“What’s weird?” I ask, sipping my wine carefully.
“According to his location, he’s right where we are.”
Alice turns her phone slowly towards me.
“Is this seat taken?”
My eyes go slowly from the screen on Alice’s cell phone to the origin of the question. It’s the same man, wearing the exact same T-shirt as though the photo has only just been taken. I have a tiny little heart attack and let out a weird little shriek my hand is too late to my mouth to stop. Alice snaps the phone against her belly so hard it’s bound to bruise, covering the action with a weird smile.
This is the kind of strange coincidence you read in the creepy column of the free subway newspaper, right before someone gets killed. I wonder if they’ve been stalking us all night, following the location on Alice’s cell phone and they’re about to good cop bad cop us for the location of the microfilm.
I tap the table in sequence, take a sip of each of my glasses of wine and count out the first seventeen prime numbers in my head, while Alice continues to smile weirdly, neither one of us really sure what to say.
“If it’s taken-”, Mike says, looking around the room.
“No”, Alice says, starting into action. “Sit down, please.”
Mike slides into the booth and someone else slides in alongside him. This guy wasn’t on Mike’s Tinder page so how the hell am I going to know who he is without asking? If that isn’t progress, I don’t know what is, and he isn’t all that bad looking either.
I wonder how long it’ll take me to put him off. I mean, after all, I’m sat here tapping the table repeatedly, drinking equal amounts of wine from two glasses and working out the square root of the year in which I was born, while I stare at them both inanely.
Chapter Three
It doesn’t take long before we strike up conversation, and for a while I feel like a perfectly normal human being. I do imagine us all on the orient express hurtling towards an exotic destination, while someone somewhere else on the train is getting brutally murdered, but that’s still fairly normal for me, and at least it’s comforting to know that if we share absolutely nothing else tonight, at least we’ll share an alibi.
Mike’s friend is another junior doctor called Charlie. He’s got soft hands, a slight overbite from where he used to suck his thumb and charming blue eyes that have probably seen way too much pornography. Alright, my mom’s not the only Sherlock Holmes in the family.
He’s not exactly my usual type, but at least he gets a plus point for not wearing plaid. Mike looks like a grown up version of the boy that used to steal my dinner money at school. He’s got an oddly cherubic face, which he either can’t grow a beard on or keeps extremely closely shaved - I can’t decide which - and piercing brown eyes like raisins pushed into dough. He listens along atently to the conversation like a basset hound waiting to be tossed a cream bun and has a weird habit of tapping the table before he’s about to speak. Okay, I’m the last person that should be criticising people on their weird habits, but believe me, there’s OCD and there’s just plain odd.
Alice has just finished explaining what she does for a living when Mike moves his hand towards the centre of the table and gives it a stiff little two finger tap. I can see it coming a mile off even before he’s launched out the words.
“So, why the two glasses?” he says, pointing those same fingers at me like a pistol. “Did we miss the offer?”
We’ve done names, professions, small talk on the bar itself, which, by the way, is way less divey than either of these two med school graduates want it to be, and now Mike wants to tap his way straight to the nitty gritty. I don’t blame him, it’s kind of impossible to avoid asking.
“I’m just greedy”, I say, shrugging. “I like things to come in twos.”
Mike leans back into his seat, his raisin eyes twinkling with what is undoubtedly a dirty thought. Men are so predictable. You give them a thread of innuendo and they run away and make up a blanket.
“That too”, I add, just to see how he’ll react. He smiles so widely beer almost falls out of the corners of his mouth.
“I buy things in twos all the time”, Charlie says. “At least you don’t have to go up to the bar so often.”
“They do table service here”, Mike adds, tapping the table briefly before he speaks. “No one has to go up to the bar.”
I sip my glasses of wine one by one, pretending someone has slipped poison into one our drinks and we’re secretly playing russian roulette. I’m hoping it’s Mike’s. Watching him choke and then keel over the table would liven up the night a little bit. Alright, I suppose that’s a little unfair. I know I’ve got high standards in men and Mike doesn’t make it even half way there, but watching someone choke to death would be absolutely awful. To be fair, this night is already livelier than a lot of my normal ones, and anyway, he might knock my wine over on his death roll, and that would be disastrous.
“So”, Alice asks, with the elongated o of international communication, about as subtle as a rhino in a lift, “are you guys up to anything good for the rest of the night?” She falls just short of adding the nudge nudge wink wink of desperation all lonely single ladies must reek of, but it’s far from necessary. There’s a chance I’m just being overly sensitive and because I know Alice so well I know what she’s really asking, until Mike and Charlie look at each other with a knowing smile to confirm they heard it too.
We are looking to hook up, she’s saying, it won’t get any more obvious than that. Take your best shot.
Mike taps the table, over and over again while he thinks. “Not really, you?” he says eventually, and I get the feeling he’s even worse at this than I am.
“Shots?” Charlie says, with his arms spread out as though channeling a divine spirit, and you can almost hear the sound of my already low expectations finally hitting rock bottom.
“Sounds like a plan”, Alice says, seemingly excited by the prospect.
“I have to work tomorrow”, I remind her.
“Shots of wine?” Charlie offers, and I can’t help smile at his thoughtfulness.
“Even that’s a bit too weird for me, but thanks for the offer”, I say.
While Charlie orders shots for everyone else, I drag Alice to the restrooms.
“Are we sticking with the doctors?” I ask when I’ve got her back to myself.
“I think they’re cute.”
“They’re not exactly my type”, I say.
“No one is your type, Penny. We can ditch them if you want but I think they could be fun. Why don’t we take it to its natural conclusion, wherever that might be. You might surprise yourself.”
“I told you I’m not sleeping with anyone.”
“You said you weren’t going to get drunk either.”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“What’s the worse that can happen?” Alice asks. “We have a few shots, we talk some more and each of us goes our separate ways. It’s been ages since we’ve done this. Or you loosen up, let your hair down, forget about your hang ups and have a good time. If you want we can have this round and go. It’s your call.”
My record for meeting men is atrocious. I’ve had my fair share of relationships but all of them have been disasters. I haven’t met the man of my dreams yet and I’m ninety nine percent certain we haven’t just left him at the table. But Alice is right, what’s the worst that could happen? At least it might give me enough confidence to start chatting to men I do like.
“Okay”, I say, sort of reluctantly.
“Okay?”
“Let’s go and have some fun, even if it’s with the pillsbury doughboy and Nucky’s little brother.”
Alice puts her arm around me. “You never know, they might fuck like rabbits.”
The thought sends a shiver down my spine. Is this the best it’s going to get for me? Sculling shots of sambuca with people I can’t even imagine as superheroes? Where’s my Indiana Jones or Prince Valiant? Is it really time for me to com
e to terms with the fact that my imagination is always going to be better than the world I’ve found myself in, that there aren’t huge Xs all over the world with buried treasure underneath and there never were dragons listed on maps?
Back at the booth, Alice slides in first so I’m now sat in front of Charlie. The shots have already arrived and as I pass over the one that’s now in front of me, I see two on the table in front of Alice.
I know it’s coming before Mike’s finger is even raised. He taps the table sharply. “We got you two”, he says, passing them over clumsily. “Just in case you changed your mind.”
I adjust them quickly without response, and then tap the table a number of times in sequence it’s impossible to cover it up as anything other than an obsessive twitch. I have to touch each of the other shot glasses too, just because I’m suddenly feeling nervous.
“What the hell was that?” Mike says.
“You forgot to tap the table”, I say and quickly down both shots.
Chapter Four
“So, Penny, what do you look for in a man?”
I knew this was going to be a bad idea. I could be missing the opportunity to meet the love of my life while I sit here with the low resolution, atari st versions of Chris Pratt and Robert Downey Jr, but I’m far too inexperienced socially to know how to get out of this without coming across as a complete and utter bitch, and even if I did, I have no idea what I’d be doing instead.
For a girl that prides herself on the far stretching limits of her imagination, it amazes me how absolutely clueless I can be when it comes to working out how to attract good looking men. The emphasis very much on the plural there.
I’ve been told I’m not unattractive, which is kind of a nice way of saying I’m not ugly, and I do get attention from time to time, like the somewhat slanty-eyed stare I’m getting from Charlie right now, but never from the type of men I really want to be with. I know it’s a little over the top to expect the Xbox one S version of well known celebrities, and a lot of my fantasies involve people that don’t actually really exist outside of the pages of books, but surely I merit someone somewhere in the middle of all of that.
Before Casper there was James, and between both of those bookends in an otherwise less than illustrious career, I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve pretended just to get it over with.
Not once have I had the pleasure of the athlete, the billionaire, the star football player, the politician, the adventurer, or the rock star, but to be honest, the profession means less than the personality for me. What I’m really looking for is someone who can call themselves a man and mean it.
I contemplate the faces in front of me, and decide to answer Mike’s question as honestly as possible.
“Courageous, magnanimous, respectful, gracious, humble, and sexy would be getting off to a very good start”, I say. “Times that by two and I’d be in heaven.”
Alice smirks at me.
“What?” I say, “I can’t help it if I like doing things in twos.”
Charlie and Mike pass furtive glances across the table to one another. “You know, I’ve always considered myself as humble”, Charlie says. “Ask anybody at work, I’m about as meek as you can get.”
Mike taps the table. “Me too”, he adds jabbing himself in the chest. “Totally, one hundred percent meek and humble. Any door you need holding open, I’m your man.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from a doctor”, Alice says, returning his suffocating grin.
“So how about you, Alice?” Charlie asks. “What do you look for in a man?”
“A big bank account and an absolutely gigantic” - Charlie and Mike lean in like puppets in a punch and judy show - “cock”, Alice says, swallowing the silence that follows with a ferocious laugh.
“I’m only kidding”, she adds quickly, just in case there is any confusion. “I don’t really care about the bank account.”
I smuggle Alice off to the restrooms again before Mike fills the prevailing gap in conversation with another one of his pop quiz questions or an offer to get up and dance.
“I don’t think I can take much more of this”, I confess. “Our table’s been tapped so many times the legs are likely to fall off. I don’t know where to tap he’s tapping so much.”
“You haven’t got an international right to be the only tappee”, Alice says. “Besides which, I kind of like them in a weird kind of kinky way. Aren’t you having fun?”
“Yes, of course. I mean, sort of”, I lie. “But it’s kind of like getting a fourteen in Blackjack. You’re never going to win with a fourteen, but you don’t want to twist either and risk being out of the game. It’s not exactly a pair of kings is it?”
“You want to ditch these guys and find some kings?” Alice offers.
“I think I want to go home and draw”, I say, suddenly feeling miserable.
“You don’t want to go home and draw”, Alice says. “What you want is adventure. Come on, let’s go and say goodbye to Scrubs and go and find Game of Thrones. You can draw while I pee, as long as you make it quick.”
One tiny but perfectly rendered erotic image later, that adequately represents my current emotions, Alice and I are back in the bar, looking for the men we plan to ditch.
There is no sign of them at the table we were both sat at, which is now occupied by a gaggle of well-oiled women on a hen night out, and they don’t seem to be at the bar or the sparsely filled dance floor. In fact, they don’t seem to be in here at all. Alice and I look at each other in utter confusion.
“They can’t have just left without saying anything”, I say, a little hurt at the blatant rejection. One thing is telling them subtly that we’re not interested, having them leave without saying a word is another thing entirely.
“Those fucking assholes”, Alice says. “They’ve dumped us.”
I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. All of that time wondering how to get out of the situation we’ve somehow found ourselves in and without any need to worry. Pinky and the Brain have left the building.
“Well that sucks”, Alice says, still chewing it over. “They were punching well above their weight there as well.”
“Tinder again?” I suggest.
Alice shakes her head. “Fuck that. We don’t need dating apps, we need a miracle.”
Without anywhere to sit, and drunk but not quite drunk enough to dare the miserable looking dance floor, we decide to change venue, but before we leave properly, I have to check at the table to make sure I haven’t left anything. I know I won’t have done because I already have everything I own in my handbag and I’ve checked inside it three times already, but that’s not the point. Alice knows these things happen whenever I leave somewhere, and because they are completely unavoidable for me, she never complains.
We’re at the exit, half way through the doors when I decide to turn back. It happens so often like this Alice knows my half of the script and I know hers.
“I’ve just got to-”, I say, without any need to finish.
“That’s okay”, Alice says on cue, “I’ll just wait for you here.”
She’s an incredible friend like that. I’ve never met anyone as patient and understanding as her, over what must, by now, be incredibly annoying.
This process requires a full retrace of the places I’ve been to within the particular establishment I’m trying to leave, combined with a thorough search anywhere I might have sat for long periods of time, which can often be rather embarrassing.
I go to the restrooms first, wait for the cubicle I need to examine to become free, and resist the urge to break out my sharpie in the meantime. I know there is nothing in here that’s mine, but I check it twice anyway, just to be sure.
I’m appalled to see my beautiful drawing has already been scribbled over with biro, making the already adequately proportioned penis into something absolutely monstrous and briefly wonder if Alice is the guilty party.
I pass through the ba
r, weave around the dance floor, keep my eyes in the shadows where the floor meets the wall and finally, unable to procrastinate any longer, make my way back to the table we were sat at.
“I’m sorry”, I say meekly. “I think I might have left something here.”
I’m reluctantly invited to have a look around for something I can’t explain I’m looking for.
“Is it your cell?” one of them asks me.
“Your purse?” another chimes in.
I just smile, root around behind their backs and crouch down to a face full of spray tanned legs.
“I guess I must be mistaken”, I say, tapping the table twice and quickly rearranging some of the empty glasses into a line before I leave.
I back away but don’t get far, because either someone has moved the wall, or embarrassment has frozen me solid.
I turn slowly, already coming up with excuses, expecting to come face to face with one of the door staff who’s likely been tipped off about my sexy graffiti and plans to turn me over to the police, but even if I have a chance to say them, the words never make it to my mouth.
I stare at him like I’m seven years old again and Mom’s just brought home the arc of the covenant. Without the capacity to do anything else but stand there gazing up at him awkwardly before he orders me to get out of his way or squashes me like a giant might a flea, I gather as much information as I can, my eyes like dinner plates roving across his torso, his chest and his arms like an information hungry robot, my brain about to explode with glee. When I get to his face, I have to control myself not to moan. I couldn’t draw anything more perfect. If I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t be able to imagine anything this incredible. He’s the superhero I’ve been waiting my whole life for and now he’s here I don’t have a clue what to say to him. Actually, I don’t think I can say anything at all, because all I’ve been doing up until now is stare, mouth-open, like I’m on day release from a high security mental institute.
“Are you looking for this?” high definition Prince Valiant says, holding a piece of paper out in front of him.
Obsession: A Twin Menage Romance Page 3