One Day in the Life of Ivanka the Bitch, A Novel, Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Spiritual Insurance
7.22 am — Networking is not for the faint-hearted.
Join businesswoman Ivanka Tupolevka on the day she’s about to lose everything in the apocalyptic gulag of her divorce, with Brexshit to deal with, no HRT and surrounded by ‘fuckers’, will she ever escape the psycho ex and save her daughter?
Still networking with the ladies…
Smile and shine, come on! This event really is fabulous! I’m glad for her, Lisa’s done well in the end and so will I! Girls gotta stick together!
Ladies only, so totally different from the past, put that all behind you. Lisa’s promised some big hitters, definitely Torfaen, Cardiff and the Vale hopefully, most likely some other government bods too, so totally worth it. Let’s just get on.
Just take a deep breath before you go launching in. You know how manic you can sound sometimes, so watch yourself, don’t gabble! There. A lot has changed in twenty years. I mean look at the venue for a start. A lovely, romantic, classic seaside hotel, fitting enough for any Agatha Christie type murder. Breath-taking views over the Bay, gravel drive, exquisitely restored Victorian interior and fabulous steampunk details to stimulate your inner vampire. Who could ask for anything more in the morning? Blessings!
If Tit were here, she’d be nagging you right now to ‘be present, mum! Stop grinding on about shit. You might get hit by a bus later and all this worry would have been for nothing and you’d have wasted your last few hours on earth. Focus on something outside yourself for a change.’
She’s right. Look at that through there, stunning! Leather strapped pipes and brass gears and cogs, glittering hands, ticking and turning in the lamplight. Carved onyx bar in long indulgent swirls of burnt umber and cream, lit up inside, like I feel when I make a sale, there’s nothing that compares, and that’s what we’re here for. So focus on that. Lighten up. Deep breath, hinge that corset, heave those laces and kick the buckles off the old camera obscura. No more negativity! We don’t do negativity! And I’ll kick the arse of anyone who brings that to my door again!
OMG the wallpaper is made of real vintage banknotes, beautiful! That’s got to bode well… Something, something wonderful, something brilliant will happen and you’ll get through this. You’ve got to be in it to win it, as they say, so get back in there, you never know…
Titania would have loved this! Shame. She’d have insta’d all those fancy craft gins by now and cadged us a fag or two from a captivated Romanian waiter, if there are any left. Dark days for charming Transylvanian eye candy since we scared them all off. The rabid right, brandishing the splinters of a crumbling system as if they were powerful stakes held high. What a joke! Who’s going to make our cushty lives work now? Deal or no deal, the coffin lid is firmly crashing down on our economy and no crucifix or holy water is likely to rescue me or this now. Even if I pulled the most amazing rabbit out of the hat now, and it is my responsibility to scour the earth for just the hair of one, so I’m not really wasting my time here, there’s so little I can do about the government.
Ffff… really though? I honestly don’t know why I came. This is pure distraction and you’re pathetic. But what can you do but hope for the best? None of us has a crystal ball. In so deep I can’t afford to fail, can’t see the way forward and can’t back out and prove that bastard right. Silver bullet to my head, please.
What’s that? Breakfast menu? Baked Egg Danish Tartine with spiced kimchi and honey drizzled ham? Blessed with a liberal sprinkling of gochugaru and grated Perl Las cheese? Seriously?
It must have soooo grated on that chef when Lisa negotiated making a fortune on us by getting him to serve that bacon roll crap to us earlier. Got to admire her balls, itchy or otherwise. But what the living fuck was all that apologising? She’s lost the plot, seriously.
‘Jenny from Hogarth Housing is now going to tell us a little bit about what they do and how they do it, is that OK?’
Of course it’s bloody OK! That’s what we’ve paid to come and hear about, isn’t it? And then to clap her off asking us, ‘Was her presentation was OK?’
What the hell? I’d have told Lisa where she could stuff her event next time if I were the speaker. A little bit? Cheeky bitch!
‘Ivanka! There you are! You haven’t bought any raffle tickets! You did remember to bring cash didn’t you?’
‘Lisa! Just admiring the view. Yeah, yeah of course.’
Shit man, all I’ve got is my lucky tenner. My tattered lucky tenner from the first deal I ever made, with the Chinese wealth symbols I spent hours inscribing in my own blood that night. Fuck you, inner critic! Yeah I know it’s all bollocks, but it felt meaningful at the time and that has its own value. Plus, that’s time I won’t get back AND it’s got to be bad luck, hasn’t it? You should never squander your spiritual insurance.
Look, I’m not going to argue with you, time spent believing in yourself is precious currency in a turbulent age. Besides, it cost me £14.99 to download this app and I’d be giving up my new rituals on day thirteen of all days. And I’d have to start all over again. AND, as I said to Artur when he tried to chuck out all my stuffed magpies, ‘What’s left of my tattered self-belief is going to be severely impacted at the unconscious level all this shit is supposed to work at, whether it has any real meaning at all, it meant something to me. Fuck off!”
Shit, why do fuckers always have to interfere?
‘What’s the… er…?’ Oh no, do I sound stingy?
‘Ivanka,’ she exhales my name, clasping my tenner-clutching hand to her ample bosom, ‘I know you’ve had your troubles, as have we all. But you must start living in the moment, take chances, tune in to your true path.’
Jesus, I know we only had a perfunctory catch up when I booked on the phone the other day, but it’s like she doesn’t remember who I am or was, or she wouldn’t dare peddle that shit at me. I know it’s been years but she can’t have forgotten? Hang on, where’s she going with my other hand? Christ, she’s going to make me drop my phone in a minute!
‘Women in business need to follow their inner goddess, female instinct if you will. Feel… here, your solar plexus, HERE! It will guide you…’
She’s talking to me like I’m in nappies! Sugar! Is it my hair? My saggy jawline? Can I have changed that much? I remember it all like it was yesterday but it obviously meant nothing to her!
Like my stomach wasn’t upset enough, she’s got my one hand thwomping right under my ribs and my other hand still clamped to her free-floating boobs, all bubbling and bursting out of that plunge neck Jaeger number. Who wears that for breakfast? With Ladies? I took that to mean we could dress casual. Who’s she dressing to impress?
Urgh, I’m not sure technically who’s assaulting whom here, but it’s bringing on a flush and I can do without it.
‘You’re going to be ok. Now come back in, we’re all friends here.’
Hmm… not as many friends as you had promised, when I committed to getting up at 4.30 this morning… but hey ho it is Easter week, the ladies probably have kids to look after. You didn’t really need much of a Goddess instinct to work that one out did you?
And here’s Kylie, her daughter, shaking her tin. She is surprisingly attractive, but then again all the curls probably hide any weird angles. But what lovely energy!
Jesus Christ! Ten quid for a ticket? Twenty for three? A one in twenty… something or other chance to win a shoddy basket containing a bottle of Waitrose Prosecco, a bar of Green and Blacks killjoy chocolate and a day pass to David Lloyd’s you know gets sent out free to the mailing list every three months?
And second prize, whoopee! A copy of Lisa’s book Work Your Network! which we all received when we joined, how very generous of her. But as she’s just reminded us: ‘Imagine the joy you can give to a friend, deserving colleague or family member when you share my work with them!’
Oh I’m so glad now Tit didn’t come, she’d have really ripped into me about all this. I bet she’s got a web page somewhere dedicated to how stupid and desperate and sad her mother is. All my gaffs around her friends, my substandard posts and comments she has to keep deleting. Can I help it if I get face blindness around them? I couldn’t read their reactions to save my life, but at least I tried!
Probably pastes them straight on there. How would I know? Shit, when I was her age, I was already married. And that was stupid and desperate and sad, just trying to get away from my own mother. Nothing changes. And where am I now? Back trying to escape her spare room again.
And all the dog shit. I know I must get my entrepreneurial instincts from her, certainly not my father, and she’s done OK in the past but dog breeding? Yes OK, she’s trying to recover her pension pot and yes that’s my fault, and she’s entitled to earn her money any way she chooses, but how long will that take? Seriously!
Then, Tit goes and shows her some youtube videos about puppy farms and that was that. Every potential buyer for the pups was a canine Josef Fritzl. So what’s her answer? Repeat the madness again, and this time add some cats, Blue Persians, three of the little fuckers, don’t ask me why. With the same result. Puppies crapping everywhere and cat shit in my slippers. And that mother cat, what was that all about? OK, I locked her in the front room accidentally, but surely she could hold herself? I come home, go to play out all my frustrations on the one remnant left of my childhood, my saxophone, and somehow she’d managed to hoik herself up and piss into the bell. How did she know it was mine? That’s what I can’t work out.
What’s Lisa wittering on about now? I’m so tired. My eyes are shutting. Why couldn’t she do Ladies’ business dinners? That’s civilised. Not this. I always get sleepy after breakfast. Who does business over breakfast? It’s just an excuse to escape an unbearable household at an excusably ungodly hour, let’s be honest. It’s all coming back to me now. She was always a bit flaky, a bit shallow, all about the money. What the fuck am I doing back here?
Next…
To start from the beginning…
Copyright Alexis Behrend June 2021.