Nobody True (8 page)

“Chill out, Ollie,” I said, not rising to the bait. “I think—”

“Chill…?”

It was snapped out and I stiffened, taken aback.

“We’ve got until Monday morning to come up with the goods,” he went on. “Presentation’s at the end of the week, and you’re telling me to chill out! What is it with you? Doesn’t anything ever puncture your cool?”

“Hey. C’mon,” I began to protest.

“Finished layouts, full-colour posters, storyboards—Jim, we’ve got to get our shit together on this, we’ve got to ink the paper! But no, as usual, you’ve got to have your own way. Your idea has to be the one we go with.” The your came as a sneer.

I was, well, I was astonished. Oliver and I had had our spats over the years, always about work, but on balance it was generally his ideas that went through. The split was about sixty-forty in his favour.

“This is stupid…” I said, beginning to lose some of that cool just a little bit.

“Don’t call me stupid!” he came back. “You’re the one who’s stupid.” His eyes were wide; he was staring at me in a way that was somehow familiar. His knee jerked as the heel of his toe-cap continued to punish the carpet.

“Ollie, I’m not calling you anything. Look, let’s just ease up, give ourselves a break. Maybe carry on early tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep.”

“Fuck you,” he said, reaching behind him for his cigarettes on the bureau top.

As he looked away I suddenly remembered why that wildness in his eyes had seemed familiar. Without another word, I rose and strode towards the shared bathroom.

Cigarette halfway to his lips, he noticed I’d left my chair. “Where the fuck are you going?” I heard him say.

Ignoring him I went into the bathroom and did not bother to close the door behind me. A black-marble shelf containing two basins ran beneath the full length of the long wall mirror and I squatted so that its surface was at eye level. I moved over to the second basin, studying the smooth, flecked marble beside it and saw exactly what I feared might be present: a small amount of scattered granules of fine powder and smears where Oliver had gathered up some of the residue with a damp finger to wipe into his gums.

Just to make perfectly sure, I licked the tip of my own finger and dabbed it on the hard marble surface, then tasted it. Although rarely one for any kind of drugs, I had tasted cocaine before, and this was the real McCoy. Oliver was doing blow again.*

*Sydney had taught me how to spot this years ago when we first suspected Oliver was a user. Unlike the cokeheads and their habits you might see in Hollywood movies, addicts who bend over glass tables or flat mirrors to snort cocaine, one finger closing a nostril while the other provides passage to the nose’s inner membranes, leaving a slight residue of fine powder like dandruff on a dark suit, coke is never wasted this way. It’s too expensive to leave even the smallest spillage. No, true addicts will always tongue-damp a finger so that it picks up whatever’s left. They will either lick their finger again as though it was some kind of narcotic lollipop, or will rub the substance into the gums. Where drugs are concerned there is no wastage. Doesn’t happen.

I stormed from the bathroom to confront my friend.

“You silly bastard!” I told him.

His turn to freeze for a moment. The flame from his lighter hovered a couple of inches away from the cigarette, then was extinguished without completing the job. He glared back at me, but said nothing.

“You told us you were finished with drugs. Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?”

“All right, all right, okay, okay. So what if I am back off the wagon? Where’s the harm?”

“It nearly broke the partnership before!”

“You remember what Sinatra said: A nip every now and again pulls you through the day.”

“I saw the movie; he was talking about booze, for fuck’s sake.”

“Same thing, chum.”

“The hell it is.”

“Same thing and no hangover.”

“It’ll ruin you.” I shook my head in dismay.

“So will constant work overload. Besides it sharpens me up.”

“Sometimes,” I told him, “it makes you think the crappiest idea is awesome.”

“Hey, I give you good copy.”

“No, Oliver, you don’t. Trouble is, you don’t know it when you’re high. Don’t you remember how strung out you were before?”

“You’re exaggerating, chum. I can handle it.”

“Don’t fucking call me chum.” Maybe it was the “chum” usage that made me a little bit cruel. “You lost Andrea, remember that?”

I didn’t like the dark grin he gave me. Nevertheless, I softened my tone.

“You promised you’d quit, Oliver. You’re letting us all down, but mostly yourself.”

“Ah, fuck it!” An ugly snarl accompanied the curse. “It’s my problem, not yours.”

“No, it’s our problem. We’re the ones who have to deal with it.”

Anger spoiling his good looks, he jumped to his feet, shoving the lighter back into his pocket and tossing the unlit cigarette onto the carpet.

“You know what you can do with the agency.”

“Hey, c’mon.” Even though I was more than a little annoyed I raised both hands placatingly. “You don’t mean that. See, this is what happens when you’re doing coke. It makes you bloody schizophrenic.”

“At least I’m not the one that’s holding the agency back. You were frightened to pitch for this account until Sydney and I persuaded you. Even worse, you’re scared of tying in with a bigger agency so that we can expand.”

I felt the skin of my face tighten. “Let’s leave it there, okay? I don’t want to get into this right now.”

“No, Jim, ‘course you don’t. Let’s face it, chum, you don’t like change, you never have.”

I could have pointed out that we’d built the agency together, account by account, and I was equally a prime mover in everything we had achieved; but it wasn’t worth it—it was no good talking common sense to him when he was in one of these stupid moods. He had been hitting the bottle all evening, first emptying the miniature whiskies from the mini-bar, then ordering a bottle of Black Label from room service, while slipping into the bathroom every so often for cocaine hits. And I’d thought he had a bladder problem.

“We’re both tired,” I said evenly, grimly aware that there was no point in trying to reason with him. Alcohol and coke were a bad combination. “Let’s call it a day, carry on tomorrow morning when I’m fresher and you’re straight.”

“Why? You think that’s going to change anything? You’ll still be holding me back, as ever.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, Oliver.” I refused to rise to the bait, suspecting the bitterness of his words had more to do with whisky than powder. “Enough for tonight, okay? We’ll start again in the morning.”

“You won’t change your mind though, will you? You still won’t agree to a merger.”

“This isn’t the time to discuss it!” I shouted back at him. I wanted to give him a smack, wipe the supercilious smirk from his face. Instead, I said through suppressed anger, “I’m turning in and I think you should do the same.”

“What?” he raised his arm and peered at his wristwatch. “Going to bed at half-past eleven. Well I’ve got better things to do.”

He grabbed his jacket hanging over the back of a chair and tramped across the sheets of layout paper towards the door, crumpling them, leaving scuff marks over my Pentel visuals.

“Oliver, don’t,” I called after him. “This is bloody silly.”

“Fuck you,” he said as he pulled open the door to the long hallway beyond and turned to give me a contemptuous look. Never before had he regarded me with that kind of expression and I was shocked. He looked as if he could kill me.

Then he was gone, slamming the door behind him, and that was the last time I saw Oliver while I was alive.

12

Maybe it was the vodka, then the brandy, then the gin I’d consumed from the mini-bar that made my OBE so confusing; I’d downed them all in rapid succession after Oliver had left the suite.

Now on my own, surrounded by trampled layouts, I’d grown more and more angry. Trust Ollie to walk out on me when there was so much work to be done by Monday. And trust the fool to go back on his word that he’d keep off drugs for good. Now our partnership was in jeopardy all over again. I needed a copywriter who could judge what was good and what was awful. I needed a business partner who could think clearly when important decisions had to be made. I thought Ollie had learned his lesson from last time around.

It was past midnight when I went through to the room next door and threw myself onto the bed, an almost empty miniature of gin clutched in one hand. I supported myself on an elbow and drank the last dregs (shit, I hated gin) and let the tiny bottle drop to the floor as I flopped onto my back. Oliver, Oliver, why did you have to do it? Why now at this crucial time? The bank was probably one of the most significant accounts we’d ever take on and, once we became committed, we couldn’t be seen to blow it. Okay, it might not seriously knock us back in the industry, but it could damage our reputation as a winning hot shop a little. As for the so-called “merger” with Blake & Turnbrow, we needed to talk about it coolly and rationally without internecine disputes even before negotiations had begun.

Man, I was tired. Sick and tired, I guess. I’d never liked arguments and this one was a dinger. Ollie and I used to be tight, but now the relationship appeared to be over. For good? Who could say?

Closing my eyes I felt the room shift around me; by no means a seismic shift, but a smooth displacement that had more to do with exhaustion than the alcohol I’d consumed. I opened my eyes again and stared at the ceiling. Orange light came through the windows from the street below, this occasionally brightened by a whiter light, traffic approaching from a side street opposite, so that shadows moved around the darkened room like playful ghosts, growing then waning as headlights outside moved on.

I wasn’t drunk—I’m sure I wasn’t drunk—but anxiety, mental weariness and booze were never a good mix. For a moment I was disorientated, but the room soon settled itself again. The hum of late-night traffic that filtered through the windows’ double glazing was almost soothing. We would get through this, I told myself, and things eventually would go back to the way they were. Compromise was all that was needed here, and Sydney was good at smoothing over difficulties and offering solutions to disputes. I’d give him a call in the morning, get him over here, let him sort things out. Sydney had always been the perfect middleman, the soother of awkward situations. Hopefully, he would back down once he saw how anti-“merger” I really was and, in turn, he would help dissuade Oliver from such a drastic course.

My eyes closed again and this time they remained closed. Within seconds I was gone.

It was as easy and as quick as that. One moment I was drowsy, sinking into sleep, the next I was out of body, hovering near the ceiling, gazing down at myself.

Sometimes—in fact, most times—I had to work at it, consciously putting myself into a state of relaxation, imagining myself outside of my own physical form, seeing myself lying below in my imagination only, until the image became sharper, clearer, and suddenly I would actually be there, some other place, watching myself, no longer confined to the shell of my physical body. Usually, a great sense of freedom accompanied egression, a feeling of limitless space around my spirit form, a knowledge that I could fly to any destination I chose without constraint; but tonight I was confused, my mind not as liberated as my spirit. It was as if a thick yet invisible harness held me to my body, the bondage of reality perhaps. It could have been that my body, the part of me that was permanently chained to the physical world, sensed more than my spiritual self did and so was reluctant to release me, somehow afraid of the parting.

This state did not last long though, because a moment or two later my body dwindled below me as I zoomed away, through the ceiling, then the ceiling of the room above, swifter and swifter until I was out into the night sky.

It’s difficult to describe the feeling accurately, because it involves so much that is unknowable to most people. To begin with there is an incredible sense of wellbeing, for there are no physical torments such as pain, weariness, hunger or hangover anymore and, although there is some initial apprehension, this quickly vanishes with familiarity and you begin to enjoy the sensation. Most of the time you’re not in control of your destination but sometimes, if your mind is clear and compliant enough, you can direct yourself, you can choose a place and suddenly you will zoom off to it. Same thing if you envisage a particular person. It’s a bit like those rare times when you realize you are dreaming and so for a while can direct your own actions in the dream. Usually this interesting state doesn’t last long, because a little consciousness soon encourages full consciousness, and you find yourself awake again, annoyed you hadn’t made more of the experience.

On this night though, I was unable to govern my journey and found myself inside a kind of kaleidoscope of images, none of which appeared relevant to me. I seemed to travel back in time, because I saw myself as a little boy, skateboarding down a hill, picking up speed, shouting with both glee and fear as I increased speed, and then I watched myself sailing through the air, because the skateboard had hit some obstruction in its path (I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was my mother’s handbag lying in the roadway, and that was ridiculous, because why should her handbag be lying there?) and the board I had been standing on clattered over and over on the hard concrete while I glided smoothly through the air, screaming because I knew I was going to hit solid ground before too long. But instead of smashing into concrete, I found myself lying on cheap lino flooring, gazing up at a ring of faces that stared down at me, one of which was my mother’s, embarrassment as well as anxiety written across her plump features, and I remembered I’d just swallowed a steaming hot potato, a potato whose fire singed the inside walls of my chest, and then I was in another place, in a room filled with oldish-looking furniture, and I was watching a little boy, an even younger me, playing with a plastic Skywalker and Darth Vader on a rug in front of an electric fire, only two of its bars working, and I was desperately trying to ignore a row that was going on between a man and a woman who shared the room with me, and I could see that the woman was my mother, only she was much younger than she was today and she was almost pretty, despite the roundness of her face, and she was shouting at the man who, for some reason, had no face, his image masked beneath one of those pixel cover-ups, you know, little squares of different hues technically superimposed on screens so that the person being filmed cannot be identified, and he was silent as my mother screeched into his face, only occasionally uttering some kind of weak protest, and the more I stared at him the more the pixels disintegrated, square by square, while he was turning to me and saying ‘Jimmy’, until—