Clark Kent, in his tiny starship, crossed galaxies to reach us, the sole survivor of the planet Krypton. Peter Parker, shy and bookish, was bitten by a radioactive spider. There was the murder of a loved one, then a glorious career fighting crime. Daredevil lawyer Matt Murdock had his own run-in with radiation. It left him blind, only for him to see more clearly.
My transformation to superhero was less dramatic than these, and my powers slower to reveal themselves. I roamed galaxies too, only to land on the Planet of the Failures. Animals would taunt me, but none of them radioactive. Then murder played its hand. Murder and a corrupt city. These were my Causes of Action. Your standard superhero motivation finally worked its magic on me.
At first, though, I didn’t look nearly so promising as a comic book legend. I looked like I would only ever be, at best, The Incredible Loser. Captain Inert.
And there is nothing quite so inert as a depressed man, lying on a couch, watching TV. It was a sweltering afternoon, December 31, and my annus horribilus was at last limping into its final hours.
I was watching a re-run of a cooking show on the LifeStyle Channel. When your own lifestyle has violently come to an end, when it’s curdled, there’s something strangely nostalgic about this channel. Sam was sitting on the couch opposite me. Her couch. She was talking. ‘You don’t really want to do this, do you?’ I clearly remember her asking that. What she meant by it was harder to nail down. It was hard, for Samantha O’Brien is good at spin. She’s great at it.
She can give stockbrokers specialist expertise in the Asian region. Accountants become purveyors of strategic advice across global boundaries upon the tap of her keyboard. Lawyers gain partnership philosophies, firm cultures. They become dynamic, focused and, above all else, ethical. Architects push the frontiers of form. Everything is complex, but then the complex is made simple. Advice is strategic, pithy. The only English used is plain. The only thoughts are those outside the square. The only services provided are seamless.
Sam spins all these things. Your CEO get caught drink-driving? Better let Sam draft the press release. Did your company pollute a river? A lake? Let Sam help you get through all those dead fish.
How would Sam spin Andersens, for example? That now deceased globally integrated professional services firm? Well, she would have focused on its people, their talent, their experience, their passion. Nine point three billion in net revenue didn’t come out of thin air, after all. Passion, that’s the key. A little too much of it in the end, as things turned out.
Then, what of Enron, World Com, HIH, BCCI, One. Tel? Well, she might say, anyone can make an error of judgment. That’s what Andersens said. An error of judgment, by an isolated few. The penalty was unfair. The jury instructions were flawed. There were erroneous evidentiary rulings. It was just a technical conviction.
Sam can put a spin on anything. Even on me. Had I merely made an error of judgment? Was I just the victim of one of life’s erroneous evidentiary rulings? Cut the spin. Now, just the facts.
The most important fact is this. In the fading hours of that awful year, Samantha said to me, ‘You don’t really want to do this, do you?’ If by that she was asking me whether I wanted to talk during the re-run of Nigella Bites, my answer would have been ‘No, I don’t.’ She didn’t mean that, though. I heard a faint, dull blip in my brain, like a faulty, final heartbeat, and I assumed that what she meant was You don’t want to be with me anymore, do you? And without taking my eyes off the chocolate fudge cake that Ms Lawson was preparing (serves ten, or one with a broken heart) I calmly answered, ‘No, I don’t.’
The look that I then detected on Sam’s face raised the prospect in my mind that she and all her worldly possessions would be out the door before I was informed what Nigella would be cooking next week. But no, I had misinterpreted that look for now. Besides, I remembered just as quickly that she had become the sole owner of the terrace, and I would be the one doing the packing.
‘I gave you the opportunity weeks ago to let me know what you wanted to do tonight. You had your chance, Christopher. I asked you a dozen times!’ She stormed out of the room, red lipstick glowing, towel trailing off her head, before slamming the door shut on both the bathroom and any whimper of protest I might have contemplated. I had contemplated no such whimper. Oh, I simply thought. The fucking party. That’s what she’s on about.
In the early days I would have followed her to the bathroom door. I would have pointed out to her that while she may have raised it many times, to suggest that she had given me any opportunity in the matter, much less choice, was a conclusion worthy of her entire agency’s spin at its best. I would have asked her how telling me what we were doing, and where we were going, could have become a forensic analysis of every available option. I might have opened the door and sought to ascertain how the rejoinder ‘no way’ to my tentative enquiry about whether she’d mind spending the night with my friends had become a full, frank and fair discussion of all competing claims.
But it is not the early days anymore. Now I just sit, inert before the screen, while Nigella Lawson sautés my depression in a little olive oil and a white wine sauce.
‘No, I don’t’ was not the cataclysmic expression of will that led to our bust-up. It wasn’t even the straw that broke the camel’s back. The camel was already spread-eagled on the floor, humps flattened, tongue out, not breathing. So, how did the camel get its back broken? And when?
By July, if I’m honest. The month that marked the all-time low point in my professional life. July should have been a wonderful month. The month of our first trip to Europe together after two years’ cohabitation and three years as a couple. It’s just that July turned out to be too good a month for me to get out of town, and the change in my professional and financial circumstances that had been looming for some time had by then entirely overwhelmed me.
We did a five-week jaunt in a car through France and Italy. Sam paid for much more of the trip than she had planned. If we had been honest we both would have said that the relationship was kaput even before the mad scramble for passports and tickets, and the endless, silent taxi ride to the airport. Instead, we were about seventy-two hours into the holiday before we both knew, for different reasons but just as emphatically, that this holiday would never get a sequel.
The tension rose each time a romantic opportunity was presented. A walk over the Pont Neuf in Paris or through a hilltop vineyard in Tuscany remain, for example, moments of excruciating agony rather than golden memories to be savoured. And with seventy-two hours of the holiday left, I was certain that when we got home Sam would be collecting her bags from the carousel and walking straight out of my life via customs. There was a slight delay, that was all.
Until right on midnight on December 31.