by Matt Dunn
‘Shurely shome mishtake,’ I said, looking him up and down while trying my best Sean Connery accent, but unfortunately sounding more like one of those deaf people who have learnt to talk without ever hearing real speech.
Nick stared back, indignant. ‘What?’
‘Nothing, mate. It’s just that I didn’t know we were going to be playing blackjack with Blofeld this evening.’
‘Fuck off!’ He said, sticking out his lower lip to indicate his hurt feelings. ‘Back in a minute.’
Nick disappeared back up the stairs to his flat, and reappeared, literally sixty seconds later, more properly attired in black.
‘Better?’
I stared at him, incredulously. ‘You’ve got two dinner jackets?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, you never know . . .’
‘Nick, most people don’t even own one, let alone two. And what exactly is the correct protocol for wearing one or the other, anyway?’
He grinned at me. ‘Whether your mates take the piss. Besides, if you want to impress the lay-dees it helps to have the right gear.’
I shook my head despairingly. ‘Mate, you need the help of Richard Gere.’
We headed off through South Kensington and up towards the museum, where the driver, who’d watched the goings-on with more than a little amusement, deposited us outside the huge building. Strolling nonchalantly up the stone steps we walked inside, the doorman checking us off on his list as we swaggered past him.
‘I didn’t know so many of your ex-girlfriends were going to be here tonight,’ Nick whispered, and I felt a momentary sense of alarm before noticing his smirk and seeing where he was pointing. Towards the dinosaur hall.
‘Let me buy you a free drink,’ I said, helping myself to a couple of glasses of champagne from a tray proffered by a passing waiter. I handed one to Nick, which he downed in one, and we headed off in search of Mark. We soon spotted him in his ill-fitting suit, his bright red cummerbund concealing the fact that he couldn’t do the top button up on his trousers any more, a detail he’d made the mistake of telling me on the phone earlier. I caught his eye and he excused himself from the group he was talking to and ambled over. We clinked our glasses loudly and downed what was obviously expensive champagne with little respect for its vintage.
‘Been here a while?’ I asked him, having noted his slightly rolling gait.
‘An hour or two,’ he replied, stifling a burp.
Nick surveyed the room, which was full of London’s richest and, it had to be said, oldest. ‘So, how much would these tickets have been, anyway?’
Mark lowered his voice. ‘Two hundred quid, mate.’
My jaw dropped. ‘Two hundred quid? I thought it was “adopt” an animal, not pay for it to live at the Savoy.’
Nick made a sweeping gesture. ‘Look at this place,’ he said. ‘It’s full of people with more money than sense!’
‘You should fit in perfectly, then,’ I said, digging him in the ribs.
‘Just enjoy yourselves, and don’t tell anyone you got in for free, will you?’ Mark slurred. ‘I’ve got to go and be sociable.’ Dextrously grabbing another glass of champagne from the now returning waiter, he staggered back towards the people he’d left.
Nick and I helped ourselves to more drinks and discussed our strategy, quickly deciding that the best course of action was to get as drunk as we could in as short a time as possible. As Nick headed off to find the toilets, I liberated more champagne from the bar and began scanning the crowd for any potential female company.
After downing the best part of a bottle, I’d decided that the only unattached women there were probably single because their husbands had recently died of old age, and they weren’t long for this world themselves. I’d also started to worry about Nick, who’d been gone for half an hour. I collared Mark, and we were discussing whether we should go off and look for him when he appeared, looking like he’d got his fast-forward button pressed down, clutching a brown envelope in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other. I greeted him as I would any long-lost friend.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’
‘Sorry, boys. Got sidetracked,’ he said, triumphantly waving the scrap of paper in the air, on which we could see what looked like a name and a telephone number.
Nick’s never been a great chatter-upper of women. He’s not the most charming of guys, and his usual idea of an opening gambit is to ‘casually’ throw his Ferrari key ring on the table in front of any woman he fancies. In my book, any woman impressed by this approach . . . well, horses for courses.
Much to his annoyance, neither of us took the bait. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what this is?’ he said, eventually.
I grabbed it from his hand and held it up to the light. ‘Hmm. I’d say it’s a scrap of paper. Mark?’
‘Yup, definitely paper,’ Mark agreed, taking it from me and examining it closely. ‘And I write on the stuff every day. I should know.’
Nick snatched it back impatiently. ‘I’ve just met someone and got their phone number.’
‘What’s he like?’ said Mark.
‘Fuck off, fat boy. It’s a she, obviously. And she’s gorgeous.’
I sighed resignedly. ‘Come on then. Tell all.’
‘Well, I was off looking for the toilets,’ he gabbled excitedly, ‘so I went through this door by the bar, and in the room there’s this desk, and behind this desk was this gorgeous woman.’
‘Name?’
‘Sandra. And we got chatting, and it turns out that she’s working for the charity people here tonight, and so—’
I held my hand up. ‘Hold on,’ I said, a dreadful realization dawning. ‘Which one?’
‘What?’
‘Which one?’ I repeated, louder this time.
‘Which charity? I don’t know what it’s called. Anyway, that’s not important. So, she—’
‘No.’ I stopped him, and reverted to sentences one word long. ‘Which. Animal. Did. You. Adopt?’
Nick looked at me sheepishly. ‘Er . . .’
‘Please tell me you didn’t?’
‘Um, a monkey,’ he replied, his eyes wandering guiltily to the envelope in his other hand.
‘A monkey?’ I shook my head in disbelief.
‘Yeah.’ He peered at the front of the envelope. ‘Capuchin, to be precise.’
Mark frowned. ‘Isn’t that a kind of coffee?’
‘And dare I enquire how much?’ I asked, guessing the phrase ‘pay peanuts, get monkeys’ wasn’t applicable in this case.
‘Well, I . . . I thought we could put it through the business,’ stammered Nick.
‘Put it through the business?’ I said, incredulously. ‘Bollocks!’
‘Why not? Good . . . PR and all that,’ he replied, in a straw-clutching kind of way.
‘Well, you put it through your half of the business then.’
‘Good PR? I can’t quite see how,’ said Mark, his champagne intake putting him a few seconds behind the conversation.
‘So anyway, me and Sandra got chatting—’
‘How much?’
Nick rocked nervously from one foot to the other. ‘Only a thousand. Anyway, as I was saying—’
Mark suddenly caught up. ‘I thought a “monkey” was five hundred pounds? Or is that a “pony”?’
I was almost speechless. ‘You spent a thousand pounds sponsoring a . . . a monkey, just so you could get a girl’s phone number?’ I would have liked to say that I didn’t believe it, but knowing Nick it certainly wasn’t out of the question. Despite earning well, the school of life has taught me the value of money. Nick, however, had obviously been off sick for that particular lesson.
‘Not just for her phone number,’ he said, slipping it guiltily into his pocket.
‘So what else? Do you get to take the monkey home at weekends?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Do you get to visit it, feed it, anything like that?’
‘Er, nope.’ His eyes flicked back to the en
velope. ‘You get a certificate.’
‘A certificate?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, suddenly perking up. ‘And, you get to mention it in any advertising you do.’
‘Nick. We run an Internet porn site. How is that going to work? “Dear Customer, please select us as your preferred masturbatory medium because we sponsor an animal at London Zoo”?’
We stood in an uneasy silence for a while, until Mark suddenly piped up. ‘I’ve got it,’ he announced. ‘Fed up spanking your own monkey? Spank ours!’ And I laughed, despite myself.
Nick, on the other hand, was looking like he’d been told off by his mother. ‘Well, I’m sure it’s tax-deductible,’ he offered.
I sighed wearily and found myself actually looking at Mark, hoping that yes, maybe this did make some financial sense. Unfortunately, he was still too pleased with his joke and too full of champagne to offer any serious advice.
‘Admit it,’ I said, turning back to Nick. ‘You just did it because you fancied her.’
‘Um . . .’
I peered over his shoulder, back in the direction he’d come from, and drained my glass.
‘Well, let’s have a look at her then,’ I said. Shaking my head, I started to head off out of the hall, but Nick grabbed me by the arm. Quite firmly.
‘No way,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you stealing her off me before I’ve even had a chance to go out with her.’ And I remember looking at his face, thinking he was joking, but seeing instead just how serious he’d been.
Then, two weeks later, when Nick marched proudly into Bar Rosa clinging to this girl like they’d had an accident with the superglue, I had to stop myself from doing a double take. He’d been right – unusually for him, she was gorgeous. Tall, expensively dressed, her long blonde hair scraped back off her angular face – open any copy of Hello!, turn to the society pages, and you’ll see her type, usually draped around Lord Nobody-of-Note at some charity polo bash.
‘This is Sandra,’ he announced, albeit quite unnecessarily, and with a silly grin on his face. ‘Sandra – Adam. Adam – Sandra.’
She looked me up and down for a few moments, keeping hold of my hand for longer than felt comfortable.
‘Hi, Sandra. Nice to finally meet you,’ I said.
‘Hello, Adam,’ she replied, in a voice that could cut glass. ‘Nick’s told me all about you.’
I raised my eyebrows and looked across at Nick, slipping effortlessly into that ‘best buddies’ routine. ‘Most of it probably true.’
‘I hope so,’ she said, with a glint in her eye that instantly made me feel awkward, and that, strangely, I hoped Nick hadn’t seen.
We found a table in the corner. ‘What would you like to drink, hon?’ Nick asked her. Hon? I tried to catch Nick’s eye, but with no success.
‘My usual,’ she replied.
‘Two glasses of champagne please,’ Nick asked Pritchard, who’d suddenly materialized next to us. ‘Adam?’ he asked me, as I watched Sandra sizing Pritchard up.
‘No, I’m fine with my beer, thanks,’ I replied, wondering when Nick had started drinking champagne in the middle of the week.
I’m a great believer in my instincts. I can normally tell what someone’s like within a few moments of meeting them, and I certainly know almost immediately if we’re going to get on. Just as Pritchard and Rudy say they have a ‘gaydar’, where they can immediately tell anyone who’s their way inclined, I have a similar sixth sense, a ‘bitch sense’ if you will, when it comes to women; and with Sandra my hackles, wherever they are, had definitely started to rise. And when I think back now, I realize that it was her smile that unsettled me the most: a smile that, although frequent, and revealing perfect white teeth, forgot to tell the rest of her face to join in.
‘So, what do you do, Sandra?’ I asked her, as she sipped her champagne.
‘Oh, I’m in between careers at the moment,’ she replied dismissively.
‘Oh really? Which two are you in between?’ Perfectly normal question, I thought, but her answer was just another of those surface-only smiles.
We chatted for a while, mostly about Sandra, her hanging on to Nick’s arm and Nick on to her every word. Strangely, I’d initially found myself trying to think of a way to excuse myself without being rude, but the novelty factor of seeing Nick with an attractive woman soon overcame my urge to leave. Then Rudy came over, smiling broadly, and refilled their glasses.
‘On the house, Nick,’ he said, hovering at the table.
I stood up. ‘I’ll do the honours, shall I? Sandra, this is our friend Rudy. He and Pritchard own this place.’
‘Oh really?’ Sandra suddenly seemed more interested now Rudy had been elevated from the status of barman. She smiled and held out her hand, and Rudy kissed the back of it.
‘Nice watch,’ he said, noting the gleaming Cartier on her wrist.
The smile clicked off, and she quickly removed her hand from Rudy’s and settled it back on to Nick’s arm.
‘Thanks. It was a present.’
Rudy and I both stared at Nick, who was blushing slightly. ‘Well, Sandra said she didn’t have a watch, and we were out shopping, and I could tell she really liked this one—’
Sandra stopped him by putting a finger on his lips. ‘Now now, Nicky. I’m sure your . . . friends don’t want to hear about our private lives,’ she said, emphasizing the word ‘private’.
Nicky? Eeugh! I thought, as Rudy and I looked at each other knowingly.
‘Join us for a drink?’ I asked him, leaning over and patting the seat next to Nick, who edged along awkwardly.
Rudy smiled. ‘No can do – I’ve got to go downstairs to the cellar with Pritchard and flush the pumps. Care to give us a hand, Nick?’ he added, mischievously.
‘Please,’ said Nick, ‘there are ladies present.’
I looked round at him, waiting for the joke, but none came.
We sat in an awkward silence for a few moments, until Sandra patted Nick on the arm. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to use the ladies’.’
‘That’s normally Adam’s speciality,’ said Rudy, putting an arm round my shoulders and giving me a squeeze before heading back to the bar.
‘Thanks a lot,’ I replied, moving my chair so Sandra could get by. Nick reluctantly let go of her, and we watched her walk away from the table.
‘So,’ he turned to me, once she was out of earshot. ‘What do you think?’
Now, there are two rules between best friends concerning girlfriends, and as it was looking like Nick was seriously considering Sandra as someone who could fulfil this position, I decided that I had to apply them. Rule number one is, of course, never sleep with your best friend’s girlfriend, past or, obviously, present. It will create an unspoken issue between the two of you, particularly in terms of performance issues, size comparisons, and so on.
Rule number two, appropriate in this case, is never give your honest opinion, even if asked, of your best friend’s current girlfriend, fiancée or wife. At least not until they’ve parted company, and even then, the only acceptable comments are along the lines of ‘We never liked her anyway’ or ‘You could do better’.
So when Nick asked me what I thought of Sandra, what was I to say? That I didn’t like her? That I didn’t trust her? That my initial impression after a few minutes was that the watch, the champagne, and the lack of career marked her out as a gold digger? Or that, dare I say it, she was out of his league, especially given his puppy dog eyes whenever he looked at her?
I settled for a ‘She seems nice’, and watched him sip his drink nervously, his eyes flicking repeatedly towards the toilet door, as if he feared she might never come out again. Eventually, she returned to the table, and, without sitting down, made it clear that she wanted to leave.
‘So, Nicky, did you decide where we were going for dinner?’
‘Well, I thought we could maybe eat here?’ he suggested, tentatively.
‘Oh, I’m not really keen on these Spanish . .
.’ she looked around dismissively ‘. . . finger-buffet places. What about somewhere like . . .’ She named a horrendously expensive restaurant in Knightsbridge.
‘Sounds good,’ Nick replied, looking at his watch. ‘Let’s go and see if we can get a table.’
And with that they’d left, Sandra giving me a couple of those little air kisses either side of my face that didn’t actually make skin contact – something I was actually quite glad about.
‘Bye, Sandra. Nice to have met you,’ I lied, adding, ‘Bye, Nicky . . .’ Nick shot me a murderous glance.
I watched them go, and then walked to the bar to settle up.
‘Who was that bitch?’ Rudy asked me.
‘That, unfortunately, was Nick’s new girlfriend,’ I said. ‘And don’t call me bitch.’
‘You’d better look out for that one,’ he said, as we saw Nick hold open the Ferrari’s passenger door for her. ‘I think she’s set her sights on our friend.’
And as I watched her fixing her make-up in Nick’s rear-view mirror as they drove away, one question leapt to the front of my mind: a question I was worried I already knew the answer to.
What did she see in Nick?
Chapter 3
With The Best Man’s Bible failing to provide any inspiration, divine or otherwise, I put it back on the shelf, and, with Nick’s announcement still playing on my mind, get out my mobile phone and select ‘calendar’ from the menu. Today is April 4, it says – not three days earlier, sadly – and Nick’s birthday is on May 17. With a rising sense of panic, I scroll all too quickly through the six intervening weeks. Time to think.
By early evening I’m no closer to a strategy, so I decide to stroll round to my gym, the ‘amusingly’ named Slim Chance, to work out my frustrations on weightier matters. It’s one of those huge health clubs on several levels, although not metaphysically, you understand. Heading in past the smiling receptionists, I take the lift up to the top floor.
Walking past the dance studio, I’m disappointed to see that there are no aerobics classes taking place, even though, unfortunately, and despite my numerous anonymous suggestion forms, it doesn’t have a spectator area. I change quickly and head into my regular venue, the cardio-theatre, where a huge bank of television sets on the wall at one end broadcasts a selection of news, music and assorted programmes to the exercising faithful on the machines below. Each bike, treadmill, or cross-trainer has its own control box, into which you plug your headphones (£9.99 from reception), before selecting your channel and setting off on your workout.