Playing Away

by Adele Parks

  "I won't tell you his name. It's John."

  "Tell me all about him."

  "He's irresistible."

  "In what way? How exactly? Is he tall, dark and handsome?"

  "No, yes and exceptionally so. In that order." I squeal, delighted. The floodgates open. I take her through the exact details of our meeting, and every subsequent date and phone call that John and I have shared. I recount every single emotion I've felt, outfit I've worn, meal I've eaten, in his presence. Then I give her a soap-opera script of everything he's ever said to me. We dissect it. We discuss it. We consume it. And we drink a load to celebrate.

  Lucy's reaction to my infidelity is elation. She is pleased that I've moved closer to something she understands. Lucy is used to juggling numerous balls and hearts. Many of her lovers are married. She is dismissive of the holy sacrament of matrimony and refers to it as "an unholy sacrifice, matrimony." I think that her elation is in rather bad taste. She was bridesmaid for Luke and I, shouldn't she at least be a little bit shocked? Then I remember that it is precisely because Lucy is unshock-able that I've chosen to confide in her. I've had a stomachful of Sam's disapproval.

  "At last you've grown up, I thought you'd never get real." She refills my glass. "People are not born to be monogamous. Oh, it's great to have you back! It's like the old days."

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  I cock my head to the side. "What do you mean?"

  "Pursuit. It's your raison d'etre.''''

  "You're saying I'm like Sam."

  "No, her pursuit is tinged with desperation."

  I'm relieved.

  "Yours is tinged with arrogance."

  I'm pissed off.

  I need her opinion. "There are seven million people living in London. Assume half are women, and discount girls under seventeen and women over forty, which I think is about his range, adjust for the fact that half of those are below average looking and he won't touch them, and again assuming that those who are pregnant or taking holy orders won't touch him, there must still be over a million women for him to choose from. How will I keep him?" I ask her, then a more horrifying thought hits me, "Imagine the odds when he goes abroad."

  "Connie, you can't seriously imagine that he is that attractive."

  "He is," I reply simply. She is staring back at me, unmoved. I try to explain. "I know the taste and texture of his skin, every inch of it. I know the exact shape of his cuticles on every digit. I can tell you exactly where his freckles are. I've licked in between his toes. I know the smell of his hair and his sweat. I know the different smells of the different sweats, brow or body." She's impenetrable. "I not only know the shape and taste and smell of his genitals but I'd recognize his arse-hole in a lineup." That gets her. She nearly falls off her seat.

  "Shush." She checks the restaurant.

  "Now do you understand when I say he's all-consuming?"

  "It sounds exhilarating. It sounds like great sex."

  "It's not just sex."

  "I didn't say 'just sex.' I actually don't believe in 'just sex.'

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  I think sex is very important. But you haven't said anything that tells me what it is apart from sex."

  Momentarily I'm stumped.

  "OK, OK. Yesterday I was walking down Oxford Street."

  "Oh, Con, how could you?" Lucy asks horrified.

  "OK, pretend I said Bond Street, if it will offend you any less. It's like this. There are a hundred million people teeming up and down that street. And those people, they are every shape and size and variety and color and height and weight and social status. The women range from buxom to anorexic and the men from nerd to Adonis."

  "Yes." She waves impatiently. "I can imagine what it is like."

  "But do you know what the one thing is that they have in common?"

  She stares at me; unusually she is lost for words.

  "Not one of them is him. Not one of them can make my heart beat faster, encourage me to fling my clothes and morals aside, induce me to break my wedding vows. He's extraordinary"—I pause to take a breath—"do you think he is my destiny?"

  Lucy tuts, largely ignoring the question. "I understand. I'm still seeing my married lover as a matter of fact."

  "Really?" It's been quite a prolonged liaison. I wonder who she is sleeping with and why. With Lucy there is always a rationale, a fully weighed-up "why." The drink is going to my head too quickly and I can't clearly define the difference between us, but I do know that mine isn't a calculated affair, sensible or pre-considered.

  I. Simply. Can't. Resist. I try to explain.

  "I'm loving this but it is a disappointment to my grand plan. I still believe in marriage and I want to be monogamous. Life has gone topsy. It's tearing me apart that I am actively, certainly, methodically, destroying all that I want to believe in. I

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  feel it almost physically, a rip deep inside my body but I'm powerless to stop myself."

  "It would be inconvenient." I glare at her. "We are the same," she insists, "I know what you are talking about, Connie. He's like a pudding: wicked, bad for you, unnecessarily excessive and leaves you feeling sick. Enchanting." I'm uncomfortable when she says this. Because she is spot on.

  Although we drink a stack, Lucy doesn't tell me much about her married lover. She doesn't tell me how they met, what he looks like, how old he is, what they talk about. She does tell me that she reads his horoscope. She describes how her fingers leave sweaty marks on the glossy paper. Dirty patches that are her signature, a signature that dries and disappears after only a few moments. She angrily explains that if the horoscope hints at domestic bliss, she rips out the offending page, her hands shaking with rage. She crumples it up into a tight, furious ball and tosses it into the wastepaper basket. Annoyed by a horoscope that might tempt him into betrayal, ironically, betrayal is being with his wife. She refers to his children. I gather that he has at least two, possibly three. I glean that they come together every day. They find a way.

  "If not in a bed, then offices; I went into his office earlier this evening and we bashed it out, there and then, on his desk. I howled so much that he had to push a shirt in my mouth in case I disturbed anyone and brought them running."

  "So you work with him?" I'm surprised.

  "Yes." She quickly goes back to describing the sordid details of their relationship, which is brilliant because that's what I want to hear about.

  "We do it in toilets, cars, against walls mostly. A quick, deep, lustful banging. His trousers around his ankles, my skirts pulled up past my thighs." She whispers this naughtiness and we compare venues.

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  "And as he does up his zip he only just stops himself saying how bloody marvelous it is that he should find himself such a devoted, expert, uncomplicated lover who possesses an immense amount of unshakable confidence. I can see it on his face. He's saying what a relief."

  "Oh, Lucy, I'm sure it means more to him than that."

  "Are you? Well then you are a fool. We're old enough to know that this is about need and attention. He angrily screws me because his wife is too tired or too uninterested in making love." She drains another glass. "Still that doesn't mean I can't have fun. It's even possible that I might get to keep him. I may turn his infantile desperation into a dependence on me. Even angry screwing can become love of a sort. I'm a patient girl, I know the score."

  My gob is well and truly smacked. Lucy is talking about love and keeping him. Lucy! The waiter interrupts us as he brings our salads.

  "What's his name, your chap?"

  "Pete."

  "Oh, how funny. We now have two Peters. Rose's Peter and yours."

  "Mine is definitely Pete, not Peter."

  She makes me laugh. She can't bear to have anything in common with Rose, even something as simple as a partner's name.

  "So, by the sound of it, this Pete won't be making it into your book of funny stories, 'passes that I have known and loathed'?" I slur. It really isn't
easy to say this as I've had the best part of a bottle of champagne. Lucy goes very quiet. "He's different, isn't he?" I ask excitedly. If so, she isn't going to let that cloud her judgment.

  "God, Connie, how can you believe in such cliches? They are never different. There is no such thing." I don't believe her. I don't think she believes herself. She pauses. "Let's order

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  another bottle. There is no such thing as a great love, the one. Someone who understands one completely, suits one completely. There are simply chaps that are more, or less, convenient or amusing. It's all about timing." She raises an eyebrow and pours us both another glass of champagne.

  "Lucy," I slur, "you are so cynical. You're wrong."

  "Are you sure? They are all the same, insisting that I am the best or different."

  I'm taken aback and it must show on my face, as Lucy laughs at me contemptuously.

  "You don't fall for that shit do you, Connie? Thinking that you are the best, the sexiest, different somehow." My silence confirms her suspicions. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, Lucy's reminded me of something that, due to my safe and secure relationship with Luke, I'd forgotten. Their declarations-slash-deceptions are all the same, when they are thinking with their second head.

  Lucy hoots. "Oh, come on! This John bloke, you don't believe him. You haven't thought, for a second, that you are anything more to him than a lay. That this situation is anything more than a challenge?" She often gets nasty and bitter after alcohol.

  "Lucy, just because the men you've spent your life with are equally finite and unreliable, it doesn't mean all men are bastards. Luke proves that."

  "It seems to me pretty reprehensible that you are using your faithful husband as a defense for the behavior of your scurrilous lover."

  I blush and drain my glass. The waiter opens a bottle of Chablis and Lucy continues.

  "We've both been around enough men to understand the subtext to male language and their psyche. We know that 'It's not a good time for me to get serious' means 'I have another woman.' 'My mates mean a lot to me' means kiss good-bye to

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  Friday-night dates. 'I never meant this to get so serious' is 'I just wanted to sleep with you, not speak to you.' 'I don't deserve you' is 'I don't want you.' 'My wife/girlfriend/fiancee doesn't understand me'—chances are she understands too much. 'My wife/girlfriend/fiancee is my best friend' is of course 'I'll never leave her, I just want to have sex with you.' Finally, 'Let's be friends' is 'I don't fancy you anymore.'"

  I am silent. I guess some of this does sound familiar.

  "I thank God," Lucy continues, "that I've listened to enough of this to know how to play it back convincingly. Women rarely say these things to men so they never recognize the appalling cliches that every woman sees as clearly as fluorescent loo-roll floating down the Thames. I will not take responsibility for their vain, selfish, cheating actions. I'm not married. They are."

  As soon as the words are out of her mouth we both see the consequences. Lucy hasn't added, "And you are too." She doesn't have to. It's clear that her vain, selfish, cheating men are no worse than I am. I am no better.

  "Err, look, Con, I'm sorry." Lucy lights a fag. "Errrm, I'm sure it's different for you." I am too amazed to bother reminding her that she doesn't believe in different. There is a prickly, uncomfortable feeling hovering around my neck, shoulders and head.

  It is shame.

  We both drain another glass and agree to have pudding. We very, very rarely have a pudding. We keep them for birthdays and those days when one of the gang has been dumped (but not for Sam, otherwise we'd all be huge). We don't say another word until the brioche lands on our table with a thud. The table is a hive of activity. I am tearing the label off the wine bottle and Lucy is furiously puffing on her ciggie. Lucy's face is red. I feel sorry that she's embarrassed, and so I rescue her.

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  "Sooo," I slur, "have you ever tried to exercise any restraint. At any point did you think, 'Oh, he's married I shouldn't do this'?"

  She shakes her head impatiently. "Not at any point, quite the reverse, full steam ahead. You?"

  It's impossible to comment, console, or condemn. I am floundering around in a moral no-man's-land, ambiguous and directionless. My introspection is sadder.

  "No, I have not. I ask myself when will it stop? How did it start? But I can't bear the idea of it ending and I make no effort to draw it to a close. I want him so much."

  "Is that wise?"

  "Probably not." My tongue clasps the roof of my mouth. I can't be more articulate, so I settle on, "I really want him."

  "Be specific," she challenges.

  "I want him to long for me. I want him to fall in love with me. There isn't a challenge for either of us in getting someone into bed. Both of us can do that with anyone, everyone, we want. But getting someone to love you . . . Better still, letting them know you and them still loving you, that challenge is huge."

  "Luke knows and loves you."

  "Oh yes, Luke," I say dismissively, "not enough."

  "Works both ways you know. Play with fire and you will have to call in the paramedics."

  "Oh, I'll never fall in love with him." Trying to sound more certain than I am. "I love my husband."

  "Really," says Lucy, scattering ash all over the bread-and-butter brioche. "So why are you so cruelly determined to risk so much? From what you've told me, Connie, he doesn't even want you that much."

  I am horrified. "Where do you get that idea from?"

  "From you."

  "He does!"

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  "No, Connie, he doesn't." She says this with some determination. "How often have you actually met up?"

  "Who keeps count?" I laugh.

  "Women do," Lucy argues, "so, how often?"

  "I don't remember." I play with my napkin.

  "Yes, you do."

  "About eight times." Six.

  "Eight times in two months!"

  "It's difficult. I'm married. Remember?"

  "You said that Luke has been away a lot recently. I can guess the pattern, three times in the first week, twice in the second week, once in week four, five and seven."

  "I have no idea. I haven't plotted it like a share price," I snap, desperately trying to remember exactly when I have seen him. I shake my head. No. Lucy is definitely barking up the wrong tree there.

  "Sweetie," she says, putting her hand on mine, "it's not that I'm not delighted for you. I mean your first affair, it's a big thing. And he sounds simply marvelous, what with his huge cock and enormous eyes. But this destiny thing." She shakes her head, "Just try to keep it in perspective."

  "You don't understand, Lucy. I'm married. I wouldn't have done this if it didn't mean something ..." I search for the right word. "... enormous."

  "Are we still talking about his cock here?" asks Lucy. She can be very crude. "Where would you put him." I stare, non-comprehending.

  She elaborates. "If he was for keeps? How would he fit into your life?"

  OK. As it is Lucy, time to be frank.

  "I've known from the beginning that I can't keep him. Honestly? I'm not even sure I want to. He's not about permanence, that's his very attraction." I look at her to see if she is following me. "Instead I cram as much of him as I can into a

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  short time. I memorize his looks, his gait, his words, his clothes, his views. I push and squash it all into my mind. It's like the week before A-levels when you know that you have a finite time to cover as much of the syllabus as you possibly can and you know that after the exam you'll never have use for that information again."

  Lucy adds, "Yet it is true to say that little facts will always be with you and pop into your head when you're least expecting them." She is looking dreamily into the middle distance and I get the feeling that she isn't really concentrating on me. I'm determined that she will.

  "The difference here is that the cramming and swotting hasn't
satiated my appetite. To extend the metaphor, I now want to do a Master's in the subject of John Harding. I study his form in an attempt to capture him exactly as he is. He wears his trousers too long, he keeps his hands in his pockets, he balances his weight on his left hip. I look closer, his socks don't match. I store these memories deep in my head where they are safe."

  "And we call it knowing them," she finishes for me.

  "Lucy," I slur, reaching over the table, urgently trying to make my point, "it's exquisitely exciting and enthralling. I cannot be without him."

  Deadpan, she says, "You might have to be. Let's get the bill."

  As I get in a cab I begin to sober up. For the first time since I met John I feel almost morose. Lucy doesn't know anything about men! I mean if she knew anything about men, would she still be single? I'm the married one.

  Hhhmmmmm?

  Christ what a mess. I lean my head against the cold window of the cab and watch the lights of London whiz by. Exhausted, I begin to drift off to sleep. My mobile, playing the

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  distinctive "Happy Birthday" melody that John programmed for a laugh, wakes me.

  "Greenie."

  "You called!"

  "Returning yours, how goes it?"

  All the frustrations of the conversation with Lucy fall from me. I try to sober up so that I can concentrate on being witty and engaging. He beats me to it.

  "I want to fucking fuck you."

  He's struggling and stuttering with excitement. "You turn me on so much my cock aches. My cock is straining. I'm hard just talking to you. I'm putting my hands inside my clinging Ys, now, this minute, and I'm rubbing my cock."

  I squirm on the leather cab seat, thrown into immediate confusion. He makes me feel invincible. I've never been so sexy, never been so desirable, in my life. It at once excites me and shames me. When Luke and I talk dirty it doesn't seem real, it seems as though we are playing at grown-ups. This is real, really real, really horrifying.

  "Where on your cock?" I lean forward and close the glass partition between me and the cabbie.