Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

“I’ve got this new thing.”

“Go on.”

“I’m not smoking. But I am smoking. It’s like… I don’t, but I do.”

“Oh, right. How does it work?”

“Easy,” she said. “I don’t smoke. But if I want to, I smoke.”

“Uncanny. That’s exactly where I am.”

“Shall I go and get some, then?” she asked.

“And some more drinks, seeing as you’re up.”

“Jesus, Gabs, we’ve just started these.”

“I know. But what if there’s a terrorist attack and everyone panics and we can’t get to the bar?”

She returned seven minutes later carrying glasses in both hands and the cigarettes under her chin.

“You know,” Gabriel said, “I wish someone would give me a sabbatical.”

“ Self-Help! still shit?” Isabella offered him her match.

“Shittier than ever.” He inhaled and felt almost immediately sick. “I’d like a sabbatical from myself too, while they’re at it. A year off. A year out. Whatever they call it.” He noticed that the two men who had sat down at the other table had started looking at Isabella. “Want to come and work for Randy?”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Great benefits—enough homoeopathic water to drown your sorrows, tankloads of Rescue Remedy if that doesn’t work, and herbal teas to revive you at the end of your long hard day of fooling yourself. You’ll love it. Hmmm… these cigarettes taste lovely. Tar, nicotine, ash. Gives me that special inner glow everyone talks about.”

Isabella smiled. “Why do you need another bad writer on the staff?”

Gabriel took a deep drink of the fresh pint to cleanse his mouth. “I need anyone who is prepared to do any work of any description without crying, walking off, sulking, bitching, pretending to do it and then not doing it, phoning their union representative, or calling me names. I may well be an utter penis. I accept this charge. But we still need to do the bloody work.” He paused. “Christ, Is, even to see a member of staff coming back from lunch would make me uncontrollably happy.”

“Maybe you should get a motivational speaker in.” Isabella leaned her head to one side. “I hear that they are very… motivational.”

“Oh, they are. I’ve heard a few. They re highly effective. They motivate everyone to become motivational speakers as fast as possible. Lots of money for the same old shit over and over again. Easy hours. Everyone loves you. And nobody can hold you to account or remember what you said. Perfect way to earn a living.” Gabriel smiled, then suddenly remembered a work conversation from a few days previously. “Hey—actually a friend of mine, Becky, told me about an assistant producer job on this new Culture Show. I’ll get in touch with her if you’d like to meet up. Might even be good. You never know.”

“Thanks, Gabs. Why not? No sense ruling anything out.” Isabella squinted against her shortening cigarette’s acridity. “Well, that’s our careers dealt with. And I’ve done my relationship news. Over to you. What’s the Lina situation?”

Gabriel considered his drink. He had three quarters of pint to finish before he could legitimately lobby for the next.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t know? Or you do know? But you don’t know how to end it?”

“Both. Neither. All three.”

“What’s the core of it?”

“I can’t live without Lina. I can’t live without Connie.”

“You can.” Isabella stubbed out her cigarette. “Which?”

“Both.”

“Easy to say. Not easy to do.”

“For your own good.”

“My own good is entirely lost to me. I know you’re clear about everything, Is. And I’m pleased for you that you are. Really. But for me—I don’t know—everything is complicated and shaded and there’s no clarity.”

“Not true.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what you hate.”

“Do I? Sometimes I think I just invent that as well.”

Isabella bent to drink from her straw, looking up at him as she did so. “Are you having a breakdown?”

“No.” Gabriel sat up straight. “I am the one still at my job and still with my girlfriend. Still living in the same place. Are you?”

“Still with two girlfriends. Still hating your job. Still pretending.”

“Don’t knock denial. Sometimes it’s the healthiest place to be.” He tapped his remaining cigarette. “Humanity has achieved all of its greatest successes in denial. I’m a big supporter of denial. If you could march under denial’s banner without denying it, then I’d be at the front of the parade.”

Isabella looked back at him and said, half seriously, “I think you should talk to someone.”

“That’s because you’ve been living in America.”

“No it’s not.”

“I don’t want to investigate myself, Is. I don’t want to hold up any more mirrors to myself. I’m sick of myself. I’m the most tiresome person I know.”

“I feel insulted.”

“Okay, the most tiresome person I know apart from you.” He passed the halfway point of his Guinness. “Christ, Is, I’d love to talk to someone, but I haven’t got five years and the thousands of pounds needed to wade through all the idiotic so-called therapists, shrinks, and other secret lovers-of-the-self to get to the someone who actually knows anything useful or pertinent. Take it from me, psychology is just the same as every other subject in the world—there are five people who know what they re talking about. And they re not talking. The rest are just rehearsing various forms of ninth-hand crap. Anyway, you’re the one who has left everything—boyfriend, work, continent. You’re the one on the run here. I’m all sorted. Look at me. Happy. Happy as an organic pig in fair-trade shit.”

“Not the same as a breakdown. I am running toward the issue. I am truly sorting things out. Taking things on. Not hiding.” She stopped to drink through the straw again. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Going around with your brain in flames all the time.”

“You do that too?” He poked his cigarette violently into the ashtray.

“More or less every second of the day. I wake up and I can’t stand the news—the radio and the TV—not just the crap that’s on but the way that it’s on, and the way that the people behind it try to make it seem. I hate the whole thing. I hate that the newsreaders stand up because their stupid producers told them that standing up is cool. And I hate it when they sit down because some idiot told them to sit down again.”

Gabriel picked up. “Oh, I am way past that. I have started actually hating individual words. I hate the word ‘mayo.’ I hate… I hate ‘latte.’ I hate people who say ‘win-win’ or ‘going forward.’ I hate sports writers who cite that fucking Kipling poem.”

“That’s nothing. I have even started to hate the font —that fucking font they use on those women-and-shopping books. I mean, how can a typeface become so insidious?”

“No. Don’t.” Gabriel shook his head. “Do not start me on typefaces. That stuff gets me really angry.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I hate every billboard I ever see. Like, I am not in conversation with your fucking stupid brand. There is no relationship. I don’t know you. I don’t like you. I don’t want to know you or to learn like you or feel part of your phony cl—”

“Okay. Okay, okay.” Gabriel interrupted, holding up both hands. The two men at the adjacent table were listening in, he could tell, watching his sister’s animation with ever more frequent glances. “Feel better?”

“Yes. Thank you.” She finished her drink. “You?”