Waiting for Doggo by Mark Mills Page A

he’s smoking a cigarette.
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘You live here?’ he asks.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Quasimodo?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘The dog, you doughnut.’
    ‘Er, no, he doesn’t.’
    ‘So what makes you think you can bring it here to shit?’
    I’m about to reply, quite reasonably, that it’s a public park, but I don’t get a chance to.
    ‘You want me to come round your place and have my dog shit on your doorstep?’
    ‘I always bag it.’
    ‘Yeah? So will I. Twice a day. Just like you.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Wot?’
    ‘I’m sorry. If it upsets you, I’ll stop.’
    ‘Wot?’
    He’s obviously itching for an argument, but I’m damned if I’m going to let him haul me down off my karmic cloud. Clara comes to my aid in the form of one of her favourite phrases. I raise my hand high and call, ‘Love and light.’
    The man falls strangely still, then his hand slowly rises to return the gesture. It’s a beautiful moment … until the hand swivels, the fingers folding back so that only the middle one remains, perfectly upright.
    ‘I got my eye on you, weirdo.’
     
    The story draws a smile from Edie, but not much more.
    She has been a bit subdued all week, and I think I know the reason why. The aftermath is always tough for us creatives. The moment the account is won, our job is effectively done. We may have landed the fish, but it’s for others to gut it, fillet it and cook it. At best, our opinion will be sought from time to time by planning, design and production, but it’s poor consolation after the buzz of victory, which fades all too fast.
    I’ve been in a bit of a funk too, and we’ve been shooting a lot of pool. It’s the glue that binds the creative department together. Colleagues cum rivals, we play as we work, in a spirit of good-natured competitiveness. Megan and Seth are currently top of the box league, followed by Eric and Josh from design (whose graphics skills have earned them honorary membership of the creative club), then Clive and Connor, with Edie and me in the bottom spot. New to the game, Edie is still infuriated that she’s holding us back. She won’t be for long, not at the rate she’s practising in her lunch hours. She also confessed to me the other day that she’s found a pub with a pool table near her flat so she can hone her game away from work with Douglas.
    It’s a determination that verges on obsession, and it lays her open to Megan’s mockery. Megan excels at mockery. She dresses it up as playful joshing, but you can’t help feeling there’s a splinter of genuine hostility buried away in there somewhere. It’s the same with her smile, which is big and freely given but also mildly unsettling, because her eyes never quite seem to be smiling too. I’m pretty sure she hates having us around and isn’t going to change her mind any time soon. We haven’t set out to challenge her hold over her ragtag posse of slightly hopeless young men, but our refusal to play along with her mother-hen antics inevitably calls her authority into question. I’m guessing that’s how she sees it.
    If I’m aware of Seth perking up every time he finds himself in Edie’s presence, then so is Megan. She’s a watcher. I’m coming round to Seth, partly out of pity that he gets to sit in an office all day with Megan, but mainly because he’s sweet with Doggo, chatting away to him like he’s a human being: ‘Doggo, you’ll never guess what, the weirdest thing happened to me at the weekend …’ I have a sneaking suspicion it’s his way of letting Edie know a bit more about who he is, what makes him tick. ‘Hey, Doggo, I was at the Gaga concert at the O2 last night with a bunch of friends …’
    Clive and Connor, I’ve decided, are a couple of bona fide oddballs, best avoided, which isn’t hard. They like to keep themselves to themselves, their door closed, the music loud (to drown out the sound of their constant bickering). They’re like a couple of foul-mouthed old fishwives, even when