Yes Man (50 page)

I nodded, a little relieved that my days of gatecrashing dates were at an end.

“Is she nice?” I said.

“I hope so,” he said. “Friend of a friend.”

I nearly told him about Kristen, but caught myself. I still didn’t want to talk about that. And with Lizzie getting ready to come back to London, it just didn’t feel … right, somehow.

“Well, good luck,” I said.

“Cheers. My friend Simon set this up. He knows I’d never say no to a red-head. My own personal weakness. That’s the thing, eh? Your mates know your vulnerabilities.”

I was pleased for Paul. And I felt slightly guilty, too. Why had I been so grumpy about meeting with him? I suppose, in the back of my mind, I’d thought I was doing him a favour. He seemed lonely. But look at him: a successful man with friends who thought highly enough of him to set him up on dates. An active social life. We’ll brush over the Sarah Brightman fixation, but the fact was he was fine. Life was sorted. If anything, he must’ve thought he was doing
me
a favour. Me, who never seemed to have anything to talk about. Me, who’d put stickers all over town, which essentially said, “Please call me! I am a sad and lonely oddball who craves the polite conversation of strangers.”

Paul put his jacket on, and as he shook my hand, said, “I meant to ask … I’m in town again tomorrow night. I could bring you that CD. Do you fancy a quick drink, then? Save you sitting here all on your own.”

I felt wretched. Paul obviously saw me as a somewhat pathetic loner.

I put my thumbs up again and said quite gratefully, “Yes.”

And that, I’m afraid, was my big night out. Those were my efforts to drown my sorrows. Don’t get me wrong; I rang around. I rang Wag, and I rang Ian, and I rang Nathan, Jonesy, Ben, and Rich. I even rang Cobbett. But each had an excuse. Each had somewhere else they had to be or something else they had to do. Each had the power of No. I found myself growing jealous of those freedom-loving bastards.

I trudged to the Tube and walked heavily down the steps of Oxford Circus station. Two stops later, at Holborn, I was forced to get out. There was trouble on the line. Some kind of power failure. We were instructed to find other means of getting home, or to hang around and wait for the bus replacement service.

It was a common enough occurence, but it had real resonance with me. Maybe, I thought, this was a sign of hope. This was how it had all began, after all. Perhaps
it was a sign. Maybe Maitreya would come to me. Maybe I’d bump into the man on the bus. Maybe all this meant something. Maybe it
wasn’t
all pointless.

The buses arrived soon after. With genuine hope in my eyes, I looked around me. Scoured the faces of the other affected, moody commuters and travellers, but I didn’t see him. I moved upstairs, but to no avail. There were no men with beards. No men who looked like they might be enlightened. Plenty of men on the bus … but not
the
man on the bus.

The journey was long and the stops many. By the time the bus was running parallel with Roman Road, minutes from my flat, I was completely on my own. A lone figure on the top deck on a dark night, staring out of the window.

As the bus slowed at a junction, I walked downstairs and jumped off. I would walk the rest of the way home. The last half an hour had confirmed a lot of things for me. I knew, once and for all, that I was on my own. That Maitreya did not exist. That the man on the bus had just been a man on the bus. That I’d done all this myself. That there was
no
grand plan. That I alone was responsible for my actions.

And so I stopped at an off-licence, bought a bottle of wine, and went home, the pit of my stomach churning as I realised that at some point this evening I’d have to investigate how much a flight to Texas would be.

Oh. And to fax Sarah Brightman’s agent.

That night, I had a bath. A long, long bath. I didn’t want to get out. As long as I was in the bath, I felt protected. I wasn’t near my phone or the Internet. No opportunities or favours or requests could sneak in through the locked door. It was a steamy, warm cocoon. Things really had changed since my Yes heydays … I’d only had time for showers, then. I’d always wanted to be out there on the other side of the door, searching for Yeses and grabbing them with both hands.

I’d brought my diary into the bath with me. I wanted to see what I’d been through. Analyse my actions. Understand them. See whether, with a month to go, it had been worth it. Whether it could inspire me to want to travel to the other side of the world just one more time. I flicked idly through from page to page, through July and August and September, wondering what Ian would make of it all at the end of the month, when it would be me and him on New Year’s Eve in the same pub we’d been in when I’d told him about the man on the bus. What would he think when I explained what October had done, what November had taught me …

There were things he knew about, sure—the scratch card, Amsterdam, the undeserved promotion, my newfound status as both respected minister and
(failed) inventor—but there was so much more he
didn’t
know about. So many experiences I’d had—people I’d met or places I’d seen. Things I’d done. Little changes in habit. Little efforts I wouldn’t normally have made. No matter how well Ian knew me, much of this would surprise him. A lot of it surprised
me
. I suddenly felt rather proud of Ian. He’d been a constant support. A constant friend. Someone who
could
have used his special knowledge to teach me a lesson I’d never forget, but who
hadn’t
. He’d seen the worth of this project. I guess it was like Paul had said: The people who know you well are the people who know your vulnerabilities. They know your weaknesses. But you trust them not to pounce on them; not to take advantage. And they don’t, because they care. It’s the strangers you’ve got to watch out for. The people like Jason. The people who sense weakness and for whatever reason, feel they have to crush you. Strangers were bad. But why were some strangers
so
bad?

And as I flicked through the diary some more, and I thought about that, I nodded to myself, impressed by my own wisdom … until I was struck by one aspect of the diary in particular. One set of Yeses … one single chain of events … one idea that turned into a feeling that wouldn’t go away …

The people who know you well are the people who know your vulnerabilities…
.

But I pressed on. Reading through the diary. Taking it all in. Reading who I’d met and when, and what had happened before and after, and then I just couldn’t help it…. I started to feel less and less well, and more and more nervous. I couldn’t put my finger on why, exactly, but it had something to do with the thought that was slowly creeping up on me, slowly forming somewhere …

It was an uncomfortable thought—one that made the back of my neck prickle, and my heart start to beat a little faster. I pushed it to one side, knowing that it just couldn’t be possible, that there could be no truth in it, that I was just being silly …

But the more of the diary I read, the more I started to understand …

I got out of the bath and started to whistle. I hoped that would be enough to distract me. But it wasn’t.

Suddenly I had to make sure of something. I had to make sure that this was all down to just mild, unshifting jetlag and ground-in paranoia.

I pulled my shirt and boxers on, walked into the living room, and turned the computer on. There was an e-mail I had to check. One I’d received a little while ago from Thorn … It had been a throwaway sentence and had not really struck me as odd until now…. But now it struck me as
very
odd indeed….

I uncorked my bottle of wine while the Mac started up…. This was stupid. What was I doing? But I had to check …

Finally the computer was ready. I clicked into my mail, and there it was … the sentence …

What’s your address?

My heart leapt. Shit. Thom didn’t have my address. So if Thom didn’t have my address, how did Jason find it with such ease?

Oh, God, it was true.

Maybe Jason had nothing to do with this at all.

I picked up my phone and started to dial … but then I put it down again.

I couldn’t just phone someone up and accuse them of having a hidden identity. Of being the Challenger.

Could
I?

I poured a glass of wine and paced the living room. A stupid idea. It couldn’t be true. But the more I tried to force it out of my head, the more control the thought seemed to gain.

The people who know you well are the people who know your vulnerabilities…
.

Was I being paranoid? Was I going mad? I mean, I already
knew
who the Challenger was, didn’t I? It was Jason, the man who’d taken an active stand against the way of Yes. The man who’d sworn at me and made me feel like a little boy with a stupid hobby. The grown man who said no for a living.

But …
what if?
What if it wasn’t Jason? What if it wasn’t a near-stranger? What if it was … a friend? A friend who knew what I was up to and where I lived and exactly what I’d been doing with my life?

Maybe there was a way of finding out. Or maybe not exactly finding out, but at least setting my mind at rest. It was a long shot, sure, but at least I could take that long shot and be done with it.

But it couldn’t be a friend … the hat … the book … the T-shirt … the trip … it
couldn’t
be a friend….

I went to Hotmail.com.

Would this work? Could it?

In the log-in box, I typed an e-mail address. One that had become rather familiar to me. “Whoisthechallenger.”

Below that, it asked me for a password.

What was the password? What would be the Challenger’s password?

Slowly, and with two fingers, I typed in one familiar six-letter word, and then looked at it.

If this works …
I thought.

My finger hovered over the mouse.

I pressed it.

The screen went white. The computer whirred. And there, in the blink of an eye, it appeared.

An in-box.

I stared and stared, and I still couldn’t believe it. I was looking at an in-box. The password
worked
.

There was one e-mail. It was unread. It was from me. The angry e-mail I’d sent only a day before, telling Jason that the game was up, that I was making a stand, that he could go to hell.

I was stunned. The only reason I’d been able to guess the password was that it was a password I knew all too well.

Which meant that it was a
challenger
I knew all too well.

My head spinning, I picked up the phone, and I dialled.

Eighteen hours later I pulled the car up near the Horse & Groom. I tried to make it screech to a halt, but the braking system of the Nissan Figaro is annoyingly well-designed.

I got out and slammed the door shut.

“I wouldn’t park there, mate,” said a street cleaner. “There’s traffic wardens all over the place. They’ll have you fined within five minutes.”

Oh,
would
they? I wasn’t in the mood to be messed with today.

I opened the door of the car again, leaned over to open the glovebox, brought out a small laminated sign, and fixed it to the window.

MINISTER ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS.

Sod ’em.

It had been my suggestion where we would meet, and I wanted to do it on
my
turf. The Challenger, of course, hadn’t realised they’d been found out yet. They assumed this was a social call—a normal day in a normal place, just as we’d done thousands of times before. I was calm on the outside. But on the inside I was fall of adrenaline.

We sat down, and I spoke first.

“Well … it’s nice to see you again,” I said, making sure to pause dramatically before saying, “It’s always nice to see …
the Challenger.”

There was a silence. I remained like that on purpose, trying to force a statement from someone who was now looking very embarrassed indeed.

“How did you find out it was me?”

How did I find out? I found out the same way they knew I was the Yes Man. Because those who know you best know your vulnerabilities.

I took a deep breath, and said one word.

“Norway.”

“Sorry?”

“N-O-R-W-A-Y. Like the country.”

Something dawned on Hanne.

“You used the same password on your fake Hotmail account as you’ve used for everything else for the past five years,” I said. “Including your mobile phone account.”

I imagine that after she reads this book, she probably won’t be using the word “Norway” for passwords quite so much. But it serves her right.

Her pin number, by the way, is 4626.

“Oh … well. Right. I should probably apologise,” she said.

“Yes, you probably bloody should! When did you first know, Hanne?”

She drummed her fingers on the table as she thought about it.

“Early on. I mean, I
assume
it was early on. God knows how long you’d been doing it by then. But at that restaurant, you ordered fish. You never ordered fish before. You never even
ate
fish before. You said they were too creepy. You said you were sure they were looking at you funny, even when they didn’t have heads. But as soon as the waiter recommended it, you just said ‘yes.’
That’s
how I first knew something was up.”

I suppose the lesson here is that you should never underestimate an ex-girlfriend’s intuition.

“And then there was the fact that you came to dinner at
all,”
she said. “I mean, that was
odd
, Danny. You’d done some odd things before, but that was
really
odd. I was fuming. I was fuming for days. I knew you were up to something, and every time I met you or heard from you, you did something to confirm it.
Yes
, you minded if I started seeing someone new.
Yes
, you were going to help the murdered son of a sultan.
I’ve
had those e-mails, Danny. And
then …
sponsoring a small African child for me, Dan. Do you think I haven’t seen those leaflets too? And the flowers?At first
I thought you were just being easily influenced by advertising, but then I put two and two together and got … well … an idiot. An idiot who says yes a lot.”