Nick
Nick
The morning disappears, as always, in a blur of calls and meetings. He manages one cigarette – at which point he calls his landline to try and stir Beth – and a toilet break, but he’s still thinking of his research even as he puffs away frantically outside.
This is what he loves about his job. The fact it gives him no time for anything else. No time to think.
It might be unhealthy, but he’s pretty sure it’s saved his life. He’s had no time to dwell on what happened to them at university. He chose the easiest, cleanest option of all: running away, and burying himself in his work.
It’s only at 2 p.m., just before New York opens, that he takes a real breather. He usually just goes up to the canteen on the top floor and grabs something to eat back at his desk. There’s an impressive array of options, and he gets breakfast, lunch and dinner there most days.
It’s not as depressing as it sounds.
But today, he needs to get out. He has disappointed his boss, making a rookie error, and he knows his head is not with it, despite the four espressos coursing through his system.
There’s cocaine, in his drawer, if he gets desperate. But today he’s not flagging for the usual reasons.
So he takes the elevator all the way down to the vast marble lobby and he steps outside onto the street, and he looks up at the shiny skyscrapers that surround him, the wharf itself just beyond, and he takes a deep breath of that weird London air and he tries to find some calm.
He heads to Cabot Place, the screech of the DLR in his ears as he goes. He pauses briefly by the fountain, and then, he spots a face in the crowd. A woman, head down, striding purposefully towards something.
He stares.
Anna.
No, it can’t be.
He looks again, squinting to try to make her out.
Is it her? He can’t tell.
He hurries towards the woman, but she’s lost in the crowd and then sucked down into the underground station before he has the chance to catch up with her.
It winds him. Suddenly, his heart is racing and he can’t catch his breath, and he leans against the low marble wall that surrounds the fountain and closes his eyes.
Anna.
It can’t be her. Of course it can’t be. Just someone similar. Not Anna.
Anna is dead.
He hasn’t thought of her for months now. Afterwards, he used to dream about her all the time… but once he started his job, the dreams began to recede. He barely has time to dream. He averages four, maybe five hours’ sleep a night. As soon as his head hits the pillow he’s out, in a deep sleep, and then his alarm goes off at 6.30 a.m. and he’s wide awake the second his eyes open.
On the nights he can’t get to sleep, a couple of pills sort him out quickly enough.
He knows what they all say about this life. It’s unsustainable. Men like him – men who are really just overgrown boys – burn out before too long. Drink, drugs, the pressure… It all gets to you in the end. Just last week a portfolio manager jumped to his death from the twentieth floor. His wife had just left him and his position had gone south, his hedge not covering his bet as it collapsed.
The sound his body made when it hit the marble lobby was like a bomb going off.
No one outside this world would cry for a dead hedge-fund manager. But they are all like him. His colleagues. Just men wanting to make good. It’s a meritocracy, this life, and that’s why he likes it. There’s no time for heirs and graces, no time for bullshit. It’s honest, loud, and more collaborative than people understand. His colleagues feel like fellow soldiers to him, being thrown into the face of the financial markets time after time. Every day at their mercy.
But he knows it would be disingenuous to see his job as a hardship, something that he endures. The truth is different: his job is his addiction. His passion. It makes him feel alive.
He loves it.
But today. Today he is sub-par. Christ. And now he’s hallucinating that he’s seen Anna. It must be because of Beth.
Hadn’t he always known this might happen? Isn’t this exactly why he stayed away?
He pulls out his personal phone. Beth still hasn’t called him back.
‘Fuck,’ he says, hoping, praying that she hasn’t gone back to him. Paulo. What was his surname? He can’t remember. He should have been a better friend.
He scrolls down on the phone until he finds Beth’s number. And then he presses the fat green button and puts the phone to his ear.
‘Hello?’ she says, as though she doesn’t know who’s calling.
‘Hey,’ he says, feeling the tension dissipate. ‘I just… you didn’t call me…’
‘I’m sorry Nick,’ she says. ‘I can’t really talk…’
Fear lurches into his throat.
‘Oh God. Beth, no. Please don’t tell me you’ve made up with him?’
‘What?’ she says, and there’s a strange, muffled sound on the line. ‘Hang on.’
He waits until the line is clear again, and she speaks.
‘I’m sorry, I had that audition, do you remember?’
‘Oh,’ he says. He doesn’t remember. Had she mentioned it? His short-term memory is appalling these days. ‘Right, sorry.’
‘It went OK, I think. Should hear tomorrow or the next day. But while I was there, at the studios, I bumped into someone I knew in the corridor and we got chatting…’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, we decided to go for lunch. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t worry you.’
He feels ridiculous. Stupid. Beth is a 23-year-old woman. Not even his girlfriend. Not even his ex-girlfriend really. Just an old friend. She doesn’t need to tell him where she’s going or who she’s with.
‘No,’ he says, grateful that she can’t see his cheeks, which will have inevitably flushed with embarrassment. ‘Not at all. It’s been mental this morning at work and I just…’
It’s mental every day.
‘I just hadn’t heard from you and wanted to check that last night, you know… how are you feeling?’
‘Fine, honest. Relieved. Thank you for everything last night. Anyway, I’d better… I’d better head back into the restaurant. If that’s OK. I left him…’
‘Him?’
‘Vaughan, a director I once worked with. The one I told you I just bumped—’
‘Oh right, yes.’
Vaughan . What kind of name was that?
‘But listen, I was going to try to call you later, even though I know you’re impossible to get hold of at your busy and important job… I know you mentioned you were out tonight with…’ There’s a tiny pause, as though she feels the same way about Celine as he already does about this Vaughan . ‘The photographer, but tomorrow night, are you free? It’s Friday.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Well if you are free and you fancy it, I thought I could cook for us. It’s a shame you having a kitchen that never gets used. What do you think?’
‘That sounds great,’ he says. ‘I’ll try to make it back for 8 p.m.’
‘Brilliant,’ she says, sounding cheerful. ‘And listen, Nick, thank you… I’ve got a really good feeling about this job. I know it’s only an advert but… hopefully if I get it I can start to get back on my feet.’
Something about the way she is speaking reminds him of his mother, and it makes him feel sad.
‘It’s nothing. And dinner… dinner would be great.’
‘Wonderful,’ she says, and they are back on an even keel, the humiliation of last night forgotten. ‘See you then.’