‘Wait, wait,’ I interject. ‘Are you serious? This was a genuine business venture?’
‘Well, yeah,’ he says, looking slightly offended. ‘What’s the problem?’
There are so many problems I have difficulty focusing on one. ‘How exactly would you find out all these personal details? The waitresses are just going to tell you?’
‘No, of course not. We’d have a dedicated data-collection team deployed across the city. And we’d also repackage whatever the waitresses have uploaded themselves, on to Facebook and so on.’
The surveillance equipment: at last the pieces fall into place. I feel a kind of deep and distressing pang within, a sort of moral headache. ‘Surely this can’t be legal.’
‘It’s an information service, that’s all,’ Paul says. ‘How can information be bad?’
He sits down opposite me and leans earnestly over the table. ‘Imagine being able to tap into a resource like that for Ariadne. Think what a comfort that would be.’
‘I wouldn’t be comforted by the knowledge that countless others were out there, stalking her online.’
‘It’s not stalking,’ Paul says.
‘It is,’ I say.
‘It’s not.’
‘It is practically the definition of stalking,’ I say.
Paul throws his hands in the air. ‘It’s the twenty-first century! People expect to be spied on! For a good-looking woman it’d probably be more upsetting if she found out she wasn’t being spied on.’
‘And your wife, what did she think about this business venture?’
‘Oh, Clizia,’ he says impatiently.
‘Well? You told me before how much she hated being stared at by men in the club. What did she think of you keeping waitresses under surveillance?’
‘Clizia’s living in a fool’s paradise. We have to eat, don’t we? This is what people want now. They don’t want novels. They want reality, up close and personal.’
‘Someone else’s reality, turned into entertainment.’
‘You might not like it. But I’ll tell you this, the response to Hotwaitress was the polar opposite of the response to Clown. We had investors queuing out the door! Venture capital, private equity! We had a pre-launch party with an elephant — an elephant!’
‘So what happened? Why aren’t you an Internet millionaire?’
His face clouds. ‘There were legal issues. You know how it goes — it got tied up in court, all our funding went on solicitors’ fees.’
‘Maybe for the best,’ I say.
‘It could have been big. Loneliness is one of the few growth areas these days. And it’s self-perpetuating, you know? Because the more people pay to stop feeling lonely, the lonelier they tend to get.’
‘Is that why you spend all your money on lap dances?’ I say.
He purses his lips, lowers his eyes. ‘About that,’ he says. ‘I’m going to need another advance.’
ELEPHANT RUNS AMOK AT CITY CENTRE EVENT
A man was seriously injured last night and the ground floor of a Dublin hotel badly damaged when a hired elephant went on the rampage at the launch of a new Internet dating service. Witnesses reported that the animal became enraged when an intern employed by the service attempted to dress it in a ‘French maid’ costume. After trampling the man, who remains in hospital, the elephant overturned a number of tables in the reception room and charged at hotel guests. A zookeeper who arrived to sedate the animal described it as ‘extremely agitated’. The hotel manager, Mr Wallace Willis, said that the event had been ‘a fiasco’ at which ‘basic safety had been thrown out the window’. The company’s director, Mr Igor Struma, was not available for comment last night. Mr Struma, described in the company’s press release as an entrepreneur and bounty hunter, is wanted for questioning by authorities in Ukraine in connection with the robbery five years ago of a consignment of gynaecological equipment. The company’s president, Mr Paul
‘Whatcha readin’ there, Claude?’
‘Nothing. Old news.’
‘I saw you in the Ark.’ Ish is chewing one of their home-made cookies. ‘I was waving at you, but you didn’t notice.’
‘Ah-um …’ I swivel my chair away, busy myself shuffling documents.
‘You were talking to that waitress, and then you just took off, like a streak of lightning! What happened, she catch you sneaking a peek down her top?’
‘Mmm.’ I stare at the screen and batter a random series of keys.
‘Like a streak of lightning.’ She chuckles to herself, and then, abruptly, she stops. ‘Wait a second … are you after her? Were you in there trying to chat her up?’
‘I am not “after” anybody,’ I say irritably.
‘Is that what all this put-my-life-in-a-book stuff is about?’ she asks. ‘You’re trying to get with Ariadne? That’s her name, isn’t it? Ariadne?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Ariadne,’ Ish repeats, as if she’s talking to herself, and then, ‘There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Claude. She’s gorgeous. And she seems really cool too, like a real free-spirit type.’ She notes this with a kind of sadness, as though she were watching Ariadne through the bars of a cage. ‘Though I wouldn’t have thought she’d be the kind of girl you’d go for.’
‘I’m not “going” for anyone,’ I snap; I experience a sudden, vehement wish for her to go away, because now I too can see the bars of the prison we are both incarcerated in, and my plan to escape seems foolhardy, laughable, like trying to dig your way out of a cell with the stirrer from a semi-skimmed latte.
‘Okay, whatever you say,’ she shrugs. ‘Anyway, FYI, I have a date tomorrow night.’
‘What are you telling me for?’
‘No reason,’ she concedes, and turns to her computer.
This afternoon’s episode has left me with serious doubts. Paul’s intervention not only ruined a promising conversation with Ariadne, but I can’t even console myself with the thought that it might have inspired him to write; instead, it seems only to have reawoken memories of his hare-brained business plan.
Now I find myself torn. After today’s demonstration, the wisest course of action is surely to cut my losses and abandon the project. At the same time, the more I find out about Paul’s life, the more responsible I feel for him. Clizia’s permanent fury now makes perfect sense. To marry an artist and find yourself chained instead to a professional lost cause, whose efforts range from monetizing isolation to outright theft — isn’t that a betrayal just as bad as the one that brought her here? When she signed up to work as a waitress and instead found herself contracted to a lap-dancing club? Would it be any great surprise if she were looking for a way out?
The rain comes down all day, and the next morning it is heavier still, turning the plaza into a dismal game of hopscotch, figures in black shoes and trench coats leaping and splashing their way to shelter. At the zombie encampment, one of the tents has collapsed, and the undead scurry about with tape and buckets.
‘What’s going to happen to them when Royal Irish gets shut down?’ Gary McCrum says, looking out the window. ‘Will they all just leave?’
‘I suppose. Royal’s the zombie bank, after all.’
‘Shame.’ Gary McCrum scratches his belly. ‘They bring a bit of life to the place.’
‘They’re zombies, Gary.’
‘You know what I mean.’
The government has had a number of days to digest our report, but so far no action has been taken on Royal. The Minister gives a brief statement this afternoon, but it’s just the same threadbare phrases again: Royal is open for business, Ireland’s fundamentals are sound, the IMF is not moving in. Behind him stands the little Portuguese man I saw in Rachael’s office; he listens to the Minister with lowered eyes, as if to a eulogy at a funeral.