by Shari Low
Now that I was entrusted with actually selecting the candidates, I could just tell Zara that in a fit of efficiency (and because I didn’t want to bother her or take up her time, etc. etc.) I’d gone ahead and organised another date. It had become pretty clear that as long as another sign had been crossed off the list and there was a twenty-two-page report to show for it, neither Zara nor Conn would interfere in the process.
Zara wasn’t due in for another hour, which gave me plenty of time to mock up an application letter from Dave and then write a comprehensive dating report, obviously omitting any reference to naked parts or orgasmic situations. If Zara or Conn did question it, I’d just say that he was one that I’d picked from the pile and that I’d misplaced the photograph.
Set to the melodic backing track of my grinding teeth, I got to work.
Dear Zara…blah, blah, blah, please pick me. Signed, David Canning.
I resisted the urge to write ‘Devious Twat’ underneath, and instead just printed the one piece of vital information that I’d so far omitted.
PISCES.
EMAIL
To: Leni Lomond
From: Jon Belmont
Subject: How’s it going, Star Lady?
Good morning, Star Lady!
Just thought I’d drop you a line to see how you got on at the hospital yesterday. Are you now bandage-free? Strange, but I kept thinking about you last night. I know I’ve said it a few times already, but at the risk of sounding repetitive, I just wanted to say again how much I enjoyed our night together and that I’m lookin’ forward to doing it again…just as soon as you reject all those other blokes!!!!
So how’s the survey going? You said that you’d already crossed Capricorn, Scorpio and a couple of others off the list (sorry, can’t remember–not that I wasn’t listening to you but just get easily confused with all that zodiac stuff), so where are you up to now? I hope you’ve not found anyone who’s made you forget the Gemini!
Sorry, just realised that sounded totally naff, but you know what I mean.
Is Zara still driving you nuts? Seems that she’s everywhere just now talking about this book–you must feel good being a part of that. Your stories about her wacky ways were hilarious. Go on, I’m having an exceedingly boring day at work, so cheer me up with some more mad tales from the planetarium.
Better go…New York opens in ten minutes so gotta get my eye on the ball.
Write back soon! Today! Now!
Jon. Xx
PS: My sister says hi!
EMAIL
To: Jon Belmont
From: Leni Lomond
Subject: Re: How’s it going, Star Lady?
Hi Jon,
Good to hear from you again, and yes, you’re getting repetitive, but you’re saying nice things so you’re forgiven. Please say more !
The bandage is finally off and I’m now free of the pressure of trying to coordinate my clothes with a white elasticated tube.
I continue to blaze a trail through the cosmos and have now scored Pisces off the list. It was a fascinating, unexpected kind of date with–believe it or not–a male nurse, but ultimately it was a bit of a disappointment. Not that I was in any way saddened by that because, as I mentioned before, this is an entirely professional project and not something that I’m doing for fun. Although, obviously, our date was fun. It was. Yes, I have the ability to say the wrong thing, cause offence and blurt out inanities even when using email. I really must make more use of the delete button.
It’s a quiet day here today and I mean that quite literally. Zara has eleven Buddhist monks in her office, they are performing some kind of silent Tibetan ritual and no one else in the building has been allowed to speak since ten o’clock in case it somehow reaches Zara’s ears and breaks her vibe. I’m tempted to burst into a rousing chorus of ‘The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music’ just to witness her reaction. However, I’ve got rent to pay at the end of the month so perhaps I’ll give that idea a miss for now.
And, double strange, you popped into my head last night too. I’m looking forward to seeing you when this craziness is over, although I might be all dated out so it would be nice to do something simple like go for a walk or chill out with a takeaway. Do stockbrokers do things like that? I have an image in my head that you’re all adrenalin-fuelled and rush about all day shouting ‘buy, buy, buy’ and ‘sell, sell, sell’ into a mobile phone. If you could add ‘two chicken fried rice and a packet of prawn crackers’ to your repertoire that would be great.
Right, I’m going to go now because I’m rambling. Sorry about that. It’s just a bit boring here today now that we’ve been robbed of the power of speech. I’ve finished all my filing, scored everything non-verbal off my To Do list, burnt off 300 calories by running up and down the stairs for twenty minutes, trawled eBay, and now I’m talking to you. Not that you’re a last resort, because you’re not.
Okay, going before I dig another hole…
Have a great day, Leni x
21
Jupiter’s Moons
‘Now, are you absolutely positive that it’s okay, because there could still be a silent fracture in there. And did they do a scan? Because while the cast was on, a blood clot could have formed that could potentially grow, then dislodge, travel to your heart and kill you.’
Thankfully a racking cough cut Stu off in full flow before he could move right along to picking out hymns for my memorial service.
‘What is it this week?’ I asked, fully aware that ‘oh, just a bit of a chest infection’ wasn’t going to be the answer.
‘Don’t know yet. Could be TB, could be pleurisy. But it could also be SARS or bird flu, in which case we’re all fucked.’
Trish raised an eyebrow. ‘Bird flu?’
‘Look, it’s only a matter of time. As soon as it mutates to a virus that can be easily transferred from person to person, we’re going to see a return of the mass chaos that occurred during the 1918 outbreak. Scientists are predicting that fifty-five million people worldwide will die. It’s got to start somewhere.’
‘And you think it’s going to start in the Third World environment of a shampoo section in a posh hairdressing salon in Notting Hill.’
‘It could happen,’ retorted Stu indignantly.
‘Babe, I think you’ve been sniffing the perm lotion again. And Leni, stop spinning round, you’re making me nauseous.’
I put my feet down immediately. I hadn’t actually realised that I’d been spinning round aimlessly in one of the flash leather chairs while Stu was touching up Trish’s roots.
‘Right, wait until you hear this,’ she blurted, dying to share her latest revelation. ‘Malky Menzies, our celebrity chef? Tanked two bottles of red wine before breakfast this morning, vomited into his pre-prepared boeuf bourguignon and we had to phone The Priory to come and collect him. Thank fuck it was all off camera or school kids would have been eating their Coco Pops to the sound of “Yer fookin wankers! WANKERS! Where the fook’s mah ladle?”
I managed a (admittedly probably fairly pathetic) smile as I leaned back, flicked up the retractable headrest, pressed the button that made a foot-rest shoot out from underneath and then slouched down into a more comfortable position.
‘Spit it out,’ Trish demanded impatiently.
‘What?’
‘What’s wrong with you? Other than the Grim Reaper here,’ she gestured to Stu behind her, ‘you’re the most depressing person in here.’
I cast a glance around the deserted salon, all the staff long gone to their trendy wine bars, their Tae Bo classes and their part-time cage-dancing jobs. Stu attracted the kind of free spirits who like a bit of raunch.
‘Trish, I’m the only other person in here.’
‘No you’re not–Grey’s lying on the couch upstairs.’
Poor Grey. He’d worked a twelve-hour shift, during which he’d put out two house fires, a burning skip, assisted at a road traffic accident and used cutting tools to remove a road cone that was stuck on an
eight-year-old’s head. Trish had then dragged him, exhausted and mentally drained, along here on the premise of ‘spending quality time together’ and ‘jungle sex later’. Five minutes after he’d arrived, he’d decided to spend quality time on the sofa upstairs while Trish got her hair done and insulted her friends. After spending all those long hours in the butch, life-or-death surroundings of an emergency service, I had the definite feeling that Grey found our rapid-fire gossip sessions too trivial for words. Trish usually only used the times when Grey was working nights and weekends to socialise with Stu and me, so these little snippets of his presence reassured us that he was a real-life person and not an inflatable imaginary husband that she kept in a cupboard.
‘Come on, Leni–be sparkling! Be witty! Or at least tell us why you’ve got a face like a constipated camel.’
‘Constipation is no laughing matter,’ Stu interjected. ‘It can be a sign of…’
‘…me sticking that hairdryer where you’ll need surgery to remove it. Shut up, Doctor Death, and let Leni tell us all about it.’ She flashed her wrath in my direction. ‘And it had better not be about that git from the hospital. I told you to chalk that one up to experience and forget about it. You just got unlucky,’ she concluded, her tone softening at the end.
My heart plummeted–you knew you were in trouble when Trish was being very obviously sweet to you.
‘I’m thinking about quitting my job.’
There. I’d said it.
Trish swiftly abandoned ‘sweet’. ‘Why? Why would you do that? The pay’s great, it’s a bit glam, it’s never dull…’
‘I know, I know, but I just think it’s not me. Maybe I like things a bit dull.’
‘Ballcocks,’ Stu coughed.
‘I don’t have to go back to that. I could just get a job in a normal company, one where I do normal things and have a normal job description.’
‘Leni, where’s the fun in being normal?’ Trish sneered. ‘Look, hon, this bloody ridiculous dating thing aside, working with Zara is a top job, not to mention a brilliant gig to have on your CV–but not if you chuck it in after you’ve been there for a whole ten minutes.’
She was right and I knew that, but she was overlooking the crux of the problem.
‘So is it just the dating thing–is that what’s making you want to leave?’
She was no longer overlooking the crux of the problem.
I pulled the sleeves down on my oversized navy jumper, and folded my arms as I shrugged. A body-language expert would be calling for Prozac by now.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Leni, why are you getting so uptight about this? It’s just a few nights, and then it’ll be done and you can get on with your life. You’ve got, what, five of them out of the way already?’
‘Six. I lied and included Dave in the report.’
‘So you’re halfway there. Six more nights out, that’s all, then you’re done.’
‘Why are you being so bloody positive about it–it’s not long since you were claiming that this job was the biggest single affrontation to womanhood.’
‘Did I really say that?’
‘Yes!’
‘Ah, don’t listen to me! You know I talk crap when I’m having a bad day. Look, Leni–you’re nearly there, just stick at it and then you can have a long and happy career as the craziest woman on the planet’s PA–that’s a dream job!’
It sounded so easy and simple, so how come it didn’t feel like that? My pre-date anxiety levels might be diminishing slightly as the project went on, but I still felt ill when I contemplated the prospect of facing another six strangers and having to go through the whole bloody rigmarole again. This whole thing just went against every aspect of who I was. It was now a week since the Dave fiasco (and six days since I’d posted his phone to the hospital, with no stamps on the padded envelope), and much as I’d tried my best to put it to one side, it had given me a bit of an emotional shake-up. On the plus side, at least the daydreams and nightmares had stopped. Obviously, now that I’d had real sex, my subconscious no longer felt the need to imagine it.
But on the down side, it was time for a reality check. The reality was that I was not the type of person who would, say, go on Big Brother and flash my baps on national telly, nor did I have any desire for fifteen minutes of fame. I liked the safety of familiarity and predictable outcomes, and much as I tried to subvert that every New Year’s Eve with a declaration of intent to shake things up, the absolute truth was that I was happy being one of life’s observers and didn’t have the inclination or ambition to take on crazy bloody missions that put me centre stage and gave me sleepless nights.
‘Stu, tell her how crazy she’s being!’ Trish commanded.
Above her, Stu was in manic highlight mode, wrapping little sections of Trish’s hair using an incredibly quick system comprising: lift section with tail comb, slide foil underneath, dab, dab, dab with hair dye, fold foil horizontally, then fold one, two, three, four times vertically until there was just a two-inch square foil package dangling from the roots of Trish’s hair. There were about fifty of them on her head now, and she looked like she should either be baked or used as a receiver for satellite television.
‘I’m saying nothing.’
‘Why?’ both Trish and I exclaimed simultaneously.
As he stopped folding, I was puzzled by his general lack of contribution to the conversation. Normally we’d need a gag and a restraining order to prevent Stu from giving his opinion.
‘Look, no one was more opposed to this than I was when you first started, and yes, I admit that I turn into some kind of over-protective, irrational psycho when you’re out with these guys, and don’t rest until I know that you’re home safe and not lying drugged on a container ship bound for a whore house in the depths of the Far East…’
‘Thanks–that’s a whole new worst-case scenario to add to my current list of dire eventualities.’
‘But the thing is,’ he conceded, ‘I think Trish is right. I mean, it’s six more nights and then you’ll be over it and you can just enjoy the rest of your job. Leni, I’ve never seen you as animated as you’ve been in the last few months. You were so in a rut before that it wasn’t healthy. Not to mention being stuck in an office day after day–do you know what that does to your health? There’s the lack of vitamin D, the risk of deep vein thrombosis from sitting at a desk all day, and I don’t even want to contemplate the possibility of getting Legionnaires Disease from the air-con system. At least now you’re out and about, life is varied, challenging, and you’re getting loads of new experiences. A recent study proved that keeping the brain active can ward off Alzheimer’s by years.’
Why don’t I have normal friends? Why couldn’t he just have said, ‘It’s up to you, babe, do what you want’? Sometimes talking to Stu wasn’t so much a discussion as an advisory bulletin from the Department of Health.
Even though he was reinforcing her position, Trish was getting impatient with Stu’s digression, so she decided to sum it up in a clear, concise, steam-rolling manner. ‘Look, put it this way, if it wasn’t for the degrading, ridiculous book-research stuff, would you or would you not be really happy in your new job?’
Reluctantly, I nodded…
‘Then you have to bite the bullet and just get on with it and stop being such a wimp.’
Thankfully for my battered sense of self, she said that last bit with something approximating a comforting grin.
‘I do want you to take this though,’ Stu said, as he reached into his back pocket, took out what looked like a ring box and handed it to me.
‘Aaaah, Stu, I didn’t know you cared. Is this a proposal? Only, if it is, can you put Cruella De Vil’s hair down and do the whole bended knee thing,’ I teased.
‘No, honey, that’s next week,’ he joked. ‘I want you to take this with you–it’s the latest personal protection alarm, I got it from the US, it’s a centimetre square and you just thread it onto your necklace. Anything goes wrong, just press it and the whole
of London will hear you.’
‘Stu, you are truly neurotic and paranoid, but thanks.’
‘You’re welcome, my darling. So anyway, what would you have said?’
‘When?’
His perfect row of white teeth were glinting as he grinned. ‘If I’d proposed?’
‘I’d have asked when your therapy starts.’
He winked at me, making me laugh for the first time in days.
Just at that moment, the main doors to the salon swung open and in sashayed–celebrity alert–Verity Fox. Verity Fox!
Verity Fox was a lads’ mag darling who’d been dismissed as a piece of shallow, bimbo-esque fluff when she had risen to fame after her then boyfriend, movie actor Joe Callan, had got arrested for trying to smuggle three ounces of coke into the Cayman Islands. He was doing an eighteen-month stretch where the sun didn’t shine, whereas the whole incident had been enough of a publicity push to get promotions girl Verity her first topless shoot and a whole new career in the glamour industry. Her popularity really soared, however, when she was a contestant on the reality show Celebrity IQ and was declared to be Britain’s Smartest Celebrity with an IQ of 179, beating a host of prominent and famous figures, including a much-revered captain of industry and a notoriously clever quiz-show hostess. Apparently Verity was smarter than most nuclear scientists, but she still preferred to get her baps out for the boys, her calendars garnering in millions for the mushrooming corporation that was now Verity Fox Inc.
She marched right up to Stu and gave him a casual kiss on his cheek. ‘Hi, baby, I know I’m early but the shoot wrapped sooner than I expected.’ She turned to us and gave a bashful, jokey shrug. ‘That’s what happens when you don’t have to worry about wardrobe. Trish! What are you doing here?’
She fell on my other friend with air-kisses and hugs. I was starting to feel left out.
‘Okay, how do you two know each other?’ Stu asked, sounding just a little freaked out.
‘Great Morning TV!’ Verity shrieked. ‘When Joe got arrested I was on the show every week for about two months commenting on the case, and this girl here kept me going with food and tissues.’