The next thing came swiftly – and Marianne maybe was as shocked as the woman. Tom had approached her in silence (but not like a hawk) and in one fluid movement he inclined his head downwards and closing his eyes he buried most of his face quite deep into this (who is she?) woman’s rather thick and sunlit tawny hair, as his hand closed in fast and was firmly massaging her tightly-trousered bottom. Marianne both felt and heard the woman’s gasp as she spun around to meet this, her eyes and mouth struck open and held in not just bad surprise but also big enquiry, while a darkening flush fled up from her neck and was mottling her cheeks (a kind of mauve). From Tom, though, all trace of blood or even muscle had instantly dissolved: he seemed stricken by a pain, stuck with jagged confusion, and already his jaws were set to work as he stammered out now his hopeless apology:
‘Oh my – oh God, goodness – I’m so terribly – !’
‘What in hell you think you’re doing?!’
‘I thought you – oh my God, please forgive me – I thought – !’
‘What doing, huh?! Mister!’
And although the woman was working hard on indignation, Marianne could see that already the mind behind her slapped-open eyes had latched on to the reality, here. Tom seemed suddenly so much older – thin and white and dressed in black, his eyes beseeching and yet darting with energy from side to side, to maybe ensure he wouldn’t be looked at – and his fingers flipped hard at the air in a mute display of mortified exasperation.
‘ … desperately sorry. I thought you were – someone else entirely. I … I can’t apologize enough, I’m just …!’
The whole of the woman’s outraged face and pent-up body were calmed right down.
‘Well… okay …’ she was conceding – and even kindly.
But Tom was having none of that: it was as if he was pleading for his life.
‘ … quite unforgivable … I don’t know what you must – !’
‘Hey …’ soothed the woman. ‘It’s OK – OK. Big ship, huh? Stuff happens. It’s OK …’
And now, thought Marianne, the woman really needed to be done with it. This was kinda becoming a whole, like – thing, you know? People were looking over – and anyways, I gotta be someplace else real soon.
‘Come on, Tom,’ said Marianne. ‘Come and sit down. Have some tea with me, yes?’
Both Tom and the woman turned to gaze at Marianne: the relief that hovered it seemed was unspeakable.
‘Marianne …’ breathed Tom. ‘I – thank you, yes. Some tea would be so nice. I haven’t yet had – oh madam, I really am so terribly … um – breakfast.’
Marianne smiled quite graciously at each of them in turn (and the woman, guys – she was just outta there) and then she took Tom by the hand and led him somewhere safe and elsewhere (a place he badly needed to be).
*
‘Yeh well – all I’m saying is – ’ (Charlene was doing it again, yeh? Talking at Dwight these same goddam words) ‘ – you’d been there, it maybe wouldna happened. Nobody gets to thinking you’re someone you ain’t if you’re with someone you’re with – right? Get just the plain potatoes, Dwight – those with the mayo are gonna kill you for sure. So it’s with me you shouldda been. Is all I’m saying.’
Dwight was standing in front of her and sliding a tray down this sleekly ribbed and aluminium slipway – so long and snakey, the damn thing is … nah – long just don’t do it: like everything on this tub it goes on for just ever? And why they’re in the Poolside restaurant doing self-service lunch, just don’t ask him. Most days, he picks and chooses in the Duchess Grill (they know him down there, know what he likes – and also not to serve it when Charlene’s around him and yakking). But sometimes – and this is one of those times, surely seems – Charlene, she takes it into her head to hit the Poolside for some kinda change. Do you good, Dwight – change is good, also the food I think up here is lighter? And with your bowels, Dwight – you listening to me, Dwight? Light is what they’re needing.
‘I can’t be around you alla the time, Charlene. What you figure the guy was gonna do? All it was was some dumb klutz making a mistake. Jeez, Charlene – it’s you that told me he made a mistake – so why we don’t just leave it already, huh? Excuse me, sir – any how you can see your way to breaking a egg over the top of that steak, there, just easy like?’
‘A egg, Dwight, you don’t want. And mister – can I ask you to make real sure that steak is, like, totally lean? I thank you. The salad he’ll take as it is.’
‘Thousand Island is what I like.’
‘The point I am making, Dwight, is that it brought on home to me that all through the vacation you ain’t hardly never been by my side. I’m in the beauty parlour – you’re in the casino. I take in a movie – you get wasted in a bar. I visit the coffee shop – then you take in a movie. It ain’t togetherness, honey, is what I’m saying here. OK? No Thousand Island. And Dwight – what’s with the cream?’
‘You can’t have no fruit salad, you don’t got cream.’
‘Where’s Suki and Earl? You see them, Dwight? Always they get their food in so damn quick and they say they’re gonna get us a table someplace and danged if I ever can see them again.’
‘Over yonder. I see them. See – Earl’s waving.’
‘How’d all that cream get to be on your tray, Dwight? It flew there, maybe?’
‘Jeez …’
‘Just get it back. What is it with you, Dwight? You wanna die, or what is it?’
Dwight did some hissing and set to wagging his head as he followed Charlene across to the table. It’s maybe my age or my eyes or sump’n, could be, but I’m finding that toting this here tray, you know? Looking down and placing my feet and weaving in and out around alla these tables … get kinda dizzy; got to go slow, else it’s me or the tray that could lose it. And naw, Charlene – it ain’t I wanna die; I mean – I’m gonna die, sure, just like we’re all gonna, one day, this much I know. It don’t fear me much, but I ain’t just sitting here waiting for it, you know? Keen I ain’t. But until the good Lord comes claim me for a angel (and I just hope He knows what He’s doing) – well till then, I guess, Charlene, that what I wanna do is just, you know – live some?
‘Kay, you guys’ (Charlene the drill sergeant was back on duty, so sit up real straight now, soldier). ‘Let’s get us a bidda clear, here. Earl? You done with those dishes? And Coke cans all over I don’t need.’
‘I’m clearing, already,’ responded Earl – placing a couple of cans on top of a sideplate and shifting the whole just someways to the left. ‘Hey, Dad – how come you don’t got the Béarnaise soss and the Southern fried chicken and the chocolate fudge cake and, what – no blueberry pie just like Mom never made?’
‘Yeh yeh,’ went Dwight, sitting down heavily. It ain’t enough I can’t get to eat what I wanna eat but I gotta put up with Mister Funny Guy, here? ‘Hey, Suki – how you doing?’
‘Doing good, Dad. Like – really rinsing it, you know?’
And Dwight was both pleased and surprised by this. Suki didn’t look sulky, and it wasn’t even her birthday. I ask her how she’s doing, what I’m expecting back is Yeh right: like you really care? How many munce she’s with the teenager from hell bag – now she’s cooking with Shirley Temple. Kids? Talk to me about it.
‘Eat your food, Dwight,’ said Charlene. ‘It ain’t getting no hotter. Also cut it real small, the steak, yeh honey?’
‘Yeh,’ grunted Dwight. ‘Small. Real small.’
‘So Mom,’ struck up Suki, ‘ – hey, Earl – you needing those biscuits? What’s shaking down today, Mom?’
‘You want the biscuits?’ checked Earl. ‘Sure – take ’em. Listen, guys – I gotta bail, OK? Like – places to be?’
‘What’s with all the hurry?’ Charlene wanted to know. ‘You maybe gotta train to get?’
‘Yeh sure, Earl,’ said Dwight. ‘Catch ya later.’
‘Mom?’ pursued Suki. ‘What doing today? Anything? Nothing?’
‘Train to get �
�’ emphasized Charlene. ‘I thought that was kinda funny, no?’
‘Oh yeah!’ enthused Earl. ‘I gotcha – like, train to get – I see where you’re coming from, Mom. Like, what we got us here is a joke, right? On account of there ain’t no way I’m pitching up on no train cos like we’re on a boat – am I right?’
‘Leave it, Earl …’ cautioned Dwight.
‘You’re just offal, Earl!’ laughed Suki.
Charlene had put down her fork – the fork with which up until now she had been eagerly stabbing at all her little cut-up bits of meat: the fork now joined the discarded knife alongside.
‘One day, Earl … one day …’ she said, slowly.
Earl stood up, and flashed at his family an all-encompassing grin.
‘Yeh right,’ he agreed. ‘Well I guess I’ll take a rain check on that, Mom. See you guys!’
Charlene watched him go.
‘What’s gotten into Earl? Dwight? You know?’
Dwight swallowed whole a great lump of steak.
‘Oh yeh sure. It’s like he talks to me?’
‘I gotta go too,’ chimed in Suki. ‘So Mom – you didn’t tell me. You gonna be around later, or what?’
‘Today I got bridge with the girls – and then I gotta start in on the packing. Yeh yeh – I know we got days and days, but I’m telling you – paddery like I got, needs real care, you know? Take me like forever to get it packed right.’
Yeh, thought Dwight – and then when we get it all back home (and where in Jesus she gonna put it all, huh?) then she takes another forever to unpack the mothers and then I’m paying the garbage guys to put all the boxes in the crusher and then what? I pay Melita to every day clean it, is all. What is it with you, Charlene? Why you do alla this? Why is it you don’t wanna live some?
What I need right now is a cuppla drinks, someplace real quiet. Could be check out where’s Dave: maybe we can hang one on.
*
Suki, yeah, was kinda early. It’s maybe how it goes when you really wanna, like – be there? So Stacy – why don’t she feel that? I mean – she feels that, she’s here already, right? But like I say, I’m kinda early, so let’s just loosen up and chill awhiles. It was me who said we meet here – this real scuzzy old Black Horse pub? Like – don’t barf or nothing – I sort a think of it as our place, already? Spooky or what?
That guy – he just come over with my vadkan-Coke. You believe it? He’s back behind that bar again, that poor guy – what is he? Sammy – yeh, Sammy. This is how he’s gonna spend his whole life? Not sleeping nights and fixing drinks? Like – poor guy: know what I’m saying?
Last night – what there was – I didn’t sleep too much either. This whole, like – thing with Stacy? Still kinda arsem in my mind. Ain’t never been here before, you know? Thought about it, oh yeh sure – like, at high school? Some real foxy chicks there, man – you better believe it. But I was hanging with this, like – superjock, you know? Carl? And OK, he was kindava meathead, yeh sure – but around school he was, like, Guy Numero Uno, you know? So what’s a girl to do? But always, like, I gotta be seen in his car and I gotta go watch all these dumb football games on account of he’s, like, team captain? One day I’m cruising by early, yeah? And any practising Carl was doing was on the dumbass cheerleaders. Pissed me right off. Soon it was, like – when the prom comes around? Carl is acting like I’m so cool and lucky on account of I get to go with him? Can you believe that? And then in the car afterward? All he wants is I should go down on him. And I’m going, C’mon Carl – I got my real pretty dress on and everything, yeh? My corsage, it’s getting messed up bad. It’s like he ain’t hearing. C’mon, baby, he’s going – c’mon baby – do it for me, do it for me. And I figured hell – I just don’t got to take this, you know? I just don’t need to, like – go there? What am I – some kinda ornament and a suck-off machine for one dumb doughbrain with a dick? Even when we did get it on, it was just like Wham, Bam – and no sir, I didn’t even get no Thank You, Ma’am. So I thought, what – this is it? You read books, there’s this thing called love. French class one semester we got to read some thing by Colette? You ever come by that? I guess it’s pretty obscure. Anyhow, I could really relate, you know? There was … tenderness? Strength, sure – but like softness in with the strength? And a whole buncha movies – they taught me that too, I guess. That maybe you can lie down with someone and this someone ain’t just gonna be jumping your bones, you know what I’m sane? So in the end I broke up with Carl (and in the stampede of lowlife tramps to get him for their own, I tell you – you couldda got yourself killed) and as a result I kinda found myself giving up on guys, period. On account of if you dump the top jock, where you gonna go? Like – downward? I don’t think so. Oh sure, all sortsa guys kept hitting on me, but I figured, like – who needs it, you know? And on this here ship – aw Jesus, you would not believe the number of guys who’ve come on to me. But I guess I just been hanging loose. Sometimes, I get attracted to just the weirdest? Like last evening – the blitzed-out old English guy? Cute. Don’t ask me. I guess I just like kinda weird. See – look at the bar guy. Sammy, yeh? All the time he’s checking me out. All the time I see it. And he’s a great-looking guy, you know? Young, and all. But what I get is zilch. I look at him and what I feel is nothing. And then some, like, real ancient loser from England falls offa his goddam stool and what I think is neat. I mean hey look – nuts or what?
But Stacy – that was like literally something else? We talked some and we laughed some and next item up I’m real deep kissing her? I really, really loved that. Like I say, I ain’t never done it before, you know? But it kinda felt like coming home. For her, though – I guess I was just another chick. I mean – she’s a professional, right? Rooming with that Jennifer, she’s just gotta be. And yeh, I admit it – they make a cute couple. Shame it has to me who’s maybe gonna break it up.
‘Well well well well well … what a delightful surprise. We meet again, er … I’m awfully, um, sorry,’ David now apologized. ‘If I ever did know your name, I’m afraid I’ve, er …’
‘Suki,’ she smiled. ‘Hi. And you are?’
‘And I am? And I am David. David. Yes. Can I get you a – ?’
Suki raised her glass. ‘Got. Get you one, David?’
‘Oh good Lord no, wouldn’t hear. No no. But thank you, of course. Um – what’s funny? Have I said something funny?’
Why, thought David, is she laughing at me? I thought we were getting on really quite well. Jesus Jesus: what would it be like to have something this young, and so soft? I can’t remember and I can’t imagine. This Suki makes my Trish look old; she makes Nicole seem dead and buried.
Suki’s eyes had been closed as she fizzed out her amusement.
‘It’s you English guys,’ she smiled. ‘You’re just so polite, you know? I like it.’
David pulled out a chair and sat across the table from her.
‘You’ve been in England lately? Politeness is barely more than a memory in England, now. Place is full of yobbos.’
‘England I was in just two days back for maybe, like, a couple hours? We were in the Harrods store? Look – lemmy getcha drink, David, yeah? Scotch, is it? On the rocks?’
Suki raised up her hand, and David was both surprised and impressed by the sight and then speed of the barman scurrying towards them, for all the world as if he had forever been poised and awaiting such a summons.
‘Well I, er – yes, Scotch, thanks so much. No ice – touch of water. Harrods, of course, is hardly typical, is it, uh – Suki? Full of foreigners, for a start. Oh God – no offence, of course … well, it’s not as if you’re really a foreigner, is it? I mean – American isn’t foreign foreign. Not like you wear a veil, or something. And you do speak English. Well …’ he qualified – cocking an eye and going for it ‘ … after a fashion …’
‘Knotty knotty …’ Suki playfully admonished – her eyes, it seemed to David, pretty much ablaze. Suki. Jesus. What a fucking sexy name: suits her.
/> His Scotch must have come, then – because either David or some passing poltergeist surely would appear to have drunk it all, anyway (all I have here in my hand is one empty glass). So let’s get in another round, I can’t see why not … where’s the fellow? Has he seen me? Yes? No? Ah yes – now he has; doesn’t seem to be in that much of a hurry this time round, I can hardly help but notice.
‘So, Suki – looking forward to getting home, are you? Had enough? New York you live, yes? What – with your family, are you? Boyfriend, maybe?’
Suki looked at him, as she idled the pad of one stiff finger over the rim of her glass (she knew that for some reason this always worked: guys, you know, would see in it something – don’t ask me what. Last night, David was blind, but it sure did work on Stacy: don’t you go thinking I didn’t catch a sight of her watching; anyone’s watching me, I know it before they do).
‘That’s one loada questions, David …’
‘Hm? Oh God sorry, sorry – I didn’t mean to, um …’
‘See what I mean? Bout you English guys? Always with the ‘sorry’, ‘sorry’. What you sorry about, David?’ Her eyes were wide open and full on him. ‘You done sump’n you should maybe be sorry about? Have you, David?’ Her mouth was too (well, not wide open, no – but nor, let’s face it, was it in any way shut).
‘Not yet,’ he blurted – and damn, he thought: oh bugger. Not only was it glib and trite and sleazy and (much worse) like some kid in a film, that bloody stupid comment, but also, I get the very strong feeling – if I’m not totally misreading this whole situation (and I’m not, am I? And it is, is it, a situation of sorts we have here? Maybe just a bit of one?) – then I simply and weakly supplied the summoned conclusion to her rather cheeky little flirtation. Cheeky, yes; though none the less arousing for having erred on the side of the somewhat obvious. More so, actually, if you want me to be honest. (And never mind her name being so bloody sexy – even the way she says mine, Jesus: goes right through me.) But would she let it lie?
S.O.S. Page 18
