to ink the paper! But no, as usual, you’ve got to have your own way. Your idea has to be the one we go with.” The your came as a sneer.
I was, well, I was astonished. Oliver and I had had our spats over the years, always about work, but on balance it was generally his ideas that went through. The split was about sixty-forty in his favour.
“This is stupid…” I said, beginning to lose some of that cool just a little bit.
“Don’t call me stupid!” he came back. “You’re the one who’s stupid.” His eyes were wide; he was staring at me in a way that was somehow familiar. His knee jerked as the heel of his toe-cap continued to punish the carpet.
“Ollie, I’m not calling you anything. Look, let’s just ease up, give ourselves a break. Maybe carry on early tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep.”
“Fuck you,” he said, reaching behind him for his cigarettes on the bureau top.
As he looked away I suddenly remembered why that wildness in his eyes had seemed familiar. Without another word, I rose and strode towards the shared bathroom.
Cigarette halfway to his lips, he noticed I’d left my chair. “Where the fuck are you going?” I heard him say.
Ignoring him I went into the bathroom and did not bother to close the door behind me. A black-marble shelf containing two basins ran beneath the full length of the long wall mirror and I squatted so that its surface was at eye level. I moved over to the second basin, studying the smooth, flecked marble beside it and saw exactly what I feared might be present: a small amount of scattered granules of fine powder and smears where Oliver had gathered up some of the residue with a damp finger to wipe into his gums.
Just to make perfectly sure, I licked the tip of my own finger and dabbed it on the hard marble surface, then tasted it. Although rarely one for any kind of drugs, I had tasted cocaine before, and this was the real McCoy. Oliver was doing blow again.*
*Sydney had taught me how to spot this years ago when we first suspected Oliver was a user. Unlike the cokeheads and their habits you might see in Hollywood movies, addicts who bend over glass tables or flat mirrors to snort cocaine, one finger closing a nostril while the other provides passage to the nose’s inner membranes, leaving a slight residue of fine powder like dandruff on a dark suit, coke is never wasted this way. It’s too expensive to leave even the smallest spillage. No, true addicts will always tongue-damp a finger so that it picks up whatever’s left. They will either lick their finger again as though it was some kind of narcotic lollipop, or will rub the substance into the gums. Where drugs are concerned there is no wastage. Doesn’t happen.
I stormed from the bathroom to confront my friend.
“You silly bastard!” I told him.
His turn to freeze for a moment. The flame from his lighter hovered a couple of inches away from the cigarette, then was extinguished without completing the job. He glared back at me, but said nothing.
“You told us you were finished with drugs. Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?”
“All right, all right, okay, okay. So what if I am back off the wagon? Where’s the harm?”
“It nearly broke the partnership before!”
“You remember what Sinatra said: A nip every now and again pulls you through the day.”
“I saw the movie; he was talking about booze, for fuck’s sake.”
“Same thing, chum.”
“The hell it is.”
“Same thing and no hangover.”
“It’ll ruin you.” I shook my head in dismay.
“So will constant work overload. Besides it sharpens me up.”
“Sometimes,” I told him, “it makes you think the crappiest idea is awesome.”
“Hey, I give you good copy.”
“No, Oliver, you don’t. Trouble is, you don’t know it when you’re high. Don’t you remember how strung out you were before?”
“You’re exaggerating, chum. I can handle it.”
“Don’t fucking call me chum.” Maybe it was the “chum” usage that made me a little bit cruel. “You lost Andrea, remember that?”
I didn’t like the dark grin he gave me. Nevertheless, I softened my tone.
“You promised you’d quit, Oliver. You’re letting us all down, but mostly yourself.”
“Ah, fuck it!” An ugly snarl accompanied the curse. “It’s my problem, not yours.”
“No, it’s our problem. We’re the ones who have to deal with it.”
Anger spoiling his good looks, he jumped to his feet, shoving the lighter back into his pocket and tossing the unlit cigarette onto the carpet.
“You know what you can do with the agency.”
“Hey, c’mon.” Even though I was more than a little annoyed I raised both hands placatingly. “You don’t mean that. See, this is what happens when you’re doing coke. It makes you bloody schizophrenic.”
“At least I’m not the one that’s holding the agency back. You were frightened to pitch for this account until Sydney and I persuaded you. Even worse, you’re scared of tying in with a bigger agency so that we can expand.”
I felt the skin of my face tighten. “Let’s leave it there, okay? I don’t want to get into this right now.”
“No, Jim, ‘course you don’t. Let’s face it, chum, you don’t like change, you never have.”
I could have pointed out that we’d built the agency together, account by account, and I was equally a prime mover in everything we had achieved; but it wasn’t worth it—it was no good talking common sense to him when he was in one of these stupid moods. He had been hitting the bottle all evening, first emptying the miniature whiskies from the mini-bar, then ordering a bottle of Black Label from room service, while slipping into the bathroom every so often for cocaine hits. And I’d thought he had a bladder problem.
“We’re both tired,” I said evenly, grimly aware that there was no point in trying to reason with him. Alcohol and coke were a bad combination. “Let’s call it a day, carry on tomorrow morning when I’m fresher and you’re straight.”
“Why? You think that’s going to change anything? You’ll still be holding me back, as ever.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Oliver.” I refused to rise to the bait, suspecting the bitterness of his words had more to do with whisky than powder. “Enough for tonight, okay? We’ll start again in the morning.”
“You won’t change your mind though, will you? You still won’t agree to a merger.”
“This isn’t the time to discuss it!” I shouted back at him. I wanted to give him a smack, wipe the supercilious smirk from his face. Instead, I said through suppressed anger, “I’m turning in and I think you should do the same.”
“What?” he raised his arm and peered at his wristwatch. “Going to bed at half-past eleven. Well I’ve got better things to do.”
He grabbed his jacket hanging over the back of a chair and tramped across the sheets of layout paper towards the door, crumpling them, leaving scuff marks over my Pentel visuals.
“Oliver, don’t,” I called after him. “This is bloody silly.”
“Fuck you,” he said as he pulled open the door to the long hallway beyond and turned to give me a contemptuous look. Never before had he regarded me with that kind of expression and I was shocked. He looked as if he could kill me.
Then he was gone, slamming the door behind him, and that was the last time I saw Oliver while I was alive.
12
Maybe it was the vodka, then the brandy, then the gin I’d consumed from the mini-bar that made my OBE so confusing; I’d downed them all in rapid succession after Oliver had left the suite.
Now on my own, surrounded by trampled layouts, I’d grown more and more angry. Trust Ollie to walk out on me when there was so much work to be done by Monday. And trust the fool to go back on his word that he’d keep off drugs for good. Now our partnership was in jeopardy all over again. I needed a copywriter who could judge what was good and what was awful. I needed a business partner who could think clearly when important decisions had to be made. I thought Ollie had learned his lesson from last time around.
