The Edge

by Jamie Collinson

  ‘Woah,’ Erica said, laughing again. ‘You’re really pretty happy!’

  ‘This feels amazing,’ he said, wiping his brow and taking in the view. ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘Well done,’ Erica said. ‘I’m quite impressed, actually.’

  She stood, hands on hips, pack dropped to the ground behind her, regarding him with a half-smile.

  Adam studied her for a moment, then marched over to her and kissed her.

  For a few moments after this initial boldness, he felt as awkward as a teenager. He couldn’t seem to remember what he was doing. It was a long time since he’d really kissed someone, he realized. Or cared about the act, anyway. He seemed to be giving her a series of slightly elongated pecks on the lips, his mind devoid of other ideas.

  He’d once considered himself a good kisser, but the horrible thought struck him that maybe he no longer was. Prickly heat rose up from his neck, and he stiffened up. Was kissing like dancing, he wondered? Was there very little chance you’d stay good at it forever?

  Thankfully, Erica moved a hand to the back of his neck and slipped her tongue into his mouth. Adam relaxed, pressing his own fingers into the small of her back, moving his tongue over hers. They avoided falling into a rhythm, and he began to remember how it worked. After a moment, he was simply enjoying the texture of her tongue on his. He’d forgotten how intimate it was, to really kiss. How it could be an enjoyable act in itself, rather than a simple formality to observe before others could begin. How falling into a kiss was like experiencing gravity afresh. How strange and lovely the soft pink universe was that you fell into…

  Erica drew back, smiling and squinting in the sunlight. She took his hand in hers.

  ‘Are you happy?’ she asked.

  ‘Very,’ he said.

  And, he realized with something like relief, he really was.

  * * *

  There was a back route down from the mountain, and, Adam fearing the scramble in reverse, this was the one they took. A long, sweeping path that led through wild meadows, shady forest and back across the rocky north face of Strawberry Peak. It took them four hours, during which time Adam experienced a bliss he’d thought forever lost to him. They talked when they wanted to, and the rest of the time walked lightly and happily in silence.

  Soon after dropping down to this path from the summit, they came across the couple. They were standing at a junction of the easier summit path that Adam and Erica had just descended, the back way they would now take, and a third path leading to a well-known starting point a long way from their own. The man was prodding the earth with his stick, calm and quiet. The woman was agitated, taking her quick little steps. She glanced around them in different directions, evidently trying to locate herself.

  ‘Have you come from the top?’ she asked them.

  ‘Yes. Did you miss the turn?’

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Yes.’ She turned to the man. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve done it before and I was sure I’d find it.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ the man said, trying to calm her. ‘Do you happen to know what’s up this path?’ He gestured along the ridge, away from the peak, with his stick. Adam saw that he was trying to be kind, to compensate and suggest something new.

  Erica answered his question.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said again. ‘Let’s just carry on to the top from here.’ She looked as though she might cry.

  * * *

  Back in the city, Adam dropped Erica off.

  ‘So,’ Erica said. She looked at him as though trying to decide something.

  He wanted very badly to be asked in, or to suggest they meet that night. But fighting this was a fear of messing it up, of having too much of a good thing. He wanted to take each moment with her carefully, to prevent himself from getting it wrong.

  ‘Call me soon,’ she said, finally, and grinned as she climbed out of the car.

  20

  It was the week of the trip to Denver. Despite this, and the usual Monday general meeting being once more upon him, he found himself in an excellent mood as he arrived at the office.

  At nine o’clock the staff started to file in. Adam installed himself in the meeting room and flicked through the latest copy of Billboard. Market shares, streaming income, men with hairdos and showy suits getting new jobs at the few remaining majors. God, he thought. No wonder I don’t read this more often.

  A picture a few pages further in caught his eye. It took Adam a moment to place its subject. Joel Liebowitz, he realized. Almost unrecognizable out of his poolside garb and sunglasses, smartly dressed in a black suit jacket and crisp white t-shirt, grinning at the camera. The eyes, finally revealed, were shiny and clear with bright blue irises. Actually, Adam thought, they had about them an odd – and certainly unexpected – look of innocence.

  Behind Joel was a tall slab of frosted glass, etched with the enlarged logo of Euphonic, the ascendant US live music promoter. Despite recent revelations regarding the right-wing political sympathies – and donations – of its shadowy Texan owner, the festivals it owned had seen record attendances already that year.

  Joel, it seemed, had been appointed CEO.

  Adam peered at his photo, trying to gauge – inconclusively – whether or not he’d kicked the drugs.

  By 9.30 the staff had cooked their oatmeal, made coffee, discussed basketball results and weekend activities and begun to drift into the meeting room. Scott was first to come in.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ Adam asked him.

  Scott sniffed violently. ‘It was awesome,’ he said. ‘I was at RPPD in San Diego? The festival?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Adam said. ‘That’s one of Euphonic’s, isn’t it?’

  Scott frowned, apparently perturbed by this rare display of industry knowledge from his boss. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘How was it?’ Adam asked.

  ‘It was awesome. Really, really great,’ Scott said, eyes widened in emphasis. ‘I really, really enjoyed it actually.’

  My weekend was lovely too, Adam thought, nodding serenely.

  ‘Think I’m getting sick, though,’ Scott said. ‘It was really dusty down there on the site. Think it must’ve been that.’

  Scott, Adam knew, was pathologically incapable of admitting, to himself or anyone else, when he was hungover.

  ‘Right, yes,’ Adam said. The famous viral dust of San Diego. Not the mammoth quantities of MDMA you’ve been shoving down your throat.

  Kristen, head of North American radio, walked in and sat down. She slumped onto the couch, still wearing her oversized sunglasses. Her platinum blonde hair was tied back severely, the vest top she was wearing allowing her gothic, metal-style sleeve tattoos to show.

  A thirty-something with a background in alternative rock, she’d only been with the company three months. The Autodidact’s bold new age of commercial crossovers had required a different sort of staff. The era of waifs, strays and loveable weirdos was over. Now, Adam had begun poaching people like Kristen from the corporate music world.

  She seemed to vacillate wildly between hard partying and a fanatical health regime, and Adam was never quite sure which mode she’d be in. In Scott’s words, she ‘coked at the weekends and kaled during the week’.

  ‘How you doing?’ Adam asked her.

  ‘Soooo wiped,’ she said.

  ‘Hectic weekend?’ Scott asked her.

  ‘Just a lot of yoga,’ she said. ‘So needed. Totally killed me though.’

  ‘What’s your spot?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Reaching Crane,’ she said. ‘In Echo Park?’

  ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘I like Yologa, in Culver City?’

  ‘I heard about that place. Do you know Atrium Yoga, in Silver Lake?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve been there a couple times when my spot was closed. What about Silver Monkey? It’s in the Valley, but God, so worth it.’

  ‘Yep,’ Kristen said. ‘My BFF works there actually.’ She paused, eyeing Scott. ‘Do you know Golden Path Yoga, in Hollywood?’r />
  Scott frowned, disturbed. ‘No…’

  ‘It’s pretty new?’

  ‘That’s cool.’ For an elastic moment, Scott looked crestfallen, and this alien little ritual appeared to be over. Then he rallied.

  ‘What about Flow Yoga, in Atwater?’ he asked. ‘It’s awesome.’

  Just as Adam was imagining how it would feel to headbutt the giant bubble-wrap roll – a completely new urge – Beau walked in. Adam brightened. Beau was from Montana, which apparently made him less alien, to Adam, than his LA-bred colleagues.

  ‘Morning, Beau!’ Adam said.

  ‘What’s up?’ Beau grinned.

  ‘Do any yoga at the weekend?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Hell no,’ Beau said, smiling broadly. ‘Too damn busy having fun.’

  ‘Good lad,’ Adam told him.

  When all the staff were gathered, the meeting was opened with general business.

  ‘I have something actually,’ Kristen said. Her default expression was one Adam had recently heard referred to as ‘resting bitch’ – the same lifeless pout that Angelina’s friend had favoured.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  ‘So, like, my wellness practitioner has told me I have to drink kombucha every day. For, like, my stomach?’

  ‘OK.’ Adam nodded.

  ‘It could be workplace stress-based, apparently.’

  Scott frowned, then sniffed violently, twice in quick succession.

  ‘So… Can we, like, install a kombucha tap?’

  Adam sipped his coffee. There seemed to him to be only one possible answer.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Great,’ Kristen said.

  ‘Excellent. Anyone else?’

  The staff, crammed into the room on moulded plastic chairs, shook their heads.

  ‘Great,’ Adam said. ‘Then the only other thing, I think, is that we’re going to have a new member of staff in LA.’

  ‘Really?’ Scott said, alarmed.

  ‘Yes. Isa Dixon is going to come out here to join us full-time.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kristen asked.

  Before Adam had a chance, Scott leapt in. ‘She used to work in the London office,’ he said, ‘then went off to do an MBA.’

  The team, each of them too ambitious to greet this news with any real enthusiasm, feigned it.

  ‘What’s she gonna, like, do?’ Kristen asked.

  ‘Business development,’ Adam said.

  ‘Really?’ Scott curled his lower lip.

  ‘Yes. Under the Au—’ He stopped himself just in time. ‘The, ah, auspices, of Jason.’

  ‘Honestly,’ Scott said, ‘Isa is a very good friend of mine, but I’m just not sure there’s a role for her here.’

  ‘Well, a role is being made for her,’ Adam said.

  ‘That’s great,’ Beau said, first to warm to the idea. ‘I like Isa a lot.’

  ‘Do you even know Isa?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Sure I do,’ Beau said. ‘I hung with her in London. She’s a lotta fun.’

  * * *

  Isabella Dixon had already been at the company for three years when Adam joined it. She was five years younger than him, and Adam’s position was senior to hers. It had seemed to him that she’d disliked him on sight. In the first marketing meeting they’d been in together, he’d found her staring at him, and when he smiled at her she didn’t return the gesture. In fact, he didn’t think she’d smiled at him once for the first few months they worked together. The experience was upsetting, and worsened by the fact that Isa seemed to have friendly, even flirtatious relationships with several other men in the office. After a few attempts to improve things, Adam had more or less given up.

  Isa was short and slim, her hair cut into a fringe that framed her watchful eyes. She’d studied English Literature at Durham, and could switch between London slang and high eloquence in a heartbeat, something she used to tactical advantage daily in meetings. Her Nike Airs and bright streetwear made her stand out from the indie-rock garb worn by her colleagues. Later, she admitted to Adam that she didn’t like guitar music at all, rather hip-hop, and that for her it was about the right company for her career, not a genre. Adam had never encountered someone outside of a major label who spoke like that, and he admired her for it.

  In fact, other than with the handful of male colleagues she flirted with, she didn’t seem popular among the staff. The label tended to attract a type – nerdy boys and the occasional girl, people who spoke quietly and didn’t usually interrupt each other. Isa was not like them. Her voice, which moved with her guise between a strong east London accent and Queen’s English, was loud and clear; and she thought nothing of interjecting or cutting a colleague off, most often with a better idea than the one they were having.

  Serena loved her, and the boss’s open approval only made her more unpopular among the rank and file. To Isa, this was water off a duck’s back. Worrying about it wouldn’t have been worth the energy she could put into advancing herself.

  Isa made it clear that she thought of herself as very valuable, and later, Adam wondered if he’d come to desire her in part because of this.

  One day, after three months of her virtually ignoring him, an instant message window had appeared on his screen. It was from Isa.

  Hi mate, it said. Did u complain about me?

  Adam, in charge of the marketing department, had an office to himself. Nevertheless, his pulse had thudded anxiously.

  No, he’d typed. What do you mean?

  He wasn’t surprised by how quickly the reply appeared – he’d already been impressed by Isa’s rapid, loud typing in the main office.

  Serena says I need to work better with you.

  Well, I didn’t ask her to do that, Adam said.

  OK good, Isa said. What do you do down there all day anyway? Is it nice having an office all to yourself?

  While Adam was considering his reply, another message had appeared.

  U a big shot?

  And so a flirtation had begun between them, too.

  It was difficult to say exactly when this had become serious, more meaningful than Isa’s others. Adam assumed at first that it simply meant she’d accepted him, and he hoped they’d become friends. It was a relationship commenced, and largely conducted, over instant messages. These would start early in the morning, usually regarding some minor work issue – Isa sarcastically and superfluously asking the big shot for his opinions and ideas. As the day wore on, they gradually grew in intensity, and later explicitness.

  Instant messages evolved into texts. One night, coddled drowsily in the back of a warm car, heading from Geneva to the French Alps, Sofia gazing sleepily from the window opposite his, Isa had texted to ask when he was back in the office.

  Good, she said when he’d replied. I think I actually miss you.

  I don’t believe you, Adam told her.

  It’s tru. When you get back, we should go out for a drink…

  It wasn’t anything, he told himself. He was aware now that he would like to have sex with Isa, but he didn’t think of it as something that might actually happen. A few days after he’d returned, though, the instant messages took on a new sense of purpose.

  So, she’d asked him towards the end of one of these days. When are we going for a drink?

  They had gone to an old pub in Soho after work, and got quickly drunk. After a couple of hours, Isa had run a hand between his legs and felt his cock through his jeans.

  ‘I’m going to the gents,’ she said. ‘You can follow me in.’

  Giddy with drink and transgression, he did so. Isa was standing in a cubicle, its door open, bright and impossibly exciting amid the drab concrete floors and dirty white Formica of the stalls. She stared at him brazenly as he approached.

  When he’d reached her, she closed the door behind him and they pulled at each other, kissing urgently. He felt a moment’s reviving shock at the different feel and taste of her as they did so, the shape of her face against his – ho
w emphatically she was not Sofia.

  They kissed for several minutes, until Isa pulled away and sat down on the closed toilet lid. Adam leaned back against the stall, breathless and trembling, as Isa began fishing for something in her handbag. Now’s my chance, he thought. I could just leave now. But then he saw a wrap appear between the intricately painted nails of her left hand, and she looked up at him, smiling, holding his gaze. She moved her other hand to her brow, and pushed a loose strand of hair back. When she had, her hand lingered, not so far from Adam’s crotch.

  He took hold of it and placed it back there. Isa dropped the wrap back into her handbag, and undid his belt and flies.

  It was only a blow job, he told himself. It was a bit of naughty fun. A one off. She was expert at this, twisting her hand around his cock beneath her mouth, her warm saliva slipping down to his balls. She looked up at him as she did so, holding his gaze and occasionally smiling as she paused and worked his dick with her hand. She swallowed his come without compunction.

  Afterwards, he apologized that he’d done nothing to satisfy her.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s my favourite thing.’

  A one off, they’d agreed. But it hadn’t been. A seal had been broken, a bottle of evil spirits opened. There were more messages at work, more texts outside of it.

  They lingered late in the office after hours, waiting for the last colleague to go home, or to the pub. In his tiny, cluttered nest of an office – years of demo CDs and promotional material piled up around it, like layers of sedimentary rock containing the fossils of Adam’s recent past – they began to have sex several times a week.

  Eventually he had taken her home when Sofia was away. In the spare room – his study – there was a mattress made up with bedding. They passed a drunken night on it, carrying out a series of sordid acts until they fell asleep, exhausted, in the early hours.

  In the morning, Adam was crippled by his hangover. They stayed tucked into the soiled bedding, eating whatever was in the fridge and watching DVDs, Adam reeling from the bleak glare of his sin. Isa, too, had a significant other, but she didn’t seem to feel as guilty.

  He hadn’t realized it at the time, but Adam had destroyed a world.