Ask Me Anything

by P. Z. Reizin

  “Morning, Chloe. All set?!” Clive twinkles as Endrit guides Pickup Two into her seat alongside the silvery gent. “You’re looking ravishing, my dear,” he adds and, if I’m not mistaken, squeezes her hand.

  “Mr. Percival!” Chloe is momentarily flustered. The Datsun Cherry lurches away in the direction of central London.

  “Please. Call me Clive.”

  Mr. P may have made something of an effort himself today. The blazer buttons seem shinier than usual and the hair looks recently barbered.

  “Am I getting limes, Clive ?”

  I think—I hope—she is referring to his aftershave.

  “Clever girl! What a nose!”

  “Where you two off then?” inquires Endrit, piloting the vehicle onto the A1000.

  Chloe and Clive stare at one another in a delicious moment of elderly confusion. It’s rather as if neither can remember, and both Clive’s Boomwee FrostPal and I speak the same word into our respective client’s earbuds.

  “Brighton!” they chorus, before dissolving into a fit of giggles.

  “I feel quite giddy,” says Chloe in what Daisy would surely call MMR mode (minor member of royalty).

  “Would you care for a glacier mint?” offers Clive. “Important to keep one’s strength up.”

  For a while there is companionable sucking in the rear of the vehicle.

  “Tell me something,” says Chloe.

  “Yes, my dear.”

  There is a long pause.

  “Oh, bugger. It’s completely gone. Honestly, my memory these days is like a fucking sponge.”

  Clive roars.

  “I do like a woman who’s not afraid of a bit of salty language. Don’t you mean sieve?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Don’t you mean you’ve got a memory like a sieve?”

  “What?”

  “A sieve. You know, the thing with holes. That stuff falls through. Or doesn’t.”

  Chloe’s eyebrows draw together and I fear we are about to lose the happy mood.

  “Ask him about his tie,” I prompt.

  “I know what it was!” she cries. “I was admiring your lovely tie. Is it regimental?”

  This is an excellent question and both me and the FrostPal breathe a metaphorical sigh of R.

  “It’s from Italy. Present from my daughter.”

  “The one that lives in Camden.”

  “Canada.”

  “Are there any grandchildren, Clive?”

  “Just the one. Little Freddie. Well, I say little. He’s nearly seven, the scamp. I’ve never actually met him, you know. We’ve talked on the phone. And there are photos…”

  Clive spots something through his passenger window that requires all his attention for a while.

  Chloe allows a few moments to pass and then touches his arm.

  “I have a gift,” she says softly.

  “Really? You shouldn’t have.”

  “Not that sort of gift. I can tell people’s names just by looking at them. Do you have a middle name, Clive?”

  The silvery G brightens. “I have two. And if you can guess them I’ll buy you lunch!”

  “Is this done how I think it’s done?” asks Clive’s fridge-freezer, a touch wearily.

  “I’m afraid so,” I admit.

  “Arthur Lancelot.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Chloe is staring deeply into the eyes of her mug punter—sorry, companion—trusting that the fix is in, and that shortly I will divulge the vital information. A small part of me is tempted to whisper Elvis Garibaldi.

  “No!” cries Clive at the denouement of the illusion.

  “It’s a gift,” trills Chloe. “I don’t know myself how I know.”

  “You’re scaring me, madam!” he says. But he’s enjoying the drama. “Here, I’ve got one for you.” He glances about for comic effect. “What makes love like a tiger and winks?”

  Chloe’s face clouds as she attempts to ponder the riddle. Then her expression clears to one of the purest vacancy. Okay, let’s hear it, it seems to be saying.

  Clive Arthur Lancelot Percival’s eyes glitter in high amusement. And then one of them—the right—winks.

  Even Endrit, who has been following the dialogue in the rear-view mirror, can’t help snorting at that.

  I won’t say Eggstain was a changed man after the epic snogging session, but when he came through the doorway the following Friday, I almost didn’t recognize him. Yes, he was still handsome in his new beardless condition, but the thing was, he was wearing a suit! A smart charcoal jobbie with a fresh white shirt, although the effect was undermined by the tragic trainers that puffed and squeaked as he made his way into the flat.

  I think we had both felt awkward the morning after the epic ss. And we were awkward again now, Eggstain thrusting a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers at me.

  “You shouldn’t be cooking me dinner,” he said. “I should be taking you to the Ritz for rescuing me that night.”

  “Okay, I’ll get my coat.”

  For a split second I think he believed me. Fear flared in his eyes, but then he smiled.

  I made us White Russians—vodka, Kahlúa and milk—in honor of his ancestors who he’d told me had been obliged to flee the Cossacks a hundred years ago. Not a hundred percent appropriate, possibly, but he raised no complaints, clinking drinks and croaking “wow” with a red face at the extraordinary potency of the legendary cocktail whose recipe I’d torn from Metro only that morning.

  “Should we hurl our glasses into the fireplace?” he asked at the bottom of the first installment.

  “There isn’t one. You can chuck it at the radiator, if you want.”

  We gobbled blinis and I realized that tonight’s menu was identical to one I prepared in another lifetime for a lying estate agent whose name I have forgotten and who never turned up to eat it anyway. Eggstain explained that he’d been staying in a spare room in his sister’s house in Holland Park; she and her husband were both City lawyers and Eggstain now lived in terror of the various cleaners, nannies, therapists and personal trainers who attended upon the couple and their four children.

  “Four!?” I heard myself bellowing.

  “Two sets of twins.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She used to tell me, anyone can have just one kid. But as soon as there are two, you’ve basically got a zoo.”

  “So she has two zoos. Or like, one big zoo. Zoo with an attached safari park.”

  “They’re beautiful children. But I got up from dinner last week to find my shoelaces had been tied together under the table.”

  “I’m an only,” I told him. “They broke the mold before they made me.”

  We clinked glasses again. “Funny,” he said.

  “How many children would you like?” I found myself saying. “That’s if you want any at all. Though you do seem like the sort of person who would want some. Do you think these White Russians are a bit fierce? I seem to be gabbling.”

  “The answers to your questions are: Yes. Extremely fierce. And therefore perfect. And two: a boy and a girl.”

  “What are their names? What do they do?”

  “The boy. He’s Ben, an internationally renowned brain specialist. He finds a cure for dementia, obviously. Or, perhaps, he quits medical school after his band are offered a four-album deal.”

  “And her?”

  “Oh, she’s a housewife.”

  Did my jaw actually drop open? It may have.

  “It’s a joke!” he added quickly. “Your face, honestly!”

  “Phew!”

  “She’s Rachel. An astrophysicist. And she discovers the secret of dark matter, the invisible stuff that holds the galaxies together.”

  “And in her honor, they call it Eggstainium.”

  “I like that!”

  We clinked again to celebrate.

  “And what about yours?” he asked. “How many would you like, what are they called and what do th
ey do?”

  When the answer popped into my head my face must have done something strange because Eggstain stared at me oddly for a long time, and I almost said, what?

  “What about yours?” he repeated softly.

  My heart began to thump when I realized I couldn’t say my answers to the three questions for a very good reason. I shrugged and drained my White Russian.

  1. Two.

  2. Ben and Rachel.

  3. Rock star brain surgeon and the astrophysicist who cracks the secret of the universe.

  We were both fairly pissed by the time we sat down to Nigella’s chicken and pea traybake. Halfway through my mother phoned to say she was going to Brighton with a man she’d met in Waitrose. It seemed like a lousy idea, but Eggstain said afterward we could do some discreet checking.

  “Apparently, the fridge has already googled him.”

  “Ah.”

  “Exactly.”

  “When is it supposed to be happening?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  “It may be an entertaining fantasy.”

  “I very much hope so.”

  He talked about Hope Waverley. How she was being “incredibly difficult” over his possessions, refusing to agree a time when he could book a van to remove his stuff.

  “All because you shaved your blimming beard off!”

  “The relationship was already fatally flawed. The beard was pulling the trigger.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “Do I look sad, Daisy?”

  He didn’t. He looked pretty chuffed, actually. There was a light in his eye, the one that appears after two White Russians and a glass of the robust red that he’d brought to the party. The problem was with her.

  “She’s not a fool. She knows it wasn’t working. But she’s crazy. She contains a lot of suppressed rage.”

  “So a smart angry nutjob. A kind of female Hannibal Lecter.”

  “Not so much the eating people thing. But definitely short of a few screws. How did I stay with her for so long?” He shook his head in amazement. “People get trapped in sick relationships.”

  “All relationships are a bit twisted, aren’t they? I spent two years with a guy who couldn’t actually feel anything. He was the easiest person to be with until the point you realized he was a hollow shell. Nothing there. A smiling zombie.”

  “Interesting case. Perhaps we should introduce them.”

  “It could work! He’d put up with any amount of bad behavior. It was soul destroying.”

  “Sounds like they’re made for each other.”

  “So is she the sort who’d—I don’t know—cut up your clothes and chuck paint on your car? Boil your rabbit? If you had a rabbit. Tell me you don’t have a rabbit.”

  “Hope? Probably she’ll be furious for a while, and then she’ll meet someone new. Probably someone with a beard. Then she’ll be happy for a while. Or not unhappy, let’s say. One of what shrinks called the worried well. Emotional issues, yes, but not the full cuckoo bananas.”

  The trifle—I say it myself—went down extremely well. Eggstain called for seconds.

  He said, “So this man says to this woman…”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “If you find it funny, it’s a joke. So the man says, I’d like to cover your body in sponge cake, jelly, custard and cream. And then I’d like to scatter you with hundreds and thousands. And then—then I’d like to lick it all off. And she says… No! I won’t be trifled with!”

  Well, what can I say? I hadn’t heard it before. A speck of pudding—including a single pink hundredth and thousandth—flew from my lips and landed on the lapel of Eggstain’s posh suit. Time seemed to slow.

  “Wait! Don’t touch it. I’ve got this,” I said.

  Ever so delicately, perhaps like a brain surgeon performing a tricky operation, I lifted the offending blobule away with the corner of a kitchen towel. I was very aware of Eggstain’s face, close to my own, as I inspected the garment for remaining food residue.

  “I think that went well,” I said. “I believe we got away with it.”

  “Thank you. It’s my brother-in-law’s suit. He lent it to me.”

  And then I looked into his face.

  Finding the Brighton train in the heaving maelstrom of London’s Victoria Station is, if I say it myself, a breeze; although were it not for all the web-enabled security cameras and other paid-up members of the Internet of Things (thanks all for the frictionless R) Clive and Chloe would doubtless be on their way to Bognor Regis; or perhaps Canterbury West (just to pick two possibilities from the departure board on the concourse of the mighty railway hub).

  Happily, the Boomwee and I were able to guide them discreetly to the correct first-class carriage, where safely ensconced—still neither has commented on the wires hanging from their respective left ears—Clive now plays his Joker.

  From his holdall he produces a small ceramic vase and a plastic carnation. With something of a look on his face, if you know the one, he sets the props on the table between them. Next to appear is a stainless-steel dish into which he empties a packet of roasted peanuts. Finally, wrapped in one of those cooler jackets, is a half-bottle of champagne, which he opens like an expert—“the trick is to turn the bottle, not the cork”—and dispenses carefully into two plastic flutes.

  He raises his glass. “To adventure!” he proclaims.

  “Adventure!” echoes Chloe.

  “To getting them back in one piece,” I say to Clive’s fridge-freezer.

  “It’s barely ten in the morning,” giggles Chloe.

  “Never too early to eat peanuts!” quips the elderly roué.

  By the time East Croydon and Gatwick Airport have been left in our wake, the chitter-chatter has become more personal. Clive turns the grandchildren question on Chloe and Mrs. P’s answer takes me wholly by surprise, it being so eminently clear-headed when one considers her firmly nailed place in the demented community.

  “There are none, Clive. And I fear there will never be. My daughter Daisy’s taste in men has been like mine. Disastrous. I’m afraid I have not set a good example, and as a result, she has never had a proper male role model in her life.”

  “Her father?” prompts Clive.

  “An awful shit. Left when Daisy was terribly young. Unforgivable. How about whatshername?”

  “Denise? She was a very cold woman. I only married her because that’s what people like us did in those days. She moved to Dawlish and became a fucking magistrate, pardon my French.”

  “Life is strange, Clive. And this champagne is strong! My neighbor Mrs. Abernethy lost her husband in the most pointless way you can imagine. He fell awkwardly getting down off a bus. Can you believe it? Bashed his head on the curb and never woke up, poor bastard. She, a personal friend of God and everything.”

  For a while, the pair fall silent and are content to allow Southern England to pass by through the window. From what it’s possible to see courtesy of the train’s limited camera coverage, we’re traveling close to a settlement of some kind, a village at a guess. There are scattered houses—rather unlovely new ones—a couple of shops, a pub with a sign that says QUIZ NIGHT TUESDAY. I am struck by the realization that this is the first time that I have ever “left” the capital; and also that people actually live out here, passing their days in these tiny boring communities amid fields and trees, knowing nothing of vibrant pulsating highways like West End Lane and the Finchley Road. What can it be like never to feel the warm breath of our Tube stations, never to be affectionately sworn at by one of London’s artful black cab drivers? What on earth do people even do in the country? I wonder whether human Londoners have thoughts like these when they catch sight of a sad horse standing in a muddy meadow; or of ridiculous road signs to piddling places like Chalvington with Ripe! The Dicker! (Look them up, if you don’t believe me.) If they do, then call me proud to be in their snooty metropolitan elitist number!

  “Listen, enough of all this doom and gloom, do another trick with
your gift,” says Clive. “What’s the biggest fish I ever caught? If you can tell me that, I’ll buy you lunch and dinner.”

  “Okay. But I need you to be thinking of it,” says Chloe.

  “Never forgotten the bugger,” says Clive. “Was an absolute beauty.”

  “Just checking we’re okay here?” I inquire lightly of my fellow stooge.

  “So funny the way they remember stuff that happened in the middle of the last century…”

  “… and not what they ate for breakfast that morning.”

  “If I’ve heard this blooming fish story once…”

  “Yes, yes it’s coming,” says Chloe. “It was. I do believe it was a twelve-pound barbel.”

  “Christ on a bike!” (Clive)

  “You were fourteen. At Whitstable. The rod snapped, but you managed to land it.”

  “This is extraordinary, Chloe!”

  “I scare myself sometimes, Clive.”

  After Three Bridges, Wivelsfield and Hassocks (see what I mean about the silly names) it’s announced that Brighton will be next. Clive says he’ll “pay a quick visit to the little boys’ room before we land.”

  And now three things happen.

  Chloe removes the compact from her handbag and begins adjusting her face powder.

  The train manager, Wayne, broadcasts that we shall shortly be arriving at Brighton; he reiterates that Brighton shall be the next “station stop” and he recommends that passengers leaving the train at Brighton should ensure they take all their belongings with them, which is great advice when you think about it, and were it possible, one would be tempted to send a note of thanks to Wayne for the heads-up!

  And Clive does not return from the little boys’ room.

  Whoever said history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes, was dead wrong. Because after I saved Eggstain’s borrowed suit, I once again found myself kissing a man while holding in my hand a sheet of kitchen towel. This thought must have made me laugh—what did I say about kissing and laughing at the same time?—because we had to stop and Eggstain said, What? I told him it didn’t matter and suggested we might be more comfortable in the sitting room.

  I knew from before that Eggstain was a pretty good kisser. Now, during one of the natural breaks for romantic chitchat, he said he’d been attracted to me from the first time we met.