You Must Be Very Intelligent

by Karin Bodewits

  “It’s an experience as such, just go for it. Because I seriously doubt Mark has ever read it himself!”

  I feel grateful for the nicotine and support. Two unfamiliar guys join us outside, fellow smokers. “Wow, two pretty girls waiting for us outside. Life could be worse…” says the one with curly blonde hair, and a nice Australian accent.

  “Your blue scarf really fits your eyes,” the same guy says to me with a cheesy voice.

  “And your yellow shirt really fits your teeth,” I reply, wondering who I am insulting.

  As the bar is on the university campus, chances are that it is someone working here.

  “Oh, oh, ooh,” says he, grinning in a way that doesn’t suggest he is really offended. “I am Harold. Nice to meet you.”

  “Are you working here?” I ask.

  “Nope. I’m just visiting this dude,” he says holding the shoulders of the other brown-haired, average-looking guy.

  “Yeah,” says brown-haired dude. “Harold is a senior lecturer in Glasgow. We know each other from way back. We’re collaborating on a research project.”

  “What are you girls doing? PhDs? Postdocs?” Harold asks.

  There’s something about this guy. He’s not so terribly handsome, but he’s got something about him. Maybe it is just the good-humoured smile.

  “PhDs,” Lucy and I reply at the same time.

  “What field?”

  “Biochemistry.”

  “Which group?”

  “The McLean group.”

  “Hahaha. Poor you!”

  “Why?”

  “His reputation leaves much to be desired. Everyone knows him, even in Glasgow, but not in a positive way!”

  “What’s bad about him?” I ask.

  “Two buzzwords: unreliable, incompetent. But, I have never worked with him so I don’t know what’s true about it and what isn’t.”

  Shit.

  “You girls fancy going to town?” he adds.

  I quickly look at Lucy who seems slightly less curious about this pair than me. “You want to go?” I ask her.

  “Why not? If you want to….” she says with a noticeable lack of interest.

  “Okay, we’ll come.”

  “Great! That’s probably our cab right now,” says the average-looking guy indicating a taxi pulling up.

  Lucy and I quickly fetch our coats and join the guys in the cab. “Any preference as to where we go, ladies?” Harold asks.

  “I don’t mind,” I say. “So long as it’s not a club.”

  “Whistlebinkies?”

  “Okay.”

  We drive to the underground pub where a band is playing very loud Indian pop music. We order a pint and chat about the whole PhD experience thus far. It doesn’t take too long before I am feeling too tired to be sociable or funny. I tell Lucy that I haven’t eaten yet and really need to go home. She orders a cab.

  Before going to bed I sit at my desk in the living room eating a pack of chocolate chip cookies Daniel bought. Curiously and dutifully I am reading some of the thesis. It is of little interest and absolutely no relevance whatsoever. However, there is a noteworthy gulf between what the thesis says and what Mark says when he is trumpeting it. Wow, he actually hasn’t read the thesis he bangs on about at every opportunity, how bizarre…

  Before bed I quickly check my email. One email from Hanna with the subject “Christmas dinner” asking if we all happen to have time on the 7th of December.

  “Seventh works for me,” I reply to the email, fully cognisant that my availability will not be pivotal in the final decision of the Christmas dinner date. I have long understood that, as a first-year PhD student, I am the appointed runt in the poorly contrived wolf pack of Lab 262.

  I close the laptop and make my way to bed. In the faint street light through the curtains I look at the silhouette of Daniel’s sleeping face on the pillow next to me. I quietly whisper, “Just cheat on me, darling. That would make it all so much easier.”

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_9

  Chapter 9

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  Duct tape. I need duct tape! Holding the bands of my hold-up stockings between index fingers and thumbs in order that they do not roll down to my ankles, I play “island jumping” to the living room. I press my legs together to free my hands and start digging through the toolbox in the large lighted cupboard. It is not there. Of course it is not there… nothing is ever where it should be…

  I issue a few random swear words and feel Daniel’s eyes on my back.

  I hear a distinctly outdoor voice, and realise it is mine: “Where’s the fucking duct tape?!”

  “Jesus, relax.”

  “There are only so many hours of relax time available in one house and you’ve taken all of them!”

  I now realise that I really do need assistance. With gargantuan effort, I continue, “Sorry, I’m just late. Do you happen to know where the duct tape is, by any chance?”

  I wanted to sound conciliatory, but sarcasm triumphed.

  “It’s there,” he says, pointing to the upper shelf in the cupboard.

  “Can you do me a favour and get the scissors?”

  Daniel raises himself from the office chair, so bloody s-l-o-w-l-y and ambles to the kitchen. I hear him opening a drawer, then another one.

  “It is hanging on the magnet bar,” I shout, struggling and failing not to sound annoyed.

  He returns with the scissors.

  “And now?”

  “Now we are going to tape these tights to my legs. What else?”

  He shrugs. “Of course… I should have guessed. What else would you do with duct tape? How do you want do it?”

  “Once around and three times vertical.”

  I hold the tights up and indicate where he needs to stick the tape. He rolls the tape once around my upper leg, half on the stocking, half on my skin.

  “Not too tight!”

  He cuts it off. Carefully he takes three short pieces and sticks them on vertically, over what we just taped. He starts the same procedure on my other leg while enquiring, “Is it normal to tape stockings to your legs with duct tape?”

  “Of course not! But I don’t know what else to do. I’m a scientist, not a lingerie expert.”

  “But you bought them.”

  “Yes, I bought them,” I say with a glare to ward off more irksome comments.

  “Why did you not buy normal ones? Like those that go over your arse.”

  “Just let it be, Daniel!”

  He laughs mockingly and points at my duct-taped legs. “Very sexy.”

  I pull my dress down to just above my knees, narrowly covering the tape. I get my only pair of high-heels from the bedroom and, with some apprehension, slip into this alien footwear. An uncomfortable tingle shoots up my legs.

  With some difficulty I totter on to the packed bus and find a seat near the back. The moment I deposit myself in it I feel, and even hear, the tape releasing from my skin, on both sides. The stockings slither down me with remarkable ease. Oh shit, did anyone see that? What will I do? I slip out of my stilt-shoes and, at very high speed, pull the stockings over my toes, crumple them together in my fist and deposit them in my handbag.

  The bus drives along beautiful, spacious Princes Street overlooked by the lighted Nelson Monument on Calton Hill. It turns right over North Bridge where history surrounds you in the different layers and characters of all the old buildings – a dramatic jumble of the ages, and yet always those huge patches of greenery in the city centre; deathly black at night. Oh how I love this town in the dark. How lucky I am to live here.

  When I disembark the cold wind cuts through my skin. It would have been grim with tights but this is downright tortuous. I ring the bell at 17 West Nicolson Street. Lucy buzzes me in from three floors u
p and I ascend the ancient wooden stairs.

  “Hi, how are you?” she says, looking drop-dead gorgeous in a simple, classic black skirt with crème-coloured blouse and thin black tights.

  Out of breath I reply: “Fine. Cold legs!”

  “Oh, you don’t have tights?”

  I take the tatty tights with duct tape out of my hand bag and show them to her.

  “They were supposed to be hold-ups but they did not stick.”

  She pulls the tights apart and regards the duct tape. “Those are not hold-ups, Ka. Those, you wear with a garter belt.”

  “Garter belt?”

  She walks to her laptop and types “garter belt” in the search box. The screen fills with pictures of elegant women in beautiful lingerie. “Okay, yes, that is quite sexy. Quite different from how I feel.”

  It is deflating. Are scientists just not sexy? Was Marie Curie sexy? Wait, Lucy is sexy. She’s the freak…

  “Wine?”

  “Sure”

  We drink and smoke with our upper bodies hanging out of the two tiny windows next to each other. Michael Jackson’s childish voice can be heard in the distance. Sometimes the best part of an evening out is that period of hope and expectation between being ready and leaving.

  We chit chat about everything and nothing and decide to walk to the restaurant. It is just after 8:00 p.m. when Lucy pauses in front of a bright blue facade. The small windows and the large white lettering are homely and inviting. Our colleagues’ faces are shining in sweet candlelight within the premises.

  “Here we go,” says Lucy.

  I empathise as Lucy inhales deeply and then sighs before opening the door. Apprehension stalks the Lab 262 Christmas Dinner. It doesn’t help that I am wearing a dress, stilt-shoes and no tights in the brutal Scottish winter. The moment we enter the small restaurant, a handsome, young waiter greets us with a welcoming smile. “We belong to that group,” I state, pointing in the direction of my colleagues.

  Everyone is tastefully attired in ironed shirts, smart trousers, stylish dresses and neat skirts; all rather chic yet suitably wintry, apart from the stupid Dutch girl with bare legs.

  Mark greets us with a friendly smile. He looks pleased and excited; this is a Mark I haven’t seen lately.

  After a few minutes of Mark being unquestionably charming, my mind is in turmoil: Maybe it is because the grant proposal was successful. Mark told us yesterday that he managed to get some new funds for the lab, and he did seem very happy about this achievement… Maybe this is why he has been so moody and unpleasant since the water-filter argument?… Maybe it’s just the pressure of academia, a world where you completely rely on third party funding, negotiated by way of long dreary documents, endless competition and, above all, who you happen to be chummy with… Maybe Mark has just been having a difficult few weeks, getting stressed and depressed about funding… Maybe everything will get better now… or maybe I should steel myself against wishful thinking at a Christmas party…

  Mark looks around the table triumphantly and indicates to the bar that we are complete now. The waiter hands out menus and before he can turn away, Mark touches his arm and asks, “Drink?”

  His eyes flit from me to Lucy and back.

  “I’ll take a red wine.”

  “Me too,” Lucy says.

  Everyone at the table is drinking wine or beer. The atmosphere is strange. I can’t work it out. People talk in a friendly way while tension and excitement vie to dominate. On the one hand, the Christmas excitement evokes memories of childhood and celebrations of years past, as Christmas is wont to do; I think of me and my sisters, three happy little girls bouncing about at the breakfast table, unable to contain ourselves as we stare over at the presents under the Christmas tree, all bursting to find out what Santa brought us this year. But on the other hand, this evening also calls to mind one of those stifling dates with someone you definitely do not fancy and are beginning to dislike, before the starters have even arrived, and yet you feel it would be imprudent to just drink your way through this slow evening because alcohol is likely to render you rude and undignified. Ominously, I finish my glass of wine before dinner is served and Mark orders a few more bottles…

  The waiter places a steak in front of me, and it is leaking blood like fresh roadkill. Damn, I asked for well done! I consider asking him to cook this dead flesh a bit more but I wimp out. I feel the red steak mixing with the foundation of wine in my stomach. Like a good chemist, I conclude that the liquid I have imbibed might not be the best solution for dissolving this bit of cow. Slowly my head starts to spin and soon I am afraid I will end up on the floor. I resolve to flush the flesh down with water. Mark orders bottles of booze the moment one empties. Everything starts to normalise as the evening progresses. At least it looks that way to me as the consumption of alcohol oils the engine of bonhomie and dampens cares about dignity. We are laughing and joking with each other in a way I have never once seen in our lab. It’s nice, I’m starting to enjoy myself, that’s confusing. We pool money together to pay the bill and for drinks thereafter. Mark insists on taking us to a pub in Leith.

  “Why is that?” I ask Lucy while smoking a cigarette in front of the restaurant.

  “He always wants to go there.”

  Standing next to us is Bubblegum-Bobline-Girl, displaying bland Celtic tattoos on her feet. Thus far she has never uttered one friendly word to me and, since she is soon to finish her PhD, I assumed she never would.

  “Mark loves Leith,” she says, and actually smiles at me. The alcohol must have you in its power and I hope you are going to regret your friendliness tomorrow when you wake up; because I know I will definitely regret being friendly to you after all the unfounded “fall to death” looks you have thrown at me in the lab.

  “Why is that?”

  “He lives there, and believes it is the best place on the planet. In fact I am surprised he agreed to come here for dinner. It’s always been Leith in the past.”

  Vaguely I recall Mark telling me during my interview that if I was going to look for a flat in Edinburgh, Leith was the best place to live. I checked it on the map at the time and concluded it was too far out of the city centre and too far away from the university. The rest of the lab members join us outside. Like a swan guiding its uncertain cygnets, Mark leaves the restaurant last.

  “We need three taxis,” he states, and jumps onto the road like a rugby player ready to deck a prop forward. He very abruptly halts a passing cab. Four of us get in.

  “Port O’ Leith,” Mark instructs the driver.

  Wow, that sounds exotic…

  We drive off, leaving the rest of the lab members behind. We cross South Bridge, then North Bridge and wait at the traffic lights before turning onto Leith Walk. On the little square in front of us, a guy in a kilt and full Scottish regalia is playing bagpipes. Like me, he doesn’t wear any tights but he has thick, high socks which leave only his knees exposed to the cold. There is a hat in front of him to donate money and I drunkenly wonder if I could pay him for his socks…

  We travel down Leith Walk, a famous street I haven’t seen before. We pass a few pubs and clubs, and it gets dingier by the block, until there are only small, seedy shops and dark, residential buildings.

  “We’re there,” announces the driver indicating a red pub with white metal bars in front of two large windows.

  A few middle-aged drunks totter about at the entrance. From the car you can already hear that they are engrossed in a passionate conversation about politics and life, which would make no sense to them were they sober. As it is, they are all certain of their genius. They look surprised when we exit the taxi.

  “Hi girls, welcome to the best pub in town!” one blurts, opening the door for us in faux gentlemen style.

  There is an old lady standing on the other side of the door, obviously an habitué of the Port O’ Leith, perhaps even the owner. She seems to be attired for a carnival party; pink velvet dress, boa and high lurid red shoes. Damaging lifestyl
e is writ large on every inch of her face. She takes my hand with her wrinkly fingers, each of which sports a ring, in a way my grandmother might, and presses her heavily lip-sticked and botoxed mouth to my cheek.

  “Welcome,” she says.

  Though overwhelmed by this warm and yet frankly revolting largesse, I try to reciprocate whilst disengaging from her grip without cutting myself on one of those knuckle-duster rings. I feel soiled, I hope I did not just get a weird disease… Then I will never be able to finish my PhD, I won’t walk down the red carpet like a celebrity when I win the Nobel because I will be oxidising in a 24/7 care home… I am momentarily appalled at my own snobbishness. But only momentarily…

  The pub looked small from the outside, and now it looks small from the inside. It is just a local alcoholic pub with an exotic name. The roof is covered in a mix of English, Scottish, sport and random pirate flags. There is a preposterously large selection of alcoholic drinks on the shelves behind the bar and most customers are at least fifteen years older than me – or least look like they are. Early graves beckon for these ghouls, yet in here, tonight, they have no cares. A few middle aged ladies, with coloured, greasy hair and dresses that reveal far too much wrinkly booby flesh, regard us with disbelief; as if to say, “What the hell are those girls doing here? And how come they still have all their teeth?” I share their bewilderment. Why on Earth would Mark bring us to such a place?

  The others arrive and Mark orders beers all round from the money pot. I check the glass to see if it’s dirty and take refuge in conversation with Lucy. Then Mark joins us. “You like it here?”

  Just at that moment a very drunk middle aged man emerges from the gents with his zip open and saggy, limp member on casual display.

  “I love it here,” I reply.

  Mark, now also looking at the penis, says: “It is a strange place. We go here every year. It’s become a tradition.”

  As if he is too curious to wait and see who comes out of the gents next, he heads to the toilet. The music is loud. The second burst of alcohol really starts to kick in, and we find ourselves dancing between the tables. When Mark comes back he shouts at the bartender: “Those girls want to dance on the bar!”