The Waitress

by Melissa Nathan

  Then suddenly, as if from nowhere, another feeling, not quite as nauseating as love, not quite as spiritual as heartache but none the less very real, rose within him. Without lifting his head, his eyes shifted to his upper thigh and yes, sure enough, he found the cause. On it, on his thigh, as bold as brass, lay Eva’s hand. He knew it was hers because of the vast plastic ring on her middle finger. And because she was the nearest person to him.

  He froze. Then he heated up. Then an inner ice cracked through the heat. His body was all over the place. He could almost hear a weatherman grinning inanely into the camera, pointing out various parts of his body: “And here we have a warm front drifting down to the groin, while in the north, I’m afraid it’s a thick, dense fog.”

  Matt’s learning curve shot up into a vertical line.

  “You’re going to have to forget her,” came a voice in his ear.

  Forget who? he thought.

  “Come on,” said Eva, her hand—the one on his thigh—squeezing ever so gently. “I’ll get you another drink.”

  And suddenly the hand was gone as Eva took it to the bar with her.

  He watched her and the hand go. That skirt was short. Not slutty short—just-right short. And the top went in and out exactly where she did, as if it was meant to. No, her body wasn’t like Jennifer’s, but if you looked at it from the right angles you could see it had many good points. He watched it for a while from the right angles. He watched it as she stood at the bar, one leg resting on the foot-rail, strappy sandal sliding off her foot, skirt rising up her thigh. He watched it as she turned slightly to her left and eyed a bloke at the other end of the bar. He eyed her back! And then she smiled at him. He smiled back! Tosser, thought Matt.

  By the time Matt looked back at Eva, she was walking toward him with a warm, inviting smile. He jumped up, taking the drinks out of her hand.

  “So,” he said, as soon as they sat down. “They’re showing a new Tom Cruise film at the Odeon.”

  “Ooh, I love Tom Cruise.”

  “Do you? Me too! Isn’t that funny!”

  “Yeah. Amazing.”

  “Fancy going? Tonight?”

  Eva sipped her drink and gave him a little grin.

  “Yeah, why not?” she shrugged.

  Dan glanced across the street as he turned the Closed sign to face outward, and Paul sat himself down at one of the tables near the counter. Dan joined his business partner and prepared himself for the worst. He could never have expected to hear what he heard. He blinked at Paul, and then smiled.

  “Congratulations! Blimey! What the hell brought that on?”

  Paul allowed himself a smile. He shrugged. “I just woke up and decided she was the one for me.”

  “Had enough flings on the side had you?”

  Paul shook his head firmly. “Those days are over, mate.”

  “Good. So what really brought this on?”

  Paul gave a resigned look. He knew he couldn’t fool his best mate. “Well, all right,” he started, and then gave a big sigh. “She just said that she wanted to know where our future lay, that sort of thing.”

  Dan eyed his friend. “An ultimatum?”

  Paul frowned in concentration. “I suppose, as it was, the relationship wasn’t really fair on her. She’s not getting any younger, she wants kids one day, we’ve been together five years. She needed to know where it was going, or—”

  “Or she was going to leave you?” finished Dan quietly.

  Paul nodded. He spoke quietly. “And it made me realize that all those stupid flings were meaningless. Without her I’m nothing. New slate. New me.” Dan smiled. “The lads at work are ripping the piss out of me, but I knew you’d understand,” continued Paul. “You being engaged and all that.” Dan stopped smiling. “When you’ve met the one, you’ve met the one.”

  “This is wonderful news,” said Dan. “So why the long face?”

  And so Paul told him.

  It was only afterward, when Dan was sitting on the floor in the silent kitchen, staring at the dishwasher, that he realized he couldn’t ever have prepared himself for the worst because his imagination wasn’t that good.

  Paul had said his well-rehearsed piece about how he had got the promotion. About how this and the prospect of his wedding made him realize it was time to stop gambling with money that wasn’t his alone any more. About how he wanted to put a deposit on a house and he might as well put it on as big a house as he could get. He owed it to his girlfriend—no, his fiancée. And then he had waited in an echoing silence.

  Dan tried to speak, cleared his throat and tried again. “Mate…” he said weakly, all his breath gone.

  “I know,” said Paul sadly. “The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.”

  “Hurt me?” repeated Dan.

  “Yes. You mean a lot to me. This place means a lot to me. But I just feel…well, like I said, ‘new me.’ I haven’t got a choice.”

  “You haven’t hurt me,” whispered Dan.

  “Oh thank God—”

  “You’ve ruined me.”

  Paul managed a laugh. “Oh come on. It can’t be that bad.”

  “Of course it’s that bad. I can’t afford to keep this place on my own if I have to buy you out.”

  “It’s only a café, Dan. This is my life.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that. Paul left, although Dan couldn’t remember how. All he could remember, as he leaned back against the cold fridge door, was his father’s favorite motto, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and the price of the engagement ring with all the wotsits.

  Katie made it back to London in good time—she took the wrong turning off that wretched roundabout again, but next time she’d get it right. During the journey, she took two calls from Dennis Blatchett’s solicitor. The first was to say that Dennis was very keen: he wanted a fast sale and she sounded perfect. Name your price. She named her price. The next phone call from Dennis Blatchett’s solicitor was to say that Dennis wanted £10,000 more. After she’d parked, she sat in her car for a while, wondering where on earth she’d find that much.

  She decided that when she got upstairs she’d phone her mum. She’d like to phone Great-Aunt Edna and discuss it with her, but it was late—and also she didn’t want her to think she was asking for more money. What she did know though was that she felt fired up with determination. She wanted Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.

  From her car, she looked up at Jon’s light in the flat. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d got such a good parking space. It was a sign. Everything was going to be all right. Like a black cat or two magpies, a space right outside a London flat was a message. Right. It was time to go in.

  She heaved herself out of the car, pulling her bag with her as she went. She couldn’t wait to apologize to Jon and re-write herself. She’d worked out exactly what she’d say to him on the way home. She ran up the stairs, opened the door and catapulted herself on to the sofa where she knew he would be sitting. He nearly hit the ceiling in fright.

  “Jon,” she rushed. “You have to listen without interrupting, OK?”

  He pointed at the television. It was Star Trek: The Next Generation.

  “Call me when it’s over,” she said. “I’ll be unpacking.”

  Half an hour later, he came into her room with two mugs of tea.

  “Right,” he said, handing her one and then sitting cross-legged on her bed. “Fire away.”

  “I am so sorry for being a completely selfish, self-centered flatmate for the past two years.”

  Jon looked at her.

  “That’s OK,” he said. “Did you have a nice break?”

  “Yes.”

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  “Have I been horrendous?” asked Katie.

  “No.”

  “Am I an awful friend?”

  “No. I think you’re quite a good one actually.”

  “But I’ve been very selfish. That time with the perfume.”

  He smiled and shrugge
d. “’s only perfume.”

  “No, it was more than perfume. It was your property and I abused it.”

  He frowned. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Have you been on some hippy retreat or something? You haven’t taken any mind-altering drugs have you?”

  “No,” she said. “Sukie made me realize how selfish I’ve been and thoughtless—borrowing your laptop to write a book that night—and always expecting everything to be laid on a plate for me all the time…”

  “What are you girls like?” he was shaking his head. “You’re all as mad as each other.”

  “That’s sexist, Jon.”

  “It’s true. Look at you both. Mad as March hares.”

  “But Sukie said—”

  “Sukie’s going through hell. She’s angry. She took it out on you.”

  “No, it was more than that.”

  “Anyway,” said Jon. “I was dead chuffed that night you borrowed my laptop.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cos I won a bet with Sukie. I made twenty pounds without moving my arse.”

  Katie’s eyes widened in surprise. “Sukie bet money on me being able to write a book?”

  Jon laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. She put money on a literary agent knocking on the door and offering to represent you after reading the title.”

  Katie tried to laugh. “Oh yeah, that’s funny,” she smiled. “That’s really funny.”

  “I know,” he laughed so much he fell back on to the bed. “So thanks to you, I won twenty pounds and had a good laugh.”

  “Excellent. Well,” said Katie. “I’m glad I could help.”

  “Actually, there is something you could do to really help.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “You could read the synopsis of my next book before I give it to Richard Miller. And then look at my list of future ideas for him. I’ve just finished it. I want to send it tomorrow morning, and I’m bricking it.”

  She was overcome with emotion. “Me?” she gasped. “Why me?” “Because you owe me for all those bloody CVs I wrote for you.”

  Matt sat in the cinema to Eva’s right, staring at the screen, his left leg close enough to her for her hand to stray, but not too close that it should look obvious. It was such an unnatural position his thigh muscles were starting to cramp. He wondered that she could eat at a time like this, let alone be so wholly preoccupied with her popcorn and Diet Coke. He coughed a little and used the excuse to move his left leg slightly nearer to her. It touched her accidentally, so he shot it away again fast. It practically rebounded off his own leg and back into hers, so he tightened the muscles again and kept it close to him. He was now sitting like a coy transvestite. He tried to remember how he usually sat. He visualized himself on the bus. Nope. He had no idea. He tried to relax his body but stopped short when he realized that this might mean knocking into Eva again. His leg was now beginning to shake. God, he wished for once in his life he was thick. It would be much less exhausting.

  Next to him Eva laughed at an advert, then leaned in toward him.

  “Popcorn?” she whispered in his ear, offering him some.

  He shook his head.

  This was ridiculous. Here he was, about to watch a fantastic sci-fi thriller with an attractive, bubbly, bright 21-year-old woman who had put her hand on his thigh, and his head was ruining it.

  Eva giggled at the adverts again.

  He frowned at the screen.

  Maybe she wasn’t so bright. These adverts were crap. How could she find them funny? Maybe she had some kind of mental disorder. Maybe that was why Jennifer no longer came to lunch with her, and why she was in the cinema with a bloke four years younger than her. Maybe she had the mental age of a fifteen-year-old and he’d been so hung up on Jennifer he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he was on a date with the saddest woman in the country. He almost smiled. It would figure. The saddest woman and the unluckiest bloke. Of course the film would be crap too. That would be the icing on the cake, wouldn’t it?

  Yep, he should just face it. The film would be shite, Eva would reveal herself as special needs and he’d dislocate his left leg from the effort of not touching her. Excellent.

  “Hey Matt,” whispered Eva.

  “Hm?” he turned to her.

  And then, without any warning whatsoever, she kissed him so softly and lingeringly he thought he was in slow-motion. And paradise.

  Late that evening, still in the café, Dan stared at the café phone for a long time trying to decide who to call with his shit news. Geraldine deserved to be the first to know. She was going to be his life partner. She had stood by him through thick and thin. Yes, she deserved to know that her engagement ring would be his last shiny gift for a long while. And maybe she’d have some useful advice for him. Yes, he sighed loudly. He would phone Geraldine. Maybe she could come and pick him up; he was in no fit state to drive. He started to dial her number then his eye strayed to the list of contact numbers on the wall that Katie had put there. He slammed down the receiver, and then, quickly, before he changed his mind, started to call her at home.

  Katie looked up at the ringing phone again.

  “Please,” she begged Jon, “let me answer it.”

  Jon shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  “It might be for you.”

  “All the more reason not to answer.”

  They stared at the phone.

  “That’s the sixth time in under an hour,” said Katie. “It must be important.”

  “Not more important than my synopsis. Where are you up to? Has the talking snake come out of the wardrobe yet?”

  The phone stopped and Katie sighed. “I haven’t started it yet. I’m still on your list of future ideas. I like the new genre ‘lager sagas.’ She read from his list: “‘Say goodbye to clogs and shawls, say hello to jobs and brawls.’” She looked up. “Very nice.”

  “Does that mean you haven’t started the synopsis yet?”

  “Well, I’m tired.”

  “Jesus, Katie. My nephew reads faster than you. I know, I’ll make you a coffee.”

  He left the room as the phone started ringing again. “No answering!” he yelled from the kitchen. Then he popped his head out from behind the kitchen door. “I think,” he said slowly, “it was sixty CVs in all.”

  Katie began reading the synopsis.

  Just before midnight, a none-too-pleased Geraldine parked her car outside Crichton Brown’s and hooted four long blasts on her car horn. Five minutes later, Dan stumbled into her car and they drove off back to her flat.

  At approximately 12:03 A.M., in Eva’s flat, Matt Davies lost his virginity, aged 17 and seven months, and started his epic journey of sexual discovery that was to last him the next six decades of his life.

  Chapter 27

  DAN SAT ON HIS APARTMENT FLOOR, CLICKED HIS PHONE OFF AND FLUNG it on the sofa. Then he turned to the pad at his feet and crossed off another name so vehemently it tore the paper. He gave his stubble a slow scratch. He was glad Katie was back at the café. He hoped she was feeling better. Perhaps now Sukie would stop behaving so oddly. He gave a long sad sigh. Only two days to go before the café’s summer party. Should he tell her before or after it? He knew he should tell her before the others, although chances were they’d guessed something was wrong by his absence today. The only problem was, the longer he left it, the less energy he had and the less energy he had, the less he felt able to do it. He wasn’t even sure if he had it in him to go to the party. And if Katie took the news half as badly as Geraldine had, it would mean another hysterical banshee on his hands.

  Ah dear, Geraldine. Just one more thing to worry about. It had been hard facing up to the fact that he had to tell Geraldine such bad news. Hard because he realized there was something wrong if he was this nervous to tell his bad news to the woman he was about to marry. And he’d been right to be nervous. Where he had hoped to spend the night resting his throbbing head on the forgiving bosom of his fiancée, he had spent it trying to reassure a mad harpie. Instea
d of helping him in his hour of need, Geraldine had just become another stress on top of all the others.

  Her reaction had been the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. It made him question whether there had been other times he’d turned to her for help. He realized he never had, and that this was not a healthy dynamic for a partnership. He looked back over their years together and wondered why he had never asked her for help. He realized the painful truth: he had never thought she was able to help him: practically, emotionally or psychologically. It just wasn’t in her make-up.

  This made him question the kind of man she needed. He concluded that this was someone with thicker skin than he had; someone who got a kick out of looking after their woman; who felt that a high maintenance woman was a feminine woman; someone who was harder than him; who wouldn’t notice her constant hammering away at the emotional bridge they’d be building together, or notice her chip-chip-chipping away at his self-confidence; someone whose self-confidence was protected by a hard shell of complacency. And someone who made lots of money.

  This made him question the kind of woman he needed. He got a bit stuck on that because he kept remembering kissing Katie at the wedding.

  None of this meant he didn’t love Geraldine or that they didn’t have a lot of wonderful memories to look back on. It didn’t mean that breaking up would be easy. Breaking up never was. He’d tried it before, so he should know.

  And that’s where he always came back to the same point: on the one hand, her reaction had been the straw that broke the camel’s back; but on the other, bigger, hand, he was a nervous camel and Geraldine was a piece of straw with a rod of steel going through it. Did he really have it in him to leave her?

  They hadn’t spoken since he’d told her the news and they’d rowed so apocalyptically. At first he hadn’t phoned her because he was angry. Then because he was confused by his thoughts on their relationship. Then it had started to veer from confusion, to awareness that the relationship was over for good, to fatalistic realism that this was probably just another row. Only in the last hour or so had it started to be fear. Because if they were fated to stay together he was in for a right rollocking when they finally spoke.