Beta Male (14 page)

Still, in for a penny… I took out a Biro and told Rosie I had just set up a new email address: ‘[email protected]'.

‘Didn't like the dot-com address, then?' she said, taking the proffered bit of paper with a smile.

‘No. Thought I'd keep it local. UK-based, you know.'

‘I know.'

Phew. She knew.

‘Bye, then.'

‘Bye.'

I climbed into the cab and closed the door. There was a knock on the window. I wound it down.

‘And Max. Shall we do that lunch another time?'

‘Definitely,' I said, smiling to myself as the cab pulled away. I loved this new breed of young, confident women. I loved Rosie.

In the seat next to me, Ed stirred, fixing me with briefly comprehending eyes. ‘Max?' he slurred. ‘Why did she call you Max?'

‘It's all a game, mate. It's all one big stupid game.'

I took Ed ‘home', by which I mean my home, which was actually Alan's, or Alan's uncle's, or at least had been Alan's/Alan's uncle's before Matt moved in and became a squatter. Definitions had become a little blurred of late.

We arrived noisily, prompting Matt to burst out of his War Room. If he was surprised to see me in the middle of the day, accompanied by Ed in that state, he didn't show it. He quickly helped me take Ed's clothes off, gave him a shower and, after a brief argument, put him in Alan's, i.e. Matt's, bed to sleep whatever it was off.

‘It's just like the good old days back in A&E,' said Matt,
scrubbing his forearms – a little unnecessarily, I felt – with antiseptic soap afterwards. ‘Now, how on earth did you bump into him?'

I explained how my bizarre morning had seen me attend my own business meeting, get promoted from temp to chief executive, fall in love with Rosie and then cancel a business lunch in order to rescue one of our drunken friends from a square man. Matt listened increasingly open-mouthed, occasionally prompting and laughing. He was an excellent listener, Matt.

‘My word,' he said, when I'd finally finished. ‘It makes my own adventures today look quite lame.'

‘What adventures?'

Matt took me back into the War Room and closed the door so that Ed's snores grew fainter.

‘Remember that Spanish girl I showed you on here earlier this week?' He pulled up her profile on the laptop. ‘Bonita. Beautiful name. Beautiful girl, no? Looks fairly normal, right?'

‘Right.'

He flipped down the lid. ‘Wrong. She's a student at LSE, a very rich student judging by her online chat, so I asked if she fancied meeting up for a coffee this morning. She said she fancied it very much, which was a good start, as I fancied her very much, too. But then she suggested meeting at the Imperial War Museum, which I thought was, well, a little odd. But no matter; there's nothing wrong with being quirky, and at least we'd have something to talk about. Anyway, I turned up early so that my beautiful Spanish date wouldn't have to hang around waiting for me. Eleven o'clock came and went. Nothing. Half past eleven – still nothing. And all the while this strange dumpy creature sat on a bench nearby. I ignored her. In desperation, I actually approached three other passers-by, in full view of this girl, and asked them if they were Bonita. And can you guess who the real Bonita turned out to be? This strange dumpling, of course.'

‘That's embarrassing,' I said.

‘It wasn't the best start to the date. Still, I wouldn't have minded all that much if she'd turned out to be as friendly as she was online. You win some, you lose some, right? Looks aren't everything. We might have passed a pleasant hour together. But her first question was, “Do you want to go downstairs and look at genocide or shall we start on the first floor with the Holocaust?” After ten minutes, I bowed out, feigning an important work call, and returned here.'

Matt slumped down in his chair, apparently shocked to the core that people might twist the truth to present a better image of themselves online.

‘You need to get out more,' I said, gesturing at the low ceiling and limited light in the War Room. ‘This is not healthy.'

‘And what you're doing is?' he retorted.

‘At least I'm keeping my acting skills honed.'

‘I'm sure your next casting director will be delighted to hear all about your latest production.'

‘Science versus art. I think we're quickly learning which seduction technique is more successful.'

Matt stared vacantly at his laptop and didn't say anything.

‘Having said that,' I continued, ‘there is one vaguely scientific thing this artist could use a little help on.' I scribbled down an email address on a scrap of paper. ‘Can you make it so that any messages sent to this address are forwarded to my Hotmail?'

‘
[email protected]
? You actually are depraved, Sam. You can't really be serious about taking this further?'

‘I've never been more serious about anything in my life,' I said.

‘Even though you realise it will end in tears when she inevitably finds out?'

‘Tears of happiness, mate. I spoke to Claire on the way home in the cab – '

‘When are you just going to marry
her
?'

‘I spoke to Claire on the way home in the cab because I hadn't seen her for a while and thought she would be amused
by what had just taken place. Well, she was, as it happened. All the more so because she'd heard people talk about this Max character before. Until fairly recently, he used to go out with one of her colleagues who remembers him mentioning his business idea. Max Anderson-Bickley, chief executive of the Max House… Well, you don't forget a name or a company like that. Claire made a few enquiries and rang back to tell me that Max left the country recently at short notice – partly because he's under investigation for tax evasion, partly because he's just got a job advising a Russian oligarch in Abu Dhabi. So on that account, at least, it looks like I might be off scot-free.'

‘And what about his business, which you now appear to be running?'

‘I'll quietly tell Rosie that I've reconsidered the idea and have decided it's the sack of shit which she already knows it to be. Then I'll pretend to go back to my old banking firm, feign redundancy within a couple of months and tell Rosie I've decided to become the actor I've actually been all along. By that point it won't matter because she will have already fallen deeply and irretrievably in love with me.'

‘Genius,' said Matt. ‘Why don't you just tell her the truth now?'

‘Because, my slow-witted friend, it's both too late and too early: too late to own up because I've already gone too far down the Max route; too early to tell her I'm becoming the actor I already am because she hasn't yet fallen in love with me. We've started on a lie. I just need to work her slowly back towards the truth.'

‘And what makes you think she'll fall in love with you?'

‘We have a connection. Plus, she's after my “money”.'

‘And you're after hers. What a delightful couple.'

‘She's well-bred, charming, ambitious, intelligent and beautiful. She's clearly going to make as much money as she will no doubt inherit. What's not to like?'

‘And by the time you end up penniless, or rather admit to her that you're penniless, you think she won't mind because she'll never be able to leave you?'

‘Exactly.'

‘Sam, you're the most arrogant man I've ever met.'

‘Not arrogant, Matt. Just desperate. And I like a challenge.'

Matt smiled and swivelled back to face his monitor. ‘Okay, last thing I do in my War Room before I go and join the real world again.'

‘You're giving up on this bet?'

‘I didn't say that,' he replied, enigmatically.

After a couple of minutes of what Matt assured me was relatively simple computer wizardry, I had a new email address. ‘Let's check it out, shall we?' he said, sending an email from his own account to [email protected]. ‘Now, log on to your Hotmail.'

I logged on and duly found the empty test email from Matt with the subject line: ‘Cock'. We went for a celebratory pint. An hour later we returned and found a new email above the ‘Cock' one, from [email protected], with the rather more sober subject line: ‘Invoice'. Matt's technical wizardry had come just in time.

‘Dear Max,' read the sober email. ‘It was great to meet you finally this morning. Esbern has also asked me to pass on his best wishes. I hope you don't mind my sending an invoice so quickly, but our accounts department is very rigorous about this sort of thing at the moment. We're very much looking forward to continuing our working relationship with all relevant stakeholders going forward. Best wishes, Rosie.'

‘Fucksticks!' I buried my head in my hands. ‘
An invoice! A working relationship! Best wishes!
Fuckity fucksticks!'

‘Well, don't pay it,' said Matt, failing to hide his smugness that Rosie clearly didn't fancy me. ‘You don't owe them anything. Get out while you can.'

I nodded. But just as I was about to log off I noticed that the
genial Dane had been cc'd into this formal email. Above it had popped up another one, also from Rosie, but with the rather more interesting subject line: ‘Lunch II'.

‘Max, hello!' it started, which seemed to me an excellent way of formulating a greeting. ‘So good to meet you earlier. Esbern has just told me to send you a boring email about the invoice, but I wanted to drop you a quick personal line as well. Very sorry about our lunch. I'm holding you to a repeat. Hope your friend is okay. Rosie x.'

‘Matt,' I said quietly. ‘Let's open that invoice and see how much it comes to.'

‘No,' he said, attempting to delete it.

I pushed him out of the way and opened it. ‘Five thousand! For that poxy little presentation! Who has five thousand pounds?'

‘Max probably does.'

‘Bully for Max. I certainly don't.'

I had no money at all, in fact, I thought, slumping down in the spare chair. No money, no prospects, no career. Just a lot of debt. But I did have Rosie – or at least it looked as if I might be able to have Rosie. What if Rosie was my saviour? And if her price was five thousand, so be it. It was a small price to pay for salvation.

‘A small price, if it works,' said Matt. ‘For the record, I repeat that I really do think this will end in tears.'

‘Tears of happiness and liquid gold. You have to spend money to make money.'

‘And how do you know that?'

‘From my former high-flying career at Goldman Sachs.'

‘And where exactly are you going to get the money from?'

‘Now that is an excellent question.'

It was indeed an excellent question – and a weighty one, too, with which I bored Matt and myself rigid for the rest of the afternoon. If Ed hadn't still been passed out, I would probably have bored him as well, until he passed out all over again. Could
I just delay payment and let the interest rack up while hoping for a miracle? Or maybe I should get on to my useless agent and get her to land me another well-paid advert? Then again, she hadn't got me so much as an audition for months. So perhaps I should sack her and get a new one? Or set up Max's business myself? Or a better one?

‘For the love of God, please just give up on the invoice,' snapped Matt at last. ‘Or go back to Christian Mary.'

‘Christian Mary is not Perfect Rosie.'

We were just thinking of heading back out to the pub when my mobile rang.

‘Hello, Alan,' I said, answering it. ‘Do you have five thousand pounds you'd like to lend me?'

‘No, Sam, I don't. But I do have one hell of a problem at work.'

‘So are you going to fuck Amanda backwards or is she going to screw you sideways?'

‘That's really not funny, Sam,' said Alan.

But it
was
funny. It was one of the funniest stories I had ever heard. Of all the people to be sexually harassed in the workplace, Alan was by far the least likely candidate. Why couldn't I have a job with an attractive fortysomething boss preying on me? Life was unfair.

‘I reckon you report her to an employment tribunal,' said Ed, who was sitting on the sofa, dressed in Alan's pyjamas and clutching a bottle of headache pills.

‘I reckon you call her bluff and do nothing,' suggested Matt.

‘And I reckon you screw her.'

‘Sam! This is serious.'

Alan was right, of course. This was serious – certainly serious enough to warrant cancelling our Friday night plans and holding a four-way summit in the living room. But what was the poor guy supposed to do? Sleep with Amanda and ruin his relationship with Jess? Or turn down Amanda and ruin his career? Personally, I thought a great deal more of Alan's career than I did of his relationship with Jess. If I were in his situation, it would be a no-brainer. But you can't really say that to a best mate – especially when he's been with his girlfriend for eight years and has just got engaged. There is a small window of opportunity in the first three months of a friend's new relationship in which you can give your truthful, negative opinion. And they either thank you for helping them see the light and move on, or they ignore you, stay together and your own friendship is never quite the same again. Either way, I had missed that window.

‘More to the point,' said Alan, calling the meeting to order again, ‘why on earth does Amanda want to sleep with me?'

‘Now, that,' I said, ‘is the unspoken question on all our lips, and one to which I believe we have no answer. What the hell have you done to the poor woman? Is your office so starved of male eye candy that you actually constitute a catch? Are you Messrs January, February
and
March in the accountants' pin-up calendar?'

‘Maybe Amanda is one of those sex addicts you read about in magazines.'