You Again?

by Spalding, Nick

‘You okay?’ Cara says as she takes a mic off its stand.

  I nod and give her a smile, if only because it’s lovely to hear her concerned about my welfare. I just can’t let her down now by not going through with it.

  I grab the other mic off the stand, and look down at the monitor in front of us. Rajesh has already pulled the virtual lever, and the song names are rapidly rolling over one another to the accompaniment of the drum roll.

  I roll my eyes when it stops on ‘The Time Of My Life’ by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. I then let out a high-pitched whine when at the bottom, in brackets, it adds, Gender Swap Version.

  What the fuck?

  The song’s first few notes begin, and I look at Cara in confusion. What does it mean by gender swap?

  On the screen in front of us, and mirrored on the massive one just behind us, the first lyrics of the song appear like this:

  Her: Now I’ve had the time of my life . . . no, I never felt like this before.

  ‘Fuck! Do I sing this bit?’ Cara asks, looking at me and then over at Rajesh – who smiles, nods and beckons her to start.

  ‘Yes! I think so!’ I reply, watching as the colour of the words on the screen starts to change from bright green to bright red from left to right, to indicate that they should be sung.

  Cara splutters over the first few words, but by the time she reaches the end of the first line of lyrics, she’s caught up magnificently, and has – it has to be said – a rather lovely singing voice.

  The audience actually give her a bit of a clap, which is very nice of them. I can’t see Amy and Ray at the back, but I have a feeling there’s probably not much clapping going on over there.

  Then, on screen, it changes to show me that I’m supposed to start singing the Jennifer Warnes bit. I, Joel Sinclair, who at the best of times probably has a singing voice that can strip the paint off a nuclear silo, am now required to mimic a woman’s singing.

  Ah, fuck it.

  If I’m going to have to do this weird gender swap thing, let’s have some fun with it, eh?

  I repeat the same lines that Cara just has, only in the worst falsetto voice I can manage. This is shriekingly hideous to listen to, but at least it’s deliberately so, rather than my normal singing, which is equally awful, but in no way intentional.

  Instant, loud and raucous laughter swells into the air from the audience, and I have to stifle a loud, drunken chuckle. Well, it’s nice to see my efforts have not gone unappreciated.

  I continue through the next couple of lines, with the laughter still ringing in my ears.

  Now I remember why I like karaoke so much! I’m entertaining the people!

  Okay, it’s not the way karaoke is necessarily intended to entertain, but I’ll take it!

  It really helps that Cara has such a nice voice. It works in perfect counterpoint to whatever the hell it is that I’m doing. Going from her in-tune, lovely pitch to my weird Monty Python-esque falsetto is as hilarious as it is incongruous.

  And Cara is enjoying herself immensely. She can barely keep it together every time I sing. It’s fabulous to see such a huge smile on her face. I don’t think I’ve seen her look this happy the entire time we’ve been on the island.

  Who’d have thought a bit of Medley and Warnes would do the trick?

  We might not quite be having the time of our lives, but it’s certainly a lot of drunken fun, and that’s good enough for me, for the time being.

  When we hit the chorus, and both Cara and I have to sing together, it takes the performance to a whole new level. So much so that we start to dance around one another with our arms linked. I don’t remember Bill and Jen doing the Dosey Doe in the video to the song, but it feels completely appropriate in this context.

  The audience continues to lap all of this up, and I can even hear a few of them joining in with the singing when we hit the chorus for the second time. Everybody on planet Earth knows the lyrics to the chorus of this song, even if they don’t bloody want or need to.

  Cara and I are a hit.

  . . . and I bet Amy is hating every second of it.

  I’m currently the centre of attention – in a positive way for once – and I bet that is sticking in her craw like a sideways chicken bone. I’m making a point of not looking in her direction, but I can just see the expression on her face in my mind’s eye.

  Hah! See, Amy? See how I don’t need you to have fun, or do well at something?

  And I bet Ray – good old happy-go-lucky, wife-stealing-from-under-my-fucking-nose Ray – is sat there tapping his foot along, with a big, handsome, goofy smile on his face. That’ll annoy her even more.

  This vision warms my heart as we hit the saxophone break.

  What also warms my heart is how much my girlfriend is having fun. It may be the five Sin Cities talking, but she’s never looked more beautiful than she does now – with her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her arms and legs flailing around to the greatest saxophone solo ever recorded, and loud cackles erupting from her mouth like a braying horse.

  I have never sat through all of Dirty Dancing, because obviously not, but I know enough about it to know that there was some serious lambada action going on between the overwrought interpersonal drama.

  I figure that while the saxophone is going, I might as well attempt to recreate the dance from the movie with Cara for the delight and edification of our audience.

  I sidle up to her and put my arms around her neck, indicating to her that she should put her arms around my waist.

  She steps away from me with a pointed expression on her face.

  Oops.

  Have I gone too far?

  ‘Oh no, mister!’ she says in a breathless voice. ‘You’re the girl here, remember?’

  And then she closes the gap with me again, but forces my hands around her waist, while she loops hers around my neck.

  Heh.

  Fair enough. This is the gender-swap version after all, isn’t it?

  Cara and I then proceed to drunkenly lambada, while the instrumental plays itself out. This largely consists of stumbling back and forth in front of the monitor, occasionally bumping our crotches into each other awkwardly. Whoever decided this was a sexy dance must be a right masochist.

  As the saxophone reaches a crescendo, Cara loosens her grip around my waist and dips me.

  Yes, that’s right, she actually dips me, so I have to arch my back and drop my head backwards. The timing is perfect. As the sax stops, and everything goes quiet for that bit in the song where everyone can get their breath back, we hold the dipped position like we were born for it.

  The crowd loves it. So does Cara.

  I’m not sure how I feel about it. I couldn’t care less about being the dipped person in the equation, but I’m not sure I can stay like this for long before my back gives out. I am neither as young nor as flexible as the woman in the film, and while Cara is a strong girl for her size (the way she powered us around in the kayak is testament to that) I’m pretty sure she’s not as strong as Patrick Swayze, so I’d better come upright again fast, before my spine gives out and we both crash to the floor.

  I receive the mother of all head rushes as I stand up again, but that’s all the damage that’s done. My back is thankfully fine.

  Bill Medley is telling us all once again that he’s had the time of his life, this time with no backing track. It’s so incredibly earnest.

  From over near where Cara and I were sitting I hear somebody scream, ‘Do the lift!’ I think it might be Trevor, or possibly Sandra – she sounds like she goes through forty B&H every day of her life, so it’s perfectly possible to mistake the two.

  I laugh and wave my hand dismissively.

  ‘Do the lift,’ he/she says.

  Is he/she mad?

  We all know what the lift is, don’t we? Even those of us like myself who have never sat through Dirty Dancing know all about that bit at the end when Swayze lifts the girl by her waist, while she does her best impression of a jumbo j
et.

  ‘Do the lift!’ Trevor/Sandra calls again, this time being joined by some of the other karaoke fans watching us.

  I mean . . .

  It would be one hell of a way to round things off, wouldn’t it?

  I have never finished a karaoke song in my life, and if I’m going to finally do so, it’d be nice to mark the occasion with something spectacular . . .

  And Cara has already demonstrated that she is happy to play the part of Patrick Swayze. What’s to say I can’t carry on being Jumbo Jet Girl and finish this performance off with a real showstopper?

  Yes. I have indeed taken leave of my senses. Thank you so much for noticing.

  Scientists posit that there could be multiple realities layered over our own. The inflationary theory of existence states that countless individual universes could have been created at the time of the Big Bang.

  It’s a truly fascinating concept.

  I bet you all the fucking tea in China that no matter how weird and wonderful the physics are in those strange parallel universes, none of them would allow for all thirteen stone of me to be lifted successfully above my nine-stone girlfriend’s head.

  And yet, right here in this universe, five Sin Cities are telling me it’s perfectly possible, and the absolute best way to bring the house down at the end of a marvellous performance.

  I start nodding and gesticulating to Cara as the song starts to wind itself towards its conclusion. She in turn starts shaking her head and backing away from me.

  This is the worst possible thing she could have done, as it gives me a run up.

  As everyone in the lounge sings the last couple of choruses for us, I step away from Cara by a few more feet, as she continues to back away, towards the giant main TV screen.

  ‘Do it! Do it!’ the crowd start to chant.

  The bastards want blood, and they’re not going to be satisfied until they get it!

  Well, that’s just fine by me!

  Nobody is going to upstage Cara and I tonight. Not Trevor and Sandra, not Bao and Chun, not Larry and Chad, and definitely not Amy and Ray!

  ‘The Time Of My Life’ reaches its crescendo, and I start running straight at Cara, screaming ‘Arms up!’ as I do so.

  The poor girl is so taken aback by my commanding drunken tone that she does as I ask, and her hands go above and slightly in front of her head, ready to receive me as I jump gazelle-like into the air.

  Now, you may have noticed that I couldn’t jump like a gazelle if you popped one in a hand-made teleport machine with me, and spliced us together in one gloriously hideous lump.

  Especially not when I’ve had a skinful.

  But I’m committed now. There’s simply nothing that can stop me attempting to jump into the air like Superman on his way to a bank robbery, and have Cara lift me over her head like a graceful jumbo jet.

  . . . all except Cara that is, who – being still partially in control of her faculties – jumps out of my way at the very last instant, squealing in terror as she does so.

  This means that when I do launch myself off the ground like Clark Kent responding to another dastardly Lex Luthor plot to take over the world, I am not gathered lovingly up in my girlfriend’s outstretched arms, but instead fly face first straight into the TV screen.

  The heavy, flat crunch that accompanies this is far louder than Bill, Jen and the entire happy crowd of the Blue Horizon lounge.

  ‘The Time Of My Life’ therefore does not conclude this evening with its usual repetitive wind down. It instead comes to a very abrupt and decisive halt with all thirteen stone of Joel Sinclair meeting the lower third of a sixty-five-inch flat-screen telly at a speed that does neither of them any good whatsoever.

  Tell you what, though . . . nobody else will be able to follow my performance tonight, I am entirely right about that. There’s something very final about a fully grown man flying into a TV screen, I think you’ll agree. Unless someone wants to try to upstage me by karate kicking the entire bar to pieces, this karaoke session is fucking done.

  Cara cries out in shock and alarm as I slide down on to the ground, leaving the TV screen above me blackened and covered in a spiderweb of cracked lines.

  From somewhere far off and very distant I can hear Trevor and/or Sandra start to laugh raucously.

  Ah well, at least I’ve sent them home happy, I think, as I slide into temporary unconsciousness.

  Friday

  AMY – A SPLIT SECOND

  He came around about two or three minutes later.

  With blood running from a freshly smashed nose, my inebriated ex-husband let everyone in the bar know that he was okay. He was given a round of applause that even I had to begrudgingly admit he probably deserved. The way he flew straight into that television was quite something. I don’t really have the words to describe it. They probably haven’t been invented yet. But when they are, they will be long, difficult to pronounce and only used on extremely rare occasions.

  We all had to clap at the sheer unlikelihood of him getting away without major injury. He’ll have a sore nose for a while, but that’s probably about it.

  What concerns me most is my reaction to seeing him fly into that TV screen.

  For a moment there, it genuinely looked like he could have done himself a serious injury. There’s something both very dramatic and quite terrifying about watching someone crash straight into something that is ostensibly made of glass. Especially someone you know well.

  I did not laugh like the funniest thing ever had happened when he did it – unlike some of the drunken people in the lounge, who found the whole thing hilarious.

  No, I leaped to my feet and immediately started to rush forward.

  I was so far at the back of the lounge, though, that by the time I’d even closed half the distance, Joel was already surrounded by people fussing over him.

  This brought me up short, and it suddenly hit me that I was not the right person to be helping him, even if my gut reaction was to rush over.

  I’m not his wife anymore.

  I haven’t been his wife for a long time.

  And I hate him.

  I should be doubled over with laughter at the sight of him potentially hurting himself badly . . . but that was not how I reacted at all.

  It only took a few moments to shake myself out of the panicked need to see if he was okay or not, but I was acting on autopilot for those few moments, and had no real control of myself.

  Ray then joined me, also looking pretty concerned. We may both have good reason to think Joel Sinclair is the biggest idiot that has ever graced God’s green earth, but that doesn’t mean either of us wants to see him crash into a sheet of glass.

  We hung back a little as we watched Cara, Rajesh and the rest of the Wimbufushi staff tending to Joel where he lay on the floor in front of the broken TV.

  I have to say it was with some relief that I saw him slowly get to his feet, helped up by everyone around him. He looked dazed, confused and bloodied from the smashed nose, but other than that, Joel looked like he’d got away with his crazy drunken antics without permanent injury.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that things ended this way.

  Joel has never been good around karaoke. The only reason he didn’t break his neck at our wedding reception was because I pulled him off the two-foot stage before he had a chance to fall off it. Nobody – and I do mean nobody – should be inflicted with Joel singing Kelis’s ‘Milkshake’, no matter how much they’ve had to drink across an entire wedding day.

  I wouldn’t have let him run at me the way Cara did either, but then I’m older, wiser and more cautious than she is.

  Mind you, I’d never have got up on stage to sing that song with him in the first place. I’m just not that . . . crazy? Brave? I don’t know.

  Ray and I left the lounge shortly after Joel was walked away to be treated in the island’s small medical centre, which lies somewhere in the depths of Wimbufushi.

  As we strolled back to our bunga
low, I couldn’t help but reflect on my reaction to seeing Joel fly into the TV.

  I continued to reflect on it throughout what remained of the evening, and I continue to reflect on it even now – at two o’clock in the morning, when I should be fast asleep.

  I am disturbed, you see.

  Disturbed that even under all the rage I feel towards Joel for what he did to me two years ago, there is still a part of me that quite clearly cares for him.

  You don’t leap out of your seat with your heart in your throat when it looks like someone you don’t really know has hurt themselves badly.

  Or do you?

  Maybe I’m just a very, very nice human being, full of compassion for my fellow man. Maybe I would have leaped up in the same way, even if it had been that tattooed guy Trevor who had run face first into the screen.

  Maybe . . .

  But what’s keeping me awake now is the prospect that I only reacted the way I did because it was Joel. Followed swiftly by the horrible question: would I have done the same if it had been Ray?

  Not that Ray would ever do something as foolish as that, but still.

  And then there was that moment, wasn’t there?

  The one with the dugong – where Joel’s eyes met with mine, and for the first time in years there was no sign of malice in them whatsoever. That wasn’t Today Joel and Today Amy looking at each other. That was the Joel and Amy of Yesterday. The two people who loved each other very much and would leap out of chairs in an instant if the other one looked hurt.

  Oh, good grief.

  Is it any wonder I can’t bloody sleep?

  I shift the thin covers off, and sit up. Beside me, Ray is softly snoring and looks incredibly content about everything in the world. He’s quite beautiful when he’s like this. There have been times when I’ve just spent a couple of seconds watching him, with a big dumb smile on my face.

  Joel looks and sounds like a dying camel when he’s sleeping.

  And here I am again . . . back to thinking about my bloody ex-husband. What the hell is going on?

  I get out of bed and pad my way over to the front door, pulling on a t-shirt and jogging bottoms as I do so. A bit of night-time fresh air will make me sleepy. It always does.