Yes Man (54 page)

It was Tuesday afternoon and time to face my punishment
.

I drove through central London on my way to Langham Street and the Yorkshire Grey, where Ian would already be waiting for me.

I parked my car outside the Yorkshire Grey, popped my
MIMSTER ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS
sign on the dashboard, and walked through the doors. He was sitting at a small table by the fireplace. He smiled when he saw me. Of course he did. The bastard. He’d been looking forward to this since the summer, and the fact that I’d lied to him about Kristen had only doubled his venom.

I had my diary in my hand—the result of nearly six months of intensive Yessaying, the proof of my decision to live my life religiously by the power of Yes—and yet the very document that also confirmed I had failed. I set it down on the table and saw that Ian too had brought something. A long, red envelope, with the words
THE PUNISHMENT
written across the front.

“Is that the punishment?” I said slightly unnecessarily.

“It certainly is. It’s a good one. I think you’ll like it. I have put a lot of thought into it, Danny. A
lot.”

Ian smiled.

“You did far better than I thought you would,” he said. “I’m sorry it had to be this way. But a deal’s a deal. As we have established, you have failed on three counts, averaging out to roughly one failure per two months. Not an impressive record.”

The fact that all three Nos had happened in the last six weeks apparently meant nothing to Ian. And he’d conveniently forgotten about his role in the dastardly plot to make it all so much harder, too.

Luckily I hadn’t.

I would still have my revenge on Ian. But not today.

“So … let us count the ways in which you have said no.”

“Well, hang on. What about the ways in which I said yes?” I said.

Ian considered the point, and with a theatrical wave of his hand, signalled for me to explain. I felt like a serf being granted an audience with the king.

“Well … what I mean is … I’ve tried really hard at saying yes to things. Yes to everything. And what I’ve learnt is that Yes is a powerful word. It’s a word that can set us free and let us open our hearts and fly like the wind. It’s a word—”

“Oh, Jesus, shut up, mate. Yes. It’s a word. But the point is, it’s a word you failed to say three times. To a pint. To a girl. To Australia. And now, by the power vested in me by the Yes Manifesto, I …”

“There’s something else I haven’t told you.”

Ian put his head in his hands.

“If I’ve got to rewrite the bloody punishment …,” he said. “What is it? What haven’t you told me?”

“Well, what you’re saying isn’t strictly true. I mean, yes, I did say no to those things, and so
technically
I failed, but …”

“Oh, here we go,” said Ian, throwing his hands up in the air. “You’re going to find a loophole, now, aren’t you? Or some kind of last-minute twist. Well, that isn’t fair. You said no. That’s the end of it. You failed.”

“That’s just it,” I said. “I
did
fail. I
didn’t
say yes to everything. But I only said no to two of those things. I only failed on
two
counts.”

Ian looked at me suspiciously.

“Have you been round Kristen’s house? I
thought
you were looking a little tired….”

“No. I’m tired because I’ve been up half the night packing.”

“Packing?”

“I’m going to Australia. To see Lizzie. See how things go. Take a risk. I’m saying yes.”

“What!?”

“I’m flying out tonight. I’ll be there Christmas Eve. I’m afraid your elaborate and well-thought-out punishment will have to wait until I get back.”

“But the punishment is
brilliant!”
he said, holding up his little red envelope with some degree of desperation in his eyes. “You can’t do this to me! I worked long and hard on this!”

“I’d better go.”

I started to stand up. Ian looked at me pleadingly.

“But … what changed your mind?”

I picked up my diary and flicked to the last page.

I found the postcard—the glorious, glorious postcard—that had arrived mornings before. I put it on the table and slid it toward him.

“Read this,” I said, and I watched him while he did.

“Oh …,” he said. “Wow.”

And then he handed it over, I put it back in my diary, left the pub, and got back in the car. I was driving to the airport. But there was one thing left to do.

I got my phone out and dialled Wag’s number.

“Wag?”

“Hiya, Dan.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Italy.”

“Right. Well. This’ll sound a bit odd, but there’s a big favour I need …”

Many thousands of feet up in the air, I thought about what I was doing. It was a risk, yeah, but it was a risk I was glad I was taking. Lizzie had been delighted when I’d phoned her up to ask if the offer still stood and to explain my behaviour the last time I’d seen her. And like Ian, she’d wanted to know why I’d changed my mind; what could possibly have happened to make me decide to find the one credit card I hadn’t cut up—the one credit card I’d saved “for emergencies”—and book myself on the first available flight to Melbourne.

I opened up my diary and took out the postcard. It was battered, and bruised, and smudged, and it was all the way from Thailand.

Danny,

How’s it going? It’s Jason here, I met you a while back at Thorn’s party in Liverpool. Sorry for being a bit of a dick that night—methinks one too many. Well, a few days later I realised that I really did want to go travelling with my brother. Work was getting me down anyway, dunno if you could tell! So here we are in Thailand; dunno where to next. We’re having an amazing time. Thorn gave me your address and said you wanted to chat with me. I’m back home in a few months, how about then? My new e-mail address is *******@hotmail.com or call me on 07*** *** ***. Gotta go, the beach is calling …

Jase

I smiled. Jason had said yes.

I had no idea whether his decision to give up his job and do something that made him happy had anything to do with me. I suspect that on the
whole it didn’t. But a part of me still hopes that it did.

It’s incredible how a few words from someone you hardly know can have an impact on your life. Of course some would call this divine intervention. That maybe Maitreya
did
exist, and it had been him that had done this. But I knew something. A stranger can affect your life in a thousand different ways—with a new thought or idea … or suggestion. I had my man on the bus—perhaps Jason had his stranger at the party. And maybe right now, he was on some beach in Thailand, telling a local girl (who one day, I like to think, he might marry), all about the night he met the stranger at the party, and all about those few words he’d said that had made him change his ways.

It was actually more likely that he was on some beach in Thailand, getting drunk, but it’s a nice thought all the same.

The fact is saying yes hadn’t been a pointless exercise at all. It had been point
ful
. It had the power to change lives and set people free. People like me or Jason. Maybe even you. It had the power of adventure. Sometimes the little opportunities that fly at us each day can have the biggest impact.

And now as I sat, cramped and sleepy, in a passenger jet high above the ocean, I would see what else Yes had in store for me.

This was it. This was
life
.

I leaned against the window and fell asleep in an instant.

SELECTED EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A YES MAN

December 26

I have been in Australia for a full three days.

Everything is … great.

Lizzie met me at the airport with a Kiss and a smile.

On christmas Day had a barbecue with the family and drank beer with all the various, cousins and brothers and stood around and bated in a thirty-degree heat. I feel it is important to stick to as many international cultural clichés as is possible in life, so as well as the barbie, I also had someone lend me a hat with some corks in it. Plus, despite my lack of tan and muscles, I really fit in here. Australia is the land of the mullet! I feel that at last I am among my own people.

Lizzie’s just made me a cup of tea. She’s looking after me. I am pretending to be more jetlagged than I am. I get a lot more tea that way.

December 28

This morning Lizzie wote me up to tell me we were going on a journey in her little red Nissan. We set off in the direction of a place called Glenrowan. She wouldn’t tell me why. It took three hours to get there, and when we arrived, there didn’t seem to be much of it. Ë dirt tracte, a few dusty wooden buildings, and an old man in dungarees and a beard he must have been growing since the 1800s.

Lizzie got out the car and asted the old man, “there’s Ned?”

He poted a thumb to his right and said in a gruff and husfy accent, “Pound the corner.”

I tried to ask Lizzie who Ned was, but she put her finger to her mouth, and then beckoned me to follow her.

And then I saw it. Towering high into the sky with a gun in one hand and a buctet on his head was … a Big Ned Kelty A Big Thing! My first-ever Big Thing! It must have been a hundred feet if it was an inch! A true Australian hero, lovingly re-created in concrete and fading plaster. Okay, so it was no Big Prawn, but it was brilliant nonetheless.

We stood there for what seemed lite an age just quietly staring at the silent majesty of Ned. There was reverence in the air. I loved Lizzie for that.

When we got home, I sat down with a map and enthusiastically attempted to plot the most efficient route round Australia with a pen. A grand, epic journey that would take in the Big Rock, the Big Lobster, the Big Cow and the Bid Oyster. Me and Lizzie. On the road, in a tiny red car. For months and months and months.

December 29

It appears that the map has mysteriously disappeared.

How curious. Unie seemed just as shocked as I was and gave me a look that some would have mistaken for guilt, but which 1 Know was of a genuine disappointment.

December 31

It’s New Year’s Eve.

Exactly one since the last one.

And the night I was supposed to have finished being the Yes Man, in a pub, with lan—either triumphing as the Yes Man, or receiving my punishment with humility Cut here I am instead, on the other side of the world, having said the biggest and most unexpected Yes of my life … and happy Happier than I’ve been in ages. So happy that I came here.

Melbourne is ablaze with fireworks. We’ve been standing in Federation Square, watching live bands and drinking bottles of water, counting down to midnight—all around us happy Australians, who are hugging and shading hands and ooh-ing at the fireworks that bang and burst above our heads.

Lizzie and I hug. And at one point she looks at me, and she says something along the lines of “We can make this all work out, can’t we?”, and I look at my watch, and I see that it’s 12:04 in a brand-new year. And I realise that for the first time in months, I feel like I can say whatever I want, with no restriction, and no regrets. Anything I want.

And so I turn to her.

And I say “Yes.”

To : Danny

From: Ian

Subject: Help me!

Dear Danny,

In the last forty-eight hours I have received more than one hundred calls on my home telephone. Each one of these has been from a confused Italian looking for someone named Charlie. One of the more persistent callers is a teenage girl who, as soon as I pick up, spends upwards of a minute simply screaming at me.

I did the sensible thing, of course, and switched my answerphone on. However, I forgot that my outgoing message contains my mobile number, and consequently I woke up this morning to find thirty-two texts and forty voie emails—one of which was just a minute and a half of screaming.

I take it that all this is not just coincidence.