by Dan Tyte
‘How long can this go on for?’ The theme from Les Misérables hummed low in the background.
‘What? Our lunch hour?’
‘No, Chris. Bringing up your brother on your own.’ I’m not sure what the hell I was fishing for here. Was I implying they both move into Craig and Connie’s and we set up a free love commune? I very much doubt it.
‘Well, what else do you suggest, Bill?’ She clung to her coffee cup.
‘What about trying to find your dad?’ She spat her latte all over the table. This was fast becoming a theme of my dining experiences.
‘I’ll take it by your reaction that you think there’s as much chance of finding Lord Lucan riding Shergar?’
‘What the fuck, Bill?’
I’d snookered her with a pop culture reference once again.
The waiter, an impossibly camp man in his late-40s with a neat moustache and tight pants, broke in and mopped the coffee up. His presence extenuated the silence between us.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘It’s fine.’
It wasn’t.
‘It’s just—’
‘I know exactly what it is, Bill.’
I wish she’d tell me because I didn’t.
‘Oh.’
‘Because of the way things worked out for you, you have this ideal of the family unit up on some pedestal. Well, you know what? It just doesn’t exist. Not for any of us.’ She took a sharp sip of coffee.
I thought about what she’d said. Maybe she was right.
‘You know what? I wish my dad wasn’t missing and my mum wasn’t dead and my brother didn’t wake up screaming in the middle of the night but that’s my lot,’ she said.
‘Your dad is missing?!’
‘Yes, Bill, my dad is missing.’
‘Christ, I just thought you weren’t in touch.’
‘We’re not.’
Smart arse.
‘Clearly, but I thought you knew where he was, roughly.’
‘We don’t.’
This was news to me. I’d assumed Christy’s dad was at arm’s length in a halfway house somewhere, not actually MIA.
I tried to pick up where she’d left off.
‘Well, okay, I wish my dad wasn’t dead and my mum wasn’t shacked up with a walking mid-life crisis and that I could take a dump in my house without looking down and seeing a relative stranger making a Cup-a-Soup, but we don’t live in a perfect world…’
‘Because if we did Morgan & Schwarz would only be open two days a week and pay a seven figure sum…’
‘And Pete would actually have had sex…’
‘And Jill wouldn’t be so bat shit crazy…’
‘And Trent wouldn’t be such a sex pest…’
‘And Carol would occasionally swear…’
‘And Miles wouldn’t be so silently terrifying…’
We fell to the table laughing. A grandmother with tattooed-on make-up and tight blonde curls peered over her teacup at us from the adjacent table.
The opening bars of ‘Beauty School Dropout’ kicked in.
‘Christy, I’m sorry.’ I swallowed. I put my hands together, lowered them onto the table and edged them towards her. Were it not for the hum of the waiter whistling show tunes, time could have been standing still.
‘I’m sorry too, Bill.’
My hands were an island swimming solo in a sea of glass-covered ticket stubs and theatre flyers. I looked down at them. Her hands touched the table top. They slid slowly towards mine. We touched. The dial turned down on the background buzz. Punters passed by in a slo-mo blur.
I genuinely have no idea how long we sat there for or if we said anything at all.
‘Oh, and before you get back to your desk, I’ve got a message for you,’ Christy said.
‘Fire away.’
‘It’s from the man from the Transition Town group,’ she said.
‘Tell him I’m not here.’
‘He’s not on the phone now.’
‘Well, he’ll call back another time I’m sure.’
‘Bill, that was the eighth time he’s called for you this week. Can you just call him back, please? He’s getting more than a bit tetchy with me on the phone now.’
‘Sure I will do. Just not now. I’m busy. Really busy.’
‘Deadline stuff?’
‘You could say that.’
Saving the planet from climate change was going to have to wait. What good was saving the world if all the people left had broken hearts?
Chapter 26
‘We found love in a hopeless place, we found a-love in a hope-less place’.
The music played loud and fast.
‘Come on, people, let’s crank the resistance up half a turn. Half a turn. You can do this, people. Now we’re going to sprint for one whole minute in five-four-three-two-one-sprint people!’
A collective grunt sprung up from the group. In a new addition to the Morgan & Schwarz employee benefits package, alongside the charge card, dental plan and option on a week in a gîte in the south of France, we now had our own in-house personal trainer. His name was Andrei and he was an early 20-something Armenian, built like a brick outhouse with all of the charisma. Perhaps I was being harsh. A spin class was perhaps a difficult forum for the complex facets of a personality to reveal themselves. Particularly when the poor fuck was herding out-of-shape PRs to improved cardiovascular levels. It was a million miles away from being Madonna’s yoga guru, but them’s the breaks, Andrei. At least you’re the fuck out of Yerevan.
‘Halfway there, people. You can do this.’
‘In a hope-less place, we found a-love in a hopeless place.’
‘I want to see those wheels turning, people.’ Andrei weaved between the static bikes, clapping and cajoling. He stopped next to Pete.
‘Come on, Peter, you have an iron will. You are my main man, Peter.’
Following in the great tradition of all the best motivators, Andrei’s attention served to galvanise Pete and push his body to previously unforeseen heights. As with everything he set his mind to, Pete had taken the spin class very seriously indeed. He was dressed more than appropriately for the gym, the only slight problem being that the gym he’d dressed for seemed to be located in 1980s Miami: Lycra shorts, headband, sweat bands and a luminous yellow vest lest the bike take off and he be faced with traffic at dusk.
In his slipstream rode Jill, resplendent in a lilac velour tracksuit. A Hello Kitty towel draped from her handlebars. Sweat congealed in her curls as she tried to keep pace with the beat. She took a long, needy swig from her water bottle.
‘In a hope-less place’
‘Pssst…’
‘less place,’
‘Pssst… Jill,’ I hissed.
She looked over her left shoulder to me, coating Pete in salt water as she turned.
‘What?’
She had her war face on.
‘Can I have a drop of your water please?’ Like an anarchic Boy Scout, I was ill-prepared.
‘No.’
‘Oh come on, I’m dying here.’
‘I wouldn’t piss on you if you were.’
She turned the bottle upside down and poured the remaining liquid over her head. It was reassuring to know that even as I tried to change, Jill steadfastly remained a grade A sociopath.
My previous perspiratory pursuits were the by-product of illicit drugs and explicit sex. On the wagon, a bead was permanently etched on my temple. On the bike, it purged from my being like a wet sock being wrung dry.
Andrei brushed between me and Christy. Yes, she was there. Yes, she looked fucking great in Lycra. He looked at my red face and took obvious inspiration.
‘Remember, there are only two rules, people. Rule number one is—’ He smiled wryly to himself. ‘You must sweat more than me.’ Considering the Armenian’s apparent lack of awareness of antiperspirant, compliance with this regulation was going to take Tour De France levels of effort.
Andrei held up the fingers of his left hand like Churchill. A frayed leather shag band sat on his wrist, his face sterner now.
‘And rule number two, people—’ His eyes stared fiercely ahead like he was recalling some wartime atrocity from his broken Eastern European home. ‘You must remember to…’ He stalked through the bikes like a boot camp instructor.
‘…you must remember to… SMILE, people!’ He broke into laughter. Christy, previously a blur to my left, turned to me, her legs slowing now, and took Andrei’s advice in my direction.
Melt.
I needed to concentrate on the imaginary road.
Compose.
This was not the situation for a full-on hard-on.
It took quite extraordinary powers of imagination to transport to the cliff-cutting roads of the Cote D’Azur when flanked in all directions by a pungent collection of my colleagues.
Pete steadfastly turned the pedals over and over, grunting and grinding his way onwards to Andrei’s acceptance. The outriders of our deviant diamond formation were Trent and Carol. Trent was sulking. I’d revved him up this morning with rumours of a new peroxide-blonde Bosnian PT by the name of Llana, with hot abs and a pressing need for a visa. He’d hogged the changing room mirror pre-session, spending a good half hour plucking his chest hair and applying body bronzer.
When we entered the gym and his hungry eyes set upon a 16 stone Armenian, his face was like a scene from The Crying Game. The effort he put in over the ensuing half hour was in direct proportion to his disappointment. He burnt far more calories shooting me a ‘fuck you’ look. If his bike hadn’t been static he’d have toppled over.
Carol, on the other hand, was as diligent as ever. Her application had been honed over the years through a series of athletic endeavours for countless charitable causes. She had her own JustGiving domain and had mastered the pathos required for an email to almost apologetically push colleagues into a tax deductible donation. We joked around budget time that stopping Carol running half-marathons was as pertinent a fiscal policy for the chancellor to consider as lowering the higher rate tax band or raising the stamp duty threshold. She cycled onwards, resplendent today in a ‘10k for Cassie’ tee; not the quickest, not the slowest, ever-moving onwards, oblivious to the sped-up R & B that played loud in the foreground.
Miles wore the metaphorical yellow jersey, dressed head-to-toe in white Ralph Lauren, blonde hair swept back and just so, looking to all the world as if he was on holiday in Mustique. Which he often was. He sat on the bike at the peak of the formation, driving his men forward from the front like an Ivy League captain parachuted in to lead a ragtag platoon deep into the jungle of Iwo Jima.
‘In a hope-less place.’
‘Okay, people, time for just one more 5 minute sprint…’ said Andrei.
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding,’ screeched Jill, a furball of cusses, curls and sweat.
‘Oh come on, Jillian,’ pleaded Andrei, his wry smile planted across his chiselled chin, ‘I am joking. Maybe we sprint some more next time. Just me and you. I joke, Jillian, I joke!’ Jill had her back to me but I could feel the heat from her scowl through the back of her head.
‘Okay, people, take it down to eighty, ease up now, people. And then down to sixty…’ Rihanna now jarred with the pedal revolutions, like hard house at a tea dance.
‘Slow it up, people, you’re nearly home…’
As we warmed down, my mind wandered on how to warm up the existences of the people around me, the people who, like it or lump it, I spent the majority of my waking hours with.
Jill, Pete, Trent, Carol, Miles.
And Christy.
And those not here; Craig, Connie, Mum, even Barry.
And Christy.
To misappropriate Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, it was time to turn it up to eleven.
‘Great job, people. Great job. I will see you all next week.’
Chapter 27
‘We can’t eat an elephant whole,’ was one of Miles’ most well-worn edicts. Perhaps for the first time in my professional life I was about to follow the Big Dog’s advice.
As with most things at Morgan & Schwarz, it came back to one man. If we could find a pot at the end of the rainbow for Pete the perennial virgin, surely salvation could be grasped for all of us damned souls. Despite what old wives would have you believe, the route to happiness for the modern man wasn’t through the stomach. Pete was still rather traditional. We’d gone for lunch.
Being particular with his pennies, he jumped at the mere suggestion of a free lunch, albeit suspiciously.
‘You know what they say don’t you, Bill?’ he said as we walked the two blocks to the restaurant, squeezing our way through the rest of the suits.
‘They say lots of things, Pete.’
‘Yes, I know that, Bill,’ he chuckled, ‘but I meant what they say in relation to our current little escapade.’
‘No, what do they say, Pete?’ I humoured him.
‘They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch.’ He winked and nudged me in the best bawdy fashion, pushing me into a pinstriper who broke his stride to tut in my direction.
‘Look, Pete, can’t a man take his fellow man for some Dim Sum, friend to friend?’ Because like it or not, that’s what Pete had become. Sure, in my fantasies I envisaged myself rolling around town with Keith Richards and Baudelaire, dressed as dandies, stinking of sex and dripping in drugs, gadding about on the guest list and living life as one long, continuous hangover-free party.
But I didn’t.
The reality was if I had a friend at all it was Pete, and he told me not to scrimp on tyres because it was a false economy, or to always check the rate with at least three Bureau de Changes before committing to a currency exchange, and I told him to shut up or I didn’t listen and we stood there or sat there drinking beer, and not even that now.
I’d picked this spot specifically for lunch for its waitresses. It was a Dim Sum place that had flirted with the lower reaches of the hot list around three years ago (or twelve seasons if you counted like that, which on the culinary scene in this town they very much did). It was now very firmly not hot. Still, though, despite the best efforts of the chef, the broads who brought the dumplings were, the ones in the know knew, the wrong side of smoking, the right side of willing and with a grey area over their legality. Pete was not in the know.
And before you get all high and mighty with me, I do know what you’re thinking. Pete was better than these girls, Pete deserved to meet someone nice, someone to share interests with and settle down with. Believe me, if I knew those kind of girls, Pete’s would have been the first hand I’d offer to them.
‘Oh, hi, this is Pete. He loves hill walking too, I can’t believe I’ve not introduced you guys before.’ But I didn’t know those kind of girls. You had to stick to what you knew. If I’d got out of my comfort zone on this kind of gamble, all hell could have broken loose and that was the exact opposite to what we were trying to achieve here.
So what were we trying to achieve here? Well, ultimately for Pete to get his rocks off, so to speak. Sure, love was the end goal but love could wait. Pete needed to get on the scoreboard first. Otherwise the minute he did meet someone who shared his passion for comparison websites and car boot sales, he’d shoot his load within seconds of black lace (or, if we’re being more realistic, white cotton). This was purely an itch-scratching exercise. Fortunately the girls waiting the tables had very long nails.
We’d take a table for two by the service hatch in order to optimise our options with the hired help. The waitresses were a smörgåsbord of the second world. A little rough around the edges but that only served to make them more fuckable.
‘What would make you happy, Pete?’ I took the lead.
‘You mean besides this free lunch,’ he half-joked.
‘Yep, that’s already in the bag. What would make you truly, deeply, happy…?’
He paused for a moment, lifted the teapot and poured us both a green t
ea. Bad Chinese covers of current pop hits played in the background. The corners of Pete’s mouth dropped from their smile.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Bill, that’s quite a question isn’t it? A bit like what’s the meaning of life?’
‘42,’ I replied. Pete stared blankly before laughing again.
‘Hitchhiker, very good.’
I even made sci-fi jokes for Pete. We must be friends.
‘As I say, Bill, it’s quite a question.’
‘But isn’t it the only question worth answering?’ I cupped my green tea and took a sip. Lines furrowed on Pete’s brow.
‘Shall I get you started?’ I offered. ‘What about a tidy lawn, compliance with the Countryside Code, low interest—’
‘High interest rates,’ he broke in. ‘I’ve got a fixed rate mortgage and it’s better for the savings.’ We both laughed this time. He took a deep breath and blew out against the backdrop of a Cantonese X Factor re-imagining.
‘The usual things I suppose, Bill. The arms embracing you when you awake, the kiss on the cheek before the commute, the packed lunch, the warm welcome home, the dinner on the table, the love of a good woman. Even the odd weekend away in a country house hotel on a Groupon deal…’
‘Peter White, you old romantic, you!’
He looked victorious.
‘I bet you never knew I had it in me, did you?’
‘I always suspected you had it in you, just not that you’d ever had it in anyone else…’
‘Bill!’ If he hadn’t already drunk his green tea, it’d have been a hat-trick of regurgitated hot drinks.
‘Well excuse the tawdriness, Pete, but you’ve got to start somewhere.’ He smiled in resignation now. Mandarin interpretations of the sounds of the Sixties played on.
‘Sadly I think you’re right, old boy.’ And with that, she appeared. Short, black hair, knockout hazel eyes, full red lips with just the slightest suggestion of downy hair above them. She had Latin features; that was the thing with this town, the girls never matched the cuisine.
‘You guys ready to order?’ she asked, her accent barely out of the swamp.
‘May I?’ I motioned to Pete. As more of a meat and veg man, he was accustomed to me ordering for him.