Skin in the Game
A short story about misunderstandings (again), going mad (again), and working too hard
It’s 1am and Maisie faceplants the keyboard. Two backlit colleagues lean out from behind their screens opposite with what might have been concern but Maisie’s upright again and waves them back, forcing a smile. Split lip, metallic taste of blood. She hides back behind her monitor, blinks and refocuses. Project Sail stares back: a PowerPoint file about Southampton Docks with little yellow boxes indicating where the data about profit and loss, volumes of shipments, numbers of passengers etc. are to be added, by Maisie, by the morning. A text box is filling up with the letter v.
“All good, Maze?” comes Florian’s baritone from behind the opposite left screen, and for a moment Maisie is back on her interview Zoom call with him, wondering what kind of face would be behind the Camera Turned Off icon. He’d been travelling, busy leading a deal. She’d been working late at the family restaurant taking the Smithfield delivery and was dialling in on a borrowed laptop outside the cold store. She hadn’t told him that. Blurred background.
“vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv” goes the text box.
“Fine, fine. Need a coke.”
She hits v; it’s already depressed and doesn’t ping back up. Hits it a second and third time. The text box keeps going, and being in Wrap Text mode the box stretches off downwards and the white canvas of page 16 of Project Sail is hoisted up and out of the top of the monitor. Her eyelid has started twitching again. She goes to unplug the keyboard but it’s wireless.
“vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv”
“Don’t bloody flay yourself. G won’t even look at your new deal till Monday. And you shouldn’t drink so much coke, too much caffeine, makes you go crazy. Sugar high, can’t sleep, next thing you’re going schiz and I have to explain myself to HR.”
“Well, you….” She tails off, mouth still smarting from the faceplant, as suitable retorts swim partially-formed round her brain with yellow PowerPoint boxes on. He’d said it: your deal. Not someone else’s. Hers. It had been she who had overheard the two old boys on their way to their private table at the restaurant, not even bothering to lower their voices despite the ‘all a bit hush hush’ nature of the ‘sale process’ commencing for what she had ascertained was the Port of Southampton. She had spoken to the former Associated British Ports manager and got the inside track on potential upsides. She had convinced G to let her work it up into a pitch for potential investors, and now it’s very important to her that the deal’s greenlit before some other investment banker gets the same idea, she’s fired, and she’s back skinning rabbits until 2am in the kitchens. For this, she will need the letter v. She turns the keyboard upside down and prods the upside-down key. Out of its plastic fissure swivels a thin shard of enamel. Maisie unclenches her jaw and runs her tongue across her teeth, cutting it on a jagged edge. She flinches. Considers emailing HR to ask if dental reconstruction is part of her health insurance.
There’s a movement across her desk and to the left. Florian’s head is obscured by the back of the monitor, so he can’t see where she’s looking. His right hand caresses his left, then unstraps the Garmin from his wrist and rests it on one of his deal trophies, things which he had explained to her were known in investment banking as “tombstones”. This one Maisie knew well. Selkie Restaurant Group. Lead left bookrunner. £480m. A jaunty logo: the letter S over an old boat called a coracle, harking back to Selkie Group’s origins as a seaside diner for fishermen. The Garmin’s sensor light flickers green, downlighting the boat through the lead crystal of the tombstone like the macabre font of a budget horror, searching for his wrist. Maybe he takes it off when he’s stressed, so it doesn’t mess up his resting heart rate stats. Maybe, with her head obscured from his gaze by the monitor, he’s now watching her chest region intently too, as she is his. One day, perhaps soon, they’ll have twin tombstones mirroring each other across their desks: Project Sail and whatever that is in mirror writing. She practises with her cut tongue.
“Lias tcejorp.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Hey Floz, can I have one of those mints?”
“Yeah but they’re sugar- and caffeine-free you know…” The thrown tin skittles over onto her keyboard. “Don’t see why they’d appeal to you…”
They take away the taste of blood.
~
In Southampton the disused dock coal yard backs onto the disused Alloway Road Church graveyard. On one side breezeblock columns rise, solemn and vertical. On the other, granite tombstones lean chaotically towards the earth. A fuse box trips in the downpour; on the church’s roof something wired flits across something copper and the shock flashes sparks of green. For a heartbeat they downlight the scraggy grass of the yard, the emerald quartz among the mica and feldspar, and the wet slick of stretched skin nailed to a frame.
~
Sitting upright, minty breath icing the back of her nose, Maisie becomes aware that her analysis is slowing up. Plenty of yellow boxes remain unreplaced by stats. And it’s true, G will probably not have time to hear about new deals before the weekend. If only it was as straightforward as breaking down a side of pig. She’d be done in two hours, tops. A double handed yank around the yellow fat of the leaf lard to slide out the balance sheet. A wiggled fingertip into the sinew between loin and leg to separate the cash flow. A rounded scything with the boning knife to release the operational upsides. Bit of handsawing by the aitch bone, a long slash down the loin, and hey presto. And the skinning, of course, for the crackling. What would crackling be? Sweet equity. Upside. Her M&A fee. Maisie hits ctrl+s out of habit, double taps with a fingernail on the monitor where it confirms that the file has saved to OneDrive, saves an extra copy to the desktop anyway, and puts her machine into Sleep mode.
“Fancy..?” she begins, standing up, until she realises she’s addressing Florian’s empty chair. Across the floor, into the distance, the Slaughter & Lynch Investment Bank M&A department stretches in disjointed fractals of desks. Waxy-leafed plants from an office facility management company, picked because they don’t need dark and respire equally happily under daylight or fluorescent tubes, await their water and dusting from the cleaners. For months Maisie had assumed they were plastic, like the people.
Monday. Maisie hits Send/Receive on her Outlook email. The software duly shows a little spinning circle and green bar but fails to retrieve anything. She picks at her fingernail and sips her coffee, one of her subscription ones from Pret that she doesn’t particularly like the taste of but which she buys because she likes the business model: the more she drinks of their hateful coffee, the lower their profit margins. Over her screen she spots the side door into the meeting room area opening and several of the Managing Directors and Vice Presidents striding back into the open plan office. Florian is among them. He slides up to their desk pod, glowering at his phone.
“How was it, Floz?”
“Ah, yeah.” He prods at the touchscreen with his ringless ring finger, glancing up at Maisie and across to the empty spots across the rest of their pod. Having worked late across the weekend on others’ deals, their pod neighbours would be in late. Not Maisie though. Not when it was her deal she’d been working on. “No sign of Bry?”
“Nope, I think he was on top of things, give or take.” says Maisie. Bry had spent Sunday evening shouting profanities. It wasn’t totally disastrous, therefore. When things were totally disastrous, Bry would mumble the profanities barely audibly. There was an inverse correlation between degree of disaster and volume of profanity. She clears her throat. “What did they think of Project Sail?”
Florian looks up and smiles. “Green light. Loved it actually. Sorry, I should have said… Who is the lead on that one?”
“There isn’t one, it’s just me.”
“Really?” Florian looks up as the ringtone on his phone starts. “Ok well maybe let’s… Hey? Bry? You’re in later right? Yeah. We need to run some scenarios before lunch if we’re going to be in with a chance of getting this over the line. Yeah. Yeah, like in G’s inbox before? No, we’ll clear that with him later, don’t stress. More than one way to skin a twat.”
Bry’s responses had sounded mumbled. Florian prods to end the call with a little more force than necessary. He turns back to Maisie. “Well. I…” His phone rings again. He winks and gives Maisie a thumbs up, then turns to take the call and walks off towards the open plan kitchen, thumb still raised. Maisie grins into the dregs of her coffee and sings a whispered vibrato “Laaaaa” into its unrecyclable echo chamber.
~
There is no Pret at Southampton Docks so Maisie’s coffee is a delicious oat flat white from a tattooed German hipster in a van at the end of the docks offices car park, a patch of industrial land constrained by concrete buildings from the sixties on three sides and a flat yet foamy strip of grey sea on the fourth. Her coffee is so good she almost forgets about the outsized profits the bastards at Pret will be making from her today. Florian is pacing up and down the seafront on his mobile talking to Bry, pausing every few seconds to swear about reception and wave his phone in the air. A stiff sea breeze doesn’t help and when he’s not waving it he’s cupping it to his mouth like he’s trying to light a cigarette. Their meeting with the CEO is due in fifteen minutes. The German was on his way to the Isle of Wight Festival but his sailing was delayed thanks to the storm, he explains, easing a heart shape into the textured foam of her second cup.
Florian uncups his phone, prods it firmly and slides it into his trouser pocket. If he feels uncomfortable being the only suited person on the docks he doesn’t show it. Maisie had picked a robust jump suit which was her go-to for “smart casual” events. Thirteen minutes.
“So you can lead on this right yeah?” Florian asks, pulling his phone back out, checking it, then sliding it back in.
“Sure.”
“It’s just Bry has gone off script a bit again you know and I might have to handle some stuff. You lead the meeting, it’ll be fine. You’re good, Maze. You’re ready.”
“Sure.” She grips her laptop bag, seeking extra gravitas from the weighty printed copies of her PowerPoint presentations. Great. She is ready. Then it occurs to her. Florian has been ready to take the step up from VP to MD for over a year, and as they both know, he just needs a deal to lead successfully. The fact is that he doesn’t think it will be her deal. She ungrips the bag and brings her hand to her violently twitching eyelid. It isn’t out of kindness or a managerial desire to empower subordinates that Florian would suggest she take the lead.
Somewhere a sluice opens, hissing like a detuned radio.
“I love the fucking sea. It’s so, what is it, natural,” says Florian.
The door to the corporate centre swings open and a receptionist with gleaming teeth welcomes them in.
~
They make it to Southampton Central just as the rain returns. Florian kicks back in the first class lounge, tapping away on his phone, like he had been through much of the management meeting.
“It’s a brilliant business.” Maisie feels her throat constricting and jaw clenching.
“It’s not for sale,” Florian says, without looking up. “He told us.”
“But can’t we just, you know, see? With some of the private equity investor guys? Like the ones who bought the Selkie Restaurants?”
Florian’s nostrils flare at the mention of Selkie Restaurants.
“I mean, we are supposed to be investment bankers after all, right? Like, we are supposed to find something, chop it up ready for sale, then sell it?” Not unlike meat prep.
Florian sits forward and swipes the screen with his prodding finger.
“Maze, look, it is, we are, we should, right… Wait.” His eyes swing back to his phone. “Yes. Ok it looks like we are on. Oh yes! Bloody Bry has come good.”
Maisie raises the meanly-sized cup of mean-smelling coffee to her nose, makes a decision, and replaces it without sipping. “The old boys. The ones at the restaurant. They said there was a sale process starting. The manager might not even know. This is a stakeholder thing. We should try them.”
“Hmm yeah. One sec.” Florian holds his phone to his ear and starts to listen to a voicemail from Bry, thick with victoriously shouted expletives.
Well. Right then. That was a yes.
Maisie heads towards the Ladies, enters, and unzips the inner pocket of her handbag. She reaches for her phone, next to the engraved good luck from everyone at Selkies! skinning knife with gut hook. Silent lightning flashes through the soundproofed, frosted glass.
~
Florian’s voicemail tirade is interrupted by an incoming call. The single letter G flashes up on the screen.
“Have you fired her yet?”
“Hi G, how are..? Er, no I haven’t. Actually I…”
“It sounded pretty clear from your email that she needs chopping. She’s making stuff up, you said it yourself.”
G was right. There was no deal to be done, that much had been made clear in the management meeting.
“Thing is, though, she has something. Drive, I guess. Maybe she’s just got deal fever. It was always going to be a bit of a risk, taking her on from...” Florian realises too late that bringing up Selkie Restaurant Group was a poor move. The line is silent for a long moment.
“I remember when you had drive. You never made things up, though, and took your boss on a wild fuck chase to Portsmouth or wherever. Where is she now?” Florian looks up and sees her phone on their table. Its dark mirror reflects streaks of scrolling red. It’s reflecting the Departures board, which is filling up with cancellation announcements. Shit. Stuck here.
“She’s in the ladies.”
“Well when she comes out, take the opportunity to suggest she goes straight home. Second class.”
“What about the diversity quota stuff we have to send to the States? Can’t it wait till next month? Hello?” Florian looks at his screen and sees the call has ended.
Maisie returns. “Floz, I was just on the line to the shareholders. You know, the two old guys? I made it my business to befriend one of them. And guess what?”
Florian exhales and replies with his eyebrow.
Maisie continues. “Management have no idea. But the shareholders want out. This is real, Floz. A proper bilateral.”
Florian looks over at her phone, resting on the table, and back at her. At what point does this become a mental health issue? Should he call HR? Maisie stares back at him. Is it sadness behind those unblinking eyes? Maybe she has another phone. That could explain it.
“Can I talk to him?”
“No, he’s driving and had to end the call with me quickly.”
“Hmm. Look, Maisie, there’s something that I…”
“You could meet him though.” Maisie coughs and touches her collarbone. There’s something statuesque about her.
“Could I really. When.”
“In about ten minutes. He’s driving here. He says he’ll meet us in the old coal yard.”
Florian taps the rim of his empty coffee cup against the table several times. What the hell. Trains are cancelled anyway, and the Old Coal Yard sounds like it might serve a half decent lager.
“Ok.”
Maisie grins, nearly opening up the split in her lip again. Florian holds the door and she steps out into the night. Up close, he smells wonderfully expensive.
~
Maisie huddles under the entrance canopy of Alloway Road Church, framed by water cascading off and through the roofing slats. Florian’s Slaughter Lynch umbrella is wedged in an inverted crumple between the slats of a memorial bench while Maisie braces hers against the wind, shielding him and his phone while he checks his phone.
“No fucking Ubers, no fucking signal. Why the fuck are we here.”
“Project Sail. Sale process. Ten percent of a billion fucking quid,” says Maisie. Florian can’t hear her anyway in the gale, may as well speak the truth.
“I would have stayed in that self-styled first class lounge if I’d known the old coal yard was literally an old coal yard.” Florian prods his phone. Masie looks over his shoulder; the Uber app remains unloaded.
“It’s close,” she says, extending her hand into the downpour.
The door of the church pivots open on its one good hinge.
“Come on, Floz.”
Maisie takes him by the arm and they step into the silent vestibule, out of the weather. The door groans closed. Florian looks like he’s about to say something but doesn’t. Maisie brushes open the internal door and heavy curtain behind it and they walk down the nave, across the transept. The smell of stale incense hangs in the air. Somewhere a loose panel of stained glass braces against a fresh gust and rattles in its frame, but inside the sandstone walls Maisie is protected, comforted.
Pockmarked columns are uplit by candles.
One of them speaks.
“You’re here late. Though where else would you be on an evening like this? Maybe cooking up a storm?”
Masie furrows her brow, steps closer and examines the impassive column. Walks around it. There’s nobody there.
“Er, what’s the deal?” she asks, half to Florian, looking down at his phone, and half to the column.
“The sale process,” says the column, “is, I’m afraid, exactly that. A sail process. A sailing process. Sailing, Maisie. Not selling. The chairman of the port authority you overheard is also on the Southampton Docks Yacht Club committee. He was looking into sponsorship deals. All a bit hush hush.”
Maisie swallows. “So, I’ve been imagining this.”
She senses Florian’s hand on her shoulder. “I think you’re imagining rather a lot, Maze. I don’t think you’re well. Look, I’ve got us a cab.”
“Hang on.” Maisie blinks. Looks at Florian, the column, back to Florian. “Do you hear someone talking, Floz?”
Florian dutifully scans the empty space around the column. “No, Maze. No, I do not.”
“Well I do. There’s someone right there.” Maisie presses the bitten point of her index fingernail into the stone. Waits for a response.
“It’s ok Maze. Let’s get you a taxi, all the way back to London, ok?”
“No.” Maisie scratches at the column, scraping free a couple of grains of sand. She starts with her other fingers, then both hands. She can feel the cool stone grainy under her nails. One of them bends back. “What kind of a fucked up schizo do you have to be to… Floz, you didn’t hear it?”
“No…”
“The church is telling me there is no fucking deal.”
“Well, erm, I think the, er, church, is right, Maze. Whatever you see it as. I think maybe the church represents part of your brain? Part that is very tired and needs a break?”
“What else do you think it represents?”
In the distance a cat screeches.
“Sorry to interrupt,” says the column. “About that sail process. We’ve moved some of the boats from the old coal yard in here to keep them out of the storm . That one there,” the column gestures to the sanctuary next to the altar, “is called a coracle. Skin stretched over a wooden frame, pinned with iron nails. An old type of boat. Light, manoeuvrable. But oh dear, look, the storm has torn it.”
Maisie starts walking towards the altar. Next to a bronze cruxifix, the slick hide of an ancient vessel gleams. Florian’s hand slips from her shoulder.
“The problem with investment bankers,” says Maisie, turning to Florian, “is they don’t care when deals go wrong. Think about Selkies. They never have any of their own skin in the game.”
Above them, a sharp green pane frees itself. Maisie watches as it pirouettes down, down, and lodges itself neatly into the apex of Florian’s skull. She grips it and holds him as his legs give way. His eyes meet hers, roll back, darken with blood. She lets him fall. He faceplants the flagstone like a keyboard. Teeth skittle around her feet. Through the broken window a live wire fizzes and spits sparks down into the sanctuary, lighting Maisie as she unzips the inner pocket of her bag and gets to work.
Above the altar, a malfunctioning speaker hums “vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv”.