by Simon Brooke
'I'm not playing away from home, it's not that kind of relationship,' I say quickly.
No, it's not that kind of relationship. It's not going to last for ever with Marion, certainly not after what Channing said. I almost shudder at the memory of our dinner. Besides, I've already been unfaithful to her once. In fact, thinking about it, I might just cut my losses now. To be really brutal about it, it was fun while it lasted, we had a good time together. Having the Rolex is great, assuming she doesn't want it back, and Paris was brilliant but ... well, it can't go on forever. I know that.
I'm pretty self-conscious about being seen in restaurants with Marion - especially when she gets the menu with the prices and I don't. A normal relationship with a normal girl suddenly seems so attractive, so right. No more playing lapdog and no more evenings spent with a bunch of extras from Dynasty. Instead, someone I could relax and be myself with, someone I just have something in common with. Besides, after Helen, I've got some catching up to do in the snogging stakes, haven't I?
I look at Vinny, who is smiling and holding something out at me. It's a rather old packet of condoms. I laugh and dash back downstairs again without taking them.
'Sorry about that. Just had to talk to Vinny about the rent before tomorrow,' I find myself saying. God, I'm getting good at lying. Jane just smiles and looks back at the telly.
So now, without looking away from the screen I begin to review the situation and the ways in which it might develop.
Jane will obviously have to sleep in my bed, but will I be there too or down here on the settee? At what time should I say 'I think I'll crash'? Is that what she is waiting for? If I say that will she take the hint and make it clear that she would like to be invited? Or will she just think I want to go to bed alone. I am sitting quite close to her, I could make a move now. Very discreetly I turn my eyes towards her. She is wide-eyed at the screen. Nobody could be that interested in anything on TV. She obviously isn't watching this crap.
God, she does look pretty, though. I love the way she sweeps her hair back behind her ear. She has a smooth, white forehead and a strong, intelligent mouth. Now that she has taken off her jacket and her thick pullover I can see her small, rounded breasts through her T-shirt. I am only two feet away from her on this old heap of a settee. I could just reach out and gently put my arm round behind her. I could do the old stretch and yawn routine. What the hell, let's just see what happens. Besides, you can't let a girl like Jane just slip through your fingers. The simple fact is that I do really, really like her. I've had a good time with Marion but nothing she could give me in the way of presents would be as good as spending some time with Jane.
I look round at her slowly and move forward a few inches.
She turns to me, eyes wide with a look of calm expectation. I reach over and push her hair back slightly with my left hand while putting my right on her shoulder, then I move forward and kiss her lips.
Her mouth tastes of tea and sweet spices. I move further across and draw her into me, slowly taking my hand down towards her breast. As I touch it she gasps slightly and I feel her nipple harden under the T-shirt. We kiss for some time gently but not shyly and I am pleased I made this move, especially when I feel her arm round my neck pulling me gently on to her. It goes on for some time and I begin to feel hard so I make a move for what I once overheard my sister and her friends describe as 'inside downstairs' but she gently pulls my hand away.
'Sorry,' I whisper.
She lowers her eyes and says very softly, 'I don't want to do that right now, Andrew. I mean, I like you but it's too soon.'
She pauses for a moment. 'Besides, you're seeing someone else right now, aren't you?' Oh fuck. How do I answer that? Why don't I have a reply ready? I should have thought of it upstairs with Vinny. I can't deny it and I can't say yes, because it'll just look like I'm looking for a one-night stand and somehow I don't think Jane would go for that. And perhaps I don't want to go for that with Jane.
But it's too late now. I've taken too long to answer. The moment has passed. She realises things are not as simple as she had hoped. She moves away.
'I am but it's coming to an end. It's, it's not really right ...'
She looks at me for a moment. 'Listen, we'd better get to bed. I'll use the settee,' she says.
'No,' I say too loudly. 'I mean, I'll stay down here, you have my bed.' I can't think of what to add. I start to say something but it comes out as rubbish. She strokes my cheek and looks at me for a moment.
Then she does something to her hair and says, 'Do you need to get anything out of your room before I go to bed?' Jane has gone again by the time I get up the next morning. I was looking forward to having breakfast with her and saying goodbye. I didn't sleep much last night, wondering where we stand, where we go from here, how our conversation seemed to her. I can't ever imagine Jane wanting to have a relationship if she thought I was already in one. If I am in a relationship.
In some sort of perverse, misguided effort at revenge, I ring Marion on my mobile on the way to work and wake her up. 'Well, I had the evening from hell on Saturday,' I tell her as soon as she picks up the phone.
'Why? What happened?' she croaks, still not awake at eight o'clock.
'Channing. Marion, it was awful, it was so bloody embarrassing.'
She coughs and takes a deep breath. 'Why?'
'Why?' I shout. 'Why?' Where to start? I can't really put my finger on any particular event, it's just that the whole thing was so appalling. Then I remember the weirdest bit. 'He made a pass at me.'
'Did he? Really? He is terrible,' she says innocently and begins to giggle. Her laughter develops into a cough. I try and decide whether she is genuinely surprised or whether she was expecting it. Or even planning it.
'Well, I'm glad you find it so funny. It was bloody awful.'
'Did he do it in the restaurant?' she says creakily.
'No, back at his flat, after dinner.' I sound even more prissy.
'You shouldn't have gone back there then.' Good point.
'I shouldn't have gone to dinner with him in the first place.'
'I hope you declined his kind offer.'
She is beginning to annoy me now so I say, 'He told me that it wasn't that unusual because you sometimes ...' I'm beginning to wish I hadn't started this conversation '... you shared lovers.'
'Shared?'
'Yeah, sometimes your ... boys, as he called them ... would, you know ... with him.'
She seems a bit taken aback but a second later she has regained her composure.
'Oh, Channing. He'll say anything to shock.'
'He certainly was embarrassing.'
'You're not going to up and leave me and make a little love nest with him, are you?' she says more kindly.
'I'm tempted to,' I say sulkily. This isn't going anywhere, she obviously doesn't feel any guilt whatsoever. Not a very Marion emotion, I suppose. I just look like a silly, strait-laced Englishman.
She laughs again and says, 'Never mind. Look, you'd better hurry up and get to the office before you get fired.'
'Yeah, I suppose so.'
'Shall we go to New York this weekend?'
'What?'
'I said, shall we go to New York this weekend? Didn't you say you liked New York City?'
'God, I love it, I'd love to. Yeah, that would be brilliant.'
'Let's go Friday morning, I'll call the airline now.'
'Yeah, Friday would be great,' I say realizing that Friday would also be great for finally getting sacked.
'Call me when you get home tonight,' she says and puts the phone down.
At work I follow one of the very few useful pieces of advice I have ever read in my dad's management books. Instead of asking Debbie for Friday and Monday off, I write her a memo saying that unless she objects, I will be taking Friday and Monday off. Clever, eh? My violent threats against the word processor, although issued under my breath, attract the attention of Claire, Debbie's dreary secretary.
'What
are you doing?' she asks irritably.
'Why won't it type there?' I moan, pointing at the screen and the uncooperative cursor which just blinks at us insolently. Claire mutters something about tabs, her fingers dance over the keys and the machine does what I want it to. She lingers a moment while I send it through to print. Then I sign it, copy it and drop it discreetly on Claire's desk, which, to my irritation, is unusually tidy today. I walk past the desk again, pick up the memo and put it into a folder on her desk so that she won't find it as quickly. I had thought of backdating it by a few days until Claire saw me type it.
'I'm off to New York this weekend,' I tell Sami casually when I get back to my desk. 'Can I get you anything?'
'Wow, really?' she gasps. 'Ooh yes, I'd love, I'd love ... what would I love?' She scratches around the bottom of her yogurt carton with a plastic spoon and licks it thoughtfully. 'Oh whatever, something nice.' I laugh and decide that if I do nothing else in NYC I will get something nice for Sami.
I must have been on the phone when the Claire dropped my memo back on my desk. As I turn round to make a note of someone's phone number I see it. At first I think it is my copy then I notice Debbie's firm, ugly handwriting along the bottom. 'Sorry,' it says, 'we're still understaffed as you know and I think you've had enough time off recently. DL.' I read it through twice. How can she have seen it so quickly? Claire must have read it on the word processor screen and warned Debbie it was coming. God that bitch! That fucking bitch! What is it to her if I take some time off work? The hours I've put in for her over the last few years!
I feel like someone has thumped me in the stomach. When will Debbie ever give me a break? It's just not fair. I am just getting up to go and see her with it when Sami reaches across the desk and catches my arm.
'Andrew, don't.' She has obviously read the note while I was on the phone. I sit down heavily.
'Why, Sami? Why? For God's sake. Why has she got it in for me these days?'
Sami shrugs her shoulders gently. 'I told you - just keep your head down,' she says. 'New York will still be there in a couple of months' time. Just hang on.'
'I can't hang on,' I say, thinking out loud.
'Oh, Andrew.'
'Oh, shut up,' I say, getting up to walk up and down the corridor a bit. I wander into the corridor. There is a ping from the lift. People. I can't face them. I nip into a disused office and close the door quietly behind me. There is a phone so I ring Jonathan to see if I can get my money yet. I'm not holding my breath, he is obviously going to make me wait for my cash.
While the phone rings I do a quick calculation and discover that it's been a month since I did my first jobs. There must be a cheque ready now. I reckon I've had a couple of hundred quid from Marion in tens, twenties and fifties. Plus Paris and the Rolex. But I need some cash. Living this lifestyle is costing me money too.
Jonathan is friendly but cool.
'Yep, let me just make sure here on my sheet. Bub-hubbubbub-bah. No problem, I'm putting a cheque in the post to you today.'
I'm almost dumbstruck. 'Really? Oh, great. Thanks.'
'No problem. Hope you're around for the next few days because things are certainly hotting up here,' he says.
'Yeah, yes, I will be.' Hang on, what am I on about? I won't be around at all. As usual, I'll be with Marion for the next few days. Or years.
When I come back Sami is on the phone so I pass her a Post-it note: 'Sorry about that. Shall we go to that Italian cafe and have some lunch? Andrew X.'
She reads my note and then finishes her call and thinks about it.
'I'm sick of sandwiches,' I whisper. 'Let's have something decent.'
'Oh, Andrew.'
'Oh, Sami.' She thinks about it for a moment longer and then makes a face in gentle annoyance.
'Go on, then. If it'll cheer you up. We'll have to be very quick, though.'
I push open the door of the cafe and let Sami in first. We are met with clouds of warm, sweet-smelling steam, the clatter of plates and the piercing scream of the Gaggia machine. Most people are finishing up and leaving so finding a table is no problem. Two of the girls from the paper's Home and Style section are just leaving. I smile hello at one of them who I've spoken to before at a staff party. She is wearing a totally unnecessary scarf and gives me a fleeting, patronizing smile and carries on talking to her colleague: 'I'm still working on that food piece about that stall in the Farmer's Market in New York that specializes in basil.'
'Oh, yah,' says her friend, flipping her hair away from her face and adjusting her heavy, narrow, black-framed glasses. 'Isadora's piece. I saw the copy when it came in. It's like, totally amazing, that place - seventeen different types.'
'Fourteen,' the first girl corrects her as they head for the door. When I first came to London I couldn't understand how girls like this earn less than we do but have their own flats in South Kensington, fly business class to New York for a wedding and go skiing in Gstaad every year. How naive, how suburban, how middle class was I to assume that income necessarily has any connection with salary?
The cafe owner's daughter comes over to us and hands out two menus, typed fifty years ago and warped with damp in their smeary plastic covers.
'We'll start with a bottle of champagne,' I inform her haughtily.
'Yeah, sure,' she says in her throaty, London-Italian voice. 'We put it on ice this morning just in case you showed up.'
'Jolly good,' I say.
'You wanna watch him,' shouts her dad from over the counter. 'He order everythin', yeah? Then he stick you with the bill.' He laughs loudly, ignoring another customer who is trying to tell him something about the sandwich he is making for her. Sami laughs shyly and looks at me.
'That's ruined your date, hasn't it?' says the daughter, poking my shoulder affectionately with the blunt end of her pencil.
'Sami is not my date,' I explain with feigned indignation. 'She's my colleague. I'm taking her for lunch, that's all.'
'Yeah, well hurry up and order - we're nearly sold out.'
'Lasagna?' I ask Sami.
She looks horrified. 'No, I told you-'
'Kidding,' I say, squeezing her arm across the table. I ask the Italian girl, 'Got any of your mum's spag bol left?'
'Yep, just enough for two, as it happens.'
'Spag bol?' I say to Sami. 'It's quite good here.'
'Quite good! Cheeky bugger,' says the girl.
'I'll have the spaghetti bolognaise then. Thank you,' says Sami, smiling nervously.
'To drink?'
I order mineral water for us both and when the girl has gone Sami whispers, 'Andrew, I haven't got enough money. Can I borrow some until-?'
'No,' I say abruptly. Sami rolls her eyes. 'This is on me.' I feel in my pocket just to check that I've still got a twenty Marion gave me.
'Andrew, don't be daft, I'll pay you back-'
'No. I told you, it doesn't matter.'
'I'll have to go to the cashpoint afterwards.' She looks at her watch. 'Actually it'd better be tonight., if that's OK.'
'Oh, shut up.'
Sami raises her eyebrows. 'Don't tell me to shut up,' she says. She waves her tiny fist at me and pulls a face. I laugh at this naked aggression, Samistyle.
'Sorry. I hate talking about money,' I say seriously. 'Please let me buy your lunch, Sami.'
The Italian girl comes back with a bottle of San Pellegrino.
'Moet & Chandon for two,' she announces, banging down the bottle of water and two small unbreakable glasses, still hot from the dishwasher. I wink thanks at her and then carry on talking to Sami. 'Don't you ever get fed up worrying about money? You now - a fiver for this or that and then panicking about going overdrawn?'
'Everyone worries about money,' says Sami, frowning.
'No, they don't.'
'Well, millionaires might not but normal people do. Everyone I know does - once in a while, anyway.'
'Don't you ever get sick of it?'
Sami shrugs her shoulders. 'It's part of life
, isn't it?'
'Is it?'
She pours us both some water and takes a delicate sip. 'Well, unless you've won the Lottery.'
'Then you wouldn't have to worry.'
'You would - what about someone scratching your Rolls Royce or your servants stealing things?'
'At least you'd be able to have a plate of spaghetti bolognaise without having to rush to the cashpoint, hoping it would let you have enough money. You could go on holiday or buy new clothes whenever you wanted without having to save up.'
'But I like saving up,' says Sami. 'It's part of the fun.'
'Really?'
'Yes. You wouldn't enjoy something if you could just buy it like that, would you?' I think about this for a moment. The girl brings us our spaghetti bolognaise and I savour the smell for a moment, before adding the dried, bright yellow, sicksmelling parmesan. 'Anyway, you're not doing badly for money, are you? Paris and now New York.'
'I just want more than this.'
'You think yourself lucky, matey,' says Sami, carefully coiling pasta round her fork. 'I just want to be able to meet the guy I'm going to marry before my wedding day.'
Chapter Thirteen
On Friday morning while Anna Maria is serving breakfast, I stare at the phone, debating whether to go through the motions of leaving a message at the office about not feeling well. I decide not to. It's too undignified, I'll take it on the chin when I get back.
Marion asks me why I'm so quiet and I explain that taking time off work is worrying me.
'Well, if you want to spend time in that dreary office of yours instead of coming to New York you're very welcome to do so,' she says over the top of the International Herald Tribune.
'I don't want to, I'm just frightened of getting fired,' I say, moving my knife idly around the toast crumbs on my plate. 'Well, like I told you, you should broaden your horizons, think beyond those four walls.'
'It's all right for you. I-' I realise that I'm about to ask her for money, straight out. Would it work? I try it. 'I'm a bit broke, Marion, you couldn't just lend me, er, I don't know, two hundred, could you?'
