Serendipty Kills

It was only a small story at the back of the Wall Street Journal but it was still a title-bite that grabbed immediate attention. Investment Bankers had birthed a variety of badly behaved children, but stabbings were not generally part of the play book. I mentally flipped back to the day I first met Lucian…

A distastefully confident man swept into the hotel dining room. Focused more on finding the monied people, a certain stumble was inevitable but was deftly covered up with a smirk that never found his eyes. We had organised to meet in one of those soulless places that provided the same food, with the same atmosphere at the same excessive pricing. The expensively standard lunch was booked so we could foster business as my bank hoped Lucian could help introduce our product to Middle East investors. He was too smooth, too uninterested in business, and too finicky on food choices. Yet, despite this chronic apathy, management voices bullied my head into bringing out the black moleskin notebook, a soothing companion when factual certainty was required. I prepared to take my million dollar notes, after making a side excerpt on Lucian noting how awkward the whole situation felt.

After a number of trips involving a variety of perfunctory catch ups and a plethora of inappropriate but politely shut-down emails, my bosses decided this extraordinary lack of professionalism provided incentive for a physical move. My CEO suggested a further nail in the unprofessional coffin; not only should I move countries, but I should move in with Lucian, his partner and their corpulent poodles.

It was tough going. The atmosphere in the house was peculiar, the house-bound poodles waddled about like nobility and Mrs Lucian showed an unpredictable penchant for spouse spying. This CIA bent seemed warranted as when outdoors, everywhere I turned I seemed to meet one or more Lucian besotted mistress. One of these paramours informed me the prevailing Mrs Lucian, prior to becoming the Mrs part, had first evolved as the children’s nanny. And obviously, like all over-confident, short and blandly attractive men, Lucian had decided to leave his wife and four children to immediately impregnate and settled down with his nanny. Investment banking ethics 101.

It needs to be pointed out Lucian and Mrs Lucian were initially generous and kind considering the connection to my boss was not linked to influential partnerships and first-class work. No; the super glue that held this gifted relationship together was that well known nose guzzler Coke, to which, at the time, I was completely unaware.

A few months further into this grandly abusive adventure the house and insider atmosphere took an even stranger turn. The confined poodles became restless, Mr and Mrs Lucian even more so, and a trip to Paris was planned. This away time for the protagonists meant the house would be looked after by staff i.e., the housekeeper and her chauffeur husband. Accordingly, flying free with some mental breathing room, I kept myself to myself and enjoyed the gift of having a house that had shrunk to only 2 staff and 2 swaggering poodles. To mix things up I accepted a last-minute invite to a dry wedding, middle eastern style, and spent my Saturday evening low-kicking soberly around the dance floor, high-kicking being a far off dream of mine.

When Cinderella time kicked in I caught a taxi back home and walked into the house to find two staff had defied the laws of procreation and multiplied to 25. Slightly confused we all stared at one other. Even though there were a lot of faces, there weren’t a lot of happy ones, so of course 50 sad eyes staring at me prompted a ‘what’s wrong’? A very excitable Mr Chauffeur jumped up and said, ‘what have you done with poodle Pol Pot’? Of course, one of the poodles was called Pol Pot. But still confused, on circumstances rather than names, I replied ‘isn’t he in the house’? Mr Chauffeur said NO…and at this firmly voiced no I knew a catastrophe was inevitable. I may have failed to make it clear at the beginning of this story, so make it clear now, poodles Pol Pot and Chairman Mao were treated with more deference and reverence than the child Lucian and Mrs Lucian had begotten 2 years previously. Looking down at my phone, I saw 20 missed calls and texts and immediately panicked. I called Lucian.

At first the conversation flowed most civilly as bankers are wont to do when in conflict or negotiation. He questioned me on my exact steps from bedroom to front door, exact moves made at the front door, exact turns made with the keys at the front door, and then, the exact sounds the keys made when turning occurred. As I kept repeating the same information (there is only so many sounds a key can make that I can reproduce faithfully) Lucian started to get heated. Not realising he was extremely inebriated amongst other questionable gratifications I became more and more confused as his tone became more and more contemptuous. The conversation turned to the bizarre. Amongst many accusations that didn’t make sense he yelled ‘my wife is pregnant and if she loses the baby it’s your fault’. He explained Pol Pot and the Chairman were her life and the stress of losing a poodle would mean she would most likely spontaneously abort? He then blurted out he was ex British Intelligence (WHAT??) and he had video evidence of me leaving the house. To which all I could reply was ‘that’s great as it will prove all Poodles were left behind’. His final words were get OUT of MY house…although the calls and texts continued I ignored them due to an overwhelming sense of confusion and pure breed dread.

It was now about 1am and having turned my phone off I had nothing else to do but start crying. Mr Chauffeur put his arms around me and kept them in a slightly too long hug. Disengaging awkwardly with an uncomfortable trail of gifted mucus, I returned to my bedroom, shut the door and started packing, wondering how to explain this ridiculous drama to a CEO who is woo-woo buddies with your middle east introducer?

My bedroom door inched open and in walked Mr Chauffeur. Much to my consternation, he star-fished on my bed then started a tragic drama that culminated in me taking the blame. He explained Mr and Mrs Lucian were incredibly difficult employers and in this situation all they needed was for someone to admit fault and all would be forgiven. I was pretty sure all they wanted was a pure bred poodle back. Unfortunately for Mr and Mrs Chauffeur I was a stickler for what is fair and right so promised I would do whatever I could to help them find new employment but would not admit to being the perpetrator of Pol Pot’s escape. I didn’t think it prudent to establish the fact I was a relative stranger in the middle east meaning it would be very difficult for me to procure any form of employment advocacy, but during my thought recess Mr Chauffeur changed tack. He randomly suggested he could raise $20,000 to pay me for taking the blame.

This took me almost as much by surprise as Lucian blurting out his wife was suicidal over a missing Pol Pot. Outside of being correctly sceptical two underpaid and overworked house staff could raise that amount of cash, I had zero interest in taking any amount of money to take the blame. So, of course said no. Much to my horror he changed tact again and started walking towards me with arms outstretched. I asked him what he was doing? He said I need a hug to feel better. To which I said the most emphatic NO of the night. He casually said I’m not leaving your room until you kiss me and then maybe things will be ok again for me (WHAT)?? He was in between myself and the door with his whole family, including his wife, downstairs. He lurched and I didn’t have time to turn my cheek before wet, slack lips were slobbering all over my face. I pushed him off and all I could think of to say was No – No – Down – DOWN, a potential confusion of poodle instructions with sexual harassment guidance. He hesitated, looked me up and down, hesitated again, then thankfully sidled out of the bedroom. With no lock, my only mental and physical protection was to put as much luggage as possible up against the door and sit strike poised, shaking and vigilant against further intrusion.

Despite spending the next few days walking the streets calling out Pol Pot, here boy, where are you Pol Pot, and trudging to various government departments whilst calling numerous lost dog institutions, the intimidation and abuse from Lucian and Mrs Lucian continued. Emails containing ‘watch your back’ threats and offers of unemployment for the rest of my life peppered my next few months of living hell. My employer, who may I remind you was best nose-candy buddies with Lucian, was just as unforgiving. Somehow it seemed I was the worst poodle sitter of all time regardless of not actually providing any poodle sitting at the time of the crime, and, throughout all of this randomly bizarre and nasty canine drama, I lost my job…

Years later, I was lunching with one of my ex banking bosses in Monaco and she asked me if I had ever learned what happened with poodle-gate? I told him that Lucian had tried numerous times to contact me but I had blocked him so I hadn’t really spoken to either of them for quite some time. Mrs Lucian had always scared me with her inability to control anger and stalking capabilities, and Lucian had always made me uncomfortable with his narcissism and complete lack of real world presence. My ex-boss proceeded to tell me it turns out the Chauffeur was alcoholic and had apparently kidnapped the poodle asking for $250,000. He had sent a tuft of doggie hair in the mail to Mr and Mrs Lucian threatening Pol Pot death if they did not pay the reward. WHAT??? I realised the $20,000 payment made sense, it was a bargain if he thought he was coming into an easy $250k from juiced up, poodle obsessed employers.

My eyes were drawn back to the article. There was an odd picture of Lucian with his current mistress who I presume was the ‘probable cause’ for the stabbing development. Lucian it seemed had gone to the Wildenstein school of plastic surgery in an attempt to hang on to his bland handsomeness. The other optical portion of the article held a strange photo of a neglected looking Mrs Lucian, who used to be a striking women but now looked as if she had already done 30 years hard labour. Apparently they had moved to the US to find work, and the article told of a particular moment where a drunk Mrs Lucian had house crashed, with her BMW, Mr Lucian and the new mistress in flagrante. Taking exception to this and encouraged by inebriation, Mrs Lucian (I guess by now ex-Mrs) took the nearest implement to express her disappointment, managing to stab Lucian whilst screaming out to the potentially new Mrs Lucian she was ‘horse meat’. A suspenseful reference to the current mistress being passionately engaged in equestrian pursuits. I sighed. Somehow I felt karma had been served at a certain level, BUT it seemed Lucian, the man that puppeteered numerous women around him was free and ‘innocent’, and the women he had broken was soon to serve jail time. Somehow his sociopathic narcissism and confidence paid off, and a wrong was not necessarily righted. Maybe I should have taken that $20,000 and written a proper story about it all…