The Edge

by Jamie Collinson

  ‘Noting it isn’t going to be enough. What happened was unacceptable, Alicia, and we need an official response from the station.’

  ‘You’ll be getting an official response in the mail.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Our lawyers wrote to you already. Regarding the threats that your staff member made.’

  ‘Threats? What do you mean, threats?’

  ‘Apparently, she threatened to make public accusations about Fischer.’

  Adam was pacing the rug in the narrow meeting room, circling the low white coffee table.

  ‘That doesn’t mean he didn’t do what she says he did. That’s all that counts here,’ he said.

  Alicia sighed. ‘Look, Adam. I get that she’s freaking out. I’m a woman. He didn’t mean anything by it, though. She showed interest in his pictures. She actually asked him about his photography.’

  ‘Of bands, Alicia.’

  ‘His photography, Adam. He’s very clear on that. He showed her a bunch of his shots, including some that he considers to be pieces of art.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  Adam prodded his right temple, where the throb had broken out again. ‘How can you say this stuff, Alicia?’

  ‘Don’t let’s go there, Adam. You and I have always had a good working relationship…’ She sighed, and when she spoke again her tone was deadened, as though she was reading from a script.

  ‘In the current climate,’ she continued, ‘the station simply wanted to ensure there was no inflammatory public accusation here, not before they’ve had a chance to investigate.’

  ‘Have you seen these pictures, Alicia?’

  ‘No, I have not. I have never expressed an interest in his photography.’

  Adam remembered something. ‘You’re leaving the show soon, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Adam.’ She paused. ‘Can you think why?’

  ‘Right,’ Adam said. He sat down on the couch, empty of ideas.

  ‘As I understand it, one of your executives has spoken to the girl – what’s her name again?’

  ‘Meg. Which executive?’

  ‘Some guy in London, I don’t know his name. Anyhow, I am registering an official complaint at my end, and she knows that. It’ll be handled. In the meantime, the letter from our lawyers is intended to make sure it’s handled properly.’

  ‘Right,’ Adam said again.

  ‘I’m sorry we’ve found ourselves in this difficult situation, Adam.’

  ‘Me too,’ Adam said. He hung up, and slid the meeting room door open.

  ‘Scott, come down here, please,’ he called.

  Scott’s slim, muscled calves and flip-flops appeared on the backless stairs, and when he reached the bottom he scuffed his way into the room wearing a ‘what now?’ expression.

  ‘Shut the door,’ Adam told him.

  Scott did so. Both of them remained standing.

  ‘You called your friend at KCXE and warned them about Meg, didn’t you?’

  ‘I called to tell them about the problem,’ Scott said, as though weary of pleading for reason with a madman. ‘I have my own relationship with the station. Also, I knew that Jason wouldn’t like the way it was potentially gonna get handled.’

  ‘And you called Jason, too?’

  ‘He called me. We were catching up. We do that. I’m not gonna lie to him.’ Scott shrugged. ‘I don’t have a poker face.’

  Adam felt dizzy with anger.

  ‘If you ever go behind my back again regarding a professional matter,’ he said, ‘you and I cannot keep working together.’

  ‘Right.’ Scott slid the door open and scuffed out of the room.

  Adam waited until Scott was out of view, and slumped onto the couch.

  His head pounded with betrayal, confusion and rage. This bitter cocktail, it seemed, was the price he must pay for his life in Los Angeles.

  17

  He’d moved in with Sofia in the spring of 2008. Her flat was in an old red-brick mansion block in London Fields, built in 1901 as housing for the poor. A century later, by modern standards, the space within each flat was decidedly luxurious. A group of incoming middle-class types had bought out the freehold, and the block’s courtyard was lined with potted plants, olive trees and a leafy gazebo.

  Over the next year, Adam and Sofia lived as contently as he ever had. The punk label had gone bust, but he liked his new job working for Serena, and he was earning more money. He was still working on records he believed in, and which seemed to give his life purpose. Sofia was less happily employed at an art restoration company, located as far away as it was possible to be while remaining in London. She was up and gone each morning before Adam got out of bed, and home after he was.

  She poured her passion into her own art, taking him to gallery shows she wanted to see, making notes on the pieces in her neat, attractive handwriting. She began filming herself in the living room, splicing images of paintings with her own thoughts on them. She was very good at speaking to the camera, and her enthusiasm was infectious. The videos were uploaded to YouTube, apparently for her own pleasure and with little fanfare. These were the seeds of the career that sprouted after he broke her heart.

  The flat was cosy and run-down. In winter, the smell of wet towels lingered by the front door, which was beside the bathroom. Adam used one of the bedrooms as a study. He, too, had been passionate, and working late from home had been a point of pride.

  When had it started to go wrong? Possibly as early as a few months in, when the fights had finally started. By then, Adam’s fear was less of losing her, and more of her jealousy destroying them. He had foolishly thought that jealousy would exist in inverse proportion to the overall value of a person. That Sofia, in her beauty and loveliness, would have no need for it.

  In hindsight, of course, he saw that he was the worst person to be with for anyone who suffered it.

  Sofia’s jealousy came like storms. A period of heavy tension, cloying air and dread, followed by a flashing outbreak of anger.

  One night, this souring of her mood had occurred shortly after they’d made love in her room. Adam was lying on the futon that was pushed into a corner. The walls were painted in faded pale green woodchip, probably unaltered since her landlord had bought the place.

  Adam had loved the bedroom nonetheless. There was a wardrobe stuffed with Sofia’s clothes, a built-in dressing table with a mirror over it. Placed on this was a bust made of wicker, on which she hung her jewellery.

  That night, she had been playing an early Missy Elliott album on her midi system, and had gone quiet as she was dressing.

  Adam had already come to know the stiff, unhappy look that had set over her face. The room’s usual comfort had been stripped away, and he felt trapped in its newly heavy weather.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked eventually.

  With other women, this question had been only the first step in the grim trudge to revelation. With Sofia, the journey was often mercifully faster.

  ‘I’m pissed off about your ring,’ she said.

  She spoke in a pretty, clear RP that gave away no trace of Hungarian. In fact, the only incursion into her accent was that of the estuarial south, when she said words such as ‘salt’.

  Adam wore a simple silver ring on his left hand. His last girlfriend had bought it for him in South East Asia. Inside it was engraved ‘Love Ya Big Daddy’. The ex, a life-hardened South African, had never been comfortable with sentiment.

  Adam loved the ring in small part for the memory it held, in far greater for the object itself. Sofia hated it as a token of a former lover, someone whom he’d loved and had left him. This subject, like others, had been often deferred.

  ‘Please let’s not go through this again,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you, I love you. I’m so happy with you. There’s nothing left over about her.’

  Her frown deepened, but she made no reply. Not that he’d said anything very inspiring to her. Was eve
r a phrase spoken in argument that wasn’t calcified with overuse? Perhaps only the insults were ever original.

  ‘It’s just a ring,’ he said into her silence. ‘It’s just a possession that I really love.’

  ‘With a fucking dedication from her scratched into it. “Love Ya Big Daddy.”’

  When angry, the clear tone of her voice cooled and hardened, like flowing water turning to ice.

  ‘It’s been over two years since we broke up, for God’s sake. It’s all over and done with, ancient history. Please let’s not go into all this again,’ he repeated.

  He couldn’t tell Sofia quite how great his love for her was. That knowledge wouldn’t come to him until it was far too late.

  ‘But you thought you were going to marry her,’ Sofia said. She was at her dressing table now, crouched, tidying loose items into a cardboard box. Every now and then she pushed a strand of hair back behind her left ear. Her pout was natural, the result of a face with full lips showing unhappiness. Women in LA would have killed for a pout so perfect.

  This was the price of intimacy, Adam had thought. You told the truth, and it could be as dangerous as a lie. Intimacy was cruelly objective, it allowed a view of the worst in people as well as the best.

  Above Sofia’s head, on her wicker jewellery stand, was a fine gold chain. Hanging from this was a small, open-ended cylinder, also gold, etched with swirling patterns. It was by Gucci, and from Sofia’s ex.

  ‘What about your necklace?’ Adam asked, his own anger boiling up.

  ‘It doesn’t say anything in it, and I don’t wear it every day.’

  ‘Do you want me to stop wearing the ring?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I want to get rid of it. I’ve bought you a new ring.’

  Adam frowned, the anger ebbing. ‘Well, thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s really nice of you. I’d love to wear yours instead. I’ll put this one away and never wear it again if you like. It’s having a ring I love, not where it came from.’

  ‘No,’ she said, looking at him. ‘I want to get rid of it.’

  A heavy despair settled in Adam. ‘What do you mean get rid of it? Get rid of it how?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how,’ she said. ‘If you love me and you’re over her, you’ll let me do it.’

  ‘That’s unfair,’ he said. ‘You can’t just take someone’s possessions, the things from the past that mean something to them, and throw them away because of something you feel.’

  ‘If it’s just an object then it doesn’t matter. I’ll give you a new one, so if what you say is true, you shouldn’t care.’

  Adam, lying on the bed, felt drained and lifeless.

  ‘If you keep that one it’s never going to be OK,’ Sofia said.

  This went on for an hour, until eventually he gave in.

  Sofia took the ring, put on her shoes and left the flat. She returned a few minutes later.

  Adam, too, was now stiff with unhappiness. ‘What did you do with it?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. Her own mood, perhaps inevitably, had now softened.

  ‘It does matter,’ Adam said. ‘You owe me that. I did what you asked and I want to know what you did with it.’

  ‘I put it down a drain in the street,’ she said. She looked as if she’d cry. ‘You’ll never find it. It’s gone now.’

  ‘Did you really?’ Adam asked. ‘Promise me you’re telling the truth.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

  Rage flashed and cracked within him like sheet lightning. Fucking bitch, he thought. You fucking bitch.

  In Asia, when he’d been given the ring, it had slipped from his finger in the sea while he was swimming. Distraught, he’d slumped on the beach in panic while his girlfriend’s helpful, optimistic friend had dived for it. Lost, he’d thought. It’s lost.

  After ten minutes the friend had emerged from the water, standing, dripping and golden, hand raised in triumph, her fingers clasping the bright silver ring. Relief had hit Adam bodily, like a drug, and left him alight with happiness for the rest of the day. He’d told himself never to be so careless again with something he loved.

  Now it was down a drain in Hackney, and he would never see it again.

  ‘And when do I get the new ring?’ he asked Sofia.

  She moved over to him, kissed him and stroked his head. ‘Not now. It’s not the right time to give it to you. Let’s wait for a better moment. I’m sorry,’ she said.

  You fucking bitch, Adam thought. And hadn’t he actually sworn revenge?

  Over the years, he often thought of that ring, and where it had come to rest. Was it still lodged in a sewer, somewhere beneath the flat they’d shared all those years ago? Losing its shine, the words etched into it gradually fading away, the metal itself thinning and degrading. Or had it moved, made a merry journey, found itself carried off by the subterranean currents to end its long, sad journey elsewhere?

  Who was he kidding, he’d think. It was where she’d thrown it, lodged among the shit in a place they’d once lived and been happy, and every other trace of them was now gone.

  By anyone’s standards, particularly those of the age he found himself in now, all of this had happened a very long time ago.

  Was it normal, he wondered, to be haunted by it for so long? How was he ever to be rid of her?

  18

  Erica’s place in Atwater Village being north-east of Adam, and thus on the way to the mountains, they arranged that he would collect her.

  He pulled up outside at 8 a.m., with a queasy curdling in his stomach. Butterflies at the prospect of the date had mixed with raw fear at the memories of his last attempt on Strawberry Peak.

  Erica lived in a smart grey bungalow on a wide, pretty street. Most of the houses had gleaming lawns, but Erica’s front garden had been gravelled over, with brick circles built within it to house tall cacti. Good on you, Adam thought. LA’s lawns were one of his pet hates. The vampires of garden design in this parched city.

  On the driveway beside the house was a Mercedes – the same model as Adam’s.

  Erica appeared in the doorway of the house before he’d had a chance to call her. She wore a small pack on her back, lightweight hiking shoes, a long-sleeved, figure-hugging top made out of some space-age fabric, and the brightly patterned workout pants he’d first seen her in. On her head was a black Nike baseball cap.

  She smiled as she approached the car, and Adam grinned back, a swell of jittery anticipation rising in him.

  She shrugged the pack off and opened the back door of the car, placing it on the seat beside his.

  ‘Hi,’ she said as she swung into the front. Her scent filled the air, and Adam leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  She peered at the car’s interior, and ran an approving hand over the dashboard.

  ‘Snap,’ she said.

  ‘You have excellent taste,’ he replied, peeling away from the kerb.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘Ready to conquer the mountain?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘Think so? That’s not the right attitude. You need to know so.’

  ‘Ah yes, the American way. I should visualize success. Bring my A game.’

  ‘You got it,’ she said. She switched the radio on – her fingernails were painted a dark red colour, he noted – and moved the dial to a classic rock station, then leaned back in her seat and shot him a grin.

  After a few minutes, they escaped from the stop-and-start grid of Glendale’s streets and were released onto the 2 – Adam’s favourite freeway. Erica seemed happy to be on it too; as the gradient changed beneath the car and the rock songs’ riffs tripped from the speakers, there seemed to be no pressure to speak.

  The 2, Adam thought, was as beautiful as a road could be. A long, wide ramp that fired them out of the city in a truly kinetic experience – like driving into the sky. It was impossible to speed up it, to see the mountains swelling in the windshield without feeling excited, and feeling better. Even the c
hurn in his stomach seemed to be settling.

  As they drove north, and up, they exchanged hiking stories and favoured trails. It quickly became clear that Erica had tackled far bigger hikes than Adam had. Possibilities began to yawn open in his head. Bigger hikes with her. Long days on airy mountain trails.

  They turned off the freeway and made the short run eastwards to the Angeles Crest Highway. This winding, vertiginous road was considered one of the finest in the country, a route through the mountain range that very quickly placed you in an entirely different world. The closest comparison, Adam reflected, would be a mountain road in Andalusia. But with more muscle cars and bikers, and the futuristic towers of Downtown LA rupturing from the vast flatness a long way below and to their right.

  ‘I like the outfit,’ Erica said, regarding him.

  Adam was wearing blue Rohan trousers and a long-sleeved checked shirt. On the back seat of the car was a wide-brimmed Tilley hat that made him look ridiculous. He’d considered not bringing it, but fear of skin cancer had won out.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘It’s quite British. It’s what I imagine someone very sensible might wear, if they were taking out some Boy Scouts for the day. In the seventies.’

  ‘I can’t seem to escape from it,’ Adam said. ‘I still dress like I’m hiking in Scotland.’

  ‘It’s cute,’ Erica said. ‘Though I’m glad I saw you for a city date first.’

  ‘The shirt has high UV protection,’ Adam said proudly.

  After a moment he glanced at her again. ‘I like your outfit.’

  ‘Well thank you,’ she said. ‘I remembered that you liked these pants.’

  After forty minutes, they were at five thousand feet. There were alpine forests vaulting above them on the steep, higher slopes of the San Gabriels. This place never failed to amaze him. From that giant, seething city to this raw mountain landscape in less than an hour, he thought. Less time than it took many Angelenos to commute to work. Beyond the car, and the occasional Harley-riding biker or early-rising muscle car driver, there was the silence of a thousand square miles of wilderness.

  As they approached the small parking area for Strawberry Peak, Adam’s stomach began to roil again. Images of his last attempt came back to him – the ground rising steeply and thinning beneath his feet. The sense of airiness around him, of a long drop. The vague outline, to his right and higher in the sky, of a steep, sharp mass of dark granite, looming above him like an airborne dreadnought.