The Love Market

by Carol Mason

  Like we had company.

  I opened one eye to see the BBC security guard’s face on the other side of the windshield. I attempted to tell Mike to stop, but Mike somehow took my moaning as encouragement, and revved up his kissing. His hand went to swiftly unbutton my blouse. It had found its way into my bra before he must have sensed something was wrong. And that’s when he saw our intruder. Mike removed his fingers from my nipple, which was now there for anyone to have a look. The security guard smiled. Mike smiled. Mike got out of the car. And I skidded off before the car door was even shut.

  After that I never heard from him for two weeks. When I could stand the suspense and the cold shoulder no longer, I decided to ring him. ‘I’m phoning to tell you that I don’t think this is going to work,’ I said.

  ‘Is this Celine by any chance?’ he said.

  ‘Yes Mike. This is Celine.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I seem to cock everything up every time we go out, and you’re still in love with someone else. These two things admittedly don’t bode well for us. And maybe you always will be in love with this other person, or maybe you won’t. I don’t want to rush you. We can either pick it up in your own good time, if you think there’s anything worth picking up. Or we can still be friends, and you’ve got my word that I’ll not put pressure on you to be more.’ There was a pause where he seemed to draw breath after all that. ‘Or, of course, you can choose to never see me again. That too. Which is what I’d probably pick. If I were you.’

  ‘Mike, about our kiss.’

  ‘Celine, please, if it’s okay with you, can we forget about the car episode if you don’t mind?’

  ‘Forget about it?’

  ‘I’d rather not be reminded.’

  ‘But it’s over. I’m sure if the security guard told anyone you were feeling up your girlfriend in your lunch hour in the parking space no one would believe him anyway.’

  ‘You might be surprised,’ he said. ‘I think quite a few believed it with no trouble.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The thing was, it got captured on the security cameras. Then mysteriously, in the way that these things work in certain office cultures, the entire staff of the BBC ended up with it as their screen saver. I’m never going to live it down.’

  ‘My breast was broadcast to the BBC?’ I sit there pulling a face in horror.

  ‘But at least it wasn’t broadcast on the BBC. So for that we should be grateful.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ he says now, looking me over the way he always did: appreciatively. I wonder if he catches the nostalgia in my face, because I am hit with it suddenly, meeting him like this. He stands up as the waiter pulls out a chair for me.

  ‘Nice to meet me?’ Oh yes. I forgot. You have to treat me like we were never married. That’s what he wants and he’s clearly enforcing it.

  As I look at him, a thought just blindsides me: if only this was our first date. If we could rewrite thirteen years of whatever it was we got so wrong. If only there was a magic wand they gave you on your wedding day, so you could undo every subsequent argument, every petty resentment, every tear you caused, every lashed-out, hurtful comment that you didn’t even mean. If only you could stop yourself trying hard to tell yourself that things aren’t right, and back off, and maybe let them have a chance to be.

  He is analysing me, cautiously optimistic. ‘Mike… This is mad.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But it’s for a good cause. Please stay.’

  He must think I am about to run. Which I almost am. I am aware of the heat of curiosity from other diners. Mike often attracts attention: the non-conformist look that makes him interesting to others. I sit down at our booth, and immediately bury myself in a purple, leather-backed menu.

  By the servers’ station, the young host and a young male waiter are exchanging smirks, their eyes directed over here. When they catch me looking, they quickly glance away. They have me sussed. Nobody, not even a reasonably attractive, thirty-something female, goes on this many dates with different men. I’m obviously a high-class tart. ‘What are you smiling at?’ Mike asks me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I tell him.

  Mike now pretends to study the menu but his eyes keep bobbing up to fix on me. He’s made an effort to dress nice. A new-looking white shirt, undone a few buttons and showing his grey chest hair. A grey blazer that’s the same shade as his hair. The drainpipe jeans. Tan winklepickers. Much as he changes, he stays the same.

  ‘You’re analysing me and wondering what you ever saw in me.’

  ‘No I’m not. Why would I do that? This is the first time I’ve met you, remember?’

  ‘Somebody once said you should never criticise your husband’s faults, because if he didn’t have any, he might have found somebody better than you.’

  I launch a smile. His eyes twinkle at mine now. I go back to perusing the menu again, even though I come here so often I know it off by heart. ‘I understand you work in radio,’ I humour him.

  ‘Yes,’ he quietly charms me. ‘I’m the producer of the Jackie Zane show, on Blaze FM.’

  ‘I never listen to it.’

  ‘So that’s a conversation stopper right there then.’

  ‘No it’s not. It sounds like an interesting job. Do you like it?’

  He pretends to think. ‘Put it this way, I’ve done it for twenty years, so I certainly don’t dislike it. It’s been good to me, so I’ve been loyal back.’

  It’s true. Mike never cared if he got promoted, made more money, never seemed to mind that he always worked the graveyard shift. When we were happy, I’d admire his ability to be so content. Then when we were getting on each other’s nerves, I’d want to hold it up as evidence of a personal handicap or demerit on his character.

  My friend the mischievous waiter arrives and reaches over to make room on the table for a basket of bread. ‘Besides, the lifestyle would be hard to give up,’ Mike says. ‘You know, exotic travel. Penthouses in five cities. The company Ferrari. The chance to eat at a fine restaurant like this, and meet a woman as beautiful as you, who would have otherwise been way out of my league.’

  The waiter places the bread down and a smile has set on his face, like a little boy caught with his finger in the pie. Mike asks him for two gin and tonics. ‘Absolutely, sir,’ he says, and backs up, looking possessed by an alien.

  Mike frowns. ‘What’s his problem? And why’s he calling me Sir?’

  I grin, relaxing into the groove of the light piano jazz, and the wholesomeness of Mike’s company that is so familiar to me. ‘You know, Mike, we could always skip this fake date part, and just talk about Aimee or something? If you like.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with Aimee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we can’t skip this part.’ The waiter is back surprisingly fast with the drinks, cheeks the colour of two plums. Mike continues, ‘I’m paying for the full service, remember? That was the deal. Everything that you normally do with a Jim I want done to me. The whole works. No crack or crevice unexplored.’

  Mike always called them Jims. The waiter freezes momentarily, then tactfully backs up half a dozen steps, turns, and wonders how fast he can return to his friend.

  ‘That’s actually a very nice dress,’ Mike’s eyes go down the front of me, as he quickly strums his fingers on the table in time to the music.

  ‘You don’t have to compliment me.’

  ‘I’m not. It is. It’s a good colour on you, with your hair. Red’s not normally a colour you wear.’

  I unnecessarily look down at myself. ‘I got it in the sale.’

  ‘Was it marked down because it was too bright for everybody else?’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  His eyes meander over the top half of my body, making me nervous. I snap the menu closed, cross my arms. ‘Here’s the thing Mike, about your proposition: I’m not sure I have anyone I can set you up with.’

  ‘Really? I’m having the liver and onions.’ Mike snaps his menu closed too. ‘
So tell me about the person you’re going to set me up with.’

  Isn’t he listening? ‘I’m saying, I don’t have anyone in mind.’ But even if I did, that’s not how I work. They have to trust that I’ll match them right, not just with somebody they like the sound of, or the look of. I never let them know too much in advance about their dates. That way, I’m doing what they pay me for, not just selling them a catalogue. It also forces them to break old habits. In matters of lust and love, people are usually repeat offenders, attracted to the same qualities that have failed them in the past. But there’s another more selfish reason why I don’t give too much away: I only promise them one date a month so they’ll know I take what I do very seriously. If they want a numbers game, there are plenty of online services for that. But the main reason I can’t let them pick and choose is because I don’t have a huge client bank. If they wrote off everybody the second I described them, I’d soon be out of business.

  ‘And another thing,’ I tell him. ‘Nobody said you’re in. I actually don’t let everybody in who wants me, you know. I’m very picky who I do this with.’

  The waiter is hovering there with his pad, disbelieving his own good fortune.

  ‘God, he creeps up on you like baldness, doesn’t he?’ Mike says after the lad manages to take down our order. ‘He’s as red as a week on the Costa Brava. I think you might have got yourself an admirer.’

  ‘I think it’s you. I think he’s after your car.’

  He scowls. ‘My car? Oh! My Ferrari you mean.’ He laughs.

  ‘You’d actually suit a Ferrari, you know.’

  ‘But then I’d be a case of “small bloke, big vehicle” and you know what they say that means.’

  ‘As I was telling you,’ I try to ignore how much I love his easy humour. ‘You have to pass this fake date first, before I can agree to take you on.’

  ‘Why do I feel I’m already screwed?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mike. If that’s how you feel then why are you here?’

  We hold eyes. ‘I want to fall in love. I miss being in love,’ he says. His reproachful gaze cruises over my face. And it strikes me, when he looks at me like this, how much regret is still there. And I want to find somewhere to look other than at his sad, still-loving eyes. I want to. But I am failing miserably.

  ‘Cute versus sexy?’ I tap my pen on my note pad waiting for his answer. We’ve finished off the wine. Mike has been entertaining me with some of the radio station sexual politics stories that I have, admittedly, missed. I note that the upbeat jazz has been replaced with Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles, one of her songs that Aimee and I really like. I can hear Aimee’s little voice droning along to it. ‘I have to have these answers for my personal profile. If you don’t want to—’

  ‘No, ask away. What was the question?’ He was off listening to the song too. ‘Oh yeah… Cute is sexy, isn’t it? Did you fix the bath tap?’

  ‘I called someone in to do it, yes.’

  ‘To fix a tap? I’d have done it.’

  ‘It’s done.’ My eyes go back to my notepad. ‘Your definition of thin?’

  ‘Kate Moss. I still don’t know why you’d pay somebody to fix a tap. How much did he charge?’

  ‘Thirty pounds. Who is a lucky person?’

  He tuts. ‘The tap man, I’d say. Easy money for some.’ He sighs. ‘Brad Pitt’s a lucky person if you want to know.’ He starts whistling, sits far back in the chair, stretching his arms across the back.

  ‘What’s hot?’

  ‘Somebody who argues passionately but knows when to stop. Somebody who laughs a lot, and isn’t always searching for things they don’t even know if they really want.’

  ‘What makes you laugh a lot?’

  ‘Not a lot these days.’

  ‘What would you have liked to be if you weren’t who you are?’ I press on.

  ‘Virtually anything that’s not a married human being. A dog. Geese are good too. A walking stick. A postage stamp, then I’d get to travel.’

  No, I’m not being hypersensitive. Mike is sticking it to me in this ever so slightly passive aggressive way he has. ‘You’re not batting highly on the compatibility score. I did once have a woman who wanted to be a walking stick, but my geriatric clients were all fighting for her.’

  ‘You haven’t really started taking on geriatrics have you?’ he asks, his spot of sullenness has past.

  ‘No. Not yet. But we’re all getting older. We’ll all be on my books in thirty years, if we don’t get taken soon.’

  ‘Do you want to be taken soon?’

  His gaze confronts me. I have to look far across the room, to not see it, and to struggle to keep the tears back. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ He sits far back in the chair, with his legs spread; like a man subconsciously trying to maximise the space he takes up to assert his status, like he does when he’s into you. Or, in this case, perhaps just because he’s more comfortable this way. ‘You deserve to be taken. To be swept off your feet.’

  Another Katie song now. Seems like we’re getting the whole Katie CD. It’s too mellow for the occasion, and for some reason makes me feel very sad. ‘Maybe I don’t. Maybe I once was and I didn’t even know it.’

  ‘Meaning?’ he says.

  I look down at the top of the table and feel his eyes burning into the top of my head. The waiter comes and saves the moment by asking if we want dessert.

  ‘Why don’t you go and find him?’ Mike asks, when the waiter goes again. It’s Mike’s magnanimous capacity to care for me that makes him selflessly detached at the oddest moments.

  The restaurant has cleared out, Newcastle folk now having moved on to a bar or a club. We’ve been here a long time. Time always used to just disappear when I was with Mike, that’s how little he bored me. ‘Find who, Mike? And why do you care so much that I find anybody? Can’t you just be a normal divorced, bitter, resentful sod of an ex-husband?’

  He shrugs. ‘Find anybody. Someone who is a vast improvement on what you had.’

  ‘But that would be difficult in many ways.’

  ‘You know, you almost sound like you mean that.’

  I have to drop my eyes from his. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him, my voice rasping.

  He cocks his head. ‘What for?’

  ‘Everything left unsaid.’

  We sit like this for a while, wordlessly, as Katie sings The Closest Thing to Crazy. Then he says, ‘the things we painfully find out long after it stops mattering: just because you’re in love doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy. And just because you’re not in love, doesn’t mean you’re going to be any worse off.’

  We study each other until my eyes smart from the raw burn of his gaze.

  ‘You and your fake dates,’ he says, not bitterly, and I look away through a cast of tears. ‘You know, I always imagined that while you were out there dining with your Jims you were secretly hoping for an opportunity to jump ship.’

  I look at him, sadly. ‘With a belief in me like that is it any wonder that we’re divorced?’

  ‘Why are we divorced?’ he quickly asks. ‘I mean, I know, but I don’t know.’

  I look at him now and he holds my eyes so grippingly that I am deadlocked there.

  I think of him saying to me, ‘I can’t be with you when there is not a doubt in me that I am somehow holding you back.’ I had wanted to ask him, From What? It seemed he knew, maybe more than I ever did.

  ‘Don’t do this Mike,’ I stare at a spot far across the room again. I can feel him staring at me, his eyes soaking me up.

  We sit in silence until the bill comes. The lad watches while Mike puts down the money, says a grudging “thanks.” Mike never was a great tipper. I can almost read the young lad’s thoughts: you greedy Ferrari-driving bastard.

  As we walk out, Katie Melua is singing My Aphrodisiac Is You. I reckon we couldn’t have picked a better time to leave.

  ~ * * * ~

  When I get home,
Jacqui, who has been minding Aimee, looks up from reading a book, cross-ankled, on my couch.

  ‘That bad?’ she studies my face.

  I flop down in the armchair. ‘I should never have agreed to do it.’

  ‘Do it and call off the debt.’

  ‘I don’t feel there is a debt.’

  ‘Yes you do.’

  ‘Yes I do.’ I pick up the cat and cuddle her.

  Jacqui studies me for a long while, then says, ‘Do you want the good news, or the better news?’

  ‘Both. Please.’

  ‘Patrick rang.’

  I blink. ‘What’s the better news?’

  ‘There isn’t any. That’s it.’ She smiles. ‘Actually, he was phoning from his hotel in London.’

  ‘London,’ I say to myself, but out loud.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be there with him right now?’ she asks. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  Seventeen

  My father has an appointment at the dentist’s. He has to get his upper wisdom teeth removed, and asked me if I’d go with him. When he’s on the phone I say to him, ‘Dad, do you think that it’s ever a good idea to go back? That if you have something that was almost perfect once with somebody, you can ever recapture it?’

  ‘What has this got to do with my teeth?’ he asks.

  ‘Not a lot. But I was just—’

  ‘Love is love,’ he interrupts me. ‘If the person’s state of mind hasn’t drastically changed, then those feelings never change. Whether it’s a good idea to go back is another question.’

  Then he surprises me by saying, ‘But I don’t know why you’re thinking this. You obviously divorced him for a reason.’

  ~ * * * ~

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I tell him in the car. ‘If you’ve had your wisdom teeth for seventy-five years, what’s the big rush to get them out now?’

  He sits beside me in his navy blazer with the brass buttons, the red handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket. He looks paler than normal, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs.