Age, Sex, Location

by Melissa Pimentel

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, laughing awkwardly. ‘I’ve done some pretty cowardly things in my time.’

  His eyes locked onto mine and I felt my breath catch in my throat. ‘I think you’re extraordinary,’ he said. He slid his hands onto my waist and I felt a shiver run through me. ‘What do you say – how would you like a lifetime supply of free books?’ he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘Well, when you put it like that …’ I said, wrapping my arms around him.

  And there, amongst the stacks of dusty old books, he kissed me and the world fell away.

  Three Months Later

  (Journal forgotten due to sexual bliss)

  Name: Callum (i.e. The Angry Bookseller)

  Age: 32

  Occupation: See above

  Nationality: Scottish

  Description: Auburn-haired, green-eyed, cardigan-wearing, very handsome when he smiles

  Method: Rancor, sarcasm and capriciousness

  Result: Unmitigated success

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader (or person who flips to the back of a book before finishing it, in which case, Hello, Kindred Spirit!),

  Far back in the annals of time (2009), I made the decision to turn my love life into a sociological experiment. I can’t remember where the idea came from; I just woke up one morning and there it was, lying fully formed on my pillow, waiting for me. Like Lauren, I was fed up with men assuming that I was desperate to settle down and bear their children just because I’d spent a couple of nights in their company, so that certainly influenced my decision to start the project. I’d spent so much time running around London bleating about how noncommittal I was that it was starting to feel like a bit of a … commitment. So when the idea of following the experts’ advice on dating came to mind, I figured it would be a good way to find out if it was me from which men were fleeing, or just my approach. To make things more interesting (and perhaps to legitimize what might be construed as a sign of mental illness), I decided to write a blog about it, too. I went out and bought my first dating guide (The Rules) the next day.

  Four months on and four books down, I’d written forty-two posts, gone on twenty-three dates, drank God only knows how many drinks and alienated approximately half of London’s single male population. I’d signed up to two different dating sites – Match and My Single Friend, the inspiration for the fictional Castaways and YoDate – and been on several blind or almost-blind set-ups. I also somehow managed to meet the love of my life. All in all, not a bad way to spend a summer.

  But the meeting-the-love-of-my-life thing, while nice, is sort of beside the point. The real objective of my little dating project – and, I hope, this book – was to show that dating can and should be really, really fun. Sure, there are terrible kisses with garlicky men, and moments of crippling shame the mornings after the nights before, but even those bits end up being fun in that slightly manic, gossipy, breathless way. Dating is surely one of the weirdest human behaviors we engage in – two relative strangers spending a few hours together in order to determine whether or not they want to see each other naked – so we might as well have fun while doing it.

  Anyway, all of this is a long-winded way of saying that I hope you enjoyed the book, and I hope it inspires you to go out there and be brave in the big bad dating world. And, as I’d wished for myself and for Lauren, I hope you get to have lots of sex with attractive, non-psychopathic men while doing it. If you happen to meet the love of your life along the way, even better.

  Melissa x

  Bibliography

  Fein, Ellen, and Sherrie Schneider. The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr Right. New York, NY: Warner, 1995.

  Moore, Doris Langley, and Norrie Epstein. The Technique of the Love Affair: By a Gentlewoman. 1928. New York, NY: Pantheon, 1999.

  Taylor, Kate. Not Tonight, Mr Right: Why Good Men Come to Girls Who Wait. London: Michael Joseph, 2007.

  Strauss, Neil. The Rules of the Game: The Stylelife Challenges and The Style Diaries. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007.

  Duvall, Evelyn Millis. The Art of Dating. New York, NY: Association, 1958.

  Jour, Belle de. Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men. London: Orion, 2009.

  Humphry, C. E. Manners for Women. 1897. Whitstable: Pryor Publications, 1993.

  Greenwald, Rachel. Find a Husband After 35 (Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School): A Simple 15-step Action Program. New York, NY: Ballantine, 2003.

  Acknowledgments

  I would never have even attempted to write a book if it wasn’t for the patience and encouragement of my editor at Penguin UK, Hana Osman, so she gets the top billing – Hana, I can’t thank you enough for taking me out for that pint all those years ago. Sorry it took me so long. Enormous thanks to the incredible Felicity Blunt, who I’ve long been proud to call a friend and am now equally proud to call my agent, and to my wonderful US editor, Tara Singh Carlson, whose insight and energy have been truly remarkable. Thanks to everyone at Penguin (on both sides of the Atlantic), with special thanks to the translation rights team led by Chantal Noel: you guys are awesome. Thanks to my foreign editors, particularly Andrea Best at Goldmann Verlag and Quezia Ceto at Companhia das Letras.

  An unfillable debt of gratitude to Katie Cunningham, who fielded countless panicked emails and read countless half-formed sentences and never once lost her patience (or at least hid it well), and who has also been the best friend a girl could ever ask for these twenty-two years: I’d be lost without you. Endless thanks to Simon Robertson, who put up with lots of furrowed brows in the pub and weekends of me staring at my computer screen or into the middle distance: you make me feel lucky every day and I love you a stupid amount. Thanks, too, to Carly Peters, my partner in crime and exercise, who has supported and at times enabled my lunacy from the very beginning. Thanks to everyone at Curtis Brown, a lovely place to work and an even lovelier place to be represented by, with particular thanks to my office-mate Helen Manders, who answered lots of hypothetical questions about a book she hadn’t read and always offered excellent advice, and to Emma Herdman, for her help and good cheer.

  Mom and Dad, I know this book has probably mortified you (sorry about that) but your constant love and support has been the making of me, and I can never say thank you enough. Chad and Meighan, I love you both and trust that you will ensure that my two favorite girls will never be allowed to read this book, at least not until I’m dead. To the lovely Robertson clan, thank you for being the best second family I could have imagined. And to both the Pimentels and the Robertsons: remember, it’s heavily fictionalized.

  Now

  It was a Monday night. The remains of a chicken Caesar salad were congealing gently on the side of my desk, and the mug of coffee next to my elbow – my fifth of the day – was now cold. I looked at the tiny clock at the edge of my screen: 9:23 p.m. There was no way I was getting out of here before midnight.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ I looked up to see Jennifer, the assistant I shared with the other account directors, standing in front of me. She’d arrived with the apple-cheeked, milk-fed look of a woman who had wandered in straight from the farm (even if, in her case, that farm was Yale). Now, after only a few weeks with us, her skin had already taken on the vitamin-D deficient pallor of someone unfamiliar with daylight. I felt a twinge of guilt: she was like a sweet little lamb being slowly, methodically sheared by the city.

  ‘No, I’m all set, thanks.’ I looked at her more closely. She was wearing lipstick. Red lipstick. ‘Are you going out tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ she said, nervously fiddling with the gold chain around her neck. ‘I mean, sort of. I had plans or whatever, but I can stay here as long as you need me.’

  She was wearing a dress, too, a floral tea dress that suited her tiny waist. It was definitely a date. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I said. ‘I don’t need you to stick around, honest. What time are your plans?’

  She shifted her weight to her othe
r foot and tried to look casual. ‘Um, twenty minutes ago?’

  ‘Then what are you still doing here? Go!’ I said, shooing her away.

  Her eyes widened, her mouth breaking into a wide grin. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Oh my God, thank you!’ she said, scrambling around her desk and gathering her bag. ‘I really, really appreciate it. I’ll be in super early tomorrow morning, I promise.’

  ‘Relax, you’re fine. I’m off for the rest of the week, but I’ll be on email all the time, so just drop me a line if there are any major fires. Hopefully I’ll wrap most things up tonight.’

  Jennifer hesitated. ‘You’re sure you don’t need me? I don’t mind staying, really.’ Half of her body was already out the door.

  ‘I know, but I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Okay, well … have a good trip! Let me know if you need anything!’

  ‘I will. And Jen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You look great.’

  She beamed at me and slipped out the door. I heard her heels clacking down the stairwell and the sound of the fire-exit door swing open and clang decisively shut.

  I sighed and turned back to one of my many color-coded spreadsheets. I was working on a major new digital campaign for Spike, a low-cost airline that had been plagued with a myriad of health and safety scandals recently: salmonella in a batch of their in-flight meals, child harnesses that snapped when tested, and one particular incident where a marauding band of mice chewed through a nest of wiring during a flight to San Jose. We were rebranding them as the ‘Airline of Adventure’, complete with GoPro footage of various lunatics jumping off buildings and abseiling down crevasses. Because surely, at this point, it was only those lunatics who would willingly board one of their rickety planes.

  Regardless of my thoughts on the ethics of fudging airline safety, the Spike business was a huge slice of the BlueFly budget, and it was essential that the campaign went off without a hitch. As a result, I’d been pulling sixteen-hour days for the past three weeks, taking phone calls from the nervous CEO late into the night and early in the morning. One of my eyes had developed a twitch a week ago, and now that twitch had a twitch. And, of course, with the worst possible timing, I had to take a week’s vacation to travel to the north of England because my sister had insisted on getting married in a castle (which, if you’d met Piper, wouldn’t come as much of a surprise). And to add insult to injury, my ex-boyfriend would be there, too. Trust Piper to marry the best friend of the one man I never wanted to see again. And at this rate, I wouldn’t even have time to wax my legs before I left.

  My phone flashed up with a message.

  Are you bailing on me tomorrow?

  It was my best friend Jess, who had defected to the wilds of New Jersey two years ago with her husband and baby son, and who I had since managed to visit a grand total of three times. I know, I know, I’m a terrible friend. Something Jess hasn’t held back on telling me. Another text flashed up.

  Let me rephrase that. DO NOT BAIL ON ME TOMORROW. You do not want to piss off a pregnant lady because I will crush you.

  I’d promised her I’d swing by her place on the way to the airport the following morning, but had, in all honesty, already been planning to make my excuses and spend the morning in the office. But seeing her text messages, I knew I was toast.

  Of course I’m still coming! Can’t wait. Xxx

  I placed the phone back on the desk and turned back to my spreadsheets. I saw the phone flash up again from the corner of my eye.

  You’re a liar but I love you. Let me know what train you’re on and Noah and I will meet you. X

  I took a sip of cold coffee and grimaced. Midnight, I thought to myself. I won’t stay any later than midnight.

  I woke up to the mechanized chirrup of crickets.

  My eyes stuttered open and I fumbled in the dark until my fingers curled around my phone: 6:33 a.m. I let out a plaintive moan. I thought about closing my eyes again, letting sleep pull me gently back under, but the little blue envelope on my iPhone had an angry red number hovering above it: fifty-seven new unread emails. The Shanghai office had been busy overnight. I tapped with a reluctant index finger and scanned through a series of minor and major disasters that would need rectifying, and felt my chest tighten with each swipe.

  6:37. Time to get up. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and suddenly regretted my decision to take an Ambien last night. I shielded my eyes from the sun, now streaming through the window, and sat for a moment while I made a mental calculation of what I had to do today: gym, train, Jessica, plane. England. The ex. I let out another groan and glanced down at my pillow longingly.

  I forced myself onto my feet. I had a 7 a.m. training session this morning, and Jeff would make me do extra burpees if I was late. Tuesday at 7 a.m. had been spent with Jeff for three and a half years now, ever since I had tried to squeeze myself into a dress I used to wear back in college and couldn’t get it past my knees. All the days and nights spent at the desk had caught up with me, and the only solution was to subject myself to twice-weekly punishment sessions with Jeff, and frequent pre-dawn runs along the river. It was brutal. It was endless. It was, it appeared, the routine I would be following for the rest of my life. Why couldn’t exercise be like money, or Starbucks points, where you could amass a stockpile and then spend it gradually over time for the rest of your life? Instead, I found that if I took even a week off, my lungs reverted to their previous flaccid state, and my ass started inching towards the backs of my knees. And so, onward I fought.

  I padded into the bathroom and flicked on the light, wincing slightly before switching it back off again. Brushing my teeth in the dark felt safer and more humane. Face washed and hair tied up in a fresh ponytail, I pulled on the gym clothes I’d left carefully folded for myself the night before, and scooped some coffee grains into the French press. I glanced up at the clock hanging above the range. 6:48: two minutes to spare. I straightened the covers and double-checked that I had everything I needed for the trip, including the lurid green monstrosity that Piper had decided was the maid of honor dress. I was going straight to the station after the gym and couldn’t afford to come all the way back to the apartment for an errant shoe.

  Dress, shoes, make-up, Ambien all accounted for, I had a quick last look around the apartment before heading out the door. It was a tiny studio, but it was all my own – the first place I’d been able to afford by myself in the city. There comes a time in a person’s life when, if single, one should live on one’s own, mainly because the only possible room-mates available to one are the deranged and mentally diseased. The commute from Bay Ridge – where I’d lived for the past seven years, ever since I moved out of the place I’d shared with Jess in Sunset Park – had been brutal, but not as brutal as the feeling of being the oldest, and lamest, person in the neighborhood. When Len, the grizzled old bartender at McDougall’s, was replaced by a smirking twenty-three-year-old wearing a Hypercolor tank top, I went home, prepared a financial spreadsheet, and called a real estate broker: I would move to Manhattan, where I would be poor but would at least feel young. (I felt more poor than young, but it was still worth it.)

  The new place, nestled in an old tenement building in the East Village, was tiny and extortionately priced, but I could afford it (barely) thanks to my recent promotion to account director. It was beautiful – all exposed bricks and high ceilings – and I’d been slowly replacing my old Ikea furniture with purposely distressed vintage pieces that had originally been bought at a garage sale in Michigan and resold at a tremendous mark-up to city rubes like me. I was fine with this.

  I tore down the stairs and burst onto the street. It was a beautiful morning: the sky was a faultless blue, the day’s inevitable mugginess had yet to descend, and the street sweepers had already come through, so the road wasn’t littered with the previous night’s detritus of beer bottles and vomit. I sipped my coffee on the way, and listened to the quiet rhythms of
the city waking up: the metal shutters sliding open, the pails of water being tossed onto the sidewalk, the quiet tick of town car engines cooling as they waited for their breakfasting businessmen. I walked into the gym, the familiar smell of sweat, chorine and overpriced air freshener welcoming me. 6:59 on the nose.

  A large, muscular man with a head shaped like a triangle and a sadistic grin stood up when I walked through the door: Jeff.

  ‘Morning, Ruby,’ he said. ‘Ready for the pain?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, but it didn’t matter – it was going to happen anyway.

  I sweated my way through the usual series of increasingly grueling and bizarre exercises, Jeff standing over me and occasionally bellowing what he thought was encouragement, but would more accurately be classified as harassment. ‘Lower! Deeper! Faster! Harder!’ he said, over and over. Taken out of context, it would sound as if he were directing fringe porn. I squeezed my eyes shut and thought about the coffee and bagel that awaited me at the end of this, and considered, not for the first time, the irony of working out this hard in order to maintain some semblance of the body I’d had at nineteen, when my diet had consisted entirely of Cheetos, Diet Coke, slices of processed cheese and cheap vodka. I pushed the thought out of my head and did another rep. This is about being strong and healthy, I told myself, not about being thin. (Okay, it was a little bit about being thin.)

  In addition to allowing me to eat a guilt-free bagel, exercise helped temporarily to dislodge the tight knot of anxiety that had nestled itself in my breastbone – like a tiny, fluttering baby bird with an extremely sharp beak – ever since the promotion. With every squat thrust, it flew higher and lighter until, by the end of the hour, I couldn’t feel it at all. Today it was particularly useful, considering the amount of pre-travel/wedding/family/ex-boyfriend anxiousness pressing firmly on my shoulders.