On the Floor (26 page)

‘Control freak.' I hiccough so violently the bottle slides from my
grip. ‘Wahey.' I catch it just at tipping point. ‘Check it out!'

He gives me a stern look. ‘OK, so Caesar wants to change time. The astronomical year was 365 days and 6 hours and he wanted to fix the equinox at the same day.'

‘What you have to do is—'

‘Which is what he did. But they had to ease into it. And that year of transition was called the year of confusion.'

‘I'll drink to that.'

‘Maybe you shouldn't.'

‘What the fuck else is there to do?' I am staggering to my feet but the carpet swarms up to meet me and I lurch back and Pie Man is droning on, ‘So what I'm thinking is if we—'

‘Could give a shit.'

He stops talking, lets a cool silence settle while he tilts his big head back and stares up as if some crucial piece of the Caesar puzzle might be written on the ceiling. The radiator is cold against the back of my head.

‘It's such a waste, Geri. You have such a gift and you just don't want to use it.'

‘I'm busy.'

‘You could do so much. I don't understand, I mean, I just don't get it. You're totally wasted on sales.'

‘Absolutely wasted.'

‘The cutting edge in finance is quant. And I
know
what you are capable of, what you could do. I can see how far you could take it. But instead you just—'

‘Future is quant. Drink to that.'

‘We could even work on lots of things together.' Pie Man's voice is rising and closing in. He leans forwards, balanced on the edge of the coffee table like a massive red troll.

‘The two of us.'

‘We could move to somewhere else as a – like a package, you know. You could use this – eh – crisis to change direction.'

‘Two of us in a package.'

‘The future is all about people like us, Geri. In a few years' time the big money will be chasing quants and everyone else will be old hat. Even people like the Grope – they haven't got a clue just how big prop trading is going to be.'

‘Fucking HUGE.'

‘Just think how much fun it would be, how much we could do together—'

‘Sitting around playing with models all day long.'

‘That's the future,' he beams delightedly. Wipes his palms on his tracksuit. Does not register my piss-taking tone, for he is tuned out and into some horror vision where I throw in my mathematical lot with him and we break new ground in value extraction, use our mega brains and my sales expertise to roll out the models that will transform the business and end up pasted all over the front page of the
Wall Street Journal
as Beauty and the Beast, the ex-Steiner's combo who changed the landscape for ever. And I will be so boggle-eyed I will become blind to Pie Man's grossness that I'll agree to marry him so we can pool our superior genetic material to start a little baby farm of maths geniuses. Pie Man has a vision of possession, where the two of us work on maths puzzles for all eternity.

‘How can you not want that kind of future?' His hands flop by his side, deflating, the dream receding. ‘Don't you even care?'

‘Everyone wants a piece of me. Seems like nobody wants the whole.'

‘Frege's principle of compositionality,' he sighs. ‘The meaning of the whole is the sum of the constituent parts.' I lean my head back but the universe wobbles and it flops forward again. ‘You need to sort yourself out, Geri,' he says, with a chilly tightening of the lips. ‘You need to take a good, long, hard look at your life.'

And I do. Here on the floor, dog hair all over my suit, unwashed and unloved, wearing the same clothes, the same fucking underwear for forty-eight hours. And still drinking. My tights are sagging at my ankles, a toenail poking through, the pink varnish chipped and tired since when
was the last time? When were all the last times that anything was OK?

‘I need a shower.'

‘What, here?'

‘You've got a bathroom, haven't you?'

He looks doubtful.

‘It's OK, I'm not fussy,' I grip the radiator and try to haul myself up but my knees fold under the strain. ‘Gimme a hand here, fucksake,' and his big fleshy paw tugs me upright.

‘TAKE A LOOK AT MY GIRLFRIEND,' I sing. Rex slinks away to hop on the couch. ‘All right, Rexy wexy, all right.'

‘Steady there, Geri.'

‘Having made my fortune Col-IN. I shall – mark you – become a highly original person.' Up close his neck fat is white like something on a butcher's slab. ‘That's a quote from Dos-toy-evskeee actually.
The Idiot
. Very
topical
.' He steadies me upright, one big hand tucked under my arm. ‘Uh – oh, don't forget the bottle. Coming with me to the shower.'

‘You sure you want it?' He leads me into a shadowy room with curtains closed and a rumple of duvet rising like an iceberg out of the crumpled bed.

‘Wahey,' I swing on his arm. ‘What's all this? You're not trying it on, are you?'

‘I only have an ensuite,' he mutters and I grab the bottle from him.

‘No sharp objects,' I laugh, prod him in the stomach. He stands waiting while I lurch against the bathroom door. ‘So what, are you going to help me undress too?'

I am a room spin expert; the trick is not to try to balance, but to find support and claw your way on hands and knees to a safe space.

‘If you're sure—' he backs away.

‘I'll scream if I need you.' And I tumble into the bathroom.

THERE ARE SPIKES DRILLING
against my skull, my temple throbs on one side and all the way down my shoulder into my right arm, which I cannot move, since it is lost somewhere over the side. My eyes open onto darkness. A bed, unfamiliar, feels all wrong. I lift my head, let it fall. I may be sick, something in my overheated chest. A laboured kind of breathiness and then a sickly smell, sweet, warm; maybe I have already been sick. I use my left arm to explore, discover I am wearing some kind of towelling robe.

‘You're awake.' The voice strong and very close. Pie Man's stale vanilla scent. ‘You know you passed out in the shower.'

I tug on my right arm but it is still stuck down the side of the bed.

‘Where's my arm?'

‘By your side. You cut your hand on the bottle when you fell.'

‘It's numb. Can't move it.'

‘I've looked after it, bandaged it up. And put TCP on it.'

‘I don't remember.'

‘That's because you passed out, Geri.' Disapproval snipping the vowels.

‘Sorry.'

‘You were lucky I was here.'

‘It was your bottle.'

‘Nobody made you drink it.'

‘Spare me the lecture. I can hardly see you.'

‘I'm here.' He shifts, sitting by my side on the bed and I can sense his outline now, inhale the stale sweat. I gag on a stomach lurch.

‘You've been out for hours.' His voice soft and further away as if he has tilted his head upwards.

‘What time is it?'

‘5:32.'

‘What?'

‘It's 5:32 p.m.'

‘What the fuck? I never—'

‘What's the last thing you remember?' The tone is harsh and the battering ram in my skull and the lurch in my stomach are sapping all my attention but I don't like the sound of his voice in the darkness or how the mattress dips like a rollercoaster when he moves.

‘I can't see anything. Open the curtains.'

‘It's dark outside.'

A watery quiver hits my legs. ‘I'm going to be sick.' I lurch upwards but my right hand catches again. Pie Man grabs my left shoulder and pulls me over onto to my side, shoves something hard and cold beneath my cheek.

‘Here, be sick in this.'

A doorway of light. An overhead lampshade comes slowly into view, the top of a corner wardrobe but I shut my eyes again. I do not move since I know he is here. I can hear his breathing and I do not want him to speak. Something bad is happening here, worse than the dry aftertaste of puke and the rancid stink of all I expelled.

The last thing I remember is the shower, a noise. My right hand throbs somewhere down by the side.

‘You're awake.' Didn't he say that last time? And anyway, how can he tell? ‘I know you're awake, Geri, no use pretending.'

‘Where's Rex?'

‘In the living room. I didn't think he should disturb you.'

‘I want to go home now.'

‘I don't think you're in a position to go anywhere. In your condition.' When I open my eyes, he is standing by the bedside, arms folded and resting on his massive stomach.

‘Yeah, well I'm going.' I roll to my right but my arm disappears down over the edge. ‘And what's the matter with my fucking arm?'

‘Why are you ALWAYS swearing?' His hands are clamped beneath his armpits now as if he is trying to keep them from harm. And my skull vibrates like it will surely explode and blow my brains out all over the bed. ‘Why can't you just STOP? For once, just STOP swearing and drinking and running around and wasting everything that's good.'

‘Why can't I lift my arm?' He glances down the side of the bed and back at me, a grim little unpleasantness playing about his lips.

‘Why?' I cannot keep the rising quaver from my voice.

‘Because it's tied to the bed.' But I know this even as he tells me so I turn my head to the left where it is dark and wintry behind the curtains, the sound of belting rain.

I might have pissed myself.

Oh, but pull yourself together, Geri, this is
Pie Man
. This is the Pie Man you know, not some fucking psycho-killer like in the movies; this is just a fat-boy geek who slobbers around in the office all day eating jammy dodgers. This is a big guy who is really a very small guy underneath, so you need to get it together. Take a deep breath and play it cool.

‘I just want you to stay still, to stop all this—' he waves a paddle hand.

‘For my own protection, huh?' I turn my head back and offer him a feeble smile, try to show him I am not fazed by all this. ‘Only it's making my arm go numb.'

He doesn't reply, but I hear Rex whine softly in the next room.

‘He wants to come in.'

‘No, he's staying there.'

‘Maybe he needs to go out?'

‘I took him out this afternoon. When you were out cold.' This last delivered viciously. ‘Let's hoist you up a bit.'

His big red arms slide me effortlessly up in the bed and he plops a pillow behind me like a hospital nurse. He sits down on the bed, the mattress tips steeply and I slip sideways towards him. And there, over the side of the bed covered by the vast folds of a dark blue bathrobe, is my tethered arm. I pull at the sleeve. Rex's red dog lead looped round my wrist and disappearing under the bed. A big wad of bandage around my palm.

Focus on the specifics, Geri. Focus on solutions. Stay in safe waters. Do NOT digress.

‘So is it a bad cut?'

‘One slice and a few scratches.'

‘I might need stitches.'

‘It's not deep enough.'

‘There could be some glass in there.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘Yeah, but I should get an X-ray. You know, in case there are slivers and they could travel up to my heart or something.'

‘You don't need that.'

‘You're not a doctor.' I smile, winningly. But Pie Man has a new resistance to my attempted warmth and these little gestures that would normally have him fawning and blushing have no effect. There has been some kind of transformation while I was unconscious, a steely immunity to my charm. And I do not like what I see.

‘It would be a waste of time just sitting there for hours in casualty,' he mumbles.

I WOULDN'T MIND AT ALL, I want to scream. Anything that gets me out of this fetid danger zone, all sorts of unravellings going on.

‘I had to rescue you, you know, Geri.' He shakes his head. ‘But you don't even remember what happened, do you?' His lips compressed in tight distaste.

So I wing it, try to recreate the moment of astonishing heroism where he saved my life while I was blind drunk in his bathroom. ‘I think I remember slipping.'

‘I heard the thud and then a smash and I called out but you didn't answer, so I was really worried. I even hammered on the door but you still didn't answer. Then I was going to break it down but it turned out you hadn't even locked it. And there you were on the floor.' He spreads his arm. ‘The vodka bottle was all smashed and there was blood on your hands. I don't know how you didn't cut yourself to pieces. I mean you could have done yourself some serious damage, Geri. It was awful to see.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Then I lifted you right up so you wouldn't roll on the glass.' He nods in memory. ‘You know how heavy an unconscious body is?'

‘Like a dead weight.'

‘Yeah, like a dead weight.'

‘You must be very strong.'

‘You're not that heavy.'

‘Well, about eight stone. Maybe even more.' I want him to be impressed by his gallantry in the face of my dissolution, so this sordid little story can have a nice ending and we can skate on past the nasty plot twist of captivity.

‘I carried you in here. Sorted out your hand. TCP, bandages. Cleaned up the bathroom. And all the while you just lay there.'

I shake my abject head. ‘I'm really sorry. Really.'

‘And you had no clothes on.'

A chill snap of my spine. He is glaring at me, an unreadable needle between anger and disgust.

‘You were completely naked.' I let my eyes drift down from his unreturnable stare to the stained duvet. I try to push away the horror flashes
for this is the Pie Man I know, but I am already body scanning and in the searchlight of failed memory I am squeezing my thighs.