SS Glasgow Castle 1 Chapter One

"And oysters."

"Plus lots of other delicious food and booze."
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"Free food and free booze."

"And girls."

"Dozens of girls."

"Beautiful girls."

"All panting to meet the Nordic G.o.d."

"Now, we know you're a good husband."

"A very good husband."

"In fact, probably a model husband."

"Still, you could probably use some admiration."

"And adoration."

"And fornication."

"Everybody can."

"Oh yes, and there'll be this hot new band – The Suns.h.i.+ne Kids."

"You probably heard them on the radio, performing in the breaks between the commercials."

"Some of which were probably art-directed by yourself."

"Well?"

The Glitter Twins – also known as John and Jim Robinson – grinned at me from inside their Italian suits. They were very big on corporate fun; their vaudeville cross-talk routine was developed because of this overwhelming desire to please everyone and everybody. Once, they'd even brought an ukulele to a presentation, and attempted to perform a proposed advertising jingle in front of a roomful of suits; that was when people started calling them the Glitter Twins. The clients loved them. Everybody else hated them. Well, not everybody else; they were account directors now, and rumor had it that before long they would be anointed as account group directors.

"I can't come, guys," I told them. "Donna has a company Christmas thing too tonight, and someone's got to take care of the baby."

"Ah, the baby."

"Oh, baby, baby."

"Oh, baby, baby, bay."

They got up, strumming imaginary guitars and grinning wider than ever. Jim or John (I couldn't tell them apart) slipped out of my office. John or Jim made as if to leave, then stopped, turned to me.

"Try to come, Oscar," he said softly. "It would be good if you came." He looked serious for a brief moment; then he rearranged his features into the usual mask, and left.

So: you know my name is Oscar, Oscar Hansen. I'm an advertising art director. I wanted to be a painter, but I became an advertising art director because I had to make a living, like everyone else. Painters who actually paint usually can't make a living, and only a very few can make art.

I'm thirty two years old, married to a Donna. Her name is Donna, and she is a Donna. She has long black hair, big sad dark eyes, and a wide red mouth; she is suitably willowy, though not very tall. We don't have children, but about a year ago, I made up this lie that we had a daughter. It just happened, just like that. One moment I wanted to take the afternoon off – I was having a really grotty day – the next I was telling the secretary that my daughter was having a fit in her expensive day care, and that I had to go, right away. I wanted to set the record straight later, but I couldn't. Everyone at the office was suddenly looking at me with new respect. It was nice, and also I found that having a kid and a working wife was the right setup to have if you wanted time off in a hurry.

It was four o'clock, and I had nothing more to do that day, nothing that couldn't wait till tomorrow. I swiveled round in my chair and picked up the phone and called Rapid Taxi, and asked for Joe, my childhood buddy Joe, the guy I used to play cops-and-robbers with.

"Joe," I said, when he came on the line, "Can you do the usual?"

"I got twenty a.s.sholes waiting for cabs," he said.

"Well I want a cab too."

"a.s.shole." He hung up.

I hung up too, got up, and went to the can with a slow, deliberate step. On the way I caught a glimpse of the Glitter Twins. They were knocking on an open door, grinning at each other. The door belonged to the office that belonged to my partner, Tad. Tad had once wanted to be a writer, but he became a copywriter because he had to make a living, and – as he confided to me one beer-sodden evening – he couldn't make art. We got on together famously, me and Tad. We talked only when it was absolutely necessary because of the job, and gave each other maximum slack.

The company can was just around the corner from my office, and mercifully it was empty. I combed my hair twice, inspected my teeth, and ran a quick scan of things in general. And then, probably because I was in the can – there's something about the place that invites introspection and reflection – I started thinking about me and Donna. Things weren't well there. They weren't simple, either. They never are when there's guilt on both sides.

I spent two more minutes in the can, repeatedly glancing at my watch. Then I walked out and took the long route back to my room, past the main secretarial desk. The secretary – the constantly smiling Paula Johnson – wasn't there. She smiled at everyone as often as she possibly could, and possibly she had a good reason; rumour had it she was snitching for Schutz, the managing director of our ad agency. I made a long detour so that I could walk past Daphne, our red-haired receptionist, in a seemingly preoccupied and professional manner.

"Oscar," she sang out, thanks G.o.d, and waved a pink slip at me. I unrolled it, looked, frowned.

"My daughter's sick again," I told Daphne.

"Your little daughter."

"My little daughter, oh yes. Very little."

She grimaced and bent over her log, her spybook. I noticed a little pile of what looked like cab slips next to her elbow.

"Are these –?"

"Oh yes. It's for the party tonight. Don't drink and drive."

"Absolutely," I said, reaching out.

The street was speckled with Christmas lights and decorations that became gaudier with every minute, as the day died. I inhaled the cold, clammy air; solitary snowflakes fell heavily onto the pavement and onto my shoulders. A smudge of orange intruded from the left – Rapid Taxi. Good old Joe. If you know a good old Joe, life is so much easier.

I settled down in the smelly, creaky interior and gave the appropriate directions. I have a car – or rather we have a car, me and Donna. We share it – I usually get it two days in a week (the exact days differ). Life is nice then, because our car is a big BMW. Things are quite pleasant even when I'm stuck in the morning traffic jam, with a steaming styrofoam-cupped coffee clipped to the dash and a guy doing his best to entertain me on the radio. The other three days a week are h.e.l.l. We live as close to the suburbs as you can without actually living in the suburbs. Getting to work involves a bus and a f.u.c.king train. A lot of the perfumed people I meet therein don't wash in the morning. There are legions of the unwashed in my city, even though it deems itself a world-cla.s.s city, and the area I live in – an upscale, world-cla.s.s area. It must be that the world is unwashed, as a whole.

But now I was riding along in a cab, and the company was paying for the long ride. I enjoyed the approaching headlights slas.h.i.+ng across the windscreen, lighting up the thickening snow; I even got used to the smell. It wasn't a dirty smell, but –

"Nice smell you've got in the cab," I said. "Air freshener?"

"And Mister Clean." He guffawed and bent over the wheel.

"What?"

"Mr. Clean. You know." He paused to negotiate an intersection with sure, flat slaps of the steering wheel. "Hope you don't mind my telling you this," he said, "But a guy threw up all over the back seat earlier today. Started the party early. But I scrubbed everything real careful with Mister Clean. Including the cracks, heh-heh." I wished I knew how to levitate.

"It's very important to wash in the cracks," I said.

"Yah. Heh-heh."

The driveway was marked by fresh tracks, squeezed black into the thin, melting snow. A light was on upstairs. I tipped the honest driver and weaved along the flagstones to the front door. I don't like this weaving path. I used to cut across on a regular basis, but Donna forbade this. She cares about the gra.s.s.

The house still smelled faintly of paint and synthetic carpet, and it was empty. I knew that without trudging up the staircase, without removing my shoes. I took them off anyway, shed my jacket, and got rid of the f.u.c.king tie. I soft-socked it to the booze cupboard and poured a drink. After a while, I poured another. Donna was still absent. She was in her world, a world of professionals dealing with failed love. Donna is a very good divorce lawyer. She specializes in getting minimal settlements for guilty husbands. A long time ago, when I still had my very own Mustang, I drove round to someone else's cheap, ground level law office and watched Donna work.

I stood half-hidden behind a street lamp post, feeling like an idiot; the blinds in the window were up, but a cleverly placed potted cactus obscured the face of her client. I got a good look at Donna, though. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun; her wide mouth was pursed in solemn concern. Her hand held a pen as if it was a scalpel, the paper beneath – an unsuspecting body. I understood then how she got wronged, furious women to shrink their claims. She'd say yes, he's wrong and you're right, but being right carries a price too. They'd look at her and agree, as they had to.

Donna owns everything; I don't own a d.a.m.n. My money pays for the bills – we have an ever-increasing amount of ever-growing bills – and the weekend shopping sprees at the local plaza (very upscale: a fountain masquerading as a waterfall, tons of plants in ceramic tubs, guys and gals in fancy dress smiling as if their life depended on it - maybe it does - while pus.h.i.+ng a.s.sorted flyers and leaflets into your hands; donation boxes for at least three different charities on each checkout counter; and let's not forget the string quartet serenading the shoppers - two string quartets and a choir at Christmas. In short, everything one can think of to make the act of spending money - consuming - a moral experience).

When Donna and I moved in together, I covered rent, the car, and entertainment, and she got the groceries and the bills. Now it's the other way around, and she goes to Christmas parties without waiting for me to tell her I'm not going to mine. You might say I've got plenty of material for deep thinking sessions in the office can.

We'd met at a Christmas party, several years earlier. It wasn't a corporate get-together, but a friendly booze-up thrown by my neighbours, a married couple who were increasingly worried by my single state. Donna was invited to meet me and another unmarried holdout, a rich real estate agent called Frank Mahoney. Frank Mahoney habitually has tufts of hair sticking out of his nose, a pot belly, and a beery laugh, while I, as John and Jim Robinson have observed, I am a Nordic G.o.d. Donna looked like a Barbarian princess in artistically torn suede and net stockings; we hit it off at once, while Frank pensively dipped his nosehair in large gla.s.ses of whisky.

Donna and I got married on a rainy May day; her Hispanic aunt observed, mystically, that rain on a wedding day meant plenty of married good luck. I changed jobs for a 50% raise three months later. In September we bought a house in a new housing development. The developer had used a talented architect, and the house – a two-storey affair of grey brick, black slates, and white window frames – looked good inside and out. I didn't like the synthetic bluish-grey carpeting everywhere, but Donna did, and she was totally won over by the Italian kitchen. She thought she'd be doing a lot of cooking, just two years back. But our married good luck continued unabated – she got promoted, changed jobs, got promoted again, and now she was working eighty hour weeks and pulling in well over a hundred grand a year. You can't deal with cooking when you make money like that.

It was good she did. My own job situation was - let's call it insecure. They were firing people left, right, and centre in all the ad agencies in the city. I'd heard that S&S Unlimited bodybagged six media and four creative people just the other week. And you could feel it, you could feel it every day, cruising down the corridor – there would be this waft of cold air on your neck in spite of all the expensive air-conditioning, and if you looked quickly enough you'd see a door closing, a shadow disappearing around a corner, someone quickly averting their eyes.

Night had fallen; the pool of light from the standing lamp turned a bright yellow. I stopped pacing around the room and went upstairs for a long shower. I caught a whiff of perfume when I entered the bathroom. There was a thin trail of talc.u.m powder near the basin's pedestal, and a few drops of hairspray frozen in the corner of the mirror. I felt a tug of jealousy at the thought of Donna making herself pretty for other people and squinted at my reflection, suddenly ashamed of my thoughts, my nakedness, and at the way things were going with me and Donna. She had written me a couple of love notes on the mirror soon after we'd started living together. I should have felt happy, but instead I felt embarra.s.sed. To start with, I'm uncomfortable with the mirror: I know the man inside is no Nordic G.o.d. Also, the very thought of my writing a note like that practically made me gag. I regretted feeling that way, and actually forced myself to think about writing Donna back, so to speak. But I couldn't very well use lipstick, and once I started thinking about writing materials (shaving foam? No, it would run. Soapy finger? No, it would simply look as if the mirror was dirty) the whole thing ceased to have anything in common with love, etcetera, and became like art-directing an ad. So I dropped it and became embarra.s.sed instead, and eventually Donna became embarra.s.sed too, and there were no more love notes.

I took a very short shower and went to the bedroom to dress in something comfortable, and found the kind of note Donna and I wrote each other nowadays. She'd gone to her Christmas party; she hoped I'd enjoy mine.

I reached for the phone.

"Joe," I said, when he came on the line, "I need a cab."