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... continued from previous chapter
I stage-coughed to advertise my sudden return to the workplace, desperate to spare my mentor the humiliation of being caught in the middle of an ugly cry.
There was no way to predict that my estimation of Susan – as a professional, as a woman and as a vertebrate life form – was about to fall from the weightless worship of my girl-crush universe and burn up upon re-entry to a harsh atmosphere of clear-eyed judgment.
Susan's open office door revealed an exodus in progress, four blue walls bare except for screws and nails staggered like sheet music where her clients' pictures once hung. Stacked flat on the floor in a wonky ziggurat, framed photos loomed beside a cluster of shard-shaped Perspex industry awards and several dead or dying ferns.
A series of thumps and crashes came from the office interior, followed by a burst of profane oaths. I recognized the swollen vowels of a Tyneside accent I'd not heard since the firm's Christmas party, when Susan butchered "One Love" on karaoke and blocked a terrified intern's airway with a medically invasive kiss.
I leapt to my desk and pretended to rummage for something left behind as Susan toddled into the foyer holding an empty copier-paper box, Burberry skirt stuffed down the back of her tights. She was absolutely bladdered.
Our gazes met. Her dead leaden eyes sucked the light out of mine.
Dear, I said. Your skirt's tucked up. Let me help.
She dropped the box. Planted her feet in a wide stance and extended her arms the way lads do outside nightclubs when doormen pat them down for hard drugs and sharp knives.
I held my breath against the boozy smell of ethanol and boiled-onion body odour. Stood behind Susan and hauled a yard of pleated wool from her elastic waistband. She twisted left, swivelled right and smiled like a child at her twirling skirt. Flung herself faster in a jerky circle, fanning her tartan thigh high and picking up speed until her ombre bob floated from her ears and she rolled an ankle.
Susan shrieked and sprawled over the desktop, sweeping my keyboard, monitor and telephone to the floor along with the coffee I'd poured earlier.
Cold quills of sweat stitched my scalp. My capacity for calm and ordered thought was overwhelmed as Susan howled like a stricken widow clutching a coffin. My orientation of self, the cognizant core of my soul was abruptly uprooted. It flew away to a comfortable perch overhead, somewhere higher than the ceiling but much closer than the clouds.
A woman who looked exactly like me stood frozen in the foyer of Prestige Media Accord, watching a shimmering blaze of fair-trade coffee soak into the grey carpet. She swam across the floor in slow motion. Locked the door, hung up my buzzing desk phone and helped Susan hobble to the settee in her office.
Sobbing behind her fingers, Susan transformed further from a solid to a liquid. I plucked at tiny buckles and removed her shoes. Her ankle resembled a lump of dough rising sideways under her screaming canary tights, and the sight of it snapped my fugitive singularity back to its point of origin behind my wide eyes.
I fetched a tea towel full of ice cubes from the breakroom. Plugged a microwaved mug of stale coffee into Susan's hands and patted her damp back as she recounted how Nathan and Naomi confronted her that morning to deliver an ultimatum. If Susan wished to remain part of the firm, she would issue a statement on Twitter announcing Prestige Media Accord was severing ties with Stephen Cowles, aka Sir Peanut Majestic.
The arch of Susan's lower lip buckled and broke.
Like fuck me you know? Susan croaked. He's not just some, some fucking client. His debut album paid for my house. I can't stand his wife, if she starves to death in the street I won't lose sleep but the man has children-
Aftershocks of emotion rattled Susan's hands to riot. I confiscated her dripping mug and she dissolved into the settee, posture in ruins, tits touching her waistline. She was a shell, crumpled and empty, like a mascot costume somebody would unzip, step out of and leave drooping in a changing room if they worked at a theme park based on my life and had just finished a sweaty summer shift walking around portraying Susan.
I removed a slippery mound of magazines from the seat of an imitation Eames. Pushed the chair close to Susan and sat down as she pawed at the coffee spots dappled across her lap.
'Til now, she said, I've had one regret in my career. Many many nineteen-nineties ago I lived in Los Angeles. And do you know what I did? Do you? Yeah. I passed on the chance to sign the fucking Pussycat Dolls. Are you a fan of The Pussycat Dolls?
No, I said. I find it very difficult to focus on more than one stripper at a time.
Susan cackled and clapped, leaking oily mascara tin man tears and pounding her good foot against the floor.
Oh my yes, she said. That's pure fucking belta. Tomorrow if I sober up enough to remember I was sacked I believe I'm actually going to miss you.
Hold on, I said. Now I know you must be joking. Susan I'm sure Stephen is a wonderful person. But if I'm being honest he's not an actual rapper, is he? I mean he's never penned a chart topper. He won't be remembered as, say, an insurgent poet on the order of Tupac. He's not even a sincere white disciple showing mad respect for the get-down like a Beastie Boy. Sir Peanut was a character. A fun flavour of the month. And big points to him for creating his own brand and making it pay, but his time is up.
Susan tenderly drew her feet onto the cushion beside her, unravelling my shoddy Girl Guide compress and spilling the ice. She grunted, doubled over herself to gather the tea towel and she farted. It was epic, lasting twice as long as a train takes to stop and I wanted to fucking die.
The storm passed. Susan wadded the tea towel in one fist, blew her crackling nose and carried on.
Two years, she said between sniffles. Two years I lived with Stephen. And for a time, very briefly, there was a baby on the way. But that didn't happen. So we didn't last. And now? I won't be the one to cast him out of the industry. But they've outvoted me again, the other partners. I've brewed up trouble before as I'm sure you knew. Or as you now know. As anyone could fucking guess really, right?
She rested her head on the cream-colored arm of the settee and closed her smudgepot eyes.
Boss, I said. Give those wankers what they want. You'll be in the best possible position to engineer a comeback for Stephen. Under the radar, like a shadow ministry, yeah? A few months from now, a year at most, the public will forgive or forget Stephen's sins. You continue developing me in your image until I become powerful enough to destroy you, then I take over this shithole office and redecorate. Everybody wins.
Susan laughed and rocked her head from side to side.
Today's meeting was not my first sit-down with Jekyll and Snide, she said. My performance at Christmas lifted a very sharp sword above my head. It's poised to fall the second I violate the firm's final-warning, get your shit together, sudden-death agreement.
And what does that mean? I asked.
Susan cracked the stiff edge of one hand across her upturned palm.
It means tamám shud, she said. The end. They'll buy me out with a non-compete clause. I'll be finished in the business, but my solicitor likes the numbers. Far from generous but more than fair, she said. So. I may immigrate to Ibiza. Invest in some hideous statement jewellery, grow fat as I like and live comfortably watching Spanish quiz shows until a horrified cleaner finds me dead on the sofa and soaps my fingers to steal my rings.
Susan slowly filled her lungs and sighed, losing air like a slashed tyre. She held an invisible inch between her finger and thumb. Peered at me through the gap and said:
We were close with this Five Ways booking. So very very close. Stephen's tweets were ancient history, totally benign and nobody cared. But now everyone's a damned thought cop. Their scrutiny on social media awakened some kind of cancer that's retroactively metastasized and killed his career.
Susan, I said. I truly believe if-
She pushed one rubbery hand in front of my face and I flinched. Her fingers folded into a quivering fist.
Stop your gobshite, she snarled. Fucking leave it.
My lower teeth set tightly against their upstairs neighbours. I took a breath, relaxed my jaw and chose my words carefully.
I need a slash, I said.
Susan fluttered a hand toward the doorway and nodded, a weary monarch granting her leave.
As I stepped through the debris field of her imploded career, my admiration for Susan came under siege from dark forces.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Alone in the lav I tried to scrape the insides of my heart for a remnant of compassion. Something to insulate my idealized image of Susan from a growing surge of negative current. The scene I witnessed, however, left me drained of any greeting-card goodwill.
My mentor was no longer suited to any useful purpose. She derailed her dreams for a dickhead, a man-child yo-yo whose last paying gig saw him wearing a zebra onesie, rapping in a Wotsits advert.
If she had failed in the undertaking of some great risk I would have saluted her as a maverick and sent flowers. But Susan wasn't a casualty of overreach or hubris. She chose to clip her own wings and walk among the other mortals with her eyes cast down. She was broken. Beaten. Afraid to fly for no good reason and I fucking hated her for it.
Icarus fell. That's what made him a legend. But he enjoyed a spectacular view on the way down.
In the dim hallway between the lav and Susan's office I prepared a verbal statement of resignation, choosing just the right words to make it sting. I found her snoring on the settee, knees tucked up and bottom hanging out, flushed face turned to the wall like Andy Capp in a skirt. I set to work at once and rifled her desk drawers.
Up top on the left, a jumble sale of cosmetics breath-mint tins and take-away sauce sachets. The drawer below was packed with neat rows of unopened hosiery organized by pattern and hue.
The shallow centre and top-right drawers were strictly business. I was not prepared for what I saw in the deep lower drawer on the right. It was a horror show, a filthy nest of tangled tights, stained or run through, puckered toes turned inside-out in a way that reminded me of smashed earthworms on wet pavement.
I probed the unsanitary mass with the rubber end of a pencil. The scarlet tops of a dozen Smirnoff pint bottles lurked beneath the surface, empty vessels branded with a black Sharpie X. I located Susan's unmarked half-full bottle of distilled soup du jour and dosed myself with a serving of courage.
My thorough violation of Susan's privacy jostled her mouse and brought her computer to life. The black screen blinked and sizzled. Burned bright and displayed correspondence between Susan and her solicitor, several unopened e-mails from Stephen Cowles and an interrupted rough-draft tweet on the firm's account.
An abandoned cursor flashed at the foot of three unfinished sentences:
Prestige Media Accord stands with all people of colour
Prestige Media Accord and Stephen Cowles have parted ways
It is with sadness that Prestige Media
_
And there it was. My Marian Moment was waiting for me inside a tiny glowing portal of negative space. I took another shot of Smirnoff and logged on to Ursari Global Consort's virgin Twitter account.
My agency's inaugural tweet warmly welcomed Sir Peanut Majestic to the UGC family of talent, and invited the media to attend his Monday press conference, location and time to be announced. I added the hashtag #CancelSirPeanut to rile the torch-and-pitchfork PC villagers and keep them in the loop.
In an interview with NME, Marian Moore expressed her disdain for the new generation of crisis PR professionals, specifically their failure to harness the raw power of negative thinking.
Have you noticed? They're actually afraid to fight for the client. Their first instinct is to roll over like a kicked dog and offer absurd apologies to "anyone who was offended", as they say. That literally means any individual who can invent a reason to take offense, never mind freedom of expression. And fuck logic and reason and humour and satire. To hell with everything we used to celebrate in British culture and entertainment.
I would ask those ministers of mea culpa: For whom do we write when we fill a page? To whom are we speaking when we tread the boards or stand before a camera? Who on Earth has the power to decree that artistic expression meets the standard of a personal assault?
Celebrity is a thirsty engine. It requires a constant supply of fuel, but it runs efficiently on outrage as well as adoration. Any competent publicist knows this. Think of the adage, 'there is no such thing as bad publicity'.
P.T. Barnum made that observation in the 1880s. Madonna proved it in the 1980s. Madge is a genius. She knows her foes have advanced her career in ways that a fan never could do.
Once upon a time, this job used to be fun. PR has become a children's party game where everyone must speak in code to continue playing. Mother May I, Simon Says. One wrong word and you're out.
While my first tweet trickled down to contaminate the groundwater of public opinion, I reviewed Susan and Stephen's Punch and Judy e-mail exchange. A hot blossom of shame opened under my stomach when I recognized my fluency in the sick dynamic they shared. It was the same language my father and mother spoke at home, an obscure dialect I was forced to learn through numbing immersion.
I knew how it felt to slowly smother under layers of weight created by things unsaid. I remembered how hard it was to defy a script written by family tradition, where hitting my mark meant standing in the chill of someone's shadow.
Then an extreme odyssey of challenge and failure forced me to quit my silent role. I developed the strength to author my own scenes. To move downstage and stand up tall in the strongest light.
For that and many other reasons I should have felt sympathy for Susan, as I had for my mother back when I still called her Mum. But my empathy went missing in action in Illinois. That situation required me to shut down crucial social components like humanity, grace and other delicate mechanisms that allow normal human beings to interact as friends and family.
By the time I noticed certain things were missing I was accustomed to operating without them. The evolutionary advantage I gained was undeniable. I didn't look back.
Susan would never stand up for herself if doing so meant standing alone. I decided I would intervene and do the old girl a solid by impersonating the bitch I knew she could become. I used her e-mail account to break the cycle of co-dependency and I wrote to Stephen.
The message I sent on her behalf was a brutal broadside, the sort of declaration a woman with a backbone would bang out in all caps if she understood that a stiff cock is not a magic wand that turns a mediocre man into a 'soulmate'.
I attacked Stephen's ability to provide for his children. I mentioned a brilliant colleague who owed me a favour, a woman who specialized in stabilizing careers in freefall.
I told Stephen where and when he could meet with his new publicist and warned him not to be late. For his children's sake.
Then I deleted the sent copy of my ghost-written manifesto, emptied the trash and blocked Stephen from responding to Susan's account.
For my closing act I hijacked Prestige Media Accord's Twitter. Congratulated Sir Peanut on his move to Ursari Global Consort and wished him well.
Susan was dangerously quiet. I crept to the settee to ensure she was still breathing. Her nose was up against the upholstery, pressed flat in an embroidered field of flowers but I could see her stained silk blouse rise and fall.
I tucked the pint bottle under Susan's chin like a miniature fiddle and fired the flash on my phone. Acquired a series of photos and a bit of video to guard against repercussions.
As a form of self-awarded severance I loaded my trusty H&M tote with supplies and threw in a selection of curio to remember all the good times. Sentimental fool, me.
I locked the office, slipped my keys under the door and called an Uber.
My driver was a proper gentleman. Tomasz held the car door as I ducked out of the rain and into the back seat. My top-heavy tote tipped over in my lap, dumping framed pictures to the floorboards in a shower of blue Biros and non-dairy coffee creamer pods.
He leaned in to help collect my stolen property, lifted one of the framed pictures and turned it right-side up in the light. It was an enlarged photograph of a much younger Susan at Glasto in a halter-top sundress, standing arm-in-arm with a sweaty Sir Peanut Majestic.
Tomasz's sapphire eyes flared. He tapped a calloused finger over Sir P's face.
Ho, he said. Is Sir Peanuts Majesty. Your friend?
My client, I said. I represent Sir P.
Tomasz got behind the wheel and guided the car into traffic.
You are solicitor? he asked.
I'm his publicist, I said. Have you heard his music?
Yes I hear on MTV, Tomasz said. Very funny. He sings the advert, Wot-iz-iczs candy but this stops. People don't like what he says.
For the second time that evening my braincase filled with a murky syrup of shock and disbelief. Pending a formal contract with his signature at the bottom I did not legally represent the professional interests of Sir Peanut, yet I was conducting a one-man focus group from the back seat of a rideshare. I couldn't pass up this organic opportunity to engage with the market and take the temperature of my client's brand.
Why do you suppose people are mad at Sir P? I asked.
His Twitters, Tomasz said. They want him to cancel for the racist talk. Anti-homoseckshule, some things like this. In Poland you can say, but here this makes problem. He will never work again.
Do you believe Sir Peanut can mount a comeback? I asked. Get people to like him again?
Is possible, yes, Tomasz said. Mistakes, we all make. Only God and Jesus Christ his son is perfect. You know Jesus Christ?
We've never met, but I'm familiar with his work, I said.
I repacked my tote, protectively sandwiching the photograph of Susan and Sir P between an autographed group portrait of Travis and a bug-eyed headshot of Bez.
I know is very personal decision, he said. But I can witness to you how Jesus Christ makes possible anything. Sir Peanuts, he needs Jesus. He could try this and he would know salvation in Christ make you more rich than money. Christ is-
Tomasz' testimony was cut off by a flurry of chimes ringing inside my purse. Not one or two or a few but a non-stop Christmas Dickensworth of sleighbells.
My heart tripped and raced. I juggled the four devices I carried and confirmed I had indeed powered down Susan's phone. It was not the source of the alerts.
Let me clarify. I did not steal a cell phone from a woman in crisis. I merely impounded it to prevent Susan from speaking with Sir P until I had a chance to sign him.
The noise was coming from my dedicated UGC social media phone. It was warm to the touch, blowing up like jungle drums with double-digit retweets, triple-digit replies and nearly fifteen-hundred followers.
I muted the ringer with a shaky hand. Thomasz' beautiful eyes flashed in the mirror.
Popular girl, he said.
Busy girl, I said. This is business.
Tomasz flicked his indicator and stopped in front of Majid's flat. I gave him a five-star rating and a generous tip. He held the car door and tucked a glossy Salvation Army pamphlet into my tote.
For Sir Peanuts, he said.
Majid ordered Chinese for dinner. I ate one egg roll and instantly became sick when I understood that I had chained my fate to Stephen's future, sink or swim. I had no guarantee he would show up for our meeting in the morning.
Alone in my room I paced laps around my couch-bed, attempting to evaluate Stephen's career through an unsophisticated parody of Susan's PR process. Without a seasoned team to inspire me, I could only look to the cracks in the ceiling, peer into corners and think about how far I would fall if I couldn't make this work.
I stood the picture of Susan and Sir P on the windowsill and unfolded the Salvation Army literature from Tomasz.
I was intrigued. Then I was spellbound. I sat on the couch and I read every word.
Somewhere inside my head a very big switch flipped and a bright light came on.
A local phone number was stamped on the back of the pamphlet. I dialled and spoke to a man with a military rank who said he knew Tomasz. He agreed to forward my number, and within twenty minutes my prophetic Pole was waiting for me in the street.
He logged out of the Uber app. I sat up front and for an hour we talked and drove around London. Once he understood what I was trying to accomplish, he took me to his favorite all-night delikatesy in Ealing.
We discussed salvation and forgiveness over strong coffee, poppy-seed buns and marmalade. Tomasz talked about his Grimm-noir childhood in Poland. He spoke of profound loss, survival and guilt. He shared his testimony as a born-again Christian, and in the middle of my fourth refill another switch flipped.
The light inside my head blazed like a sun. I had the answers I was looking for.
The night sky was fading to grey when Tomasz took me home. I woke Majid, gave him a takeaway cup of coffee and a toasted pieguski with butter and jam. He sat up, sparked a cigarette and tucked in, freckling his sunken chest with poppy seeds while I sat at the foot of his bed and told him all about my midnight revelation.
I laid out my smartest ensemble. Added Tomasz and Stephen to my Rolodex and sat by the window until it was time to get ready for our meeting.
My Marian Moment was over. The rest was down to me.
continued next chapter ...