On the Floor (13 page)

‘Felix may want to know more.'

‘No more information,' Kapoor raises a warning finger. ‘Refer him to me. Think of yourself as a secretary who is taking a phone message. I'm sure you can manage that.'

‘Right, so it's what – like 5 p.m. in Hong Kong now?' The Grope is on his feet again, his hands working his pockets like he's adjusting his balls.

‘Five twenty-two.'

They both stare at the phone on the table. I dial the number. Picture Felix raising his head, considering.

‘Geraldine.'

‘Felix.'

‘You didn't call me at our usual time.'

‘Sorry, Felix. Something came up.' The Grope stares at my mouth like he's lip-reading. Kapoor swallows shallowly like there is a sour taste in his mouth.

‘You are not at your desk?'

‘No.'

‘You are in a meeting room.'

‘How did you know?'

‘A quality of stillness. No background noise.'

‘Felix, I need to come and see you.'

‘What an unexpected surprise.'

‘Tomorrow afternoon?'

‘I look forward to it.'

‘Thanks, Felix. I'll let you know the time when I get a flight.'

‘And Geraldine?'

‘Yes?'

‘Do give Mr Kapoor my regards.' The line goes dead but I can hear the smile in the dial tone.

‘So you're all set?' says the Grope.

I nod, put down the phone.

‘He made a remark,' says Kapoor.

‘He could tell I was in a meeting.'

‘And there was something else?'

‘He said to give you his regards.'

A faint tinge of pink smears his cheek, a Duchenne spasm tightens his jaw.

‘What?' the Grope's head snaps up. Anil Kapoor eyes me, some sort of indecipherable message etched on his brow. And then he slips out of the door almost as if he was never there.

‘OK,' I move to rise from my chair.

‘Not so fast, Geri,' the Grope raises a palm. ‘You tell me how the
fuck
Felix Mann knew that Kapoor was in this room?' He shakes his head like a wet dog.

‘He guesses stuff. Can I go back to the floor now?'

‘No,' he says. ‘Our Interested Party wants to meet you.'

I wait outside in the corridor like a naughty schoolgirl. The Grope glares at a tapestry wall hanging as if he finds something offensive in its elaborate weave. When the door to the conference room opens he barges in front, making a wrist-flicking tugging motion as if he has me on a leash. And there, in the middle of a roomful of suits, grinning like a toothy game show host is a man with a huge white Stetson on his head. It is Max Lester II, aka Max-a-Billion, the instantly recognisable CEO of Texas Pistons, and my second celebrity face-to-face of the morning. He looks exactly like he did in a recent photo shoot at the Bush family ranch with a spaniel darting madly round his feet. So
this
is our Interested Party. Texas Pistons is cash rich and hungry for growth. I can see the headlines now:
Yanks take out British guns
. And Vulkan Valve is the
perfect target.

‘This her?' he goes to no one in particular and the Grope makes a little hand flourish in my direction as if he's introducing an exotic pet. I step forward gamely while Max-a-Billion checks out my tits.

‘Geri Molloy,' I stick out my hand. ‘Good to meet you.'

‘Well, hello there.' He clasps it in both of his and peers down at me from beneath his brim. His scent is hotel-citric, his skin is curiously waxy as if he is wearing stage make-up.

‘So what's your secret, Geri Molloy?' He lets my hand fall and walks over to a big white couch behind which stands a posse of obvious Texans grinning like apes.

‘C'mere,' he flops down and smacks the space beside him.

Max is well known as a giant playboy round town, is great pals with Charlton Heston and so evangelical about the right to bear arms that he has launched a nationwide series of Babes 'n' Bullets weekends where women can fondle magnums and take turns shooting cardboard rapists in the balls. The Grope urges me forward with a hideous smile. Kapoor stands over to the side with a princely aloofness.

‘You got all the hotshots on your trail. Must be quite a little charmer.' He guffaws, his wattle redneck puffing in and out. The atmosphere is part locker room, the only thing missing is that he doesn't pull me onto his lap.

‘Geri Molloy,' Max-a-Billion repeats, nodding his Stetson as if he is testing the name for size. Stares steadily up at me with black eyes that he believes can burn through to the true core. I have seen it before, these men who place all trust in their own judgements.

‘Siddown here,' he belts the cushion beside him. I sit at the furthest reach. Everyone else in the room remains standing, apart from a few of Kapoor's boys who are huddled over some paperwork at the far end of a roomful of guys who are all, of course, convinced that I am only here because I am shagging my biggest client.

‘Let's cosy,' he says and for a moment I think he might grab me and mash my face in his groin.

‘So ole Kappor here told you the story? Told you what I need?'

‘Yes.'

‘Got the key to Felix Mann's heart? You gonna work your special magic on this fella?' The Grope stands over at a diagonal like a henchman, arms folded across his chest. ‘You gonna find out what Felix wants to do with his 13%?'

‘I'll do my best.'

‘She'll do her best, you boys hear that?' he bellows and the grinning circle chuckles on cue like quiet hyenas. Kapoor is inspecting his shoes as if he has just trodden in dogshit. ‘And tell me, Miss Molloy, just how
good
is your best?'

‘It's real good,' I say and Max-a-Billion slaps his thigh.

‘It's real good,' he honks, ‘it's real good,' and the Grope is grinning wildly and the whole room is an orchestra of merriment. ‘You hear that, Ae-Neel?' He throws a glance over at Kapoor who is locked in a rigor mortis on the far side of the room. ‘Nah, he's got no sense a humour.'

Max-a-Billion leans back, rests his arm along the back of the couch, his fingers almost touching my hair like we were in a cinema. I have cheek strain from holding this polite smile. ‘So where you from, Geri Molloy?'

‘Ireland.'

‘Figures. Smart and hungry.' He nods, looking me up and down and then whips his Stetson round. ‘What's the matter with you boys, whyn't you offer the lady a drink?'

A flurry as two lackeys step forward, one pulls back. ‘Whadya say? Let's have us a cocktail right here.' One of them sneaks a glance at the wall clock. ‘I've been up for two days straight and I don't give a goddam what time of day it is. Wild turkey for me. And for Miss Molloy?'

And I think, fuck the Perrier. The client is always right. ‘Vodka. On the rocks.'

Max-a-Billion taps my shoulder pad with a finger. ‘'Cos it is
Miss
Molloy, am I right?'

I nod. I see there is a clear tendency towards roughness in the yellow
tint of his pale iris. I can easily imagine Max with his trousers round his ankles and some plump young blonde, a little too much pressure on the trachea. Or perhaps I am wrong, perhaps Max likes to receive, to be anointed with pain. A masked Amazon spilling out of a rubber corset with gashed red lips and a coiled whip by her side. She makes Max undress in front of her, strip down to his vest and boxer shorts and steps closer in her stilettos. She meets his watery gaze. His lips tremble pinkly and she jabs his chest with the whip handle. Leans closer, spits in his face and he mouths a mottle of webbed saliva. He moans and she slides his shorts down with the whip, prods him hard in the mid point of his belly and then barks BEND OVER, pointing to the bed behind her. Max-a-Billion spreads his hands wide, she lashes his wobbling buttocks with the whip and he jerks forward with a muffled scream as a pink welt blooms on the pale flesh.

‘You got yourself a good man, Geri Molloy?' My lips quiver. If Stephen could see me now, he would consider all this to be in extremely poor taste. Like Kapoor, who has managed to slink away to the farthest desk now where he is in quiet communion with a spreadsheet.

‘Or are you savin' yourself up till the right one comes along?' He winks, he actually winks beneath the Stetson.

I take the tumbler, heavy, sparkling, two inches of solid glass at the base. Max-a-Billion leans in so that the brim practically touches my forehead. I wonder if he has thought about Pissed On as a nickname.

‘Bottoms up,' he clinks and knocks it back. I follow suit.

‘Atta girl.' And I imagine this as the opening round of a drinking competition that will have us slugging it out until Max starts chasing me round the room. But he waves away the man with the tray and stands up. I rise on cue. He ushers me forwards and I'm half-expecting him to slap my bottom as I walk ahead. Instead he drapes a heavy arm around my shoulders and walks me to the exit.

‘You an' me might just get together sometime after this is all done,' he says. His eyes are little slits of light beneath the Stetson and he stands stroking my arm on the threshold. ‘You do real good now, Geri Molloy.
You do real good.' He doffs his hat, turns back into the room and an invisible hand closes the door behind him.

The spotlit corridor stretches out in front of me like an empty runway. It is the flight instinct I feel tugging at my gut, the need to escape somewhere safe and dark and quiet and far away from men who would weave me into the webs of their own design. I could just tip over and sprawl here on the carpet, let my lids shutter down, will my heart to sleep on the velvet and wake in a white room with kindly nurses patting my hand and telling me I am lovely and I should not worry about a single thing, that this life of mine has been put in suspended animation while I catch up with it and decide whether or not I want it back.

I hurry away before the door opens again and the Grope comes to hunt me down. I am now the centrepiece of his bid for stardom so he will want to keep me close. Doubt snaps at my heels and I am feeling the chill. The Grope, Felix and Stephen like the three fucking fates, my life story scripted by three men, and me the willing pawn.

‘A simple answer to a simple question.' The very phrase makes me want to howl with despair, for this is just the kind of cat-and-mouse that Felix enjoys. A trade for a trade. All the cards dealt to him and me sitting there empty-handed with nothing to offer apart from myself.

ZANNA STANDS BY THE WINDOW
of her 12th floor office, talking into the phone in her reassuring client voice. She makes a little gap sign between index finger and thumb so I slink into a chair and survey her shelves, the tombstone display of deals that she has worked on and above them the framed photo gallery CV: Zanna marlin fishing in khaki shorts and a green visor cap with Daddy and the toothy CFO of AIG, Zanna in a white visor teeing-off at Gleneagles with the Finance Director of News Corp looking on admiringly, Zanna in last year's favourite Chanel sunglasses, hugging her IVF nieces in twin sailor suits on a yacht off Cape Cod Bay.

She sits down at her desk and runs a hand over the glass peak of a fist-sized sun-trapping iceberg that her mother commissioned from a reclusive Swedish designer who turns down 99 per cent of the offers he gets. She replaces the receiver and makes a note in an open file, holding up a silencing palm.

‘Come out for a coffee,' I say.

‘Hello?' She points to the clock. ‘I can't believe you're not snowed under down there. Anyway, I've got a conference call in five minutes,' and she starts yakking on about how the looming war is inconveniencing
the European road show she's doing with some big-wheel CEOs.

‘I'm going to Hong Kong.'

‘So you said yes!' She pushes back her chair and leaps up. ‘Oh Geri, congratulations!'

‘No, what I meant is the Grope's sending me out to see Felix about a piece of business.'

‘So what about the relocate? You haven't said yes?'

‘I thought the Grope had called me in to talk about it but it turned out he wants me to go see Felix about this other thing.'

‘So you didn't discuss it at all?'

‘No.'

‘What did Felix say this morning?'

‘There wasn't really time to talk about it.'

‘So when are you going?'

‘This afternoon. Julie's trying to book me on the 14:05 flight.'

She sighs, casts off the celebratory mode and folds her arms tightly. ‘Don't you think that this proves just how much you need to be in Hong Kong, seeing as you've only just come back?' Zanna is at her exasperated best now, tucking her hair impatiently behind her ear. ‘And when you've met with Felix and done your business he's going to ask you if you're saying yes to the relocate? So what are you going to say?'

I shrug and this immediately infuriates her. ‘You want to risk losing all his business? You got another life plan I don't know about?' She is warming up to a lecture I do not care to hear, the one where she tells me I need to pull myself together and step into the adult world. Of course, Zanna herself couldn't wait to get out of the playground and start taking charge. She has told me how she learnt to read the time at nursery so that she could check her mother's erratic pick-up after long lunches with her girlfriends against the big clock on the nursery wall. She interviewed teachers and parents, did her own research and compiled a shortlist of target colleges before she even started second grade. She timetabled her teen years, methodically ticking off a list of essential skills to master – tennis, sailing, skiing (although not boarding),
snorkelling, waterskiing, riding (but not show-jumping, there wasn't time), conversational French, flawless make-up, effortless teriyaki.

‘Geri, you're a wreck,' she sighs, pats my cheek. ‘You can't keep drifting like this. I mean, look around you.' She gestures wide. ‘We all know where we're headed. Even bone-headed traders like
Rob
have got their sights locked on a personal destiny. You need to get a future. This is not playtime, this is your life. I mean, you don't even care about the money like you should. You don't even enjoy spending it.'