Model Guy

by Brooke, Simon

  "Mmm? Oh yeah, took up too much space," he tells me, his voice echoing around the barn-like emptiness. "Want some coffee?"

  "That'd be great," I say, drifting around and looking out at the view. In the distance a tractor is pushing something into a hole and crane moves almost imperceptibly against the shimmering skeins of cloud.

  "How do you have it?" he asks looking, slightly apprehensively, at a black and chrome espresso machine the size of a nuclear power station.

  "White with a couple of sugars, please." I wouldn't expect him to remember that.

  "Espresso? Cappuccino? Latte? Ristretto?"

  "Rigoletto? Ravioli? Ravenelli? Oh, I don't know - just white coffee would be great, thank you."

  "O...K," says the non-streak bronzed barrista. "Erm..." he yanks the handle off and looks for somewhere to bang out the dregs. He looks along the line of identical minimalist brushed stainless steel cupboard doors and chooses one. His smile indicates that this is the one with the bin.

  "I can have instant, Dad, honestly, whatever's easiest."

  "Nope, nope, this is no problem...honestly," he says, mesmerised by the line of dials and buttons. He presses one and suddenly boiling water begins to trickle down into the grate below. He leaps back and curses again.

  Just then an angel appears and saves us. I say that because a beautiful girl, straw blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, wearing only a baggy white T shirt and a pair of tiny panties wanders into the vast living area, the shadows of the window frames slipping over her shoulders and clearly visible breasts as she glides along, hips swaying. She comes up behind Dad, puts her arms around him, reaches up to kiss his neck and then gently, silently and confidently takes charge of the coffee machine.

  Two minutes later we're all three drinking wonderful lattes.

  "Very good." I tell the girl to break the ice.

  "This is Kari," says my Dad over his chunky American Retro mug. No, I don't think I've met this one before which is very possible since I haven't seen my Dad for nearly three weeks.

  "Charlie," I smile. I'm never sure whether to admit I'm the son or just let them assume that I'm a cool young dude my Dad happens to know - his dealer, perhaps.

  The girl smiles back from the black leather settee, her legs luxuriously folded up under her. Like father like son: me and my Dad both have the same taste in women. Except that his are usually ten years younger than mine.

  "Good coffee," I say again to the Sphinx-like Kari.

  "Should be," says my Dad proudly. "Kari works in Café Nero, don't you, Carina?" Presumably after school. "So what's this new job?" he asks, dragging his lips off hers and turning to me.

  "I've jacked the modelling in. I did a shoot for an internet company last week and they offered me a job as marketing manager, I mean, marketing director."

  "Director? You've got equity in this thing?"

  "Er, no. How do you mean? Have I invested something? No. I'm just on a salary."

  "Oh, that's good."

  "I thought I'd wait." I say, enjoying this paternal approval.

  "What's it called?"

  "2cool2btrue.com."

  "Oh, right, heard of them."

  "Really? Have you?"

  "Oh yeah, there's quite a bit of talk in the creative and media industry about them at the moment," says my Dad levelly. "Sort of a lifestyle site or something isn't it?"

  "That's right. It's a second generation website. It's going to be the first of the truly aspirational internet brands. You know, the web equivalent of Gucci or Louis Vuitton."

  "Interesting," says my Dad.

  "I think it will be."

  "All life consists of a label of one kind or another," says my Dad, running his fingers through Kari's hair as she stares at a silent MTV on the massive TV screen.

  As I leave a couple of hours later, it occurs to me that it would sometimes be nice to have a Dad who mowed the lawn on Saturday before falling asleep in front of the cricket and who spent Sunday mornings in the loo with the papers like normal fathers, but then you can't choose your parents.

  I do some shopping in town on the way home and then, because it's quite near to Chiswick anyway, drop in at the pub in Barnes where we used to meet at, post Saturday afternoon footy. I wander in, avoiding the gaze of the girl at the bar and look around for the old gang. But they're not there. I do another quick tour just in case I've missed them or don't recognise them and then I walk back over the bridge to Hammersmith and the get the bus to Chiswick.

  It's nearly seven when I let myself in. I smell cooking and hear Lauren laughing. I leave my bags in the hall and wander into the kitchen. She is sitting on the work top, swinging her legs and laughing at some middle-aged bloke who is stirring something on our hob and telling her a story: "So this girl's reading the bloody autocue as fast as she can and the director's shouting: For God's sake...." He trails off as he sees me. "Hello. You must be Charlie. I'm Peter, Peter Beaumont-Crowther," he says extending a hand.

  "Hi, Peter," I say. I've just realised that I really can't be bothered with this. I just want to lie in front of the telly with Lauren, a good bottle of wine and a crap film.

  I look down at what he's cooking. Lauren fills the silence: "Peter came to Sainsbury’s with me after we'd finished and it turns out he makes this chicken casserole thing. I thought it sounded delicious so I bullied him into making it." They both laugh. I know Lauren on charm mode so well. It's just a bit unnerving to see it happening in our kitchen. I'm not sure who is the target of it, me or Peter.

  "It's a kind of chicken cacciatore but with a few secret ingredients." Peter tells me, raising his eyebrows. The first thing that struck me about him was: 'Why don't you get a haircut?' His hair flops forward and he is constantly sweeping it back with his hands. He has a pudgy fleshy face, big lips and a sharp nose and he's just a bit too smooth for my liking.

  "Smells great," I say and leave the room. I'm kicking my trainers off in the bedroom when Lauren comes in. She watches me for a moment as I take my T-shirt off.

  "What's the matter?" she asks from the door.

  It's decision time: I can either go for a fully-fledged sulk which is what I feel like but would make tonight a hell of an effort for both of us and probably result in at least 48 hours of awkward silences and bickering or I can just give in and be a good boy. I choose the latter.

  "Sorry, babe, I'm just knackered."

  Lauren sensibly meets me half way.

  "That's OK." She turns me around and puts her arms round me, whispering in my ear. "Sorry about this. Peter insisted we try his chicken thing and you know I've got to be nice to him."

  "I know. I'm just going to have a shower and then I'll be fine."

  "'Kay," she says. She kisses me. "Hurry up, though, the others will be here in a minute."

  I'm about to walk out of the bedroom naked as any man would naturally do in his own flat but then I remember about Peter. Oh, sod it, I do it anyway.

  Chapter Seven

  I'm such a devoted boyfriend/crawler/good actor/spineless wonder or mixture of all four that I even ask to taste Peter's stupid bloody chicken creation.

  "Mmm," I say, licking my lips as he holds the spoon inches away from my mouth, his hand poised underneath it to catch the drips. "That's delicious." In fact it's just about okay. It tastes like chicken casserole with tinned tomatoes in it to me. "Babe, have you tasted this?" I say, deciding to put my back into this crawling.

  "Yep, good isn't it?" says Lauren, who is slicing courgettes at the other end of the kitchen. I know I'll get my reward for this tonight.

  Peter is smiling knowingly. Oh, leave it alone, you smarmy pillock. It's just bloody chicken.

  "Can't wait," I say, moving away, having done my duty. Getting drinks and laying the table is my limit of culinary ability, besides it's not a good idea to get in the way of Lauren while she is cooking unless she tells you to.

  Sarah is relating her favourite dinner party anecdote.

  "So I came back early one
day because I had to pick up a file I'd accidentally left on the dining table," she tells Peter in her heavy, throaty, 30 Marlborough Light-a-day voice. She is the only smoker that Lauren allows in the house and she revels in this accolade. "And I know the cleaner is there obviously because it's a Tuesday. So I put my head round the door to say hello and let her know I'm not a burglar or a mad rapist and there she is doing the washing up at the kitchen sink." She pauses. "Topless." She punctuates her punch line with a slurp of wine.

  "No!" Peter is leering across the table in disbelief.

  "Seriously. And she's not exactly Kate Moss either, yeah?"

  Peter roars with laughter.

  "What was she doing?" asks Peter.

  "It's just for cleaning the glasses," I explain, twisting two imaginary glasses over my own chest.

  Peter roars again.

  "What did you do?"

  "What could I do? I just said 'Oh, hi, Janet, could you do the oven please if you get a moment?"

  "But preferably not with your tits," adds Sarah's husband, Mark.

  More guffawing from Peter.

  "Oh, not that awful cleaner story," says Lauren, entering the room with two more bottles of wine and a basket of warm, rosemary infused focaccia which we immediately fall on.

  "Cleaners are such a problem aren't they?" says Sally. Everyone nods and mumbles agreement. Then Sally says: "The woman next to us has a Brazilian."

  I can't help it: "Have you looked?"

  Sarah is howling with laughter.

  "I think Sally's talking about her cleaner, Charlie," she says. "Not her bikini line."

  "Oh, right, sorry," I groan, overdoing it. There is a pause while Sarah and Peter try to control themselves.

  "Ooh, can I help you Lauren?" says Sally suddenly, always glad to lend a hand. Whenever she and her husband Tim come over, Sally seems to spend more time in our kitchen than most of the appliances.

  "No, Sally, honestly sit down, thank you. Charlie can do it."

  "Charlie's doing the wine," says Sally. "Here you are." She gets up. I let her - after all, I've done my bit with the brown-nosing casserole appreciation.

  "So Peter, you're in television," says Mark, who does something with futures in the City that we've all given up trying to understand a long time ago.

  'Yes," says Peter. "I run a company called Freak Productions.

  "What kind of things do you make?" asks Sarah, obviously feeling she should repay him after his tremendous reception for her cleaner story. At least I'll find out a little bit more about Lauren's New Best Friend without actually having to talk to him.

  "Mainly lifestyle programmes, like Ready Steady Cook."

  "You make Ready Steady Cook?" says Sarah. "I love that programme."

  "Er, no, but programmes like it," says Peter. "I do one for a cable channel where a celebrity chef comes round to your house and makes over all your boring, ordinary food - takes it up a peg or two. So if you're giving your kids beans on toast, for example, he'll make it really special by adding some extra ingredients or showing you how to make your own beans on toast with real Cannellini beans and fresh tomato sauce and newly baked sour dough bread.

  "Oh, right. You must really learn something," says Sarah. She mulls it over while Peter looks on smiling at the brilliance of his baby. "But on the other hand I think I'd be tempted to say 'OK, you try keeping a three year and a five year old from killing each other while you piss about with Cannellini beans and skinning tomatoes.' You know what I mean?"

  But apparently Peter doesn't. Tim who has also been listening to the exchange and who deals in commercial property doesn't really do jokes unless they come from a client, so there is only one person now roaring with laughter in the room. Oh dear, it's me.

  "It'd be wasted on our kids," says Mark, inadvertently twisting the knife, I mean the reinforced steel, Sabatier cook's paring knife, in the wound.

  Fortunately at that moment Lauren and Sally come back in, each with a tray full of starters arranged on small plates.

  "...it's called centre height," Lauren is saying to Sally. "The idea is that you arrange the dish so that it’s raised at the centre - looks more dramatic, more interesting, then it's so easy, you just chop up a packet of herbs and sprinkle them over - gives it a more professional appearance in no time."

  "That's another thing we do," says Peter. "We give little tips on how to get that professional look."

  "Oh, that would be useful," says Sarah, clearly feeling guilty about her last joke. I know she couldn't give a toss, though and so I'm trying not to laugh again.

  The others ask Lauren about her new career and she smiles knowingly at Peter. Then they ask about my new venture. Mark doesn't say anything even though I address most of my comments to him. He nods in an interested but noncommittal way.

  I make my usual contribution to the meal by taking the dinner plates into the kitchen and putting them in the dishwasher. Then I carefully take the Patisserie Valerie tart aux fraises out of its box. Two things are racing certainties at this point: one is that I'll nearly drop it which I do, breaking the crust slightly. Shit! Lauren will notice, even if no one else does. The other is that Mummy's Little Helper will make an appearance.

  "Can I do anything?" asks Sally from behind me.

  "No, it's fine, honestly. No problem. Thanks."

  "Are you sure?" she asks, her voice rising another octave.

  "Yes honestly. It's very kind Sally, but there's no need."

  "Really? I feel so guilty leaving you out here doing all this while we're in there having a good time." I'm probably having a better time loading the dirty dishwasher and struggling with an uncooperative tarte aux fraises than I would be in there, but I don't say it.

  "No, I know my place, Sally. The old kitchen porter."

  "Oh, you are good." Oh, you are annoying. "Are you sure?"

  "Oh, go on then, clean the oven will you?"

  There is a silence from Sally as I crush up the tart box and bash it down into the overflowing bin. Obviously not my funniest line ever. But when I turn around, Sally, in her pearls and immaculate Thomas Pink shirt and pressed blue jeans, is peering into the oven anxiously.

  Chapter Eight

  On the way to the tube station on Monday morning I grab a copy of the Post to see Nora's piece. I have to read through quite a bit of other stuff before I find it and by this stage I'm sitting on the train, so when I say: "Oh, shit," loudly, quite a few people around me notice.

  The first thing I see is a picture of me. It's from a job I did last year, or the year before, for some Swedish fashion house. I'm in a white linen shirt with most of the buttons undone and an old pair of jeans and cowboy boots, lying back against a huge, moss-covered log in a wood, hair ruffled, giving it the old, three quarters-to-camera, frowny 'come to bed' look. I hated the picture when I first saw it and never even put it in my book. Now coupled with the headline "At last.....the net nerd gets sexy," I hate it even more.

  It's huge - across nearly two whole pages. There are other pictures including one of me in a tux which is taken from a catalogue and another featuring me on a beach, wearing some stupid bright yellow trunks where I was originally advertising a holiday brochure, except that now my 'family' have been carefully cut out so I look like an extra from 'Baywatch'.

  If the pictures are toe curling, the text is worse:

  "The blonde, six foot hunk is self-effacing when I ask about his involvement with the new site. 'I think they've just employed me because I've got the right look, you know, classy, cool', he says."

  Did I? Possibly during lunch at some point, but I was being sarcastic. Tongue in cheek. Didn't she understand that? Well-aired observations about Americans and irony flit through my mind.

  "You won't know his name but you'll know his handsome face - and his well-toned body - from hundreds of advertisements and commercials around the world, for a variety of luxury products ranging from designer label clothing to fast cars. Charlie Barrett is one of Britain's most successfu
l male models..."

  No, I'm not - and I told her not to use the phrase male model.

  "Over lunch at his favourite restaurant, the mind bogglingly hip Dekonstruktion in Soho, haunt of celebrities and the media world's most beautiful people, he explains a bit more about how the site, dubbed 'the coolest thing in cyberspace', will work. "It's a second generation site so we've learnt from the mistakes of the net pioneers."

  I've never used that phrase in my life.

  '"It'll be the first web designer label," explains Barrett. "But what about the Gucci and Prada websites?" I ask'.

  No, you didn't.

  "Ah", he says, his deep blue eyes flashing with excitement, "they are just luxury products with a website - this will be a website that is itself a luxury product. It's a global village of cool. Your boss will actually be impressed to see you surfing it at work."' With his chiselled jaw and elegantly swept back mane of blonde hair, Barrett, who lives in trendy Chiswick with his model turned TV presenter girlfriend...

  When did that happen?

  "...is something of a designer label himself. But he has now decided to turn his back on the modelling world..."

  I can't wait for Penny to read that.

  ...and to trade on his good looks and his cool, self-assured manner in order to bring his lifestyle of elegance and hip sophistication to a wider audience."

  "'It's very aspirational'" he says, using one of the marketing men's favourite buzz words. Now we can all aspire to be like Charlie Barrett.'

  Feeling lightheaded with the initial shock and anger welling up inside me, I fold up the paper as the woman next to me quickly goes back to her book after allowing herself one final glance at my face.

  I get off at Piccadilly Circus and feel, or at least imagine I feel, thousands of pairs of eyes on me. I've been stopped in bars, at the gym and even on the street before with the question: "Aren't you the bloke from - ?" Or, "Sorry, but aren't you in that ad for - ?" It goes with the territory and it can even be quite funny sometimes, depending on who makes the comment and what kind of mood you're in, but "Hang on, aren't you that vain, arrogant tosser in today's Post?" isn't quite as much fun somehow.