‘What about? Does he want me to go to the studio?’
‘Er, I’m afraid not. You see, and I’m really sorry about this and it’s not my fault at all, I promise, honestly, but the photographer, he told me to tell you that, he doesn’t think he can shoot you.’
‘What? Why not?’ he said, with jaw-dropping disbelief.
‘Well, I’m really sorry, I’m on your side, but he thinks that, well... he said, rather that,’ then a stroke of brilliance occurred to me, ‘that we don’t shoot men. I mean, actually we don’t. Look!’ I said, darting through reception and grabbing a spare copy of Bling from behind Wendy’s desk. ‘Look, it’s all women, there aren’t any blokes in it, none at all, are there? We only shoot women.’
‘But the lady said that if I took some pictures of myself I could be in it with Jerry,’ he said.
‘I don’t think she said that exactly now did she?’
‘She did! She did! She said if I brought in pictures I could be photographed with Jerry.’
‘No, I think what she actually said was that if you wanted to take pictures of yourself with Jerry, then we’d take a look at them.’
‘No! No, that’s not what she said. She said I could have pictures taken with Jerry if I brought in some pictures of myself. That’s what she said,’ he insisted.
‘Look, it doesn’t matter what she said or what you thought she said because she’s just a receptionist. Here’s what I’m telling you, and I’m very sorry but I’m afraid this is the way it is. We do not take pictures of men, we only take pictures of women.’
‘But why? That’s not fair.’
‘Why? Because that’s what the readers want to see. You buy the mag, don’t you? Would you buy it if it was full of geezers?’
‘But what about the lady readers? They might want to see something too.’
How I didn’t ask him if he’d taken a look in the mirror lately (‘you scrawny fucking little runt’) is beyond me but somehow I managed to remain diplomatic.
‘We don’t have many lady readers, our readers are mostly men.’
‘Mostly?’
‘Yes, men and lesbians,’ I told him, although this wasn’t actually true. According to market research a great many women who regarded themselves as ‘straight’ read our magazines too, although just how ‘straight’ was ‘straight’ was anyone’s guess. Put it this way though; if you caught me sat at home reading Sexy Cocks Monthly, just how ‘straight’ would you say I was? Still, there was no point in confusing the issue with this poor baffled bastard any more than I had to.
‘Well, maybe if you had men in it, women would buy it too,’ he said hopefully.
‘I’m very sorry, that’s not down to me. I’m really just the messenger.’
‘Oh,’ he said, looking utterly crumpled. ‘Well, can I just quickly have a quick word with Jerry then? I just want to ask her something.’
‘I’m afraid she’s not here.’
‘But you said that last time.’
‘Yeah, and she wasn’t here then either.’
‘Well where is she?’
‘I don’t know, at home or down the shops or somewhere I suppose.’
‘What shops?’
‘I don’t know Colin, I don’t know her. I’ve never met her.’
‘But I want to speak to her.’
‘Can’t you speak to her next time you see her?’
‘But I don’t know when that will be.’
‘I thought you said you were her boyfriend?’
‘I am and I love her.’
‘Well good, that’s that all sorted then.’
‘I know what you’re trying to do,’ he said menacingly.
‘I ain’t trying to do anything,’ I told him.
‘Yes you are, you’re deliberately trying to keep her away from me. I just want to fucking talk to her!’ he demanded loudly, freaking the shit out of me.
‘Alright. Alright, you win,’ I conceded, holding up my hands and motioning for him to calm down. I knocked on the security doors for Wendy to buzz me through and spelled it out for him. ‘Okay! Here’s what we’re going to do,’ I told him, stepping through the doors and closing it between us. ‘I’m going to go in here and you’re going to go away and never come back again, all right? Otherwise we’ll phone the police.’
Colin stared at me through the doors in angry disbelief for a moment longer then exploded into a rage.
‘You fucking bastard! You fucking piece of shit! I’ll kill you, you fucking cunt. I’ll smash your face in. You’re a fucking wanker, etc etc etc.’ Then he started looking past me and yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Jerry! Jerry! JERRY!’
I don’t think I helped matters by making mental faces at him through the glass but sometimes you just have to go with the moment.
Peter, June, Stuart, Paddy and pretty much everyone else in earshot piled out of their offices to see what the commotion was, so I quickly stopped with the faces and told them that he just went crazy for no reason. Wendy, for once in her miserable life, backed me up. Peter told her to phone the police.
‘Doing it now,’ she said, and I just managed to pull one last quick spazmo face at Colin without Peter seeing, prompting Colin to go wild and start pounding on the doors to get at me.
‘I don’t think he likes you,’ Peter pointed out. ‘What set him off?”
‘Who knows with these people?’ I said, shaking my head sadly.
12. Look who’s stalking?
Colin didn’t take the hint.
He phoned up the company a dozen different times and put on a dozen different voices but as he asked to speak to Jerry each time, we all knew who it was.
‘Jerry isn’t here. She doesn’t work from here,’ he would be told time and time again but there would be no getting through to him. Sometimes he’d erupt into a temper and sometimes he’d plead, but most of the time he’d just try and con us that he was an agent or a photographer or that he wanted to hire her for a million pounds or something. Actually, I hope that was him because I turned down fortunes for Jerry one week.
Anyway, we gave his number and address to the Old Bill and they went around to talk to him, but like all good nutters he just denied everything and continued his fruitless attempts to get in touch with Jerry from phone boxes around London.
I told Paddy that we should get one of the girls to ring him up and pretend she was Jerry just to wind him up but Paddy thought that would probably aggravate the situation rather than help it.
It was another few weeks or so before he started showing up at the office again. He didn’t come into reception this time but instead chose to hang around outside waiting for... well, presumably Jerry to emerge. That wasn’t very likely seeing as Jerry lived in Budapest and had never even visited our offices. This too had been explained to Colin during one of his calls but he wasn’t having any of it. As far as he was concerned Jerry was from Guildford; he knew this because she’d said it in one of the bullshit interviews I’d made up about her in Bling once. He didn’t quite phrase it like this but you know what I mean. Besides, when he’d made his first enquiries we’d probably humoured him a bit too much, not realising what a persistent bastard he was going to be, and so that was that as far as he was concerned. Jerry was alive and well and waiting for him to find her, and we were the enemy keeping them apart.
‘I still think we should get Hazel to ring him up,’ I said.
‘And say what? “Fuck off you nutcase”?’
‘No, get her to say something like, “Oh Colin, I hear you’ve been trying to get a hold of me. They won’t let me talk to you, but I’ve had it with them. I want to get out of here and be with you. If only I was sure you truly were the man for me. Prove your love to me, go and stick your legs on a railway track.”’