I Think I Love You Read Online Free PDF Page B

far your prospects had dived by the number of stairs you had to climb to the interview. Great jobs came with lifts. Banks of lifts standing to silver-buttoned attention like the guardians of an ancient citadel. Lifts that arrived with a geisha’s sigh and opened with the delightful
ching
of money. And beside them there were receptionists, who asked you to please take a seat and Mr. Porter would be right with you. He still dreamed about one receptionist, an Ali MacGraw brunette in a tight red merino wool sweater, who had offered huskily: “Tea and two sugars all right, William?”
    One by one the jobs with lifts slipped from his grasp. He had just reached the basement level of despair when, sitting with a pot of tea and a round of toast in a Chalk Farm café, he spotted a small ad in a corner of the London
Evening Standard:
“Publishing opportunity for self-starting graduate. Knowledge of pop music an advantage. Lively writing style essential. Desirable central London location. Perks.”
    The desirable central location turned out to be the groin of Tottenham Court Road, a junction where the whores competed for trade with the unlicensed minicab drivers. Both professions looked equally taken aback if a punter took them up on the offer of a ride.
    It took him a while to locate the tall, narrow building because there was no number and the nameplate for Worldwind Publishing was a business card, taped between Bunnyhop Personal Services and Kolossos: Importers of the Finest Greek Cooking Oil. Where once must have stood an impressive Georgian door, there was now a flimsy hardboard replacement with a handle improvised from parcel string. Bill pushed the door gently and fell into a dark hallway. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. There was one light fitting on the ceiling,a crystal dome the size of a washing-up bowl, but such light as it shed was filtered through a gauze of dead insects. He spotted some stairs in the distance and set off in their direction, the carpet squelching underfoot. It was like walking on mushrooms. By the time Bill got to the sixth floor, his ears had popped and his lungs were banging noisily on his chest demanding to be let out, but, unbelievably, there was another set of steps to go. Ascending to the seventh floor, the staircase became so narrow that you had to spiral your torso in a sort of corkscrew motion to get round; there was a real danger you might end up holding your right hand over your left shoulder.
    Once at the top, before entering the office itself, it was necessary to squeeze past a battlement of cardboard boxes. Some were open, and inside, spilling out, was a selection of magazines. They bore different headlines, but they all had the same girl on the front. Definitely not his type. A shy smile, shoulder-length mousy hair, hazel eyes, lashes you could wipe a windshield with. Bill heard a rasp of breath; some sort of office boy, who was either a wizened teenager or a perky pensioner but couldn’t possibly be anything in between, had come to hover at his side. It could do no harm, Bill thought, to be friendly.
    “Not my type.”
    “Who?”
    “That bird there, on the cover.”
    The rasp did something strange, writhing and wheezing into a cackle.
    “I should friggin’ well hope not.”
    “I beg your pardon?” Two minutes in, and Bill was already floundering.
    “Cos that’s a fella.” The goblin was richly enjoying the moment, storing it up to recite at the pub round the corner: “So this nancy comes in for an interview and he thinks David Cassidy’s a bird …”
    Bill leaned down to the open boxes. “Blimey.” A fellow it was, but only just. Certainly nothing that he would recognize as a man. The guy, whoever he was, had a waist smaller than Ruth’s. Bill’s own musical heroes were Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and the Stones. Before the interview he had riffled through his record collection and done a bit of homework. Nothing too ostentatious. Just enough to show