“You’re acting awful high and mighty for someone who faked her own death to get out of a gym membership.”
SYSTEM FAILURE
“No! I will not sit down! And it wasn’t a gym you prick, it was a pyramid scheme with kettle bells!”
I’m screaming. Everyone is too shocked (or confused) to speak. Everyone but He Who Shall Not Be Named,
“Take a deep breath and sit back down Penelope. If you stand too long you’ll get barnacles.”
It breaks the tension and the three men start chuckling under their breath.
“You’re a barnacle! Stop pushing on me!” I scream, my fists are clenched so hard they’re turning white.
“Penny!” Angrypants chokes, regaining her command of speech.
“No, this ends right here, right now. Look at me, you piece of shit,” I point a shaky finger at He Who Shall Not Be Named, “you treated me like one should never treat another person, like I was a bit of gum you could chew and spit back out. Then you tried to use me, but you’ve got no remorse. In fact, you continue to ridicule and mock me. Why? Why would you do that to another human being? You broke my heart and you broke me, then you somehow twisted it around to make it seem like it was my fault, my misunderstanding. Well, it was your fault, your misunderstanding. Your misunderstanding for thinking you could be a good partner, when at the end of the day you’re just a selfish fuck who’ll never be any good to anyone!”
“Penelope Jones, sit down!” Sarah yells, “you are excused. Go outside and calm down before returning with an apology for these gentleman.”
I turn to her. I may as well have froth coming from my mouth,
“Gentle? Are you fucking kidding me?! One is chauvinist swine, and the other,” I gesture at Voldemort, “is a lying, deceptive, dumb slut. Yeah, you heard me,” I look at He Who Shall Not Be Named who for the first time looks a little unsettled. I turn back to Angrypants, “You and your gentleman friends can go shove it. Except you Michael Cera, you’re cool.”
The young Lloyds boy gives me a frightened look.
“Penelope...” Angrypants is about to snarl another command.
“No.” I interrupt, my voice shaking as it rises, “you take every opportunity to be awful, don’t you? You’re a mean, spiteful little woman, and you can take your crappy job, your slightly-better-than-average pay and your dumber than dogshit clients. Yeah, that’s right,” I point to Old Man Gin, “What, you got all your life tips from the Man-is-Better-Than-Woman-Guidebook-for-Complete-Assholes? It’s time you got with the program, you old fossil. We’re women, and we’re smarter and better and stronger than you ever were. The world doesn’t even need you anymore. We have vibrators and artificial insemination centres and single mothers get more social security anyway, so your misogeny can go fuck itself!”
Uh oh... A tiny voice from the back of my head is telling me that this is getting way out of hand. But I am officially out of control. I am a helpless passenger in my mentally deranged war-machine of a body.
“Oh my,” I hear Sarah whisper.
I turn to her,
“I cannot believe you’d lower your integrity and put up with his crap. You of all people. The meanest but still the strongest, most assertive woman I know. So put this in your hypocrisy pipe and smoke it. I quit! And...?”
I make them all wait for it.
“You’re fucking welcome.”
I pick up my bag and walk towards the door, but I don’t feel like I’m done. In fact, I am so not done. I could holler for months at these three vile spawns of Satan and I still wouldn’t have enough. I take the handle of the glass door and open it to step out into the foyer, but just before I do...
I turn to see the white face of Angrypants, Michael Cera looking like a deer caught in headlights, and one very scary dinosaur. But I don’t look at any of them. I have eyes only for my ex-fiancé. I give He Who Shall Not Be Named my most fierce Aretha-Franklin-R-E-S-P-E-C-T stare down,
“Oh, and by the way, that time I stole your things? Thought you should know, I had sex on them. Later.”
I catch his look of confusion as he glances down at his keyboard and it fills me with so much satisfaction I’m brimming. That’s right bitches, I will rain blood and volcano balls from the motherfucking sky!
I flick my hair, straighten my dress and power walk out of the meeting room, to the lifts, and to freedom.
***
The Tale of the Terrible Thing
Six months ago my ex-fiancé sent me a text, asking me to have a drink with him at the Churchill. It had been our favourite pub while we were still a couple. I wouldn’t have met up except he still had in his possession two very precious items of mine, my eyebrow plucker and my SpongeBob SquarePants DVD box set.
The problem was, I’d double booked myself. I’d agreed to meet up with an old mate who’d recently moved to Berlin, Nathaniel Theodore Ormond-Jones the Third, who was in town for the weekend. We met at uni and he was by far the hottest lad at Law School. I’m talking hotter than lava hot. He was also super smart and super successful. He’d recently made partner at Clifford and Chance Germany, hence the move to Berlin. In fact, that was what we were celebrating. He was in London to meet and greet the first client he’d be the signing Partner for, which is a big deal in any lawyer’s career.
I refused to cancel on Nate because lava should never be put aside for a cold plate of ex, but I really wanted that plucker back. My face was starting to look like a giant furry caterpillar was crawling across it. Me Jane, you Tarzan. Jane need plucker.
The place Nate and I agreed to meet for supper was a stone’s throw away from the Churchill Arms, so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone – meet Nate and have a couple of drinks, duck out for a few minutes, meet He Who Shall Not Be Named, exchange things then duck back for dinner, never to see my ex again.
[Boy was I wrong on that front. Who would’ve thought that a few months later I’d be having a very public, career-destroying meltdown in his office?]
Anyhoo, I met Nate that Saturday afternoon at Kensington Wine Rooms. He was even more beautiful than I remembered. He’d chopped off the shaggy locks, the jaw was more defined and he’d been working out. His formerly tall, lean frame was bulked up but nicely, not in that gross over-testosteroned way I find so repulsive. On seeing him, I immediately wanted those strong manly arms around me.
We shared a bottle of wine, then another, and I noticed him smiling at me in that way he always used to smile at me during Torts lectures and Evidence tutorials. Shame we were never single at the same time back then, one of us was always dating someone. But now things were different. He Who Shall Not Be Named and I were no longer on the road to matrimony and Nate was enjoying his single manwhore life in Germany.
I think I’d had a few too many by the time it came to meet the ex. Thinking it was a fabulous idea for Nate to join, I giggle-asked him whether he wanted to chaperone. I would never have suggested it if I had been sober, composed and non-idiotic. Nate agreed, so we cancelled our dinner order at the Wine Rooms (royally pissing off the waiters) and headed off, arm-in-arm, to the Churchill.
He Who Shall Not Be Named was waiting at the bar. At first I observed him from a distance, noticing he’d grown a bit of stubble and was looking slightly more scraggly than usual. But remnants of his metrosexuality were still there. He wore a shirt that accentuated his man-cleavage and on his nose were those obnoxious bug-eyed sunnies he always loved (made even more obnoxious by the fact he was wearing them inside a dark pub). I had gripped Nate’s arm a little more tightly and continued watching my ex from afar, wondering for the thousandth time what I’d ever seen in this badly coordinated hipster.
Nate took a seat by the window, leaving me to make my way over. Time to get that damn eye plucker back.
“Hey Dumpling,” he’d said, standing from the bar stool to give me a kiss on the cheek.
“Hey doucheface,” I’d replied, a tad confused.
We were kissing on the cheek now? When did it
suddenly get friendly? Last time we saw each other I’d locked him out of our flat and was throwing his clothes out the window onto the street.
“How have you been Penny?” he had asked, “please, take a seat, what would you like to drink?”
He pulled out a stool for me, ignoring my jibe.
At that point I should have known something was up. He hadn’t shaved and was pulling out chairs? Most out of character.
“I’ve been good, thanks,” I’d replied, “but no drink for me I need to dash. Here, I bought you the rest of your things. The ones I didn’t burn or throw out the window.”
I handed over the rest of his stuff. I’d shoved it unceremoniously into a Morrisons bag. I knew he’d hate that. He’d always been a Marks & Spencers guy, thinking that shopping there made him superior to everyone and a bit posh. No Tesco tortilla chips or Sainsbury’s crunchy nutty seed bites for him. It had been one of the many little differences we had throughout our almost-four years together. I would always buy basics and necessities from Aldi or Tesco. M&S was reserved for Christmas and random international holidays like Cinco de Mayo.
I gotta admit I was mildly disappointed that doucheface didn’t notice the brand on the bag. It was the most clever revenge ploy I could think of with my limited imaginative capacity.
Instead, he looked confused when I plonked the Morrisons bag in front of him. He looked even more so when I reached into my jacket pocket to bring out the engagement ring.
“What are you doing?” He had asked.
“Giving it back to you. It wouldn’t feel right to keep it. Maybe you can give it to your new girlfriend, you remember, the girl you were doing at lunchtimes while we were still together? Anyway, where’s my fucking plucker? I need to get going.”
He looked at me blankly,
“Got a hot date?”
“Yep, he’s sitting right over there.”
I had pointed to Nate, who noticed us and raised his pint of lager in greeting.
He Who Shall Not Be Named had given me a disgusted look,
“What the fuck, Penny?”
“Oh please, like you can talk? It’s okay for you to treat me like garbage but I’m not allowed to date after you break up with me? Get real. Now I’m going to ask one more time. Where’s. My. Plucker?”
He slowly removed a small bag from under his chair. I checked inside and was happy to see it was all there. DVD, check. Best plucker since Hendrix, check. I was still inspecting the contents when he spoke again,
“This night isn’t going at all how I had planned.”
“What did you have planned?” I had said, absentmindedly plucking a hair from my arm to check my anti-caterpillar tool was still in tiptop condition.
“We were supposed to catch up properly. You promised we’d catch up properly.”
I had looked up,
“We made no such arrangement. I agreed to meet to trade goods, that’s all.”
“I thought... I was hoping... Fuck I hate it how you’ve rushed me like this, but I wanted to tell you that I made a mistake. Couldn’t you drop that guy and catch up with me tonight instead? We could have some champagne, grab dinner, talk about old times?”
I was momentarily gobsmacked. My gob literally had never been smacked harder in my life.
“The old times where you were smooshing your privates against another woman’s privates while still engaged to me?”
But he wasn’t listening,
“You’ve really hurt my feelings tonight, Penny.”
Clearly his ability to smack my gob was only ever increasing, because there it was again. Gob Shock Syndrome,
“What the hell are you talking about?” I had replied, aghast.
Hurt feelings? How hurt did he think I had been when I wanted to throw myself off a bridge a year ago?
But he still wasn’t listening,
“I want to try to turn this into a friendship, start from there and see how it goes. You owe me at least that.”
“I do, do I?” I was tempted to sing that Bros song, I Owe You Nothing, but it somehow didn’t seem appropriate.
“Yes. We owe it to each other, because what we had was special.”
Special?!
“... and even though you can be a bitch sometimes, when you want to you can be the nicest, sweetest, best girlfriend a guy could have. I think there’s still a lot of love here and maybe we could try again?”
Do I need to mention that Toxic Gob Syndrome was exponentially increasing in intensity? I hadn’t heard a peep from this man in a year and he was suddenly back in my life saying there was still love between us? That we owed something to each other? That he wanted to be friends and ‘see where it went’? See how many minutes it would take for me to start throttling him, more like.
I tried to sound reasonable as I’d replied,
“Okay... Firstly, I’m gonna skip the fact that you just insulted me. If you want to be someone’s friend it’s a good idea not to refer to them as a bitch. Second, on what planet could you possibly think that you and I could ever be friends, or get back together?”
“Other couples manage.”
“We’re not other couples, and I think I need to set something straight. Once a woman’s heart closes off from a man, there ain’t no going back. I despise you. I want everything bad to happen to you. I hope you lose your fingers in a deep fryer. I hope you get sodomised by a gorilla. I hope you get some crazy ass tropical disease where baby spiders start crawling out of your skin and they have to amputate your arms and legs or something. I hope your grandchildren get bombed in the faces in World War Three.”
“Fuck, Penny.”
“That’s not even the half of it. You don’t speak to me for a year and then barge back into my life expecting reconciliation? If someone did that to Emma or Chloe or Mags I’d have them castrated. So let’s set something straight. If you were the last man alive and the fate of the human race depended on us breeding, I’d take that opportunity to beat the living shit out of you and probably kill you. Then I’d eat your face. That’s how much I hate you. So no, we most definitely cannot be friends, and it’ll be a cold day in hell if we ever get back together.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment.
“I need some air,” he said melodramatically, “will you mind my stuff?”
“Yeah alright.”
He had walked out the back entrance into the beer garden, leaving his stuff strewn around. The ring was in its box next to his martini glass (yeah, he was one of those martini guys... please don’t judge me for once liking this prick), his gym bag was under his stool, his laptop on the bar counter.
I lugged his things over to where Nate was sitting. Plonking down and thinking of what to do next, I barely heard my neglected super-sponge-worthy friend from Law school ask what I wanted to drink. I think I replied with “whatever has the highest alcohol content” and started scrolling down my list of contacts. Prowling for names, searching for someone who might know...
You see, it wasn’t just what my ex said which left me shocked, confused and without a gob. It was how he’d said it. Like he was humbled, like he was almost... begging? That was what made me most suspicious of all. Something fishy was up, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. He Who Shall Not Be Named always had a motivation for acting a certain way. If there was one thing I learnt from our time together, it was this – Do Not Trust This Man. If he was trying to weasel back into my life, either as a friend or lover, there was a darker reason behind it than love and devotion (‘love and devotion, baby, I can’t get enough of all that love and devotion in my life... Oh-la oh-la, oh-la oh-la hey). I love that song.
Pretty soon I found just the contact I needed. Colin Morris, He Who Shall Not Be Named’s broker trader friend person. They were colleagues at James Peterson & Sons and they sometimes caught up for a beer/martini on Friday nights. I’d met Colin a handful of times while we were still together. He was alright.
I called Colin while Nate was up ordering drinks. H
e Who Shall Not Be Named was still nowhere to be seen.
“Colin speaking,” a cheery voice answered.
“Hi Colin, it’s Penelope.”
“Penelope! Long time, how are you?”
“Good thanks, yourself?”
We did the polite back and forth thing for a short while, during which Nate bought me a Long Island Iced Tea and my ex still hadn’t come back to reclaim his things. Which was a good thing, because I needed time to ask Colin some pertinent questions. I thought I should gently ease into my inquisition, but to my utter delight there was no need. It soon became apparent that Colin had no idea Voldemort and I had split and he gave me the answers I needed straight off the bat.
“So Penny, tell me honestly, how’s he been? You know, since the redundancy?”
Bingo.
“I think he’s okay, but he could use a friend. When was the last time you two caught up?” I played along.
“I admit I haven’t been the best at keeping it touch, it’s been so busy and the missus is pregnant with our second.”
“Oh my gosh, I hadn’t heard, congratulations Colin!”
“Yes. Most exciting,” he’d replied unconvincingly. Guess he wasn’t overly enthused at losing another three years sleep.
I decided to ask Colin a very specific question. I already knew He Who Shall Not Be Named didn’t genuinely want to get back together with me, so what was the reason? As soon as Colin had mentioned the redundancy my always suspicious lawyery brain had started to forge a theory,
“So Colin, the reason I was calling is this. I have a Polish passport so I’m fine with staying in the UK indefinitely. It’s a different story for him, he only has his Australian one and he’s over thirty. What’s he going to do if he can’t find a job?”
“It’s going to be difficult. HR cancelled his visa last month, so unless he finds another job he’ll have to return home. Unless you forward the wedding date and quickly organise a Polish passport for him? It’s not ideal but it wouldn’t be the first time you Poles have jumped the queue,” Colin had chuckled.
“Oh. I see.”
I thanked him and said goodbye. So that was the reason. I had expected as much. I hadn’t believed for a moment that Voldemort had wanted to ‘catch up’ and ‘talk about old times’ out of the goodness of his own heart. He definitely needed something. His self seeking, egomaniacal soul only acted for his own interests.
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