Downtown Manhattan and the early alarm call sounds like a road drill.
"Arrrgh" comes the groan from deep within as you turn in bed and fart with a vengeance. Indigestion’s calling card. There’s no one there to hear you so you let it rip. Actually even if there was someone next to you, you probably wouldn’t try and silence it too much. Although that would depend on how well you knew them, but if they were sharing a bed with you then you probably knew them pretty well, so it wouldn’t matter, would it? Let them see you as you are, that sort of thing. Thinking about it, maybe you would try and hold it in, clench the buttocks politely. No one likes sharing a bed with a farter. But men fart and are proud of it where as women don’t or don’t admit to it if they do. It’s probably one of those urban myths found in the "strange but true" column snippets you might read in the Daily Whatsit. You’ve never heard a woman drop a decent one, drunk or sober, and yet at boarding school Liversidge (or was it Kenning?) could fart God Save the Queen after lights out every night. Come to think of it, he (Liversidge or Kenning) never changed his repertoire. It was always God Save the Queen followed by a good night to each member of the dormitory, a fart after their name.
"Good night Cavanaugh." Fart!
" Good night Jones." Fart!
" Good night Russell." Fart!
You wonder what he’s doing now (Liversidge or Kenning)? Probably an investment banker, civil servant or, you smile, working at the Met office.
No, men fart, women can’t. That’s what you think and you do another just to prove the point and roll over to think about the day ahead.
It’s too bloody early. Ten more minutes wouldn’t hurt, so you get as comfortable as your body lets you, curl into the foetal position and close your eyes. Did you have a dream last night? Yes you did! Sometimes when you wake up you remember your dreams and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s not until you’re in the bath or munching your Kellogg’s that you remember. But you remember last nights, or bits of it and you open your eyes to try and make it clearer. It was vague. Faces and places, undefined but not threatening, colourless somehow but not in a land of black and white. Surreal springs to mind but then so does Ulrika Johnson. What the hell was she doing there? Percy Thrower too, the last century’s Alan Titchmarsh. How strange the brain becomes when the body sleeps. Wasn’t Percy Thrower trying to force geraniums out of Ulrika’s arse or was it the other way round? You don’t remember. What you do remember was the last bit of the dream. You were falling. In the last minutes before the early alarm, you were falling and they do say that falling, to dream of falling, means something, but you’re not sure what. You can’t remember what they said it was supposed to mean. Never mind. Another night. Another dream.
You stretch the length of the bed and turn and turn again. Acid indigestion runs up and down. Sleep has had enough of you and even though you really don’t want to, you’ve got to get up. You’ve got to burst out from beneath your cover, fix bayonets, blow the whistle, go over the top and charge at the day ahead. Another day. Another dollar.
Your meeting with First Commercial isn’t until 8.30 and as you run the bath you sort of imagine your opening pitch. You see yourself, smart suited, word perfect, confident, proud and loud, not giving an inch just going in and getting the business. The bathroom fills with steam long before the bath itself is ready and you wipe your hand across the misted mirror to reveal your face. It’s all there, pretty much the same one you went to bed with and, like scores in bathrooms across the city, you do your early morning acting. When Michael Cain gets up and goes to the bathroom and examines his face in the mirror, who does he think he is? My name is Albert Stinkridge he might say in his Michael Cain voice, which wouldn’t be right at all. This morning, this September morning, you are Adolf Hitler. The bristles of the electric toothbrush, a mean Nazi moustache and your hair ordered to the front sweeping down to the right eyebrow threatening to invade it.
"Seek hile," you say softly to the mirror clicking your bare heels together on the bathroom floor.
"Seek hile," you say once more creating a bad impression.
Baths are so much more than showers. You get intimate with them. A bath is more like making love where as a shower is at best a quick shag. You sink in for your session, half man, half water and you sink and think.
The First Commercial meeting could go one of three ways. You could come out with the deal. Unlikely. They could say thanks but no thanks, but that was not on the cards as they had called for this other face to facer. What they were probably going to do is say go away and sharpen your pencil, redo your sums and come up with a better offer. If that were the case you’d have to really cut the cloth and look long and hard at cost savings. To work on a margin of less than three percent would not impress the board. You’d have to do some pretty smart talking to get around that one. Get your ducks in line, convincing Richard that it was a deal with a future worth having. Once Richard was on your side, the others, F.D. included, should all agree. Your rock bottom line was two point two five percent and if they wanted you to beat that, then you’d just have to turn and walk. You’d know one way or the other by ten. Fingers crossed and all that, it would be great to pull off another Afghan deal. Selling arms to the third world is a tedious business but it pays the bills. You pull the plug and the used bath water starts to disappear off out to the Hudson you suppose.
You wet shave in Hitler’s old mirror and as always, you marvel just for a brief moment at how the can, the Gillette shaving can, can hold so much foam. How do they get it in there? Why don’t you read about them blowing up with the pressure, covering bathrooms in crazy foam? Perhaps they do but you never hear about it. Crazy foam terrorists aren’t news worthy.
You dress in the uniform you chose last night. White Oxford cotton button down shirt, pale pink silk tie and the Gieves double-breasted pin stripe. Polished black Church’s for the feet, you remember your Mother’s words about how you can always tell the quality of a man by the quality of his foot ware.
By seven you’re ready to leave. The driver is in the lobby at 7.20 and you take the elevator down to meet him. The raucous roar of the Upper West Side hits you as you slip from the air-conditioned building into the back of the air-conditioned limo and off to the World Trade Centre.
Your driver is pleased to see you and yes, you are enjoying your visit to the Big Apple and yes, you will be going on up to New England and no, it isn’t as beautiful as it will be next month in the Fall. It’s small talk in a big car.
You never discover which way First Commercial really wants to play it or who their clients are. The deal is never done. Something atrocious happens. You leave without a word and you’re never seen alive again. They put your possessions in a jiffy bag the only sign that you were ever there, your things and the silver Cross fountain pen, the one I gave you last birthday with the initials on it, the one they took from your suit pocket when you arrived at the St James Infirmary, dead in the back of the limousine. Your heart must have known all along and kept you from the horror. They said that you had had a massive attack on your way to what they now call Ground Zero.
"Arrrgh" comes the groan from deep within as you turn in bed and fart with a vengeance. Indigestion’s calling card. There’s no one there to hear you so you let it rip. Actually even if there was someone next to you, you probably wouldn’t try and silence it too much. Although that would depend on how well you knew them, but if they were sharing a bed with you then you probably knew them pretty well, so it wouldn’t matter, would it? Let them see you as you are, that sort of thing. Thinking about it, maybe you would try and hold it in, clench the buttocks politely. No one likes sharing a bed with a farter. But men fart and are proud of it where as women don’t or don’t admit to it if they do. It’s probably one of those urban myths found in the "strange but true" column snippets you might read in the Daily Whatsit. You’ve never heard a woman drop a decent one, drunk or sober, and yet at boarding school Liversidge (or was it Kenning?) could fart God Save the Queen after lights out every night. Come to think of it, he (Liversidge or Kenning) never changed his repertoire. It was always God Save the Queen followed by a good night to each member of the dormitory, a fart after their name.
"Good night Cavanaugh." Fart!
" Good night Jones." Fart!
" Good night Russell." Fart!
You wonder what he’s doing now (Liversidge or Kenning)? Probably an investment banker, civil servant or, you smile, working at the Met office.
No, men fart, women can’t. That’s what you think and you do another just to prove the point and roll over to think about the day ahead.
It’s too bloody early. Ten more minutes wouldn’t hurt, so you get as comfortable as your body lets you, curl into the foetal position and close your eyes. Did you have a dream last night? Yes you did! Sometimes when you wake up you remember your dreams and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s not until you’re in the bath or munching your Kellogg’s that you remember. But you remember last nights, or bits of it and you open your eyes to try and make it clearer. It was vague. Faces and places, undefined but not threatening, colourless somehow but not in a land of black and white. Surreal springs to mind but then so does Ulrika Johnson. What the hell was she doing there? Percy Thrower too, the last century’s Alan Titchmarsh. How strange the brain becomes when the body sleeps. Wasn’t Percy Thrower trying to force geraniums out of Ulrika’s arse or was it the other way round? You don’t remember. What you do remember was the last bit of the dream. You were falling. In the last minutes before the early alarm, you were falling and they do say that falling, to dream of falling, means something, but you’re not sure what. You can’t remember what they said it was supposed to mean. Never mind. Another night. Another dream.
You stretch the length of the bed and turn and turn again. Acid indigestion runs up and down. Sleep has had enough of you and even though you really don’t want to, you’ve got to get up. You’ve got to burst out from beneath your cover, fix bayonets, blow the whistle, go over the top and charge at the day ahead. Another day. Another dollar.
Your meeting with First Commercial isn’t until 8.30 and as you run the bath you sort of imagine your opening pitch. You see yourself, smart suited, word perfect, confident, proud and loud, not giving an inch just going in and getting the business. The bathroom fills with steam long before the bath itself is ready and you wipe your hand across the misted mirror to reveal your face. It’s all there, pretty much the same one you went to bed with and, like scores in bathrooms across the city, you do your early morning acting. When Michael Cain gets up and goes to the bathroom and examines his face in the mirror, who does he think he is? My name is Albert Stinkridge he might say in his Michael Cain voice, which wouldn’t be right at all. This morning, this September morning, you are Adolf Hitler. The bristles of the electric toothbrush, a mean Nazi moustache and your hair ordered to the front sweeping down to the right eyebrow threatening to invade it.
"Seek hile," you say softly to the mirror clicking your bare heels together on the bathroom floor.
"Seek hile," you say once more creating a bad impression.
Baths are so much more than showers. You get intimate with them. A bath is more like making love where as a shower is at best a quick shag. You sink in for your session, half man, half water and you sink and think.
The First Commercial meeting could go one of three ways. You could come out with the deal. Unlikely. They could say thanks but no thanks, but that was not on the cards as they had called for this other face to facer. What they were probably going to do is say go away and sharpen your pencil, redo your sums and come up with a better offer. If that were the case you’d have to really cut the cloth and look long and hard at cost savings. To work on a margin of less than three percent would not impress the board. You’d have to do some pretty smart talking to get around that one. Get your ducks in line, convincing Richard that it was a deal with a future worth having. Once Richard was on your side, the others, F.D. included, should all agree. Your rock bottom line was two point two five percent and if they wanted you to beat that, then you’d just have to turn and walk. You’d know one way or the other by ten. Fingers crossed and all that, it would be great to pull off another Afghan deal. Selling arms to the third world is a tedious business but it pays the bills. You pull the plug and the used bath water starts to disappear off out to the Hudson you suppose.
You wet shave in Hitler’s old mirror and as always, you marvel just for a brief moment at how the can, the Gillette shaving can, can hold so much foam. How do they get it in there? Why don’t you read about them blowing up with the pressure, covering bathrooms in crazy foam? Perhaps they do but you never hear about it. Crazy foam terrorists aren’t news worthy.
You dress in the uniform you chose last night. White Oxford cotton button down shirt, pale pink silk tie and the Gieves double-breasted pin stripe. Polished black Church’s for the feet, you remember your Mother’s words about how you can always tell the quality of a man by the quality of his foot ware.
By seven you’re ready to leave. The driver is in the lobby at 7.20 and you take the elevator down to meet him. The raucous roar of the Upper West Side hits you as you slip from the air-conditioned building into the back of the air-conditioned limo and off to the World Trade Centre.
Your driver is pleased to see you and yes, you are enjoying your visit to the Big Apple and yes, you will be going on up to New England and no, it isn’t as beautiful as it will be next month in the Fall. It’s small talk in a big car.
You never discover which way First Commercial really wants to play it or who their clients are. The deal is never done. Something atrocious happens. You leave without a word and you’re never seen alive again. They put your possessions in a jiffy bag the only sign that you were ever there, your things and the silver Cross fountain pen, the one I gave you last birthday with the initials on it, the one they took from your suit pocket when you arrived at the St James Infirmary, dead in the back of the limousine. Your heart must have known all along and kept you from the horror. They said that you had had a massive attack on your way to what they now call Ground Zero.
That was a good one. x
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