Our Man in Iraq. Robert Perisic

at least in public, to give the impression of being a couple. Silva was one of those blondes; she gave up modelling, with an extramarital baby in arms, and joined the editorial staff via Charly.

      If she’d been sitting with us he definitely wouldn’t have been telling me about that woman, although it wouldn’t have bothered Silva. She, for a joke, often mentioned hot young things keen on him. She evidently aimed to divert his erotic attention from herself.

      ‘But, man, when the morning light filtered in through the blinds –,’

      Charly described the horrific moment.

      I listened to him. He could only screw a chick when he forgot his high standards. When he woke up in the morning and realised that the hot young things in the porn videos were much better, he got a shock.

      ‘And now the woman keeps calling me and wants to go out for coffee.’

      I wanted to tell him: Well, go out for coffee then – your masochistic friendships with models have gone on long enough. But that didn’t match the image he’d made of himself.

      ‘The craziest thing is that I splurged on her. We drank probably twenty cocktails and I overdrafted my account,’ he was surprised at himself. Of course, I thought: Charly had sunk all his savings into an eighteenyear- old Jaguar and spent every bit of spare cash on repairs. And with what he has left he buys extra-virgin olive oil for three hundred kunas a bottle from an Istrian farmer ‘because it’s the only sort that’s any good’. The truth is the truth – he suffered from high standards in every respect. He even made a kind of career out of it; he began to write gastronomic columns, recommended the most expensive wines, reviewed restaurants and created a sophisticated image in the midst of our post-revolution hangover, while driving around in his fat Jag. You could always find out from Charly what was trendy and what you weren’t allowed to ridicule: sailing, diving and headhunters had recently enjoyed immunity, as well as Asian films, gardening, slow food and you name it. I wasn’t quite up to date.

      ‘But the truth is the truth, she’s a good shag.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yeah, she’s a maniac,’ Charly said. ‘She does everything.’

      ‘Uh?’

      ‘www perversion dot com.’

      He laughed.

      I realised he must see himself in those women, yet he had no sympathy for those similar to himself.

      ‘But what can you do,’ Charly sighed. ‘Shit happens.’

      I looked around, waiting for all this to blow over.

      ‘You know her, in fact, ‘ Charly said.

      ‘What? Who?’

      ‘The woman. She knows you.’

      ‘What’s her name?’

      ‘Ela,’ he said. I recoiled.

      ‘Fuck, man, you really are an arsehole!’

      Charly laughed and nodded with a cheesy grin.

      ‘Just look at him!’ I said, glancing around as if addressing a jury.

      ‘What’s so damn funny? She’s a friend of my girlfriend’s.’

      Something was amusing him, but I couldn’t tell what.

      ‘Hey, take it easy!’ he said. ‘She’s not your girlfriend!’

      He was right – technically speaking I had no right to object. ‘She’s not ugly. If she lost a few kilos she’d be cool,’ I admitted.

      ‘Well, sort of, yeah,’ Charly agreed, as if he’d suddenly become serious.

      ‘The girl’s OK!’ I declared.

      ‘Sure she’s OK, I never claimed otherwise,’ he defended himself.

      ‘What are you getting so hung up about?’

      ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘What is there to get hung up about?!’

      At that moment Silva came along.

      ‘But maybe it’s not right to, kind of, talk around like that, y’know –,’

      I continued.

      I intentionally didn’t fall silent when Silva sat down, but Charly pretended to be searching for something in the pile of newspapers he’d brought with him.

      I went on: ‘The girl’s OK, I know her pretty well.’

      It was on the tip of my tongue to add that he shouldn’t treat Ela like that because she’d been having treatment for depression, but I changed my mind. If Ela thought she might have any chance with this lout she’d kill me if I said anything like that.

      ‘Hey, have you seen this?!’ Charly exclaimed, trying to change the topic. ‘In Solin near Split there are eight betting shops in a thirtymetre radius.’

      ‘Uh?’ Silva nodded.

      ‘Look!’ he opened the newspaper. ‘A guy says: “You oughta come Sundays after Mass, that’s when it’s busiest.” Y’know, they all go to Mass, and then it’s off ta the betting shop.’

      ‘Who were you talking about just now?’ Silva asked.

      I just blew out a plume of smoke.

      ‘Oh, a girl from the accounting section,’ Charly lied. ‘She messed up a payment to me. I claimed she’s a birdbrain, but Toni defends her.’

      Not only did he behave as if they were a real couple but he had that conditioned reflex: he was able to think up a lie on the spur of the moment. I looked at him almost in admiration. If we ignore the fact that it was all pretty inane, he’d come through it remarkably unscathed. ‘Uh?’ Silva went, long and drawn out. Then she looked at me: ‘Why are you standing up for her?’

      I paused for a second, and Charly scowled at me as if to say: we’re boys, you’re not going to give me away, are you?

      ‘It’s just that... the girl’s OK,’ I said to Silva, taking a deep breath.

      ‘From Accounts? Seriously? Is this something new?’

      I had no idea now what she was thinking. Should I conceal what we were talking about, or tell her I was fucking my way through Accounts?

      Oh hell, I don’t know!

      ‘What’s wrong with the girls on the editorial staff?’ she asked with a wiggle.

      Oh God, I thought, don’t lean so close to me with that décolletage...

      ‘I mean: en masse from Mass to the betting shop?!’ Charly fought for attention. ‘That beats them all. Where else do you have anything like that?!’ He wanted to underline the grotesqueness of our religious, post-communist reality.

      Silva butted in laconically: ‘Most people go to church to improve their chances.’

      Charly rolled with laughter. You could see he considered her the wittiest person in Europe.

      When someone has a faithful audience they always turn out witty.

      I felt it’d be best to get out of there. Charly had a jealous eye and, as if the Iraq crisis wasn’t enough, Silva’s décolletage was now causing me additional stress...

      ‘May I sit here?’ our youngest colleague Dario asked.

      He kept popping up at our table ever more frequently. He probably saw mixing with us as a way of moving up in the world.

      ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, looking up gratefully – he’d come at just the right time to kill that conversation.

      Dario sat down and whispered worriedly: ‘Whaddaya think? Didya hear the Chief?’

      He was pretty scared, but he enjoyed that.

      Silva