five senses

FIVE SENSES

Well, I guess, to be honest, it was my fault.

It all started in January, just after Christmas. Well, actually I suppose it really started about six months before when I lost my job.

'Listen, John, times are hard, we are going to have to let you go. We will give you a redundancy package. You've been a good employee, sorry.' That was the second lie, I told them their product was faulty, but of course, they didn't listen. Whistle-blowers always lose out in the end. Any excuse to get rid of me.

My girlfriend wasn’t sympathetic either, ‘You’re just lying around doing nothing- just drinking and watching tv. And feeling sorry for yourself. I really don’t care if you were right, I’m past all that crap.’ The money soon ran out and so did she.

I didn't mind sleeping rough. I called it an adventure- an experience of a lifetime. Who else with a doctorate would be meeting the interesting class of people I was meeting? Someday I would write a book? The thing I hated the most about roughing it was the lousy food.

Under the stairs at the end of the alley was safe, the only drawback was the bloody thumping of the disco music when you are trying to sleep. But I enjoyed watching the patrons enter the strip club, with James Bond's anonymity.

In the morning I found it, black leather and bock-a-block full of credit cards and the most curious of all, a voucher for one person on some island resort called the Five Senses and an air ticket booked for next Tuesday. I continued leaving through the wallet, the usual, and a rather nice photograph of an attractive blonde - a trophy wife with two kids. Now how would he explain his little visit to the Pussy Cat club and his ‘business trip’ to a tropical island. I smiled thinking of the explanations- they would never wash.

I thought about handing it into the police, but my relationship and opinion of the police had, since I'd been on the rough, taken a nose-dive. I continued leafing through the wallet, the trouble is nowadays nobody seems to carry cash.

What the hell! He deserved to lose it. I looked again at the voucher-wouldn’t it be nice, 10 days of unlimited food. But how?

I begged on the street, outside a MacDonalds' for half a day, until the owner gave me five bucks to move on. Round the corner, I bought a hamburger from his opposition and with the change made my way to the post office. I rang the airline and canceled the flight and asked for a refund – the voice on the phone was very accommodating but they couldn't refund directly to my credit card as it had been a special deal- for a company account, it would be a refunded as a voucher that I could redeem at any time over the next six months. She gave me the new voucher number, I said there was no need to send a hard copy, the voucher number would be sufficient, I checked the number with her as I wrote it down with one of the post office pens.

The next day I rebooked the air ticket a day earlier than the original date just in case he, the actual owner, tried to check, but I was pretty confident that he wouldn’t, given the circumstance. I thought about ringing the Five Senses to advance the booking but didn’t have enough change to ring international- I could always sleep rough for a day. It was a tropic climate- what could go wrong.

I had two days to wait. I went to the local supermarket and bought three black T-shirts and some cheap cotton jeans and a swimming costume, making sure the amount didn't exceed fifty dollars, using his credit card. I went to the local swimming centre and showered and changed. Later that day I bought some shorts, new gym shoes, one good casual shirt, and a set of necessary toiletries. A backpack and a casual jacket I got for free from the local

Salvation Army store.

I jumped the train to the airport and soon I was sipping champagne in business class. The movies weren’t great but beggars can’t be choosers. Even when I was working I had never traveled business, saying ‘the back of the plane lands at the same time as the front’, but I liked being in front- if only for a while.

I flashed the voucher and talked my way onto the hotel bus. We arrived at the pier and were ushered to a long low and lovely speed boat; I felt like James Bond- a little shaken but not stirred. In about 15 minutes we arrived at the island, to be exact a long pier with a golf buggy which chauffeured me and the other four people to the reception.

One of the few things I had retained, I don't know why really, was my passport. I showed it, the different names didn't faze them, I explained that I often, for privacy reasons, book under different names. I figured they were used to rock stars, oligarchs, and 'businessmen' seeking privacy.

‘Mr. Mitchell, you understand that we have to, under local by-laws, retain your passport over the duration of your stay.’ I nodded- it could be a short stay. 'Oh and Mr. Mitchell, your sister has emailed to apologize and said she will be two days late, ‘an unavoidable change in her shooting schedule.'

Like the old saying, ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ well Sir Walter Scott was a Romantic and I wondered what was in store for me, at least I would have two days of complete luxury – ‘live life to the full for tomorrow we die’ but the thought I much preferred to Ecclesiastes, ‘a living dog is better than a dead lion'. I left the bar it was making me too philosophical, one of the many faults my ex-girlfriend and listed prior to her departure. It seemed so long ago.

I fell into a routine, waking early, an hour in the gym, god I was unfit, a swim and breakfast, then whatever took my fancy. Although there were a lot of very fat men with gold chains and tatts with very slim and very young girls in bikinis that definitely economized on the amount of cloth they used- I thought -don't even think of going there. I didn't recognize the language- but I thought Russians.

I was asleep when I heard the sound of the door lock opening- Oh god! I rolled over and looked towards the door, silhouetted in the light from the hallway was a fantasy, tall and shapely.

'So sorry I was delayed, darling'. Panic cut the sword of Damocles free, it fell, I lay there in agony unable to speak.

She approached, unfazed by the stranger in what was meant to be her bed. She dropped her bags and sat on the edge of the bed, "So your John, I'm Penelope but most people call me Penny,- I suppose because I keep turning up- late'.

To say that over the next eight days, we enjoyed each other’s company, would definitely be an understatement. Her London agent had assured her that John Worth, although they had never met, could deal with her predicament and set up the new deal. He was well connected in government circles and had a number of heavy connections. As for payment, that would be that arduous, she said she liked sex and had no philosophical objections in sleeping her way to the top.

'I know I can act, given half a chance, that’s all I wanted, and that how this whole mess started.’ There was a certain innocence in her bravado. ‘There always a hidden agenda in a good deed, but some agendas go too far’.

I liked her, and she liked me.

She said her father was in 'real estate' she said. But that was an understatement. 'No, he doesn't develop high-rise apartment blocks, he develops suburbs'.

I said, ‘But why can’t he help you?’

'We haven't spoken in years, there’s no way I would contact him"

Over the next couple of days between the surf, sun, and sex, I started researching. The hotel computer in our room had a surprisingly good internet connection and unlimited download. I researched my absentee benefactor, his name was John Worth, he had a society wife and two children as I suspected, a net worth of around 300 million, apparently accumulated from steel imports, with a whiff arms dealing. Not the type of person I would have willingly wanted to tangle with, but the dice was cast- and I thought, in reality, I had really not much to lose.

I looked up Penelope’s father, the Right Honourable Roger Carlisle, second in line for the Duchy of Glenmore, with undisclosed wealth, he was an intimate of Whitehall and twice a member of parliament for the Constituency of Glenmore and a friend of the Lord of the Chancellery. I was intimidated, forget the old saying ‘in for a penny in for a pound’, all I had was a penny.

On the Friday we met with one of the Russians. His name was Vladimir Kozlov. He was big and bald, with a gold neck chains-I couldn’t stop thinking of the old ethnic joke, ’why do Russians wear gold neck chain, so they know where to stop shaving.’ I had research Vladimir, he was indeed, among other more dubious things, a film producer, of some standing in Hollywood, I suspected in part through his ability to self-financing many of his productions- it was rumoured it was a way of laundering cash for the oligarchs.

We talked over what he called 'pure water', after the second vodka I fudged, lifted up the glass but to quote from a good old slogan of the temperance movement, 'not a drop passed my lips'. He had a proforma contract, I said I would read it and I would also read the script and we would meet on Sunday.

The script was good, I hoped that by the time it got to Hollywood and into production, not too many egos had ruined it by making their mark. Penelope's potential part was good, a supporting role but with enough potential to allow her to make her mark. I read the contract, it was standard as far as I could tell, I was no lawyer but in my other life I had read numerous commercial contracts, this appeared to have the same clichés and provisos.

The price for this largesse towards Penelope was simply for her to set up a meeting between Vladimir Ivanovic Kozlov with the Right Honourable Roger Carlisle, the subject of this discussion would naturally enough be of a business in confidence nature.

On Saturday night, with the contacted details for her father, gained from a quick phone call by Penny to her father's PA, I set up a zoom meeting with the Right Honourable Roger Carlisle. He was somewhat surprised and initially wary about my call, but with Penelope in the background for authenticity, we struck up a good talking relationship- Yes, he was interested in a possible meeting with Vladimir, in fact as the conversation progressed, he was quite enthusiastic about such meeting, and suggest London, on the 20^th at his offices in The Shard, and offered me 10% procurement fee, if the deal was what he had been contemplating eventuated.

To cut a short story even shorter, the meeting on the Sunday, our last evening at the Five Senses, we consecrated the deal with Vladimir. Penelope paid for the in-house expenses and my trip to Los Angeles. She got the part in the movie and it led onto a solid career in Hollywood. As for me, well, we are still together in a loving relationship, and did receive a sizable fund from the Right Honourable Roger Carlisle which allow me to develop my skills within the film industry - what can I say - trust me, now I’m a Producer.