Commissioning Editor, London: 4

Posted on August 17, 2009 in Uncategorized

I can’t remember when it was that Frank had decided to stave in the skulls of the publishing meeting by consistently bringing a more boring book each week. This particular one left us all slack-jawed with ennui and I came out of the meeting feeling sick. Sick and hot and queasy like an overripe mango on the tenth floor window ledge of a south-facing Central London office block. My mind was going in five directions, all contrary to each other. There was a copper taste in my mouth. Was it blood? Frank was belligerent and charming and got the book passed, arguing against arguments, narrowing the routes of escape until a signature finally found its way on his profit and loss sheet.

He had a glint in his eye as he pulled on his sports jacket and readjusted his Windsor knot. He threw the signed form into Bettina’s tray and came back to me.

“You bet your lily fucking ass!” he said, for no reason, and then he left the office. He didn’t come back after lunch that day.

I sat down to have my lunch at my desk. It was fairly hot day and one of the windows was open, the noise of traffic floating in from the outside in bursts. The squeal of the hydraulics from a bus. The beep of a horn. Dorothy Basic came and sat near me. She seemed almost tearful and impossibly quite and sad. I asked her what the matter was.

“If you forget the words … is it easy enough to fake them?” asked Dorothy, reducing the visible margins of the room to the barest minimums.

“In … what sense?” I replied. It seemed like an odd thing for her to say.

“If – like – you forget your script? You know.”

“I don’t think I do know. I didn’t think you were in a play, D?” I called her ‘D’ in the office, but I don’t think she liked it, I mean, who would?

“In – life.” At that she started crying, at first silently, with small tears forming in her eyes, welling up. One solitary tear finally rolled down her cheek, taking in a contour and dripping off her face into her lap. I had no idea what to do, and I looked around for other people in the office, but everyone was out at lunch. A minute or two passed. My eyes turned to my unopened Tupperware for a moment. I realised I was quite hungry. I glanced back at her. She was starting to sob, a gentle, deep noise that reminded me of something terrible. I couldn’t watch her cry, it was too painful. More tears rolled down her cheeks and her mascara started to run. Fumbling in my pocket, I pulled out a pack of tissues that I helpfully had on me. Retrieving a fresh tissue, I unfolded it slightly and passed it to her. Dorothy took it gratefully and wiped her eyes.

“Do you want to tell me what the matter is?” I said to her.

“I just … can’t follow the script anymore. The words don’t form.”

“Right,” I said, trying to be encouraging. It might have sounded more like bafflement.

“I broke up with my boyfriend last night,” she said. “I ended it. He was a shit, really. Just a let down. A media construct. I feel so sad. It’s so sad when these things end. When the media ends.” She was more coherent that I expected at this stage, her sobs receding and the icy calm that she usually exuded reforming from the momentary meltdown.

“I – can understand that you feel … quite bad. I’ve been there,” I said, and even as that last sentence left my mouth, I couldn’t quite believe I’d said it. It was a hackneyed, clichéd token, a phatic noise almost. More to the point, it was opening up a box full of the most unbridled angst.

“I guess we all have,” she said, wisely drawing a line in the sand. I don’t think the office itself was ready to hear my tales, expunged or not; all the stories of pointless, meandering liaisons and dead-end love affairs. I stood up. It was a quarter past one.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked.

“Yes, please,” she said, wiping the last of the smudged mascara off and fixing me with her gaze. “Listen, _____. Maybe we should … go for a drink … tonight?” she added, taking me by surprise. She seemed to have taken herself by surprise, as if she’d sat on some sort of hidden dildo and then grown to enjoy the sudden invasive pleasure.

I looked at her. Dorothy Basic, blouse buttoned up, her hair in a tight bun and held up, above her ears. A small set of unobstrusive earrings and a book collection I would love to peruse, one ISBN at a time.

“For some moral support?” I quizzed, about to edge away to the kitchen.

“Milk and two sugars,” she said, nodding.