13 — Shag, Marry, Kill.

Bottoms up.

⬅️ Read previous 12 — Sex Chess

⬅️⬅️Read T H E N O T E B O O K S from the start here.

Portrait of a Man in Red, The Royal Collection.

The thing you have to understand about Rob is that he wasn’t a real person.

Not saying he didn’t exist. He definitely existed (insofar as any of us do).

I mean he wasn’t a real person you could really know. He didn’t express real opinions or preferences.

Sure, he knew what was desirable or what his friends might want or what someone in his position ought to have.

But Rob himself? He existed at the Venn centre of everyone else.

Even in our most intimate moments, and in our most private messages, it was as if he was performing for some unseen audience.

What I’m trying to say is that Rob was cool in a way I’ve never been cool.

He was too social a creature to be ruled by his own unfiltered desires.

It made him oddly selfless.

If the essence of cool is never letting them see you sweat, never letting them get an in on you, never letting them know what you really think, Rob was the coolest motherfucker on the planet.

The consummate lawyer.

Even then, it was clear he would go far. Shapeless as the snow; just as cold.

And me?

I was playacting.

Almost a lawyer, but still in training. I was pretending to be cool, trying to be cold.

I thought I just needed to learn how to lawyer to be a lawyer.

Turns out I needed some more fundamental dismantling first.

It was like I had been measured and found too… earnest.

I imagined the partners’ conversation:

“She writes a good email, knows the law. Studied at {checks notes} yes, it was. Oxford.”

Mutinous muttering. “She’s too earnest.”

“Well, she did used to work in {stage whispers} human rights. What do you expect? Need some time to unpick all that starchy moral fibre.” Clears throat with distaste.

“It’s been almost two years. Still a bit too moral, I think.”

“Mmm. I heard she leaves at 5pm every day to do bath and bedtime.”

Concerned rumbles, raised eyebrows. “She does come back to the office in the evening to put in the hours. Sometimes…”

“Does she? Yes, well. Hmm. That’s a good sign.”

“I think she’ll turn.”

“Let’s put Rob on her.”

—

I’m joking, of course. In a law firm, no one cares about your moral fibre—as long as it doesn’t interfere with the bottom line.

The struggle was all internal. When you do a shitty job, how long before the shit starts to wipe off on other parts of your life?

It’s a decent question without a decent answer.

Perhaps you can stave it off for many years.

Or perhaps the chasm between office desk dissociation and fucking a hooker in Dubai on a work trip is not so wide as you might think.

How long until you say to yourself wonderingly, without cognition: look what you’ve done.

—

Alright, enough foreplay. So what happened the night of Rob’s leaving drinks?

If I close my eyes, I can still see the view out the office window. It was dark already: rainy old London, and a fogbound Thames.

I had a cold coming on, I could feel it. That slight rasp behind the eyes and rawness of the throat told me I could probably nip it with an early night and a quart of orange juice.

Stephen, the partner I sat with, turned to me just before 6pm. Like all the other male partners, he had an unhealthy obsession with Rob’s doings.

“Are you going to Rob’s leaving drinks tonight?”

He was feigning casual. I could tell he really wanted to go but was torn between his genuine love for Rob and not wanting to appear to approve Rob too much. (Rob was, after all, a rancorous traitor, abandoning ship for a different firm.)

“Yes. Are you coming, Stephen?”

“Oh!” Hastily stowing papers in desk and wiggling mouse to sleep his computer. “Yes, alright then. I’ll look in on the way home. Just for one.”

“Great.” What the hell else do you say to your boss? “I’ll just nip to the loo and see you down there.”

In the loo, I checked my brows, a slick of lip balm. Pinched my cheeks. My eyes were bright and feverish looking.

The impending cold, I told myself.

Back at the cubicle, Stephen, in his eagerness, had already left without me.

I stood on his side of the small room—the better side, the window side—for just a moment.

Rain lashed the glass. It was a mucky night.

Look what you’ve done.

The decision to go out felt momentous. Don’t for a second think I didn’t know what I was doing or that any of this took me by surprise.

I watched with impartial fascination.

Considered myself in that little cubicle and thought how interesting—how academically fascinating!—that I could go home, silence my phone, drink my orange juice and go to bed.

It was a real option.

Rob’s leaving drinks would happen without me. Maybe there would be messages asking where I was, maybe not. In the morning, he would work at a different firm and any danger he presented, passed.

How interesting, I told myself. I would awake in a different tomorrow, unsullied by tonight.

Alternative futures would spin off through the rain-streaked glass, and never happen. Alternative me would sprint up along the river towards home, to nowhere.

I would never know what happened on this side of the glass.

I knew what I would regret more.

The lift dinged. One or two flash frames of a rain-soaked street, and I was in the bar next door where Rob’s leaving drinks were kicking off.

About ten people were already there, including Stephen, the partner. He was in a private huddle with Rob.

“… and there’s nothing to say you can’t come back, door’s always open. Partnership committee love to see it: go off, get some experience elsewhere, maybe go in-house. Then come back.”

He held Rob in a tight handshake with accompanying gripped forearm, and sustained eye contact. It was almost indecent.

“Right, I’ll be off then.” Stephen made his dash for the train.

Once the bosses left, the night went the way these nights go.

We did shots, took a chaotic taxi ride to another bar, ended up in the lobby bar of a hotel up Shoreditch way.

Gradually, the numbers dwindled.

The last four standing, still drinking pornstar martinis at 11, 12, sometime long past lights out: me, Rob, Naomi, Harry.

Harry was the next most junior member of the department after me. He had only just qualified and returned from leave to find that the team he thought he’d be joining was off to an American firm, without him.

Rob slapped him on the back, told him not to worry.

Harry wasn’t worried. He’d been to Eton. Things would come off fine for him. He was a good time boy, up for a night out because it had presented itself to him.

In my head, I flagged him “Non-combatant (only here for the coke)”.

Naomi was a different story, a senior associate. A woman who looked like she might have been born on the trading floors of the London Stock Exchange, chain-smoking in the loading dock behind the office, sending emails at 4am, from her nest of discarded shoes under a desk on the 12th floor.

She couldn’t have been more than five years older than me but a face like an aged monkey and a hacking laugh to match. She also, I remembered with unease, knew Rob from whatever Counties village they both hailed from. Her father knew his cousin, or something. She was an old family friend, knew him from way back.

And, what was more, she knew Rob’s live-in girlfriend, the unmentionable Sarah.

Naomi I flagged “Enemy combatant” and further added: “poisonous breath”.

Chat was laden with innuendo. We were all talking shit, squawking at each other, intermittently playing “Shag, Marry, Kill” about colleagues and necking shots.

Shag the fit one in HR (that was Harry). Marry the hot, young stud in insolvency (that was Naomi). Kill the partner in reg who never checked her emails (that was Rob).

I looked at his face, at a side-angle.

Harry across the table, darker, with lashes, dimples and pixie cheekbones, was much more conventionally handsome.

Rob looked somehow … medieval. He had a Renaissance fair face. I could see him in another age, scrappy, in felt shoes and a peaked cap: a tall yeoman, a rangy squire, a plague-dodging peasant. Too clever to get caught. High forehead, firm jaw. Eyes slate—but just a bit too close together, a bit narrow. Nose long, and crooked where it must have been knocked askew at some point.

There was no arguing the point: he was only average good-looking.

But, my god. There was something about him.

I could no more have stayed away from him than I could have flown a loop over Tower Bridge, under the power only of my own two arms.

The clock above the bar ticked steadily on.

It was just after 1:00am now.

Naomi turned to me.

“Ok, your turn. Shag, marry, kill: Stephen, Rob, Harry.” She meant Stephen, the partner I sat with and indicated the other two at the table.

Rob smirked and looked at his drink; Harry smiled broadly and looked at me.

“Well, shag Harry, obviously.” I raised my glass to him over the table and he clinked mine, loudly (“Yaaas, darling”). I pretended to consider. “Marry Stephen, bless him, he’s such a lovely man.” I drained my drink. “Kill Rob.”

Across the table, Naomi and Harry hooted.

Naomi started bantering Harry about how good-looking he was: almost too good-looking.¹ Harry rode along. He was wasted and Naomi was way more senior than him.

Rob looked straight at me. “You wouldn't kill me.” Confident undertone.

“Oh yes I would.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know what I’d do.”

“Actually, I know exactly what you would do.”

The lobby started spinning but not irrecoverably so.

He gave a soft laugh and turned to face the others, joined Naomi in mocking Harry.

His phone lay on the table. Before I could think about it or stop myself, I pulled out my phone and typed a message.

You’re right. I want you. Just saying.

Sent. 1:07am.

I joined back in with Harry and Naomi across the table, not daring to look at him.

After a moment, his phone flashed and he grabbed it. I laughed at something Naomi said and we clinked glasses.

Under the table, he pressed his leg into mine—hard.

I kept joking with the other two, leaning forward, not even looking at him.

In my lap, my phone dinged.

Just saying what?

His message and my response came all within a minute.

You need it spelled out?

The two of us, briefly impassive, side-by-side on our respective phones. Nothing to see here.

The merriment across the table continued unabated. A few more rounds of Shag, Marry, Kill. It was determined that Naomi would happily shag and marry (and whatever else was required) a swarthy chap from the other end of the corporate team.

Eventually, the other two rose and rustled wrappings, looking for lighters. They wanted to go outside for a smoke.

Finally.

I sat looking at their backs retreating further, further, until they were out the revolving doors.

I turned to him. He’d been watching them out too.

It was probably only a matter of seconds: the smoothest three seconds in the world.

He shifted his chair, moved his arm to the back of mine.

Just like our knee-to-knee under the table, the sound extinguished itself and, for a moment, nothing else mattered.

And all I could think was this.

He feels so good and his white shirt collar is open and he’s such a good kisser and he’s so sexy and I want him and my marriage is over and it’s all Stevie fucking Nicks’ fault.

Look what you’ve done.

—

Pair with Starboy, The Weeknd / Daft Punk.

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1. A million points if you got this Zoolander reference.