Upgrading (32 page)

“Fuckin’ ’ell,” Mark gasps. “You’re doing all right. What you waiting for?”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

I decide not to mention the circumcision thing.

With elaborate care Vinny puts the ball away in its usual place: balanced on top of the teapot we’ve only ever used once, when Jane came round, but whose lid we’ve somehow managed to break since that occasion. My ball control has been crap tonight. It’s been such a half-hearted game that we haven’t even elicited any bangs of complaint from downstairs. I’ve been looking anxiously at my watch between shots as eight o’clock approaches.

“Do you want a beer?” I ask, opening the fridge and leaning on the door for a moment.

“Line ’em up, Barkeep.” I open a couple of cold Rolling Rocks and hand one to him. Hot and thirsty, we both drink in silence for a moment. “You’re quiet,” says Vinny. He burps. “You’re not usually like this when you’ve been thrashed. Who the hell do you think you are? David Beckham?” I laugh and take another swig. “How’s Mrs. Robinson?”

“Who?”

“The older woman?”

“Oh, right. She’s … I’m, er, I’m moving in with her.”

Vinny swallows a mouthful of beer quickly. “Really?”

“Oh, right. Well, it’s your …”

“Funeral?”

“Probably.” We both stare at our beers for a while. “When are you moving out?”

“Well, tonight, actually.”

Vinny looks shocked. “Tonight? Bloody hell! That was quick.”

“Yeah, I know.” Poor Vinny. I think of Jane’s words. I’ll miss him.

“I can’t believe … well … you know.”

“Thing is, I’ve just got no money since I got … since I left my job and I don’t have to pay any rent at hers—”

“Oh, God, no, mate,” says Vinny, shrugging his shoulders. “I see what you mean. It makes sense.”

“It’s the only way—”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” We look at our beers again. Vinny gets the ball again and bounces it a couple of times on the ground. “Have you written to the landlord?”

“Yeah, I did it this afternoon.”

“Oh, right. Do you want a hand with your stuff?”

“Oh, no, don’t worry. She’s sending the … someone’s coming. He’ll be here at eight. Anyway, you’re going out tonight, aren’t you?”

“Well, I was just going for a drink with some mates but …”

“Oh, well, go. Go on, don’t worry.”

Vinny puts his foot on the ball. I’m trying to work out how long we’ve lived here. Just over eleven months.

He says, “OK, I’d better …”

“Yep. I’ve got some packing to do.” He makes for the door and I wonder what to do next. “I’ll see you though. We’ll keep in touch.”

“Oh, sure,” says Vinny, finishing his beer.

I scoop the football off the floor and spin it around in my hand. “After all, I want revenge.”

“In your dreams, mate,” he says, staring at the ball.

“I’ll be back for fry-ups on Saturday,” I say, though I don’t know how.

“I should hope so. That girl with the wonky eye and the—what shall I call it?—under-arm problem, at the Ritz grill down the road will be sorry to see the back of you.”

“Ah, yes. The ugliest girl in London.”

“In Britain,” says Vinny indignantly. “Don’t sell her short!” I laugh again. Poor thing. It’s so obvious she’s got a thing for Vinny. And she hasn’t got a wonky eye. Or an underarm problem. She’s actually very pretty. Jane says it is Vinny’s defence mechanism because he can’t handle someone fancying him.

“Don’t worry,” I say, suddenly feeling overcome with emotion. “I’ll be back for footy and fry-ups.”

“Oh, yeah,” agrees Vinny as he heads for his room.

I’ve been half-heartedly stuffing things into bags for an hour or so when Chris, Marion’s chauffeur, arrives with Anna Maria. He stands uncomfortably in the hallway in his uniform, looking very tall and worrying about how safe the car is, double parked outside. Anna Maria, meanwhile, thinks it is all great fun. She sniffs and turns up her pug nose. “Berry bad smell.”

“Is it?” I say, sniffing around.

“Smell like, er, smell like old sneakers and sweat.”

She runs her finger along the radiator. Not surprisingly it comes up black. She gasps in horror and begins to giggle again. I lead her upstairs, asking what is so funny. Laughing, she follows me into the bedroom, looking anxiously around her.

I point to my shirts hanging up in the wardrobe and ask her to take them down and fold them. Still giggling inanely, she discovers she can hardly reach. I take them down for her and chuck them on the bed while I deal with my underpants. No one touches my underpants apart from me—and my mum.

Still giggling and muttering “Oh, my God,” Anna Maria begins to fold things neatly and put them into my suitcase and my Head bag.

“Is that all?” she says after an hour or so. Chris takes the boxes with my ghetto blaster, some books, CDs and tapes. We set off back to Marion’s with Anna Maria still laughing at this whole ridiculous business and me worrying about what I’m doing. What am I going to tell my mum and dad? If they ring I’ll have to get Vinny to say that I’m out and then ring me at Marion’s and I’ll ring them back and do 141 beforehand. This is getting very complicated. As for Jane—I’ll have to cook something up with Vinny. Another lie.

One month. That’s all. While I find … all right, let’s face it, while I find another job but perhaps a job I can actually stand to do. Then I’ll take the money—the £15,000 Marion has promised me—and get somewhere to live. Somewhere normal that Jane can deal with. Like
this
flat. I look around at my old room and listen to Vinny singing along to Elvis on the radio. What am I doing?

But I can’t afford to stay here, I tell myself, picking up some socks listlessly. At least I can look back and say I went to hotels and restaurants I would never have seen any other way. I’ve got some nice clothes and, best of all, nearly a year’s salary all at once, tax free.

When we get to Belgravia Chris takes the bag, the suitcase and the boxes upstairs and Anna Maria follows him, ready to unpack them. Marion has set aside some of her wardrobe space for me.

“Is that it?” asks Marion.

“Yes,” I say. “I haven’t got that much.”

“We’ll have to do something about that.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The next morning I suddenly realize I haven’t seen my ghetto blaster. I ask Marion where it is.

“That old thing? With the sticky tape on the front and the aerial all bent up? Yuk! I had Anna Maria put it with the garbage. You can use mine. I’ve got one in almost every room. We don’t need any more of them, that’s for sure.”

I suppose not.

My mum and dad bought it for me on my first day at college.

a
nd so the days drift along. I get up late, have a long, leisurely breakfast, watch a bit of TV, go for a walk, sit at the Picasso Café in the King’s Road and have a cappuccino or two while I read the paper or just watch the people walk past. I meet Marion for lunch somewhere nice or Anna Maria makes me something and serves it to me, as I sit at the head of the dining table on my own. I go to the gym or swimming or even the pictures in the afternoon. Sometimes I go window shopping. Or sometimes it’s back to the Picasso Café if I’ve got enough money. I spend quite a bit of time listening to music while I’m lying in front of the telly with the sound turned down. It makes whatever crap you’re watching look like a documentary or some satirical pop video. In the evening we go out to dinner or to the theatre or to a party with people I don’t know and she hasn’t seen for years.

I find myself doing funny things at funny times of the day: I’m in the bath at three o’clock in the afternoon sometimes or having lunch at four. I don’t always sleep very well so I sometimes wander downstairs and put the telly on at two in the morning or I take some pills Marion gave me.

She nags at me sometimes to do something but whenever I ask what she means—like getting a job? Accompanying her to lunch? To her daily treatments?—she just changes the subject and I go back to the telly or the paper or the stereo.

I ring Jonathan almost every day but either I can’t get through or some woman explains that he’s on the phone or out but he’ll call me back. I go to visit him on a few occasions at the office in Pimlico but he is never in. Usually I get the woman’s voice again, trying a bit too hard to be posh, squawking out of the entry phone that she’s terribly sorry, he’s out at the moment and she doesn’t know when he’ll be back.

Once when I walk up the street, on the opposite pavement, trying to decide whether to be Mr. Nasty or Mr. Nice on the entryphone today I casually look up and I’m sure I see him through the Venetian blinds of a first-floor window.

I run over to the door, jam my finger into the buzzer and hold it there until I get a voice shouting, “Hello? Hello? Could you stop that, please.” It’s him, it’s Jonathan.

Almost as if he’s my saviour, not my tormentor, I shout, “Jonathan, hi, Jonathan, it’s me, Andrew.” There is a silence and I wait for the door to open. It doesn’t move. “Hello? Jonathan?” I push the door again, perhaps I just didn’t hear it buzz.

“How can I help you?” says Jonathan through the metal grill of the entryphone.

“I just wanted to pick up my other cheques.”

“OK. Hang on, let me look at my file.”

“Can I come in?” I say but there is silence.

“I’ve got a record of another job but, like I said at the time, I take the earnings from the first jobs to cover my expenses.”

“What, still?”

“Things like photographs cost money.”

“But I never had a photograph and—” I realize I’m getting off the point here. “Look, what about the other jobs I did?”

“Well, you didn’t do many jobs because you haven’t been around much. I’ve talked to your flatmate more than you,” he adds prissily.

“But I did do jobs for you—Marion, er the American woman, and that girl, the young girl, in Clapham—”

“Have you got dates for these jobs?”

“Dates? Look, I can’t … erm … there was one a few weeks ago.”

“Andrew, I’m really sorry, I need dates.”

“The young girl, Erren. It was … let me think. Tuesday the eighth. Yeah, it must have been. Or the ninth. Whichever was the Tuesday.”

“What about the credit card receipt?”

“I gave it to you.”

“Did you keep a copy with the job reference number on it?”

“What copy? What job reference number? Jonathan, can you let me in for a minute?”

“I need the dates and job reference numbers, Andrew. I’m very sorry but you’ll need to be more precise. I’ve got a lot of guys working now—and girls. I can’t just dole out cheques willy nilly.”

“Willy nilly?” I repeat, probably because it’s such a daft phrase. “Willy nilly? Listen, you owe me that money, for Christ’s sake.”

“Andrew, this is getting a bit boring. I told you: I need the credit card slips and the references.”

I bang the door with my hand and take a deep breath, trying to get a grip. Then I have an idea. “What if I asked the clients for the slips? They might still have them.” Does Jonathan laugh at that?

“I really don’t want you pestering clients.”

“What about Marion, you know, the American woman in Chelsea?” She must have noticed that the amount has been debited from her card and she’ll certainly remember the date. “I can ask her tonight … hello?”

“Tonight? I don’t have you booked to see her tonight. Laura? Do we have any bookings for Andrew Collins tonight?”

“No, but I’m seeing her anyway,” I explain desperately, almost hysterically and then it hits me.

“You mean you’re seeing a client without the agency?” says Jonathan calmly.

“No … well, yes. We’ve started sort of going out, that’s all.” Oh, shit! Why did I say that?

“Andrew, as I explained when you signed up, dealing with clients without the agency is strictly forbidden. I’m afraid I’ve no choice but to end your employment with us. Goodbye.”

“What?” I screech. The entryphone is silent. “Jonathan! Jonathan!” I bang the door again, so hard my hand hurts but I don’t care—I just wack it again. I stab the button again and yell at the small metal box in the doorway. “Listen, you fucking bastard. You fucking owe me.” I stand back and look at the door for a moment as if it’s going to give me a break and open by itself. Then I kick it as hard as I can. The force sends me staggering backwards. I lose my balance and fall down the steps, landing at the feet of two middle-aged women.

One of them cries out in fear. They back off quickly as I struggle to stand up. “Cunt!” I bellow above the noise of a passing motor bike at the impassive building towering above me. “You bastard.”

“Excuse me,” says a voice from behind me.

“Oh, fuck off,” I hiss without turning.

“Now, hang on a minute, sir.” I spin round, ready to punch someone but it’s a policeman. I look away from his intense, curious gaze.

“He owes me money,” I mutter.

“Well, I don’t think you’re going get it by swearing at him in the street,” says the policeman in the kind of calm, patronizing logic you would expect of someone in a uniform in this kind of situation. “I’m going to have to ask you to move on.”

“I’ve got no money,” I hear myself saying.

“Look, you’ll have to talk to a solicitor about recovering it, then. You can’t stand here shouting and swearing.” There is an edge to his voice now. He is about my age. “That’s not going to get you anywhere.”

“What
will
get me anywhere?” I ask but he just watches me silently until I move off.

A few days later I also think I see Jonathan whiz past in a cab when I’m sitting at a café in Brompton Road. I leap up ready to run after the cab but whoever it is is on a mobile phone or something so I can’t quite see for sure. I could really do with that money. It’s also the principle of the thing. He owes it to me. Plus cab fares, plus hours of sleep, plus my job …

My encounter with Jonathan, or rather his entryphone, is about the only exciting event to upset the gentle rhythm of my pointless existence. Marion gives me ten or twenty pounds or so every now and then and buys me some more clothes: a really cool Dolce & Gabbana white T-shirt. If you look at it close up and you know about these things you can tell it’s expensive. Unfortunately, after Anna Maria washes it it becomes a bit tight and when I catch sight of myself in it with my shades I realize I look too gay. She also buys me an off-white suit from Hugo Boss which looks pretty cool, especially with the aforementioned white T. Except that there aren’t many places I can wear it and Mark says something about Richard Gere in
American Gigolo
having one. I sort of leave it at the back of the wardrobe after that.

I think about Jane a lot and ring Paperchase a few times but put the phone down before there is any answer. I can’t work out what to say to her. My prepared speech or plan to meet her suddenly sounds all wrong when I get ready to say it. Sometimes I think it’s pure lethargy that prevents me from arranging to see her, or the thought of having to invent some story about Marion and where I’m living now or simply not knowing what to say to someone so sensible, so organized, so together. But in fact it’s probably just shame that stops me from ringing.

One of my dad’s books talks about something called creative visualization—if you really see something happening you can actually bring it about. The square-jawed motivator who wrote the book was referring to a more senior position within your department, I think, or a pay rise or something else really worth having, but with me it seems to work with Jane.

I’m sitting at the Picasso Café reading the paper I used to work on for a change when I look up and see her. She is wearing Ray-Bans and a pale blue summer dress.

But it’s not her.

It’s just another girl walking down the street. A girl with a job and a flat who has friends she sees for a glass of white wine after work and who reads glossy magazines at the hairdressers.

So I pay for my coffee quickly, pick up my magazine and Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and go off to find a phone box. I have to hold on for a while because Jane is serving a customer but somehow I manage not to put the phone down.

“Hello, can I help you?” she says finally. I’m slightly taken off guard by her formal greeting.

“It’s me, Andrew.”

“Oh, hi,” she says, surprised but friendly. There is a pause. The phone box suddenly seems very hot and smelly.

“How are you?”

“OK, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“Great … how’s it going?” Shit, haven’t we just done this one?

“Good, yeah, busy.”

“Oh, sorry. Can you talk?”

“Yes,” she says but then she doesn’t. She is obviously going to make me do all the running on this.

“I was just ringing to say hello … and …” Either she takes pity on me for my faltering conversation or she is genuinely interested.

“Where are you? It’s very noisy, it sounds like a phone box.”

“It is. I … er …”

“You not at work?”

“No … I …”

“Day off?”

I may as well tell her. “Everyday’s a day off at the moment. I’ve been sacked.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” She seems genuinely surprised, upset. It’s as if I’ve got my slick, yuppie comeuppance. “That’s awful.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m quite relieved, actually. Stupid bloody job.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. Perhaps I sound like I don’t care at all about working, like I don’t have to.

“Jane, I just wondered if you wanted to do something tonight.”

“I can’t, I’m going to see at film at the NFT with my friend.”

“Oh, of course. Sure.” A huge truck thunders past. I wonder if she has said something that I didn’t hear. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“No,” she says quickly. “No, sorry.” Why do words always get in the way when there’s something important you want to say?

I try again. “Er, tomorrow night, then?”

“OK, why not?” She sounds quite pleased, quite enthusiastic.

“Great!” I say. “I’ll see you—where? Sloane Square Tube? At what? Eight? And we’ll have something to eat. You know—somewhere cheap and cheerful.”

“All right.” She seems to warm to it. “All right, that’ll be fun. See you, then.”

“Marion,” I say over dinner at Ciccone’s that night. “I’ve been thinking about this marriage thing.”

“Yes?”

I take a deep breath. “Well, I think I’ll do it.”

Yep, I will do it. I’ll take the money and then get the hell out of this. No more Ciccone’s perhaps but no more tight lead, no more killing time over coffee in the King’s Road—oh, and no circumcision. I might get out of here in one piece.

So now I’ve got to escape from this mess, cut my losses, get what I can and get out of it. A bogus marriage was not what I had originally planned but it’s better than carrying on like this. At least it’s money—perhaps cash. Quickie wedding, quickie divorce, take the money and run. Like Mark says, everybody does it. And Marion will be getting something out of it, too. So will Anna Maria.

“OK,” says Marion coolly.

There is a pause.

“Well, you know, if it’s still on, if you still haven’t found anyone?”

“Mark had a friend, I think, but, as I said, I would prefer to give you the opportunity.”

“I know, thanks for that.”

“I’ll speak to the lawyer in the morning and he’ll tell you what to do.”

“I don’t fancy talking to Mr. Markby again.”

Marion spears a piece of ravioli. “Don’t worry, I’ve found another one.” She puts the pasta in her mouth and chews gently for a moment. “More amenable.”

I ring Jerry, the more amenable lawyer, the next morning and he is
very
amenable—and very reassuring. Over his mobile phone in what sounds like a Coffee Republic he explains exactly how it all works. He tells me to let him sort out the forms. He’s done it a hundred times. No one ever gets caught. Easiest thing in the world.