The time is now monica s.., p.2
The Time is Now, Monica Sparrow, page 2
‘And you are buzz less.’
Monica could not ascertain if that was a question or a statement.
Without answering, Monica got up and headed towards the kitchen, slipping through the familiar maze of furniture and boxes like a mountain goat on a well-trod trail. Diane followed, bumping into a stack of crates and knocking over a floor lamp. She was less able to steer cleanly through the tight canyons in Monica’s house than she once might have, but didn’t give a toss.
Diane had recently been compared to an actress in Mad Men. The voluptuous one, she assumed. Apparently, several of her husband’s work colleagues had commented on the likeness. It was meant as a compliment, of course.
Leaning against the doorframe, Diane watched her sister busy herself locating the elements required to produce two cups of coffee. She grudgingly conceded that softer eyes and sweeter demeanour (not that these attributes were particularly important) fell into Monica’s column. What else? Diane decided she was being kind by not scoring them on negative traits like fragility and melancholy. All these her younger sister owned convincingly.
Monica sensed Diane’s scrutiny; it was as if she was trying to pin down what had happened to her once adored baby sister. And yet Diane was not someone Monica recognised either. They had shared so much once, now they only shared what they no longer had.
For far too long the only conversations they’d had of any length were when Diane called late at night, and Monica, behind the rambling, could make out the clicking of a cigarette lighter, then the twisting of a bottle cap, followed by the gurgle of liquid, first into a glass, then down Diane’s throat.
Monica and Diane never acknowledged these phone calls, which erupted every few months, when they saw each other. Monica assumed her sister was home alone when she made them.
Diane assessed the refrigerator door, the only part of the house remotely orderly. ‘Why have you circled this day on the calendar?’ Diane pointed at next week. Monica caved, giving up the upcoming ‘bereavement through misadventure’ group instantly. Diane had, of course, a few things to say, ending with, ‘Monica, you really are as needy as a comedian.’
Monica slid Diane’s cup of coffee into a hastily created space on the kitchen bench. She watched her sister sashay towards it, then once again reproached herself for judging Diane so harshly; after all, she thought, it was me who killed our brother.
5
Xavier
Xavier flipped his body over one more time. The single, very hungry mosquito was still whining in his ear. He dismissed the fleeting thought that discarding the flyscreens might have been a bad call.
The restless night had given him plenty of time to think and it had occurred to him at some point shortly before birdsong that he may well be hoarding an entirely superfluous second rack inside his rarely operated cooker.
Since moving into his flat just on a year ago, Xavier had slowly whittled down the number of unnecessary items and fixtures it contained. Occasionally Xavier feared he was completely lacking in nostalgia. Then he’d remind himself: had he not kept the same unused spice rack and still empty acrylic photo frame through all the purges? One for what was, the other for what might be. Not a complete cold fish after all, huh!
It was still quite dark out. Xavier congratulated himself on not immediately succumbing to the urge to ensure the cooker was not overburdened with racks. To distract himself from the almost overwhelming desire to wrench open the oven door, he created a list of things he needed to do that day. Not on paper, of course, but in his mind.
The best part of creating a list was demolishing it. He’d acquired the passion when first conscripted to work in his family’s furniture removals business, at sixteen. Swift Removals catered to the well-heeled, who generally insisted on itemising their possessions to ensure that the no-doubt dunderhead removalists loaded every last thing from the house into the trucks and unloaded it all at the intended destination. Crossing off each item as it was carried into its new home was joyous. And ripping up the list was cathartic.
First thing was to check inside that pointless, yet frustratingly well-secured, oven.
The redundant oven rack, as unnecessary as household contents insurance, would go out with this week’s rubbish. Xavier briefly felt unburdened, a fix that was ever harder to attain. Though it was nothing like the buzz he got each year when he enjoyed a streamlined entry into daylight savings. Nothing to be attended to. No microwave’s clock, not a thing.
Xavier dropped his phone, the smallest one that he’d been able to buy, into his Tuesday pants’ front pocket, along with his sole key – to the building’s front door. Not for him a second lock to secure the apartment. With no blinds to draw, appliances to check or animals to farewell, he slipped out the door. If anyone wanted to take what remained, let them.
Before he could make it outdoors, Olga – blue-haired Russian émigré, ninety at least, ground floor – hit him up. She needed him to shift an armoire away from her bay window to a shadier corner of the front room. Olga had cleared the space in advance so as not to overly delay Xavier; the next Number 16 was barely five minutes down Cricklewood Broadway.
Xavier’s shoulder muscles tensed as he hoisted the armoire. The piece was hefty, but he single-handedly carried it across the room. He waved away Olga’s offering of homemade honey spice biscuits – what would he have done with her container once he’d eaten them; carried it with him all day?
He swiftly delivered his elderly neighbour that dazzling smile few could equal and, equally, few had seen, and was out the door.
Xavier let the pack horses, as he thought of them, onto the crowded bus ahead of him, then jammed himself into a crevice where he was least likely to be shoved by their overstuffed daypacks. On dry mornings he’d walk to Kilburn tube station rather than bus it. This seemed to Xavier less onerous than lugging an umbrella or forever trying to guess the sky’s intentions.
The overloaded, he’d observed, rarely allowed for their temporarily increased circumferences. Xavier studied a guy fussing with earphones, recording-studio sized, and a hot coffee. Oh, and the obligatory green environment-friendly tote bag that transported the overflow from the daypack. Double-baggers were now the norm, it seemed. Ciggies at the ready, they’d light up immediately on alighting. As if their life depended on it.
In fact, Xavier had noticed that some of his fellow travellers had taken to bearing side packs – like mules preparing to descend into the Grand Canyon, laden with sufficient rations for a three-day trek. Or they would drag bags like so many short-haul flight attendants. The first sign of rain and out would come their oversized investment-bank-branded umbrellas. All the while they chugged on water bottles, relentlessly hydrating.
What was the alternative? A car? Xavier listed in his head the stages involved in acquisition and deployment. This overwhelmed him. It wasn’t the cost, of course. If money were an issue Xavier would have got in on the ground floor of backpack futures a decade back. He’d called it before most.
6
Wyatt Dean
Wyatt Dean was considered a middle-tier publishing house, its peer group consisted of companies like Bloomsbury and St Martin’s Press and, like those venerable houses, Wyatt Dean flogged respectability for all it was worth. Xavier had joked once that they could double their advances to authors if they relocated their digs from Green Park to Kilburn. Only one person had laughed, and it was a packed meeting.
Such an expensive address was all about appearances, and it had undoubtedly contributed to Wyatt Dean keeping its ferocious rivals on notice. Prospective big-name authors (mostly established fiction writers and celebrities hawking memoirs) often succumbed without a murmur and signed up for multi-book deals when faced with the combination of the enviable location, the olde worlde ornate interiors, and the commanding views from Wyatt Dean’s offices.
WD himself, founder and sole owner of the publishing house, never tired of observing Xavier walk into reception unencumbered by as much as a slim folder, let alone a bulging manuscript, briefcase or laptop. Always dressed for what he’d like the weather to be, with nary an umbrella on the grimmest of mornings. One really had no idea if he was arriving or leaving, or simply moving about the office. Most often, however, Xavier was already at his desk in the editorial area well before Wyatt Dean, or most anyone else, arrived.
As it happened, Wyatt Dean had been at an early meeting, called by the head of sales and one of the publishers. They had wanted to bypass the normal procedure for acquiring a new author: seeking a consensus of all relevant departments during one of the infamous Monday Meetings. Wyatt Dean sensed that Xavier would not be happy with the result of the clandestine conference.
Xavier was surprised to see Wyatt Dean in so early. He liked the old man and certainly preferred his no-fuss leadership to that of the heads of some other like-sized houses, still bloated from long-gone decades of an unrelenting stream of corporate lunches.
Xavier’s colleague Sunita had apprised him of such places from her experience as an industry whore. Her term, not Xavier’s. Initially he had baulked at her self-description, until Sunita clarified she just meant that she had worked at several of WD’s competitors. Worse than her portrayal of other managing directors as hogs, was her depiction of their style as one of never failing to overcomplicate what might more easily be streamlined: a capital offence in Xavier’s book.
Before Xavier got the chance to unload his mobile and key at his desk, Wyatt Dean signalled from the door of his office, the solitary personal office in the otherwise open-plan space, for Xavier to join him and a couple of blurry shapes that Xavier could not quite identify through the frosted glass.
A rush of adrenalin ignited Xavier. In that moment he pondered why he, unlike most others (from what he’d gleaned), got a positive jolt from the prospect of being relieved of his job. It was not as though he disliked the main chore particularly, that of editing literary lion Tobias Balfour. Balfour was a legend, of course, and could be guaranteed to churn out a new book every year. He accumulated prestigious awards and accolades as well as solid sales – a rarity. His words, deftly chosen and strategically placed, were fine enough; there were just way too many of them for Xavier to be comfortable.
The shapes behind the glass turned out to be Yasmin, Xavier’s manager and one of two senior publishers vying for the vacant position of publishing director, and Jacob Meneksk, head of sales and possible successor to Wyatt Dean himself, come timely retirement or early death, whichever came first. Most folk in the place were best identified by the role they were eyeing rather than their actual incumbency. And only the most senior folks went by their full name. Wyatt Dean, being at the very pinnacle, frequently got the extra honour of simple initials: WD. The only other full namers were Jacob Meneksk and Mark Hazer, marketing director, another (relatively) young gun keen to replace the big fellow.
At the levels below in Editorial, Sales, Marketing and Publicity, it was first names only. For Xavier, this was a blessing – he’d rather avoid the obligatory ‘As in Swift Removals?’ that followed someone getting wind of his family name. As for those in IT, Finance and HR, they were pretty much nameless, and mostly invisible.
Yasmin gave Xavier a reassuring look and he sat down opposite them with old man Wyatt Dean seemingly nominated to break the bad news.
‘Xavier, we have decided to reward your great work with Tobias Balfour by allocating you another author to hone.’
Xavier’s mind stuck fast on the word another. Not his favourite word and one he efficiently deleted from each of Tobias Balfour’s weighty manuscripts during the first wave of editing, sweeping aside the clearly redundant. Or first kill, as Tobias Balfour labelled Xavier’s initial passes.
Wyatt Dean suspected his sales pitch, that this extra person to deal with was some sort of reward, was never going to fly. Yasmin stepped in to sweeten the deal.
‘Monica Sparrow is a terrific find – she has garnered a formidable readership online and really deserves to be traditionally published. We’ve decided to approach her and snap her up before others get wind of what we’re thinking.’
Jacob Meneksk joined in and Xavier wondered why these three, his superiors, found it necessary to cajole and entice him in this way, as if they were game-park workers trapping a rhino that had just been delivered a dart.‘Monica, who for the purposes of transparency I will declare is a relative of sorts, is the real deal, and I think you, Xavier, are the perfect person to finesse her work.’
Xavier’s natural tendency would have been to shorten Jacob Meneksk’s name to Jake, but he was clearly no Jake – those exotic dark good looks and intense demeanour demanded a serious label, not the local laconic plumber’s name. Even so, whenever Jacob Meneksk spoke to Xavier he felt as if he was being sold a car. And Xavier did not want a car.
Xavier pre-empted further to-ing and fro-ing by conceding the inevitable result.
‘Is Monica a writer of literary fiction?’
Xavier knew this to be unlikely if she was indeed a hit on the Internet; that meeting place for angry folk and nitpickers. A village square Xavier rarely visited. It was one of the chief reasons, along with public transport, that Xavier had decided people were not for him.
‘Commercial fiction,’ Jacob Meneksk said, then added, ‘Monica has several e-books for sale online already, but they’ll need serious editing to work in print. She is currently writing another which we will launch her with. She’ll need help to keep the word count down. That’s where you come in.’
Yasmin’s next remark was almost gushing. ‘Monica’s female characters are central; however, her male characters are also compelling.’
Something in the way she looked at Jacob as she said that caught Xavier’s attention, but it was quickly shuffled aside as the realisation hit him: ‘Romance fiction.’ It was not a question; it didn’t need to be. And it was left unanswered like any decent statement of fact ought to be.
Xavier, ordinarily, was a fan of silence. And here it was in spades. Yet his revised author-count, doubling overnight, caused him immediate unease.
‘How are you related?’ he asked Jacob Meneksk.
‘Monica is my wife’s sister,’ Jacob Meneksk replied. Yasmin looked away, a tiny frown creasing her brow.
Xavier had never met Jacob Meneksk’s wife for he was not one to attend author dinners and launches, where spouses were frequently wheeled out. Whereas Jacob Meneksk never missed the opportunity afforded by a work event, to schmooze persons of influence.
Yasmin jumped in, unnecessarily, it seemed to Xavier. ‘It’s all above board as this is entirely my call as publisher. And I have no skin in the game, as they say. Well, I have, I mean as publisher, of course. But not in the, er, relations sense.’
Everyone left that tangle alone.
Wyatt Dean, who had obviously met Jacob Meneksk’s wife, asked, ‘Is Monica like Diane?’
‘They look very similar,’ Jacob Meneksk said, before adding, ‘Monica is sweet.’
It seemed to Xavier that Jacob Meneksk had carefully edited out the word however.
‘Great. We are signed off,’ Wyatt Dean said, crossing his forearms in front of him in an elaborate gesture. This was his reference to Xavier’s signature – a minimalist ‘X’. Wyatt Dean ribbed him about it regularly: ‘People must think you are illiterate; an illiterate editor! Ha!’
Xavier forced a smile that faded as he passed through reception. Emma, the receptionist, conscripted him to help move some boxes of advance copies that had just been delivered from the printers. While his colleagues had learnt to refrain from humming the Swift Removals tune within his earshot, he, Xavier Swift, was still the first they asked whenever something heavy needed to be swiftly shifted.
7
The Family Sparrow
The task of nominating the location for the lunches devoted to planning Diane’s fortieth was to rotate between family members. Mother, given the honour of choosing first, unsurprisingly chose to stay in.
After looking over in the direction of where her father now lived, mere streets away, Monica assessed the raggedy hedge atop the low brick wall that back in the day sported a radiant coat of red. The very morning of his eighteenth Caleb had painted the wall so he could direct partygoers to look out for it. Monica took a deep breath and pushed opened the front door.
‘Whoever heard of lamb dressing as mutton?’ Diane looked Monica up and down as she greeted her sister at the old family home. ‘At least you don’t smell of turpentine today,’ Diane added, nonsensically, thought Monica, as she moved into Mother’s front room while Diane stalked off to the kitchen.
Jamie had not yet arrived; he was always late to any family do Monica invited him to so as to be sure that she would be there before him.
As best she could, Monica attempted to ignore the family photo that weighed heavily on the front room mantlepiece. Caleb’s dark eyes matched his elder sisters’. With them was their mother: strong and secure, surrounded by her children – a set, not to be broken up – looking at her husband, in turn just as proud of his family, calling cheese.
Caleb, just turned eighteen, as he would forever remain.
It was seeing other people deal with the photo that stung Monica the most, and Mother always insisted that they eat in her front room, rather than gathered around the dining table. She’d guilelessly declared the large table ‘too big now’.
Monica hugged her mother and got a small something in reply. She wasn’t sure if these diminishing returns were intended, or all due to the ailment that had Mother increasingly trapped.
‘You seem very nice today. What’s different?’ Mother asked her.
Even in her deteriorating state Mother could craft a putdown Diane would be proud of. She didn’t intend it as a jibe though. Perhaps she’d picked up on Monica’s quiet excitement at the prospect, however distant, of being published.
