Leftovers (20 page)

‘Then what are you looking for?’ I say, draining my drink and wondering if he’s going to buy me dinner, and thinking I’m not sure I actually want him to buy me dinner …

‘I suppose someone who’s on my wavelength,’ he says. ‘A girl who’s independent …’

I’m pretty certain that in modern dating parlance,
independent
actually means
won’t expect me to call her after sex
.

‘A girl who takes care of herself …’

That means
zero body hair …

‘
Who’s
generous
…’

Loves giving blow jobs
…

‘And open minded …’

Into butt sex.

‘Do you do any online dating?’ I say.

‘Sometimes …’ he says, stroking his fingers along my thigh. ‘I’ll do it for a month or two, then I just get sick of it.’

‘I don’t like it myself.’

‘I went on this terrible date a few months ago, this girl I met on PlentyofFish – she looked nothing like her pictures. She must have eaten the girl in those pictures! I should have known – all her photos were headshots. I put my coat on half way through the first drink and she still didn’t get the hint!’

I down my gin and tonic. Would now be an OK time to leave? How has it taken me this long to realise he’s a prat?

‘Let me get you another,’ he says, ‘same again – double, wasn’t it?’

‘You know what, I might go and get some food.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ he says.

‘That’s fine. We’ll just finish these and then I’ll eat at home.’

‘No! The band’ll be on in a sec, I’ll get you something,’ he says, rushing off before I can protest, and returning with a gin and tonic, two Sambuca shots and a pack of pistachios.

‘So you,’ he says, squashing up next to me and putting his arm around me. ‘You’re very aloof, aren’t you? I find that very sexy.’

I’m not aloof, I’m annoyed; you have, within the last thirty minutes, reminded me why I should never bother leaving the house again, because there are men like you out there, and I truly would have been better off making a trifle and saving myself the bus fare.

‘Down in one.’ He hands me a Sambuca – a drink even more odious than a Jäger Bomb.

‘I can’t drink shots on a Sunday night,’ I say – but then figure maybe that’s the only way to get through this, so I drink the Kool-Aid and instantly regret it. Urgh, so disgusting …

‘Tell me more about you,’ he says. ‘I really think we could be on the same wavelength.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘I don’t know … When was the last time you had sex in a nightclub?’

‘Never,’ I say.

‘You’ve never had sex in a nightclub!’

He makes it sound like I’ve just announced that I’ve never tried toast.

‘OK … how long’s the longest you’ve gone without sex?’ he says.

‘Do you want to talk about anything apart from sex?’ I say. ‘Because otherwise this is going to be a very short conversation.’

‘Oooh, OK then! What do you want to talk about?’

‘I don’t know … Where are you from, what do you like to do in your spare time?’

‘Born in Leicester, moved to London when I was thirteen … let me see, went to university in Manchester, studied estate management, I work in property … What do I do in my spare time? Dunno, watch sport, have a laugh. See my mates, go to bars, meet sexy girls like you, go clubbing.’

‘What sort of music do you like?’ I say.

‘All sorts, house, a bit of rock. I just turn on Spotify and see what’s new … By the way, when was the last time you were sexually screened?’

‘Why on earth are you asking me that on a first date?’

‘I was recently tested and I know that I’m safe.’

‘And?’

‘If we’re going to be intimate I just want you to know that it will be at my risk.’

I am without the vocabulary to reply to this.

‘Do you want to touch my penis?’

And again.

He grabs my hand and moves it over to his crotch. I rapidly whisk it away.

‘Don’t worry. It’s dark, no one will see,’ he says.

Yep – because being seen was the thing stopping me …

‘I’m going,’ I say, standing up.

‘Sit down, sit down, I was only joking. Joke.’

‘Look. I don’t know you. I have to go now, I’ve got work in the morning.’

‘So have I,’ he says, standing up and following me out. ‘It’s still early.’

‘It’s far too late,’ I say.

‘I’ll give you a ring in the week,’ he calls out after me.

‘Really, don’t,’ I say.

Status report:

• Fat Bird: Get script from Karly and Nick – URGENT
  
• Fend off Devron in the meantime
  
• Then sell script. MEGA-URGENT
  
• Get date with Jeff – PRIORITY RED
  

‘Count yourself lucky. At least you got some pistachios out of it,’ says Rebecca, as we sit in our department meeting on Monday afternoon, listening to Berenice talk about cost-cutting. ‘Pistachios are expensive.’

‘Rebecca, there are some clouds that have no silver linings. Don’t you dare try and make me feel better about last night,’ I say, as she tries not to laugh. ‘And the lunatic even had the nerve to text me at midnight asking when he’s going to see me again.’

‘And what did you reply?’ she says.

‘Are you joking? I’ve deleted his number.’

‘Well at least you gave it a try,’ she says.

‘That is
not
the moral of this story. The moral is
don’t ever
give things a try.’ I fold my arms and try to sit up straight and focus on Berenice’s lecture. No more free stationery for anyone below board level? Why don’t they just sell our chairs and make us stand at our desks?

The minute our department meeting is over, Berenice drags me to one side to scream about the delayed scripts. ‘I’ve had Martin on the phone this morning, Devron is furious!’

Not any more he isn’t. I spoke to him before this meeting. He’d just returned from a mega lunch at Nobu with Martin and sounded in fine fettle. I told him he’ll have scripts by the end of Friday; Martin filled him with so much expensive sake that Devron said end of the week was fine, then accidentally said, ‘Love you, darling’ instead of goodbye.

‘I told you, Susannah,’ says Berenice, ‘you will be defined by this brief. And yet you’re falling at the first hurdle.’ Her face is so close to mine I can almost taste her Smint.

It is not
that
big a deal, I want to say. The scripts will be a few days late. No one’s dead. No one’s even sprained a toe. Instead I take the bollocking, feeling the tendons in my neck tighten like dental floss round a finger. The whole time she’s telling me how incompetent I am, all I am focusing on is how Sam is going to work his way round this new stationery ban. If I can’t even have nice pens and Post-it notes then, really, what is the point?

I’ve had Devron on the phone all week. Once his sake hangover wore off, he realised he wasn’t at all happy with the delay and has been increasingly irate about these scripts. I have promised him on pain of death that he’ll have something today. He’s now on some media jolly at Pennyhill Park, but he’s got a golf club in one hand, a whiskey and an iPhone in the other, waiting. Waiting.

I’m waiting too – for Alexis to summon me to the script meeting, but in the meantime I’ve come to see Sam for a pep talk. He has assured me that there are a myriad of ways round the stationery ban, and he can’t quite believe I doubted his skills. And as for how to handle a script presentation with Karly and Nick, the key, apparently, is to go to the Happy Place.

‘Sam, could you possibly take your headphones off your neck for one minute and explain yourself? I can hear Bruce Springsteen coming out of your collar and it’s rather disconcerting.’

He slips them briefly onto my ears: ‘Thunder Road’. ‘You’ve got to admit that is a class song,’ he says.

‘Yes I am a big fan of that song, Sam. Now help me, please.’

‘Right. So, the thing you have to do with Karly and Nick is just not struggle, don’t argue back in the room. Let it all sweep over you. It doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is what the client thinks and what the public thinks. Your opinion counts for nothing, you’re the world’s best-paid ketchup fetcher, stick with that thought, right?’

I nod.

‘Keep your comments to yourself. Don’t point out the flaws in their work. Those two take great delight in provoking. Do not play up to them. If the script hasn’t got a woman in a burka or a threesome in it, count your blessings. Just nod, play nice, deal with it outside the room. You’re a diplomat. You’re Tony Blair. You’re the Dalai Lama. Go to the Happy Place in your mind, lock the door and stay there.’

I take a deep breath. OK, I can do this. I don’t want to do this, but I can.

My phone rings. Alexis. ‘Yup. Be there in a second.’

‘Thank God – it’s only going to be Nick, Karly’s not around,’ I say.

‘That’s half your battle done. Good luck,’ he says, nodding sternly. ‘Remember: go to the Happy Place.’

Don’t worry, I think, in the lift on my way up to their office. They
are
the agency’s star team. And they
have
had sufficient time to make this work good. It
will
be good. It had better be good. It had better be the Sistine bloody Chapel of pizza ads. And the Mona Lisa …

I find Nick perched on the side of Alexis’s desk, trying to impress her with his new Terry Richardson-style over-sized plastic glasses. ‘They’re Moscot Originals,’ he says. ‘I picked them up when we were shooting in New York.’

‘You look like a pervy geography teacher,’ she says, laughing.

He seems slightly disheartened that his five-hundred-dollar glasses have not turned out to be the roaring, knicker-loosening success he’d hoped for.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I say, ‘but you’ve got scripts for me?’

‘Wait here – I’ll be back,’ he says to Alexis.

‘Right,’ says Nick, closing his office door and handing me a piece of paper that turns out to be blank. ‘I want your first impressions of each script as I read them out. You’re the target audience for this product, aren’t you, Susie?’

‘Not really.’

‘You are demographically: ageing, weight-conscious, that’s the deal, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Whatever. The first route is called “Naughty Naughty”. And it’s based on the insight you gave us: pizzas are like curries – you don’t expect them to be low-calorie.’

‘Right. Good.’

‘These pizzas look like they’re bad for you but in fact they’re not. Yeah?’

I nod.

‘So it takes that metaphor – something that looks bad, but is in fact full of goodness – and Usain Bolts with it.’

‘OK …’ I say. Sounds reasonable enough.

‘We open on Penelope Cruz in a red basque and suspenders …’

‘A Penelope Cruz look-alike?’ I say.

‘Penelope Cruz. Or Monica Bellucci if we can’t get Cruz. Megan Fox at a push. She’s in a dark room. Candlelight. You can’t tell exactly where. But she looks sultry and smoking hot. Think film noir. Steven Meisel. Dolce & Gabbana. There’s music in the background. Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty”. Sung by the Welsh Male Voice Choir.’

Don’t worry, I think, trying to calm myself. They’ll never be able to afford the music, let alone Penelope Cruz.

‘The whole ad is an extended reverse striptease. Penelope bends over, puts on her sussies, g-string, push-up bra, then finally, right at the end, her habit …’

‘Her what?’

‘She’s a nun, isn’t she? And then an Italian voiceover comes on and says, “Some things in life look a LOT naughtier than they are. Like new Fletchers Fat Bird pizzas. Lose the guilt. Find a tasty new habit. Thank heavens for Fletchers.”’

He looks up over the top of his paper. ‘Why aren’t you writing anything down?’ he says. ‘Write something down and then I’ll go on to route two.’

‘I don’t need to write anything down, Nick.’ Because there are two chances of that script getting made: fat chance and no chance.

‘Write something, I want your immediate reaction.’

Trust me, Nick, you don’t. Instead I write down ‘Catholic issue?’

‘What have you written?’ he says, leaning forward to peer over the top of the paper.

‘Just the PR angle …’

‘That’s the whole point? Massive PR, all those free tabloid inches. It’ll be the most talked-about ad of the year.’

‘What’s the second route?’

‘Karly wrote the second route, it’s the girly one.’ Karly – as girly as Tyson. ‘It’s called “What It Means to Be a Woman” – and it’s based on insights of what real women feel about being real women. It features four women talking about emotional stuff, but they’re going to be CGI women, not actual women.’

‘Real women played by pretend women?’

‘It gives it an edge. The girls are CGI but we film the backgrounds. It’ll be totally fresh.’

‘I can’t quite …’

‘Look: like this,’ he says, bringing up a YouTube video on his Mac that has had eighty-seven million hits. ‘Some kid in Wisconsin did this. Ours would look like this. Get it?’ I nod.

‘So we’ve got a blonde, a redhead, an Asian and a black girl. We open on a close-up of the redhead in a bikini on a Caribbean beach, and she says: “You know that awful feeling when you’re on holiday and you suddenly realise that you’ve forgotten your tweezers?” That’ll be shot in Mustique or St Barts, somewhere where the light is that granular, golden light you only find in certain parts of the Caribbean.’

Certain parts of the Caribbean where you want to go on holiday, Nick. Mind you, I wouldn’t say no to a week on the beach …

‘Carry on,’ I say.

‘Then the blonde says: “Ever had a bikini wax that went really wrong? Like, seriously wrong?”’

‘Is that on a beach too?’ I say.

‘That’ll be in a rainforest, Fiji. Then we have a close-up on the Asian bird: “The day before I’m due on all I want to do is cry or shout. My boyfriend stays in the pub all night.” That one’s shot in Barcelona. And then the black girl’s in Buenos Aires and she says: “My boyfriend cheated on me with my sister. All I want to do is put on pyjamas and eat, eat, eat.” Then we cut to a black screen that says: “bad-day-just-got-better.com”.’