Little Black Everything

by Alex Coleman

  “Wow,” James said when he was out of earshot. “That was a bit . . . wasn’t it?”

  “What?” Holly, Barry and Julie said as one.

  James used his thumb to point at the chair that Mike had just vacated. “‘Go fuck yourself’?”

  “I don’t think he was entirely serious,” Holly said. “And even if he was, I’m sure he’ll get over it.”

  “Holly’s well used to this sort of thing,” Barry added. “She gets told to go fuck herself or get fucked or just plain fuck off on a fairly regular basis.”

  Julie nodded in agreement. “I think I’ve told you to eff off a few times myself, haven’t I, Holly?”

  “Probably,” Holly shrugged. “I’m effed if I can remember.”

  James didn’t respond but his expression clouded.

  “What?” Holly said.

  “Nothing.”

  “You . . . have a look.”

  “Well . . . ”

  She felt something wobble deep within her. “Yeah?”

  “You can’t be happy with that, surely? Being told to fuck off or whatever? I mean . . . repeatedly.”

  “She’s well used to it at this point,” Barry said.

  “Water off a duck’s back,” Julie added.

  They both looked to Holly then, waiting (she presumed) for her to say something similar. She tried to comply but the words stuck in her throat.

  “Not much I can do about it,” she croaked eventually.

  James popped his shoulders. “I wouldn’t say that. You could always try not being so . . . y’know . . . sarcastic.”

  Julie and Barry guffawed in unison.

  “Yeah, right,” Julie said.

  “And you,” Barry said, looking very pleased with himself, “could try not being tall.”

  This raised a chuckle. Holly joined in with a small smile of her own and made a point of catching James’s eye as she did so. He held her gaze for as long as she offered it. As she returned her attention to her sandwich, she became aware that no one had said anything for a few seconds. The silence deepened and became embarrassing. Please, she thought. Please, someone say something. Anyone. Anything. She looked up then and, for the first time ever, was delighted to see Larry Martin approaching.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said as he collapsed on to a seat. “Keep it down, you lot. People are complaining about the noise.”

  “We’re just comfortable in each other’s company,” James told him sweetly.

  “Either that,” Larry said, “or you’re all having a day like mine.”

  To Holly’s great relief, he embarked on a story about the hellish time he’d had with his second years. When she had finished her lunch, she crept away as quietly as she could and took a walk down the road to kill the rest of the free time. Teaching-wise, her afternoon wasn’t exactly a disaster but it fell a long way short of the morning’s high. She tried to console herself with the notion that it wasn’t her fault.

  Her mind was elsewhere.

  “Go on then,” Mark said that evening as he poured her a second glass of wine. It was an Argentinian Malbec. He had characterised it as “provocative”; Lizzie, by contrast, had complained that it was “imprecise”.

  “Go on what?” Holly said and then immediately wished that she hadn’t. It had been quite obvious from the moment that she’d shown up on the doorstep that she wanted to give something an airing.

  “Please,” Mark said. “Look at you, you’re itching to go. What happened? Did a Jehovah’s Witness call? Did you see someone with a Bluetooth headset? Did you accidentally catch a bit of Hollyoaks?”

  Holly took a drink. She couldn’t see how a person could call it either “provocative” or “imprecise”. It was wine, end of.

  “All right,” she said. “Remember when I was in here the other day bitching about Kevin and the way he talked about me? That I was all smart-arsey and not like other women and –”

  “Yes,” Mark said. “We’re not senile. We remember.”

  “Shut up, you,” Lizzie said and shot him a look. “Let her talk.”

  “Right,” Holly went on. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that – a lot. The way things are going. With me. And men. I mean, I don’t want to wind up one of those crazy old cat ladies, do I?”

  Mark screwed up his face in puzzlement. Lizzie nodded for her to continue, which she did.

  “So, anyway, there’s this new guy at school. James B– . . . James. Subbing, just for a while. I didn’t think all that much of him one way or the other at first, but we wound up seeing a bit of each other over the last few days and I started to . . . y’know. He, uh . . . this is going to sound really corny, but he intrigues me. Nothing seems to bug him. Everything’s great all the time. I’ve never heard him say a bad word about anyone or anything. He’s so . . . nice.”

  “Opposites attract,” Lizzie said.

  Holly wrinkled her nose. “Jesus! I wish people would stop saying that! I do have feelings, you know! And it’s bullshit anyway. It’s just one of those things that sounds like it might be true because it’s a neat phrase. But it’s clearly a load of shite. All right, you might be able to name an occasional time when it’s worked out with opposites, but to go from that to a blanket rule of ‘opposites attract’ is like saying cigarettes must be good for you because there’s a guy down the road who smoked like a train and lived to be a hundred and eight. Look at you two. You’re like peas in a frigging pod. So are most couples.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Lizzie conceded.

  “The point. . .” Holly sighed. She felt exhausted all of a sudden. “The point is, he’s said a couple of things. One about how I shouldn’t always say what I think and one about my . . . sarcastic . . . tendencies.”

  “Tendencies?” Mark laughed. Lizzie threw a cushion at him. Holly threw a look at him.

  “Today. At lunchtime. He said maybe I could, y’know . . . tone it down a bit.”

  “And what did you say?” Lizzie asked after a brief silence.

  “I didn’t say anything. But I was thinking. You don’t suppose maybe he was . . . hinting? That he might be, you know, interested. If only I was a bit less . . . me?”

  Lizzie and Mark exchanged a curious half-glance. Then Mark said, “Well, I don’t know about this guy in particular, but you did have that conversation with Kevin. And it wasn’t the first of its kind – you said so yourself. There was Dan, for one.”

  For a moment, Holly was sure she had misheard him. It was a sort of unwritten rule between them that Dan’s name was never to be mentioned.

  “Dan? I’m sorry? Dan?”

  “You were nuts about him and he dumped you for not being frothy enough.”

  Lizzie rolled her eyes and flopped back into her armchair. “For fuck’s sake, Mark.”

  “What? He did. He told her she –”

  “Listen, Holly,” Lizzie said, cutting him off. “Listen. Listen. All right . . . to tell you the truth, we did a bit of talking about you behind your back after you left the other night.”

  Holly drained her wine. “Oh yeah?”

  “And . . . I don’t know if you’ve just forgotten this or blocked it out of your mind or what. But, yeah, Dan did say all of those sorts of things to you too.”

  “I haven’t forgotten it or blocked it out,” Holly said.

  Lizzie looked to Mark who folded his arms as if to say, Leave me out of this. She frowned and scratched the top of her head. Holly heard the noise the gesture produced and thought of sandpaper.

  “I’m trying to think of the right way to put it,” Lizzie said.

  “Just put it,” Holly told her. “What am I gonna do, thump you?”

  “I dunno, you might. All right, lookit. You’ve asked the question – twice now, really. And the fact is, you do get this ‘lighten up’ stuff from men. If you’re waiting for someone to tell you it’s your imagination, you’re out of luck. Sometimes you get it from men like Kevin, fair enough. But sometimes you get it from men you’re completely in love with
.”

  “One man,” Holly argued. “Dan was a lot of things but he was singular.”

  Lizzie went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And now you’re getting it from a man you find ‘intriguing’. The point is, what are you going to do about it? I’m not trying to be harsh, Holly. I love you to bits, I think you’re great. But if everyone you meet keeps telling you your breath stinks, then maybe it’s time for some TicTacs.”

  “Holy shit!” Mark said. “I would have put it better than that!”

  Lizzie looked suitably forlorn. “Sorry, Holly, that was . . . I could have . . . sorry. But you know what I mean. Maybe this James guy is hinting. And maybe it wouldn’t kill you to dial it down a bit, with him at least. See how it goes. You love your science – you could think of it as an interesting little experiment.”

  Holly made a conscious effort to calm down. There was no poing in getting all maudlin about Dan. She had asked, and they had answered. Full stop.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. That’s what I’ve been thinking too. But how do I go about it? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of shitty movies that start out this way. How would I get started on this transformation – with a frigging montage?”

  “You’ll be fine,” Lizzie replied. “Do a little tongue-biting. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. That sort of thing. Just keep your eye on the prize and go with the flow.”

  Mark said nothing for a moment. Then he showed the palms of his hands and said, “Yeah. Flow-go.”

  There was a certain weariness in his voice. His patience with this line of conversation had clearly expired already. It didn’t matter, Holly thought. She had what she came for.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  It was nine thirty when Holly returned from Mark and Lizzie’s. She checked the phone and saw that her mother still hadn’t called to get the verdict on Charlie Fallon. That was no surprise. Mrs Christmas wasn’t a particularly patient woman – in all likelihood, she was going up the walls – but she would always choose suffering in silence over entertaining even the remotest possibility that she might make a nuisance of herself. As she hit the speed dial, Holly felt a strong pang of guilt for having left it this long to make the call. Best thing for it, obviously, was to concoct a series of lies.

  “Mum?”

  “Oh, hello there. How are you? Having a quiet night?”

  Her voice was muted, faux-casual. Holly lost no time in launching Operation Fib. “Yeah. I didn’t feel great this afternoon when I got in and I went for a wee nap. I was going to stay in bed for an hour or so and call you then. I don’t know, maybe there’s some sort of a bug working on me or something, but I’ve only just woken up.”

  “Aw, are you all right? Sure you could have called me any time. There was no rush.”

  “No, no. I was dying to get you, honestly. Sure we have to have our chat about himself.”

  “Well, that’s true. I suppose we do.”

  “So!”

  “So . . . ”

  Holly straightened her spine. “I really liked him, Mum. I thought he was great.”

  A long pause. “Did you?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! He was very, uh, chatty. Sociable, I mean.”

  “He’s that all right, yeah.”

  “And he’s so . . . ” The words stuck in her throat. She gagged for a moment and then forced them out in a sort of linguistic Heimlich maneuver. “So sophisticated. He’s a real . . . man of the world.”

  “Oh! I’m surprised to hear you say that, Holly. I really am. I got the impression you thought he was a bit of a gasbag. About his travels.”

  He hasn’t travelled, Holly thought. He made it as far as New York and stayed there for thirty years. That’s not travelling. That’s moving house.

  “God, no. What gave you that idea?” She realised that her mother was about to answer and moved hastily along. “And I’ll tell you my favourite thing about him – he wasn’t shy about paying you compliments. He was at it all night, wasn’t he? Lovely this and delightful that.” She exhaled. It was a relief to have said something that had some grounding in fact.

  “He wasn’t doing that to impress you,” Mrs Christmas said quickly. “He’s been like that every time I’ve met him.”

  “I’m sure. And you were loving it, don’t deny it. I could tell.”

  “I’ve no intention of denying it. Who doesn’t like compliments? It’s just been so long since I’ve had any from a, you know . . . man. It feels funny.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Holly, are you sure you’re not just trying to be nice?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “You really liked him?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  There was a long silence. “Well, I’m really . . . I’m stunned, that’s what I am. I would have bet my left leg you were going to lay into him today. All that stuff about science and God and all that, I know that’s one of your subjects.”

  Holly’s teeth ground together. Aisling and Orla talked about her “list”. Her mum talked about her “subjects”. She wondered if anyone else had a pet name for her various anti-passions. She put considerable effort into making her next contribution sound casual.

  “So we disagree on a few things! We’re both adults, Mother, we’re allowed to have our own opinions. Doesn’t mean we can’t like each other.”

  “I suppose. And he did like you, by the way.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. He said you were very ‘feisty’.”

  Once again, Holly’s jaw clamped shut. This time it wasn’t so easy to pry it open. “Feisty”, indeed. That was the word choice of a sexist. It meant that she was a woman who didn’t know her place and would probably have to be reminded of it once in a while. If she’d been black, no doubt he would have called her “uppity”.

  “Okay,” she said through her teeth.

  “And pretty! He said you were very pretty. But that only led him on to buttering me up a bit more. Her mother’s daughter and all that.”

  What about my tits? Holly thought. Did he say he liked my tits? Because he certainly seemed to be giving them a lot of thought.

  “What did you get up to after I left?” she said. “Crap, that came out wrong. I mean, did you go on somewhere or –”

  “No, no. We just sat there chatting for a wee while – a good while actually, they started giving us dirty looks – and then he put me in a cab. There was no, you know . . . no, uh . . . I just went home.”

  “Okay. So. Are you going to see him again?”

  “He wants to.”

  “Do you?”

  Mrs Christmas exhaled at length. “You really liked him, Holly? I know this must be very strange for you, God knows. But . . . you really liked him?”

  “Yeah. Of course I did.”

  Another exhalation. “Well then,” her mother said. “I think I’ll . . . just . . . play it by ear.”

  “Okay,” Holly gulped. Play it by ear. She’d never heard it called that before.

  Chapter 12

  On Tuesday morning, Holly sprang from her bed as if stuck with a pin. Usually this sort of thing only happened when she’d been long-fingering some tedious chore. Tired of the endless procrastination, her subconscious would stage a mini-coup, giving her a shot of adrenaline and kicking her out of bed. Not until the room was half-painted or the lawn half-mown would she regain full control of her faculties. On this occasion, she had showered, dressed and eaten and was bouncing from foot to foot like a boxer waiting for the bell before it occurred to her that there was no domestic task awaiting her attention. Still only half-awake, she had to give the matter quite a bit of thought before she remembered that this was the first day of her experiment with James. Disappointingly, however, he was nowhere to be seen when she got to school. He did show up at the mid-morning break but just stuck his head into the staff room, called out a general hello, and then disappeared again. Holly w
as only just able to stop herself from getting up and following him. She started in her seat and wasn’t all surprised, when she turned her head, to see that Eleanor Duffy had noticed. Lunchtime, she told herself, as she tried to erase the image of Eleanor’s half-suppressed giggle; it wouldn’t be long until lunchtime. Once again, however, her luck was out. She was making her way to the staff room when her mobile buzzed in the pocket of her jeans. The caller was Aisling. She sounded glum.

  “What’s wrong?” Holly asked, tucking herself into a relatively quiet corner. There was no reply. “Aisling? Are you there? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Her voice turned to a whisper. “I think . . . I think I’ve got a stalker.”

  The steel claws that had taken Holly by the shoulders released their grip at once. This was not the first time that Aisling had claimed stalkee status. It was not even the second. By Holly’s estimate, it was the seventh or eighth. Nothing much ever came of these dramatic declarations; sometimes they were never even mentioned again. In her darker moments, Holly suspected that they were simply Aisling’s way of pointing out that there was a downside to being unnecessarily attractive.

  “Oh.”

  “‘Oh’? Frigging ‘Oh’? Is that all you have to say?

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  The stalker, Aisling revealed after a short period of fuming silence, was a copywriter at work – Kieran. He had asked her out to dinner a few weeks previously and had not taken it all well when she shot him down (“He’s got one of those little Satan beards,” Aisling reported by way of explanation for her decision). Apparently, his bottom lip had trembled and it taken him a full thirty seconds to turn and walk away. In the days that followed, he had gone to some lengths to avoid her, and when avoiding her was impossible, to stare hard into the middle distance. None of this was particularly surprising and Aisling had assumed that he would soon get over his embarrassment. Then one day, he emailed her a picture of Brad Pitt along with the message “I suppose this is the sort of thing you’d prefer.” Aisling replied that she wouldn’t say no, if it could be arranged, and tried to tell herself that his tone had been light and breezey, even though he had employed none of the symbols that people usually included when they wanted to imply levity – no smileys or exclamation marks, nothing of that nature (she’d gone for two of each herself). A couple of days passed. Then he sent her a picture of George Clooney accompanied by the line “What about him?” Alarm bells rang at that point and Aisling made no reply, jokey or otherwise. A mere twenty-four hours later, a third picture arrived. This one featured Ricky Martin. Holly gasped at this point in the story. Aisling agreed that yes, indeed, this was the moment when she became truly frightened. It was one thing to receive unwelcome attention from a man. It was quite another to receive unwelcome attention from a man who was under the impression that women lusted after Ricky bloody Martin. She wouldn’t have been any more disturbed, she said, if he’d sent her a photo of himself posing with the mummified remains of his dead mother. From past experience, she knew that these things had to be stopped early and invited him to have a word in private. They convened in an unused meeting room and Aisling told him that she didn’t know what he was trying to achieve but the emails had to stop. As she’d expected he would, he claimed the whole thing had been a joke and said he was sorry that she didn’t have a sense of humour. If he’d known that this was the case, he added, he would never have asked her out in the first place. This withdrawal of the original offer, Aisling informed Holly, was textbook behaviour. She’d once had a guy claim with a straight face that she had misheard him; he hadn’t said, “Would you like to go for a drink sometime?” but “Would you agree that drinking is sublime?” She’d resisted the urge to mock Kieran and said she hoped they could leave it at that. For a while, it seemed to have worked. And then, this morning, she’d opened the top drawer of her desk and found a page torn from a magazine.