Commissioning Editor, London: 3

“FCUK YOO-“ reads the phrase scrawled in the dirt on a VW van in Soho as Marcus and I walk past. It feels accusatory and oddly personal. We’re out again, drinking, Frank and the ladies behind us.

                “Were you ever a member of the SYP?” I ask Marcus.  He turns his head as we walk and looks slightly puzzled. There’s a slight breeze blowing.  It’s dusk.

                “The Society … of Young Publishers?”

                “Yes,” I say.

                “I had my own bunch of friends,” he says. “And I’m in Sales. And anyway, I wasn’t as desperate as you to get … laid.”

                I look at him, hurt.

                “Right,” I say.

                “Deal with it, man,” he says, drawling.

                “You deal with it, Marcus, you arrogant, patronising prick.” I’m sullen.

                “I was quoting Easton Ellis, so just lighten the fuck up.” He smiles and pulls his cigarette pack from his pocket, flipping the lid and getting one out with a tapping of the case. He turns away from me to light it out of the wind and I can sense myself wanting to smash the back of his head with the balled fist of my right hand. I wouldn’t though.

                “So I’m supposed to contextualise everything that comes out of your stupid mouth?” I answer, viciously. It’s not a good look, vituperative and wound-up, a coiled spring on the defensive after an off-hand jibe. I think of the office to blank out my mind.

                “It just means that you shouldn’t go around with your dick in your hands ready to be a jerk off at a … moment’s provocation.” He smiled at me and blew smoke in my direction. I had visions of Beatrice slowly drift past in my head, hot and sweaty in some boutique hotel with him, lost in the wilds of passion in a studio flat somewhere with an expensive postcode. I think of the office to blank out the thought.

                “Aw, are you hurt? How about The Pelican,” he adds. He’s two steps ahead of me now and I can see he’s wearing Diesel jeans and a jacket with the hips pinched in.

                “Dark and crowded, lovely.”

                “Shall we get a pint in DFS, then, maybe find a halogen lit expanse that’s big enough for us all? Or maybe the All Bar One would suit you? What do you want, ____?”

                “Pelican is fine.” We stop talking at that point and do an about turn, waiting for the others to catch up. Frank was swaying a little but that’s because he didn’t make it home last night. After the customary kebab, a friend from one of the bigger trade houses had been passing in a cab and had picked him up. They’d gone to the friend’s club and sat drinking whisky until about four, and then moved onto cocaine and shots of pure napalm. Or something. I mean, should I be impressed? Is this Ibiza? I had a feeling that today was a remote conjecture for Frank, an abstract possibility. I couldn’t leave behind that extended essay, fragments even in discourse, Frank some kind of wayward older acquaintance that haunted the liminal margins of the page of my life. I shudder.

                We stop, and wait for the others. Dorothy is amongst the group, wearing a plaid skirt and a top from Dorothy Perkins that doesn’t quite fit on the shoulders. Over that is a cardigan and a scarf, probably merino wool. She’d scraped her knee falling off her bike at the weekend and was now wearing thick black tights.  Some part of me feels bad about this. Another part of me feels disconnected and doesn’t care. After all, I’d been the one that unplugged the monitors and exactly half of the keyboards in the office before the IT guy arrived for the routine checks, just to add some piquant sauce to the proceedings. I thought of the Pelican and felt oddly calm.

                Bettina gets the first round in, generous and warm. She’s on top of her game. Marcus was close behind Beatrice, adjacent to Bettina, but they weren’t being public about it. Frank didn’t notice anything, sat in the corner with a Blackberry trying to focus on an email he’d just gotten about an OU reader proposal. I sit down beside him.

                “What do you reckon?”

                “There’s no future in printed readers,” he says. “Massive permissions costs, low potential guaranteed sale, huge pre-press investment. It’s just not a good idea. A morass.”

                “I thought that too.”

                “People are going to buy what they need, if they even buy. More likely just download or read online. This Scribd shit. I just – well, if we don’t sign it up, what kind of message does it send?” He looks at me with genuine bewilderment. I feel some kind of empathy with the blank canvas effect.  Marcus arrives with three bottles of Kronenburg and a packed of cheese and onion crisps, which he opens neatly and lays flat on the table where we’re sat.

                “It sends a message of – moving with the times?”

                “What sends a message?” asks Marcus.

                “Turning down proposals for readers.”

                “I’d agree. Waste of time. Sign up some textbooks, you old wankstain.”

                We both smile in consensus. Behind us, someone knocks over an entire pint onto the floor and a woman shrieks as her bag is soaked in Stella Artois. Night is drawing in and I place my trust in things I can trust, the Gordian knot of ambition on its knees. As someone frantically scrabbles around in the store cupboard for a mop and bucket, the stereo fires into some mid-period Duran Duran and I think about the POD and long tail sales. Frank doesn’t make it home tonight either.