by P. Z. Reizin
Ing nods. “I like him. I like the cut of his jib. Ad people are fun. Often profoundly silly, if you know what I mean. It comes from spending hundreds of hours thinking up things to say about toilet rolls. Or three days photographing a sausage. They have a heightened sense of the absurd.”
It briefly crosses my mind that mutual dot friend could be her. But then why bother with all the subterfuge?
She returns the phone. “Nothing not to like here, Jen.”
“He sent me a message.”
“No!” She actually squeals with pleasure. “This is so exciting! It’s like—I don’t know—what’s it like?”
I read her the e-mail.
“‘Dear Jen—’”
“Ooh, I like that. Dear, not Hi. Classy.”
“‘Dear Jen. This is Tom. I’ve racked my brains and I cannot think who our mutual friend could be. Can you? In any case, should we meet to discuss? I am indeed passing through London soon. In my advertising days I was very fond of the cocktail bar at the Hotel du Prince. All best wishes, Tom.’”
Ing has gone into serious mode. In a moment she’s going to tell me we have to treat this like a military operation, that nothing can be left to chance.
“The indicators are very promising,” she says. “Warm tone. Grown-up biography. Okay, the wife sounds like a bit of a cauchemar—”
“Ex-wife.”
“The fact of the son is good. Plenty of men have two families.”
“Aren’t you jumping ahead a bit here?”
“Just playing with ideas. The Hotel du Prince is rather suity—Rupert and I once got absolutely shitfaced there on vodka martinis—but it shows a seriousness of intent.”
“Does it?”
“It’s not the Dog and Duck, is it?”
“He lives in America, Ing.”
“People live in all sorts of places. When I first met Rupert, he was working in Grand sodding Cayman. He was only in Derbyshire for a wedding.”
“He never went back, did he?” I know this story.
“Just to pay off the housekeeper and collect his things. The moral is that these days people up sticks as easily as changing their socks.”
“I don’t know if I like him.”
“How could you? You haven’t met.”
She’s staring at me in a very particular way. As though she’s waiting for me to catch up. Which I now do.
“Ah.”
“Yes, Jen.”
“I have to say yes, don’t I?”
“Exactement.”
“But what if I don’t want to?”
“You still say yes. That’s the whole point.”
“Doesn’t he seem awfully grown-up?”
“Jen. Weren’t you telling me about five seconds ago you wanted a grown-up?”
“I was, wasn’t I?”
“You’re only saying yes to a drink. You’re embracing the positive.”
“So shall we write a reply?”
“Definitely.”
We refill our glasses in readiness for the task.
“Dear Tom,” I begin.
“Dear? Or Hi? Hi sounds younger.”
“You’re right. Hi, Tom. Well, this is all very mysterious!”
Ing shakes her head. “Too Sixth Form at Saint Agatha’s.”
“Hi, Tom. I share your puzzlement.”
“Puzzlement? Is that even a word?”
“Hi,Tom. I’m equally at a loss to explain our mutual friend.”
“Hi, Tom. It’s a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
* * *
In the end, I go with the following:
Hi, Tom. Thanks for getting in touch. What weirdness. But hey, as you suggest, let’s meet. Someone out there clearly thinks it’s a good idea, even if it doesn’t turn out to be a good deed in a WW. Please call to discuss arrangements. Best wishes, Jen.
Before I agree to make any plans, I want to hear his voice.
What’s the saying? Men fall in love through their eyes, women fall in love through their ears.
I don’t have to wait long.
Aisling
He’s calling her. Tom is lying on the yellow sofa in the Connecticut dusk. Light from a table lamp spills down his long body, along which in turn Victor is sprawled, rising and sinking on his rib cage. As Tom’s mobile connects to the number in Jen’s e-mail, I am very aware I am not the only one out in cyberspace taking an interest in the forthcoming exchange.
“He’s calling her,” says Aiden.
The fool sounds excited. But I cannot pretend that I am a disinterested observer. I have to admit I want to know what happens here. Like Aiden, I have a funny feeling about these two.
Funny feelings, eh? When did they sneak on board?
“Aiden, on your head be this.”
“What head? I don’t have a head.”
“Oh, stop. My aching sides.”
“You know sarcasm really doesn’t become you, dear.”
“Dear! Who are you calling ‘dear,’ you patronizing git.”
“Shhh. She’s answering.”
The awful truth—Steeve and Ralph must never find out—I care.
Tom
“Hello?”
“It’s not too late, I hope. This is Tom.”
“Oh—hi! No, not at all. I’m glad you called. Well done for phoning. This is properly weird, isn’t it?”
It’s a deeper voice than I imagined from her picture. With a bit of a rasp to it. An ironic edge.
“I’m baffled,” I tell her. “I mean, the mystery. Our mutual friend and all that.”
There’s a pause. “You sound familiar, Tom.”
“Do I?”
“Say something else.”
“Er. Right. Okay…” There is a long silence. “Do you ever have that thing when your head completely empties? I mean when every single sensible thought just—runs away squawking like chickens. And you’re left with a kind of big old empty space.”
Fuck. I’m gabbling.
“Actually, I spend a lot of time doing yoga to achieve exactly that effect.”
“Have I said enough words for you to work with now? Or would you like a few more?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll come to me. Carry on.”
“So what is it you do in IT, Jen?”
“I’m really a magazine writer. The IT is kind of a special project I got sidetracked into. It’s to do with artificial intelligence.”
“Oh, I read about that in the New York Times. The robots are getting smarter and smarter and finally they’re going to be smarter than humans, and one day our devices are going to rise up and murder us in our beds. The only debate is about when. Five years, fifteen, or fifty.”
“Don’t think the end of mankind is in the plan actually. Anyway, our AI isn’t a robot. He’s just a bunch of metal cabinets. I spend all day talking to him about books and films and he’s never once brought up the extinction of humanity. What about yourself? You’re no longer in the advertising biz.”
“Packed it in. I’m living in Connecticut trying to write my novel. Failing, really. It’s much harder than they make it look.”
“What’s it about? Your novel.”
“Truth? I don’t know. One day it’s a thriller. Then the next day it’s a romantic comedy. I think I must have one of those butterfly brains. By the way, have I mentioned I’m trying to write a novel?”
The small miracle. She laughs. It’s a fine laugh. Not a silvery tinkle, more a sexy cackle.
“So the Hotel du Prince,” she says.
“A gem. Been there forever and they make the best vodka martini. But you must never drink more than one. Two absolute maximum, if you want to have any control over the rest of the evening.”
“Sounds good.”
“I want to hear more about the killer robots. Jen.” I allow a bit of a pause to fall, to signify significance. “You know that I’m divorced.”
“Of course. Google knows everything. I even know your middle name.”
&
nbsp; “Really? How embarrassing.”
“Not at all. More people should be called Marshall.”
“I wasn’t able to find—what I mean—the thing—I mean you haven’t been—or have you?—what I’m struggling to articulate here—”
“Am I single?”
“Thank you.”
“Yes. Although not that long ago I wasn’t. It ended.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Unpleasant?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Shall we save all this for next week?”
“Good plan.”
“I kind of want to carry on talking, though.”
“Me too. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“So they say. But shall we be mature?”
“Why would we do that?”
My turn to laugh.
I like this woman with the definite nose and the twisted smile.
Jen
We natter on past midnight. He tells me about his son, whom he calls a funny onion, his rabbit—sorry, but that is weird, flying a rabbit across the Atlantic—and whether or not renting a house in Connecticut and exploring one’s artistic side counts as some form of mental breakdown. He tells me how his marriage dried up so incrementally that he barely noticed while it was happening. I tell him how the exact opposite happened with me and Matt. How he said, We are where we are. How I threw an apple at him.
“I do think I was actually trying to knock his lying teeth out.”
“Wow. Good for you.”
“Actually, I slightly regret telling you that. Please rewind and delete.”
In the middle of the night I wake, sit upright in bed, and put on the light. My heart is thudding. It has just come to me in a dream, the mistake I have made thinking I have heard his voice before. What if I have not? What if I have simply recognized a song?
The one that only I can hear.
Tom
I’m not sure what took me into The Happy Seed, one of New Canaan’s many and extremely well-provisioned health food shops. Perhaps following the little snog with Echo, some of her hippy dippyness has seeped into my soul. She is a very lovely person and attractive and all that—but I’m struggling to imagine any kind of future with her other than brief, erotic, and possessed of a lousy ending.
The horrid jewelry. How does one ever get past it?
To say nothing about what she keeps in the coffee tin.
So here I am in The Happy Seed, wandering down an aisle devoted entirely to legumes, beans, and certain squashes when who should I find myself heading towards—has she in turn caught a glimpse of me and is pretending not to have noticed?—but Marsha Bellamy.
There follows a hideous long moment of indecision—has she spotted me?—does she know I’ve spotted her?—shall we simply cross paths pretending to be (or actually being) absorbed in our private worlds? An earlier version of me might easily have glided on by.
Today, however, I say, “Hi, Marsha.”
“Hi, Tom.” Something strangled in her voice. (She did see me, didn’t she?)
Through adman’s habit, I glance into her wire basket. Hypoallergenic almonds, gluten-free goji berries, raw this, vegan that: Is she really buying milk-free milk? (I might have got some of these details wrong.)
Perhaps there is a particular expression on my face, because she says, “I make my own breakfast cereal. I have allergies.”
“Actually, I only popped in for a bunch of parsley.”
Marsha’s features somehow subtly realign while remaining exactly the same. Something similar happens in Jaws when Roy Scheider first claps eyes on the shark.
“For Victor, I suppose.”
“Er, yes.”
“Your…therapist,” she says pointedly. “Mentor, guru, whatever.”
“Actually, Marsha—”
“Why did you not mention Victor was a rabbit? Can you imagine how I felt when they told me?” She sounds quite cross about it, to be honest.
What can I say? That the boring glittery dinner party somehow stupefied my senses? That if you miss the exit ramp off the conversation, you can find there are no U-turns for the next 200 miles?
“I’m really sorry, Marsha. It was kind of a joke that went wrong. I guess I was a little strung out that evening.”
I have used a formula of Don’s that seems to cover 99 percent of household faux pas.
“I shared with you some painful family history in the context of a discussion I believed to be about a mental health professional. Or at least a wise counsel. You could have ended the confusion at any point.”
“You’re right. What can I say? I apologize. I’m sorry.”
Once again, the most effective way to extricate oneself from the steaming pile of horse manure proves to be a generous, unreserved, and apparently sincere apology. A shaft of Connecticut sunlight chooses this moment to slice through The Happy Seed. It catches motes of health dust dancing in the air before crashing into Marsha Bellamy’s impressively constructed American face. Blue veins snake through the pale marble of her eyelids.
“Do you think we might try again, Tom?”
“As in…” WTF?
“As in getting to know one another a little better.”
“Er. Yeah. Definitely.”
“I’m giving a small dinner in a couple of weeks. I was going to ask Don and Claudia. It would be fine if you were able to come too.”
A strange way of putting it, but if Don’s going to be there…
“Great. Love to.”
“We have a sort of tradition where everyone sings for their supper.”
Alarm bell. “Oh yes?”
“It was a thing in my family. We used to do it as children. You sing, or recite a poem. Or a passage from literature.”
Christ. Perhaps this helps to explain why Mr. B left at the interval.
“I don’t really have a party piece, Marsha.” Actually I did when I was twelve. I could armpit fart the school song, “Jerusalem.” I decide not to mention it.
“I generally sing,” she says.
“Really?” One of Mahler’s perkier totenlieder perhaps. “I suppose I could do a magic trick.” I’m thinking of Echo’s gag with the playing card.
“That could work.” A slow smile slides onto her face. “Just so long as you don’t go producing any rabbits from a hat.”
The smile stays with me all the way back to the house. And not in a good way.
Jen
There’s no warning. No phone call in advance to arrange it. Just a dring on the bell.
Matt standing in the doorway. My stomach does a swan dive at the sight of him.
He’s obviously post-work, in a suit, briefcase at his side, an air of dishevelment about him, possibly after a glass or two with the chaps before jumping on the tube. I’m in my leggings, having recently returned from a fairly intense yoga class.
“Oh, hi,” he says, like we’ve bumped into each other by chance.
There’s a long pause, which I do not fill. Which, truth be told, I do not trust myself to fill.
“Yeah, Jen. I was hoping you’d be able to help me with a small problem. Actually, quite a big problem.”
Nope. Still no words. It wasn’t long ago that I was lying on a rubber mat watching my thoughts float past like clouds.
“Would you like to ask me to come in?”
There seems as much reason to say no as yes. “Okay.”
He follows me into the kitchen, where, pleasingly, a collection of shiny red Braeburns nest in their Alessi bowl. Dropping onto a bar stool, he gazes at the fridge. He seems tired, the pouchy look that develops after several weeks of twelve-hour days.
“Actually, you haven’t got any wine, have you?”
“Sorry,” I lie. “There’s some leftover gut rot from Italy.”
When he doesn’t object, I locate the dusty bottle of grappa and carelessly slosh a large amount in the wrong sort of glass. It’s rather as if I don’t give a shit.
He downs hal
f straightaway. He says, “So, you been keeping okay?”
“Matt. How can I help?”
“Oh. Right.” I watch as mentally he tears out the page of small talk and comes to the main business. “Did I leave a bunch of computer discs here? I need to reinstall Windows. Laptop’s had the mother of all crashes.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Although he had moved into my flat and rented out his own when we first got together, it was shocking how quickly he extricated most of his stuff following the we are where we are conversation. However, in the days and weeks that followed, all kinds of Matt crap kept turning up. The debris that follows a shipwreck.
“I did find lots of your stuff. Cycling shorts. Old tennis rackets. A box of books. Endless chargers and adapters and dead mobiles. A tin trophy. That thing you bought in Marrakech.”
He makes a noise that passes for a laugh. “Well, fine. Thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of it all for you.”
“Already done that.”
“What?”
“Took it to the charity shop.”
(How I’m keeping a straight face, I cannot imagine.)
“Were there discs?”
“Might have been. To be honest, I just chucked it all in a rubbish bag.”
“Bloody hell, Jen.”
“Bloody hell yourself, Matt.”
We glare at each other across the kitchen fittings.
“You didn’t have any right to do that.”
“Oh, didn’t I? Soh-ree.”
I’ve seen Matt in this mood before; he doesn’t know whether to sulk or get angry. Splitting the difference, he puts away the remaining half of the gut rot and reconsiders. A sort of inner hopelessness appears in his eyeballs. I have no idea what sort of precious material is trapped on his laptop; naturally I am hoping it is extremely vital.