Playing by the Rules

by Imelda Evans

  Kate lifted a hand off the ladder long enough to slap her friend’s ankle. ‘Behave, you! You know what I mean. Will you accommodate him?’

  This time, Jo just looked. Kate made a rude noise.

  ‘Oh, you are impossible! Answer the question, girl! Will you or won’t you —’ she paused to choose her words carefully ‘— receive Declan O’Leary into your home as your guest?’

  Jo gave the painting she was adjusting a final nudge and leapt lightly to the ground before replying.

  ‘Yes, I will. Although – oof! Kate! Get off! Not that I don’t love you, you understand, but if you don’t start being more careful with your hugs, we’ll have to register my niece or nephew as a concealed weapon.’

  Kate grinned as she released her friend and waddled over to lower herself onto the long padded bench in the middle of the gallery.

  ‘Your niece or nephew is a concealed weapon, at least as far as my body is concerned. Would you look at me? I am approximately the size of the Hindenburg and I swear I can hear myself creaking when I move. And still your brother insists that I am beautiful. What did I do to deserve him?’ She smiled into the middle distance and Jo shook her head.

  ‘And he thinks he doesn’t deserve you. You do know that you two are positively sickening, don’t you?’ Jo sighed and tried to look severe, but her friend’s happy glow defeated her and she found herself grinning foolishly. She cleared her throat of the sudden lump that had formed in it and changed the subject.

  ‘So, remind me again why I am putting up this Doolan —’

  ‘Declan.’

  ‘— sorry, Declan character for a few weeks?’

  ‘Jo! I told you all this on the phone yesterday.’

  ‘I know, but you rang while I was in the middle of receiving this lot and I wasn’t really paying attention.’ She gestured in the direction of the stack of paintings leaning against the wall. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Kate. I know I should have been paying attention, but I’ve got an opening coming up and need to focus on what’s important. One doesn’t get to be the proprietor of a chic inner-city art gallery by letting men take precedence over paintings, even when the man is a friend of one’s sister-in-law.’

  ‘One left out “upmarket”, “boutique”, “select” and “modern” when describing one’s precious gallery.’ For Kate, it was acerbic.

  ‘Well, one doesn’t wish to blow one’s own trumpet,’ Jo replied, casting her eyes down in mock humility.

  ‘Much!’ Kate shook her head and laughed. ‘Do you remember anything I told you?’

  ‘I remember lots,’ Jo said, as she sorted through paintings. ‘I know that Dennis —’

  ‘DECLAN!’

  ‘Whoops – Declan. Did I get it wrong again?’ She grinned at her friend. ‘Anyway, I know that he’s a friend that you met while you were in Paris, that he’s been living in Sydney and now he’s moved to Melbourne for his work but there’s some problem with his new flat so he needs a place to stay till it’s sorted out.’ She found the painting she was looking for, picked it up and turned to grin at her friend. ‘How am I going?’

  Kate smiled back indulgently. ‘Perfectly, as you know full well. Do you think there will ever be a day when I don’t rise to your teasing?’

  Jo paused to drop a kiss on the top of Kate’s head as she passed. ‘I hope not, hon. But seriously,’ she said, as she hoisted the painting into position, ‘why isn’t he staying with you? I mean, I don’t mind having him, but surely he’d rather stay with people he knows?’

  ‘He is staying with us at the moment, but we’re so far out of town that when he starts working full-time next week, the commute is going to kill him. He says he doesn’t mind, but I know he’s just being polite. He really needs to be closer.’

  ‘And I, with my inner-city pad, spare bedroom and reputation for hospitality – not to mention an inability to say no to you – seemed the logical choice of hostess.’

  ‘Quite,’ Kate replied to Jo’s back, as her friend was once again bent over the stack of paintings. ‘Although . . .’ she paused, as if weighing what she was about to say, ‘you won’t be too hospitable, will you? I know you were joking before – about having him, I mean – but seriously, his flat won’t be ready for at least six weeks, and I’d hate for things to go pear-shaped between you before it’s time for him to move out.’

  Jo straightened so abruptly that she had to clutch the wall for support as she swung to face her friend. ‘Kate Adams!’

  ‘Kate Marchant, now,’ Kate corrected, with maddening calm.

  ‘Kate Marchant, then. That only makes it worse! My best friend and my sister-in-law! Are you suggesting that I would use, abuse and discard your friend in less than six weeks?’

  ‘No . . . not exactly. I just —’

  ‘Not exactly? Kate!’

  ‘Now Jo, calm down.’ Jo made a strangled gurgling noise, but let her continue. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that Declan’s your type – your three-week type. You know: the good-looking ones you go out with for about two weeks, then they start irritating you, and you get rid of them somewhere around the three-and-a-half-week mark.’

  Jo wondered if she looked as poleaxed as she felt. Sure, she’d been out with a few guys in her time, but there were types? And yes, she was the inventor of the ‘three strikes and you’re out of my life’ system of relationship management, but there was an average? A sufficiently regular pattern for Kate to have counted?

  She looked harder at her friend to see if she was taking the mickey out of her. But Kate was just sitting there, absently rubbing her stomach, apparently unaware of having said anything earth-shattering. She must be serious. Jo filed this new way of looking at her love life under ‘things to be thought about later’, turned back to the paintings and tried to match Kate’s matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Well, even if he is my type, I’m not in the market for a man at the moment, so your friend will be quite safe with me.’ She pulled out a painting with rather more energy than was strictly necessary and set off for the opposite wall. ‘To tell the truth, I’m just about ready to give up on men altogether.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jo saw Kate wriggle around on the bench so that she could face her, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Really? This is new. Since when?’

  ‘Since last night,’ Jo replied from the ladder. ‘Since I realised, halfway through dinner with that guy I met last week, that I was bored.’ And since you just told me that my love life has become predictable enough for statistical analysis, she added to herself.

  ‘Bored with him?’

  Jo rested the painting on the top step and looked over her shoulder at her friend as she tried to explain. ‘No – or rather, yes, but not just with him. With the whole thing. Time after time, date after date, it’s the same old, same old. They’re either “suitable” guys I wouldn’t go to bed with if the future of the species depended on it, or they’re cute, but we have nothing in common. And don’t even get me started on the married ones who think I’m going to go for “my wife doesn’t understand me”.’ She lifted the painting onto the wall with a grunt, and began adjusting it as she warmed to her theme.

  ‘I’m just over it, Kate. I’m over getting all excited just to be disappointed. I’m sick of frocking up and going out of my way for guys whose true colours turn out to be three shades of mud brown. I’m tired of looking for diamonds in the rough, only to find they’re all cubic bloody zirconia.’

  Kate made a sympathetic noise. ‘Still no sign of Mr Right, then?’

  Jo snorted and leant over to tug at the corner of the painting. ‘Mr Right? As if. It’s not even as though I’m asking for Mr Right. You know me: marriage is a great institution . . .’

  ‘. . . but I’m not ready to live in an institution,’ Kate finished.

  ‘No offence to —’

  ‘— present company.’ Kate finished again. ‘I know.’

  Jo stopped fussing for a second to grin over her shoulder. ‘I
take it I’ve said that before.’

  Kate grimaced back at her. ‘Just a few times, yeah.’

  ‘Well, you take my point then. I don’t need Mr Right. Mr Right Now would do me. Hell, at the moment I’d settle for Mr Right-for-the-weekend. But I can’t even manage that. Haven’t been able to for . . . I don’t know . . . a year? Maybe more.’

  She turned back to the wall and decided that finding a decent man was not the only thing she couldn’t manage. This adjustment was not working at all. She lifted the painting off the wall to start again.

  ‘I have to face facts. There may be princes out there, Kate, but all the ones I’ve been kissing lately are most definitely frogs. Honestly, the way my luck with blokes is going, I’m giving serious thought to batting for the other team.’

  Without turning to see how her friend was taking this pronouncement, she settled the painting, leant back at a precarious angle and squinted at it. ‘Do you think that’s straight?’

  To her surprise, no answer was forthcoming from the floor. She turned around to find her friend, one hand on her back and one on her distended belly, convulsed with silent laughter. For a moment, Jo was completely lost; then she realised what she’d said.

  ‘Oh, very funny. Some best friend you are. Here I am, trying to share my pain, and all you can do is read double entendres into perfectly innocent questions about paintings.’ She sniffed and tried to turn her back with a flounce, but since she was still on the ladder, all she achieved was an inelegant lurch, which only made Kate laugh harder. With a sigh, she jumped down and headed over to where her friend was sitting to check the painting for herself. It was straight, which was more than could be said for Kate, who, between her giggles and her baby-affected balance, was almost falling off the seat.

  Jo sighed again, propped her up, and protested. ‘You know, Kate, it really wasn’t that funny.’

  Kate steadied herself and tried to catch her breath. ‘Not funny? Jo, give me a break. Even without the “straight” gag, the idea of you as a lesbian is just about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  Jo privately agreed that her conversion was fairly unlikely, but she was not in the habit of admitting she was wrong without a fight. ‘And why, exactly? I tell you, I’m over men. Maybe a nice girl is just what I need.’

  In reply, Kate grabbed her hand and spun her around so that she was looking out of the large front window of the gallery. ‘Okay, Jo, if you’re so over men, tell me what you see.’

  Parked in the space right outside the window was a hulking four-wheel drive, but Jo knew that the car wasn’t what Kate was asking her to look at. No, Kate was talking about the man who was standing with his back to them, reaching into the back seat.

  His rear view was certainly worth looking at. From their seated position, they had a direct line of sight to his bum – and it was a bum of superlative cuteness. He was leaning forward just enough for the fabric of his faded jeans to mould over the sweetest, roundest butt cheeks Jo had seen in a long time.

  Jo felt her breath shorten as she ogled the hard muscle of his behind. Then her eyes strayed to where the worn fabric stretched over a thigh that looked firm enough to bounce golf balls off, and she felt her fingers twitch involuntarily with the urge to test that hardness first-hand.

  Then he straightened up, and gave her the full benefit of his upper body. If she had had any doubts before, they were put to rest now. This was a man who had either been unfairly blessed in the muscle department, or who worked out. A lot. He wasn’t excessively tall – only a couple of centimetres taller than she was. But since she stood just shy of six foot herself, that was enough. Any more height might have diluted the effect of the broad shoulders, the muscular upper arms, the perfect inverted triangle of his back . . . Jo stopped her mental checklist.

  Forget about Declan. This guy was her type. The type it never worked with, true; the type she had nothing in common with, but who never failed to raise her blood pressure and make her rush in where sense and experience should tell her to run in the other direction. Against her better judgement, Jo found herself licking her lips and, before she could stop herself, she let out a heartfelt ‘Phwoar!’

  Beside her, she heard Kate giggle. ‘And you’re giving up men and taking up with women. Yeah, right.’

  Jo turned her back on the unknown hunk and made a face at her. ‘Betrayed by my own libido. All right, I’ll concede that one. Lesbianism probably isn’t my scene.’ She sneaked another look over her shoulder before resolutely turning back to face her friend.

  ‘But I’m serious about the giving up men thing. At least for a while. As you so rudely pointed out yourself, I’m in a rut —’ She paused, surprised, as Kate raised her eyebrows at her. ‘Okay, maybe that’s not the best phrase, but you know what I mean.’

  She turned to look out of the window again. She couldn’t resist. The man had finished rummaging and was standing, one hand holding the door open, with his head bent over his mobile phone. A lock of deep black hair flopped over his forehead and she felt another twinge of attraction. She had a thing for unruly hair. She shook her head and deliberately turned her back on the temptation.

  ‘See, hunky dude out there is a perfect example of why I have to do this. I’m all hot and bothered just looking at him. If I hadn’t decided to give up men, I’d be out there like a shot, finding out if he were single and lining up a date. But where would it get me? He’d just be like all the others. After two dates we would’ve established that the only thing we have in common is a mutual interest in his muscles, and that would be the end of it.’

  She got up and twitched restlessly about the room, adjusting a picture here, a sculpture there. ‘It’s always the same with guys like him. I get the hots for them, I go out with them, they bore me, I get shot of them and then I just start again. I’m tired of going over the same old ground, Kate. I need to stop.’

  She stopped to pick up a small statue of a dancer and cradled it in one hand as she rubbed at non-existent finger marks.

  ‘Maybe I’m just not destined to be with a man. Maybe I need to “find myself”. Take flamenco lessons, or cooking classes or something. Isn’t that what the mags tell you to do? Focus on your own interests? Find your bliss?’

  She gestured dramatically as she spoke, then, realising that she still had the dancer in her hand, put it down with exaggerated care and looked at her friend, who was watching with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Find your bliss? And that means . . .?’

  Jo felt her face relax into a grin. ‘God knows. But I think it’s time I found out. And I’m not going to do that by going on date after pointless date just because guys keep asking me. It’s time I had a new direction. Starting right now.’

  She drew herself up to her full height, clasped her hands over her heart and adopted a full-speed-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes look.

  ‘From this moment on, I, Jo Marchant, am committed to finding my bliss – whatever, or wherever, that may be – and I shall let no man get in my way. As of now, I am officially a man-free zone!’

  Kate clapped and Jo bowed. This felt good. It must be the right thing to do. Excellent. She was on the way to finding her bliss.

  Then Kate shook her head and let her down with thud. ‘Well, I wish you luck – but frankly, I give it a week. No – wait – it’s Thursday. I give it three days.’

  Jo abandoned the pose as her elation fell away. She put her hands on her hips and glared at her friend. ‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means that, apart from time off for illness, I don’t think you’ve gone a fortnight without a date since you left high school.’

  ‘Oh Kate, don’t exaggerate!’

  ‘Okay, call it three weeks, then. Can you deny that?’

  Put on the spot, Jo did a quick mental calculation. It might just be true. On average, anyway. But was that her fault? She met a lot of men in the course of her job. If they wanted to buy her dinner, who was she to argue? It was good for business and t
he food was better than if she cooked for herself. Besides, she had always maintained that if they had the guts to ask, the least she could do was give them a chance.

  ‘Okay, I suppose I can’t deny it. But so what?’

  ‘So, I don’t think you’d know what to do with yourself without men in your life. How would you amuse yourself without your playthings?’

  Jo heard herself emit a high-pitched squeak of outrage. ‘Kate Adams!’

  ‘Marchant,’ her friend replied, again with maddening calm.

  ‘Whatever. I do not treat men like playthings!’

  ‘Yes, you do. You said it yourself: you play with them until you get bored, then you return them to storage and find another.’

  Jo felt her mouth drop open. She had said something very like that. But since when did Kate call her on every word like this?

  ‘That’s not exactly what I said. In any case, even if I admit I treat them like playthings – and I don’t! – it’s no different from the way they’d treat me, given half a chance.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe. Anyway, the point is, full marks for wanting to give up men, but I don’t believe you can do it.’

  Jo felt her determination rise with the challenge. ‘Oh ye of little faith. I can so do this. Just you watch me!’

  ‘For how long?’

  Jo looked at her friend suspiciously. If she didn’t know better, she would think Kate was deliberately baiting her. But Kate wasn’t like that. At least, she never had been before. She must really doubt her.

  Could she be right? Was Jo really so addicted to dates that she couldn’t go a fortnight without one?

  Humph! That wasn’t true. And if it were, all the more reason to go through with this.

  Kate took advantage of her silence. ‘If you’re really serious, you’ll put a time on it. Come on, Jo – I’m goal girl, remember? If you want to set a goal, it should be realistic, attainable and measurable. You’ve already blown the first two but you should at least go for one out of three.’ Jo opened her mouth, but Kate didn’t give her a chance to speak. ‘So, give me a time line. Tell me exactly how long you think you can maintain this charade of not being interested in men.’