Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (9 page)

Suddenly
my natural paranoia, which until then had been gathering facts in a
half-awake, half-interested manner awoke with a jolt. She was
obviously pregnant and the plan was to first fuck me and then dupe
me into bringing up the her pasty progeny as my own.
What was
happening here? Was it the suicidal reindeer? I looked down at my
feet to find that I was descending the stairs with only slightly
more dignity than she had when she’d been thrown down
them.

*****

“
I never got
to thank you for all the work. It’s going well isn’t
it?”

Johnathan, our very
British account manager, appeared genuine enough but an account
man’s work was never done. He might need me to work late, or let
him kill an idea he couldn’t sell or come in to work on a weekend.
This was his way of sounding me out. So when I redirected his
gratitude to Silvestro, his eyes narrowed. A creative who didn’t
gloam at easy praise was something to be wary of. Did I know
something he didn’t? Was this campaign about to be received less
favourably than he’d been led to believe? Why would I deflect the
credit for a potentially award-winning campaign?

The preliminary research
results indicated that The Life Less Driven was a winner. It had
already tested through the roof in London, Berlin, Los Angeles and
New York. The idea was simple. Demonstrate safety by showing the
driver and passenger conversing freely. Real conversations. The
more relaxed the conversation, the safer the car. The client loved
it because the car was in every single shot and creatives aspired
to it because the conversations were real. It went beyond
advertising. It was reality with a logo.

Christoph, our German
producer had referred to it, in an all-staff email as the
Irishman’s campaign.
This was something he would only do if
Silvestro had already sanctioned it. My first impulse was to send
out a reply-to-all saying I’d had nothing to do with it. But if the
creative director wanted it said that I was involved in this
campaign then who was I to object? Maybe it was his generous
gesture of welcome? His way of including me. I also had to tread
carefully since my visa-situation had become extremely delicate.
The lawyer was now saying my “ little hiccup” at the Canadian
border could effectively halt my green card application and because
of this here was a very real danger I might never work in the US
again. This was not the time to distance myself from an award
winning campaign. And anyway hadn’t I perpetrated enough good work
of my own over the years to piggy-back just this once?

Across the room Lucien sat
straight-backed and expressionless watching me carefully as if he
might draw me later from memory. Without taking those button-black
eyes from mine his fingers began typing so fast I thought at first
he was joking. The screen in front of him was as indecipherable as
he was. Macro enlargements of half-tone photography woven into
layers of transparent type, ground up against jagged slabs of flat
black and white. All strangely haphazard and definitely
non-commercial. It was like an aerial view of some unforgiving
alien landscape, impenetrably obscure, airless and unwelcoming. It
was obvious from even a distance that it wasn’t agency work. It
soon became clear from the galleys and layouts strewn over every
available surface of the three-story canal house that Lucien’s book
of black and white photography (mostly black) would soon be
published thanks to agency funds set aside by Silvestro. It would
be his reward for past services and, as far as I could see it was
the only reason he tolerated any of us at all.

What I didn’t know was
that he had already resigned. As soon as his books were delivered
he would be gone. Was it just co-incidence that I should end up in
Amsterdam just as he was leaving? It might have been paranoia but a
scenario began to emerge that seemed to explain everything. Maybe
Andy had intentionally orchestrated the shoot in Canada knowing
that my visa was up for renewal. He wasn’t exactly pleased when he
caught me printing out my book and even less so when I made that
comment in the toilet. And with Lucien leaving they needed someone
to help Silvestro. Andy could get rid of me and find a use for me
at the same time. It made sense. As creative director it would have
been easy for Andy to find out the status of my work visa. If this
was true then I might have to accept that Amsterdam was now my
permanent home.

PIPPA

Pippa was an upper-class
British girl whose idea of slumming it was to fuck someone like me.
She was fat little fucker but her accent seemed to suggest
otherwise. As if body fat was something only the lower classes
suffered from. Daddy, a politician in the Hague would no doubt be
suitably livid when she inferred between Dover Sole and Gooseberry
Fool that she’d bedded a Mick. I probably made as much money if not
more than he did but I wanted her to see me as a bohemian writer
mostly because I wanted to believe it myself. She drove a little MG
sports car that she constantly felt the need to apologise for. She
said in a faraway voice that I looked like a Labrador and I somehow
knew by this that we were going to have sex. When she took her
clothes off she expanded like dough and at one point I inserted
myself into what I hoped was her pussy but there was a very real
fear that it might be a sweaty fold in her lower bellies. I tried
to give the impression I was enjoying the sensation so much I had
to close my eyes but she wasn’t having it.

“
Open your
eyes, would you?”

The nubile girls I had
conjured in my mind exploded and I suddenly became a sexual
plate-spinner trying to keep her nipples erect so that at least I
could tell what was tit and what was not. When she got on top of me
I had to suppress an urge to fight. I was beginning to doubt if I
could actually orgasm under all that heaving girl-flesh, until she
had the decency to reach down and insert one of her fat fingers in
my butt hole.

I ejaculated
immediately.

Flushed with relief, I
turned to her, grateful that I’d never have to see her
again.

“
I felt
something in there,” she whispered,”you might want to have it
looked at.”

My hard-won swirl of
endorphins soured inside me.

*****

“Apple-sick
duck the fuck?”

The receptionist thought I
was Dutch.

“
I have an
appointment with Doctor Van Amersvoort.” I explained.

“
I‘ll tell
him you’re here”

It would seem silly later,
childish even, but the thought that I would die from stress-induced
cancer of the colon had for the two preceding weeks occupied the
width and breath of my being. Advertising had killed me. Pippa’s
post-coital concern merely confirmed what I had already feared. I’d
die elegantly in nearby France while my medical insurance was still
eligible. At least I wouldn’t have to be insulted by spoken Dutch
ever again. But my almost comforting death-wish was short-lived
when, after administering a gentle lunchtime probing to my virgin
sphincter, the doctor declared me benign. I felt relief and then
joy. And then relief again. It occurred to me that I had been at
least as frightened of getting an erection as a bad diagnosis. You
could say I got the all-clear in more than one sense. Mind you, he
was an ugly fucker.

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

This commercial opens with
an over-the-shoulder-shot of me writing on my laptop. The camera
zooms in on the screen until we are looking at what appears to be
an extreme close-up of two equal sized dots positioned one on top
of the other. It’s a Colon.

:

Voiceover:“Getting checked
early can seriously increase your chances of survival.” The camera
finds and settles into the next extreme close-up, this time, one
dot positioned over a comma. A Semi-Colon.

;

Voiceover; “Getting
checked when the disease has already set in can prove more
difficult to treat.” The next frame shows only one solitary dot. A
Period.

.

Voiceover:“Get checked early for colon cancer before it’s too
late.
Isuued by Center For Cancer
Research

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

VALERIYA

With Silvestro, Christoph
and Johnathan away in Rekyiavik shooting the first instalment of
The Life Less Driven I was left to look after the agency. Four more
shoots would follow in Hong Kong, Berlin, Lisbon, and Rome.
Silvestro had invited me to tae his place but it was wrapped in an
unspoken expectation that I should stay. It was pure diplomacy.
Falfaux had just signed off on a pan-European campaign that had no
script and they weren’t about to have it supervised by a guy who
couldn’t even remember to bring proper travel documents on his last
shoot. I knew this and Silvestro knew this. But it needed to look
like my decision because this was supposedly my
campaign.

But I had far more
important matters on my mind. Namely, a third date with the
beautiful Valeryiya.
After a giggly visit to the
Reich Museum (me popping out from behind the exhibits
like a child surprising his mother) she opened
her lovely mouth and changed everything. In the café downstairs she
described her many trips to Florence while sympathising with me for
never having been. She said I couldn’t call myself a real writer
until I visited Florence at least once. She went on to say that she
would have gone there even more often if the choice had been hers
to make but that was what life was like when
you’re…

This was
where I experienced what Hitchcock liked to call a
reverse-smile.
When he
couldn’t trust an actor’s skills he relied instead on certain
tricks like beginning a shot with an existing smile and then asking
for it to be removed. This gave him the option of playing the
sequence in reverse. It was also a subtle insult to the actors who
were understandably upset by this practice and no doubt performed
the perfect reverse-smile when they were introduced to the idea. He
would have loved the effect on my face when I heard the word
married.
I felt sick and
tricked because I realised I had been effortlessly manipulated into
wanting her more than I actually did.

The options were
Single
,
Separated
or
Divorced
. She had selected
Single.
She suddenly
seemed second-hand. Used even.
Of course
you’re married
my expression tried to say.
Isn’t everyone? I tried to effect nonchalance. It would buy me some
time to think. Maybe this kind of behaviour was standard online.
And maybe, just maybe, my instinctual knee-jerk response of
you fucking lying cunt
didn’t apply. At least not yet. Then it occurred to me that
if she had lied to me it meant I didn’t need to be so respectful
any more. I’d spent hours daydreaming about us making love but now
I just wanted to fuck her. And soon, before I found out something
else I didn’t want to hear. I suggested we drop by my place for
desert and when she agreed I thought even less of
her.

There was a pause in my
doorway as if there was a chance she might not go in but I took
this to be just another lie, her playing he part of timid girl so I
could feel more powerful. So be it. I pushed the door open and
before she crossed the threshold I had peeled her coat and blouse
away in one. Her nipples seemed strangely sunken like those of an
older woman but otherwise she was a like a fucking movie
star

“
You’re like
a fucking movie star” I said

Her long slim girlish legs shivered apart under my touch and
I licked her out and she gave me a sloppy slippery blow-job. She’d
been very sneaky about not telling me she was married. In fact she
was
still
married. We were committing adultery. Or at least she was.I
wanted to ask if she had really been a figure skater or was that
lie too? I couldn’t be sure what was true and what wasn’t.
Confusing matters even more the sex was beautiful and loving and
dirty all at the same time. She was married. So what? As she teased
the tip of my cock with the tip of her tongue I didn’t care if she
turned out to be a man. She had a great energy and was cheerful and
full of life and laughter and her pussy was the most beautiful I
had ever seen in real life. It was so perfectly symmetrical I
dubbed it pussuq.

She stretched her foot down to stroke my dick as I lapped at
her. Was this a trick she used on her husband? Of course it was. I
could have stayed down there all day. There was never any need to
explain anything to Valeriya she intuitively understood.
At one point I sat with my pants around my knees,
half crouched to absorb the shocks as she smashed her pussuq down
onto my cock like she was trying to kill something. as she began to
exhaust herself on my midriff I gathered her to me and waddled
ankle-panted across the floor to lay her down there so I could more
easily feast on her. But I wasn’t allowed. Springing back up on her
bare feet she bid me kneel and immediately began pummelling me
mercilessly with spat-on hands like some sexual
laborer.