"Did I miss anything?" Rick asked, looking from Tabitha to Markie and back again.
"No!" Tabitha and Markie replied, all too quickly, too nervously.
And no one mentioned Serena again for the rest of the night.
Over the weekend, Markie decided there was no two ways about it. He had to contact Serena and tell her about Harry B. Sangster’s offer, because she was the last hurdle to be jumped on this path.
Not surprisingly Rick and Markie both agreed they’d be crazy m-fuckers to reject the proposal. If they did, it would be the catalyst to lives as bitter and twisted old men. You know the type: the ones who skull down liters of cheap whisky, while telling anyone who cares to listen about what could have been.
“I could’ve been a movie star; except my shifts at the petrol station clashed with the auditions.”
“I could’ve been a doctor; if I hadn’t had a baby at sixteen.”
“I could’ve been an author if it weren’t for my disability called laziness.”
Markie didn’t want to live a life of regret. He wanted to embrace all the opportunities that came along, both the good and the bad.
“How do you feel about having to maybe uproot and start all over again?” he asked Rick, who was pacing the living room up and down, stress ball in hand. He asked because it was one thing to make a decision and another thing to erase all accompanying doubt.
Rick shrugged his shoulders, as if there was a lot more than a cotton polo sweater weighing him down. A bit different from the cartwheels he was doing yesterday.
“I don’t know. Excited and scared all at once.”
“Having second thoughts because of Tabitha?”
“Nah,” he waved, “chicks come and go but a million dollars is….” Rick paused, searching for the right words. “Well…a million dollars.”
“So you’re happy to leave her behind?”
“Maybe I won’t need to…” Rick smiled wryly. “Just like you might not have to leave Serena.”
They looked at each other without saying a word but saying a million things at the same time.
He’s thinking the same thing as me, Markie realized at that point. He’s thinking that the money is great and so is the change but it’s as good as dog poop if the girls decided to stay behind.
Let’s pray to God they didn’t.
It took three messages, the last one almost pleading, before Serena finally called Markie back. It was five thirty and at the office, which couldn’t have been more inconvenient for Markie if she tried.
“Hello Markie?” Serena said, sounding as distant as the sirocco winds. “I’m returning your call.”
That much was obvious. Markie wanted to say it would’ve been nice if she called him at home as specifically requested but he didn’t feel like rocking the boat so soon. Especially since he was grateful she even called at all. The image of him and Clarissa bumping into a solitary Serena outside the C-Lounge still haunted him at night sometimes. Markie wondered whether he should explain himself now.
“Thanks for getting back to me,” he replied, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice. In the background he could hear the busy sounds of a film in progress, directors yelling orders and so on. Of course, Serena must have called him during a break on the set.
“I won’t keep you long,” he said, “seeing as you’re at work. It’s just there has been this minor emergency.”
“Emergency!” Serena shrilled. For a second the girl he knew and loved was back. “Oh my God, what happened?”
Okay so maybe emergency wasn’t exactly the best choice of words. Maybe ‘urgent situation’ would’ve sounded less extreme.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious or to do with death,” Markie promised, “but I do need to speak to you about a decision I have to make. You see, it affects you directly…if everything’s still fine between us, that is.”
There was a long pause, which lasted about a minute. In that minute Markie died a hundred times.
The fact that Serena didn’t automatically respond to him, the fact that she even hesitated just went to show how big the wedge was between them now. In the olden days, Serena would’ve sounded like a kid on helium whenever Markie was concerned. Her response rate used to be something like ten minutes from answering machine to return call, quicker than any impressive beeper service.
“Serena, are you still there?” Markie asked.
“Yes, I am.” This time Serena sounded less ice-queen and more teary princess. “You just had me worried there for a moment. Tell me about this minor emergency then.”
“Um, well...” Markie cleared his throat. “It’s about the business. We had an offer.”
“What sort of offer?” Serena seemed intrigued, almost reminiscent of Christmas Eve present-poking times.
“Um…” Markie looked around the buzzy office, which was still clueless with regards to the move. “I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this from work,” he murmured. “Maybe if you’re free we can meet up?”
“How about I call you instead tonight?” Serena suggested. “What time are you getting home nowadays?”
“You mean at Ricks?” Markie glanced up at the chrome wall clock, trying to disguise the disappointment in his voice. Stop it, he cursed himself, try focusing on how you plan to get some privacy rather than the fact she just rejected a live meeting. “Probably about seven tonight.”
Serena laughed softly. “I needn’t have asked. It’s nice to know some things never change.
With that, she said her goodbye and hung up the phone. Leaving Markie with absolutely no idea what she meant by that comment.
Serena didn’t really mean anything bad by that statement; it just came out sounding that way.
Holding the receiver in both hands, she stared at it and tried to shake off that eerie dream-like feeling. But it was hopeless. She couldn’t remember half of what had just happened there, though Serena knew it was a substantial as a baby’s first steps. I just spoke to Markie, I just spoke to Markie, was reverberating through her brain. Ruminating on that juicy piece of truth alone would be enough to get her through another tediously long day at work.
Serena hadn’t meant to wait so long before calling Markie but after the latest Jasper situation, there hadn’t been much choice.
It had happened the night Markie left his first message. Jasper and Serena had just stumbled back to her place after an adventurous night on a pub crawl. Now as is almost guaranteed on a traditional pub crawl, the couple was blind drunk and little things like putting key to lock and taking off their shoes were an extreme struggle when they got home. A struggle they both found absolutely hilarious.
“Let’s go see if we have any Coke in the refrigerator?” Serena slurred with a giggle, after picking herself off the floor for what seemed like the dozenth time. They knew full well there was no soft drink of any sort in the house but when you are drunk, wishful thinking goes into overdrive.
“Coke to celebrate our two month anniversary?” Jasper roared, following her into the kitchen. “How ridiculous! We definitely need more wine I think.”
It was there in the dark, that the pair both spied the red flashing light beaming at them from the answering machine.
“Oooh, messages!” Serena shrieked. She loved coming home to that sight, knowing that someone somewhere in the world was waiting to hear her voice. “Let’s see who was thinking of me while we were out getting smashed.”
Message number was Champagne:
“Don’t forget we’ve having another bastard day on Monday babe. So bring along those tarot cards you were telling me about. That way we can look into my future and see if I will ever be as lucky as…”
Serena hit the Next button hard at that point because, intoxicated or not, she was getting a scary glimpse into the future just then. The last thing she wanted to hear in front of Jasper was Champagne whining on about how hard it is to get one man, let alone two and how some girls had all the luck.
Messa
ges number two and three were the usual beep, beep, beeps…callers who were either less than impressed with getting the machine or incapable of leaving messages without sounding like an utter fool and well aware of it. Serena took this opportunity to make a mad dash to the bathroom nearest the kitchen (seeing as her bladder was about to explode) when the fourth and final message kicked into gear.
“Hi Serena, it’s me…” Serena stopped dead in her tracks and turned around, forgetting all about the haste to relieve herself.
“It’s Markie,” the voice continued. “I know you said we weren’t supposed to contact each other till the end of our break but it’s important. When you get the chance, please call me back.”
The message was over before she could even move from her spot. Jasper looked away from the device which Serena would inevitably rename “the destroyer of my life” then straight at her, his mouth dropped, eyes stunned.
“I can explain…” she started, pressing one hand urgently against her groin area. If she wasn’t careful, she‘d be peeing all over her leg soon, something Serena hadn’t done since her first day at kindergarten, because she couldn’t hold it in until lunchtime.
“Can you really?” Jasper frowned, looking back at the machine. It was as if the device was Markie and Jasper had walked in to find him and Serena in a heated embrace. Was he going to yank it out from the wall, stomp on it a bit and throw it around until the electrical sparks went flying? No…it’d looked like this confrontation was going to be fairly tame one.
“I can,” Serena had nodded, jumping foot to foot, in her best attempt to hold back the river flowing. “Just let me first go to the bathroom, and then I’ll spill it all out.”
Ignoring Jasper’s less than convinced impression, Serena skipped straight to the toilet, shut the door and pulled down her pants. Maybe stupidly she wasted a second or two on trying to find the light switch and upon failing Serena went to rest her bottom on the toilet seat. It was situated nowhere near where she expected because spatially Serena was all out of whack. Whack – well maybe that actually better described the sound of her back-bone hitting the tiles and head slamming against the glass shower screen, when she missed the toilet altogether.
“Oh my God,” she whimpered, as her legs lay sprayed up in the air and the first tinkling of urine started to trickle down her leg. “Oh my God.”
At first it came out in small increments but then her bladder, sensing the wonderful feeling of relief, released it in gushes of tidal wave proportions. Serena couldn’t stop it no matter how hard she tried.
A light tapping came at the door.
“Serena is everything all right?”
Serena swallowed her tears but not her pride. “I’m fine; just leave me alone,” she shouted.
And Jasper, obviously having neither energy nor will to counter any claim following Markie’s message, replied, “Okay then, I will.”
Leaving Serena lying alone in her self-made puddle of piss, sweat and tears.
Only after getting plenty of rest and cleaning herself up did Serena even try to embark on explaining things to Jasper.
He was plainly waiting for it. Laid out like a ghost on one of the back porch recliners, Jasper looked busy studying the moving clouds when Serena finally came down the next morning. She hadn’t wanted to come down. Oh no, she would have lain in bed all day if it meant making the situation go away. But come midday there was no escaping the situation.
What was she waiting for, a miracle fairy godmother to come and rescue her? She had been awake since eight in the morning and had already gone through all the possible scenarios in her head. The only way to put an end to this mess was to just get up and glide through it.
Thinking of Nike, Serena plucked her still sticky self out of bed and jumped into the shower for the second time in hours. Honesty was the best policy or deny, deny, deny? She wasn’t sure which approach was going to work best on this occasion and decided to wait and see what came naturally. It all would depend on how Jasper was, on how he reacted.
Unfortunately Jasper wasn’t looking too good at that moment.
“So who is this Markie fellow?” he asked finally.
Serena cringed. It wasn’t just the way he said fellow; even worse was the Markie. No one ever called Markie Markie except she, Rick and a handful of close friends who’d known him since Little League. To the rest of the world he was Mark Janssen – no abbreviation – full stop.
“He’s my…old boyfriend,” she replied, choosing her words carefully. She couldn’t help but make a funny face in the process of the first goal. Lies nil, Truth one.
“Who you happen to be on a break with?”
Oh feck. Serena had forgotten Markie mentioned that little tidbit.
“Um…” she bit her lip hard, wrinkling her brow. “Um…sort of but not really.”
Now it was Jasper’s turn to pull the “what the feck” face.
“Serena, it’s either one or the other. You’ve either broken up with him for good which means your relationship has come to an end. Or there are still cards that are yet to be played which mean your relationship isn’t over. So which one is it?”
Jasper shot that question straight through her heart and waited to see what would happen next. Would she sink or float to the surface like a witch?
“There must be some other alternatives!” Serena pleaded. “That can’t be just it. What about when one loves the other but the other has doubts? What about when there’s so much history between you two but the passion and fun has fizzled out? Tell me what category those instances fall into?”
“I think the latter,” Jasper answered solemnly and got up.
“Where are you going?” Serena screeched, grabbing him by the arm.
Jasper shrugged it off.
“I’m going home Serena and I’d prefer it if you don’t call me for a while, at least not until I’m over the fact that you’ve lied to me this entire time.”
With that, Jasper marched his rigid feet across the wooden floorboards and through the sliding door, back into his house. Serena sat there motionless as a statue, as shocked as Jasper probably had been the night before.
“Wait!” she called, getting up to run after him. “It’s not what you think!”
Seeing that Jasper had already reached the front door, Serena increased her speed but made it only far as the sliding door. The closed sliding door, which Jasper had in his fit of rage still managed to find the practicality to pull shut. In a similar vein that transpires with everyone at least once in their life, Serena felt the painful thud of glass to nose - the horrifying throbbing that only occurs by running into a door at full sprint.
“Jasper,” she moaned, as her head went into a spinning frenzy followed by her body too.
But by that point it was too late for anyone to help, let alone Jasper who had already zoomed out of her street and out of her life forever.
Chapter 28
Serena didn’t hear from Jasper in the ensuing week, which explained why Markie managed to leave two more messages to no avail.
Honestly she didn’t have much desire to answer calls (unless from Jasper), exit out of bed (unless for Jasper), laugh, smile, dream or do anything requiring mental or physical activity. At least initially…
The girls back in the trailer said that Jasper was a right ass for ignoring her pleas for a hearing out.
“He should at least give you a chance to tell him what he wants to hear.”
But it was no use. Jasper, the sensitive artiste, had already made his escape, not unlike the one that had taken place years earlier just after their consummation. Not only was his phone number disconnected, but when Serena made her way down to his piddly C-Lounge attachment, the same female friend, who had been semi-naked all those months ago, told her Jasper was gone.
“Gone where?” Serena cried, clutching her blue-paper-wrapped gift behind her back. It was an old arty-farty miniature sculpture of Venus that she’d found in a junk shop not too long ago; paid only
four dollars but surely it was worth four thousand.
“I don’t know,” the life-like Venus in front of her shrugged. “He just popped over a few days ago and asked whether I wanted to take over this place. I said yes and that’s it.”
“That’s it?” Serena dropped her head forward. “You didn’t think it was a bit strange, that he suddenly wanted to move? You didn’t ask him where he was going?”
“No,” the girl replied, sounding as though the suggestion was slightly ludicrous. “That’s just the way Jasper is, when he wants to go, he goes and when he wants to say where, he says where.”
“Humph,” Serena grumbled. She was too angry at this impostor to feel betrayed or mistreated or sad. “What about his job next door?”
The girl looked surprised.
“Jasper hasn’t worked at the C-Lounge in ages; he’s been too busy working on his latest collection. Surely you knew that?”
“Oh…” Serena cleared her throat. “Of course I did.”
Of course she knew when he said he was working he meant on his art rather than waiting on people at the bar for ten dollars an hour. What sort of clueless girlfriend was she anyway?
“So if I wanted to maybe contact him…” Serena stopped, wondering why this girl might have that information and not her but oh well…she had to ask. “How would I go about doing so?”
“You don’t have his cell number?”
“No I do,” Serena replied, “but in case you haven’t tried it lately, it’s been disconnected. In addition to his main line.”
“Oh I know, I needed to put the account in my name so I changed the number,” the girl replied, nodding her head.
Serena stared at her disbelievingly.
“Look I’m sorry but I have no idea where he is. If Jasper comes past, I will let him know you were chasing him though. What’s your name again?”
The Numbers Game Page 28
