Wake Up Happy Every Day

by Stephen May

  She tells them how, drunk, she’d gone over to him and harangued him about how ridiculous it was to be doing the beat thang in Vesuvio in 2013. She tells how she’d laughed at him when he’d got huffy and said he was a proper artist actually. The real deal. And then, seeing the way she just smiled harder, how he’d shifted tack with surprising deftness and told her how right now he managed a tattoo shop, but how he was also a qualified horticulturist. And she’d tested him on the Latin names for plants, and at the end of the night when they were getting in the cab to go back to his place, she had told him, ‘Just so you know, it’s your horticultural Latin that is getting you laid. Not your ridiculous pants.’

  And now there is a pause during which Amelia fixes her with those deep lilac eyes.

  ‘Wow. You and Megan. What a great relationship you two have.’

  Seems a bit of a conversational swerve, but she’ll go with it.

  ‘Yeah, we get on, don’t we Megs old bean?’

  And Megan smiles briefly too as she says, ‘Yep. We’re muckers all right,’ exactly the way Dick Van Dyke might have said it in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And Lorna raises her glass and Megan sighs but smiles again and raises hers too and they clink. No, thinks Lorna, it’s good to be grown up at last. A good thing definitely.

  And Amelia smiles more, showing all the little swords of her teeth.

  ‘I mean if John told those kinds of stories in public about his adventures with all his former lovers . . . I mean, gee whizz. I reckon I’d be pissed.’

  ‘But it’s not the same, is it? I mean you and John, you’re an item. You’re married. We’re just . . .’

  Lorna stops. Christ. Amelia leans forward. As Lorna remembers it later she actually flicked her tongue over her lips. John and Megan just look into their glasses. Lorna remembers something important about Irish coffee.

  ‘Do you know how Irish coffee was invented? It was made up on the spot by a barman at Shannon Airport when John F Kennedy was delayed there on his way from the States to Berlin. On his way to do ‘Ich Bin Ein Berliner’. Guy convinced him it was a local speciality. And so then it became one.’

  ‘Is that right?’ says John. ‘It’s not a traditional thing then? It’s not like Guinness?’

  ‘Guinness was brought over to Ireland by the English anyway,’ says Lorna. She wonders if she might be on the point of gabbling.

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘No straight up.’ Though to be honest, she isn’t absolutely sure about this. She knew the Guinness family were loaded and that they’d been loaded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the real Irish were starving, so that would suggest that they were English, wouldn’t it? She meets Amelia’s puzzled frown. Or is she laughing? It’s hard to tell in this grown-up dinner party light.

  ‘So you guys aren’t partners?’

  ‘Christ, no. I mean, Megan, she’s beautiful and everything, but all that wetness on my face . . . No, ta.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad. Wetness on the face in general I mean. Not Megan’s in particular. I wouldn’t know about that. Obviously.’

  This is John. Lorna feels a surge of gratitude to him. No, not a surge – it wasn’t as dramatic as that – but a flow anyway. A flow of gratitude. John trying to keep the situation light. John trying to help them through the embarrassment of this. Sweet really.

  ‘I feel so foolish.’ Amelia isn’t letting it lie. And she doesn’t sound like she thinks she’s been all that foolish. She sounds amused. ‘It’s just that . . . I mean . . . Megan’s always talking about you. It’s always Lorna thinks and Lorna says, and I remember when Lorna I went to Vegas, or Lorna and I are thinking of going hiking in Yosemite. And then this apartment. The way you are here. I just assumed . . .’

  Lorna takes a quick look round the apartment. Tries to see it through Amelia’s eyes. It’s tidy. Understated. Chic. It comes with a neurotic cat and there are also bits of crocheting around the place, but that isn’t enough to make an apartment seem all tipping the muff is it? Perhaps it is.

  ‘No, mate. Megan is my bestest chum in all the world. My pal – but we don’t do owt like that. I haven’t got a Sapphic bone in my body, worse luck.’

  ‘Why worse luck?’ John again, cool, quiet, courteous. He just needs to get his missus under control.

  ‘Oh, you know. Girls. Prettier. Smarter. Nicer than boys. Not as generally rubbish.’

  ‘Sugar and spice and all things nice?’

  ‘Mostly yeah. I guess.’ She turns to Megan who is still frowning down at the table. ‘When are we going to Yosemite?’

  Megan shrugs. ‘Just an idea.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s a great idea. I’m definitely up for that.’ And she pats her on the arm.

  And then they talk more about men and women and the differences between them, and Amelia is all women are so bitchy with each other and Lorna is all speak for yourself love, but she doesn’t quite put it like that. And John says how all his best friends are women and Amelia agrees a bit too enthusiastically about how he gets on really well with women and how great it is that he can be manly but with like this really open feminine side. And how liberating it is that there were other women he can talk to about emotional stuff, you know?

  Yeah, right.

  Then they count all the units of alcohol they’ve drunk and Amelia and John seem very chuffed with themselves when they decide that it comes to something like thirty-two.

  ‘That’s like,’ Amelia counts on her slim, pointy fingers, ‘that’s like eight units each. Wow.’ And she giggles. And it sounds wrong somehow. Lorna is pretty sure she isn’t one of life’s natural gigglers. Then she says, ‘We’ll suffer for this in the morning.’

  And Lorna thinks of the time, not that long ago, back in West Yorkshire, when eight units was what they’d have before they started the real drinking. Eight units – which is only just over a bottle of ordinary Chardonnay after all – was just a pre-drink drink then. A livener. A sharpener or two. What they had just to get the party started. The good old days.

  But then there is a taxi downstairs and there are hugs and air-kisses in the hallway and Amelia telling Megan not to be late on Monday and finally – finally – they are gone and Lorna can turn to Megan and say, ‘Well, your boss. Do you think she knows John’s playing away? Because he so clearly is.’

  But Megan just sighs. ‘She’s all right.’

  There is a little debate about whether to leave the clearing up but neither of them wants to face the dishes in the morning, so they carry crockery and glasses from table to sink. They rinse plates. They finish off the crumble, and then rinse those dishes too. They argue gently over how best to load the dishwasher. Megan wins as usual, so she does that while Lorna takes out the trash.

  It’s still warm in the parking lot and the rumble of distant freeway traffic is comforting. She has a cheeky rollie and thinks about how strange it is that she’s standing in California, living with Megan. If her friends from wild, wet West Yorkshire could see her now, standing in a car park in Berkeley. But somehow she can’t imagine their voices just at this minute. Just can’t conjure up their faces.

  When she gets back in the apartment she finds that Megan is still doing stuff with the dishwasher, making minor adjustments that will ensure maximum ergonomic efficiency or something.

  Lorna says, ‘Christ. No wonder smelly Melly thinks we’re pioneers of gay marriage. No one is more married than us.’

  Megan doesn’t say anything, just carries on moving bowls and plates around. So Lorna adds, ‘It’s nice though. I like being married to you.’ And she goes over to the dishwasher. She puts her arms around Megan from behind and kisses her on her cool cheek, which is how she discovers that Megan is crying. Despite everything Lorna has Megan’s wetness on her face after all, but she has the good sense not to say this.

  She moves away a couple of steps and Megan turns to face her.

  ‘Don’t say anything. I’m just being an idiot.’

  ‘A little bi
t tired and emotional, huh? The Johns and the Amelias of this world will do that to a person.’

  ‘Something like that. I’ll see you in the morning, ’kay.’

  ‘Yeah. And I really am up for Yosemite. Hiking, camping, being eaten by grizzlies. The whole thing.’

  Megan smiles weakly. ‘Yeah. Well, we’ll see.’

  Twenty-three

  NICKY

  The new hair. There is a piece of architecture Linwood can’t do for me, something not even Jesus can sort. And that is my hair. Hair has to be a whole separate team.

  Imagine a TV ad that is all science bit – that’s these guys. They talk like an Open University programme. Three of them, all deftly coiffured, of course, trumpeting their equations with the warm voice of God.

  Nate, Valerie and Don. Or, rather, Dr Nate, Dr Valerie and Dr Don because though they are friendly and informal and everything, they do also want us to know that they are doctorates in the follicular sciences. They spend a busy couple of hours with us, not only explaining their pricing structure but CAT-scanning my head with some hand-held implement. They use lasers to measure the nature and speed of the erosion taking place along my hairline. They take DNA swabs, as well as blood and follicle samples in order to form the basis for a considered judgement on the best way forward. They are thorough. They talk through the Norwood scale which is to baldness what the Beaufort scale is to wind speed.

  And the report they produce is thorough too. More like an academic monograph than a quote from a tradesman. Eighty closely argued pages suggesting that transplant isn’t really an option. Neither is weaving, however hand-loomed. It’s the full syrup they recommend for me. And their catalogue – as thick, as lavishly illustrated and as creamily glossy as a high-end cookbook – is there to show how follicle-support technology has changed since the days when an ageing TV presenter tried to defy time by sticking rough hexagons of roadkill fur on his bonce.

  No, the hair-replacement therapy recommended for me is emphatically bespoke and undetectable. It’s a modern wonder of the world, up there with Teflon and nicotine patches. It’s stealth hair. And, like every other great leap forward of the last seventy years, it’s almost certainly a by-product of both Nazi experiments and the space race.

  ‘Are you sure about this, love?’ says Sarah.

  Sarah’s worry is that this might be a humiliation too far for me.

  ‘It’s just that there’s such a stigma about wigs, isn’t there?’

  And there is. It’s because hair – for men as well as for women – is about sexual display, isn’t it? I mean this is obvious. Men are such peacocks really. Even the fat sweating ones you see on the BART wearing cheap suits and comedy ties. Every man is a Samson in his own head and cutting his crowning glory is – as the writers of the Bible knew only too well – like slicing off his penis and mincing it. A bit like it anyway.

  And it’s not even as if I’m totally bald now. Plenty of men my age are balder. There’s no doubt the ranks are thinning, however. My hair is a picket line where the workers, the union rank and file, are gradually being persuaded back to work while the hardcore activists – the ones that are left round the cooling brazier – grow greyer, colder, weaker. My head is a large egg in an increasingly ragged nest. If we’re not to be stopped at airports by suspicious homeland security personnel with their armoury of facial-recognition devices, then hair replacement is a necessity. I can see that.

  ‘I mean we don’t have to travel. We could stay here.’

  ‘Yeah, but what about your mum?’

  ‘She could come here.’

  ‘Yeah, she could. But she won’t.’

  Back in England, Sarah’s mum came to us once in five years. And she lives in Enfield, all of two hours away. Tops. My limited research on the subject tends me towards the opinion that the average mum likes to be the visitee, rather than the visitor.

  ‘Let’s not think about it. Let’s just go for it,’ I say. I have got quite fatalistic by this time anyway. And people have worse things to wear. Colostomy bags, glass eyes, false legs. Compared to those kinds of accessories a wig is nothing really. No hardship at all.

  Dr Don reminds me of some of the proven drawbacks of baldness. The lack of self-esteem, the absence of bald leading men in the movies, the fact that no bald man has been elected president since the dawn of the television age.

  ‘Not all that many women either,’ says Sarah.

  Dr Don – obviously the most people-pleasing of the trio – tries to make me feel better by hinting that almost every male celeb you’ve ever heard of has been under their care at some point. Even the really young ones. He won’t name them – discretion is his watchword – but I run through a few names and he nods at all of them. Jagger? Nod. McCartney? Nod. I move forward a generation. Morrissey? Nod. Bono? Emphatic nod. I move forward another few decades of pop years. Timberlake? Nod. Forward again. The Jonas Brothers? Justin Bieber? Those insanely hirsute One Direction boys? Nod, nod and nod again.

  Blimey. There’s a lot less hair around than you’d think. The world is actually a pretty bald place.

  So I allow Dr Nate, Dr Valerie and Dr Don to assess my strand type and search their database of donors. When, eleven minutes later, the perfect match is found, Dr Don’s phone buzzes. He’s thrilled to tell me that my donor is a handsome Icelander called Siggi. They show us a photograph of a young bloke scowling. He looks like he could be a cop in one of those Scandinavian murder shows. He couldn’t be the killer because in Nordic noir it’s always an angry middle-aged man, usually a top civil servant, often bald, that does the killing. An interesting contrast with American cop shows where it’s a hot pneumatic blonde who kills, and with British murder stories, where it is so often an acerbic, well-preserved female member of the upper middle class what done it. A magistrate. You want to know what frightens a society: look at their TV killers.

  Dr Nate tells us the process. ‘Siggi will be visited at home in Akureyri and given a diet sheet and a lifestyle focus to ensure his own hair stays in the most robust state possible as it grows.’

  ‘Absolutely tip-top condition,’ says Dr Valerie.

  ‘And he’ll be regularly monitored,’ says Dr Don.

  ‘When his hair has reached the required length he will be carefully shorn . . .’

  ‘And then the tresses will be vacuum-packed . . .’

  ‘And couriered over to San Francisco . . .’

  ‘Where our team of specialists will work on it . . .’

  ‘It’s a kind of farming basically,’ I say.

  ‘Organic though . . .’

  ‘More or less free range . . .’ Dr Valerie and Dr Don are smiling. Dr Nate isn’t. You can tell he sees all this kind of talk as essentially frivolous. And he makes sure the others don’t interrupt any more. He quells them with a look and a stiff, chopping hand gesture and delivers the rest of the spiel in a steady monotone. When he’s finished I explain it back to him, just to make sure I’ve got it.

  ‘So, I remain linked to the donor as long as I keep paying the standing orders?’

  ‘Yes, the payments ensure that Siggi remains a donor just for you.’

  Out in Akureyri Siggi Einarsson gets on with living, his hair under contract to me alone. I wonder what he does for a job.

  ‘I think he’s a teacher. All our donors are of the highest quality,’ says Dr Don.

  ‘Trustworthy and respectable members of the community,’ adds Dr Valerie.

  ‘So maybe not a teacher then. You read the news, right?’

  Nate just curls his lip. It’s the hair that matters – who cares about the donor’s lifestyle. He’s obviously a loser or he wouldn’t be selling his own body parts. Even minor ones like hair. Dr Nate doesn’t have time for banter.

  In any case the quality of the hair isn’t the main thing for Dr Nate. He is all about scalp visibility and he gets almost animated as he explains how chip-controlled micro wizardry ensures that Siggi’s hair is punched strand by strand into a layer of polyuretha
ne as thin and as malleable as skin itself, thus allowing for a truly realistic look and feel. Someone – a lover, Dr Val suggests with a twinkle – could pat, ruffle, tug, stroke, pull my new hair and not realise it was all Siggi’s cast-offs. I could have my hair washed, shampooed, blow-dried and set, all undetected. I could safely have an Indian head massage. In fact I could have a proper rolling in the dirt street-fight. Urchins and muggers could pull out handfuls and the young guttersnipes would never twig my secret. I could have my hair examined forensically for nits and still not be outed. In fact the nits themselves would be fooled and make themselves right at home.

  ‘OK, Doctor,’ I say. ‘I get it. It’s a damn good wig.’

  ‘The best,’ says Dr Nate.

  Next to him Dr Valerie and Dr Don smile and produce the paperwork for me to sign.

  ‘You’ll need three, of course,’ says Dr Nate.

  ‘At least,’ says Dr Val.

  ‘So people think your hair is growing,’ says Dr Don.

  ‘And you must always have them professionally fitted.’ Dr Nate getting the last word, like he got the first word. I bet Dr Val and Dr Don have some splendid bitching sessions about him. Of course they do. He’s so clearly the talent. They must hate him. Admin always wants to murder talent.

  The hair takes far less time to sort than the suit. I hope it wasn’t too much of a shock for Siggi, I hope he didn’t have an air-guitar competition he needed his hair for. For some reason I’m really sure Siggi is a full-on head-banging mosher. Teacher or not. Anyhow, a couple of weeks later and I’m sitting in front of a mirror trying to get used to this new bloke, this movie star, staring back at me. Dr Nate, Dr Valerie and Dr Don coo and purr and want to take photographs for their website, which we won’t allow them obviously.