by Louise Voss
There was a pause while he considered.
“You know what? I believe I might do. I sure haven’t seen it for donkey’s years, though. I’ll have a scout round for you. I remember your mother tried to throw it away, but I’m sure I rescued it and hid it in my study.”
Dad’s study in New Jersey was exactly the same as his study in Salisbury had been: whole mountain ranges of paperwork, yellowing newspapers, golf books, and an assortment of pipes, jumbled together in one huge fire hazard. It was hard enough to spot Dad when he was in there, let alone one thin vinyl record. I didn’t hold out much hope of getting a copy anytime this decade.
“Oh well, don’t worry, Dad. If it turns up let me know. Is Mum there?”
“No, honey, she’s out playing canasta. I’ll tell her you called.”
“Okay—well, that’s all, then. Thanks anyway.”
“Good to talk to you, sweetheart. We don’t do it enough. You take care of yourself, mind.”
I was going to have to hang up pronto, because a marble seemed to have gotten stuck in my throat. “Yeah, thanks. Bye, Dad. I love you.”
“Excuse me?”
Dad must have thought he’d misheard.
“I love you, Dad. Bye.”
“Love you, too, angel,” he said in a bemused voice.
I put the phone down and cried for ten minutes.
Sinead O’Connor
NOTHING COMPARES 2 U
ARE YOU REALLY A FAN OF BLUE IDEA? I ASKED VINNIE AFTER OUR first night together.
“Oh, man—yeah! Painting the Ceiling is one of my favorite ever records. I can sing all the words to it.”
“Go on, then,” I challenged him.
For a split second, when he thought I was serious, the look on his face was priceless. He later told me that was the moment he fell in love with me, although it was another ten months before he actually said it in so many words.
The already-subdued lights in the restaurant dimmed further, and a beaming young waiter emerged, bearing a beautifully decorated cake in the shape of a champagne bottle, five tiny flickering candles atop it.
Sam leaned over to me as everyone began to sing.
“Vinnie organized the cake for you,” she said, squeezing my hand.
I threw my arms around Vinnie’s neck and kissed his cheek repeatedly, breathing in his distinctive Vinnie scent of aftershave and Gauloises.
“Oh, Vin, baby! It’s wonderful! Thank you so, so much!”
“You’re welcome, angel,” he replied, a faintly puzzled expression on his face.
As the final “Hap-py Birth-day to yooouuuuuu!” faded away, the other diners in the restaurant applauded politely, and Sam, Timothy, David, David’s wife, Joe, Vinnie, and I all clinked glasses in a noisy and protracted toast to celebrate my thirtieth birthday.
I stood up, fingering the beautiful bracelet Sam had given me earlier, and smiling from ear to ear.
“This is so fantastic,” I said. “It’s the best birthday I’ve ever had. I’ve got my wonderful best friend here, my gorgeous and considerate boyfriend, old friends David and Joe, and, er, new friends, too! I just feel totally … great!”
They all cheered. Vinnie delved into his backpack under the table and brought out a thin, flat tinfoil package (from my kitchen—I’d caught him replacing the Bacofoil in the kitchen drawer earlier). He handed it to me, and it was so light that at first I thought there was nothing inside.
“Careful how you unwrap it,” he said. “It’s fragile.”
I gingerly undid the foil corners and opened the present to reveal a piece of wire twisted painstakingly into the wavy fingers, trouser creases, and joint bends of a realistic little wiggly man.
“Oh, Vinnie,” I said. “It’s lovely! Thank you so much.”
I showed it around the table, and everybody duly admired it. Only Sam had a slight frown furrowing her forehead. But Vinnie constantly gave me homemade presents, etchings and sculptures he’d done at college—a cute clay dinosaur with a rose in its snout, a hand-enameled mirror—and I loved them. After years of receiving vacuously expensive corporate gifts as tokens of gratitude for making Ringside rich—cashmere dressing gowns, vintage wines, state-of-the-art audio equipment, and so on—Vinnie’s little trinkets touched me deeply.
Vinnie clicked his fingers to order another bottle of champagne. After further toasts to the future happiness of David and his new wife, Cherry; Peter Gabriel, for kindly coinciding his world tour with my birthday (the reason Joe and David were in town as they were now employed as members of Gabriel’s touring band); absent friends (Justin was making his second solo album in a studio in the Bahamas); and Vinnie for generally being wonderful, we ordered a third bottle, and I cut the cake.
As we tucked in and Joe regaled us with tales of how sick-makingly in love David and Cherry were, Sam noticed that a table of older diners across the restaurant were looking askance at us.
“Do you think we’re being too loud?” she asked worriedly, when she could get a word in edgeways.
“Nah,” said Joe, in mid-flow of a story about what the newlyweds had been discovered doing underneath the stage at Earls Court, much to Cherry’s embarrassment. “They probably just recognize us.”
At that moment one of their group, a middle-aged woman with overplucked eyebrows and a tight Jaeger banana-colored suit, came up to our table and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hi,” I said brightly to her. “Would you like an autograph?”
She looked at me for a minute, as if I was being facetious. “No,” she said. “Thank you. The thing is, you see, it’s my husband’s birthday today, too, his fiftieth, and that”—she pointed at the crumbs and slabs of icing, which was all that remained of the champagne cake—“was his cake.”
“What do you mean?” I asked indignantly. “My boyfriend brought it. Maybe yours was the same. Why don’t you ask the waiter?”
The headwaiter materialized immediately beside the woman. I felt, rather than saw, Vinnie squirming in his seat beside me.
“No, madame,” the waiter intoned sonorously. “We were only in possession of one birthday cake. Unfortunately, my junior waiter was not aware that there were two birthday parties taking place, and so when the signal was given for the cake to be brought out, he brought the cake to your table, when, in fact, it was intended for the other party.”
Everybody fell about laughing, and then looked at Vinnie.
“Hey, this isn’t my fault!” he protested.
“Well, where’s the cake you brought, then?” Sam demanded.
Vinnie lit a Gauloise and managed to blow smoke into the faces of both the headwaiter and the cakeless woman.
“Thing is,” he said, “when I said I’d organized it, what I meant was that I’d asked matey-boy over there”—he pointed at the greeter by the door, who suddenly became very engrossed in his reservations book—“if he could sort us out with a piece of apple pie or something with a candle in it, you know—something to bring out for Helena so we could all sing. I was well chuffed when the other waiter appeared with this great cake. I thought, Wow, what a cool restaurant.… ”
We all slapped our hands against our foreheads, Homer Simpson style, and a chorus of “Doh”s arose.
“Well, how was I to know that someone else was having a birthday?” Vinnie said to the headwaiter. “You should have been better organized, mate. It’s not our fault if you bring out a cake to the wrong people. Here, let’s see what we can do.”
He leapt up and went round all our plates, collecting the chunks of discarded icing that had originally formed the label of the champagne bottle. After piecing them together on a side plate like a sugary jigsaw, he stuck a candle on top, lit it with his cigarette lighter, and, with a flourish, bounded across the room to present the cakeless candle to the birthday boy.
By this time the entire restaurant had ground to a standstill. Vinnie spread his arms wide, Gauloise still in his mouth. “Come on, everybody!” he shouted, and led all the diners in ano
ther round of “Happy Birthday,” sung lustily by him, ourselves, and the fiftieth-birthday party, grudgingly by everyone else (who were beginning to look at one another with “We’re not coming here again” expressions), and not at all by the birthday boy’s wife, who was furious.
I put my head in my hands and groaned, although I couldn’t help laughing.
David leaned over the table. “Quite a guy you got there, H,” he said affectionately. “I’m glad you’ve met someone you like so much. He sure seems crazy about you, too, I hope it works out. You never were that lucky in love before, were you?”
“No—it’s about time, isn’t it? I’m pleased you’ve found your soulmate, too.”
I grinned at him and Cherry, clasping hands with each other across the debris of scrunched up napkins and misappropriated cake crumbs.
“Thanks, Helena. I’m sorry we didn’t invite you to our wedding, but like I said, we just slipped away to Barbados on the quiet. You should try it—married life is awesome!”
“Maybe we will, some day,” I said. “You guys are certainly a good advertisement for it.”
Eventually the fuss was smoothed over. The headwaiter, a muscle twitching violently in his cheek, was forced to offer the fiftieth-birthday party desserts on the house, and several free bottles of champagne, and I thought it was probably time to ask for our table’s bill.
“It’s my birthday, I’m treating everybody,” I said when Sam and David began to protest.
I paid up, and Vinnie courteously helped me into my coat.
“There you go, old lady,” he said, kissing my cheek. “Have you had a good time, despite the, er, unfortunate incident?”
I nodded. “Fantastic, thanks. And even if you didn’t get it together to actually bring a cake, thanks for organizing someone else’s for me. It’ll be a great story to tell our grandchildren, don’t you think?”
“Mmm,” said Vinnie, tilting my head back for a huge, passionate birthday kiss, and wrapping his arms tightly around my waist.
“I love you, Vin,” I said when I came up for air.
“Love you, too, Helena,” he replied, for the first time ever.
I grinned and hugged him triumphantly. “You staying over tonight?”
Vinnie looked at his watch, a Rolex I’d given him for his birthday two months earlier. “Can’t, angel. I really have to get back and work on that project I’m in the middle of.”
“But it’s my birthday!”
Vinnie kissed me again. “Sorry. See you tomorrow, okay, baby?”
Sam looked hard at me. “He doesn’t stay round at your place much, does he?”
Two weeks later, we found out why.
Sam and I had gone to Richmond Park on a warm September day, for a picnic. I’d thought of asking Vinnie to join us, but then I remembered him telling me that he’d been enlisted to help his friend Ivan lay a patio that afternoon, but would see me that night at seven to accompany me to a rare function: a dinner party I’d been invited to at Ron’s house.
I’d secretly been relieved that Vinnie was busy. Even though I was looking forward to the dinner party, I was feeling quite stressed about the prospect of meeting lots of strangers, and I just wanted a chilled-out afternoon in the sun. Sam and Vinnie would only have sniped at each other—they had never gotten on all that well, and it was getting worse. Sam made snide comments about his new Paul Smith suit, his penchant for meals at tiny, very exclusive restaurants, and his sudden urgent need for expensive equipment for his art course: computers, scanners, cameras, VCRs, and the like. All paid for by me.
“It’s my money,” I’d say defensively to Sam. “I like spending it on Vinnie.”
I could tell she didn’t want to make too much of an issue out of it, in case I thought she was jealous that I wasn’t spending it on her. I didn’t think that at all. In fact I was touched by her concern; I just thought it was entirely misguided.
So that day it was a joy, as well as a relief, to have Sam all to myself. Since my birthday she’d been feeling a bit low and unwell, and I was terrified that her ill health might presage the return of her leukemia.
“It’s definitely not that,” she insisted as she unpacked the picnic hamper. “I promise you, Helena, it isn’t. I’ve been working too hard, that’s all, and my lungs are playing up from the graft-versus-host. Plus it’s so depressing being dumped for ‘not being enough fun.’ ”
Timothy had recently decided that he did not require a girlfriend who went to bed exhausted at nine o’clock practically every night, and Sam had taken it badly.
“Timothy’s just a shallow loser, if that’s all he cares about,” I said as I put a compilation tape into the boom box I’d brought with us. I was about as fond of Timothy as Sam was of Vinnie. I’d only tolerated him at my birthday party because Sam wanted him there.
I spread out an Indian throw under a tree in a secluded part of the park, away from all the families biking down the yellow gravel paths, and the hesitant children on horseback. Our nearest neighbors were a couple snogging near the next cluster of trees, about fifty feet away, and a father flying a kite with his young son on our other side.
“I’m sorry, though, Sam, I know how much he meant to you. I’ll throttle him if I ever see him again, for putting you through all this. Here, have a sarnie—I made your favorites, look, peanut butter and pickle.”
Sam reclined on a cushion, halfheartedly toying with her sandwich, as we spent an intense hour analyzing in excruciating detail every single word and gesture of Timothy’s, trying to deconstruct the whys and wherefores of rejection.
“Do you know,” Sam said afterward, “I really feel like going away for a bit, somewhere really relaxing. I’m owed some holiday. Fancy coming to Greece with me for a week? Santorini’s meant to be amazing. We could get one of those last-minute deals.”
I was delighted, until I thought of the prospect of being without Vinnie for that long. “Hmm … maybe once Vinnie’s term starts again,” I said, opening a bottle of wine and pouring us each a glass.
Sam tutted irritably. She wasn’t used to me not jumping at the chance of having her company. With a start, I realized that I wasn’t used to it either.
“Oh, come on, Helena. Please. It wouldn’t be the same without you, and we haven’t been on holiday for ages. Hey,” she added, turning up the volume as Sinead O’Connor began to sing “Nothing Compares 2 U.” “I love this song. What is this tape?”
“Just a compilation I made. Brilliant, isn’t it? I’ll let you know about Santorini. I must say, I’ve always fancied it myself, too.”
I lay down on my back beside Sam, and we watched the clouds float across the sky as the music drifted over us.
“This sky reminds me of a poem I wrote once, when I started writing song lyrics. You know, when I was going through that religious phase.”
“Can you remember it?”
“Um, hang on, let me think.… ”
I paused for a while, trying to recall the words. Sam sniggered and pointed over to the lovers by the trees.
“Look at them—talk about hot ‘n’ heavy. They’ll have completely ripped off each other’s clothes in a minute.”
The couple was indeed horizontal, him on top of her, bumping and grinding and rolling around. I was temporarily distracted from my poem, remembering the similar behavior Vinnie and I had indulged in the previous night.
Sam sighed. “I’ll probably never have sex again. Life sucks. So, quick, tell me your poem before I get consumed with depression.”
I cleared my throat dramatically. “Okay, here goes: ‘Christians kiss with their eyes closed, he said with a sigh / Rolling over to watch heavy clouds drag by. / I smiled, and opened one eye.’ ”
Sam grinned. “I prefer your later stuff,” she said.
She sat up and helped herself to some broccoli quiche. Suddenly she froze, napkin in hand, and her triangle of quiche fell into her lap.
“Bloody hell, I don’t believe it,” she said, staring into the middle d
istance.
“What?”
“Oh,” she said, collecting herself and picking up crumbs of pastry. “Nothing … I just thought of something I forgot to do.”
I sat up, too. Her tone didn’t fool me for a minute.
“What?”
Sam shook her head. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but … for a minute I thought that was Vinnie over there.”
I laughed and looked over at the almost-copulating couple. They were sitting up now, rearranging their clothes, still kissing. The girl looked Asian, with beautiful long, silky black hair. The guy had his back to us.
“No, of course it’s not!” I said. “He’s about the same build, though, I can see how you thought it was.”
Then they stood up, folded their travel rug, and began to walk hand in hand toward us, presumably on their way to the car park.
Within ten paces, I saw that it was indeed Vinnie.
My peanut-butter sandwich stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my head whirled with disbelief and panic.
“It can’t be,” I whispered thickly. “There must be some mistake. Perhaps he has an evil twin.”
“Has he?” asked Sam hopefully, her hand grasping my arm.
“No.”
They were getting closer and closer, their heads leaned together, laughing and tickling each other in a nauseatingly lovey-dovey manner. I felt sick. I picked up our half-full wine bottle.
“What are you going to do?” Sam looked alarmed.
At that moment, Vinnie glanced over and spotted me. Without breaking his stride, he wheeled around at a ninety-degree angle and steered the Asian girl away from us, toward the opposite end of the distant car park. He didn’t look back, although I sensed a definite tenseness in the way he held the hairy travel rug under his arm.
I took a deep swig of the Pinot Grigio.
“Oh, Helena. I’m so sorry. Are you all right? You’ve gone really white.”
Sam hugged me hard, partly, I thought, to prevent me from leaping up and bottling Vinnie from behind.
“Men, eh?” she continued, with feeling. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t shoot ‘em.” She looked anxiously at me. I was still silent. “He’s a bastard. Better you found out now than later. Is that the girl he shares a house with?”
