by Marina Ford
“Derivative of what?” I demanded, indignantly. “Does this have holes in it?”
She eyed the T-shirt I was holding up. “Well, no, but that’s because it’s mine.”
“Ah.” I dropped it.
“Rauschenberg,” she said.
“What?” My face was swaddled in a different T-shirt that seemed way too small for me, my hands tangled above my head.
“Derivative of Rauschenberg,” she said.
I pulled the T-shirt down my chest. It didn’t belong to me or Chloe, I decided peering down at it, but it would have to do.
“This is not a bloody pop art collage!” I shouted, before turning to the bedroom and flipping my bed over in search of socks.
“The colours,” she said. “Besides, I like Rauschenberg.”
“That’s because you know nothing!” I hopped one-legged out of the bedroom, putting on my shoes. “Do you know where my wallet is?”
She found my wallet, phone, and keys.
“We really should clean up in here,” I said, heading for the door. That sentence could very well have been our anthem. My mother liked to “joke” that my and Chloe’s flat was how they invented penicillin.
At the pub, Maya spotted me before I spotted her. The people from P&B, all still in their shirts and ties and pencil skirts, were well into their libations, roaring loudly at each other, clinking glasses, clearly delighted to not be working.
“You came!” Maya was more pleased than I deserved. “Come, let me find someone to get you a drink. Wait, let me find Harry . . .” And with the best of intentions, I have no doubt, she went off, and I didn’t see her again until much later.
I got my own drink therefore, and since I didn’t know anybody there besides Maya, I contented myself with drawing caricatures of them on the pub napkins. Networking, I decided, was a very strange thing indeed.
It was one of those historic pubs with dark, low beams and roaring fires, evoking memories of bewigged gentlemen demanding satisfaction from their red-faced chums for some imagined infraction. At least, looking around, I had the impression that they were all roughly drunk enough for that sort of thing to happen. But they were good-humoured, laughing at each other’s jokes, patting each other’s shoulders, and loosening their ties.
They were, for me, conveniently absorbed, so that I could watch them, and draw them, at my leisure. I’m particularly fond of an interesting profile, and I caught one or two romantically lit by the fire.
This would have been quite an entertaining way to pass the evening—a pint of lager in front of me, and some paper napkins and a pencil for my drawings—if I hadn’t been accosted by a man I hadn’t met before, who glanced over my shoulder and said, “Ha! That’s good!”
“Thank you.”
He was gawky and skinny, with a copper-and-gold moustache, old-fashioned glasses, and intense dark eyes.
“Hit it to perfection!” he said, laughing. “Marvellous. Who’s that, then?” He pointed at one of the napkins.
“No, let me guess,” he said, before I could open my mouth. “That’s Sophie, isn’t it?”
He pointed her out, and I confirmed that it was indeed the woman I had drawn—I liked the sharp line of her jaw and her Roman nose.
“Great!” He laughed. “Is that Harry?” Here he laughed harder still. “Oh this is perfect!”
He laughed at some of my other drawings. I didn’t know who he was, but since I was there to network, I thought I’d buy him a drink.
“Oh no,” he said earnestly when I offered. “I don’t drink. Water, from time to time, but I try to avoid it.”
At my surprise, he eyed my pint and said, “That stuff’s poison, you know.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay once in a while. Water’s not poisonous, though, is it? I mean, clean water? Tap water?”
His expression was full of pity. “You are putting something foreign in your body. It is . . . unnatural, shall we say.”
I was sure he was having me on. Nobody, surely, believed that. “Are you serious?”
“I’m a practicing breatharian.”
Living in London, especially in art circles, you meet people who want to tell you about their strange diets all the time (ever heard of the werewolf diet? I have), and yet I’d never heard of breatharians before.
“A what?”
“Breatharian,” he said. “It’s the belief that you should live without eating and, in advanced stages, without drinking.”
“You’re having me on.”
“There used to be Indian gurus who lived their entire lives like that. Nowadays it’s more difficult because our parents fill our bodies with toxins from a very young age.” He shook his head solemnly. “They don’t know the damage they do.”
“Wait, hang on.” I put out my hand to stop him. “You mean you don’t eat anything?”
“Well, I’m not as advanced as all that.” He laughed with false humility. “But I try.”
“Why?”
“To live a spiritually pure life of course! I couldn’t bear to do that to myself.” Here again he nodded at my pint. “Filthy stuff!”
“You can’t live without eating. That’s insane,” I insisted.
“Well, excuse me!” he said, offended. “I am not insane. It’s a valid belief and a practice that would—”
“If people could live without eating, mate, there’d be no starvation,” I maintained. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“I am not pulling your leg, young man,” he said, indignantly, even though he couldn’t have been more than a decade older than me.
“It’s a scientific impossibility.”
“Science, you know, doesn’t explain everything.”
“Yeah, maybe, but it does explain that. You can’t live without eating. It’s impossible.”
“Then explain to me”—he was flushed and bright-eyed with anger—“how this woman I once met lived without eating for five years! And scientists tested it and couldn’t explain it.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have reacted, but I’d spent a lot of my life arguing with religious people who wanted me to control my urges and needs on the basis that godlike beings were real, and who offered as proof precisely such statements: “I knew someone who knew someone who definitely saw this miracle with their own eyes.” It goaded me.
“Any scientist worth their salt,” I said, “would have locked her up for a week without food or drink, and seen how she coped. And they’d have found her ill and possibly dying, and then they’d have sent her home and told her to find something useful to do with herself instead of wasting everybody’s time.”
His brows furrowed and his lips thinned and quivered. I knew I’d said too much.
“Your ignorance,” he said, “is extremely disappointing.”
“It’s just common sense,” I persisted. “Like, you’ll agree, probably, that we need nutrition, right? Well, where does that woman of yours get her nutrition from if she doesn’t eat?”
“The sun,” he said slowly, as though I were stupid. “The sun is the source of the purest energy.”
I shook my head sadly. “Mate, if you don’t know the difference between humans and plants, you shouldn’t be allowed to decide your own diet.”
“You—!” His nostrils flared. “You dare—!”
“What?”
“Do you take me for an idiot?” he enunciated furiously.
“Well, yes.” I was surprised he had to ask. He stared at me, speechless. For a moment there, I thought he was going to punch me. Instead, a familiar voice said, laughing, “Okay, okay. Easy there.”
Harry stepped in. I didn’t know he’d been standing nearby, but apparently he’d heard the conversation, and now put his arm around the man and said, “Come on, Malcolm, walk it off, mate. Maya, I think Mal needs a bit of fresh air, it’s getting stuffy in here . . .”
Maya walked the guy named Malcolm away, shooting worried glances in my direction. Then Harry turned to me, his eyes brimming with amusement. “Do you know
who that was?”
“The village idiot?”
Harry stifled a laugh.
“He’s Malcolm Peppard,” he said. “The P in P&B Design Agency”
Well. Fuck.
“He’s not very bright, is he?” I said, defensively. “That’s not my fault.”
“No, he’s not very bright, but he is the heir to a large fortune that helped start the agency and kept it afloat throughout the financial crisis,” he said. “So we don’t tell him that he’s an idiot to his face.”
“Well, maybe someone should.”
Harry stepped forward to take Malcolm’s place, and gave me a look of mingled amusement and reproach.
“Is that supposed to be me?” He nodded at the napkin next to my pint.
“Oh, that—” I reached forward to put my hand over it, but he was quicker. Networking was new to me, but I was pretty sure that insulting your two bosses wasn’t a recommended approach. He examined the sketch for a few moments, before handing it back.
“What a fierce frown I have,” he said.
“You could smile more.”
“You think?”
“Sure. You know what they say about frowning and smiling.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Stop being an arsehole and smile,” I said.
He laughed. “And you know what they say about the virtues of not being a prick to your employers?” he asked, though he was still smiling.
“I don’t know, the same thing they say about being a grumpy old git?”
“Old!” he said with a laugh. “I take exception to that.”
“You accept ‘grumpy’ and ‘git,’ then?”
He turned to the bartender, who walked by just then, and ordered two more pints.
“For me?” I asked, as he pushed the one pint towards me.
“Sure, that should shut you up.” He lifted his glass. “Cheers?”
We drank our beers, and he turned the conversation to the people on the napkins, explaining who was who, and giving his opinions on how well I’d captured them. Mostly, his judgement was critical of my skill, but he spoke in his usual dry, teasing way, which I was starting to realise was his way of being friendly.
I didn’t immediately notice that it was slightly odd he should bother socialising with me, rather than with his friends and colleagues. What I did grudgingly notice, though, was that when he was smiling, his eyes were less like steel and more like liquid silver; and his features, when they weren’t stiff and unyielding from anger, fell into handsome, manly lines. Perhaps he’d had a better night’s sleep too, because he was less pale and worn and the bags under his eyes were gone, which made him seem ten years younger. Why mince words? He was looking fine.
“Two pints,” I said to the bartender. At Harry’s surprised expression, I added, innocently, “Your birthday, right?”
He thanked me, we clinked glasses. One of the other people from the office, standing nearby, addressed him about some movie they both liked and then tried to convince a third person to see. Harry turned slightly away from me.
“Do you like card tricks?” I said, interrupting his colleague. My heart picked up a little, but fuck it, I wanted Harry’s attention back.
Harry’s eyebrows rose in that familiar, bemused way. “What?”
I turned to the bartender and asked if he had a deck of cards. He found a fresh pack, and I showed it to Harry.
“What do you say?”
He lifted his pint glass slowly to his lips, keeping his eyes on me. “Why do I have a feeling of foreboding about this?”
There was something about the angle of his smile or the arrogance in his voice that made my pulse go a little faster.
“Hey, want to see something?” I asked the other people from the agency who stood nearby.
They turned and eyed me with interest, and Harry explained, in his drawling voice, that I was going to perform a trick.
“I forget,” a man in a hipster beard said, “are we supposed to find magicians lame, or are they so lame they’re ironically cool now?”
“Oh, no, mate,” I said. “You’ve not seen anything like this, I swear.” I looked around me. “Do we have any pens?”
Some of them had pens in their pockets. The bartender lent us two. I made sure the people nearest me each had one.
“Okay,” I said. I had slid the cards out of their packaging and began to shuffle them with, I like to think, some skill. “I want you all standing around me here. You go here, you go here . . .” I spread my audience in a semicircle around me.
“So,” I said. “I want each of you to, you guessed it, pick a card, any card—” I fanned the deck out, facedown, and let each of them pick one “—and write your card down on your hand. Don’t show it to me, just write it down so that it’s legible. Wouldn’t want anybody accusing me of fraud, here, all right? This is serious business, people, my reputation is on the line.”
Harry watched me, amused, but picked a card when it was his turn.
When they were done—and they struggled mightily with their sweaty palms and the often ill-functioning pens, I went from person to person, giving them a once over, tilting my head, pretending to mind-read them.
“You,” I said, standing in front of Sophie with the great profile, “you picked . . . Check in your breast pocket.”
Sophie reached for the little pocket and, amazed, withdrew a card. Her eyes wide, she showed the card and her palm—the seven of clubs—to us.
“What the— How the— How did you do that?”
“Ah, you know what they say about magicians and their tricks,” I said, a rush of excitement running through me. “Now, you, sir,” I turned to the man standing next to Sophie. “Your card . . . your card . . .” I massaged my temple, making a show of concentrating. “Check under your left shoe.”
The guy lifted his foot and stepped off an ace of spades. He showed us all his palm.
“Ace of spades, everybody!” I cried and there was a resounding cheer, as most of the taproom was now watching.
“Either I’m really hammered,” the bearded hipster said, “or you’re actually really good at this.”
I turned to Harry. He’d been watching me with eyes narrowed.
“Now let me see,” I said, scanning him slowly head to foot. “Here’s a tricky one.”
His colleagues were laughing. One or two said his name, teasing him.
“He’s the enigma!” someone shouted.
“You won’t get Harry!”
“Go, Harry!”
“We’ll have to try something else to get to your card,” I said.
“Try what?” Harry asked, warily.
I put my hands to my mouth in the shape of a prayer, breathed in, and closed my eyes as if I were concentrating.
“All right, I’ve got it,” I said. “I know where your card is.”
The others in the room were all aflutter with giggles and whispers, their eyes intently fixed on me. I didn’t care about them. Harry’s eyes were on me, which was all I wanted.
“Well?” Harry said, with a tone that implied Astonish me.
I said, “First, let me guess . . .” I lifted one finger. “Your card was . . . the jack of hearts?”
Harry’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and he showed his hand. It was indeed the jack of hearts. There was clapping, and in one or two corners of the room I heard a gasp. Harry didn’t seem impressed so much as suspicious. Oh I was enjoying this. A tingle of exhilaration passed between my shoulder blades.
I grinned. “Oh boy. I’m so fucking glad you picked the jack of hearts, mate.”
“Why?”
“Because I get to do this.” I, saying this, turned around, bent over, and mooned him. The jack of hearts was stuck to my butt cheek.
The laughter in the room was now uproarious. One or two of his colleagues toasted me. I pulled up my trousers quickly because the bartender, though amused, had a job to do, and keeping everybody in the place clothed was one of them.
I g
ot patted on the shoulder. Someone bought me a drink.
I turned to Harry. “I owe you a beer, I think.”
Harry rolled his eyes in a gesture of amused exasperation. “I think you owe me a lobotomy.”
“Well”—I grinned—“you know what they say about magicians.”
“What?”
“Always lobotomise your audience afterwards.”
He laughed.
“So, you walk around with a card stuck to your arse?”
“Oh, it’s too early in the night for me to tell you what I do.”
I liked the way he was smiling at me, and how, in this light, his light-brown hair had a greenish tinge, and his grey eyes looked very dark. I could smell him, could feel the heat beating off his body.
“Shouldn’t you be talking to your friends, rather than staying here with me?” I asked, with my elbow on the bar, leaning my chin on my hand, gazing at him.
“I don’t know, do you want me gone?”
“I know I wouldn’t spend my birthday this way,” I said.
It was very loud and crowded around us. He leaned in a little, and there was a small, pregnant pause. In a lowered voice, he said, “What would you be doing, then?”
“Celebrating.” I grinned at him.
He eyed me with amusement and, I thought, interest. I hadn’t heretofore considered that he might be gay. Now I tried to imagine what he’d be like naked, and the urge to see it myself was coursing through me with a warm buzz.
He was smiling, his eyebrows lifted a little, his eyes shiny and his cheekbones slightly rosy. He’d loosened his tie and opened his collar by now. He glanced down at my mouth, and then met my eyes.
“And how would you celebrate?” he asked, gently.
“There are no words to describe it. I’d have to show you.”
This shocked a laugh out of him. Then he scanned the room and turned to me again. “Let’s go.”
We took off. He told no one he was leaving.
“Jesus, you’re better guarded than a fucking medieval princess!” I laughed. To get to him, I had to pull off his suit coat, under which he wore a shirt, with a tie, and underneath that he had a white T-shirt. Then there was the belt, then his trousers, and then the boxer shorts. I wore a T-shirt and jeans, under which I had absolutely nothing. I’d never understood ties, so I let him handle that, but I dragged his T-shirt off over his head, and then dropped his trousers with boxers to the floor. At last, kissing, stumbling, and tripping, we fell onto his bed.