A Funny Thing About Love

by Rebecca Farnworth

  Tiana looked at her. ‘I would have expected more?’ Ha, there she went with the spurious question-asking voice. The session went downhill from there. Tiana didn’t let up with her criticism of Carmen’s performance. She hadn’t been proactive or hardworking enough. She was late at least once a fortnight. She seemed to lack direction and drive. Did Carmen realise how many other people there were out there who would jump at the chance to be a comedy agent in the prestigious Fox and Nicholson? This was less an appraisal and more a character assassination. The only way Carmen could stop herself from crying was to recite the lyrics from West Side Story’s ‘Somewhere’ in her head. Beautiful, uplifting words which told her that there was a truth beyond Tiana and her brutal words as she battered relentlessly at Carmen’s self-esteem.

  ‘So we’ll give it another month, Carmen, and review your performance again. I really need to see an improvement?’ Not a question but a command.

  Somehow Carmen managed to get up from the sofa and walk out of the office. Her cheeks were flaming with a mixture of mortification, humiliation and resentment. She knew, in spite of Tiana’s dressing-down, that she did have some redeeming qualities as an agent. Trish looked at her with concern. She silently held out the tin of shortbread. Carmen took two and crammed them into her mouth. Through the crumbs she managed to mumble, ‘Is Matthew in?’

  Trish nodded and Carmen knocked on his door and hearing a muttered, ‘Enter,’ she walked in. Instantly she was assailed by whisky fumes and presented with the sight of Matthew lying stretched out on his battered brown leather sofa. He had resisted a refit to his office, which was messy, full of books and papers, and a million times more welcoming than Tiana’s. But it didn’t seem so welcoming right now. Matthew was pissed. ‘Carmen, lovely to see you! What can I do for you, my angel?’

  Carmen had been hoping for an uplifting pep talk but there was no way she was going to get that from Matthew. His pale blue eyes could barely focus on her. Matthew was sixty-five but looked at least ten years younger. He had a full head of silver-grey hair and his eyes were usually sparkling with mischief, as if he was permanently amused. He must have been a very good-looking man when he was younger, along the lines of the actor Terence Stamp, and he was still striking. Carmen nicknamed him Silver Fox. But he was not looking so good today. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bloodshot. The silver hair was dishevelled and his purple silk shirt had a large stain on the front.

  ‘Oh, I was just popping by. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. You must have had your appraisal. I said lovely things about you so hopefully that will have registered with Comedy Bypass. You really are one of my favourite agents. Super agent Miller.’ He raised his whisky glass to her.

  Carmen didn’t have the heart to report that Tiana had failed to say a single favourable thing about her. Matthew seemed such a wreck. He’d always drunk a lot but usually only after work. He also had an emergency supply of alcohol in his office open to anyone who’d had a bad day. It looked as though Matthew had helped himself to the entire stash. Since Fox had taken over, Carmen had noticed that Matthew’s alcohol consumption had risen dramatically and he had lost some of his joie de vivre.

  ‘Anyway, I’m just nipping out and wondered if you wanted me to get you anything. A sandwich or a coffee?’ Matthew would need an urn of coffee to get sober. She couldn’t bear the thought of Tiana seeing him in this state and further sidelining him.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m fine and dandy.’

  ‘Are you going to Will’s birthday drinks?’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘Going to the theatre with Penny – it’s her birthday too.’ Penny was his wife. Carmen couldn’t imagine that Matthew would be capable of going anywhere other than straight to bed. She walked wearily back to her office. Everyone else was out at lunch. She really should sit down and do some work, but she couldn’t face it. She grabbed her bag and jacket. There was only one thing for it, a spot of retail therapy to take away the blues. Besides, she needed something to wear tonight, something a little more exciting than jeans and Converses.

  Oh, the bliss of walking out of the office and going into shops where assistants were actually nice to you and didn’t tell you that you should work harder, that you were a loser and needed to buck up your ideas or else. Swept up on a wave of post-appraisal misery, Carmen ended up in French Connection buying a gorgeous green silk tunic dress, which made her eyes look even more intensely green. And because that was never going to go with her Converses – Agyness Deyn she was not – it inspired the purchase of a pair of patent shoe boots from Kurt Geiger. All better now, she thought, as she returned to the office and managed to sneak in without anyone seeing her. Tomorrow’s another day and all that. She would work hard the next day, take on board Tiana’s harsh words, but today she was too tired, she just needed to sit quietly and decide what to do about Will.

  Speaking of the devil, Will knocked on her window and wandered in. ‘How did the appraisal go? Were you pleased with all the nice things I said about you? How creative you are and good with clients, even the ones who suffer from arachnophobia?’

  ‘You are joking! I didn’t receive a single shred of praise or constructive criticism. It was like being in the water with a pack of piranhas and having your flesh ripped off. I had to go out and spend money to try and make myself feel better, which I know is a stupid, shallow, girlie thing to do. It was either that or score some blow off Connor, which as I hate blow and I don’t want to give Connor any ideas, was never an option. I haven’t recovered from last Christmas when I had to kiss him – he used his tongue and everything.’

  Will frowned. ‘But when I filled in your three-hundred-and-sixty-degree appraisal I said really positive things.’

  A 360-degree appraisal was when colleagues were asked to comment on each other – another of Fox’s innovations, something else which Carmen loathed. The whole 360 bit just reminded her of the scene in The Exorcist when Regan the devil child spins her head round and spits out something very rude, which maybe wasn’t the intention behind the scheme.

  ‘Do you want me to have a word with Tiana?’ Will continued.

  Carmen shook her head. ‘I don’t know, I can’t think straight right now. Maybe when I see what she’s written I could show it to you and you can let me know what you think. Maybe I am just a work-shy loser.’

  ‘Miller, pull yourself together. It’s the alcohol slump, you’re getting depressed. Quick, have a Wobbly Worm, or better still,’ he looked at his watch, ‘in two hours’ time I will buy you the largest vodka the Ship can provide.’

  ‘Thanks, but you’re the birthday boy, I’ll buy you a drink.’

  Will was about to leave when his eye fell on the carrier bags propped up against Carmen’s desk. ‘Ahh, I’ll have to get out the muttonometer.’

  The muttonometer had been devised by Will practically in the first week of meeting Carmen when he discovered her penchant for lunchtime clothes shopping. After one particular spree she’d come back with what could only be described as mutton fodder – a zebra print tee-shirt dress, suitable for fifteen-year-olds, some ill-advised wet-look leggings which had gone straight back, and a pair of tiny denim shorts. Carmen had a fantasy of wearing them with bare golden brown legs, a white shirt and havaianas, and drifting about like Jennifer Aniston, sipping a skinny latte. In reality she could only wear the shorts with black tights and very high heels, so it was less about dressed-down easy chic and more about looking like a ho.

  Will reached for the French Connection bag and carefully unwrapped the layers of white tissue paper to reveal the silk dress. There was something deliciously sexy about Will handling the dress. A vivid image popped into Carmen’s head of Will slipping it off her body. Steady on.

  ‘Come here, Miller, I have to see it against you.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to say, if I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?’ She couldn’t resist coming out with it.

  ‘No, because that would be corny.’ Will
looked away as he added, ‘But you do have a beautiful body.’ And just as Carmen was about to exclaim that was the nicest thing he’d ever said to her, Will qualified it with, ‘For a thirty-three-year-old.’

  Carmen stomped over to where he was standing, grabbed his hair and pushed it back from his forehead, trying to detect a receding hairline. ‘Yeah, well, you might lose your hair one day.’ It was a very intimate gesture, probably the most intimate she had ever made with him. They were standing so close that she got a blast of his Jo Malone Amber and Lavender cologne which had long been a favourite of hers. And she could feel the heat from his body. For a second they held each other’s gaze.

  ‘You’d still love me if I was bald,’ Will finally said.

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Carmen shot back. ‘I only tolerate you as it is.’

  Phew! There were so many pheromones whizzing about she was surprised the glass walls didn’t steam up. She let go of his hair and Will instantly smoothed it back.

  ‘Okay, shoes next,’ he ordered and Carmen opened the box to reveal the shoe boots. Even she couldn’t help smiling as she saw them. Will was suitably impressed. ‘No mutton for a change. So is this my birthday treat, seeing you in all this?’

  ‘This is to cheer me up after Tiana’s vicious savaging.’

  Will frowned and looked sympathetic. ‘I really will speak to her if you want. Yes, your timekeeping is not great and you have got those mutton tendencies, but you’re a good agent – all the clients love you, and apparently so does Connor.’ He paused. ‘Did you really kiss him?’ There it was again, a slight, almost imperceptible flash of jealousy.

  ‘He kissed me. I had no say in the matter.’

  ‘I bet he waxes his chest. He’s good-looking, I suppose, in an obvious, Hollyoaks sort of way.’

  ‘If you like eighteen-year-olds. Now be gone, birthday boy, I have to at least go through the motions of doing some work before I leave in two hours.’

  Incredibly, after that Carmen actually managed to confirm two of her clients as guests on a TV comedy quiz show and read a script another client had written. Incredibly, because Will’s flirtatious banter seemed to have gone up a gear and Carmen was having a hard time thinking of any reason why tonight should not indeed be the night that she got it together with him.

  2

  Everyone else had already left for the Ship before Carmen finally made her way to the Ladies to get ready, which was just as well, as she didn’t think she was up to Lottie, Trish and Daisy doing their will-she-won’t-she-do-Will speculations in her face. She was actually running nearly an hour late, because just as she was about to leave, her good friend Marcus had phoned and they’d spent a while catching up. Still, late was good, it showed that she wasn’t too keen. The Ladies had also had a makeover with Fox’s takeover and now every time someone walked in, or so it seemed to Carmen, the automatic air freshener dispenser squirted out poisonous chemicals, which were supposed to smell like spring flowers. Spring after a nuclear winter, Carmen always thought; she loathed the smell. She eyeballed the white machine, where it clung to the wall like a malevolent albino bat as she set out her makeup by the mirror. ‘Don’t you dare do it!’ she exclaimed out loud. Silence from the dispenser. Carmen began reapplying eyeliner and was congratulating herself on having escaped the evil squirter when it let out a particularly noxious blast. ‘I’m wearing Tom Ford! Enough already of your putrid smells, you vile machine!’ she shouted, just as Tiana pushed the door of one of the cubicles and trit-trotted out, her Louboutins clicking emphatically against the tiled floor.

  ‘Everything alright, Carmen?’ Tiana asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Carmen blustered. ‘I was just going over some lines one of my comics sent me, I wanted to see how they sounded out loud.’

  ‘That’s good then?’ Tiana replied, with her spurious question-asking voice, looking at Carmen as if she should be sectioned, before washing her hands and trit-trotting out.

  A large vodka now seemed like the only possible answer to the day. Carmen rallied slightly as she took off her jeans and tee-shirt and slipped into a pair of black twenty-denier tights – so forgiving to the legs – the silk dress and the shoe boots. My career might be on the verge of imploding but I can still rock a silk tunic dress, she thought, as she swept out of the office and headed towards the Ship.

  There were many pubs and bars to choose from around work, but somehow everyone – with the exception of Tiana, who didn’t drink and never socialised with colleagues – invariably gravitated to the Ship, a resolutely old-fashioned London pub, with lots of dark wood panelling and a faded, swirly mustard and green carpet which seemed to mourn the days of smoking. In fact, even though Carmen didn’t smoke she quite mourned it too, as at least the nicotine had the effect of blocking out other unsavoury odours. The Ship was mainly staffed by Australians who were the Antipodean antithesis of Tiana, being mostly cheery, friendly and seeming to have no real concerns other than what country they were going to visit next. Desi, a bubbly girl, with a big black bow in her hair, not unlike Minnie Mouse, was working at the upstairs bar. She waved to Carmen and pointed at the far corner where Will and the gang were sitting in their usual spot. As she walked over Carmen was aware that butterflies had taken up residence in her stomach at the prospect of seeing Will. It doesn’t mean anything, she tried to tell herself, but as she drew closer to Will those butterflies really went for it.

  He was sitting on the sofa next to Lottie and Trish, opposite Daisy and two other agents. One was Dirty Sam, who rumour had it had been caught being orally pleasured on the fire exit by the girlfriend of one of Dirty Sam’s comics. Sam was in his late twenties, cute in a laddish way with spiky brown hair and a cheeky grin, though after finding out about the fire exit incident Carmen had never found him cute again. Sam had once fancied himself as a stand-up, but it hadn’t gone well, and so he had become an agent. Next to him was Lovely Christina, who was in her mid-fifties but could pass for considerably younger on account of her beautiful peachy skin. She represented actors and could out-luvvie the best of them.

  ‘I was going to ask if you wanted a drink, but you look as if you’re okay,’ Carmen said, clocking the three pints in front of Will.

  He looked up at her. ‘Took your time, Miller. Were you canoodling with Connor?’

  ‘With who?’ Dirty Sam always wanted every salacious detail of every encounter.

  Carmen wrinkled her nose, wondering what he was on about, then remembered she had told him about the kiss with the postboy. ‘Don’t be daft, I was getting changed. You like?’ She did a quick spin around.

  Lottie gave a wolf whistle, Dirty Sam leered at her breasts, Christina called out, ‘Fabulous, darling,’ and Will gave her the thumbs up. A slightly wobbly pair of thumbs, it had to be said. Carmen realised that Will was already a little drunk.

  Lottie stood up. ‘Sit down, Carmen, I’ll get you a drink, sounds as if you need one after the appraisal.’ This was blatantly part of Lottie’s cunning plan to get her and Will together but Carmen sat down anyway. What she hadn’t bargained for was how close she would be sitting to Will. She was practically on his lap as Trish, on the other side, was taking up a considerable portion of the sofa.

  ‘It’s a gorgeous dress, Carmen,’ Will said softly in her ear.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied, they were sitting so close that she could see how his eyes weren’t light blue throughout as she’d always thought but had a dark indigo ring round the iris. So close that she could see the dark stubble on his face. ‘So how much have you had to drink?’

  ‘I had a couple of shots and pints. Desi and the guys had them lined up when I walked in, and it would have been rude not to. But I’m not pissed. I’m ready for whatever you’ve got planned for me tonight.’ And he winked.

  ‘You so are pissed!’ Carmen exclaimed, delighting in the fact that for once she had the upper hand, being sober.

  ‘Get this down you, princess.’ Lottie handed her a double vodka and tonic.

&n
bsp; ‘Why, thank you, Lottie, but you know how rarely I allow alcohol to pass my lips.’

  ‘You don’t mind kissing Connor though, do you?’ Will put in.

  Lottie sat down at the table and immediately began a conversation with Trish, Daisy, Dirty Sam and Lovely Christina. She might as well wave a banner saying I am trying to get Will and Carmen to get off with each other and be done with it!

  ‘What is this fixation about Connor? It was one kiss, one time, forced upon me!’

  Will took a long drink from his pint before replying, ‘So what kind of kisser was he?’

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘What’s bad?’ Will demanded. They were shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. The butterflies were multiplying.

  ‘It’s bad you’ve got to ask. Don’t you know what a bad kiss is?’

  ‘Course, I was just checking, but tell me anyway.’

  Carmen sipped her vodka. ‘It’s all teeth and tongue and too much saliva.’ She gave a mock shudder. ‘Though in fairness Connor wasn’t such a bad kisser as Sean Maxwell.’ Sean was a stand-up comic whom she’d ended up kissing after one of his gigs.

  ‘You kissed Sean Maxwell! Did you have a thing with him? God, Carmen, he’s slept with everyone!’ Will actually sounded quite heated.

  ‘I did not have a thing with him! I snogged him one night just after I separated from my husband. A never-to-be-repeated mistake – I’ve had more sensual oral experiences at the hygienist. He was a sucker.’

  Will looked slightly more appeased. ‘So aren’t you going to tell me what a good kiss is?’

  Carmen put her head to one side and without thinking clearly came out with, ‘That’s easy, a good kiss makes you want to go straight to bed.’ What had made her say that? She blamed the hangover, blamed the appraisal, blamed Will sitting so close to her. Blamed the fact that she hadn’t had sex for nine months.

  She reached for her drink again to avoid looking at Will, but he wasn’t going to be put off now. ‘Perhaps you can show me later,’ he whispered in her ear, nearly causing Carmen to drop her drink.