On the Floor (33 page)

‘How the story ends.'

‘If you will.'

‘And if I say no?'

‘You simply have to choose between sudden death and a glorious redemption.'

A screen arm reaches up to switch off a desk light and Jerusalem is plunged into darkness. The anchorman's voiceover explains that Larry believes they could be sitting ducks, that he has switched off the lights or maybe even smashed them.

‘Remember Kant. “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become universal law.” Discontent can be our liberator, it can spur us on to our destinies.'

The anchorman tells Larry they'll be back soon and the screen freezes on a still of the lone mic dangling from the window. He tells
us with audible disappointment that Larry might have left the hotel room. His latent survival instinct has kicked in and Larry has chosen life, cutting short this gripping dance with danger. I hear the collective sigh of a global frustration as the insomniac audience is denied the thrill of the office being blown up during a live transmission.

‘My offer expires in twenty-four hours. What we have, you and I, Geraldine, could be a marriage of minds.'

Rex stands up and pads towards the double doors, turns his head to look back at me. ‘Did you know that Nietzsche once described marriage as a grand conversation?'

‘“Do that which will render thee worthy of happiness”?' I say and pick up my keys.

‘You are losing something in the translation.'

‘I'm leaving now, Felix.'

‘My driver will be waiting to collect you at the airport.'

REX STANDS IN FRONT OF ME
, ears cocked, listening to the ringing phone. I stroke his head but he's been restless ever since we got back home and wonder if he picked up this phone sensitivity from me. I once read about a girl who had a bird phobia and her spaniel copied it, fled whimpering from pigeons in the park. The ringing stops and the answerphone clicks and silently records my fate. I go into the bathroom and Rex follows me on high alert, scenting the winds of change.

I sit on the couch and wait for the Grope to call again. Rex hops onto my lap as I pick up the receiver.

‘Geri,
finally
. Been trying to get you forever.'

‘You could say I've been tied up.'

‘We were – concerned. You were kinda off the radar there. No one knew—'

‘You wanted to find me so you could fire me.'

‘Hey, let's not jump to conclusions here. You went AWOL.'

‘I was being held captive.'

There is a faint intake of breath as if he has just stopped himself saying something. ‘Well, what can I tell you, Geri, it's been quite a week.' He sighs. ‘Oh yes, quite a week.'

‘I spoke to Felix a little while ago.'

‘Great, that's great. So you're up to speed.'

‘He told me you'd made a deal about me. That he'd made you an offer you couldn't refuse.'

‘Look – the important thing is, like I said to Felix, Hong Kong was
always
on the cards, Geri.'

‘So you're
not
firing me now?'

‘Like I said to Felix, I know you'll do a great job out there. This is a terrific opportunity for you and I'm more than happy for you to be on the first flight out of here.'

‘So Steiner's can keep all his business.'

The Grope sighs long and heavy. ‘Geri, take it from me. This experience has been a lesson you will never forget.' His voice has already shifted into archive. He will be moved himself very soon and without a patron. ‘This move is coming at exactly the right time in your career. You're a lucky girl in the eleventh hour.'

‘My grandmother always said you make your own luck.'

‘Sounds like a great lady.'

‘She's dead.'

‘Right.' He clears his throat. ‘Well, I'll leave you to it. Let you get a couple of hours sleep. Julie will have your tickets ready as soon as you come in. And she'll sort out everything with the apartment, et cetera, anything you need. So you just get yourself on that plane straight away and start looking for a nice condo. Castigliano will give you a few tips, he's real happy to have you there, got all sorts of plans. See you in a few hours.'

I put the phone down on my new best friend.

‘
BEFORE ANYONE ASKS
,' I wave my bandaged hand, ‘I fell over and thank you, I'm fine.' Rob's anxious face relaxes into a grinning head shake. Al slaps me on the back and says he assumed I'd slipped off a bar stool in Hong Kong.

There is an air of focused energy about the brisk rows of white shirts and a steady war hum. Paper Union Jacks sprout from monitors and the backs of chairs all along the UK desk, they are even hung underneath the bank of overhead TVs. Over at SPUD there is a blank space where Pie Man should be. His desk is cleared of paperwork and freshly dusted. The screens removed. The geeks are clustered round their boss, trying not look as if they are missing a limb. And I know without asking that he is gone, high-tailed out of the complications, having calculated that his chance of getting away with everything would be much improved if he disappeared. He may have fled West Hampstead. May even have flung himself under a train. Or he could be sitting somewhere amidst a sea of Tesco bags, eating himself to death. But it's far more likely that he's already interviewing with Bankers Trust down the road who will welcome him with open arms. And Pie Man will take it all the way. One day I will read about him in the business pages. He has only temporarily
left the stage. And deep down we both know my trouble is all of my own making. It is time to grow up and pick up the reins, time to take the next step, for history is what you make of it. And there is no such thing as a victim.

Rob laughs down the phone but he is still staring at me across the monitors, the scissors stalled in his right hand above a large cut-out flag on the front page of the
Sun
. I watch the red and green lights, remembering how we used to have touchscreen phones and how it took so long for the novelty to wear off and then we got Seaq on our PCs and that was fun for a while and then our disposable income took a leap and that was great too. But it seems like nothing lasts.

‘You wish, mate, you wish.' His right hand extending the flex, his other now writing a ticket. And I'm thinking: you get born, you grow up and then maybe there is a moment when you realise that this is all there is, a hamster wheel of sensation and your whole life up to this point has only ever been about that lesson. Dreams of possibility start slipping like silk from your shoulders and there is nothing left to do except turn your slap-burnt face away and drink a little more, party a little harder, jam that nose right into the grindstone and watch the bank account swell. You carry on because the wheel keeps spinning and, hey, there is always the chance that you might find something worth having, that you wouldn't just end up sitting there watching your hands turn to dust.

The first day I came for interview at Steiner's, I spilled coffee down myself while I sat waiting in HR. By amazing good fortune I happened to be wearing a mandarin collar shirt that buttoned on the shoulder so I could reverse it. I was, as the secretary told me, ever so lucky. I guess I took this as confirmation of truth and never looked back.

I remember going to Principles and buying a black velvet suit with a cropped jacket for thirty quid, which was a fortune. The day I wore it, I thought I'd arrived. I thought I was the biggest power dresser on Moorgate. That suit was going to get me anywhere, would open all doors. But then every time I got somewhere, I felt it wasn't where I'd
wanted to be. And now I look around me – the trading floor, the bodies – and I see that this is not a test drive, that I'm already way down the road. This is, I realise, the loss of innocence and I have to laugh out loud; whoever would have thought it? That there really is a time when you can't get it back, when you've jumped beyond the sand mark and into a new age.

‘Hey, Castigliano, my man. How's it going?' Al stands up. ‘Yeah, Geri's here, returned from the abyss, looks a little worse for wear but I'm sure she can explain all that.'

‘Geri. Tried to call you at home but I guess it was a long night.'

Tom wants to tell me about a really cool apartment coming up soon 'cos Franklin is going back to New York and he'll take me to see it at the weekend and I picture a cab's slow climb up to Mid-levels where the rooftop swimming pools are too hot to use in summer. So much happening out here, Tom says. On my screen amid the urgent scroll of headlines is the news that city officials have cancelled the carnival in Venice citing concerns about the war and the threat of terrorism. I watch Reuters blink and embellish, and all possibilities seem equally likely.

Rob stands up, his curved palm slips a note to Greg the boot boy, who lopes wordlessly about the floor collecting shoes and sits on his orange box against the back wall of the trading floor, working the dazzle on the leather. Once I stuck my foot out when he was taking Al's and he hesitated, then nodded. Later, on my way to the loo, I saw all the Oxfords and Brogues arranged in a semicircle around Greg's box and his hand inside my pump, the spiked heel gripped tight between his thighs. He looked up, reddened and froze. All right Greg, I muttered and hurried away but when he returned the shoes, Greg ignored the note I held out and shuffled off and I knew that I had somehow crossed a line, stirred a silent ripple through the manwaters.

‘Boys and girls, we have some news,' says Rob. ‘Old Greg here is
starting at Tullett's next week.' He slaps him on the back. ‘They're giving him a shot at the big time.'

‘No kidding,' says Al. ‘Congrats.' Greg beams. And I wonder how the shoeshine boy will look in a shirt and tie, all larged up, a moneybroker.

‘Movin' on up, movin' on up,' Rob sings into the receiver. ‘Nothing can stop us – here Jonno, JONNO. I hear you're taking on Greg. So you need to get yourself round here to do my shoes instead. Arf arf.'

I turn to the window behind me, spread my hands on the cold sill. A small nameless city bird hurls itself from a rooftop and careers wildly in front of the window and then spins away towards a triangular shoal that dips in formation and dives gracefully out of view.

‘All be over in a few weeks,' Al muses, patting Schwarzkopf's wall poster which is already looking a little tired.

‘Only if you get the guy,' says Rob.

‘Who?'

‘Saddam, that's who. Got to finish the job, Al. You don't leave the bastard out there to play games. 'Cos next thing you know he'll rise from the ashes and you've got a whole army of towel heads rising up against you. I mean, you Shermans just don't get it.'

‘Yeah, right. We don't get it. This is
our
party remember?'

‘And we invented foreign policy, mate. Who d'you think founded Iraq anyway? We've been everywhere, civilised the whole world. Fucking
discovered
you lot, put you on the map. And I'm telling you right now: you haven't won a war if the fucking crazy is still IN CHARGE! Am I right, Geri? You're a Paddy, you tell him. Here we are years after we left that little pain in the butt island of Micks right next door and they're
still
giving us gyp. The I-R-fucking-A is still running around with Semtex blowing up kids. And why? I'll tell you why. Because we let them get away with it. When we should have killed every last one of them.'

What Rob does not see is that Joe has taken up position right behind his chair, the phone cable stretched out behind him. His narrow head is cocked to one side, a deep furrow between his brows. And the whole Jap desk has fallen silent, they're watching their master who has stepped
outside his magic circle and who seems, for possibly the first time ever, to be paying attention to something that's happening outside his Jap bubble. Rob spouts on oblivious, wagging a pencil in one hand until he sees that Al is looking not
at
him, but
behind
him. He stops mid-stream and spins around.

‘All right, Joe,' says Rob. But Joe does not look down, does not even appear to have heard him speak. He takes a step closer, a movement light and tense, as if he might spring up to head a ball at any moment.

‘Al,' says Joe and we all turn to look at Al, whose existence Joe has never acknowledged until this moment. The phones flash and click and the Jap traders fan out like a silent chorus behind Joe and it seems like everything has hushed while we wait.

‘You ever see
The Magnificent Seven
, mate?' asks Joe.

‘Yul Brynner?' Al slides his hands into his pockets as if bracing himself for a remark that could topple him. ‘Yeah, sure.' Joe nods gravely and Al grins, emboldened. ‘“In this line of work, we are not all alike. Some care nothing about money. Others, for reasons of their own, enjoy only the danger.”'

‘“And the competition?”' shoots Joe.

‘“If he is the best with a knife and a gun, with whom does he compete?”'

‘“Himself.”'

We wait expectant but the impromptu theatre has ended. Joe steps a little closer, now he is right by Rob's chair. ‘So you know what happened in the end?' his voice soft, his bright eyes trained on Al as if he is fixing prey.

‘Sure,' says Al, affecting nonchalance with a shoulder shrug. ‘They saved the village.'

‘And how exactly did they do that?'

‘How?' Al repeats, stalling. At Columbia they teach you to avoid stating the obvious, or at the very least to know when the obvious is exactly what is required. And so Al buys time while he scans through the range of permutations, wondering if this is just such a moment and
if his reputation, which is – let's face it – not exactly hitting the high-water mark, could be rescued or destroyed in an exchange that has all the feel of a gun-slinging showdown. It's a binary outcome and the scent of a virtual humiliation is in the air. We are hanging by a thread here.