by Helen Brown
“Oh, God, it’s that army-banking kid,” I sighed after we’d hung up.
“Maybe he wants instructions on how to find the nearest kindergarten,” Nicole said.
“He’s invited me to a play,” I said.
“A playground?”
“No, a proper play. A theater dinner, or a dinner theater or something.”
“I have to warn you…” Nicole said, pointing her pen at me. “Apart from the age difference…”
“You don’t have to warn me. He just wants someone to talk to.”
“He’s way too conservative for you.”
Red flags have been waved in my face at several important crossroads, resulting in profoundly unimaginable consequences. One was at primary school, when a bossy art teacher instructed the class that if anybody dared put their fingers in her wet pottery clay they would be in bigger trouble than anyone in this god-fearing world could imagine. Another was at journalism school, when a tutor said in unequivocal words I had no future whatsoever as a columnist. As I listened to Nicole, a familiar, thistly sensation prickled the base of my spine. Its message was the same as the last two times: You think so, do you? Well, let’s see about that.
After work that day I flitted through the part of town famed for strip clubs and thrift shops, and picked up the perfect outfit to impress a conservative young banker—a black satin Chinese pantsuit with flamboyantly embroidered trimmings. It was gorgeous.
The Kiss
Nothing is more damply magical than a kitten’s kiss.
Cats kiss. Cleo did it all the time. It starts with a gentle head butt, a raising of the chin, a narrowing of the eyes, followed by a fleeting union of lips. Hormones are presumably exchanged. Nothing beyond that is asked, except perhaps a soothing stroke. A cat kiss is complete in itself.
Philip with one l was late. Too late to be even considered half-fashionable. He’d obviously forgotten that he’d asked me out to see some trashy play, or that I’d gone out of my way to arrange it for a weekend the kids were at Steve’s. I was that forgettable. Hot rashes of emotion prickled up and down the back of my Chinese jacket. My skin stuck to the unbreathable fabric, which was proving itself not even a distant cousin of any upmarket natural fiber. Insult flared to anger. I didn’t want to see him, anyway. What on earth would we have to talk about? To think I’d gone to the trouble of buying a new outfit.
If Philip with one l had the nerve to show up now I’d demonstrate Helen could be spelt with two ll’s. Nicole and Mary would have words to say about this at work on Monday. He’s not worth it. You’re too good for him. What a dick.
Darker thoughts nudged to mind as I sat on the bed and shook off one of the dressy sandals that matched the Chinese outfit perfectly. Maybe he had a genuine excuse for not turning up, like catching a glimpse of his own reflection in a shop window and smashing into a lamppost.
Truth was, I had no reason to like him enough to care. I was content orbiting kids and work every day. They were the center of my universe. Every week that we survived without sore throats, crises at school or disturbing mail in spidery backhanded writing from a deranged reader was a miracle. It didn’t matter if ninety percent of my remaining world consisted of black holes. The shrink was nuts suggesting all that one-night-stand rubbish. Boy, that woman had issues. I should’ve been shrinking her, not the other way around.
Cleo sprang onto the bed, made one of her squeaking noises and snuggled into my lap. I’m here, I’m here, she purred. Calm washed over me like baby shampoo. Hurt and outrage shrank until they weren’t much bigger than a pair of bubbles resting in the bathroom plughole. Kicking off the other sandal, I smiled (partly from relief—they were giving me blisters, anyway). The only damage was to my ego. There was nothing wrong with a night at home in front of the fire with Cleo after a long working week. In fact, it was downright welcome.
I carried Cleo down the hall. She watched expectantly while I crouched at the fireplace and arranged the kindling in an uncertain teepee. We were both startled by urgent hammering on the front door.
“I’ve been driving around the neighborhood for ages,” Philip said as soon as I opened the door. “I knocked on the door of 33 Albany Road. It’s the street parallel to this one. The woman there was confused. In fact so was I. It took me a while to work out you’re Ardmore Road…”
So. Not only was he too young and conservative—he wasn’t in danger of becoming the world’s next Mastermind, either. Just as I was starting to feel irritated, I noticed his face. His eyes were trailing up and down my Chinese suit with the look of someone witnessing the aftermath of mass terrorism.
“You don’t like it?” I said, suddenly. “I can change into something…more conventional, if you like.”
Philip didn’t object. I was profoundly, unspeakably insulted. Thrusting Cleo into his arms, I hurried back into the bedroom. On the other hand, I thought, changing into a brown skirt and cream blouse, maybe I should be relieved he was honest enough to imply he’d rather reenact a scenario from the Vietnam War than appear in public with me wearing the Asian rhapsody.
“Nice cat,” he said, as we headed out the door.
We were late for the play. Sitting in the shadows watching an appallingly amateurish version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof I quietly assembled a list of why this was a ridiculous choice, even for a one-night stand: he was hardly out of high school; he couldn’t have made more screwed-up career choices if he’d tried (the army and banking?!); he had bad taste in plays; he was unable to appreciate my approach to fashion.
I wasn’t that shook on his clothes, come to think of it. His shoes were so shiny you could pluck your eyebrows in them. The striped shirt, the corduroy trousers, the carefully chosen leather belt. It was all straight out of some old fogey’s catalog.
Yet there was no doubt he looked good in that stuff. He smelled fresh as an alpine forest, compared to male journalists, who invariably reeked of booze, cigarettes and substances I preferred not to know about. His eyes flared like blue gas flames when he laughed at my jokes (possibly too loudly). One of my jokes was about the inadequate snobs who drive European cars. I’d been too traumatized by our dash to the theater to notice what sort of car he drove. The satirical twinkle when, after the show, he opened the passenger door of his elderly Audi, was nothing short of admirable.
He was obviously a very pleasant young man who probably wanted to download his love-life woes on a pair of understanding ears. There was no harm offering him friendship. I invited him inside for coffee.
“I’d like to,” he said. “But I don’t generally drink caffeine this late at night. Do you have any herb teas?”
While I knew a few people at work who drank herbal teas, I doubted they were the type he was talking about.
“Sorry, I only have black tea.”
The house was unusually quiet without the children. Even when they were asleep I was aware of their shifting blankets and dream-laden sighs. I kicked my shoes off and clattered through the kitchen cupboards, searching for a pair of cups that matched.
“Interesting cat,” I heard from the other room. “She’s almost like a person.”
Carrying the tray with two tea bags cunningly concealed in a teapot and the cracked cup on my side I was surprised at the vignette in the living room. A purring Cleo wound herself through Philip’s legs, leapt onto his knees, climbed his shirt and applied neat licks over his chin. Never before had Cleo warmed so affectionately to a stranger.
“Sorry, I’ll put her away,” I said.
“No, she’s fine,” he said, tenderly running his hand over the mound of her spine. “You’re a good cat, aren’t you? So tell me about the kids.”
I stiffened. He had just blundered into No Go Territory. Of course I’d made no secret of the fact I had kids. They were as much part of me as my hands and feet. I couldn’t have hidden their existence even if I’d wanted to. Everything about the house screamed “Kids!” The living room was ankle deep in Lego bricks. Lydia’s fauvist playgroup artwo
rk was taped to the kitchen cupboards. Rob’s school bag lay like a drunk on the floor outside his room.
The kids were the core of my life, so precious I’d tear my heart out for them. He had no right to ask about them. They had nothing to do with a potential one-night stand who was rapidly losing any chance of becoming one.
“So tell me about your life,” I replied. “Ever been married?”
He went blank, as if I was asking if he’d ever dressed up in fishnet stockings and lip-synched to Judy Garland.
“No.”
“Kids?”
He shook his head, his smile vaguely bewildered.
“So you’re having girlfriend trouble?”
Cleo, having finished with his chin, moved on to his ears.
“No, apart from the fact I don’t have one. How about some music?”
Music? He wanted to be interrogated to music? Without waiting for an answer he sifted through my record collection and put on my latest purchase and current favorite, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong singing “Can’t We Be Friends?”
Philip obviously had some kind of problem. Why else would he be here? I was going to have to muster all my journalistic skills to get him to unravel his woes, so he could pack up, go home and let us both get some sleep.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked.
“What?! Here?”
“Why not?”
Now it was getting silly. Still, if I danced with him he might be satisfied and go home. Standing up, I put my damp, flustered hand in his cool, dry one and lurched painfully over the Lego bricks. If I’d known the room would be transformed into a ballroom I’d have put the kids’ toys away and kept my shoes on.
As Ella’s liquid voice wrapped the room in a haze of sensuality I noticed his excellent sense of rhythm (years of marching on parade grounds probably had something to do with it). And his body, as it brushed offhandedly against mine, seemed to be encased in some kind of metal suit. Until I realized the curves were too well formed to be metal. They were made of a material totally unfamiliar to me—lean muscle.
“So how old are the kids?” he asked.
Oh no. What was it with him and the kids?
“Nearly three and twelve.”
Painfully, patiently, he dragged their names out of me, what they liked to do at weekends and how they handled having parents who were separated. I changed the subject, and we danced in silence for a while. He did have an exceptional body—but either he was clumsy, or he was deliberately moving closer. With the shrink’s words ringing in my ears, I didn’t flinch when he lowered his godlike head and pressed his lips onto mine.
The room whirled in a kaleidoscope of toys, cups and saucers against apricot-colored walls. Cleo looked on approvingly as I savored the magical kiss. Soft, damp and luscious. It was perfect, beyond perfect. Too perfect!
I stopped swaying to the music and straightened my spine. No, dammit! This wasn’t how things were meant to happen. The whole point of the night was that I was supposed to be running the show. This man-boy had no right to schmooze with Cleo and then ask me to dance. As for all that probing about the kids…
He froze, too. At least he was sensitive enough to notice my mood had changed.
“Shall we go to the bedroom?” he said softly.
For several moments, possibly six months or twelve hundred years, I couldn’t summon up a response. She the unshockable was—there was no other word for it—shocked.
“It’s not that I don’t like you…” I said, stepping backwards.
He tensed like a cardboard cutout doll.
“In fact, I’d probably sleep with you if I didn’t like you. At least that’s what my shrink says I should be doing…”
He was starting to look almost as horrified as he’d been at the sight of the Chinese pantsuit.
“The thing is, I like you too much to sleep with you…”
He stood stunned, like he’d wandered into a friendly camp and was suddenly under enemy fire. It was beginning to dawn on me that probably no woman in the multidimensional universe had ever turned down the opportunity to exchange bodily fluids with such a suntanned Adonis.
“It’s getting incredibly…late…and I don’t know about you, but I’m bushed by the end of the week.”
“Can I call you sometime?” he asked icily, as he gathered up his jacket and I escorted him to the door with Cleo in our wake.
“No. I mean, yes. Yes. Definitely. Um. Good night.”
I closed the door softly but firmly. Cleo flicked her tail at me and stalked down the hall.
Exposure
In the face of real danger a cat freezes.
“He made you change your outfit?!” Nicole was trying to control the volume of her laughter, so only half the newsroom could hear.
“He didn’t make me,” I said, giggling, yet already regretting the capacity women have to be mercilessly indiscreet about their intimate encounters with men. Especially when somebody makes a fool of himself. Except this time the personal humiliation involved was mine.
If only I’d been wise enough to have said “fine” when she’d asked how the date went and left it at that. But then she would have suspected serious emotional entanglement, and nothing could be further from the truth. “He just looked mortified, so I offered to change.”
“Seriously? I wouldn’t have bothered.”
The annoying thing was, Nicole would never have to bother. She could walk down the street in her grandmother’s dressing gown and hair rollers and still turn every male head within a square mile.
“And it was a terrible play! There were so many ham actors you could’ve made a pork roast. Honestly, he has no idea…”
“Probably trying to impress you. Did you…did he try to…take things further?”
“Course not!” I said, my face suddenly feeling like it was in a sauna. The kiss was nothing. An aberration best deleted from conversation and memory. “I think he’s just lonely. I won’t be seeing him again, anyway. Too young and boring.”
“Told you so,” said Nicole, her fingers galloping over her keyboard. “Got to get this story in by eleven o’clock, and I haven’t done a word.”
“What would a guy like that want with an old solo mum with two kids, anyway?” I muttered, trying to decipher a notepad of shorthand that had made perfect sense when I’d scribbled down the words of a fading international author the previous week. The jottings now resembled ancient Arabic. “He must have a screw loose.”
“Who?” said Nicole, her attention focused on finding the home number of an elusive television director she needed to interrogate.
“The boy.”
“Oh, the toy boy. Forget him.”
Yes. That’s what he was. Toy boy, an excellent, freshly invented expression with a cleansing ring to it, like mouth wash. With a label like that he could be sealed in cellophane, put in a box and shut away as one of life’s more regrettable experiments.
Tina slid a list of story ideas onto my desk. At the bottom of the list she’d scrawled “Halloween feature. Find some way to make this interesting. We did pumpkins last year. Awful!”
Work. Where would I be without it? There was no better anesthetic.
“Phone call for you, Helen,” Mike, one of the nosier political reporters, shouted across the room. “Some snooty-sounding bloke. It’s come through on my line for some reason. I’ll transfer it to you.”
There’s an art to how a woman journalist answers her phone. She must sound fresh and approachable, in case the caller has a story that has potential to wind up on the cover of Newsweek, which is about as likely as dinosaurs stirring themselves out of their graves and plodding through suburban neighborhoods. And there must also be a Teflon edge to her tone, in case it is a nutter or the Heavy Breather.
“Thank you for last night,” the voice was measured and formal.
“Oh!” I said, stupidly.
Nicole’s fingers froze mid-air over her keyboard. She put her head to one side and whispered, �
��Who is it?” Her instinct for a story was always spot-on.
I nestled the phone under my chin and mimed “one l” with my fingers.
“I had a great time,” he continued.
Oh God. He was lying. He would’ve had more fun giving blood.
“So did I.”
Nicole rolled her eyes and shook her head at me slowly.
“Sorry the play wasn’t up to scratch,” he said.
“It was fine, honestly…”
Nicole took a pen from her desktop and ran it like an imitation scalpel across her neck.
“I was wondering if you’d like to go out for dinner next weekend?” he asked.
Shock rippled through me and settled on my feet like a pair of leaden shoes.
“I’ve got the kids next weekend,” I said, cool and sensible. Nicole nodded approval and resumed her keyboard tattoo. That was it. Finito. No joy, toy boy.
“What about the following weekend?” he asked.
“Oh!” my lead shoes turned molten hot. “Well, no. I don’t think I’m doing anything.”
Nicole towered over me, the steam from her nostrils almost visible.
“Good. How about seven-thirty Saturday?”
“Sounds good.”
“See you then.”
“Damn!” I muttered, clattering the receiver down.
“Why didn’t you say no?” asked Nicole, my frustrated life coach.
“I don’t know. Couldn’t think of an excuse.”
“Don’t you know ‘no’ is the new ‘yes’? If you say no to something you don’t want to do now it saves you having to go through all sorts of demoralising situations in the future. Do you seriously want to go out with someone who made you change your clothes?”
“What can I do?”
“Call him back a couple of days before the date and say your aunt died and you have to go home to the funeral.”