Charlie and Pearl

by Robinson, Tammy

  Ok, that’s more than enough of that. Look, all I can say is there aren’t many moments in my life to date that I can recall with absolute clarity, but when she lifted her head and her eyes met mine, I will never, ever forget how I felt in that moment.

  PEARL

  Shit. Once again I have made a spectacle of myself. My few minutes rest in the bookshop turned into deep sleep and the next thing I knew a noise startled me and I woke to find a slightly chubby but friendly enough looking guy watching me.

  I was so embarrassed. Especially because when I lifted my head up there was a small puddle of drool on the desk. I wiped it up with my sleeve and hoped he didn’t notice.

  “God I’m so sorry” I said, “I promise I’m not a shoplifter or anything, I just....felt sick and I didn’t know where else to go and I saw this desk and.....” I trailed off.

  The way he was looking at me was making me feel self conscious. Did I have drool hanging off my mouth? I rubbed around my lips quickly with my fingers. Nope, seemed ok. Still he kept his dopey grin plastered across his face. Blue eyes, almost white eyelashes. A light dotting of acne on his chin. Hair was massively styled, with tons of product but there was something in the way he looked at me. It was both familiar and new at the same time. I felt my shoulders straighten up, my stomach suck in. Both the first moves my body makes when confronted with a guy it’s attracted to. Oh no you don’t, I told myself. Remember why you are here in the first place.

  “I’ll just head off now” I said, getting to my feet and rescuing the bags from where I’d dropped them. One split as I lifted it and a bottle of wine fell out, luckily onto a carpeted surface where it bounced and rolled under the desk.

  “Dammit”

  “I’ll get it” he said, and practically threw himself on to the floor to rescue the bottle. “Red huh?” he said, fishing it out from under the desk and reading the label, “I don’t know much about wine, is it a good one?”

  “It’s ok” I said. No way was I going to admit that my method of buying wine relied heavily on the price tag. $6.99 was ideal, $8.99 was tops. It’s not like I was a wine connoisseur or anything; growing up my father drank whiskey, no mixer, just a touch of water. My mother was a gin lady, tonic and a slice of lemon. Until the divorce when she became an anything-that’s-available lady for awhile. She doesn’t drink at all now. Frowns at me when I do.

  Wine was something I picked up from Adam. He drank red every night and I’d got into the habit too. My salary didn’t stretch to the labels he favoured though.

  He didn’t seem in any hurry to pass the bottle back. I looked at him, and then looked at the bottle pointedly.

  “Oh sorry, here you go” he grinned, handing it over.

  I pushed open the door that led back out to the shop, could feel him following closely behind, and from the light change I realised I must have been asleep for several hours. The sun was lower in the sky, the shadows longer. I don’t want to walk home, I thought desperately, and I must have sighed, or shuddered or something like that because like he could read my mind he was there, beside me, offering me a ride, anywhere I needed to go.

  I thought about all the warnings our mums give us growing up, the safety drills we get at school, every horror movie I have ever seen.

  He didn’t look like a serial killer I mused.

  Then he smiled, a broad, cheek stretching toothy smile.

  Anyone who smiled a goofy smile like that had to be harmless, I decided.

  So I accepted.

  CHARLIE

  She thinks I’m an idiot. Either that or a serial killer. I could tell by the way she looked at me, warily, prepared to flee at the first move on my part.

  I tried hard to look friendlier, less like a killer and more like the boy next door.

  My friend Cushla once told me that my eyes were my best feature, which was a huge surprise as I’d never even suspected I had a best feature, let alone one so prominent. Since then I’ve tried to use them to my best advantage, practising in front of the mirror to find the look that shows them best. Half drooped , heavy lidded like Elvis, sultry slightly squinted like Johnny Depp, (unfortunately without those cheekbones and killer dimples it’s a hard one to pull off), playful open wide like Matt Damon. I caught an episode of America’s Next Top Model once, and Tyra Banks kept banging on about something called ‘smising’, the art of smiling with your eyes. I scoffed then but I’ve tried it, and it’s not that easy.

  According to one of my mum’s magazines, the best way to ensure you are looking 100% your best before leaving the house is to take a digital snapshot. The mirror, the article said, often lies or creates a false image. The camera does not. And you know what, it’s true. I tried it. Once only, before a date. In the mirror I looked, not handsome, but not bad either. Definitely passable. I’d styled my hair with gel for ages until it looked perfectly like I hadn’t bothered at all, you know, messy enough to look natural. I felt pretty confident. But the photo I took told a whole other story, one of some weird wide-eyed, crazy haired, half-baked looking knobhead, with an extra chin which I swear I had never seen before in my life. Lesson learnt, ditch the camera. My confidence was shot to pieces which I compensated for by drinking one too many beers, (ok, probably more like four too many beers). Unsurprisingly, the girl wasn’t keen on another date, and after a few days of rejected calls and unreturned messages I got the hint.

  I realise these confessions are starting to give the complete wrong impression about me, but in my defence the magazine that created the whole debacle was lying on the bench when I was desperately looking for something to grab on my way to the toilet, so I did spend a respectable and manly 30 minutes in having a dump while reading it.

  Anyway, so I kept smiling at her while she picked up her grocery bags. A bottle of wine fell out the bottom of one and I threw myself at the floor gabbling “I’ll get it!” like the village idiot. It was a bottle of red and immediately I pictured her, sitting at a table, sipping from an elegant blue stemmed glass with a platter of cheese and olives and fancy meats in front of her. I asked her if it was nice, thinking perhaps it might lead to an invitation. It didn’t. I held on to the bottle as long as I could, pretending to read the label, hoping she would ask me to join her. She didn’t.

  I walked out to the front of the shop behind her, admiring the curve of her waist and the way she filled out her jeans.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her. But she didn’t hear me, she was staring out the window and her whole body sagged. She let out a small sigh.

  “Let me help you,” I said, taking the bags off her. She didn’t seem to notice. “Where are you staying? I can give you a ride if you like, anywhere you need to go”

  She turned then, studied my face. I knew she was trying to make a decision, whether I was safe or not, so I smiled wider and gave her my best Matt Damon look, playful but more importantly, exuding pure innocence.

  “Ok” she decided. “Let’s go”.

  PEARL

  Why does he keep looking at me like that? His eyes are big, and the way he keeps opening them even wider makes him look slightly unhinged. They are a startling colour though, blue with flecks of green, like the Mediterranean sea in the travel brochures I love to collect and dream over.

  When he smiles he gets these curved lines each side of his mouth in his cheeks, not dimples as such, longer than that, but very sexy whatever they are. Laughter lines?

  “What’s your name?” I ask him.

  “Charlie”

  “I’m Pearl” I told him.

  “Pearl”....he swirled it round his mouth and rolled it up in his tongue in a way that was a bit too personal, like he was tasting it.

  Outside I realised with some degree of relief that he obviously wasn’t a car guy, like most kiwi guys, with their souped up, lowered, lit from beneath, deafeningly loud cars. His had seen better days, was in fact a bit of a dunga, faded blue, a big scratch down one side. He saw me looking at it.

  “Not my fault” he noti
ced where I was looking, “the other guy backed into me. Insurance refuses to pay out because the asshole won’t admit it was his fault, stupid pricks” Then he looked guilty, “Sorry” he said.

  “For what?”

  “My language”

  “Relax, I’ve heard worse”.

  I climbed into the passenger seat which was surprisingly tidy inside. I expected piles of rubbish. He’s a good driver, follows the speed limit, checks both ways. I tell him where to go then relax. The movement of the car is soothing, a lullaby. He smells...spicy, oriental or Middle Eastern? Something like that. It’s deep, layered, warm on the nose like cinnamon or nutmeg. I close my eyes.

  My shoulder being nudged gently wakes me. I fell asleep again? God this guy must think I have a sleeping disorder.

  We’re home.

  He’s out the door and round my side before I’ve even unbuckled my seatbelt, opening the door and offering me his hand like an old fashioned gentleman. If I wasn’t feeling so tired and weak I might have laughed, but I am, so I take it gratefully.

  Inside he settles me on the couch in the open plan dining/lounge and then proceeds to close all the curtains, turn on the lights, put the groceries away, all the time talking, talking, talking, about nothing, nothing that I really listen to anyway. Trivial stuff. I itch to open the lounge curtains again, having them closed like this around me leaves me claustrophobic. I prefer them open to the sea and the stars.

  Having him here, in this house with me at such close proximity and making so much noise, annoys me. I want to him to leave so I close my eyes and lay my head back on the couch. Maybe if I breathe nice and slow, even snore a little, he will take the hint.

  “How about a glass of that wine then?” he says.

  Maybe not.

  “Look, sorry, not to be rude, but I’m shattered, I just want to go to bed”.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sick. I don’t mean to be nosy, it’s just you look really, really, pale, and you fell asleep in the shop, so I just wondered.....”

  What? I wondered what exactly he thought I had.

  “I’m fine” I told him, “Just getting over the flu”. As if I would tell a total stranger my business.

  I looked at him. He looked at me. I willed him to read my thoughts, leave now! And then because I was raised to be polite I added a please.

  Still he hovered. It looked like he wanted to say something. Was he going to ask me out? If so his timing sucked. I was off men.

  He obviously thought better of it because he just smiled and said, “I’ll go then.”

  “Ok. Thanks again for the ride.”

  “No problem”

  Still he didn’t make a move.

  “Night” I said, faking a yawn.

  “Oh. Right, night night, don’t let the bed bugs bite!” he said, then cringed because it sounded so sadly uncool to us both.

  “I won’t”

  “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

  “Hmm, maybe” I’m non-committal.

  He left. I don’t intend on seeing him again.

  CHARLIE

  I am such a dickhead. It’s been four days since I dropped Pearl back at her Beach house and my cheeks are still tinged red. I know she knew that I was into her; I wasn’t exactly subtle about it. But in my defence I’ve never felt like this before. I realise I don’t know too much about her, other than her first name, she’s very pale and I’m pretty sure she’s my soul mate.

  I feel very strongly about this last fact.

  I can’t explain it.

  I just know it. And now I just have to help her see it too.

  I haven’t stopped thinking about her for a second since I left her. She’s the last thing I think of when I go to sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake. The hours in between are filled with dreams of her. And the hours during the day are filled with endless fantasies.

  A recurrent one features the outdoor shower I noticed that night.

  The second I saw it I thought, “Ooh-er, I’d like to see her in that!” and then I felt bad because it was exactly like something my mate Rangi would say, and the girls at the pub call him a sleazy bastard, although they know he’s pretty harmless. He’s been with Cushla, since he was like, 12, and they have 6 kids. He’d never cheat on her because, 1), she’s gorgeous and he’d never do better than her, not in a million years, and 2) she’d kill him if he did.

  He likes to tell rude jokes (and forward them by text – some are truly, truly awful) and he loves summer when all the campers from the campground come into the pub. He puffs his chest up and rolls up his sleeves to better show off his muscles, and he acts like he could have anyone he chooses. He says things like, “fuck yeah, I’d like to bend her over the kitchen sink” then laughs loudly, elbowing Mike and I and expecting us to join in, which we do, but much, much quieter, because actually I have a lot of respect for woman, and not enough experience in that area to be able to joke confidently about it.

  I’ve been to Pearl’s house before I realised later, lying in bed and going over the night in my mind. It had looked familiar when I was there, and had been bugging me as to how I knew it but it took me awhile to remember. I went to a party there once, with a few of the guys from school. A mate, Mike, long since left this town and moved on to brighter things, had been trying to cop off with this girl he’d met at the jetty; Tania? Trisha? Something like that. He did too, lucky bastard. I only got as far as a kiss, my first, in the sand dunes out front of the house, the tussock crunchy underneath us. It was pitch black so I couldn’t see her properly, but she smelt nice and was a fantastic kisser, even biting my tongue once or twice in what Rangi said later must have been some sexy show of her desire.

  At work, for the first time I’m a little grateful that Pete spends half his time somewhere else because it means he doesn’t notice that I’m somewhere else too. Every time I walk out the back to the office I look at the desk and picture her how I saw her that first time, her hair fanned out over her face so I could only see one closed, curved eyelid. I smile at customers, direct them to the section they want, scan their choice, process the transaction, bag the book/s, wish them a good day, but the whole time I’m thinking about her.

  And how I can see her again.

  The girl on the checkout at the Four square, Amy, who was a few years ahead of me at school and has breath that smells like rotting shellfish and which can smelt from anywhere within a two metre radius, now thinks I have a crush on her because I’ve been in there buying cans of V just about every hour of the working day the last four days on the off chance Pearl might be in there buying more wine. Consequently I haven’t slept much the last few nights and my hands have developed a bit of a tremor. I’m detoxing now because Amy wrote her number on my receipt yesterday and told me to give her a call, then she winked at me and leered which scared the shit out of me. I haven’t had the guts to go back.

  Upon reflection though, surely Pearl would appreciate a friendly visit from the man who rescued her in her hour of need, just to check that she’s ok? That’s the only polite thing to do, really. In my humble opinion.

  Perhaps with some sort of gesture.

  Flowers? The only offerings round here are sold at the four square or the service station, and both are trucked in from Tauranga, so half dead by the time they arrive and ridiculously overpriced.

  Chocolates? By the look of her she doesn’t eat too many, she’s skinnier than most girls around here.

  More thought is required.

  PEARL

  Adam and I met at a bar. I was out with the girls, celebrating the fact that one of us had just got engaged. We drank bubbly wine and danced on tables till the bouncer threw us out. When I’ve had a few drinks I tend to get flirty; I think I’m sexier than I actually am. It certainly wasn’t the first time my alcohol induced confidence had attracted a guy.

  I hadn’t had a serious boyfriend since my high school sweetheart, Darren. You can’t really c
all a high school romance ‘serious’ though, can you? I mean, at the time you love him truly madly deeply and it seems like the end of the world when you break up, but hindsight and a few years reveals childish love, tantrums, deliberately trying to make each other jealous, picking fights for no reason other than to feel passionate and have make up sex and feel smug that no one else feels the same way you do and that your love will last forever.

  Oh, the angst.

  Since Darren I’d had boyfriends, the longest lasting six months but which I don’t include in the serious category because I never even saw him completely naked. He had been raised religious and although no longer went to church every Sunday felt that sex between the unmarried was a sin but if we did it with the lights off perhaps God wouldn’t notice.

  I hadn’t had sex in almost five months when I met Adam, and that first night he bore the full brunt of my frustrations. We went at it like rabbits. God it was fantastic. We didn’t get any sleep at all. I did the walk of the shame back into my house the next morning, but I wasn’t ashamed, I was in love.

  Adam never said the L word. Not in the entire time we were together, just over eight months. I said it easily, as casual as if dropping the word umbrella into the conversation.

  “Babe, can you pass the salt?”

  “Here you go”

  “Thanks, I love you”

  See, anytime, anywhere I said it.

  I spent nights examining every inch of his body, the curves behind his knees, the way his big toe was slightly webbed with the one next to it. Our love coincided with the first heat waves of summer, and we spent a lot of time naked. I remember curling up on his couch and watching him do sit-ups in only his briefs. We ended up making love right there on the floor. He cooked naked apart from an apron, a tasteful black BBQ one that said ‘chief cook’, and then we ate naked, using our fingers as utensils, the juice from the steak running down his arm and I licking it off, staring up at him seductively as I ran my tongue up his forearm. We ended up making love on the table.