by Jane Hill
It surprised her. 'American? I don't think so. Why? Is it important?'
She just stood there, looking at me as if I was mad. One of her mates laughed. I turned to her and realised it was Chloe, Chloe T., from my Year Ten English set. 'Miss Stephens,' she said, 'maybe he was a private detective? Maybe he found out what you did, about chopping up that girl last year?'
And with that, all the girls started laughing – not maliciously, just as if they'd been trying hard not to laugh, and now they had to let it all out; as if they were all sharing a really great joke. I felt myself go cold again, and then hot, and then I realised I was blushing. I felt so stupid. I'd been taken in by a stupid, thoughtless, practical joke. 'Oh, very funny,' I managed to say, before turning and walking away, wondering whether to laugh or cry.
It seemed so obvious all of a sudden. The girls had liked my joke. They knew I had a strange, black sense of humour – that joke had proved it. And so they'd decided to take it further. It was the end of term, the time for playing practical jokes. I was generally thought to be a pretty cool teacher, the sort who wouldn't mind a joke like that. They'd seen me go out for lunch with Zoey; they knew I wouldn't be in the staff room They'd taken their chance and written that vaguely threatening note, and they'd knocked on the staff room door and asked Jeff Woodhouse to put it in my pigeon-hole; and it was all such an obvious, silly prank that I wanted to cry with relief.
There were lots of things I could have done. I could have asked straight out which of the girls had written the note. I could have compared the handwriting with the latest bunch of essays from Year Ten. I could have compared the paper with the stock of white A 4 we used at school. There were lots of things I could have done to check it was just a prank; that one of my pupils had sent it to me. But I didn't. Was that because I didn't want anything to unconvince me?
That evening, when I got home, I took the note out of the file where I'd put it. I made my decision. I tore the letter right down the middle, lengthways, enjoying the straightness and evenness of the tear as it followed the grain of the paper. Then I took those two long pieces of paper, lined up the edges and tore lengthways again. Twice more, until I had nothing but narrow strips. I lined them all up and tore widthways this time. It was a jagged tear – I was going against the grain. More widthways tears – now I was just ripping up the strips into tiny shreds, angrily, destructively, as small as I could possibly get them. And eventually all I had was a lot of little confettisized pieces of white paper. I scooped them up in my hands, went across to the open window and tossed them out.
I wanted it to be a grand dramatic gesture, but there was no wind to carry them. The pieces simply fluttered downwards, like dandruff or a half-hearted snow shower, catching in window boxes and on sills, and behind the drainpipe; and the rest of the pieces fell to the ground, onto the pavement outside my flat. I knew that next time I walked outside some of them would still be there. The pieces of paper would be taunting me, saying, 'Are you sure that's all it was? Just a schoolgirl prank? Are you sure that someone isn't watching you?'
Seventeen
'Hey, you look great!'
Zoey sounded, I think, surprised. But she was right. I did look great, or at least as near to great as it was possible for me to look; as near to great as I'd looked in a very long time. It was extraordinary what a few nights of deep, relaxing sleep could do. I was doing something completely out of character for me. I'd taken Zoey up on a last-minute invitation, with barely a second's thought. I was doing something spontaneous. She'd phoned that evening, and I had answered my phone. That in itself was unusual. She'd invited me out to watch what she called her 'Edinburgh preview'. 'I need good unbiased feedback,' she said. 'You seem like someone who will give me an honest opinion. So, how about it? Want to come?'
And I had said yes, because it was the end of term, and because I was being bold and unafraid. I said yes. And with that spontaneous decision I drew Zoey Spiegelman into my nightmare.
I do believe that evening was the happiest night of my adult life to date. What a sad, constrained, tight little life I'd led until then, if a night in the upstairs room of a pub in Kingston-upon-Thames hanging out with a new friend that I barely knew counted as the happiest that I'd ever been. But I felt relaxed and calm, and also I felt needed. Zoey explained what she meant by her Edinburgh preview. 'I'm taking a one-woman show to the Fringe this year. First time ever. It's a dream come true. I'm only going for ten days, second half of the Fringe. I can't afford anything more. I can't take any more time off. But I have a great venue sorted, and all I need now is to get my material together.'
The room was filling with people, mostly groups of friends in their twenties or thirties, taking their places at the tables that were crammed into the little room. In one corner there was a black curtain and a microphone – the stage area. There was an expectant hubbub. People were chatting and reading the flyers that were on the tables, and ordering drinks and generally getting ready to have a good time. Zoey was jittery, full of nervous energy, pulling at her hair, scribbling things on a piece of paper and then onto her hand. 'Forty-five minutes I'm doing. At least. Forty-five to fifty-five minutes it's supposed to last.
How the fuck am I supposed to remember that much material?'
'You'll be fine, mate. Just remember, it's a narrative. You're telling a story.' This came from a very tall skinny guy who had manoeuvred his way across the crowded room from the bar carrying two drinks, a pint of lager and a pint of water. He gave the water to Zoey. He had long dark hair and a full beard, and he looked like an elongated Jesus. 'Just remember the story,' he said. 'One thing after another. Follow the story. And if you forget something, well, fuck it. It's not like the audience knows what's supposed to come next.'
Zoey introduced us. His name was Steve. We looked at each other, neither of us quite sure who the other was or what we were to Zoey.
'You two are on constructive criticism duties, okay? I want notes, feedback, thoughts. What you liked, what you didn't like, what worked, what didn't and why. Steve, you need to check the video camera's working. And also, go get Beth a drink. The poor girl's parched.'
I saw her take a good look around the room, checking all the faces, getting an idea of who was there. Steve bought me a beer and we settled ourselves at the back of the room. He lit a cigarette. The lights went down and the hubbub stopped. The compère took his place in front of the curtain and behind the microphone and started warming up the audience. He asked for names, had some fun with the people at the front table and told some topical jokes. Next to me, Zoey jumped up and down on her toes, and swung her arms around, raising her energy levels or fighting off her nerves. She closed her eyes and took some deep breaths. The compère introduced her: 'Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from America, the fabulous Zoey Spiegelman!'
And with that, she ran to the front of the room and grabbed the microphone out of its stand. With a giant burst of nervous energy and a huge megawatt smile she turned to the audience and shouted, 'Hey, how ya doin'?'
Zoey was good. She was very good, even better than she'd been the last time I'd seen her. She had a gift for making people laugh. She had a gift for making people warm to her straight away. She was loud, but on the chirpy, likeable side of loud. Her smile, her hair, the way she bounced up and down, in and out of the tables at the front, interacting with the audience – everything seemed exactly right. She began with some of the material I'd heard before, jokes about being an American in England. She talked about the use of the word 'toilet' where she would normally say 'restroom', and how – even as a blunt American – she felt awkward about asking for the toilet in shops. 'It's too much information. It's like going up to a store clerk and saying, "Listen, I have an urgent need to empty my bladder. Do you have a porcelain receptacle I could use?'"
She talked about other people's personal space, and how she kept accidentally invading it. She mentioned Tube etiquette, and how she freaked people out by sitting next to them and starting up conve
rsations, just to be friendly. She illustrated her point, making one of the audience members in the front row squish up on his seat, so she could sit next to him for a moment. 'It's not just me,' she said. 'It's my whole country. It's the American way. We're just trying to make friends. We invade people's space because we're trying to be friendly. Why do you think we went to Iraq?'
And then Zoey moved on to more personal stuff. She talked about her marriage, how she was seduced by a British accent. 'I thought he was just like Jeremy Irons in Brideshead Revisited. Turns out he was more like Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune.' She paused for a laugh but there wasn't one. 'You know, the movie with Glenn Close as his wife, and she's in a coma because maybe he poisoned her?' She looked around the room, seemingly unfazed by the lack of laughter. 'Too obscure? Just not funny?'
She took an imaginary pencil to an imaginary sheet of paper and crossed out the joke, and moved on to the next thing; and I was really impressed by her verve and confidence, the way she handled a joke that didn't work. Some of the later material about her husband was very bitter, but still funny. She'd been hurt, badly hurt, obviously; and yet somehow she'd managed to turn it into a joke. Perhaps it was her way of dealing with things; her way of facing up to her past and making it safe.
Zoey came off stage all sweaty and buzzy and Steve and I both hugged her. He spoke to her at length. He gave her the feedback she'd asked for, some of it quite detailed. 'The Jeremy Irons thing is never going to work. Too fucking middlebrow, and the rhythm's wrong. I know you were wondering if Ralph Fiennes would work instead – English Patient and Schindler's List – but I think that would be as bad. Plus it would bring in the whole Holocaust issue. You'd be comparing him to a fucking Nazi, and you probably want to avoid that. I say bin it. Bin that whole bit. You don't need it.'
Zoey nodded. She took in everything he said, a serious look on her face. She wrote some of it down in a little notebook. 'Thanks,' she said. 'This is great.'
They cheek-kissed and he tousled her hair. 'Gotta go,' he said. 'I'm headlining in Soho,' and he left. Zoey turned to me, smiling. I knew she wanted some feedback from me, too, so I gave her some thoughts, I can't remember what, mostly just praise. I couldn't compete with the depth and detail of what Steve had said. And then all at once the evening was almost over and I didn't want it to be.
'Do you want to come back to my place for a drink?' she said, and once again I did something I never normally would have done. I said yes.
'Comedy is truth, exaggerated,' said Zoey, almost the whole way through a bottle of red wine. She was at the precise point of drunkenness where she was hyper-articulate, verging on pretentious, without yet becoming slurry. 'Stand-up comedy at its best is a bit like poetry. The really good comedian finds words to express thoughts and moments that you may not recall ever having thought or experienced, but as soon as you hear them, you know that you have. And so you laugh. It's recognition. It's the joy of hearing that elusive fleeting thought or experience expertly pinned down.'
She poured herself another glass. I had barely touched mine. I always took care not to get drunk; not to suddenly find myself blurting out things that I wished I hadn't said. 'Do you know what every comedian's favourite sound is?' she asked.
I shook my head.
'The anticipatory giggle. Not the full-on laugh: the anticipatory giggle. Because it's the start. It's the promise of great things to come. It means the audience wants to laugh, they're willing you to make them laugh. And then, unless your punchline's really weak or you screw up your timing, there's every chance that the giggles will turn into waves of laughter spreading around the room and, on a good night, with a great gag, an extra line, and then maybe a surprise reversal, a twist in the tail, the waves of laughter can feel like . . .' She took another gulp of wine and smiled. 'It can feel like the warm ripples that go through you when you know you are just seconds away from an orgasm.'
'Stand-up comedy – as good as sex?'
She thought for a moment. 'Better. Sometimes. Well, I suppose it depends on who you're having sex with.' She downed her glass of wine and poured another, finishing off the bottle. 'So, what did you think of Steve? Do you think he likes me?'
And then, before I could answer, Zoey did something I hadn't seen her do before: she blushed. 'Listen to me,' she said. 'Thirty-three years old and I'm sounding like a high school girl.'
Zoey's flat was in Clapham, at the very top of one of those tall Victorian terraced houses, buried under the eaves. I was surprised that her door only had a Yale lock, no bolts. Despite that her place felt very safe. There was a narrow hallway, painted the dark blue-green of the deepest bits of the ocean, and all along it there was a series of antique mirrors, none of them matching. The distorted glass threw off wobbly reflections that I noticed as I followed Zoey down the hallway. She had looped strings of lights in the shape of chillies, stars and flowers between the mirrors, and it seemed like the entrance to an enchanted grotto.
The main room of the flat was a tiny bed-sitting room, with a daybed covered with a silky quilt in a deep tobacco brown and laden with cushions. The walls of the room were blood-red, and covered with shelves laden with books and DVDs and CDs. There were pictures on the walls and objects crammed onto every surface, and one wall was almost entirely covered with hundreds of postcards. The womb-like room was unlike mine in almost every way possible, except for this: it seemed to have been designed as a safe place, a haven; a little cave for Zoey to live in, just as much as my flat was for me.
Zoey covered her embarrassment by going into the cupboard-like kitchen. She came back clutching another bottle of wine, some sparkling water and a bag of posh crisps. She opened them, poured them into a bowl and offered them to me. I took a handful, and then found myself asking a personal question. I didn't do this often, because it meant running the risk of getting asked an equally personal question in return. But this seemed like a harmless subject. 'So, tell me about Steve. I thought you were out of the relationship game?'
'Oh, I don't know. He seems like a good guy. He's a comedian, too. We've done some gigs together. He's great. Very intelligent, very interesting. It's probably nothing serious. He's . . . someone, you know? And sometimes you just need someone, to keep you safe.'
I thought about Danny for a moment. I wondered if he was 'someone', and I wondered if I should tell Zoey about him. But instead I asked her another question, a question that I'd been wondering about since the first time I'd seen her. It came close to breaching our pact, but I really wanted to know. I judged that she was drunk enough not to mind, not to notice, not to ask me a question in return. 'If your husband hurt you so much, why don't you just forget about him and go back to America?'
'Because there's more to London than my ex-husband.
I like it here. I started my PhD here and I want to finish it. Also, London's a great town for comedy. There's much more chance of getting spotted here.' Another slurp of wine. 'And, to tell you the truth, the divorce isn't final yet. So there are still legal issues to sort out, and even if I wanted to leave it probably wouldn't be a good idea right now. There are still things to fight for.'
'Okay. But if he hurt you so much, why do you keep telling jokes about him?'
'Because it helps. It's as simple as that. I don't mean vengeance, or anything like that. What I mean is, making it all part of my comedy routine makes it smaller in my mind. It makes him smaller in my mind. It converts the whole thing from tragedy to comedy, and that's got to be a good thing.' Zoey looked at me, hard. 'You should try it. You should try comedy. You should get up on stage and tell some jokes about whatever this black cloud is that's hanging over you. Better than therapy. A lot cheaper, anyway. Try it. Go on, I dare you.'
'No.' The word came out very sharply, almost as a shout. Zoey looked at me, a puzzled – almost hurt – expression on her face. I stood up. I needed to walk around. I needed to get out of here. I needed to go. I was standing by the wall that was covered with postcards and I found myself looking at t
hem. Hawaii; Blackpool; the Yorkshire Dales; Florida; Paris. And then one caught my eye. Tall red girders, rising from a cloud of fog: San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, such a familiar scene from my nightmares. Rivers Carillo's face flashed in front of my eyes, the way he looked at me when I killed him, the expression on his face: confusion, shock, almost indignation. 'Have you ever been to San Francisco?' My voice sounded strangled as I asked Zoey the question without looking at her.
'Yeah,' she said, coming over to stand next to me. 'I lived there for a couple of years. It's a beautiful city. That's where I first started doing comedy.'
She was standing so close to me that I could smell the red wine on her breath. I turned to look at her, at her profile. And then she turned her head to look at me. Was there a question in those searching green eyes?
'Do you know Rivers Carillo?' I blurted out those words without thinking too hard. It had to be asked, but I felt myself shaking as I waited for the answer. What would it be? A sharp intake of breath, maybe. A shocked 'How did you guess?' A resigned, 'Okay, yeah, you got me.' Or an evil laugh, like a villain in a melodrama: 'Yes, I'm his daughter and now I'm going to take my revenge.'
I turned to face her, wondering what I'd see in her eyes. And all that was there was an interested, enquiring look. 'Riva Scarillo? No, I've never heard of her. Is she good? What kind of material does she do?'
'She's . . . no, it doesn't matter. Forget it.' Relief flooded me like embarrassment. I smiled, looked at my watch. 'Listen, I really should go.' I picked up my bag, and I touched Zoey on the shoulder, and she followed me down the long narrow hallway of mirrors. 'This was fun,' she said.
'Yes, it was.' It had been, until I'd spoiled it by getting scared and suspicious.
'Let's do it again sometime,' she said, and she kissed me on the cheek.