Twenty-seven was the end of youth. Life, after that, became serious.
As his had. And it had felt good at first. His abiding memory was sitting in the passenger seat of a rental car, Sofia driving them through the hot, wild countryside of another Spanish holiday, thinking how he’d been faithful and decent to her, how that was something to be proud of. How there were no lurking fears and regrets and secrets roiling in his head – as there had been in the past, with other women – threatening to break out of his skull and make themselves known.
Pride before a fall, in his case.
Even if he’d gone back in time to a year after that journey, when he’d already made some of those secrets, but not the big, worst one of them. If he could find himself once more, preparing to send the surreptitious text messages that would be the beginning of the end.
Before his thoughts could turn to the woman at the other end of those messages, he sat up in his bed, the LA sun lighting a hot band across his back where it had found its way beneath the blind. He winced, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Yes. That would have been a moment to go back to. To grab himself by the throat and say Absolutely not.
Sofia. She haunted him, both in the real world and in his head. In real life, she’d met someone else, had a baby, and begun a successful career as an art blogger. So successful that her first book had recently been published. From the reviews he had read, it was a clever mixture of charmingly written personal history and analysis of her favourite paintings. If he was unlucky, the images from this life – the life she deserved – would pop up on his Facebook feed.
Seeing them made him feel like a man adrift: stuck in LA, as if free-floating in space, lost forever, trapped in the orbit emitted by the family he might have had on earth.
Still, the Sofia in the pictures wasn’t as bad as the ghost Sofia – the one in his memories.
He’d realized what ghosts were from a ridge in Scotland. On a hiking trip a few months after they’d broken up, he’d felt sadness like a cold breath on his neck, and he’d turned around to find its source. A long way below him was a path, and he realized it was one he’d once walked with her a few years earlier. Hurt seemed to throb from it, as though somewhere in time they were still walking there. When he closed his eyes he could see her, turning to look at him, smiling, her hair made darker by the rain.
Ghosts are the people you’ve loved and lost, he knew now. They live on in your head and wake you in the night. They revisit you as they were, reminding you who you were.
Was he a ghost for her, too?
Enough, he decided now. It was time to get out of bed and banish these phantoms once more. The past, sadly, was every bit as bad as the present.
In the shower, he allowed his thoughts to turn to more recent disasters. The night had been a long, evil one. The fire department and paramedics had been quick to arrive. Most of the guests had already scarpered. Angelina had not stayed to offer her support. To Adam’s surprise, Benji had proven himself to be capable of quite biblical anger.
The singer had been scraped off the concrete and taken to hospital. Adam had lost count of the explanations and apologies. But the worst would be yet to come. There would be calls to head office. There’d be reputational damage. There would be a very large liability insurance claim. There would be further ammunition for the Autodidact with which to shoot Adam’s career down in flames, should he so wish.
He had chosen not to mention that it was his own drink that had set fire to the grill. Now, on waking, that decision alone among the many made during the previous night still appeared prudent.
At ten o’clock it had all been over. The staff went home, the fire department cleared out, and Adam returned to the office and poured himself another drink. In a nihilistic slump, he gave in to his worst instincts, and decided he might as well top the drink off with a final, abject line of cocaine.
Upstairs at his desk, he found Craig, sitting in lamplight, whisky tumbler in hand, FaceTiming a girl in intimate tones.
‘Ah,’ Adam said, when his friend had ended the call with a blown kiss. ‘I don’t know whether to be fucked off you’ve been down here while I’ve had that to deal with, or happy to see you.’
Craig made a flamboyantly sympathetic face, and offered him Scott’s chair. At least, Adam thought, he had someone to keep him company for some restorative drinking. Perhaps even some encouragement.
The pair of them had sat around the desk, the office in shadow beyond the lamp’s glow, drinking whisky and snorting lines.
‘Could’ve happened to anyone,’ Craig told him. ‘That’s the line you take. Come to think of it, it’s a pity the fucker didn’t die! You’d have had a hit on your hands!’
It had seemed more convincing at the time. Now, standing under the shower with his eyes closed, the world seemed to be pressing in on Adam from all sides. He felt bone-weary, edgy and paranoid from the drugs. Things, he realized, were not at all good. Things would certainly have to change.
8
When the working day was finally over, a walk on the river was just what he needed. Among the many resolutions he’d made during the long, grim hours in the office, focusing on the healthy side of his life was perhaps the main one. He would cut out the drugs. He would cut down on the drinking. He would focus on doing his job with quiet, unassuming excellence. His spare time would be spent on hiking and birding, and taking Angelina on actual dates. Perhaps, he thought to himself, they might even go on holiday together, after all this had settled down. These plans had been committed to paper, in a sort of to-do list-cum-Ten Commandments. All he had to do now was stick to them.
Whether Angelina would actually feature in any plans was definitely a question. In response to the text he’d sent her, she’d replied that she was going to be busy for a while, that life was crazy, that she’d be in touch soon. The message was decidedly chilly. Maybe it was some sort of ending. Maybe that was exactly what it should be.
He wandered down onto the path beside the river and paused for a moment, leaning on the railing. He didn’t think he’d ever been so tired. An early night was what he needed. After all, in the morning he had the critical meeting with Roger to look forward to.
Serena had been understanding. ‘It’s a big job you do,’ she’d said. Then, more ominously: ‘It might be that we need to find more ways to help you.’ While it wasn’t exactly clear what this meant, it sounded better than ‘you’re fired’, and thus Adam had felt it best not to ask too many questions.
They had agreed that there had been failings on his part. One security guard had not been sufficient. Worse, the one they’d had should have been on the roof, stationed at the fire escape. Adam explained the evening’s poor decisions using the first-person singular. He had no qualms about this – the buck, after all, stopped with him. Also, his hangovers always induced a self-flagellating mood.
Now, a fulsome apology would need to be made to Benji and Cyrus, the singer. Some very expensive gifts would need to be purchased. A long and fractious argument over a request for an eye-watering, unjustifiable amount of tour financing would now have to be capitulated on. All of this settled upon, Adam had finally got home.
This, he decided, sober and serious, would be the start of a brand-new era.
Something bright and silvery was thrashing in the river, in a small shallow patch at the bottom of the slope. Adam saw that it was a large fish, apparently unable to get itself back into the deeper water.
As he watched, a heron began stalking over towards it, skinny legs moving in a sinister goose-step. When it reached the fish, it peered at it for several moments before stabbing it in the head. Despite the fish’s size, the heron managed to swallow it whole. After it had done so, it shook its feathers and stalked back – slower now – to the shadowy bank, huddling into itself to digest its meal.
He’d started walking again when he saw a cyclist coming towards him. The tall figure in a blue jacket gave him a surprising jolt in his chest. It was the osprey lady. He
grinned, raising a hand to wave, but she pedalled straight past him.
Before he’d really thought about it, he turned and shouted after her.
‘Hey!’
She slowed, her legs angling outwards, and turned in a tight arc before she stopped. She stayed astride the bike, gripping the railing with one hand to hold herself steady on the narrow racing frame.
‘Oh, hi,’ she said.
‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘The birding guy.’
She laughed. ‘I can see.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, flushing. ‘Just wanted to say hello.’
He took a few steps towards her, and leaned on the railing again.
‘Seen much this time?’ she asked. She wasn’t wearing the sunglasses, he noticed. Just the bike helmet. She had sharp cheekbones, a feline sort of face. She was very pretty.
‘I just saw a heron murder a massive fish, and swallow it whole.’
‘Delightful. Any sign of your osprey?’
Adam felt something galvanize in his mind. ‘Our osprey,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘OK then.’
‘No sign at all. Maybe I’ll see it, now I’ve been lucky enough to see you.’
‘You think I might be your lucky charm, huh?’
Adam laughed, looked away from her and down to the water. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well, you can let me know next time I ride past you,’ she said.
‘Would you have a drink with me?’ he spurted out.
She looked at him carefully. ‘I guess I might,’ she said. ‘When?’
‘Would tomorrow be too soon?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Saturday then?’
‘That works,’ she said.
‘OK, deal,’ Adam said. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Erica,’ she said. ‘And yours?’
‘Adam.’
‘OK, Adam. So, take down my number.’
He did so, his fingers trembling as he typed it into his phone.
‘You can call me on the day, and we’ll fix something up, OK?’
‘Yes, brilliant,’ he said.
‘Good. Now turn around.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘So I can bike away without you looking at my ass again.’
‘Ah,’ he started to say, reddening.
‘We usually know, when you guys do that. Just for future reference.’ She laughed. ‘But at least you had the balls to follow up on it. Now turn around.’
He did as he was told, dizzy with embarrassment.
‘Saturday,’ he heard her call as she cycled away, laughing again. ‘Maybe I’ll wear my bike pants.’
9
Adam arrived at LEAF, a vegan restaurant in West Hollywood, ten minutes early. He still felt a little hungover and shaky, but he was trying to be optimistic. All he had to do was win Roger over. How hard could it be? He’d been holding meetings with managers for more than ten years, and he’d never once failed to seal whichever deal was in the offing. This, he reminded himself, was firmly within his area of expertise.
LEAF was on the ground floor of a large shopping mall. Its rear windows looked out onto the mall’s inner courtyard, of which the restaurant had a small section for outdoor seating. Adam asked for a table for two, outside, and took a seat in a shady spot beneath a potted olive tree.
The menu informed him that LEAF was an acronym for Love Eating, Animal-Free. In a better world, he thought, it might have meant ‘Love Eating Animals, and Fish!’ One entire page of the large, hardbound menu listed a bewildering array of juices and smoothies. This was exactly the right idea, he thought. Turning over a new leaf, in LEAF!
His eyes drifted over to the next page, which held an equally expansive list of cocktails, some of them quite mouth-watering.
That kind of thinking, he told himself, is not going to wash in this brave new era. A cocktail should not be mouth-watering at 9.30 in the morning. A juice is very much what is required.
He scanned the list again, and settled on a Belly Blaster. Apparently, it consisted of the usual kale and cucumber-type stuff, with some ginger and chilli to make it interesting.
Adam had recently met a man from New York, at a typically LA industry barbecue, who’d given up his career in advertising to set up a juice company. He’d been something of an evangelist.
‘Honestly, dude,’ he’d told Adam, Rolex rattling loosely on his wrist, his eyes glinting with the fervour of the convert below his Travis Bickle haircut, ‘juice can cure anything. Depression, sleep problems, bad skin, stomach issues. Anything.’
‘What about cancer?’ Adam had wanted to ask. ‘Or chlamydia?’ Instead, he’d said he must try it sometime.
‘You should do a cleanse, dude,’ the man had told him. ‘Get you all fixed up.’
And here he was, about to do so, because this juice’s name surely implied such a cleansing – disgusting as it might presumably be. No pain, no gain, Adam thought. Pain is weakness leaving the body.
When the waiter came out – a short, obese man with a goatee – Adam ordered the juice.
‘Sounds a bit frightening, doesn’t it?’ he asked, laughing.
The waiter simply grunted, without so much as a smile.
Christ, Adam thought. People come here to buy twelve-dollar juices, and as if that’s not depressing enough they have to order them from this guy. Mr Loves Eating Anything Fatty, he thought, pleased with himself. Mr Lemon Eating Anus Face.
He looked at his watch. Roger wasn’t due for another five minutes. Loves Eating Asses and Fannies, he thought, giggling out loud. Literally Enjoys Anal Fingering.
The waiter reappeared and thumped down a tall glass of frothing green stuff, with a straw mired in its middle.
‘Lovely, exciting, amazing, fresh!’ Adam said.
‘What?’ the waiter said, sensing something untoward.
‘Oh, nothing.’ Adam casually waved his hand.
‘Anything else?’
‘Not until my friend gets here, thanks.’
As the waiter waddled back inside, Adam closed the menu and tried to focus on the task at hand. He had a couple of good ideas for expensive radio teams up his sleeve, a press angle or two to suggest, some blue-sky marketing plans, and even a creative director he thought might make a good job of improving the Falconz aesthetic. We can’t afford a Lamest Ever Artwork Fail, he thought, smiling to himself. God, I am literally a marketing genius.
At 9.40 there was still no sign of Roger, and no message explaining why. Of course, Adam thought, the classic power games. Losers Ever Arriving First.
He finished his juice and scanned through emails on his phone. The waiter reappeared and pointedly asked what else Adam would like.
‘Another Belly Blaster, please,’ Adam said. ‘And a large Americano.’
The latest drinks had just arrived when Roger finally did, too. A tall, slim man with a prominent chin, Roger sported a rubbery-looking black zip-up jacket above his shapeless jeans. An extreme sports junkie, he wore the kind of sunglasses favoured by right-wing militiamen, or school shooters. Also like them, he seemed constitutionally incapable of smiling.
Adam stood up to greet him, putting on his own best smile regardless. ‘Good morning,’ he said.
Roger shook his hand, giving him what Adam assumed to be a long look in the eye from behind the black lenses of his shades.
‘Good morning yourself,’ Roger said.
Adam sat back down.
‘Uh,’ Roger said. ‘You mind if we move?’
‘Ah… no…’ Adam said. ‘Not at all. This table no good?’
Roger gestured to the waiter. ‘Like to move over here,’ he told him, pointing at a table at the other end of the patio. He offered no further explanation.
‘Sure thing, sir,’ the waiter said, obviously liking the cut of Roger’s jib.
Adam picked up his drinks and carried them to the new table.
‘You already order?’ Roger asked him.
‘No. Well, just drinks. I
was here a little early.’
‘Huh,’ Roger said. ‘Well, sit down, man.’
‘Thanks,’ Adam said. With a chill, he realized that Roger had literally turned – or switched – the tables on him.
‘So. How’re things?’ Roger asked.
‘Not bad, thanks. Busy, in a good way. Very excited about the guys’ new record.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Roger said, scanning a menu. ‘Yeah. It’s real exciting, that is for sure.’ He took a long pause, looking out into the mall’s courtyard. ‘I heard you had some drama a couple nights back.’
‘Yes. Just an absolutely freak accident, horrible. That said, there’s been an outpouring of sympathy and interest from the industry. The irony is that it’s probably ended up raising The Suffering’s profile. We were all worried sick about Cyrus, but the doctors say he’ll regain the full use of his legs.’
Roger nodded slowly. When the waiter appeared, he ordered a water.
‘You can’t be tempted with a Belly Blaster then?’ Adam said, gesturing at his juice.
‘Huh,’ Roger said, bemused. ‘No.’
‘Breakfast?’
Roger looked at his watch, a large, futuristic affair made of rubbery black plastic.
‘I kinda ate earlier actually,’ he said. ‘I got into a run before my morning conference calls. Feel free to eat though, man. I don’t wanna get in the way of your brunch.’
Brunch? Adam thought. It was you who asked for a breakfast meeting, you fucker!
‘I feel pretty full from my Belly Blaster actually,’ Adam said, trying to sound bright. ‘No problem here.’
‘Well, let’s get into it, man,’ Roger said, looking squarely at Adam again.
He’s the Terminator, Adam thought. ‘Sure,’ he replied.
‘I’m sure you talked to Jason,’ Roger said. ‘As you know, you guys did an incredible job last time around, really helped us get to where we’re at.’
‘Thanks,’ Adam said. ‘It was—’
‘Here’s where our heads are at,’ Roger interrupted. ‘As a team. Y’know?’
The Edge Page 7