by Marian Keyes
A bit more caressing and clothing removal ensued; Lara was beautiful, there was no doubt about it, and she was soft and downy and sweetly fragrant. And yet, when we were pressed crotch to crotch, it felt all wrong – we were both too flat. I realized how much I liked men’s bodies.
Whatever bravado or curiosity or neediness had propelled my initial response to Lara had all drained away and I was keenly aware that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Not that I was chewing anything – God, no! No power on earth could have persuaded me to do any mackerel licking.
They say that only a woman can truly know what another woman wants and Lara certainly did her best. But I couldn’t divorce my body from my mind and just let go and give myself to any pleasure that might come from the experience. I felt like an out-and-out fraud and, worse still, I felt silly.
Luckily, Lara had seemed to really enjoy herself and waved away any of my inhibitions with an airy, ‘Hey, it’s your first time.’
‘Thanks,’ I said humbly.
‘Soon,’ she said, ‘we’ll have you strapping on a twelve-inch dildo!’
Jesus Christ!
I’d barely slept all night. Then she’d dropped me home this morning on the way to her yogilates class. The Drummers to the Rhythm of Life were just arriving – one or two of them said hello, clearly getting used to seeing me arrive home on a Saturday morning, still in last night’s clothes.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Lara said, driving off. ‘We’ll go out. Tell Emily I said hey’
And now here I was, flicking through Emily’s old scripts and unable to concentrate on anything. So what was I to do? I couldn’t break it off with Lara – not only did she really seem to like me, but I’d have to ‘fess up to just being a sexual tourist. And after Nadia had let her down so badly! I simply couldn’t do it.
Anyway, I’d no idea how to go about breaking it off with someone, it was so long since I’d done it. What do people say? ‘It’s not working out’? ‘I need some space’? ‘Can we still be friends?’
But if I didn’t break it off with her…?
I could see my future unrolling itself in front of me. I’d have to stay in Los Angeles for ever and be a lesbian. I couldn’t see any way out of it. I’d have to do all sorts of lezzery things that seem enticing in the occasional fantasy, but not that alluring in real life. And I’d be worn out from the regime of personal grooming that Lara would expect from me: my hair and eyebrows would need twice-weekly maintenance, and she’d brought up the question of my raggedy nails again. She’d make me go for the Brazilian wax and God knows what else.
How had I ended up in this mess? Having sex with a girl? This wasn’t me, this wasn’t the way I behaved – someone must have led me astray. But much as I’d love to, I could blame no one but myself. I forced myself to face one of the reasons I’d flirted – yes, flirted – so shamelessly with her: I’d been showing off in front of Troy and Shay. I’d been hoping to shock them or hurt them or something, because they had both, albeit in very different ways, hurt me.
What had I become? Before Lara there had been Troy, and even though the sex itself was fantastic, the entire experience left me feeling bad about myself.
At least one thing was pretty clear, I thought wryly: any suspicions I’d ever harboured that I was a bad-girl peg jammed uncomfortably into a good-girl hole had been allayed. I’d often told myself that it was a shame I’d got married at twenty-four, that I’d done myself a disservice by forgoing anonymous sex with mysterious strangers. Deep in my heart I’d felt that if I was presented with the opportunity to showcase my dormant wild-girl side, I’d be able to misbehave with the best of them.
But I’d been wrong. I wasn’t cut out for one-night stands. Unlike women like Emily or Donna, casual sex didn’t excite me; it depressed me. God, how disappointing that I was what I’d always behaved like: a dyed-in-the-wool serial monogamist. Well, who knew? Emily was right to be worried about me: I was out of control.
In despair, I sat at the desk for an indeterminate amount of time. Then I began to think of Emily, who was desperately trying to cram seven months’ work into a week. I got up and went out to her. She was still at her laptop, typing furiously.
‘Emily, can I do anything to help?’
She paused, her shoulders hunched and her purple-ringed eyes giving her the look of a raccoon.
‘I could make you something to eat. Or I could rub your neck. But not in a lezzery kind of way,’ I added, lest there be any confusion.
Slowly, she lowered her shoulders. ‘You know what, there is something you could do. I need to get out for a few hours this evening. I don’t care what we do so long as we do something. You decide.’
‘OK.’ I thought about it. And I knew exactly what I wanted to do. ‘I’d like to go out with a gang of girls and get drunk and dance around our handbags to I Will Survive”.’
‘Fabulous,’ Emily breathed. ‘Who would you like to come? Lara, obviously–’
‘No, she’s busy! Um, how about Connie?’
‘Connie? I didn’t think you liked her.’
‘Ah,’ I shrugged.
‘Is it all the wedding arrangements?’
‘It doesn’t matter as much now.’
‘And you’ve stopped asking me if everyone is married. Maggie, I finally think you’re on the mend. Now if you’d only stop getting off with people…’
‘I will, I promise. There’ll be no more.’
Connie was on for it and so was her sister Debbie. We got very glammed up in short skirts, heels and shiny make-up and went to the Bilderberg Room – so naff it had suddenly become very cool – where the men were aggressively forward and fashion ably attired in Starsky and Hutch retro. We were barely in the door when one said to me, ‘Here I am! What were your other two wishes?’ I jostled away from him, and moments later I was running my hands through my hair when I encountered another hand in it. Belonging to a brat called Dexter, who then asked me to go home with him.
But all four of us were there to dance, not to meet men, and we deflected assholes like Wonderwoman deflects bullets –which only made us even more popular. Complicated Martinis kept being bought for us, which we drank but didn’t say thank you for. And although our handbags were small enough to swing from our shoulders without injuring bystanders, for the sake of tradition we placed them on the floor beneath the glitterball – Emily’s Dior saddlebag, Connie’s mother-of-pearl Fendi, Debbie’s LV clutch and my and my JΡ Tod’s special – and danced around them.
When Connie decided she wanted to fix her lips, all four of us steamed haughtily across the floor, ignoring offers of drinks and/or fabulous sex, and went to the ladies’ room, which was a landscape of brown-cork tiling – even on the walls. The woven wicker chairs were like a ‘Readers’ Wives’ special and the smoked-glass mirrors were very ‘Last Days of Disco’. Highly stylish, of course, but not so great if you were trying to see if you’d got lipstick on your teeth.
There was only one other woman in there, squinting at the smoky glass and trying to reapply her mascara. On the washstand, beside her handbag, lay something slightly odd – a pair of handles like the ones usually found attached to expensive carrier bags, the type of handles that are made of hard plastic and clip together along their length. They weren’t odd in themselves, what was odd was that there was no bag attached. But I only noticed all this on the edge of my consciousness, until the woman threw her mascara back in her handbag, tucked it under her arm, then – I thought I was seeing things – picked up the handles and swung them as if there was an invisible carrier attached. The Emperor’s New Bag.
In silence, we all turned to watch her leave, and as soon as the door had shut behind her, Emily, Connie and Debbie erupted into excited talk.
‘It was, wasn’t it?’
‘Got to be!’
‘Who? What?’ I asked, realizing that the woman wasn’t, as I’d thought, a poor lost soul and mad as a bike.
‘Doctor Hawk’s handles!’ From their shi
ning eyes it was clear I was meant to know what they were talking about. Slowly I shook my head and Emily explained.
‘You know how we all carry baggage from our past?’
I had to admit I did – in fact, I was beginning to realize just how much stuff I was carrying.
‘So Doctor Lydia Hawk is a shrink who’s got this, like, pioneering approach. She translates emotional baggage into physical baggage. For the first month you see her you’ve to carry a proper suitcase.’
‘And it can’t be one of the ones with wheels,’ Debbie elaborated. ‘And it’s got to be full of stuff – Doctor Hawk packs it so it’s way heavy and you’ve really got to carry it. Ev-err-y-where. To the drugstore, to work, out on dates…’
‘And as you get better, the bags get smaller. Until you’re shrunk enough to get given Doctor Hawk’s handles. You’ve got to carry them for a whole year as a reminder.’
‘And they cost a thousand dollars.’
‘Ten thousand,’ Connie corrected.
‘That’s insane!’ I said. ‘They’re only plastic handles. You could just tear them off any carrier bag that you get for free.’
They all disagreed, three heads of big hair swishing emphatically from side to side. ‘Nuh-uh. Got to be the special Doctor Hawk ones, else they don’t work.’
‘There are only twenty pairs in the whole world,’ Connie marvelled. ‘They are totally the coolest things.’
Sometimes I thought I was getting the hang of how they do things in Fantasy Land. Other times, like right then, I felt as clueless as the day I’d arrived.
But never mind – back out for more dancing! The music was unreconstructed seventies disco – ‘Mighty Real’ and ‘Disco Inferno’ and other wonderful stuff that I remembered from my childhood – and the high spot was when Emily had a word with the DJ and next thing ‘I Will Survive’ was bouncing off the mirrored walls. One of the braver blokes tried to break into our circle just when the song got to the ‘Go on now, Go!’ bit, so we shouted it at him until he withdrew again, then we danced like there was no tomorrow.
34
I found myself certainly wishing there hadn’t been one the following day, when Emily announced, Lara’s on her way over.’
‘To see you?’ I asked hopefully.
She gave me a funny look. ‘No, to see you.’ She spelt the words out like I was a moron. ‘Her. Girl. Friend.’
Oh Lord.
The day had begun very nicely, starting with Lou taking us both out for breakfast. Lou had arrived last night when Emily – loosened by several free Complicated Martinis – rang him at two a.m. and invited him over. He’d arrived within twenty minutes and claimed that he’d spent the evening watching a ball game on TV and praying she’d ring.
‘Sheesh,’ Emily had exhaled, making a meal of being disgusted by his insincerity.
Then in the morning he’d taken us to Swingers, a cool, crowded diner where the ambience was vibey and flirty, even at ten o’clock in the morning – long, hot looks being exchanged over blueberry pancakes, and that was just the waiters – where he was fun, entertaining and as nice to me as he was to Emily without in any way coming across as sleazy. He insisted on paying for us both, and on the drive home stopped at a drugstore and bought cigarettes and sweets for Emily, gave her three good suggestions for Chip the Dog and told her to call him if she needed anything. ‘And I mean anything,’ he stressed, with unmistakeable meaning.
As he drove away, I had to say to Emily, ‘I think he’s really nice.’
‘Only because you’ve been out of the game for too long,’ she said, booting up her laptop and arranging herself at the kitchen table with an ashtray, coffee cup and packet of Mintos. ‘But he’s actually evil.’
‘Evil! That’s a terrible thing to say.’
And it’s not terrible to cold-bloodedly set out to make a woman fall for you, then do a disappearing act?’
‘But are you sure that’s what he’s doing?’
‘’Course I am.’ She scrolled down her screen and muttered, ‘Now where did I get to? Oh here we go. Chip the dog has just bitten the property developer.’ She flung her face into her hands and whimpered, ‘I can’t believe I’m writing this stuff. I hate myself!’
‘Think of the money,’ I replied, just like she’d told me to. ‘Think of all those lovely things, like being able to eat, and pay rent, and put gas in your car.’
‘Thank you, thank you.’ She began to type and everything was grand until Lara rang to say she was coming over.
Half an hour later, Lara burst into the room, as golden and gorgeous as always, except instead of filling me with admiration it now terrified me. She stopped at Emily and looked over her shoulder at the screen. ‘Hi, sweetheart, how’s it going?’
‘I’ve gone beyond shame, Lara. I’m a Hollywood whore.’
‘Hey, who isn’t? Emily, would you mind if I spent a little time with Maggie in private?’
Emily winced but managed, ‘Work away.’
‘I know this is a little weird,’ Lara said softly.
Emily just shrugged and, feeling wretched, I took Lara into my bedroom, closed the door and braced myself for passionate snogging.
‘So whatcha do last night?’ she asked, moving around the bed and sitting at Emily’s desk chair.
‘Went to the Bilderberg Room with Connie and Debbie.’
‘Sounds great!’
‘Er, yes, it was. Good music’
‘Like what?’
I listed some of the songs and all the time I was wondering, When is the snogging going to start?
‘I went for dinner at Shakers,’ Lara said. ‘Up in Clearwater Canyon. Great food. You should go.’
‘OK.’ The waiting had got too much to bear, so I stood up –I had to because she was quite a way from me – forced her to her feet and pulled her to me. But before I could plant my lips on hers, she’d placed the palm of her hand on my chest and straightened her arm.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘I’m really sorry, Maggie, but I don’t think we should do this.’
‘’Cos of Emily being outside?’
‘No. I don’t think we should do it, period.’
I mouthed her words, repeating them back to myself until it sank in. ‘You want to break up with me?’
‘Um, yeah, you got it.’
‘But why? What was wrong with me? Why did I keep getting rejected?
She fixed me with her blue laser beams and said candidly, ‘I was sore after Nadia and I was curious about you. It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know…? I’m way sorry’
‘So didn’t you fancy me at all?’
‘Sure!’
‘Since when?’
‘Since… ah, since the night I found out about Nadia and you were real nice to me.’
‘Not since I first came to Los Angeles, then?’ I didn’t know why this was so important, but it was.
‘Not straight off, no. See, you’re a little confused right now, ‘cos of your marriage and Troy, and I’m real sorry but I think I took advantage of you.’
‘Um…’
‘Like, you’re great, you’re really great.’
‘But not great enough.’
‘It’s not that, it’s like… I don’t know how to say this…’
‘I’m not your type?’
‘Don’t be pissed at me,’ she said sadly.
Very hurt, I swallowed. ‘So what is your type? Girls like Nadia, I suppose.’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘And why? She had a great body?’
Uncomfortably, Lara assented.
Now, I wasn’t expecting that. I thought men made choices based purely on physical attraction, but I expected girls to be less shallow. Doesn’t a good personality count for anything any more? I wondered bitterly.
‘You’ve got a great body too,’ Lara said, so nicely it took some of my mortification away. ‘But because she usta be a dancer, you know… And, like, she really took care of hersel
f.’
‘It was my nails, wasn’t it?’
‘It didn’t help,’ she admitted.
‘And… ‘I made myself say it, ‘was my… you know… bum… um, bit… the wrong colour?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t really see it. But Maggie, it’s not about that. I’m pretty sure your natural inclination is not to be with girls…’
There, she’d said it.
‘… and I swear to you that if I didn’t break up with you, you’d break up with me real soon.’
I paused, wondering if I should play the pity card or go for pride. Pride won. Actually, I wanted to do it today, but I didn’t know how.’
‘What?’ she said sharply. ‘And here I am feeling totally like the worst person ever!’
‘Yes.’ All at once the silliness of the situation struck home and I began to laugh. ‘Tell me, Lara, tell me honestly, was I terrible?’
She stared at me and a smile creased her face as she filled up with mirth. ‘No, but I’ve gotta say I’ve had better.’
‘Me too.’
And suddenly we exploded into convulsions, huge belly laughs of relief and liberation and the full-on insanity of it all.
When we eventually quieted down I said, ‘But we’ll still be friends, right?’ And that was enough to start us all over again.
‘Keep Wednesday night free,’ she said, before she left. ‘For the première of Doves.’
When the door had shut behind her, I cornered Emily. ‘I’ve good news for you. It’s all off with me and Lara.’
She stopped her frantic typing. ‘What happened?’
‘She broke it off with me. Says I’m not her type.’
‘So what’s the story? You hate her now like you hate Troy and every time she comes over here you’ll stick a fork in her leg?’
Aghast, my heart pounded. ‘No, we’re friends.’
‘That’s a relief.’
‘Emily, I’m sorry.’
