by Marian Keyes
Wayne, however, was rather taken with Lisa. She was inventive in bed and she wasn’t mad about him.
‘Will I see you again?’ he asked, as she slipped her white dress on. ‘I’m in Dublin regularly.’
‘Where did I leave my bag?’
‘Over there. Will I see you again?’
‘Sure.’ Lisa tipped a shower cap, four soaps, two little bottles of shower gel and three of body lotion into her bag.
‘When?’
‘End of August. My photo will be above the editor’s letter in Colleen.’
Holding the sheet modestly to his chest, Wayne looked so vulnerable and confused that Lisa relented. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Will you?’ he asked hopefully.
‘The cheque is in the post. I’ll respect you in the morning,’ Lisa grinned, running a comb through her hair and checking her reflection. ‘No, of course I won’t call you.’
‘But… but why did you say you would if you didn’t mean it?’
‘How do I know?’ Lisa gleefully rolled her eyes. ‘You’re a man, you lot invented the rule. Bye!’
Swinging down the steps and out on to the street, her elbows and knees pleasantly raw with carpet-burn, Lisa hailed a taxi. Just enough time to run home and change her clothes before going to work.
She felt great. Glowing! Anyone who said that a one-night stand with a complete stranger left you feeling cheap and shitty was wrong. She hadn’t felt so good in ages!
36
Lisa swung into the office after her night of sex in a dynamic mood.
‘Morning Jack,’ she said brightly.
‘Morning Lisa.’
She gazed into his face. Eyes still opaque, expression no different from usual. No obvious signs that he’d minded her going off with Wayne Baker, but she’d seen his face at the time. He’d looked miffed. She knew.
So, to work! Fired up, Lisa went into overdrive and decided that she wanted all the nuts and bolts of the magazine in place now. Talking about something called a ‘dummy copy’. It was shaping up to be a rough week.
‘All regular features – film, video, horoscope, health, columns – to be inputted. Then we’ll take a look at what we still need.’
Proof copies of books that were due for September publication were flooding in for review, as were videos and CDs. In theory, free stuff sounded exciting, but it was no use if it wasn’t the kind of thing you’d normally like. There was a brief but ugly three-way scuffle over an AfroCelt CD, but no one was interested in any of the others.
‘Gary Barlow, I don’t think so,’ Trix sniffed, clattering it back on the pile. ‘Enya, not in this lifetime.’ Another clatter. ‘David Bowie, nah.’ Clatter. ‘And who the hell are “Woebegone”? You know, they look all right, your man’s good-looking. I’M TAKING THIS ONE,’ she yelled to the rest of the office.
‘Does anyone mind if I take this?’ Ashling held up a clogs-and-shawl blockbuster.
‘Hardly,’ Lisa hiccuped with scornful laughter.
But it wasn’t for Ashling, it was for Boo, who was so bored that he’d read anything.
The great typeface wars raged all week. Lisa and Gerry were locked in an angry stand-off over the appearance of the books page.
‘It’s all typeface and no content,’ Gerry said heatedly.
‘No one reads fucking books,’ Lisa screamed at Gerry. ‘That’s why we’ve got to make the page look sexy!’
Things kept going wrong. Lisa hated the illustration commissioned for Trix’s ordinary-girl column. Allegedly it wasn’t ‘sexy’ enough. Gerry crashed a file and lost an entire morning’s work. And a piece Mercedes wrote about a beautician got suddenly binned when they over-plucked Lisa’s eyebrows on Wednesday lunch-time.
‘But I’ve worked really hard on it,’ Mercedes complained. ‘You can’t drop it.’
‘I’m not dropping it,’ Lisa snapped. ‘I’m killing it. If you’re going to work in a magazine, can’t you at least learn the jargon?’
The atmosphere was fraught and the work kept coming. No one had less than three projects awaiting attention at any one time.
Ashling was keying in the New-Age horoscopes when Lisa dumped an armful of hair-care stuff on her desk and said, ‘A thousand words. Make it –’
‘I know, sexy.’
Looking for a theme for her page, Ashling surveyed the products piled on her desk. There was a volumizing mousse, a hair-spray that promised to ‘lift’ the roots, and a ‘bodifying’ shampoo – all paraphernalia for women wanting big hair. But then there was also anti-frizz masque, smoothing complex, and leave-in conditioner. All for those women who liked their hair flattened against their heads. How could she reconcile the two? How could her piece have any consistency? Back and forth she agonized. Was it possible to have big hair and flat hair? Or could she try to pretend that your hair needed to be flat before it could be big, thereby inventing a whole new set of worries for big-haired women? But no, that would be too cruel: having this kind of power brought responsibility. She sighed and broke off another piece of her white-chocolate muffin. Then – perhaps it was the sugar rush – she had a brainwave that, after the deadlock, took on the momentousness of the discovery of the law of gravity. Her piece would start off, ‘No matter what you want from your hair…’
‘Eureka!’ she declared, giddy with relief.
‘What’s that then?’ Jack called from the photocopier.
‘I’ve been so worried!’ Ashling waved a hand over the tubes and cans. ‘All this stuff, there was no pattern to it. But everything fell into place once I realized that different women want different things for their hair.’
‘Different women want different things for their hair,’ Jack repeated good-humouredly. ‘Profound. That’s got to be up there with Einstein’s theory of relativity… Time is not an absolute,’ he scoffed, ‘but depends on the shininess of the observer’s hair in space. And space is not an absolute, but depends on the shininess of the observer’s hair in time. What a worthwhile job we do here!’
Ashling wavered, wondering if she should take offence, but Jack beat her to it.
‘Sorry,’ he said, suddenly humble. ‘Only having a laugh.’
‘That’s what’s so worrying,’ Trix threw into Ashling’s ear.
‘Have you finished typing in Jasper Ffrench’s piece yet?’ Lisa snapped at Trix.
‘Yes.’
Lisa came and looked over Trix’s shoulder. ‘Aphrodisiac is not spelt with an “f”, there’s only one “y” in oyster and it’s asparagus, not asparagrass. Familiarize yourself with your spell-checker.’
‘I never had to spell-check anything before.’
‘Things are different now. Colleen is a class act.’
‘I thought we were sexy,’ Trix challenged mulishly.
‘It’s possible to be both. Oi! Mercedes! Where are you on the “fuck-me-slingbacks” piece?’
Not exactly challenging work, but necessary. And exhausting.
Ashling was dog-tired. As well as the long, stressful days, she was carrying a niggling worry at how abruptly things had ended with Marcus on Monday night. Why hadn’t she gone to bed with him? It wasn’t exactly as if she’d been saving it for her wedding night, she acknowledged ruefully. But she’d always resisted change and it was a long time since she’d slept with someone who wasn’t Phelim.
With a sing-song sigh, she accepted that life was hard for the modern woman. In the old days, the rule was that you had to hold off sleeping with a man for as long as possible. But now the rule seemed to be that if you wanted to hold on to him you’d better deliver the goods asap.
Marcus didn’t ring on Tuesday night or Wednesday night, and though Joy spoke long and loud about something called the three-day rule, Ashling said, ‘But what if he never rings again?’
‘Let’s face it, he mightn’t – men work in mysterious ways. But you certainly won’t hear from him this evening. Do something else, use the time constructively – any washing to be done? Paint you need to watch dry
ing? Because tonight’s the night.’
Ashling promised herself that if Marcus rang again she’d definitely sleep with him.
On her chocolate break at work, while flicking desultorily through the paper, his name suddenly jumped out. Mentioned in the context of how well Irish comedians were doing in the UK. The letters danced dizzily off the page at her – MaRcUs. He’s my boyfriend. Ashling stared hard at the small black letters, uplifted by a warm powerful surge of pride. Which disappeared a second later. Or is he?
Lisa suddenly going into overdrive meant that by Thursday everyone was on a very short fuse. Lisa was quarrelling with Mrs Morley when Jack, looking distraught, catapulted from his office.
‘Mrs Morley, would you mind booking somewhere for me for lunch today? Two people.’
‘The usual?’ Whenever any of the number-crunchers came over from London, Jack reluctantly escorted them for rare steaks and blood-red wine in an oak-panelled, leather-lined club.
‘Christ, no! Somewhere nice, somewhere a woman would like.’ He seemed charmingly helpless. Bashfully he admitted, ‘Apparently it’s my six-month anniversary with Mai.’
Lisa couldn’t hide her dismay. Why was he being nice to Mai? Why hadn’t they had a fight when Mai had called into the office earlier in the week? With chilling dread she realized that a pattern might be developing, and the buoyant confidence that she’d cruised on since sleeping with Wayne evaporated without trace.
‘Thank God I remembered the anniversary!’ Jack grinned.
‘How did you manage to?’ Mrs Morley asked.
‘Actually, she as good as told me,’ Jack said vaguely. ‘Hey, what was that place you took me to, Lisa? She’d probably like it there.’
‘Halo,’ Lisa said, but her voice was so strangled that Jack said, ‘Sorry? Say again.’
‘Halo,’ she repeated, only marginally louder.
‘That’s right!’ Jack was cheerful. ‘Full of tossers! Tricksy food at outrageous prices, she’ll love it. If you give me the number I’ll book it.’
‘You will not.’ Mrs Morley became more bulldog-like than ever. ‘That’s my job.’
Physically trembling with anger, Lisa left, praying that it was too short notice to get a table.
Half an hour later Mai arrived, looking like Asian Barbie. When Lisa saw her, her anger slumped into hopeless depression.
‘Nice suit,’ Trix sucked up to Mai.
‘Thank you.’
‘Dunnes?’
‘Er, yeah.’
Mai had assumed a distance that she Hadn’t had the day of the champagne drinking. Somehow Jack’s recent devotion had changed things. She was gracious, pleasant, but very definitely their boss’s girlfriend.
Mrs Morley gave Mai the nod and she swayed her non-existent hips into Jack’s office. The door shut firmly behind her and the entire office ceased operations, their ears stretched off the sides of their heads as they hoped, longed, yearned for a row. But seconds later Jack and Mai emerged, smugly holding hands. Watched by a hungry-eyed throng they made their Brady-Bunch way to the exit, and then they were gone. Even after it was clear that nothing was going to happen, silence reigned.
‘I liked it better the other way,’ Trix observed forlornly, articulating everyone’s thoughts.
Lisa, about to leave for her love-bombing lunch with Marcus Valentine, tried to swallow away jealousy, hurt – and confusion. She hadn’t imagined Jack’s interest in her, she was sure of it. So what was he at? She couldn’t understand it. One minute it was non-stop shouting matches with Mai, the next it was lovey-dovey heaven. Why? Why? The fruitless, unanswerable thoughts circled in her head all the way to Mao.
A mere ten minutes late, Marcus arrived. Tall, good body, but… ugh, no! How could Ashling? Lisa plastered on a welcoming smile but found it uncharacteristically hard to dredge up her usual excess of charm.
‘Lunch, right?’ Marcus said almost aggressively as he swung into the seat opposite her. ‘What I mean is, let’s enjoy our food without you going on at me about doing the column.’
‘Yeah.’ Lisa managed a speedy upturn of her lips, but her spirits were suddenly dragging across the ocean floor. This job could be terribly humiliating. You had to be disgustingly pushy and have skin as thick as a rhino’s hide.
All at once she didn’t care if he didn’t do the column. What did it matter? It was only for a stupid women’s magazine. Apart from a few perfunctory remarks about liking spicy food, she let the conversation fall into gloomy abeyance.
Ironically, the more subdued she became the more Marcus was forthcoming, and about halfway through her main course she finally twigged. Then she started to milk her reticence for all it was worth.
‘So what kind of article did you have in mind for me to do?’ Marcus asked.
She shook her head and waved her fork. ‘Enjoy your food.’
‘OK.’ But he came back to the subject moments later. ‘How many words were you thinking of?’
‘About a thousand, but forget it.’
‘And did you find out about syndication?’
‘One of our Australian publications would love to run it, as would Bloke, our men’s magazine in Britain.’ Then she went for the kill. ‘But Marcus, if you don’t want to do a column, then you don’t want to do it.’ She smiled regretfully at him. ‘We’ll get someone else. They won’t be as good, but…’
‘Tell me how fantastic I am,’ he grinned. ‘And I’ll do it.’
Without missing a beat, Lisa said, ‘You’re the funniest person I’ve seen in the last three years. Your comedy is a unique melding of innocence and awareness. Your bond with your audience is rock-solid and your sense of timing is impeccable. Sign here.’ She pulled a contract from her bag and thrust it across the table at him.
‘A bit more,’ he twinkled.
‘Despite your act having echoes of Tony Hancock and…’ Damn! She couldn’t think of anyone else.
‘Woody Allen?’ he prompted. ‘Peter Cook?’
‘Woody Allen, Peter Cook and Groucho Marx,’ – she smiled conspiratorially at him. She bet he knew every single one of his reviews off by heart – ‘your style is undeniably cutting-edge and modernist.’
She hoped that was adequate. Because if he asked for one further explanation for his funniness, all she’d be able to come up with would be, ‘Your face is goofy.’
On her return she ran over to Ashling’s desk and said with vicious glee, ‘Guess what? Marcus Valentine has said yes to a monthly column.’
‘Really?’ Ashling stuttered. He’d seemed so against it on Monday night. Hadn’t he… ?
‘Yeah,’ Lisa gloated. ‘He did.’
Forty minutes later a seething Ashling finally realized what her response to Lisa should have been. She should have said coolly, ‘Marcus doing the column? That must have been because of the great blow-job I gave him last night.’
Why couldn’t she ever think of these things at the time? Why did it always have to be ages later?
37
To Ashling’s overjoyed relief, Marcus rang on Thursday and opened the conversation by asking, ‘Are you busy on Saturday night?’
She knew she should tease, torment, string him along for ages, play hard to get, make him sweat.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Right then, I’m taking you out for dinner.’
Dinner. On a Saturday night – what a meaningful combination. It meant that he wasn’t pissed off with her for not sleeping with him. It also meant, of course, that she’d really better sleep with him this time. Anticipation flared. So did a little anxiety, but she’d knock that on the head good and fast.
Cautiously Ashling admitted that this was going well. Marcus was treating her nicely, and even though she’d been riddled with obligatory angst, it wasn’t really because of anything he’d done. Since she’d first seen Marcus on stage a regeneration had begun to creep across Ashling’s internal landscape. After Phelim’s scorched-earth policy she’d been off romance, more interested in recovering f
rom than replacing him.
But she’d always intended to get back in the game just as soon as she was fit. And Marcus’s phone call had nudged through little buds of hope which told her that perhaps that time had come. She was finally out of hibernation.
The funny thing was, there was a lot to be said for hibernation. Once awake she was suddenly seized with an urgency about her age, the ticking of her biological clock and all the usual thirty-something, single-woman angst. The fuck!-I’m-thirty-one-and-not-married! syndrome.
When Joy asked her what she was doing on Saturday night, Ashling decided to try out her new life for size.
‘My boyfriend is taking me out for dinner.’
‘Your boyfriend? Oh, you mean Marcus Valentine? And he’s taking you out for dinner?’ Joy sounded jealous. ‘All men want to do is get drunk with me. They never feed me.’ She paused and Ashling knew she was going to say something gross. She wasn’t disappointed. ‘The only thing my fella feeds me,’ Joy said gloomily, ‘is his mickey. You realize that if Marcus is taking you out for dinner on a Saturday night, he means business?… Business,’ she repeated with emphasis. ‘No more stunts like the last time, saying you have to get up for work in the morning.’
‘I know. And the hairs have already started to grow back on my legs.’
Ashling knew exactly what she was going to wear on Saturday night. Everything, right down to her nice underwear. It was all entirely under control. Then suddenly she took violently against her lipstick. She’d worn the same colour for what felt like years, buying the same again when one ran out. And all because it suited her! What tosh!
Mag-hags got through lipsticks like they got through men – speedily. She needed a new lipstick to redefine her. It was imperative that she track down the right one, and until she did everything felt wrong.
