. . .’
I trailed off.
Malcolm’s chocolate mousse had arrived while I was dissembling, but he had not dived in with his usual enthusiasm. Instead, he stared. ‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Come on! We were watching seven videos of an empty studio, for crying out loud!’ He seized my hand. ‘If I gave you a ten-hour film of an empty studio to take home, would you watch it?’
‘Err . . .’ I suspected it was a trick question. After all, this was Tate Modern.
‘Picture this: you come home from a hard day’s slog at the old nine-to-five, and there’s a ten-hour DVD of an empty studio waiting for you to watch. Will you watch it?’
The ice cream spoon was cutting into my fingers. ‘Well, if you put it that way . . .’
‘Fine,’ he said, unhanding me. ‘Now, what if I put the same DVD up on seven cinema screens, in an auditorium measuring, what? Twenty-four paces by sixteen—say a thirteen-hundred-square-foot warehouse—what if I did that, and amplified the sound of Nothing Happening till the static was singing in your ears. What would you think then, eh?’
I said nothing.
‘“Awesome,” isn’t that what you said?’
I stared at my ice cream.
‘And that is the second lesson,’ he concluded.
He then attacked his mousse with gusto. The nice waiter paused by me to ask whether the ice cream was at all palatable, so I took a final, final spoon of it. If I left at that point, the question would haunt me for the rest of my life, so I asked it. ‘What was the first lesson?’
‘Lesson one: Do something different, but do it first. That’s the Lucio Fontana lesson!’ He shovelled a mouthful of mousse into his mouth.
It was a beautiful day outside. Black barges floated past on a muddy Thames, towards the Millennium Bridge. Malcolm did not notice. He was sweating in the cool room. I suppose he had a conscience after all.
‘Lesson two: Do it on a grand scale! That’s the Mike Norman lesson!’ He wiped chocolate off his chin with a napkin.
I realised he was working up the anger to deliver my termination notice. I had to rise; I was cutting this too fine.
He was thundering, ‘So what is this nonsense about a short story? Come on, Humphrey Chow! I wait for you, I wait patiently for you, for years and years; and you come to me with a short story? So where’s the market for that? What’s my commission in that?’
The gloves were coming off. I wanted to tell him I hadn’t exactly been with his agency for ‘years and years,’ but I didn’t. It was time to go. I took a deep breath.
‘I didn’t actually give it to you . . . I gave it to . . . what I mean is, Lynn and I are working on a collection of . . .’
‘Give that poor girl a break,’ pleaded Malcolm Frisbee, clasping his fingers dramatically.
I forced myself not to look sideways, the first lesson of drama being to affect a total lack of awareness of your audience.
‘She could have walked off with her team’s bonus last Christmas if your account hadn’t dragged down her averages! Last quarter, every other writer on her slate grossed fifty K, annualised. You? Zilch! And now you tell me you’re working on a collection? Humphrey Chow, are you on this planet?’
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