Ambition (16 page)

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Susan weakly.

Zero spat on the floor and they both peered at it, glistening insolently, quite impressed but somewhat unsure of just what the gesture signified. Then Zero wrenched open the door and turned to
go.

‘Wait! I mean – what did he say to you? If there’s any misunderstanding of your position here, I’ll go now and tell him just how important your—’

‘Sorry,’ sneered Zero, ‘but I can’t help you there, bach. If you must know, he told me the usual. That I had a singular talent. That he understood that working on a
tabloid with all its limitations might sometimes be problematic for me. That he sympathized, he really did. But if ever there was anyway he could be supportive, please let him know. I told him I
didn’t have a hernia, thank you very much, and he just looked at me with those
stupid
brown eyes like a cow who’s been goosed. Then he bunged me a rise – five thou p.a.
And said didn’t I find it very time-consuming, answering all my own fanmail, and wouldn’t I like my own secretary? Only if she’s got an honours degree in cunnilingus, I said. That
shut him up.’ Zero made an obscene gesture with her wrist. ‘What a fucking
girlie
– I expected him to ask did I have painful periods next, and would I like a hot water
bottle on the firm.’

‘Men can’t win with you, can they, Zero? They act lousy and they’re pigs. They act properly and they’re girlies. Exactly what do you want from men?’

‘Well, for a start, I want them to keep out of my way. That includes Yank bigshots who throw around salaries and sympathy as though they were stockings and chewing gum. Then eventually
I’d like their complete and total extinction. But I’ll settle for a cull, so long as I can have a club of my own. Did you know there are fifty thousand spare men in London alone? If
they were seals we’d be allowed to cull them. And men aren’t half as pretty. Or smart.’

‘Go away, Zero. I’m not in the mood.’

‘You’re not in the mood for anything, are you, girlie?’ snarled Zero, leaning across the desk, ‘Except ten inches of kosher beef served hot up the ass.’

‘That’s sounds like fun,’ said David Weiss from the doorway. ‘Where do I join the queue?’

They watched Zero flounce away, her wired tail appearing to give them the finger.

‘What a very attractive and angry young woman she is,’ said David Weiss. ‘A very clever young woman too – I’ve been reading her column these past months.
She’s gay, isn’t she?’

‘Not right now she isn’t. She is a lesbian, though.’

‘I don’t blame her. If I was a girl, I’d be a lesbian too.’ He smiled at her. ‘What on earth could anyone see in a man?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Do you want to come back to my hotel with me?’

‘More than anything else in the world.’

‘Let’s go.’

Susan had always imagined that people’s sexual natures were nothing more than extensions of their personalities. Thus Gary Pride had been clueless and clumsy in bed,
Charles had been courteous and energetic and Matthew had been sensitive and persevering. Zero would be arrogant, adolescent and lascivious while Tobias Pope, God forbid she should ever get a chance
to confirm it, would be superior, sadistic and cold.

David was different. In two hours they had done it five times, each time with more brutality on his part, and she was sore all over, inside and out. But now he had her wrapped in blankets and
drinking hot chocolate laced with
crème de cacao
as he fussed around the room, opening windows in preparation for smoking a cigarette. ‘You’re sure you don’t
mind?’ he asked for the third time.

‘Of course not.’

He smiled down at her and threw himself headlong on to the bed like a puppy ready for play, sucking on his Camel. ‘It’s a filthy habit, I’m going to give it up.’

‘I hope that’s the
only
filthy habit you’re going to give up.’

‘Sure thing.’ He stroked her hair, then drew back. ‘Jesus. What’s that? That thing on your forehead?’

She thought on her feet. ‘Well, you’ve found it; my guilty secret. I had it done one night, oh, years ago, just before I joined the
Best.
In a fit of half-assed rebellion
about selling out, I don’t know.’ How Matthew would laugh!

‘You poor kid.’ He smoothed her fringe down over it. ‘Did it hurt?’

‘I was too drunk to feel it. It’s just embarrassing now. But it would look even worse if I had it removed – a big, raw scar. As it is I can keep it covered.’

‘Gee.’ He looked at her sorrowfully, then gestured hugely and vaguely around the room, laughing. ‘Will you look at this? This a.m. I was the new nerd in town, getting hit on by
the cabbies and losing my way and worrying about whether I could do my job. Now I’m in bed with a beautiful English broad, and I’ve got a job, an office, everything!’

He seemed so happy that it scared her. If he was as happy as she was, then there was so much to lose. ‘Are you serious? I mean, seriously so pleased?’

He looked at her as if she had just announced that she was Queen Marie of Rumania.
‘Serious
I’m serious. Aren’t you happy about this too? Don’t tell me
you’re one of these broads who thinks it’s a sign of peasant stock to show their feelings and play games all the time.’

‘No, I hate that.’

‘Those manipulation games are very big in New York, and they’re for penny-ante people who don’t feel they’ve been dealt a good hand in life. They’re the people who
keep you waiting for hours to see if you’ll wait for them. That’s how they prove their worth to themselves – it’s a sure sign of an inadequate.’

‘I hate that too – it’s really Seventies. I always come on time.’ Well, she would from now on.

‘So I noticed.’ He closed his eyes and snuggled up to her. ‘Stroke my balls. Just for a minute.’ He wriggled and purred.

Touching him, she laughed. She had always found testicles the ugliest items in the history of the world, like figs covered in fungus; it was strange to be with a man whose body seemed as
familiar and unrepellent to her as her own. ‘It’s strange, we come from such different worlds, and we’re strangers – but we seem so much alike.’

‘We’re twins, maybe – Siamese twins. Separated at birth by some hotshot smartass surgeon. Boy, did we show him.’

She was starting to feel tired. ‘Can I . . . am I staying?’

He sat up and looked at her, shocked. ‘Oh, no. How could you think that? This is the scene where I call you a cab and call you Suzanne.’ He punched her arm lightly. ‘Of
course
you’re staying, dummy.’

‘Can I take a shower?’

‘Want me to help?’

‘No, stay where you are. I’ll only be ten minutes.’

‘Sure.’ He grabbed the remote control and went at the TV like a teenager.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, stepping under it. But it was cold, and the shock of it made her gasp, revving up her recent memory as it hit her breasts. She stepped back,
breathing heavily; just one more time, he wouldn’t mind. She knew him by now. He’d love it.

She padded quietly into the living room just in time to hear him say, ‘I miss you.’

But she’d only been gone a minute . . .

‘Of course I do, Meesh. Yes, Bunny. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye.’ The receiver clicked.

‘Who’s Bunny?’ she asked quietly.

He wheeled around, naked and guilty. ‘Susan . . .’

‘Who’s Bunny?’

‘It’s my . . . it’s a girl in New York. Her name’s Michèle – Michèle Levin.’

‘I see. Do you have a photograph of her?’

He shot her a worried look, took his wallet from the trousers on the floor and handed her a colour snapshot of a girl. She had straight blonde hair of the type that American Jewish girls seem to
grow spontaneously when their father’s income reaches the million mark, a ski tan, a sweet, insecure smile and a slight cast in one eye.

Calmly, Susan ripped it once, twice, three times and threw the pieces up into the air. They fluttered ineffectually to the floor as though trying to look inconspicuous, like children on a
staircase trying not to make their parents’ loud row worse. ‘Confetti for our wedding,’ she said. ‘Cross-eyed fucking
cow.’

He hung his head.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Shoot,’ he said defeatedly.

‘Is it a normal part of your love play to fuck this sweet young thing in lavatories?’

‘Of course not.’ He seemed genuinely shocked. ‘It’s not that sort of relationship.’

‘Then what sort of relationship is it?’ she snorted. ‘Platonic?’

‘No . . . we’ve known each other a long time, you see, since we were kids. We lived on these neighbouring estates in Connecticut in the summer. We’re sort of . . . unofficially
engaged.’

‘I see. How old is she?’

‘Twenty-six.’

The same age. ‘May I ask you, do you often accost strangers and fuck them standing up in public places?’

‘You’re the first.’

‘Oh my, I’m honoured. She gets your fraternity pin, I get a quick one in the toilets. The
staff
toilets.
Your
staff toilets. God, fucking the help – how
Victorian can you get?’ She turned away and picked her dress up from the floor.

‘Susan.’ He came up behind her and tried to touch her. She shook him off. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to lead you on. But the way you were looking at me in
O’Brien’s office . . . I thought you wanted to as much as I did.’

‘So it’s my fault?’

‘It’s no one’s fault.’

‘Oh, no. I beg to differ. It’s
someone’s
fault, you shit eating prick.’ He looked at her, appalled. ‘There. I bet
she
doesn’t talk like
that, does she?’

He laughed softly. ‘Michèle speaks six languages and she can’t get mad in any of them.’

She wanted to throw up. She felt like a hooker in a hotel room hearing a client talk about his wife. Any moment now he’d get out the pictures of the 2.5 babies.

‘Her family are rich, of course.’

‘Her father has a bank . . .’ He shrugged apologetically, as though her father had syphilis.

‘But of course.’ Susan Street from Nowhere-on-Sea. What a fool she had been. ‘I see.’

‘Susan—’

‘Keep it, David. Save your breath for lying to your dumb doormat girlfriend, not me.’ She squirmed into her Kamali body, Alalïa dress and Emma Hope heels and picked up her
briefcase. ‘Here’s where you call me the cab and call me Suzanne.’ She walked to the door. ‘But hold the ten bucks. Put it towards an eye-straightening op for Bunny
Money.’ She opened the door, went out and looked back over her shoulder at him. ‘Because I don’t need it. I’m on your father’s payroll, remember. He can tip me better
than you could ever dream of in your wildest, wettest dreams.’ She closed the door, banged on it with her fist and screamed loud enough for the late swimmers in the hotel basement pool to
hear, ‘AND HE’S A BETTER FUCK, TOO!’

She fell into the lift, out of the lift, into a cab and out of a cab. Then she fell heavily against the doorbell. It kept playing the first three bars of Dire Straits’ ‘Sultans of
Swing’, over and over – Matthew’s idea of fun. What a fucking irritating wimp he was, with that med-stude humour doctors never grow out of. At that moment, she hated Dire Straits,
doctors and rich, handsome, young Americans more than she had ever believed possible.

‘Susan! What the – where are your keys?’

‘Can’t find them,’ she mumbled, pushing past him and bolting up the stairs.

‘What’s that smell? Where have you been?’

‘It’s sick. With Zero.’ She ran into the bathroom, locked the door and leapt out of her dress. Throwing it into the bath, she grabbed a box of matches, lit one and threw it and
its unfulfilled comrades into the tub too. Seven hundred pounds’ worth of smoke filled the room. She opened the window and leaned out, gulping the air, tears rushing down her face. Smoke gets
in your eyes, she thought vaguely.

‘Susan?’ He was banging on the door. ‘What’s that smell? What’s going on? What’s happening to us? We’ve got to talk!’

‘Just go away, Matthew. I’m sick. You can’t help me. I’m sick.’

‘I’m sick of you!’ she heard him yell before he burst into tears. She turned on the taps, fell to the floor and curled up on the bathroom mat. She dreamed about hearts,
bleeding, running around the office of the
Best
like chickens with their heads cut off.

The next day she lay on the floor staring at the ceiling until she heard Matthew’s Renault pull away. Then she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked old.
She cleared the designer ashes from the bath, cleaned it, poured half a bottle of Badedas into the water and lay there, concentrating on keeping her mind blank. When it didn’t work she
slipped down under the foam and stayed there until her lungs felt they might burst.

Her instinct to survive pushed her up to the surface, as it always had in even deeper and hotter water than this. She rinsed herself, dried, dressed and took a taxi to the
Best.

It was half past one when she arrived and, as she had anticipated, the usually busy office was doing its daily midday impersonation of a high-technology ghost town, a
Marie Celeste
furnished by Amstrad. She wandered through the open-plan room listlessly.

As she neared her office, she became aware that she was not alone. She could hear the unmistakable sound of copious computers going through their sleek, sinister paces and of tickertape spilling
from mechanical mouths – and it was coming from her office. She ran to the door, pressed her face against the glass and gasped.

Tape lay strewn across desks. Computers flickered insinuatingly. Even as she opened the door, the clatter began to cease. Soon everything was silent and she stood in the middle of the room,
looking round in a daze.

A computer in the far corner caught her eye. It beeped, flickered, and was blank. Then, for a split-second, it flashed her a message.

HAVE A NICE DAY, LOVE, CONSTANTINE.

Susan was listening to
Question Time
and looking at the frantic jumping pulse at her wrist when Oliver Fane put his head around the door. He was smiling broadly, so
obviously he had some bad news for her.