Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (12 page)

Marieke,
I decided, had developed an expression of perpetual severity so
that mortal man might be spared the full brunt of her allure. So
flattering was her beauty in its relaxed state that even the
weakest smile ignited fantasies. When she told the table she and
her boyfriend had bought a place in Amsterdam and then split up,
every face brightened involuntarily and then checked themselves.
She was after all, Silvestro’s property now.
Johnathan
seemed to have developed a maddening itch on his upper arm that
required him to push back the sleeve of a t-shirt that ordinarily
concealed his Maori-style tattoo from clients. Christoph, already
quite drunk, continuously took pictures of himself and whoever else
was near so that presumably the following morning he could consult
the digital oracle for clues as to what had happened the night
before. His camera turned blackouts into brownouts. There was an ad
for cameras in there somewhere. Meanwhile Silvestro was trying very
hard not to get caught ogling the up-turned braless breasts of his
unbearably beautiful neighbour while he somehow managed, in spite
of her protestations and gentle arm-slaps to finish a story about
Leonardo DiCaprio hitting on her in a club in New York. The
punch-line being that she didn’t even know who he was. Marieke
rolled her eyes as if to say
Silvestro is such a charming
liar
but behind this mock-mortification her eyes
twinkled.

My role for the evening I
decided was to be impressed. Oh how wonderful it all was. How
fortunate to be at the winning table with the Titanium, Gold and
Silver Lions sat like ornaments on the linen. Oh thank you all for
allowing me a seat at your table. And a desk in your agency. I kept
one hand on the water glass making sure it didn’t get filled with
wine. People were very generous with booze when they weren’t paying
for it.

Marieke became even more
serious.

“
Do you mind
people drinking around you?”

“
No, it
doesn’t bother me”

“
Silvestro
says you don’t you drink at all?”

“
No.”

“
Nothing?“

“
No.”

“
Ever?”

“
No.”

“
Not even at
Christmas?”

“
No.”

“
No joints
either?

“
No.

“
You don’t do
anything
?”

I’d already said it too
many times but there was no other word for it.

“No.”

This was not the answer
she wanted and now having wrinkled her pretty brow I felt like I‘d
ruined the mood and I was ready to change the subject. Johnathan
was looking interested in my direction. Christoph had put away his
phone and Silvestro was sitting back in his chair the better to
regard my discomfort. I was after all the only one at the table who
wasn’t on the brink of getting absolutely fucking sloshed. It
seemed only fair that I should explain myself. I tried to think of
a way to change the subject. The awards. The weather. The French.
Her bracelet. Did she get it locally? Your bracelet, I like your
bracelet.

“
But don’t
you ever feel the need..” she paused here selecting and discarding
phrases,”…to escape yourself?”

It was a revealing
question. It told me that she considered it normal to want to
escape. It was as if I’d caught a glimpse of her naked without her
knowing. The thing now was not to be critical of her. A silence had
descended. An answer was expected.

“
Well,” I
said, now addressing the entire table, “I suppose I try to make
myself more inhabitable.”

Was
inhabitable
even a word?

Fuck it, she was
Dutch.

I hadn’t noticed until
that moment that she was smoking a joint so well-rolled it looked
like a cigarette and the glass of white wine on the linen in front
of her was so full it might have been water. Inhaling from the
joint she raised her glass, sipped, swallowed, and regarded me
anew. I didn’t see her exhale.

“
I like your
bracelet“ I said quickly.

This somehow signalled the
all-clear and the conversation resumed around the table. I tried
not to look too relieved. Silvestro was still looking at
me.

“
I hear
you’ve written a book.”

It was true that during a
quiet moment before we sat down to dinner I had mentioned to
Christoph that I’d written something but only because he’d asked me
and I hadn’t said it was a book. I said I’d written
something
and that I wasn’t even sure what it was. Christoph
appeared unsurprised but then as a producer that was his job. The
file containing my book was accessible on the agency’s shared
network so it was possible Christoph had already seen it there
before I told him about it. For all I knew he might have even read
it. Either way he’d obviously mentioned it to Silvestro who,
despite Lucien’s best efforts to deplete it, still had money left
in the Projects slush-fund. As he continued talking I didn’t hear,
so much as see, Silvestro’s mouth open and close in apparent slo-mo
around words that seemed to suggest that he might like to publish
this so-called book of mine. He would need to read it first of
course and I would need to keep an eye on the agency in the
meantime but maybe I could send him the file so he could get an
idea of what it was about? He couldn’t risk the possibility that I
might put less energy into the agency than I had done recently and
publishing my book would keep me motivated and give me a reason not
leave them all in the shit. I was after all, at that point the only
one beside Pamela who knew where all the adapts for the print work
could be found. I nearly cried when I heard him say the word
publish
because even though it was like a dream coming true
it was cheapened by the fact that in doing so I might be
strengthening my connections to the advertising business when my
intention had been to write a book that did the
opposite.

“
Can I think
about it?”

“
Yes of
course, take your time. No rush”

He, of all people,
understood the need to pretend to think about it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Open on a wide-shot of me
checking into a tiny little cheap hotel in a back street in Cannes.
A shrunken old man in the tiny reception area hands me a key. Cut
to inside the room as I enter and look around. It’ll do. Shrugging
my bags to the floor I make my way straight to the bathroom and
after a few moments we hear two distinct unmistakable plops. There
is a gurgling sound but the cistern seems to be faulty. I try
flushing again. Nothing.
I pick up the phone and
when the old man at the front desk answers the I say in my very
best French; “Monsiuer, la toilette ne march pas” Silence. The old
man doesn’t understand. “Toilette. Not. Work” I say again. Cut to
the wizened old man in reception as he repeats the phrase. “Toleet.
Non. Quoi? Cut back to me holding a burning match to dispel the
odour. I try once more to flush the toilet but with no success.
There is a quiet knock on the door and I open it to find a
beautiful young girl standing there in an apron. She might be the
old man’s daughter or grand-daughter or niece. She is smiling
professionally.

“
Il y a un
probleme, monsieur?”

“
Ah yes, over
here.” she follows me to the bathroom and when I nod at the toilet
she looks away horrified. I wave frantically to regain her
attention. I behave now like we’re starting all over again and I
raise my index finger in front of her face. I hold it there
hypnotically before theatrically moving my hand towards the
flush-handle and slowly, as if demonstrating to a child, I push it
downwards. The toilet flushes perfectly. I stare at the toilet bowl
in disbelief. The girl starts to cry. My mouth opens and closes as
I try to find some way to explain.
Learnanewlanguagedotcom

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LUISA

The fact that MANG094’s
picture was fuzzy would normally have served as a warning but I had
nothing better to do that Sunday evening after returning from
Cannes and meeting her for a coffee would kill an hour or two
before dinner. On the way there I found myself walking behind a
small girl with an outrageous little ass. I remember being
concerned about turning up late if I didn’t overtake her but I
couldn’t bear to leave that ass behind. I looked ahead to the Ann
Frank Huis where we had arranged to meet but apart from the
ever-present carefully-curated queue of tourists I saw no one. The
little girl in front of me stopped abruptly and took out her cell
phone. I could see now that her face was pitted and pocked and not
at all attractive and certainly not as young as I had first
assumed. My phone rang and when she heard it she looked up and
smiled.

“
Hi, I’m
Luisa.“

She was
from Brazil. They value an ass down there. I guessed she was in her
early forties but she might have been older. She never told me her
age and she seemed to delight in the idea that I couldn’t
guess.
She did something indecipherable for an IT company in
Amsterdam
and as she explained exactly what this
entailed I pretended to understand completely. She referred to her
daily gym-visits as
ass-maintenance
.
She was out
of the country more than she was in it and when she returned she
always had a new set of lingerie to model for me. She took almost
as much pleasure in the beauty of her body as I did. She was
addicted to the effect she had on me.

I was a full-length mirror
with an erection.

Her pockmarks blurred
together when we kissed and refocused hideously when I pulled back.
This drew me closer to her like an exhausted boxer hugging an
opponent.

She
was so compact and toy-like I could fuck her and
fold her away afterwards. She made frequent references to a breed
of monkey called the Bobo who apparently gave each other blowjobs.
I couldn’t tell if it was a remnant from a prior relationship or
whether it was just a cute affectation but she would actually use
the term Bobo to describe a blowjob. Knelt there in front of me
her with face so firmly attached to my midriff
she looked like she had
a beard of balls.

Afterwards we sat naked
looking out on the canals from the window of her apartment.We could
see right up the Reguliersgracht. A pretty sight on a clear
night.

We ate strawberries and
Ben and Jerries and museli. It was the perfect relationship for me.
Her body was amazing and her face was a built-in get-out
clause.

“
My doctor
thinks it’s a mess.”

She looked directly at me,
making sure I understood. What was a mess? Her face? Her health?
What kind of a doctor would describe a patient’s health in this
way? The Dutch weren’t exactly renowned for their charm but this
sounded a little too harsh.

“
So it’s a
mess.” I said and smiled as if this was the cutest thing in the
world. It was a weird moment because by now she was sitting astride
me grinning and grinding herself down on me and I was seconds away
from a re-ignited hardon. She seemed relieved somehow.
Younger-looking. I smiled up at her and then hid in her hair as she
began shoving herself back and forth on me. On my way home, as the
effects of two successive orgasms wore off I realised I’d misheard
her.“He thinks it’s M.S.” Multiple Scerosis. Luisa was worried I’d
stop seeing her. She was right.

*****

The
next day it was announced in a group email that
Silvestro
was leaving. He had accepted a job as editor of
Passione
magazine in Rome. The email made it sound like he would be
immediately replaced but it was just a smokescreen to keep the
Falfaux clients from panicking. In fact, the New York office was
already dealing with the logistics of closing the place down. And
though there was no love lost between Silvestro and the New York
office he didn’t want to be sued for leaving them in the lurch so
publishing my book would at least ensure my continued presence
until the agency closed.

The files were already
with the printers when he announced he was leaving. It occurred to
me that in his new capacity as editor-in-chief of an
internationally renowned magazine, a quote from him would lend some
much-needed authenticity to my soon-to-be published book. I settled
on a typographic style that mimicked what a real publisher might do
and even I could see it was beginning to approach the coast of
something that might not get laughed at in a bookshop. It was
Pamela’s suggestion to apply for a barcode and again I had only
agreed because I thought it would make the book more
convincing.

I opened the manila
envelope that Johnathan had handed me the week before. Amongst the
glossy enticements to work with the cream of New York’s
photographersdirectors and stylists was a plain looking envelope
with a government eagle embossed in the right hand corner. My green
card was approved.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Open on a shot of me
reading a book. I’m looking rather smug. Panning around the
apartment we see unopened cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly.
They look like they’ve just been delivered and in
one opened box we see copies of the same book I’m reading so
intently. Diary Of An Oxygen Thief by Anonymous. Suddenly I’m
distracted by muffled snippets of a flagrant argument coming from
upstairs. Cut to the arguing couple upstairs. The fact that they
are speaking Dutch adds to the aggression of the situation.
Subtitles appear on the screen beneath them.