‘AMPHETAMINE!’ Jonathan was shouting now.
‘I’m sorry, Jonathan, I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t figure out how to tell you. I broke it off with Mark and I tried, I really tried but I just . . . I just can’t stop thinking about him.’ She talked on through her tears, saying that in some ways it was Jonathan’s fault, as it never would have happened if Dante hadn’t been so insistent on being together with Mark’s German shorthaired pointer.
German shorthaired pointer? Jonathan stopped reeling just long enough to squint at Dante, who looked away with an air of studied nonchalance.
‘Well, not his German shorthaired pointer, exactly; his girlfriend’s,’ Julie said. ‘He’s a lawyer.’ Despite her misery there was the slightest hint of pride in her voice, as if Jonathan couldn’t fail to be impressed by the fact that her new boyfriend had such an important job.
Lawyer scum, thought Jonathan. Surely common courtesy required her to describe the cheating bastard as nothing at all special, insist that it wasn’t Jonathan’s fault; that he deserved better. But no, he could tell that Julie secretly thought it was some sort of big achievement to leave your boyfriend, practically your husband, for Christ’s sake, for a lawyer – and it was Jonathan’s fault for not being higher up the career scale, not to mention dull enough to spend his life reading contracts and torts, and also for having a debilitating illness which caused him to be unable to speak properly and/or to walk his dogs. Well, not his dogs, exactly; his brother’s dogs, who then went on to develop an unnatural attraction to Mark’s dog – wait, no, not Mark’s dog, his girlfriend’s dog. Sorry, not dog, German shorthaired pointer. Even the fucking dog was high status.
Outrage made Jonathan want to kick the Palm House to pieces. He imagined thousands of square feet of glass cascading downwards in tiny razor-sharp fragments and for a moment he felt happy.
He paused suddenly and rewound the conversation, confirming that it was Dante’s crush on Mark’s dog that had led to Julie’s evening assignations. YOU, he thought loudly, staring at Dante, YOU did this. Dante stared back at him from the space next to the dishwasher, without even the decency to look ashamed.
‘Albatross!’ He’d pretty much forgotten Julie in this new train of thought. Now he turned back to her.
‘Oh, Jonathan,’ Julie was wailing now. ‘I’m so, so sorry, but we can’t get married under the circumstances.’
At the door to the kitchenette, Lorenza covered her eyes with her hands, stamped her foot and screamed, once, loudly.
Jonathan appeared to notice Cody for the first time. He kicked him hard, grabbed his camera and hurled it across the room. The young man fled, filming his retreat on his phone.
Of course they couldn’t get married. But who was going to go out there and tell his friends and family that the thing was off? Who was going to speak for him? Without Julie, he had no voice. All at once he felt panicked, dependent, rejected and alone.
‘I want you to be happy, Jonathan.’
‘Piano scum.’ Tears filled his eyes.
She took a step towards him but he backed away. ‘Oh, Jonathan. You don’t mean that. You’ll get over it and realize what a close call we had. It never would have worked.’
‘PANDEMIC.’ He spat the word.
‘I know you’re angry but I hope we can stay friends.’
‘CUCKOO!’ Jonathan shouted.
‘I think I’ll go now.’ She bolted from the kitchenette and began tugging at the celadon wedding dress, sobbing, as Lorenza struggled with the zip in a desperate attempt at damage limitation.
‘YUCK PHOO!’
Julie flinched, as if he might hit her, and gasped, cowering. She ran to the dressing-room door, opened it and fled, dress and all, followed by make-up, wardrobe, two junior art directors, three cameramen who were not Cody, a work-experience boy, Jerri the continuity girl and Lorenza. The guests, upset that their broadcast had been disrupted, cheered enthusiastically at this opportunity to pick up the action live.
Jonathan shouted after her retreating figure.
‘DUCK ZOO!’
She was gone.
Max spoke for the first time in some minutes. ‘Wow,’ he said.
Jonathan and the two dogs stood wide-eyed in the silence.
‘Well,’ Jonathan said at last. ‘That’s that then.’
He frowned.
Then, just to be sure it wasn’t a fluke, he turned to Dante. ‘By the way, don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to. You’re surely not going to pretend you had no role in the romance of my girlfriend with that asshole lawyer? Huh?’
Furious as he was at this traitorous version of man’s so-called best friend, he felt rather proud of his ability to use words in a fluent manner once more. So proud, in fact, that his anger subsided.
When he turned around, Max was grinning at him. ‘Hey buddy, you can talk. That’s so cool.’
Jonathan nodded.
‘Cause now you’re going to have to go out and tell everyone the wedding’s off.’ Max put his arm around his friend’s shoulders and guided him to the dressing-room door. ‘I have a feeling they might be prepared, what with all the shrieking and weeping. Come on. We’ll do it together.’
And they went out to the Palm House to break the news.
‘Excuse me, excuse me!’ Max tapped a knife on a glass, which failed to quiet the overexcited crowd. He looked at Dante, who barked sharply, once.
The room fell silent.
Max pushed Jonathan gently to centre stage. ‘Uh, welcome everyone, and thank you so much for coming to our wedding. Unfortunately, due to a pathological misjudgement on my part, it won’t actually be happening today, or ever, God willing, but please feel free to celebrate my narrow escape from a lifetime of despair with as many drinks as you can swig before the lovely folks at Bridal-360 realize exactly what’s going on and cancel Christmas.’
His speech was captured on three live feeds and a few hundred phones. It was followed by enthusiastic applause.
When, half an hour later, Lorenza found him at the bar with a double lychee margarita in each hand, she shifted the celadon wedding dress from one arm to the other, grabbed him by the lapel of his very expensive burnt-chocolate velvet suit and hissed that if everyone wasn’t out of the Palm House in precisely four minutes, she would personally rip his lips off.
Dante cleared the room in under a minute. He looked happier than he had in weeks.
28
Jonathan’s parents were understanding.
‘You weren’t good enough for her,’ his mother said.
Greeley stood in the rain in the orange suit, shook Jonathan’s hand and said, ‘Better late than never.’ Which, coming from Greeley, sounded like the words of the Delphic oracle.
Max, Jonathan and James retired to a Flatbush Avenue bar where they drank beer and shots and talked about the good old days while the dogs lay under the table eating nachos and cocktail sausages. Max grinned at Jonathan. ‘You’re gonna wake up any day now and realize what a close call you had.’
‘I second that,’ James said.
‘Yeah.’ Jonathan sighed. ‘I guess so.’
‘No guessing,’ Max said. ‘Even Greeley and Wes were against it. And they care about you just about as much as a box of sticks.’
‘Really?’ A box of sticks? Greeley?
‘One stick.’
‘That’s great to know.’ Jonathan stared out into the rain, feeling melancholy.
‘Jay, buddy, forget them. We love you to pieces. It’s like witnessing the goddamn resurrection of Lazarus. Have another beer. Hey, James. Life any good out there in Dubai?’
‘You wouldn’t exactly choose to live there. But it’s good work for an engineer,’ James said. ‘I miss my family, though.’
Jonathan was prepared to be moved by this admission till he saw his brother gazing at Dante and Sissy. By family, he meant the dogs. Jonathan felt a flash of panic. What if he was planning to take them back?
Max looked f
rom James to Jonathan. ‘Whoa there, Tonto. Have you two sorted this out? You’ve got kind of a tug-of-love situation developing here.’
The brothers avoided each other’s eyes.
‘You can’t take them out to Dubai,’ Jonathan said. ‘The politics are terrible. They use slave labour. Muslims don’t like dogs. Plus it’s hot as hell, they’d hate it.’
‘But it’s just fine for me?’ James tossed an empty nacho basket at his brother, who ducked. ‘It’ll take six months to arrange anything so we’ll have time to think.’
‘I already have.’ Jonathan reached under the table and found Sissy’s head.
‘Shame they’re not kids,’ Max said, opening another beer. ‘We’d have a bestseller on our hands. Or at least a slot on Judge Judy.’
Jonathan looked miserable. ‘Can we not talk about this now? I’ve had a bad enough day.’
‘Best day of your life. You’ll see.’ Max raised his bottle in a toast. ‘Ninety-nine percent of all rejections involve someone you don’t like as much as you think, telling you something you should already have known.’
Jonathan rolled his eyes. ‘Oh yeah?’
Max nodded, gravely. ‘Yeah.’
‘How’d you get so smart?’
His friend grinned. ‘Night school.’
James put his arm around his brother. ‘At least you can talk again. That’ll prove useful in later life.’
Jonathan’s head lolled. The combination of rollercoaster levels of stress and strong alcohol was making him woozy. James and Max hailed a cab willing to take them all, getting the driver to stop at a liquor store on the way for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two six-packs. At home, Max and James continued a conversation begun more than a decade earlier about rejection, sex, women and life while Jonathan threw his velvet suit on the floor and collapsed into bed. Before he closed his eyes, he sat up and turned to Dante.
‘Just tell me one thing, you miserable hound. What’s happened to your relationship with Mark’s dog? Was it a real attraction, Dante? Because, just saying here, I don’t think it was. I don’t actually see you attracted to a German shorthaired pointer. Don’t look away. Really? You really wanted to get it on with an Abercrombie & Fitch dog like that? I bet she had absolutely no sense of humour. Go on, tell me. It was all a plot, wasn’t it? To break up our relationship? To break my heart? It was the owner you were after, not the dog. A German shorthaired pointer, Dante? You must think I was born yesterday.’ He fell back, then propped himself up on one elbow. ‘And anyway, why fix up Julie? If you didn’t like our relationship, why not fix me up with someone, a goddamned brain surgeon maybe, or a Supreme Court judge? You’re supposed to be on my side, thinking of my happiness. Bad dog.’
But Dante knew and Sissy knew and Jonathan knew that in actual fact he wasn’t angry, only tired and emotional and desperate for the day to be over.
Dante returned to his bed while Sissy scratched and pushed the wedding suit into a comfortable pile of wadded-up chocolate velvet, turned around on it three times, flopped down and went to sleep.
Having solved most of the problems of the universe, James returned to his hotel at 4am.
Max stayed and slept on the couch in case Jonathan needed him in the night.
29
Over two cups of strong coffee the next morning, Max suggested that Jonathan sit out the rest of his sick leave. No one but a fool hurried back to work, he said, especially if that work was advertising. But Jonathan was adamant. Blessed once again with the power of speech, he was anxious to rejoin humanity as soon as possible, even if that meant returning to Comrade, where gossip about his aborted wedding (not to mention a few million hits on YouTube) would surely have made him an epic laughing stock. Face the music, he told himself. Get back on the horse.
Max left Jonathan and went home to change, saying they’d meet at work and he’d hold his friend’s hand against a possible onslaught of ridicule and humiliation.
Jonathan headed first to Le Grand Pain where Clémence greeted him with exclamations of relief and joy. ‘But, I thought you must be dead! Or moved to a different country!’ She came out from behind the counter and hugged him. ‘Where have you been?’
He shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I don’t know, really. I had a breakdown and then my wedding imploded.’
‘Oh no!’ Clémence clucked with sympathy. ‘So much drama! But you’re better now?’ She frowned. ‘And you, darling dogs! I missed you all.’
‘Did you really miss us? Will you marry me now my girlfriend has ditched me?’
‘Luc would be angry, my darling. And you know, I don’t even know your name. Tell me your name now, so I know for the next time you have une dépression nerveuse.’
‘I thought I might stop at one.’
She handed him his croissants, smiling.
Jonathan stuck his nose in the bag and inhaled happily. ‘Do you think you might marry me if Luc died?’
‘Stupid boy,’ she scolded. ‘If something happens to Luc I will throw myself into the sea.’
‘What if he just had a black eye and two broken legs?’
‘Go,’ she said. ‘Take your coffee and come back soon.’
‘It’s Jonathan.’
‘OK, Jonathan,’ she said, and waved. ‘Goodbye, Jonathan! Goodbye, dogs!’
At work, everyone made a huge fuss over the triumphant return of Dante and Sissy, and to some extent him, though he noticed that a depressing number of screensavers featured him shouting ‘Duck zoo!’ over and over at Julie on a loop.
Greeley smiled at him but didn’t instigate a post-game analysis, which was a relief. Wes greeted him with as much genuine warmth as his personality allowed.
‘Welcome home, Jonathan. It’s never a happy time when a member of the team is indisposed. We all suffer until our comrade returns. So, welcome back to Comrade, comrade. Ready to tackle Broadway Depot again?’
Jonathan felt suddenly hot. So a nervous breakdown and the worst rejection of his life wasn’t enough to get him off the nightmare account from hell?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t go back to working on Broadway Depot.’
Wes clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Never mind. Let’s not talk about it right now. We’ve got an all-staff meeting this morning and then I’ll take you to lunch.’
Everyone filed in for the staff meeting, but Jonathan ducked out to the men’s room. He sat on a toilet seat with his head in his hands and realized he could not join the meeting. The thought of being a Comrade comrade made him want to throw up. His hands and feet felt numb. If I stand up, he thought, I’ll collapse.
He heard the door open.
‘Jonathan?’ It was Greeley.
He said nothing.
‘Jonathan?’ Greeley knocked softly on Jonathan’s cubicle.
‘Go away.’
‘Jonathan, listen to me. You have to leave Comrade.’
Jonathan clasped the sides of his head in horror. ‘You’re firing me? I have a breakdown, my girlfriend deserts me at the altar and then you fire me? Who does that?’
‘No one’s firing you. Not unless you commit some gross indecency, steal office machinery, embezzle funds. They’ll get you back working on Broadway Depot and before you know it you’ll be making good money and you’ll buy an apartment you can’t quite afford and by then you’ll have a nice new girlfriend and the two of you will want expensive vacations in countries featured in the New York Times travel section and eventually you’ll decide to have a baby, so you’ll need nannies and private schools and organic food and Baby Mozart because everyone else you work with has all those things and then you’ll need a Range Rover to drive them all around in and a house in the country and a Prius for the nanny and then you’ll discover you’re not happy so you’ll need a shrink, and your kids will have dyslexia and dyscalculia so they’ll need tutors, and anxiety disorders so they’ll need child psychologists, and you’ll hate your job more than ever but you’ll be trapped making the huge sums you need to cover the expenses of
your miserable life, counting down the days to retirement and your kids finishing college, so you can stop working at a job you despise and finally get some peace and quiet to do something, anything, you always wanted to do like paint or write or go fishing or just sit around reading a book.’
‘Look, Greeley . . .’
‘Then, in order to make yourself feel better about your wretched existence, you’ll fall in love with someone entirely inappropriate and have an affair or discover your wife’s been having an affair or you’ll get a bit too fond of cocaine and end up wired and divorced, having lost whatever money you have left, so your kids won’t speak to you, you’ll sink into a slough of despond just as you realize you’re far too old to be working in a life-wasting profession like advertising, so you’ll take your pension and downscale your existence and then one day, far too soon, after decades of doing the wrong thing, you’ll be dead.’
Jonathan leant his head against the wall of the cubicle and said nothing for a long time.
‘Greeley?’
‘Yes?’
He cracked open the toilet door. ‘You don’t entirely buy into the whole Comrade ethos, do you?’
Greeley shrugged. ‘I’m on a three-month contract. At the end of three months I’m leaving for an internship with the Forestry Commission. I’m doing this for the tuition money.’
‘Really?’
‘Really, what?’
‘You’re leaving that soon?’
‘Yup.’
‘What should I do, Greeley?’
‘It’s your life.’
‘I know it’s my life. What would you do with my life?’
Greeley sighed. ‘I’d stop trying to tie up all the loose ends, for one thing. I’d stop obsessing about what happens next. And in the meantime, I’d try to do something that isn’t shit.’