It's Got To Be Perfect

by Claire Allan

  Fuck. I couldn’t cope with this kind of pressure. One false move and it was P45-land for me.

  “A new one. I’ll tell you when it’s a little firmer. Don’t want to risk it. It’s a big one.” I pressed Send and crossed my fingers, hoping that would buy me time.

  “It better be,” he replied and that was that.

  Now that my job remained secure, I just had to clean up the other pieces of my life.

  It was, I admit, hard to get into the spirit of work – despite the whiteboard behind my desk detailing all our up-and-coming campaigns – several of which I was in charge of. Being an account executive for NorthStar PR was rarely plain sailing, but there were times when I found it nigh on impossible to get excited about the latest branding of the local supermarket or some fancy perfume.

  I tried to ignore the fact that one of our major campaigns for the month was to be Manna – Pearse’s restaurant – and that my involvement in “keeping the client happy” might have just gone disastrously wrong.

  Instead I turned my attention to our campaign for the new “adult” shop, Love, Sex and Magic, which was set to open in town amid a furore from right-wingers everywhere.

  It wasn’t a sleazy shop, per se – I mean it was all really in good form – no seriously hardcore stuff – but we still knew we would have a killer of a time putting a positive slant on it when the local do-gooders were already planning a protest on opening day – complete with placards and everything.

  Bob wanted this to work. He really, really wanted it work. He was even trying to convince myself and Fionn to dress in French Maid costumes while handing out leaflets outside – but I figured that was more to satisfy his own seedy desires than anything else. We had, however, been talked into dressing as magician’s assistants and it was my job to source suitable costumes. Did I just say life in PR could be dull?

  “FSB?” Fionn emailed.

  Ah, Fake Smoke Break. Even though neither of us smoked we still allowed ourselves the periodic traipse out to the smokers’ corner of shame for a gossip, away from the glare of our computer screens (and Bob’s eagle eye).

  “I think he would kill me if I dared move from my desk,” I jotted back and she smiled sympathetically.

  Truth was, I wanted to avoid her best as I could, in a bid to keep my disastrous morning under wraps. And I genuinely did think Bob might kill me.

  Reaching for two paracetamol from my desk drawer, I swallowed them down with some water and started phoning.

  I was starting to feel almost jolly, until, that is, the phone rang and Pearse barked a hello at me. From the noise in the background I could tell he was calling me from the restaurant kitchens and this show was one all of his staff were enjoying

  “Hi, Pearse,” I whispered, careful not to prick Fionn’s curiosity. The girl had bat ears – anything in a twenty-foot radius was fair game.

  “So, are you going to tell me what happened?”

  Oh God. He couldn’t really want to have a meaning-of-life-the-universe-and-everything chat just now, could he?

  “I’m at work,” I replied.

  “And what? Your job is more important than me and our relationship? Is that what you’re saying?”

  In any other circumstance I probably would have gone to him. I would have made my excuses to Bob – on the pretext of the forthcoming campaign for Manna – and cleared off to talk things through. I would have apologised and told him I didn’t know what had come over me (except I did, and it was a hairy big fecker from Donegal) and begged his forgiveness.

  But sitting there in the office it dawned on me that I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted him to forgive me. Surely I wouldn’t have done what I’d done – or who I’d done – if things had been perfect? Pulling at a loose thread in my laddered tights and watching the material unravel, I sighed.

  “I can’t, Pearse – things are mad here. But I am sorry.”

  “Well, what about after work?”

  “I have to go a wedding-dress fitting with Fionn,” I said. “I can’t get out of it.”

  “I’m sure you could, if you wanted to.”

  His assumption that I would be able to stop doing whatever I was doing in order to be at his beck and call was really astounding. It shocked me that I’d once found it alluring and sexy. Once. Perhaps that was the keyword in all of this.

  I could imagine him standing proud in his chef whites, his minions running round him, listening to him ordering the little woman around.

  “I’m sorry, Pearse. If I could get away, I would,” I lied.

  He put the phone down, his anger obvious by the slam of it against the receiver. Oh, this was not going to be good.

  2

  “Taxi!” I shouted, stumbling from the bar.

  Fionn was doubled over behind me – a mixture of finding my attempts to hail a taxi hilarious and an urgent need to pee.

  Glancing back at her, her hair ruffled and blowing in the wind, her make-up long departed from her skin, she looked so much less the blushing bride than she had done just three short hours ago.

  “Seriously, I’ve got to pee,” she whined, her smile changing to a grimace and then to a look which could only be described as sheer desperation.

  We could, I realised in the cold light of the following day, have simply gone back into the bar we had just left. But that would have made too much sense. It was only fitting that, given the way my day had gone, I came up with the inspired idea of visiting Manna for a quick after-hours pee.

  It had gone eleven and the last of the diners would be sampling their after-dinner whiskies and G&Ts. Pearse would be propping up the bar with a pint glass of iced water in his hand (he never drank on duty) and the bouncers knew me well enough to let us in to use the very stylish ladies’ toilets.

  Landing in might even earn me some brownie points. So far I’d had six text messages and three missed calls from Pearse and, in my dazed and confused state, I felt that me showing willing to actually talk to him might be a good thing. We could also phone a taxi from the more dignified surroundings of the restaurant bar and, once Fionn was safely on her way back to Alex and Emma, I could start to sort things out with my perhaps-ex-boyfriend.

  “Manna!”

  “Manna, do do, be doo doo!” Fionn howled, bursting into the old Muppets’ classic song. “Lead the way!”

  We were still scatting our way through the same song – with some impressive free styling I have to add – when we arrived at the doors of Manna, Fionn now trying desperately not to grab her crotch like an incontinent three-year-old.

  “Lemme in!” I shouted before realising that this was not the best way to help me wend my way back into Pearse’s good books.

  A surly bouncer with a monobrow eyed me up and down.

  “S’me. Annie. Is Pearse there? We need in!”

  He looked at us suspiciously and called to a passing waitress, who after squinting out into the dark night was able to confirm that I was indeed Annie and that Pearse was indeed in. Opening the door, Monobrow gave a half-smile as we darted across the bar to the ladies’ with not so much as a thank-you.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God!” Fionn moaned as she bustled into a cubicle and sat down.

  I hoped against hope there was no one in any of the other stalls. I dreaded to think what they might imagine was going on. And then it struck me – an awful memory of a stall, and a hairy-backed Donegal man and groping. There was definitely groping.

  “Oh crap,” I said, sitting on the loo and leaning my head against the cool stainless steel of the minimalist cubicle.

  “Are you okay?” Fionn asked, her voice having come down a few octaves to its usual tone as the urgency of her toilet trip passed.

  “Oh me? I’m fine. Just fine.” My voice was probably a little too cheerful and my actions a little like a bad lead in a cheap pantomime as I pranced out to the sink with false confidence. “Right, let’s get you a taxi!”

  Fionn yawned. “Yes, home would be a good idea. Let’s hope I don’t wak
e Emma. Or Alex for that matter.”

  “Just take your shoes off and sleep on the sofa if you have to. I’m sure they won’t even notice.” Lifting my mobile, I tapped in a number and ordered a taxi. Then the pair of us emerged from the bathroom with faces as straight as they could be.

  “Annie!” Pearse called as he walked across the room.

  Fionn grinned at him. “I got a wedding dress. I’m going to be a princess and you two,” she said, gesturing at both of us in a fingers-pointed-in-a-pretend-gun style, “just have to be next!”

  Pearse looked at me and back at Fionn while I just grinned, trying not to let the stinky air of tension in the room get to me.

  “Yes, well, we’ll see!” I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief as a taxi horn beeped outside.

  When she was gone and it was just Pearse and me standing in the middle of an empty dining hall, I felt very foolish. It was wrong, I knew that, to come and see him – even if we had been desperate for a pee.

  It was hardly the best place to have the conversation we were about to have – even if I hadn’t been three sheets to the wind.

  “Shall we go home?” Pearse asked and I nodded, although I wasn’t sure what home he was referring to. We had been together two years but still lived apart. Perhaps my reluctance to move into his admittedly stunning house on the hill had been my subconscious telling me that one day I would wake up next to a hairy-backed man after a night of wanton sex in my own grotty flat.

  Speaking of which, feck, there was no way we could go there. I hadn’t had time to strip the bed sheets. The whole place probably still smelled of stale booze, cigarettes and very rude sex. The whole sorry mess suddenly felt very sordid.

  “Can we go to yours?” I asked pathetically.

  He nodded. I guessed he knew why I was not so keen to go home.

  We drove in silence. I wanted to start talking so many times but there isn’t much you can say in that situation. Pearse sighed, very loudly, several times and swore at passing cars but it was the tinny din of the car radio that kept me awake as opposed to any big old heart to heart.

  Pearse’s house was a thing of dreams – and testament to the success of Manna. Sleek and stylish, with the same minimalist style as his restaurant, it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the interior pages of a glossy magazine. The smell of polish, bleach and the after-scent of Yankee Candles (sandalwood) hit me as I walked through the door and into the lounge. Pearse got busy, switching on the gas fire and lighting some of the aforementioned candles before making me a cup of hot chocolate.

  “Will we talk now?” I asked, as I curled up on his squishy chenille sofa.

  “I need a shower,” he responded. “It was sweaty in the kitchen tonight – can’t risk crotch-rot setting in.”

  And when he put it like that, who was I to argue with the man? He sloped off to his designer bathroom with his perfectly polished chrome power shower and I pulled a chenille throw over my shoulders and fell into a deep sleep.

  When I woke my hand brushed against the chenille and for the briefest of moments I wondered if I was back with Hairy Back. It took a while for me to realise where I was, and that it was morning and that Pearse and I hadn’t had the chance for our big chat yet. I stretched and walked to the kitchen – parched – in need of a long cold glass of something. Finding a carton of cranberry juice, I poured myself some. God knows what Pearse thought of me now – but then, he had been the one to leave, to go and shower his sweaty privates, and given the utter cosiness of his living room it had been a given that I was going to fall asleep. If he had wanted to chat to me, he could have woken me. I wouldn’t have minded.

  I noticed a note on the worktop. “I’ve gone to the market. I tried to wake you last night, but you were out of it. I’ve left you a change of clothes in the spare room. We’ll talk tomorrow. P”

  So, I cringed, he had tried to wake me. I’d probably slobbered in his direction, or snorted or something equally unfeminine. I was certainly in the bad books if my emergency set of spare clothes were laid out in the spare room and not in the master boudoir. Swearing under my breath (and swearing again when I realised I had twenty minutes to get to work on time) I pelted up the stairs and threw on the cream A-line skirt and mint-green twin-set Pearse had left out for me to wear, along with a string of pearls, some cream court shoes and – his pièce de résistance – some American Tan tights and clean underwear. Ah, my very best respectable-girlfriend outfit which he liked very much indeed. In his mind, I guessed, it would have been perfectly lovely if I always dressed as if it was still 1956.

  As I poked in my bag for my trial-size Flash Balm and loose powder, I called a taxi and prayed it wasn’t one of the days when the grumpiest dispatcher in Derry was manning the phones.

  Of course, God was not that kind to me. As Grumpy answered the phone he didn’t give me time to state my request before he launched into a tirade of swear words at some poor driver who had taken a wrong turn on the school run.

  “Excuse me,” I muttered to his ranting voice.

  “Excuse me,” I repeated, but a little louder.

  “Excuse me,” I repeated, but a good deal louder.

  “Wha’?” he eventually muttered.

  “A taxi, please,” I started.

  “And there was me thinking you were ordering a pizza,” he said gruffly and I could hear him puffing on a cigarette. It seemed the smoking ban didn’t extend to his little office.

  Rolling my eyes, and feeling my headache kick in behind my eyes, I stated my destination and asked him to be quick.

  “Five minutes,” he said and hung up and I knew, just knew, it would be at least twenty and by that stage I was expected to be at the office, with the magician’s assistant costumes in tow. I sent Fionn a quick text asking her to pick them up and then headed straight for Pearse’s alphabetised bathroom cabinet. I scrolled my eyes over to P for paracetamol and downed two.

  I would talk to Pearse tomorrow. Mañana would be D-day because Friday nights always belonged to Manna. I knew that.

  Arriving in work twenty-five minutes late – but carrying a tray of pathetic apology-attempt doughnuts from the neighbouring bakery – I smiled at my colleagues (Bob included) and made my way to my desk where Fionn had kindly laid out two of the most garish pieces of satin and nylon I’d ever seen.

  It wasn’t long before Bob sidled silently over. Sometimes I wondered if he wore those Heely shoes with the wheels underneath. He never seemed to walk – more glide in a slightly creepy way.

  “Late again,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. Couldn’t get a taxi. I brought buns.” I offered him a chocolate-sprinkled doughnut and watched his eyes light up – just for a moment.

  “No more late mornings, Annie. The rest of your colleagues can manage to make it on time. Pull your socks up or look for something else.”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered again, resisting the urge to snatch the doughnut from his hands and grind it into the floor with the heel of my shoe.

  “Yes, yes. You should be,” he said, biting into the bun and sending a shower of crumbs everywhere – including onto the garish nylon – before turning and gliding off again.

  “FSB?” a message pinged from Fionn some time later.

  I nodded in her direction. I dug my prop packet of cigarettes out of my bag but couldn’t find my prop lighter in there. Then I remembered lending it to Chewbacca. Surely he hadn’t made off with it? Pink plastic? Hardly likely.

  Fionn looked as bad as I felt and as we walked through the back door to the smoker’s enclave – a Perspex bus-shelter-type structure NorthStar had erected on the edge of the car park – she pulled a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes.

  “I’m never drinking again,” she said dramatically.

  “Feeling that bad?”

  “Are you not?” she asked, incredulously. “I think the third bottle of wine did it for me. We should have stopped at two. No, actually we should have stopped at one.”

  “I
’m not feeling great, but I’ve had worse hangovers,” I said honestly, thinking back to yesterday – which of course I still hadn’t told Fionn about. But looking at her now she certainly didn’t look as if she had the constitution to deal with my confessions about my night of something-or-other with Chewbacca. Feeling my stomach turn a little (a strange combination of guilt and downright horniness) I didn’t think I had the constitution to relive it just now either.

  Fionn took a cigarette from her prop packet of Marlborough and pretended to light up.

  “So did you manage to get in the door without waking Alex or Emma?” I asked as I got one out too and started to fake-smoke. (We always put on a good performance just in case Bob was spying on us.)

  Fionn smiled. “Actually, I had a lucky escape. Emma was having a sleepover at her mum’s so I had Alex all to myself. And,” she said with a wink, “it would seem he doesn’t mind Drunk Me so much.”

  “Lucky you,” I said with a smile.

  “Well, indeed,” she smiled back, “but I’ll tell you something for nothing. My thighs are killing me today.”

  “Show off!” I teased.

  “And you? Did you make it up with Pearse? Whatever it was that was bugging the pair of you?”

  “I fell asleep, more’s the pity. On the sofa – so I’ve a crick in my neck but not so much as a sore thigh, never mind a pair of them.”

  “Well, it’s the weekend. There’s always tonight.”

  “I doubt it. It’s Friday. It’s Manna’s busiest night, remember? I’ll not see him. It will be me and a bottle of polish tonight, sorting out my God-awful pit of a flat.”

  Fionn laughed. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. Sure there’s only you in it. I share with the messiest man in Ireland, a five-year-old and enough Barbies to open a branch of Smyth’s. I sat on one of the feckers this morning. I’m sure I have a plastic-boob-shaped bruise on my arse just now.”