I decided I would never again try to tell a stranger how to cork his birth canal.
It was an hour later, and I was having a great time.
Already I’d talked to a Spanish girl who’d seen a ghost when she was four; a man who, much to my amusement, finished every sentence with the words “do you know what I mean?”; and a bloke who once owned a windmill. I had also attracted the attention of a girl who was very impressed that my friend Wag was, the very next morning, to set off for Germany with Busted.
The lesson of the evening had quickly become you can never judge how a party is going to turn out just by the fact that the invitation included the words “Bring a fact.”
Next up was Thom, a bloke who worked in the city but had the look of a traveller about him. And that was exactly what he was about to do. An unusual move, for a man who worked with stocks and shares.
“Of course, it’s good money, but sometimes … you know … you just have to take a risk. Turn your back on the easy way. Which is what I’m doing. So I’m moving to New Zealand to do something else. Something new.”
“What kind of thing?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve just always had a thing for New Zealand. I’ve got enough money to see me through the first few months to get me set up and so on … but I just kind of want to see what happens.”
I admired for this. He was someone who had it all, but had decided that he didn’t need most of it.
“Wow,” I said. “How long have you been planning it?”
“I’ve thought about it for years. But I never thought it would come to anything. And then me and my girlfriend split up, and that changed things because it was only my job tying me down after that, and I thought, sod it. I’m going to do what I want. Which means moving somewhere where the quality of life is far greater than in London.”
“That’s brilliant,,” I said. “Really brilliant. And quite … inspiring.”
And it was inspiring. Plus, it was a Yes. A Yes to himself. Although God knows what moving to New Zealand was in terms of yevels. looked really pleased. Like a man on the verge of something. He was excited.
“So I’m basically all packed up. I’ve got one more week in London and then that’s it. I’m off.”
“Well. I wish you the best of luck with it.”
“Thanks, Danny. If you’re ever in New Zealand, look me up.”
We clinked beer cans, and he started to walk away. What a nice bloke.
“Oh, hang on,” he said and turned back toward me. “I’ve asked everyone else, so I may as well ask you … I don’t suppose you’d be interested in buying a car, would you?”
Twenty-four hours later, and I had worked out that, yes, I probably could just about afford to buy a car. It would wipe out most of my savings in one fell swoop, but with the guarantee of an overdraft (and the promise of another contract at the BBC) it was possible. Especially if I engaged in some hard-nosed haggling with . The problem was I didn’t really know how to haggle. Not where cars were concerned, anyway; I knew nothing about them. I hadn’t even asked Thom what model it was. I’d stopped when he told me it was a Nissan. I knew my limits.
I’d been in town, working out my money situation and dropping in at work, and was nearly at the bottom of Oxford Street, when a bored-looking man holding a placard in one hand and a leaflet in the other said in an accent I think was probably Spanish, “You want?”
I mouthed a “yeah, okay,” and took a leaflet and strode on, glancing down to see it was was for an English course at University College London. I folded the leaflet and was about to stick it in my pocket, when it became all too apparent that someone else had seen me take that leaflet.
“Learn English?” said the man, holding his leaflet out at arm’s length. He’d made a special effort to stop me and said, again, “Learn English?”
I half-smiled, took the leaflet, and kept on walking, slightly alarmed by the look in the man’s eyes. I’ve walked down Oxford Street plenty of times and very rarely accepted a leaflet. Mainly because no one else ever does. I’d noticed a real hunger in that man’s eyes, replaced by instant relief when I’d taken one of his leaflets. I kept my head down and my speed up, but moments later another leaflet was in front of my eyes. It was for English as a foreign language at Premier College London. I took it and then, suddenly and forcefully, there was another one from another angle. English at Academy College. Another one came at me from over my shoulder. English at No. 1 College. Where were all these leaflets coming from? Where were all these dodgy colleges? Why did everyone think I needed to learn English? I glanced up as I moved off, but I was instantly blocked. Two men were standing in front of me, like zombies, holding out leaflets and saying the word “English.” I was trapped. I took a leaflet from each and tried to move around them, but a slight Italian girl hiding behind them had cleverly cornered me. I didn’t want to take her leaflet, and I almost moved off, but I swear she let out a moan—a long, juddering zombie groan—so I did and managed to make my way around her, but no. More foreign students, clutching placards, holding leaflets, and wearing backpacks—probably fall of more placards and leaflets. I was becoming overwhelmed by this neverending group of well-meaning foreigners making their minimum wage on the streets of London, so I snatched a couple more fliers, and tried to make a dash for it, toward the Tube, toward home, toward a world free from student zombies …
“Thinking of learning English, are you?” said a voice to my right.
I looked up. It was Hanne. Smiling. She’d just stepped out of Tottenham Court Road Tube.
“Hey. Shit. Hanne. Hi,” I said.
“How’s it going?” she said.
“Good. Yeah. Good.”
I glanced down at my fistful of leaflets.
“Would you like one?” I said.
“Ah … no.”
“I’ll keep them, then,” I said, stuffing them into my pockets.
“Hey … er … this may be slightly awkward, but … there’s someone you should probably, you know, meet.”
She beckoned to someone standing by the lamppost.
“Danny, this is Seb.”
I looked at Seb. I looked at Hanne. What were Hanne and this man called Seb doing together? And who was Seb, anyway? It was seven o’clock. Hanne should be at home by now. She should have had her tea and be settling down to watch the news with a yoghurt. Why was she out? Why was she here? And why was she out here with Seb?
“Oh,” I said. “Hello, Seb.”
“Hello, Danny,” he said, and we shook hands, limply. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t like Seb. There was something about him. Ah, yes. It was that his right hand was resting gently on Hanne’s back. But hang on. This was my ex-girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend. What did I care where some bloke’s hand was? And then I realised I was staring quite a lot at where Seb’s hand was. He slowly moved his hand away. Shit. Now they thought I wasn’t cool with it.
“You had your hand on Hanne’s back!” I said with a big smile.
“Sorry, I …”
“No! It’s good!” I said.
“Danny,” said Hanne. “Let’s not cause a scene, okay …”
“No! Hang on—I think it’s good! I think Seb should put both hands on your back!”
Hanne made the face she used to make when she thought I was being sarcastic.
“I ’m not even being sarcastic! I think it’s fantastic! Put both your hands on her back, Seb!”
This was terrible. The less sarcastic I tried to sound, the more sarcastic I sounded.
Seb’s mobile went off.
“Okay, I’m going to get this …”
He walked a few feet away and started a conversation. He sounded like he was quite important. Hanne and I just stood there, awkwardly. I tried to change the subject.
“He seems nice.”
“Let’s just forget it …,” said Hanne.
“You’re on a date, then,” I said.
“Yes, well …
,” said Hanne, looking to the ground.
“Cool.”
“Cool,” she said. “I was going to tell you, over that coffee, you know, about … tonight, but you distracted me by losing twenty-five thousand pounds. You said you’re okay with things, though, yeah?”
“Yes,” I said, “Absolutely I am. Of course.”
Hanne looked over at Seb. She was keen to go, but he was still on the phone. And I didn’t feel I could leave without clearing things up with Seb. Eventually he hung up the phone and rejoined us.
Seb smiled at me, so I smiled back at him. Hanne smiled at me. Then Hanne and Seb smiled at each other, and then they both looked at me and smiled, in that way that couples do. Gah. Couples! Seb and Hanne! Hanne and Seb! All of a sudden it sounded annoyingly … right!
I coughed.
“So, I’ll be going …,” I said, which was the right thing to say, seeing as I now wanted to be literally anywhere else on Earth.
“Right,” said Hanne.
“Right,” I said, and I started to move off.
“Unless …,” said Seb, and I stopped in my tracks. “Unless you’d like to join us?”
My stomach turned over.
That was an invitation. An invitation.
My stomach flipped again, and my cheeks started to burn with embarrassment.
Seb was obviously just being polite. Obviously. He really didn’t want me there. And neither did Hanne. And the only person who wanted me there less than them was me. Shit. This was so level four.
How could I get out of this? Was there any way in the world?
Hanne smiled at me gently, then closed her eyes and did a little nod … giving me permission to make my excuses and leave. She knew full well that the proper—the only—course of action would be for me to say something along the lines of “oh, thanks, but I have to be somewhere else” and then leave. Seb was just being a gentleman; showing Hanne he showed no ill will and harboured no petty jealousies toward her ex-boyfriend. Bastard. Even I was starting to fancy him.
“Well …,” I started. And then I had an idea. I could get out of this! All I’d have to say was that …
“Because you’d be welcome to join us, Danny,” he said.
Bollocks! This was becoming a cast-iron invite!
He smiled at Hanne. Hanne smiled at him.
I looked at Hanne with some degree of panic in my eyes. She smiled sympathetically as if to say she knew what I’d have to say next. How was I going to break this to her? How was I going to say yes?
Seb took my silence to be a no.
“Hey, sure, sure …,” said Seb, nodding and holding his hand out for me to shake. “Well, I guess we’ll—”
“I’d love to,” I said, quickly and with instant regret.
Seb’s hand remained outstretched. He looked confused. Hanne’s eyes widened.
“What?” she said sharply.
“If you’re sure. I mean, if you’re actually inviting me along, Seb, then yes. Yes, I’d love to.”
I had gone bright red. And so had Hanne. But not for the same reasons. Seb, though, ever the gentlemen, regained his composure, took his phone back out, and said “Right … well … let me just call the restaurant and tell them it’s a table for three …”
It was horrible.
The three of us were sitting in near-silence in a rather posh restaurant called Circus. Seb and Hanne were sitting opposite each other, and there was I, perched in the middle, sitting on a hastily added chair at a table quite clearly meant for two.
I mean, it was really horrible.
We’d been sitting there for ten minutes. The candlelight was doing nothing to melt the ice in the air.
It became all-too-apparent that this was Hanne’s very first date with Seb—and here I was, gatecrashing. It is hard to adequately describe just how awkward I was feeling. But still, this was how it was to be. All I could try to do was jolly things along …
“So … how did you guys meet?” I said in as friendly a way as I could muster.
“Danny, do we have to …,” started Hanne before Seb chipped in.
“Through a friend,” he said. “I work with Cecilia.”
“Oh, Cecilia, yes,” I said.
“Yep,” said Seb, picking up his menu.
“Cecilia,” I said again, for some reason in an amusing northern accent this time.
Seb didn’t respond. Hanne just stared at me.
“Cecilia,” I said normally, to prove that I could.
Seb continued to study his menu.
“It’s like that song, isn’t it?”
“What song?” said Hanne, sternly.
“Cecilia,” I said. “By Simon and Garfunkel.”
“Yes,” said Hanne. “It is.”
“Have I told you my mum’s Simon and Garfunkel story?”
“Yes,” said Hanne. Seb didn’t look at all interested in hearing my mum’s Simon and Garfunkel story. Even though it is excellent.
At a table somewhere else in the restaurant, someone coughed.
“Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Cecilia.”
I bit into a breadstick. “How does that song go again?”
“Jesus,” I heard Hanne say under her breath before picking up her menu.
So I looked at my menu as well, and the three of us sat there in silence, pretending to be deep in thought.
A waiter arrived.
“Would you like to order some wine?”
I don’t think he’d ever heard three people say yes with such conviction before.
I’d love to leave that particular evening there. Really, I would. But I can’t. Because it didn’t stop there. Plus / had to suffer, and now so will you.
Twenty minutes had passed, and we’d all ordered.
The waiter had recommended the fish, and though even as a child I never really ate fish, I had gone for it. Hanne had raised her eyebrows at me when I did this. Seb hadn’t really said anything in about ten minutes, and so it had fallen to me to make conversation. But how?
I thought about the joke I had made three nights earlier. That’d work! Surely! At last! The perfect icebreaker!
“I was thinking,” I said, smiling, and Seb looked up for the first time in ages. Oh, this was it. If I could give them the gift of laughter, the most precious gift of all, surely then all this embarassment would simply evaporate?
I chuckled to myself in anticipation.
“I was walking past Pizza Hut the other day, and for a second I was sure the sign said ‘Pizza Hat.’ And then I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if there was a shop called ‘Pizza Hat’ that sold hats shaped like pizzas?”
I chuckled and waited, eyebrows raised, for the rest of the laughter to start. Seb looked back down at his menu. I turned my head to see Hanne glaring at me.
“You know …,” I tried weakly. “Because it sounds like ‘Pizza Hut,’ only it’s …”
I looked to Seb.
“… a hat shop.”
Nothing.
I couldn’t work it out. That joke had been an absolute stormer when I’d been off my tits on drugs. I guess sometimes people just don’t want to enjoy themselves.
“Hey, I nearly got ten million dollars the other day,” I said, but I was interrupted almost immediately.
“Look, Danny,” said Seb. “Why don’t you just eat your fish and fuck off?”
Hanne’s eyes hit the floor. Seb’s remained locked on me.
And so I quietly ate my fish and off I fucked.
I walked out of the Tube a deeply embarrassed man. I decided, quite rightly under the circumstances, that I needed a drink.
I texted Ian as I headed for the pub.
IF YOU WANT A PINT, I AM IN THE ROYAL INN.
He texted back instantly.
WHAT?
I checked what I’d written. Thanks to a distracted mind and predictive text messaging, I hadn’t quite got my message across.
HE YOU WANT A RIOT I AN GO THE ROYAL INN.
I phoned him. �
��Pint?”
“Yes,” he said. “Or we could start a riot.”
In the pub Ian laughed in my stupid, bespectacled face.
“You said yes?! Why the hell did you say yes?”
“Have you forgotten about this whole saying yes thing, Ian? It does involve rather a lot of saying yes to things.”
“I know, mate, but what’s wrong with you? You’ve got to have limits!”
“Limits? Be consistent! You’re the one who threatened to punish me if I so much as dreamed a no!”
“Oh, I’m not being consistent, am I?”
“No! You were the one with all the threats at the beginning. ‘Oh, I’ll have to punish you if you don’t do it properly.’”
“I don’t need to punish you! You’re punishing yourself.”
“Jesus, Ian, I looked like a tit. I’m happy for Hanne; it’s great that she’s found someone new. I don’t want her thinking I’m not cool with it.”
“Yeah, it does kind of look that way. What with you forbidding her from seeing a new man one week, and then gatecrashing their date the next. Maybe you should tell her about the Yes thing. Stop it from happening again.”
“I would rather Hanne thought I was having a mental breakdown than indulging myself in another stupid boy-project. Which this is not, by the way.”
“Sounds like one.”
“You’re not being much help, Ian.”
“Not much help? Now I’m inconsistent and not much help! All I do is help! Without me, you’d have been beaten up by Omar in Amsterdam!”
“Or I would have got ten million dollars.”
Ian laughed.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “Prick stick.”
Suddenly I took great and brutal offence. It had suddenly become quite an emotional evening, and I wasn’t going to sit here in my own local pub, being called a prick stick just because I dared to have a little faith in my fellow man.
“Prick stick?! I’m not a prick stick!”
I was probably overreacting.
“I’m just saying, Ian … maybe Omar really was in danger! You can’t totally discount that!”
“We talked about this! I proved it to you! The man was a scammer! You’re being stupid! This whole thing is pointless and stupid!”
“It’s not pointless! I’ll find the point! And I’m not being stupid, either! Are you really telling me, despite all the recorded evidence, that there was absolutely no chance whatsoever—whatsoever—that Omar wasn’t really a scammer at all? That he wasn’t the son of a murdered sultan? I’m being human, Ian!”
Yes Man Page 14