‘I’m not sure,’ I said.
‘Well, you have to know what your customers like. Now, I happen to know that this group all like women. That’s easy. Except for that man at the end of the table.’ He pointed to a good-looking balding man, listening with great interest to a story Jamie was telling. ‘I happen to know he prefers boys. His colleagues don’t know that, nor does Jamie, but I’m sure he will appreciate being seated next to the prettiest one among us.’
I couldn’t help myself smiling at this. It was true that Jamie’s good looks could attract interest from either sex, which caused him intense irritation. He would go spare if he knew Eduardo was using him in this way.
‘You won’t tell him, will you?’
‘I will one day,’ I said. ‘I won’t be able to resist it.’
‘OK, but not tonight. Tonight you will see why these people always deal with us, and never with Bloomfield Weiss.’
At about eleven, we left the restaurant, amid cries of ‘Eduardo!’
‘What happens now?’ I asked Jamie.
‘We go back to Eduardo’s flat for more entertainment.’
I was intrigued. I had caught a second wind, and the exuberance of the crowd was infectious. I bundled into one of the three cabs we commandeered outside the restaurant.
Eduardo’s flat was in Mayfair, not more than half a mile away. He had a large living room, with plenty of chairs and sofas, and heavy expensive curtains and carpets. The light was dim. We piled in, taking off jackets and loosening ties. There were bottles of champagne waiting on a sideboard, guarded over by a very attractive blonde waitress. I accepted a glass, and slumped into a sofa.
The man next to me, Felipe, was talking about a notorious conference that Dekker had set up in Acapulco two years before. I had difficulty following all of it because he was speaking fast, he had a thick accent, and in his excitement he didn’t make much sense. But the others around him were nodding and laughing at the memories.
The champagne was excellent, the flat was warm, the chair very comfortable, and I sat back in a relaxed fug. I stopped trying to focus on the noise around me. This was really rather nice.
A light flashed in my eye, and startled me. I looked over to its source. It was a small mirror. Eduardo and two of our guests were hunched over it arranging some lines of white powder.
I smiled at the irony of the situation. Having spent the last ten years of my life in universities, I was used to seeing drugs around me and avoiding them. Things were obviously not much different here. I sank further into my chair, and hoped they wouldn’t notice me.
The mirror attracted most of the men in the room, including Jamie. He caught my eye and shrugged. I knew Jamie wasn’t a coke user. This was probably another one of those things he did to fit in.
I looked around for Ricardo. He had slipped away. Everyone else had stayed. His privilege, I supposed.
Then Eduardo caught my eye, and called across to me. ‘Want some, Nick? You should try it.’
Damn. ‘No, thank you,’ I said, trying not to sound too prim.
‘Hey, try it. It’s good stuff. A little bit won’t do any harm. Get you in the party mood.’ His thick lips broke into a broad smile, but his eyes were hard, commanding.
‘No, sorry.’
He moved over towards me. He sat down on the arm of the sofa. I could smell his eau-de-Cologne. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and I could see black tufts of hair and the glint of gold. He put his arm round me, and patted my cheek. I wanted to hit him so badly.
‘Come on, Nicky, my friend. Enjoy yourself! Party! Hey, what you need is someone to play with.’ Just then the doorbell rang. ‘And here she is!’
He stood up and made an announcement to the group of expectant central bankers. ‘These are some friends of mine. They all work in the modelling business.’ He winked. ‘I’m sure you’ll like them.’
He opened the door to a procession of about a dozen stunning women, all with different colours of hair and skin, and all wearing revealing but expensive cocktail dresses. Immediately the men stood up, the noise level rose, champagne corks were popped. The excitement in the room was almost palpable.
I stayed stuck in my chair. Eduardo put his arm round the waist of a tall girl with red hair and extremely long legs, and steered her towards me.
‘Nick, Melanie, Melanie, Nick,’ he said. ‘She’s a beautiful woman, Nick, I’m sure you will like her.’ Then he left us, much to my relief.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hallo,’ I replied, smiled politely, and ignored her. She sipped champagne, making small-talk in an upper-middle-class accent, to which I didn’t respond. I was very tired, and I wanted to go home. None of these women interested me like Isabel did, and the artificiality of the situation made me queasy. I looked around at the smartly dressed, wealthy men, all with wives and girlfriends, talking animatedly to these women whom they had never met before. Two couples, they were couples already, began to dance, slow and close. I felt ill.
I stood up, smiled politely at the redhead next to me, retrieved my jacket, and headed for the door.
‘Nick!’
Jamie extricated himself from a blonde, and rushed up to the door. I waited.
‘Nick, where are you going?’
‘Home.’
‘Look. Stay here. Eduardo won’t like it if you go now. Come on. You’re not even married.’
‘Maybe that’s why I don’t want to stay,’ I said. ‘And screw Eduardo.’
I woke up late the next morning — nine o’clock. I brewed some fresh coffee, made some toast and read the paper. The Polish devaluation was on page eight. More money for Dekker. I finished my coffee, left the flat and strolled up Primrose Hill, with its stunted black lamp-posts, and its daffodils neatly trussed up now they had finished blooming. It was a cool day for May, and a breeze bit into my skin. It felt good, refreshing.
Just below the brow of the hill, I sat down and looked out over London. In front of me was the extraordinary polyhedron that was the aviary at London Zoo, and beyond that St Paul’s and the skyscrapers of the City. Even further away, barely visible through the new leaves of the trees on the hill, was Canary Wharf.
The Dekker people would be there now, toiling hard, pretending that they could function normally after the night before. They would be exchanging knowing glances with each other, lying to their customers about what a wonderful place Mexico was, ticking up the trades, ticking up the profits.
I considered the last few weeks. The favela deal, the money-laundering, Dave’s sacking, my own lying to Wójtek, the sleaze of the previous night. All of these things I could handle individually. But together they made me feel sick.
I didn’t fit. I could pretend that I did, but only for so long. Or I could change, as Jamie had. Change so that I could lie happily, ignore what needed to be ignored, do what needed to be done. If my conscience couldn’t hack it, then I should just change my conscience.
Or leave.
Was I running away? Was it just that I couldn’t take the real world, the commercial world?
I honestly didn’t think so. There was no doubt that the attack on Ipanema beach had shaken me. But I was sure I wasn’t letting that affect my judgement. I would have to face up to the fact that I had made a mistake in joining Dekker. It was a real cock-up. I was proud, and I didn’t like admitting to mistakes. But there was no hiding from this one.
Still, as Ricardo would say, a good trader knows when to take his losses. And the time had come.
It was eleven o’clock by the time I made it to my desk. I nodded to Isabel.
‘Have a good night, did you, last night?’ she said coolly.
‘No, actually. I found it pretty unpleasant. I left early.’