Who’s That Girl?

by Celia Hayes

  “Understanding? I’m the one who’s supposed to be understanding?” I yell. “I don’t want to be understanding. I’m sick and tired of being understanding!”

  “Then go out there and tell him!”

  “No!”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’? Why not? What, are you embarrassed or something?”

  “I’m not embarrassed!”

  “That’s not what it looks like,” she says, changing strategy. “You’re terrified, that’s what it is. You haven’t got the guts to tell him to his face to leave you alone.”

  “That isn’t true!”

  “Yeah, it’s so typical of risk takers to lock themselves in the john. I’m sure Dave is terrified.”

  I throw open the door and glare at her. “I am not afraid of Dave.”

  “Sure…” she says with a sarcastic smile, not believing a word of it.

  “I’m not afraid of Dave,” I repeat.

  “Sure, I can tell…”

  “And now I’m going to go over there, take him to one side and tell him that tonight he’ll have to look for someone else to be his slave, because I’m done with unpaid overtime. I’m done with it!” I yell angrily. “And I am not going, in any way, to let myself be talked out of it. If he wants a running dog, why doesn’t he call Madeleine?” I ask, not giving her a chance to answer. “No, of course not, why disturb Madeleine if there’s Sam? Sam Preston. Sam ‘do what you want with me’ Preston? Well that’s enough! This time it’s a no. Because Sam Preston has a life and Sam Preston has her dignity, see? And when he finally finds the courage to ask me himself if I want to stay here and carry his bags at Fashion Week, instead of letting me find out from the wardrobe girl when I go to pick up my coat, when he comes to me and says, ‘Sam, listen, there’s been a change of plan. Tomorrow morning they’re going to discuss the latest developments in the textile industry and they’ve asked me to speak, would you mind staying on?’ I will say…”

  *

  “Of course, sure, no problem!”

  I smile. A long smile that goes from one ear right across to the other and is held on my lips by the power of desperation and an inability to protect myself that’s starting to feel practically pathological.

  Dave nods.

  “Ok. I’ll go and get the keys to our rooms. Wait here, I’ll just be a moment,” and he heads off down the corridor that leads into the next room, the hall with the sparkling floors I glimpsed when we arrived. He moves as though he has been walking around places like this all his life. As though he was born for this world. Wearing a fabulous dark suit, he looks amazing.

  “Hmph… Why the hell don’t you fall in love with me?” I whisper in the garden, hoping to find Terry exactly where I left her. Thank God she’s right there, sitting on a bench and trying to guess from the angle of my eyebrows how it went.

  “So?”

  How did she expect it to go? Shall we briefly sum up? Fashion Week has finally started. Three weeks have passed without me losing even one ounce. Isn’t that great? I love my tenacity, especially when it comes to trying to reach impossible goals. And so here I am, stuffed into a very expensive evening dress that barely fits me and which tomorrow will end up in a box up in the attic keeping all the other ‘for when I lose weight’ clothes that I’ve been pointlessly stockpiling for years, company. This time, though, it’s not my fault, it’s Lou’s. He couldn’t bear to see me crying any more while I tried to put on my damned dress and so he insisted on me buying something new. I would have preferred not to let him see me in that state, but realising that I couldn’t do up the zip of a dress that I’d bought only a year before made me feel so miserable. I’d taken the discovery that I wasn’t cut out for the red carpet quite well, all things considered, but not the zipper that wouldn’t close. That was a tragedy. Because you can find a thousand excuses for being rejected by a man that don’t mean you are inadequate, but a zip has no ulterior motive and so there’s nobody left to blame except yourself.

  The only consolation tonight is the surroundings. ‘Beautiful?’, you ask – ‘big’, I answer. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realised that nobody cared about me. I was sure that when I walked in they would all stare at me and someone would shout, “Thar she blows! Thar she blows! It’s Moby Dick!” But nobody did. The guests at the Globe Park Hotel proved to be very discreet, I must admit, and their behaviour stopped me feeling as self-conscious as usual, something for which I thank them all unequivocally, especially because I will probably never see such an incredible display of botox again in my entire life. The place is really fabulous too! I’m not being sarcastic: they chose a different venue this time: the Globe Park Hotel, a newly opened luxury complex, that seized the opportunity to be mentioned in all the nation’s newspapers by offering to put up organisers, contestants and guests during the event. They’ve set up catwalks and stages for the shows and multimedia rooms for the conferences. There’s everything you could need. When I first arrived, I couldn’t believe my eyes – I’d never have thought I’d participate in anything like this. And then came the chilling discovery of the evening – the story of the obligatory overnight stay – and it all suddenly seemed less fascinating than I had initially imagined. I know, I shouldn’t have reacted like that.

  I have the opportunity to spend the night in one of the smartest hotels in the city among catwalk shows, dancers and celebrities, but here I am chewing my nails off and looking for a good excuse to hightail it out of here. The truth is that my head is elsewhere and that fashion has never really been my thing anyway. And I can’t stop thinking about Al. He hasn’t called me since he escorted me to Nob Hill. And to that I should add that the official selections for Curvy are about to begin and that I’m barely speaking to Dave nowadays. I just don’t want to, and above all I don’t want to have to stay here with him tonight – I’d been hoping to limit my social interaction to a couple of hours of hanging around in the conference room. I was just a foot away from the cloakroom, ready to feign some kind of illness and get the hell out of there when one of the maids asked me if I wanted to put my stuff in my room. My room? I stared at her, thinking it must be some kind of mistake. But no, there was no mistake. And Dave hadn’t said anything to me. Absolutely nothing. And he’d had days to warn me!

  Thinking about it puts me in a bad mood again. I give Terry a desperate look and then sit next to her on the edge of the pool. Terry immediately realises that something is wrong and that Dave is probably involved somehow. Others would try to comfort me, others would ask me if I wanted to talk about it, but she just slaps her forehead and starts nodding her head anxiously. I must look really pathetic.

  “Sam, come on, how many times do I have to tell you? What did you do this time? What did you let him do to you?”

  “The usual, plus a bit of extra off the cuff stuff later on in the evening.”

  “I don’t know if I want to know,” she admits, looking at the crowd of people having fun around us.

  “No, you don’t want to know,” I say, without adding anything else. She already knows as much as she needs to spend the next two weeks worth of coffee breaks having a go at me. “I’m going to try and get the keys to my room,” I whisper, before she can add anything I know I won’t be able to argue with. I’d rather not hear her views on my inability to do what I say I’m going to, not while I’m in this state.

  “Are you coming back here afterwards?” she asks.

  “No, I think I’ll take a shower and try and get a little sleep,” I say, then wish her goodbye and traipse off to the lobby, where I find Dave arguing with one of the staff. It’s light years from what I would think of as ‘making a scene’, though – he remains detached, formal and perfectly controlled.

  “What exactly do you mean?” he says to the concierge.

  “It is an absolutely unforgivable mistake. I’m truly, terribly sorry,” stammers the man, clearly extremely embarrassed.

  “That doesn’t help much, though,” replies a furious Dave.

  I
can’t work out what they’re talking about and move a bit closer so I can listen in.

  “I will be glad to check again, but I’m almost sure…”

  “No, I demand that the issue be resolved. I cannot manage without my assistant,” insists Dave, without realising I’m listening.

  “I understand, yes,” murmurs the concierge, mortified. But after he has peered at his monitor his eyes go back to Dave and there is no change in his expression: absolute mortification. “Unfortunately, there are no other rooms. The hotel is fully booked,” he admits.

  “This is ludicrous!”

  “Problems?” I say, moving closer and looking at them both.

  “Yes, it’s a disaster,” comments Dave, barely deigning to glance at me. He seems prickly and tired. He must be exhausted, and probably can’t wait to lock himself in his room with the minibar.

  “As I told Mr Callaghan,” the man at reception tries to explain to me. “It is an understandable mistake because we imagined that—”

  “No, it’s not understandable,” Dave interrupts him before he concludes. “I am not required to specify the nature of my relationships to the staff of the Globe Park Hotel.”

  “No, I didn’t mean to insinuate…”

  “Dave, will you tell me what’s going on?”

  “They’ve booked us into a suite.”

  “So?”

  “Into one suite, Sam.”

  “You mean, one each?”

  “No, I mean one for both of us,” says Dave. And when I finally realise that I’d been concentrating on the least important part of the phrase, I lose my temper too.

  “That’s ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous! I refuse!” I snap at the poor man, not thinking for a moment that it certainly can’t be his fault – but the mere idea of having to put up with Dave after everything we said to each other last night is enough to brush away the remaining trace of sanity I had been working so hard to preserve. “Find a solution. Any solution,” I demand, banging my handbag down violently on the desk. My sudden show of anger makes the man freeze momentarily, and Dave does likewise. Although he is in complete agreement he cannot hide a trace of irritation.

  “Ms Preston, believe me, if there were something – anything – I could do to—”

  “You can’t really be thinking that I’m going to share a bed with him?”

  Dave can’t stop himself from intervening any longer, but it can’t have been anything nice because he manages to close his mouth again in time and maintain a resentful silence.

  “The point is, we thought that you were… were…” stammered the concierge.

  “‘… were’?”

  “… Mr Callaghan’s partner,” he explains, going red in the face, and this time I have to really bite my tongue because Dave throws out his hands in resignation and cries, “Oh, that is ridiculous!”

  “And why exactly would it be ‘ridiculous’?” I say, turning to him with my face bright red.

  “What? It’s okay for you think it’s impossible to share a room with me but I’m supposed to jump for joy because they think you’re my girlfriend?” All his class and poise go out of the window when he wants to win an argument.

  “You’re right, it would be really humiliating for you for people to see you with a woman who doesn’t spend her days licking bowling balls in a deodorant ad.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “So what should I do?” the concierge asks us, forcing himself to smile. “Confirm or cancel?”

  “Confirm!”

  “Cancel!”

  We both answer at the same time, glaring at him.

  “Erm…” he stammers, his pen still in mid-air.

  “Sam, we can’t go, I’ve got things I have to do here!”

  “Nobody asked you to go – I’m going!”

  “You can’t go either – who’ll keep me company tomorrow morning at the conference?”

  “Why is that my problem? And anyway, there are no rooms. Where do you expect me to sleep, in your bed?”

  He stops and scratches his head and for a moment it almost looks as though he’s actually thinking about the idea.

  “If it’s not a problem for you two, seeing as you already seem so… familiar with one another,” cuts in the hotel receptionist, “the suite has two very large rooms – a bedroom and a lounge. We could put another bed in. The rooms are communicating, but if you close the door between them…” he suggests.

  “See?” exclaims Dave, with a satisfied expression on his face.

  “See what?”

  “You wanted a room, now you’ve got a room!” he snaps, before turning back to the man. “I’ll be fine with the couch. Give my assistant the room.”

  “I am not your assistant.”

  “Give Ms Preston the room,” he corrects himself with a sigh when he hears me griping. “Ah…” he remembers at the last minute, “she didn’t think she’d be staying, could you find her a change of clothes and a couple of evening dresses from the boutique?”

  “Of course, it will be our pleasure,” the man answers with sudden efficiency. “Shall I put that on your card?”

  “Charge it to The Chronicle.”

  “Perfect. All I need now is the lady’s dress size,” he murmurs with discretion, writing a note in the register.

  There is an embarrassing silence as we all stand there and they both stare at me. How sweet… they have been ignoring me completely for the last twenty minutes while they argued, and now they magically remember my existence and want to extort information that I wouldn’t even reveal under torture.

  “Er…” mumbles Dave, looking at me cautiously, “I’d say a L—”

  I go white. “What?” I can’t believe it. Did he really say that? I glare at him insistently, waiting for him to make some kind of excuse or to genuflect in mortification.

  “Well, sorry,” he says, “if you want it tighter, you can always change it.”

  Chapter 21

  One Day Too Many

  “You owe me a hundred bucks.”

  “I’m not in the charity business.”

  “Just accept it.”

  “It hasn’t been three months yet. You’ve got another month and a half to go,” Brian reminds him.

  “A month and a day,” Dave corrects him. “And I’d like to remind you that the worst is over. Fashion Week is nearly over, all the appointments are done, the reports are in. No temptation. Victory is in sight.”

  “I’d wait and see what happens before I start celebrating, if I were you.”

  “If you say so…”

  “You’ll be scratching on the doors of all the hookers in the city with your brain boiling over and your balls bright blue, if they aren’t already.”

  “You can’t stand it. Admit it, you just can’t stand it. I’m perfectly capable of managing the situation, I’ve won the bet, and pretty soon I’ll be able to go back to my old life and it won’t have cost me a thing. You just can’t take it.”

  Brian bursts into laughter so loud that Dave is forced to hold the phone away from his ear.

  “Ha! That’s a good one. You’ve been lucky, but don’t kid yourself that your luck’s going to hold out. You’ve got the whole night ahead of you, and all those pop-up bars and cocktail corners will be full of hot girls… God, what I wouldn’t give to be there.”

  “That’s because you’re a pervert who has nothing but sex on his mind twenty-four-seven,” responds Dave, leaning towards the brass control panel of the lift. He’s leaving the party, the lights, the music – he asked a waiter for directions and left, loosening his tie as he went. He can’t take any more of that suit, those shoes, the humidity, all that pointless chatter. He just wants to lock himself in his room, take off his trousers and watch a bit of TV in total isolation. He’s done his best tonight, he really has, nobody could say he hasn’t.

  What with the promise he’d made to Tom about the not so remote possibility of finding himself on the cover of a gossip magazine, he
’d limited himself to downing glasses of scotch and following the general principle of ‘don’t touch, don’t look, don’t talk to anyone’. And to ensure that he went to his room alone, he had spent more than two hours listening to all that useless nonsense about the return of sequins and eighties fashion. Being able only to nod, he had gradually gotten more and more irritated and so, at a few minutes to midnight, he had made his apologies to everyone and left. “I’ve got work to do – a real journalist never sleeps!” He’d left the party behind and taken the opportunity to make a quick phone call to annoy Brian. Just to anticipate his defeat.

  “Know what I’m doing right now?” he asks, without even saying hello as he presses the button for his floor.

  “What the hell is the time? Let me think… suffering?” Brian replies sleepily. At this time he’s usually dozing in front of the TV in his pyjamas.

  “I’m going back to my room, Brian. Alone!” Dave tells him with obvious satisfaction. “This means that I will soon be four floors away from any models, tight dresses, thongs and studs,” he adds, waiting with one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone to his ear and his eyes on the tips of his shoes as he waits for the doors to open.

  “Give up, you coward!”

  “It’s just common sense.”

  “Onky would be ashamed of you.”

  “At this moment in time, poor Onky has far more serious problems than my behaviour, believe me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A… A little accident. At the moment he is convalescing.”

  “What the hell did you do to him?” whispered Brian.

  “Me? Absolutely nothing, but, believe me – he deserved it. I am sure that from now on he’ll think twice before sticking his nose into my plans.”

  “Dave, what the hell are you talking about? Plans? What plans?”

  “Nothing,” he sighs. “Nothing, forget it. Okay, this is my floor. Are we seeing each other tomorrow? I have a couple of tickets for the game,” he suggests, putting his room key in the magnetic reader.