Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination Page 3

  “No, but—” Her mind was racing again. “Look, I’m not saying it’s actually him, but people can completely alter their appearance, can’t they? He could easily have had some length taken out of each leg and his face changed.”

  “Right, right. So, if you look at it that way, Osama bin Laden could be Oprah Winfrey, Britney Spears, or Eminem. Why have you fastened upon this guy?”

  “It’s something about him. It’s his features—well, more his expression, in fact. He’s sort of languid.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say? Languid? Well, it’s definite then. I mean, bin Laden is number one on the FBI’s Most Languid List.”

  “Shut up. He says he’s called Pierre Ferramo. He’s pretending to be French, but I don’t think he is. He kind of rolls his rs.”

  “Right, right. Was Osama bin Ferramo drinking alcohol?”

  “Yes,” she said doubtfully.

  “Did he flirt with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Olivia, Osama bin Laden is a Muslim. Do you know what a Muslim is?”

  “Of course I know what a Muslim is,” Olivia hissed. “What I’m saying is that maybe this is a new form of hideout. They’re very clever—they’re constantly changing tactics. Maybe drinking and womanizing on the Miami South Shore makes a better hideout than a cave in Tora Bora.”

  “Hmm. I’m not sure they could pull it off.”

  “He hasn’t. I’ve rumbled him. Anyway, the bin Ladens are a really posh, rich international family. Don’t you remember that guy from the FT who used to date one of bin Laden’s sisters?”

  “Oh yeah, right before he’d done any atrocities.”

  “And he asked her about her brother’s reputation as a black sheep and she said, ‘Oh, honestly, the worst one can say about Osama is that he’s rather socially difficult.’ ”

  Kate laughed. “Okay, point taken. But promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “Promise me you won’t ring up Barry and tell him you’ve found Osama bin Laden at a face-cream launch.”

  Silence.

  “Olivia, are you listening to me? You remember the Sudan locust cloud? The Surbiton Moonies who turned out to be a corporate training scheme? The Gloucestershire ghoul that turned out to be steam from an air-conditioning vent? The Sunday Times has only just started to trust you again. So, please: do your Miami story on time, to length, nicely, and don’t bugger things up for yourself. And go to sleep.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Kate. Call you in a couple of days,” she said, reaching for her laptop.

  She e-mailed Barry. She didn’t tell him what the story was, she just asked to stay on and check out a lead. She had to do something, otherwise she’d be back in London writing articles that began, “Suddenly there is more wallpaper everywhere!!” Then she clicked off the light and lay staring at the ceiling, thinking.

  Olivia believed in independent thought. Ever since the Twin Towers were hit, when the authorities told people to stay where they were and not evacuate, she kept asking herself: would she have been one of the ones who did as they were told and stayed, or would she have thought for herself and set off down the stairs?

  5

  She sat outside a café on the South Shore Strip waiting for Barry’s morning call and wishing it would stop being so windy. It was sunny and humid, but the wind was a roaring, flapping constant in the background. Breakfast was Olivia’s favorite meal: coffee and something piggy like a muffin. Or a smoked-salmon-and-cream-cheese bagel. Or banana pancakes. And as many newspapers as possible spread before her. But this morning the New York Times, the Miami Herald, USA Today and two British tabloids had to be restrained under the salt and pepper. She had ordered cinnamon-apple French toast in order to eradicate the remnants of last night’s apple martinis. Treat apple with apple—like snake bite with snake venom.

  She poured maple syrup onto the cinnamon-apple French toast triangle, stuck her knife in and watched the pureed apple ooze out, imagining confronting Osama bin Ferramo at his party that night: “Killing is so very wrong. We, as nations, must learn to honor our differences and live in peace.” Osama bin Ferramo, breaking down, would sobbingly agree that his Holy War must end and that he would work tirelessly in future for world peace alongside President Carter, Ginger Spice, et al. Olivia would be internationally fêted, elevated to foreign correspondent, awarded an honorary Pulitzer . . . her mobile rang.

  “Hi,” she answered, in a tense, urgent voice, glancing behind her to check for al-Qaeda spies. It was Barry.

  “Okay, numero uno: this floating apartment-ship story . . .”

  “Yes!” said Olivia, excitedly. “It’s a really good story. It’s huge. And the people live on it all year round and just fly in by helicopter. I could do it in a couple of extra days.” Olivia had the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder while she tucked into the apple French toast.

  “Oh, I agree it’s a good story. So good, in fact, that, as you apparently failed to notice, we covered it in a full-page spread in the Style section last week.”

  Olivia paused with her toast halfway to her mouth.

  “That’s a section of the Sunday Times, the newspaper you’re supposed to be working for. Indeed, the very section of the Sunday Times you are supposed to be working for. You do, I assume, read the Sunday Times occasionally, are familiar with it, at least?”

  “Yes,” she said, brows lowered.

  “And this other ‘fantastic news story’ you’ve found. What might that be? Miami invaded by walking dolphins, perhaps? The former Iraqi information minister spinning vinyl in the lobby?”

  Thank God she hadn’t e-mailed him after all.

  “Well, actually it’s something I’ve just started working on. I’ll tell you more in a couple of—”

  “Shut up. How are we getting along with the story we are supposed to be doing? The story we’ve been sent out to Miami, at considerable expense, to cover? Any chance of us turning our attention to that at some point? At all?”

  “Oh yes, yes. I’m doing that. It’s all fine. But I’m onto some really good leads for another story. I promise you, it’s really good. If I could just stay one more night and go to this party, then . . .”

  “No. En. Oh. No. You file ‘Cool Miami’ by six o’clock your time tonight. Fifteen hundred words. Spelled correctly. With normal punctuation, not an assortment of strange markings put in randomly, to help. And then you do not go to parties, go shopping, or get waylaid by any other form of irrelevant entertainment. You go to the airport, get the night flight and come home. Got it?”

  By a supreme effort of will, she refrained from telling him that:

  He was missing the biggest story of the twenty-first century.

  One day he would be sorry.

  Re his punctuation slur: language was a beautiful free-flowing, evolving thing which should not be fettered by artificial rules, regulations and strange markings imposed from without rather than within.

  “Okay, Bazzer,” she said instead. “I’ll do it by six o’clock.”

  * * *

  Elan had not yet called to nix the OceansApart story, so she thought it wouldn’t do any harm to nip quickly down to the harbor to take a look, just in case, so that if Elan did happen to call and say yes, then she would have some more material. Plus, she could be picking up more local color for the Sunday Times piece while she was at it. It was nine already, but she figured that if she got back from the OceansApart by ten-thirty, she’d still have seven and a half hours to write the article for Barry. And spell-check it. And e-mail it. But it would definitely be fine. Definitely. That was only about two hundred words an hour. And she could run! It was, after all, vital to exercise.

  Unfortunately, Olivia did not have a proper grasp of the passage of time. In fact, both Barry and Kate had noted on several occasions that Olivia thought time was personal, that it moved at the speed she wanted it to. Their view was that this was not a belief compatible with being a newspaper journalist with deadlines to meet and so on.r />
  * * *

  Jogging along the South Shore Strip, even at breakfast time, was like flipping through radio channels: a different beat blaring out from each café. Waiters were hosing down the pavements, gardeners blowing away leaves. The lines of hooting cars were gone, the party people only recently tucked into bed. Olivia passed a café playing salsa music; inside, everything—walls, tables, plates, menus—was covered in the same lurid jungle print; the waitress, even at that hour, was wearing a leopardskin, halter-neck catsuit. She crossed the road to get a better view of the campy grandeur of the Versace mansion and the art deco hotels—whites, pinks, lilacs, oranges—the Pelican, the Avalon, the Casa Grande, curves and funnels suggesting trains and ocean liners. It was hot already, the shadows of the fluttering palm trees crisp against the white pavement. She started working out her piece as she ran.

  “Think Miami is full of old people’s condos, the hum of electric wheelchairs and people shooting each other? Think again!” . . .

  “Suddenly there are more revamped art deco hotels everywhere!” . . .

  “If Paris is the new elevator music, Miami is the new Eminem.” . . .

  “If Manchester is the new Soho, then Miami is the new Manhattan.” . . .

  “If Eastbourne had a makeover from Ian Schrager and Stella McCartney, then forced all its inhabitants into a giant tanning booth . . .”

  Oh God. She couldn’t do this stuff anymore. It was nonsense. It didn’t mean anything. She had to find a proper story.

  * * *

  At the south end of the strip were huge apartment blocks, and behind them, gliding smoothly, she could see a huge ocean liner. She must be close to the docks. She jogged along the street, the area becoming rougher and tattier, until she reached the water at South Pointe Park, where the deep shipping lane passed straight in front of the apartments and marina. The liner was moving fast, its bulbous rear disappearing towards the docks: big, but not the OceansApart. She peered at the skyline beyond it: the tower blocks of downtown Miami, the arched bridges of the highways crisscrossing the big expanses of water, the cranes marking the docks. She started to run towards them, but they were farther away than they seemed; she kept thinking she was so nearly there, it would be stupid to turn back.

  She had stopped at the end of a traffic bridge, trying to get her breath and pushing a damp strand of hair from her forehead, when she suddenly realized that what she had thought was an office block beyond the liner was in fact the OceansApart. Here, in the harbor, it dwarfed all the other ships around it, making them look like toys or miniatures. It was monolithic. It looked too big to be safe, as though it might topple over.

  Across the way, a small crowd of people was gathered on a patch of grass, a group of taxis parked alongside. Olivia made her way over. She counted the decks: there were fifteen of them, lines of portholes, then layer upon layer of balconies. There were people sitting out on white chairs at tables, eating breakfast. She glanced around at the crowd. Some of them were clearly passengers, taking photographs with the OceansApart in the background, dressed in the garish and bizarre outfits which seem to go with the cruising life. Olivia smiled at the sight of a lady with a bright orange face and red lipstick, which had missed her mouth, wearing a little white boxy jacket with epaulets and a captain’s hat, and an embarrassed husband in pastel, infantilized cruise gear beside her, posing while a taxi driver took their photos.

  “Excuse me, love.” It was a northern English accent. Olivia turned to see an old couple, the auburn-haired lady in an elegant green dress with a cream handbag and matching cream shoes. The cream shoes made Olivia think of holidays in Bournemouth. The man, who was only slightly taller than the lady, and stockily built, was holding her jacket. It was sweet the way he was smoothing it proprietorially, as if he was proud to be holding it for her.

  “Would you mind taking our photo in front of the ship?” The lady held out a disposable camera.

  Olivia smiled. “Where are you from?”

  “Leeds, love. Just near Leeds.”

  “I’m from Worksop,” said Olivia, taking the camera.

  “Ee, ’ecky thump,” quipped the old man. “You look out of breath. Have you been running? Don’t you want to get your breath back a minute?”

  “No, I’m fine. Closer together,” said Olivia, peering through the viewfinder. “Ooh, hang on. I’m going to have to move back a bit to get it all in.”

  “Don’t bother, love. Just get a bit in. We know what it is, don’t we, Edward?” The lady was a charming mix of elegant looks and broad Yorkshire accent.

  Olivia clicked the camera, looking at the beaming couple through the viewfinder. It suddenly felt as though all the scariness and bad things in life had receded, and she was in a lovely granny-and-grandpa world of biscuit tins and doilies. To her horror, she felt tears pricking her eyelids.

  “There you go. Souvenir of Miami,” she said slightly too cheerily, handing back the camera.

  The lady chuckled. “Running. It makes me feel jiggered just looking at you. Do you want a cough sweet?” She began to rummage in her bag.

  “So, love,” said the old man, “what are you doing so far away from Worksop?”

  “I’m a journalist,” said Olivia. “I’m trying to get my magazine to let me write something about the OceansApart.”

  “Eee, right fair. A journalist. That’s grand, that is.”

  “We can tell you all sorts about the ship, love.”

  “Do you live on it?”

  “Yes!” said the man proudly.

  “Well, only part of the time,” said the lady.

  “That’s our cabin. Look, halfway up, in the middle, with the pink towel,” said the man, pointing.

  “Oh yes, looks nice. Lovely balcony. I’m Olivia, by the way.”

  “Elsie, and this is Edward. We’re on our honeymoon.”

  “Your honeymoon? Have you known each other a long time?”

  “Fifty years,” said Edward, proudly. “She wouldn’t have me when she were eighteen.”

  “Well, you started courting someone else. What did you expect?”

  “Only because you wouldn’t have me.”

  Olivia loved people’s stories. Scratch the surface of anyone and you’d find something strange and complicated going on.

  “Do you want a lift anywhere?” said the man. “We’re taking a taxi to South Beach.”

  “Ooh, yes please,” said Olivia. “As a matter of fact, I’ve made myself a bit late.”

  * * *

  “So, carry on with the story,” Olivia said as the taxi pulled out onto the highway.

  “Well,” said Elsie, “anyway, he thought I weren’t interested, and I thought he weren’t interested, and we lived in the same town for fifty years and never said ’owt. Then my husband died, and Vera, that was Edward’s wife as was, she died, and then . . .”

  “Well, here we are. We was married two weeks ago and we’ve got a lot of missed time to make up for.”

  “That’s so sad,” said Olivia. “All that time, wasted.”

  “Aye,” said Edward.

  “Nay, lass,” said Elsie. “You can’t go regretting stuff because there wasn’t anything else that could have happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, it’s cause and effect. Every time anything happens it’s because of all the other things happening all over the world. Any time you make a decision, there wasn’t anything else you could have done because it were who you were, like, and it was all the things that had happened up to then that made you decide that. So there’s no point regretting anything.”

  Olivia looked at her, nodding thoughtfully. “I’m going to add that to my Rules for Living,” she said. Her mobile rang, dammit.

  “You can answer it, love, we’re not bothered.”

  It was a commissioning editor from Elan, gushing at her that they wanted the OceansApart piece, and she could stay another two nights to do it. “But we don’t want any white shoes and blue rinse
s, right?” Olivia flinched, hoping her new friends couldn’t hear. “We want hip people, not hip replacements.”

  Olivia said good-bye and clicked the phone off with a sigh. It rang again immediately.

  “Where are you?” bellowed Barry. “I’ve just rung the hotel and you’re not there. What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I. Am. Do. Ing. It,” she said. “I’m just doing a bit of extra research.”

  “Get the fuck on and write it,” he said. “Six o’clock, finished, fifteen hundred words. Or that’s the last time I’m sending you abroad.”

  “He sounded a bit aerated,” said Edward.

  “I don’t like men what shout, do you?” said Elsie.

  She arranged to come and talk to them the following morning at eleven. They said they’d introduce her to the residents’ manager and show her round their apartment and “all the amenities.” They dropped her off in front of the Delano. She looked at her watch and realized that, unfortunately, it was nearly quarter to twelve.

  * * *

  “If sex is the new elevator music, then Miami is the new Manhattan. If . . .”

  It was quarter to four and she still hadn’t got an opening paragraph. She sat back from the computer with her pen in her mouth. Then, glancing behind her guiltily, as if she was in the newsroom, she brought up AOL and hit Google, typing in “Pierre Ferramo.” Still nothing there. It was definitely weird. If he was for real, there would be something at least. She typed in “Olivia Joules.” You see, even she had two hundred and ninety-three entries. She started to read them: articles from the years she’d been trying to make it as a journalist, the first one about car alarms. Crufts Dog Show. She smiled fondly at the memories. Then she thought she’d have a little look through her clothes to think about what to wear for the party. As she stood up, she caught sight of the clock.

  OhmybloodyGodandfuck! It was four-thirty-five, and she hadn’t written a word.