'Have you even noticed my so insanely big mansion I don’t even know how many rooms there are right in front of your eyes, all built from scratch to my specifications with big-time monkey-yen and top dog dollars?'
Never Better by A. C. Goodwin
If there's anything I hate more than life insurance salesmen it's the way they're such complete hypocrites. When this guy comes to my door I think to myself 'You know what, Paul, the sad thing is this guy doesn't even know he's a hypocrite,' - but fortunately I've got the bona fide acid test to break his sales spiel.
'You're dying?' he squawks and stands there blinking in the sun like some kind of concussed vulture and I've got to say it's just beautiful to hear that slo-mo voice of his come all alive and do that little back-flip like he's thinking about my heart conking out on him right there and then, almost making it sound like it's my fault. Well Jeez, Bub, I just didn't know what to do, he'd tell the guys back at the office. He said he was dying and then he just goddamn went and died on me.
But he can't say that to me because as of now I'm an ex-potential customer and that still carries some weight in these modern times and he knows he got to give me something to keep this professional.
So he gives me this shitty little cough ('ah-hem') then tells me that 'that does make things a bit more complicated.'
Ok, let's take a step back and view this in the abstract - it's an awkward moment for him because a) he's standing on my doorstep in this cheap polyester grey suit, flashing this fake black leather suitcase and he's sweating his balding pate off and b) he doesn't know I'm lying. Ergo therefore, he looks like a bin bag but you've got to feel sorry for the guy: no-one's dying. And ok sure it's complicated - life's complicated - but does he ever need someone to ask him the big one, someone to deliver the all-time life-changing knockout blow and it's damn well going to be me.
'Why?' I say. Just like that.
But that patsy little face of his actually fucking brightens. Only why? he's thinking, Oh God, he thinks he's got why all locked up in his briefcase like lunchmeat in his sweaty whitebread sandwich. Why is safe territory for this hearse hound; why is an old leather easy chair and a peaceful evening half-cut on decent whiskey; why is money & stats; why makes sense, it's been worked out, calculated: why is all premiums, medical records, future expectations, fluctuating valuations, collateral...
- I know, I'm not listening either. He's on auto-pilot now and it's pissing me off. I think the major thing is he's forgotten is that he's talking to a businessman and not just any third-rate, cholesterol-ridden businessman he can jump in a café with a few half-remembered quotes from The Actuarial Review but one with an insanely profitable global affair with top contacts in all seven continents. I was to grab his little mechanical face and say look at me, Mr RoboBalanceSheet, I have Sherpas doing spread sheets after their third ascent of the day and there are Amazonian tribes who can't speak English but still get off their tanned arses and sacrifice a frog in my honour and Bonobo monkeys palm-walking their company palm pilots and even the fucking penguins have blackberries with my direct line. Have you even noticed my so insanely big mansion I don't even know how many rooms there are right in front of your eyes, all built from scratch to my specifications with big-time monkey-yen and top dog dollars? Take a look at everything and get the big picture that if anyone knows anything round here, it's me.
And I know that behind all his big maths talk and the stats of life there's something else driving that motor-mouth of his. Something big, something dark, something fearful. So I do him another favour, I tell him the one thing he really needs to hear.
'You can't accept we're all going to die,' I say.
He looks confused, but I'm not surprised because I'd be confused if I was as stupid as him. I see I'm going to have to spell this one out.
'I want to buy life insurance...' I say.
'But - '
'...I'm dying, yes. You do expect people to die sometime, don't you? Just because they don't fit into your pretty little sums you can't expect them to live forever. I want life insurance, not life ensurance.'
Now that's what you call a fucking distinction, Paul! Right between the eyes!
'We never sell policies to the terminally ill,' he says, his face tightening. 'It's counter-intuitive.'
'Counter-intuitive? So what am I supposed to do, then? Die without insurance? What kind of a life is that?'
I think that's pretty funny, but he doesn't laugh; he's probably missing that half of his brain.
'The problem with people like you,' I tell him because he doesn't look like he's getting it all that good and in fact he looks as if he's having some kind of intellectual aneurysm right now, 'is that you're small-minded hypocritical idiots who don't realise that one day it'll be their turn to die and they'll have lived their whole life lying to other people and lying to themselves. And you just can't accept that, can you?'
He shifts his briefcase between hands, almost drops it. I bet he hasn't even got anything in it. How can you sell life insurance anyway?
Then my hot wife and ex-cleaner Coconut turns up but in such a disgusting dress that I almost want to pretend she's still my cleaner so I don't look ridiculous in front of the insurance idiot - and I don't even care what he thinks, that's how bad this dress is. But I know that's not what being a husband's about: you have to be sensitive in this game.
'Where have you been?' I say.
'Out,' she says.
'You don't look that great. Why aren't you wearing that dress I got you?' It's a really great dress, cost an absolute bomb. 'You know how much that thing cost?' I say.
She looks at her feet.
'It doesn't fit.'
'Bullshit,' I tell her. 'They have your measurements.'
She doesn't say anything, then she looks at me in this indecipherable way women get when they've been with a guy for a while. You'd think it would get easier to read them - there are only so many facial muscle combinations, right? - but it only gets harder.
'What do you want me to do?' she says. 'Clean in it? When do I get the chance to wear it? You're always...'
The insurance guy ah-hems again. We look at him. He doesn't do anything.
'Well,' I say, 'let's do dinner tonight. The Ivy good enough for you?' She looks at me like some kind of brain-damaged goldfish, and I don't know what to do with that.
'You know The Ivy?' I say to the insurance guy instead.
'Never been,' he shrugs hopelessly.
'Great, then it's a date,' I say to Coconut, and shut the door in his face.
After I've got rid of the insurance guy I drop my mother a line, just to see how she's doing.
'Hey, Mother,' I say.
'Oh, hi Paul,' she says, and the line sounds crackly these days. I'll get it checked out as soon as I'm not mid-coitus or mid-deal, and it's always one or the other these days.
'You ok?' she says.
'Oh yeah,' I say. 'Yeah, I'm great Mother, just fine. How're you doing?'
She takes a breath which rattles down the line and says, 'Fine, just fine. Don't you worry about me Paul, don't you worry at all.'
A few hours later, me and Coconut have made up: I've forgiven her for her behaviour in front of the sales goon. I don't want to make anyone blush, but it's been a physical reconciliation. She's got this skinny Polynesian thing going on and she smells like some kind of wildflower I suppose but I'm not too good with flowers. She was a cleaner I took from the agency with not one reference apart from the bazookas strapped to her chest, and one day she's cleaning the cupboard door of the breakfast bar and she's leaning over (and now I think of it what kind of a cleaning outfit was that?) and suddenly we're married. (Of course Mother didn't approve but I don't have to justify myself to anyone.) And soon as I blink she's had a couple of kids, weedly little things and then and there I decide that no way am I wasting any energy on these two drips, they can learn to fend for themselves just like I did except I bet they never have the guts to set up their own business and make a success of their life like I have.
So we reconcile passionately, and afterwards we're lying on the bed (although you know we do it everywhere, you understand, but this time it was the bed) and the sun is setting and the room's looking all golden like some kind of ripe banana and she turns to me and says:
'Sweetie, I can tell something's on your mind.'
And she leans that little hazelnut-coloured face of her's on that smooth shoulder and looks at me with those cool eyes like the Pacific and she tugs my arm gently in her sexy way and says:
'Why don't we spend a bit more time together? Why don't we go on holiday?'
I think it's pretty impressive I manage to keep my cool under the circumstances. I stop the conversation right there, and we go through the physical motions again. I'd like to be modest about my achievements in this department but the fact is we're having complaints from not just next door but the whole street, and this is another world-class performance from the Paul and Coconut Sexual Philharmonic.
I've never been better.
I don't want to drive it home how great everything is going for me at the moment, how fantastic life is if you're me in this double aftersex glow of a summer's afternoon. I know that most of the people in the world are just sitting there, maybe in some little six roomed suburban affair; creased shirts; aching computer eyes; poor audiovisual equipment with no pool; no exotic, nymphomaniac wife; no multimillion turnover business with top contacts.
But I have an old friend called Turner who lives that kind of life. He's pretty fat but we go all the way back, right before I made it, and somehow my enormous success has never stopped me being able to pick up the phone and call him. He even came and lived here for six months after he got fired from his job until I found him this great little position in this publishing company. I know he's probably a little bit flattered that I'm making the effort to keep in touch, what with my lucrative commitments and all, but I try and keep it as down-to-earth as possible, real man to man stuff.
So that evening I call Turner up to tell him about a little theory I've been thinking about since the life insurance guy came over. I say:
'Turner, I've got something important to say about Death. Oh no, believe me, Turner, I know what must be going through your mind now. I'd feel the same way, I'd be thinking "I'm going to have to sit here and try to watch the football on mute and listen to a grown man get all weepy because he can't accept the facts of life, and remember to make all the right sounds but not say anything and remember not to cheer when they score". But that's not what this is about, Turner. You know me: I don't do cliché. Yeah, death's sad, but it's also a fact. I know that, Turner. The only thing you can do with facts like that is deal with them. Accept it....Wait, hold on Turner. I've got Coconut on the other line.'
'You can answer it,' Turner says.
'No, no. I don't want to cut you off; I'll call her back. She probably just wants to me to send the driver out to pick her up. I'll do it later. She should learn some independence.'
'If you say so,' says Turner.
'I do say so. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I meant to say Stop with the flouncing. Move on with your life for chrissakes, Turner, because no-one gives a fuck about what you're going through. Do you hear me, Turner? Don't let it get under your skin, because no-one cares. Don't let it fuck everything else up for everyone else. People die all the time, but it doesn't have to be that whole charade. Don't get things the wrong way around, Turner, don't get hysterical on me. Hold on. Be in control. Like we need all this inspective bullshit these days to cope with being human, Turner, you hear me? To cope with the fact that we might actually fucking die someday, surprise surprise. Don't be an idiot, Turner. Don't insult my intelligence. Putting down the toilet seat, that's what I call fucking closure. Don't be pathetic, Turner. Shit it out, be the bigger man. Don't just sit there, crying into your post work beer as you watch the game, Turner. Your team are rubbish anyway.'
Then Turner asks me, 'So, Paul, is business good?'
And I say 'Fine, fine. Everything's fine, Turner,' and hang up.
I've got a feeling I wasn't all that clear with Turner, not as clear as it was in my head before I called him anyway, but I've got bigger things to worry about, like business. Of course the truth is business is better than fine, I just didn't want to depress Turner with the details. Because at this time of night I'm super busy, hyper busy, total busy, I'm like some kind of medium for business.
And after I speak to Turner I'm making calls all night long from my home study, widescreen on low, a few bottles and some uppers to see me through the night trading on the dark side of the globe. I got a great view of the pool and the garden, and I just sit there calling Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore - hell, name some other exotic places, I'm probably calling them - and I'm thinking about how I'm going to give the Coconut a wild time later tonight just to show there's no hard feelings and then Timbuktu picks up and I say 'Hey Bong-Bong, what price have you got for me tonight for that jungle lumber? Well, that just isn't good enough is it?' and you know, I've got major, major deals going on everywhere, I'm at the heart of every single one of these fuckers, I'm closing and I'm opening like some brothel's contingent of whores on a tight schedule, and after the last major one goes down in China I sit back and look out at the garden and feel my pulse and think about how great everything is. Even my garden is great. I have these floodlights, these one kilowatt monsters mounted on the back of my house, and they don't even reach the end because my garden's that long - it just goes all grey and fuzzy right at the back and your eyes just can't penetrate the gloom. I've spent hours trying to see through it, and you just can't. I know what's there, of course: I've seen it in the day. Of course I've seen it in the day, it's my garden after all - I own it all, doesn't matter whether I can see it or not at night - I still know it's still there, I know that somewhere in the darkness and shadows there's a compost bin Alan the gardener uses and a ten foot high brick wall painted with anti-climbing paint and a security camera.
But as I'm sitting there, kicking back after the last call and trying to see the end of the garden and enjoying not being able to, when suddenly I can. Without my seeing the join the floods have faded in the morning light and I can see the end of my garden. It's another day, and I feel euphoric, like I've made it all by myself and my energy's making the sun rise...
I take out my mobile phone and there's a message from our family doctor (family: he's so wet behind the ears you can practically smell the placenta), but I never listen to his messages. I always call the doctor to tell him about the waves of euphoria I experience, but I don't know why he thinks I would want to listen to him talking about my waves of euphoria. They're mine, not his. I decide to call him about this current tsunami I'm having and I call him repeatedly but there's no answer - doesn't he have an answering machine?
I hear the birds outside the window where I'm sitting looking at the pool and I look at my watch and I realise it's still only four am.
I'll try him again at six, I've got his home number somewhere.
My wife leaves the next day with the kids and I can't say I'm not a little shocked. That morning she was all funny with me about last night and missing The Ivy and her waiting in the cold for hours until Turner called her on the off-chance I might have forgotten and gave her a lift back, and then it went bona fide Nagasaki. But you know how it is: they don't say a squeak and then it's all pre-packed luggage and joint accounts and lawyers-at-arms with some typed out accusation. Most times I try and write it off as her Pacific temperament because I think she probably needs these tropical storms as part of her diet, but this time she kept coming out with things which made me think she must have been fucking hallucinating because whoever she's getting worked up about it's not me.
And so I try and calm her down in my best, calm, slow English way.
'What is this all about, darling Coconut?'
I'm not going to bore you with the stuff that she came out with because I can see from your face that you've heard it all before. You know what I'm talking about. Times like these, there is only one script everyone uses, the same whining and moaning, the crazy allegations coming from leftfield, the stored-up grievances charged and fired right at your face. She can't even finish a proper sentence, she just says:
'I can't...Why can't you...All they want is a little...You've ostracized...'
I leave the room at that point and get a dictionary because you've got to know what you're dealing with, you've got to understand the charges. I'm impressed: she couldn't even speak English twelve years ago when we first got married, but ...ah, here it is, ostracized.
No, I think she's made a mistake, but that's understandable.
'Ostracized?' I inform her. 'What the hell are you talking about, Coconut? How can you say I've "refused to associate" with you? What's that supposed to mean? We've got two fucking kids!'
'You never...' she says.
The phone rings and I pick it up.
'Hello?' I say.
'Pawl?'
'Ah,' I say to her, 'it's just that ass-kissing Jap Sam Sung who wants to kiss my ass about doing that deal and saving his family and giving his wife and brood of malnourished kids a few more bowls of rice to see them through the lean harvest or something. But hold that thought,' I say to her. 'I'll be with you in one second.'
Would you believe it, when I next look round ('Bad news, Pawl') sweet little Coconut is looking at me and she's actually crying like one of those big splish-splashy paintings of blue and green I bought her to make her feel more at home because she said they reminded her of the sea, and I can feel the euphoria tightening in my chest...
After she's left I call Turner and I'm talking about her and how she's walked out on me when he says:
'Jesus, Paul, try and calm down, will you? You sound like you're cracking up.'
I take a breath to compose myself and try not to get too hot, and I say:
'Cracking up? What the fuck are you on, Turner? I've never been better. People are bidding for pints of my blood on the internet because they want a little of what I got. My doctor's even trying to remove me from his list because I'm in such good shape. You need to sort yourself out Turner, you need to stop taking those breaks. You forgot I let you sleep on my white leather Italian sofa for six months even though Coconut said you smelt funny when she was still cleaning and bending down with those nukes on her chest about to ballistic on me? Don't give me this crap, Turner. Just don't give it to me. You tell me to take a break, but you were the one who was broken and I had to put you back together. I'm holding everything together, and maybe that's some kind of superhuman strain people like you and Coconut can't stand, but I expected more of you.'
'What the hell are you talking about?' says Turner.
'You know what I'm talking about,' I say.
'No, I don't,' says Turner. 'No-one knows what you're talking about.'
'Then let me spell it out for you,' I say. (Christ, everyone needs it spelt out these days.) 'Let me spell it out for you since one moron's enough for this conversation.'
'Wait, is this about Celia?' he says.
It takes me a while to realise he's talking about Coconut.
'What?' I say. 'No, of course not. This is about me and how you feel threatened by how great I'm doing and...'
This strange sound comes down the line, roughing my ear up like a torn drum being beaten. It takes a few seconds before I realise that Turner is laughing. He's laughing at me.
I hang up and throw the phone across the room, not because I'm out of control; I'm in control. When I pick up the receiver there's still a dial tone (in control) so I call my Mother and say:
'Mother, how are you doing?
'I'm fine,' she says.
'That's great. That's really...great. Hey, you know Turner, don't you?'
'Of course you've told me about Turner,' she says, 'you're always talking about him. Sweet boy, isn't he?'
'He's a fucking asshole!' I shout, and then I'm ashamed because what the hell am I doing taking all this out her?
So I say, 'Look, Mother, I'm doing fine, really fine...'
But the phone cuts out, and I can't get the dial tone again. I remind myself to get the line checked first thing and I hang up.
In the afternoon after Coconut and the kids have left the house is so quiet and the sun's just touching the horizon and you can see it all the whole garden and where I'll put the new conservatory when the deal with Sam Sung comes through with a Jacuzzi for Coconut and maybe even some kind of mini-gym for the boys to work out on with me, father and sons, and I'm sitting by the pool with a whiskey and my mobile phone.
I see Alan walking at the end of the garden.
'Hey Alan', I shout. 'How's the garden doing? When are those dolphiniums going to do their thing? Coconut loves dolphiniums.'
But he doesn't hear me, just slopes off to his poky little shed. I don't let it get to me, because I've got so many more important things to worry about, and there's one thing I've got to do to set my soul at rest. It'll cost me something I know, but at times like these you've got to be the bigger man, put things right that went wrong before.
I pick up my mobile and call Turner. I need to tell him what a complete asshole he is and he should never forget the times when he'd pass out drunk on my sofa and piss himself and how Coconut would hover round him and feel sorry for him, how I rescued him but that shouldn't get in the way of us being friends. An olive branch, if you're the sentimental type, even if I'm not.
It rings and my wife answers.
'Paul?' she says.
I check the number. It's Turner's.
'Listen,' she says, 'Paul, just listen for a minute. Me and Turner, we...'
I hang up.
It's late at night when I snap back into myself, when I feel the goose-bumps shivering all over my skin and my muscles gone stiff. I throw the rest of the whiskey in the pool, and go inside.
I come back out with the house phone and throw that in the pool as well. I'll never get it fixed, and I don't care if Sammy Sung Ping Pong is trying to call across twelve time zones in the middle of his paddy field with his new satellite phone; 'Ah, Mister Pawl, it's awl ok now. You save family, we your eteranl swaves. Forever gratitude.'
I don't care if it's that whore-cum-glorified cleaner - and boy, is that pre-nupt going to come in handy - don't care if she saying she's sorry, she's sorry and when can she come home? She made a mistake? She'll never leave me ever, ever again? If it's Billyben or Bennybill saying, 'oh Daddy, we miss you so.' Whatever.
I call Mother, and she asks me, 'Paul, are you ok? It's four am...You sound...' and that's my Mother, she can tell. She can see right through me.
'I'm fine,' I say. 'I'm great. I'm just fine. Fine,' and I hang up.
A few months go by and I'm walking down the street one day when I see Turner and my wife (my ex-wife) in that dress (that expensive dress), and the boys, two, three, four of them, I stop counting, whatever. I cross the road.
I'm crossing the road when my phone rings, and for the first time in ages I feel like answering it. I stop in the middle of the road, and the traffic does the angry hornet imitations, but I'm damn well going to take this call.
"Paul?' comes the squeaky voice of our pre-pubescent family doctor through the sound of the blaring, paralysed motorcade.
'Yes?' I say. 'What is it?'
'You haven't been responding to my messages.'
'So? I feel fine.'
'It's not you, Paul, it's your mother. Paul...'
I have to hang up because a) I just can't hear him anymore over the petrolheads and b) I know things are ok. O.K.
A.C Goodwin studied English at Bristol University and now lives in London. He is working on a short story collection.
Friday, 25 June, 2010
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