by Joel Willans
‘Hello, sailor, what are you doing up still?’
‘You know what the date is today?’
‘Is this is a quiz?’ she giggled.
‘No, it’s not a fucking quiz.’ I grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. ‘For Christ’s sake, Natalie. You know how chilled out I am about you gallivanting around Soho at all hours of the day, but today is an egg day!’
‘What on earth are you babbling about?’ She wriggled free of my grasp and strolled into the living room.
I steamed after her, feeling anger surge over me. ‘Where are you going? Get upstairs and get ready!’
‘Get ready for what?’
‘For screwing.’ Natalie looked at me standing with my arms folded in the doorway. The stench of cigarettes reached my nostrils. ‘Have you been smoking as well?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, will you listen to yourself. You sound like my dad!’
‘It’s an egg day!’ I shouted. ‘And you’re getting drunk with your buddies, smoking ciggies and snorting coke like some Hollywood B list brat. What do you think that does to your ovaries?’
‘It’s Friday!’ she screamed. ‘I don’t think about my ovaries on Fridays! Got it?’
Before I could say anything, she got up, grabbed her coat and wrenched open the front door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to a place where people treat me like a human being rather than a womb on legs!’ She slammed the door shut. As I stood at the window and watched her hailing a taxi, I found myself wondering if her hangover would make her unavailable for the next day, too.
I played it more carefully after that, yet according to the Egg Day Excel spreadsheet I’d created, my sperm met her eggs eighty-seven percent of her most fertile time. I never told her about the spreadsheet or even mentioned egg days again. But Natalie wasn’t stupid, she knew that during those three days she could get me to do whatever she wanted. In the following six months, I repainted the kitchen lilac, built her a Japanese rock garden, and joined her doing sun salutations. Although a productive few months, no pregnancy was forthcoming.
It was a spring day and every living thing seemed to be preparing for, having, or caring for babies. We were sitting outside on the terrace of a cafe in Bishop’s Park. I’d just bought Natalie a decaffeinated cappuccino and was wondering whether she’d notice, when I popped the question.
‘What sort of doctor?’ she said, supping her coffee.
I moved closer and whispered. ‘A fertility doctor. Just to make sure, you know.’
She screwed her face up. ‘God, this coffee tastes rank. To make sure of what?’
‘That your lifestyle isn’t making it more difficult for us.’
She slammed her mug on the table.
‘Are you implying that it’s my fault I haven’t become pregnant in the last year?’
I reached over and took her hand, surprised that such a sensible suggestion would provoke such a powerful response. If she weren’t so immersed in her wine-and-dine, coke-snorting world, she’d see why I was so concerned. She’d see the logic in my proposal.
‘I just want to make sure everything is okay? That’s all.’
‘I presume you’ll be getting a sperm test too, then?’ she said, throwing her coffee on the grass.
‘What?’
‘If you want me to spread my legs for some stranger, the least you can do is jerk off into a plastic cup.’
I let go of her hand and leant back in my seat. An old lady on the table next to us was staring at me as if I was something that had just crawled out of the pond. I cracked my knuckles and stretched. John Wayne once said, courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway. I might not be a cowboy, but if I needed to get my six-shooter out to discover if there was an issue with Natalie, then so be it.
‘Let the wagons roll!’ I said, downing the rest of my caffeinated coffee.
By the time of our appointment at the London Centre for Reproductive Medicine, my bravado had been replaced by a cocktail of fear, embarrassment and nerves. Our consultant, Doctor Shore, looked like a teenager who’d one day woken up to find herself in a white coat. After firing off questions about our lifestyle and family history, she examined Natalie behind a screen. When they came out, Natalie winked at me.
‘Now, Mr Jones, I need your sample. The room is at the end of the corridor. Is fifteen minutes long enough?’
‘I suppose,’ I said, not wanting to appear awkward.
She handed me a plastic beaker with my name on it.
‘Is that big enough?’ I asked.
Neither her nor Natalie laughed.
The jerk off room’s décor reminded me of an old peoples’ home. Beige walls, a print of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ and a sink with a pink soap dispenser. I sat on a fake leather chair and turned the TV on. A peroxide blonde was bouncing around on a man with sideburns. I stared at the spectacle for a few minutes, overwhelmed. Like any healthy man, I’d watched porn before, but now the usual sequence of emotions was totally different. Normally, it went from illicit excitement to fulfillment, to self-loathing. On this occasion, I was watching for the benefit of my future family. The most erotic pornography in the world would have been hard pressed to arouse me.
The clock’s tick tocking reminded me that this was not the time for philosophising. I cursed Natalie for putting me in this situation and turned the TV off. Then I stood up and yanked my trousers down. With eyes closed, I got to work. What in the right circumstances might take mere seconds, on this occasion seemed like an impossible task. The harder I tried, the less I was forthcoming. Eventually, fearing that someone might knock on the door when my time was up, I flitted through my favourite fantasies until I hit the spot. With a gasp of relief rather than pleasure, I slumped down in the chair. My contribution looked so unimpressive in the beaker that I considered trying again, but the clock said I was out of time.
When I delivered my specimen to the laboratory downstairs, the woman at the counter didn’t even say thank you. I tried to appreciate her professionalism, but I couldn’t help wonder whether this was simply a huge conspiracy to humiliate men.
I shared this theory with Natalie in the car on the way home and she just laughed. ‘I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, but sometimes you are just like the men who read your stupid magazine.’
Strangely, the weeks before the results were possibly the best we’d ever had together. I felt happy that Project Baby was moving forward, convinced that now we had medical science on our side, it was only a matter of time before I started my very own Von Trapp family. While Natalie didn’t say anything much about the appointment, I caught her singing to herself a few times, and she was especially attentive to my needs. Sunday morning, I was even awoken by a special treat.
‘Well, well. What do I owe this pleasure to?’ I said, when she nudged me awake and laid a tray of breakfast goodies on my lap.
She shrugged. ‘I just felt like being extravagant. Make the most of it. It might just be a phase.’
That evening I spent filming the sunset on my fancy new smartphone. Maybe it was the unseasonably warm weather that filled me with an unusual confidence for the future, but as I panned across the horizon, zooming in and out, I hummed my favourite film theme tunes; Star Wars, Trainspotting, Doctor Zhivago, The Magnificent Seven. I was so carried away by these melodies of great moments that I didn’t notice Natalie watching me.
‘Ready for the doctor’s tomorrow?’ she said, massaging my shoulders.
‘I certainly am. As long as I don’t get banished to the jerk off room again.’
‘I’ll never forget the look on your face when you came back,’ she said and sat on my lap. ‘But listen, if there’s something wrong with me, I’ll understand if you want to split up.’
‘What! Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Seriously. I know how much you’ve got your heart set on being a daddy and even if sometimes I don’t show it, I think it’s sweet.’ She kissed my forehead.
‘Sweet? Don’t call me sweet! I write for the country’s leading men’s magazine. I’ll get fired if they hear I’m sweet.’
‘Okay, macho man. I just wanted to say.’
After I kissed her back, I played her my mobile film. ‘What do you think?’
‘David Lynch, eat your heart out,’ she said.
But it wasn’t Lynch that ate my heart out; it was the good Doctor Shore. The next day at 3.17pm, after she’d told Natalie that she was perfectly okay, she turned to me. I knew immediately from the way she paused something was amiss. She clasped her hands together and looked me straight in the eye.
‘I’m afraid there’s a problem with your sperm.’
‘Sorry?’ I said.
She repeated herself and I shook my head, unable to process the consequences of her words. This can’t be right. This isn’t even about me. The rest of the conversation took place far, far away. In the distance I heard Natalie firing off questions and I heard the phrases ‘probably a result of the mumps’ and ‘no chance of children’ and I felt her grip my hand so hard it hurt. But it was all very otherworldly, like the memory of a dream.
It was only when we left and she hugged me on the staircase and I kissed her neck and smelt her favourite perfume that I felt myself back in the now. I tried to think of something to say that was comforting, funny or profound, but nothing came.
‘Please don’t worry, Henry. It really doesn’t matter.’
It did matter of course. Even though Natalie did everything to reassure me that she never even wanted kids, that it was my idea, not hers, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I’d screwed everything up. She spent the week researching other options, showing me websites and brochures, talking about adoption and fantastic new innovations in fertility treatment. But it didn’t matter. We’d never have a kid that was half me, half her. We’d never go jogging together pushing our ridiculous three-wheeled buggy. We’d never have a troupe of singing blond kids, jumping up and down on our bed. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt like the end of one type of life. The more she tried to comfort me the more I felt myself less of a man. In the end I couldn’t bear her sympathy any longer.
I told her that I needed time alone. I thought I was being bold and selfless. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, I said as I loaded my bags in the car. She tried to get in touch, but I didn’t return her calls. She confronted me at the office and, over the shouts of the ad team, I told her to please get on with her life. When I discovered she’d resigned, I congratulated myself. You’ve done the honorable thing, I thought.
To avoid going home, I started going out with the sales lads. I had plenty of time on my hands and they were always ready to join you for a few after-work drinks. To be able to handle these ever increasing binges, I’d follow them into the gents for a quick toot of the white stuff. It did the job for while. Getting home in the early hours, head fuzzy with pints and powder, helped me to ignore the voice that kept mocking me for being a useless jaffa whose genes had hit a brick wall. It was only when the editor called me into his goldfish bowl office and threatened to pull the chain on my career that it dawned on me. My life was now as empty as my flat. I’d been a total idiot.
Now, twelve months after I walked out, I stare at my notes and the headlines I’ve jotted down. ‘How to balls up your relationship’. ‘Shoot yourself dead with blanks’. ‘Don’t bank on your sperm’. I told my editor this feature would be easy to write. Fun yet informative. Perfect for our audience.
I was wrong. Writing about losing the only girl you’ve ever really loved is never easy, even if you do change the names. Natalie always said that if I carried on working for a stupid magazine, I’d turn stupid. Now I realise she was right. One by one, I rip the pages out of my pad, until all the words I’ve scrawled are crunched up in tight balls. I order another beer and begin to write something different. It’s not a new feature. It’s a letter. It’s the letter I should have written her, a year ago today.
The Wrong Bus Girl
So there she is on the wrong bus, staring at me with a trace of a smile, and here I am at the bus stop, frozen. Two parallel worlds of thoughts and feelings, separated by a pane of scratched glass. I look at the wrong bus queue. It’s a shuffling dozen long.
The old man last in the line nudges me and speaks loudly through a tobacco-tinted moustache. ‘That girl’s giving you the right eye, son.’
‘She’s really beautiful isn’t she?’
‘What a lovely smile,’ he says.
There are five people left to get on the bus. If I follow them I will be hideously late and if I am late, I’ll miss my job interview.
The old man nudges me. ‘Is she your missus?’
Voices reach us from up front. The driver is arguing with a passenger.
‘Afraid not,’ I sigh.
‘Say what, son?’ He cups his hand to his ear.
I stare at her and speak very slowly, pronouncing each word with great care in the hope she can read my lips. ‘She’s not my missus, but I wish she were.’
The argument at the front has stopped. The shuffling has resumed. There are two people still to pay. The old man is one. He walks two steps forward. I follow then take one step back.
‘Why so down in the mouth, son?’
‘It’s not fair, is it?’
‘Speak up, lad.’
‘This. Her and me. So close. Maybe meant for each other, maybe even brought together by fate and the bus going the wrong bloody way…’
Then it hits me. And it’s so amazingly obvious that I start to laugh. I wrench open my bag and throw stuff out, handfuls of it.
The old man stares as he gets on the bus.
‘Please, can you give her this?’ I say, holding my business card out. ‘To the girl. My missus who’s not my missus, can you give it to her?’
‘What?’ he shouts. ‘What did you say?’
I bellow my instructions at him and hand over the card. He takes it and shakes his head. ‘Do I look like I’m in the market for life insurance, son?’
‘No, I just work in insurance. I’m not selling it. Just give the card to the girl, the pretty girl. Understand?’
When he winks, I want to hug him.
The bus driver snarls at me. ‘Getting on or not?’
I catch a glimpse of the girl, my girl, and smile. She smiles back. A big, proper smile, and I want to punch the sky. Then I see the right bus, the number 48, pulling up. The queue for it is only three long. I have no time to loiter.
The wrong bus driver revs his engine and asks me again if I’m getting on.
I grin and shake my head. ‘No, thanks. You’re going in the wrong direction.’
The bus pulls away and I wave goodbye to her. I actually wave. As if we’re friends already. And she does the same. I point at the old man who has taken the seat in front of her and I mouth the words say hello. She shrugs and smiles as the bus moves into the traffic. And for a couple of seconds, I’m filled with such a feeling of joy that I sing out loud. Then, just before the bus turns the corner, I see the old man pull open the window and toss out a small white card. It flutters and spins and twirls, until it is sucked beneath a passing car. I stare at the bus turning away. I stare at the space where the bus was, where my card was, and where the girl was. I stare at the space for so long, that when the number 48 leaves, I’m not on it.
Opportunity Man
Marcus knew he still had the touch, no matter what Stella said. And Friday evening in Leicester Square, with the warm air on your skin and the crowd buzzing at the prospect of a good night out, was the perfect place to prove it. He’d lost count of how many girls he’d picked up for her on summer weekends like this. They came from all over. A Polish redhead looking to make a few quid, a jet-black Nigerian just off the plane, and a posh runaway who spoke like the Queen. He liked to tell them he was the Opportunity Man and, today, he was knocking on their door.
‘You used to be a natural, a real arti
st. Now you’ve gone soft,’ Stella said, when he reminded her of his successes.
‘Don’t be stupid! I’m still the business!’
But she carried on stuffing his Armani shirts into a Tesco bag and throwing his shoes in a box, anyway.
Truth was, things hadn’t been going great. He had turned a couple of girls down because they reminded him of his little sister. Another because she said she had a kid. But there was no way he’d gone soft. Not in a million years.
Now, as he cruised through the crowds, he focused his attention on every single face. He was on his third circuit, when he spied a prospect. She was standing, arms folded, watching a busker playing guitar. Her spiky auburn hair, torn jeans and skanky T-shirt made her look like a punk kid. But with a bit of scrub, a haircut and some sexy clothes she had the potential to be a little goldmine.
He ambled closer and threw a quid in the busker’s hat. The guy’s eyes thanked him and he nodded back.
‘He’s got talent, hasn’t he?’
The girl’s gaze skitted over Marcus. ‘He’s okay.’
She had a slight accent. He couldn’t place it, but she was no English girl, that was for sure.
He rubbed his hands together. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘I’m Finnish.’
Shit. He didn’t know jack about Finland. ‘Cool! I hear it’s a really beautiful country. Loads of snow, right?’
‘Yes, snow all the time.’ She examined her fingers. ‘And we all live in igloos.’
Marcus laughed. Funny girl. He saw her nails were covered in specks of paint, just like the tatty army satchel she had over her shoulder. She had splashes of paint on her jeans too and a sketchpad sticking out of her bag. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see what she was into.
‘Bet you’re an artist, right?’
‘How could you tell?’