layout of the town and the current status of the surrounding countryside. Although subject to change without notice, it was generally accepted that west of the town square was considered civilian territory, where NGOs, a small corps of embedded press and a growing rabble of freelance journalists were allowed to rest and re-fuel between assignments. East of the town square was generally considered the start of the combat zone, although it had been relatively quiet in recent weeks. After dinner, Peter took Gavin to meet with Henri, a fellow freelancer who had agreed to take Gavin under his wing for the week, in return for a split of Peter’s ShelfLife earnings. The evening comprised heavy drinking and war stories that led to a chorus of moaning about the complications brought upon their respective lives from their obsession with women.
‘We spend our lives in the most dangerous places known to man, but is still safer
than being under their spell,’ said Peter, raising another glass.
‘At least here, we know for sure when we are in trouble,’ said Henri before throwing his head back.
‘And I guess no-one blames you when you run and hide, right?’ said Gavin, wiping the back of his mouth.
The photographers laughed and nodded.
‘I think you will be just fine in this life, Gavin Mills,’ said Peter, signalling for another round.
Gavin turned out to be a natural at being Peter. Perhaps it was the whiskey, but by the time he put Peter in a cab for the airport the following morning, still drunk, Gavin felt he’d found not only a life he could inhabit for a week, but one he could relate to. His relationship with Henri was more strained. The added pressure of live gunfire wasn’t helping.
‘OK, so once I get through that door, should I wait for you to come and get me?’ asked Gavin, still trying to delay Henri from firing his weapon.
‘You really are a fucking tourist, aren’t you?’ Henri stared at him. ‘No, I am not coming to get you. I am staying out ’ere, with the people trying to shoot you, so you can rescue that fucking lens you left behind because you were too stupid to keep it in your pocket.’
Gavin stared back, silently willing the people trying to shoot Henri to try harder. He took a deep breath. ‘I mean, what do I do once I go through that door?’
‘I am sorry. Ees good question,’ Henri tapped his helmet as if trying to wake an answer. ‘That house has been abandoned for a while. Go through to the other side then turn left, follow the lane up the hill until you get to the market. We still have a little daylight left, so you should get there in time, if you hurry. Then find a taxi to take you to Hotel Gungor. When you get there, you will buy me many drinks.’
Henri pulled back the mechanism on his pistol once more, winked at Gavin and started to rise slowly above the edge of the stone wall.
Gavin had been hoping to keep the Frenchman talking for another half an hour, at least until sunset, but Henri was now taking aim at a nest of rebel snipers hidden in an upstairs apartment less than a block away.
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