Joseph O’Neill - The Dog

Ollie said, ‘So we meet in the Irish Village. I buy him a Coke and a beef pie, which he just gobbles up. He doesn’t say anything. He’s just eating and chugging down the Coke. I’m thinking he doesn’t really speak English. He’s just wolfing everything down. Then he burps — I mean, it’s this really loud, kind of contented burp — and starts to tell me about his new life. Mate, you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘He’s happy as a clam.’

Ollie looked at me with respect. ‘Correct. He’s a pig in shit. I’m completely wasting my time feeling sorry for him. He’s the toast of the town. He knows everybody. They all love him.’ Ollie put down his green-tipped spatula. ‘You should have seen him, strolling around and waving to everyone. The cock of the fucking walk. Duty-free? How about just free? Free newspapers, free magazines, free food, free access to a health club, free internet, free everything. OK, the concourse is crowded, it’s a shithole — but basically it’s a mall. I mean, a mall is exactly where he’d like to be if he wasn’t in the airport.’

I was laughing hard. Ollie had nailed it. Dubai’s undeclared mission is to make itself indistinguishable from its airport. ‘Where does he sleep?’

‘Oh, he’s found a nice little spot over by one of the gates. He’s got himself a sleeping mat and a sleeping bag and, mate, he couldn’t be more comfortable. He looked very well fucking rested when I saw him, I can tell you.’ Ollie was hunched above my feet, doing the last touchups. ‘Why wouldn’t he? He’s got nothing to worry about. He doesn’t have to worry about work’ — the Iranian had some middling finance job — ‘because they’re keeping his job open until the paperwork goes through. And he doesn’t have to worry about his family because his salary’s still coming in.’

‘He’s totally off the hook,’ I said.

‘Home fucking free,’ Ollie said. He squinted and frowned at my green limbs as if he’d just finished the Starry Night .

I said, ‘I had an interesting visitor yesterday evening.’ It wasn’t often that I was the one with news.

‘Oh yeah?’ Ollie said. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Mrs Ted Wilson,’ I said. ‘She dropped by. She told me her husband was missing. Vanished.’

Ollie grinned — as if the advantage had somehow passed to him. He said, ‘Which one?’

I told him I was talking about the wife of the Ted Wilson who was the Man from Atlantis.

Still the grinner, Ollie said, ‘I know that. I’m asking you which Mrs Wilson you’re talking about.’

I didn’t understand.

‘Now this is just what I’m hearing,’ Ollie said. ‘I’m not saying anything. I’m just passing on what I’m hearing.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ I said.

‘What I’m told,’ Ollie unstoppably said, ‘is there are two Mrs Wilsons. There’s Mrs Wilson number one, who lives back in the States: your Mrs Wilson; and there’s Mrs Wilson number two, who lives here.’

Yep, I didn’t want to hear that.

But what were my options? Quickly seal Ollie’s lips with duct tape? Stuff my ears with wads of cotton wool I kept handy for just such an eventuality?

It might be said I have only myself to blame: I opened my big mouth about Mrs Ted Wilson: I brought the multiple Mrs Wilsons on myself. But it is in the nature of a mouth to open, especially among friends. Or am I supposed to avoid Ollie? Why not withdraw completely from society while I’m at it? And why stop there? Why not withdraw from anatomy, too? Who needs a mouth? Who needs ears?

This isn’t to say that we’re totally helpless and that there’s no defending the boundary between the here and the there. That’s not my case at all. But there is a limit, if you will, to the fortifications one can build: there is the problem of force majeure. Here’s an example. This summer, I have as an office intern Alain Batros, Sandro’s fifteen-year-old son. I’ve never wanted an intern and, were I to want one, I should certainly not want Alain. However, there’s nothing to be done about it. I must accept my instructions. The fortifications fail. Force majeure.

The kid’s hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday — Friday. He sits in a chair at a little desk facing the wall, usually with his head resting in cupped hands, which he thinks conceals his closed eyes. From time to time he makes a groan. This is to be expected. He has the task of perusing unavoidably stale and contextless documents and double-checking the calculations they contain. It is without doubt an ultra-boring assignment, but unfortunately I am not operating a fairground. I have been instructed by the kid’s own father that he is not to have access to a computer or electronic devices of any kind and that a spell of drudgery is exactly what he needs. Alain goes to boarding school in England (where things are not going well for him, is my impression) and usually spends his holidays in Beirut, where the Batros family (notwithstanding complicated taxational assertions to the contrary) most actually resides; but, in the words of Sandro, ‘the time for fun and games is over’. The boy has been sentenced to passing the hottest months of the year in Dubai in the Jumeira family compound — Fort Batros, as I call it. ‘I want him to have work experience,’ Sandro has explained over the phone. ‘I want him to learn what work means. Learn that work means work. It doesn’t mean play. If it meant play, if it meant fucking around, they wouldn’t call it work. See what I’m saying? Work is called work because it’s work.’

‘Yes, I think I follow you.’

‘That’s what you’re going to teach him — what work is. What it is to get your ass into work and work your ass off. Do boring shit and do it all day long. He has to learn. He has to learn willpower. The boy’s got no willpower,’ Sandro says, lightly gasping. ‘You’re going to teach him willpower.’

It doesn’t end there.

Eddie — This idea of making Alain’s allowance contingent upon his achieving a certain weight loss strikes me as bordering on the unkind. Is there any way you could talk to your brother? Surely there must be a better way to proceed. In any case, I fail to see how my responsibilities extend to this sort of thing. Must I be involved?

Eddie would of course never talk to Sandro about Alain. My phantom inquiry’s phantom answer is: Yes, I must be involved.

The awful business is broken down, like the steps of an execution, into small, intrinsically blameless parts. Every Monday and Thursday, Ali accompanies Alain to the corporate bathroom and invites him to step into a stall, undress to his undershorts, and step on the scale. Ali sees the boy’s feet step on the scale and sees the indicator jerk well past the 100-kg marker. He records the final measurement and e-mails me the number. I enter the new datum on a spreadsheet that reckons what allowance, if any, Alain will receive that week. The formula is Sandro’s (i.e., his accountants’): essentially, Alain’s weekly allowance depends on the progress he has made towards his weekly weight-loss target. It falls to me to communicate to the boy the result of this appalling computation, which always produces the same result: zero allowance. I discharge this burden by placing on his desk, during his lunch break, an envelope containing a Calculation Note and a Progress Graph. The Progress Graph charts Alain’s progress towards the 90-kg weight target his father has set for him. If and when he achieves this target, he will receive the keys to an Alfa Romeo 1750 Spider Veloce that sits in a garage on the Isle of Man. Why the Isle of Man? Because its residents are permitted to drive at the early age of sixteen — a tantalization that will, it is hoped, induce the fifteen-year-old to achieve his weight target ASAP. (The USA, with its minimum driving age of 14–16, was not an option. Alain’s portfolio of nationalities — the kid is a citizen of Lebanon, Ireland, France, the United Kingdom, and St Kitts and Nevis — does not yet include the American one.) Sandro has instructed me to buy an apartment on the Isle of Man with a view to creating (false) residency credentials for his son, who, it’s safe to say, has no clue where the Isle of Man is. I am happy to take care of the property transaction, but I will not be party to any deception of the Manx authorities. I haven’t made an issue of this with Sandro because the issue is moot: the kid has actually been gaining weight, and I would be amazed if he gets down to ninety kilos any time soon. Of course, it’s not my job to be either amazed or unamazed. I am not this kid’s overseer or Dutch uncle. It isn’t for me to counsel him that drinking a giant beaker of Coca-Cola every lunchtime runs counter to his dietary objectives, or to root for him, or to lie awake at night wondering what will become of him and how things could be made better for this large, soft child whose circumstances give one not the slightest basis for hoping against hope that somehow he will acquire the wherewithal to care and be cared for, which is surely the great purpose and the basic meaning of growing up.