Love by the Book

by Melissa Pimentel

  I grabbed my coat from the office, slipped my blistered feet into my flats, checked that no one had broken any important science equipment, said goodnight to Cathryn at the door and set off down the front steps.

  Halfway down the street, I heard footsteps approaching rapidly behind me and then a hand grabbed my shoulder.

  “Fuck you, fucker! I have mace!” I yelled as I spun around, grabbing a tiny bottle of hairspray from my bag. I tried to remember if I was supposed to head-butt a rapist in the nose or knee him in the balls first.

  It was Popeye.

  “Oh,” I said, slipping the hairspray back into my bag. “Sorry about that. I thought you were a rapist.”

  He looked mortified. “God, no. I’m sorry I startled you. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, and don’t be sorry. I’m very relieved you’re not a rapist.”

  “I saw you go and just had to run after you. I was watching you all night and I just think you’re . . . I don’t know . . . rather extraordinary. I’d like to see you again. Could I take you to dinner?”

  “Oh, um. God. Sure.”

  “Great. I know a wonderful little place. My treat, of course.”

  “Sounds good.” Look demure look demure look demure, I chanted to myself.

  “Lovely. Could I take your number?”

  He took out a gleaming iPhone and I tapped my number in.

  “I’ll give you a call during the week,” he said. “Now, let me put you in a cab. I don’t want you to have another fright tonight.”

  This guy was unbelievable. I was sure that one of the Rules authors had put him on to me to convince me of the merits of their ways. I glanced at his arms and decided I didn’t give a shit.

  And so it happened that I had my first glimpse of Rules success. He hailed a taxi, kissed me on the cheek and stared longingly after the car as it sped away (I know this because I watched him in the reflection of my phone). I was sure he would call.

  Regardless, it was out of my control, which actually felt kind of good.

  April 14

  “So let me get this right: a gorgeous man reaches into his pocket with these apparently amazing arms of his and buys you a drink, and you leave him after five minutes in order to wander around a room by yourself. He then runs down the street after you and tells you you’re amazing.”

  “Yep,” I said, spreading peanut butter onto a cracker as I lay on the couch in my bathrobe. Lucy and I were enjoying our Sunday-morning debriefing over instant coffee and nail polishing. “That’s what happened. Can you pass me that raspberry-colored one?”

  She slid the little bottle across the table. “And he’s already rung you this morning?”

  I nodded. “We’re going out on Wednesday. He actually wanted to see me tonight but the book forbids me from accepting a date less than two days in advance.”

  “So The Rules works?”

  I painted a single stripe down my thumbnail and watched as it immediately bled into my cuticle. I looked up at Lucy. “I mean, I wouldn’t go that far. That banker friend of Michael’s didn’t exactly fall at my feet. But, yeah, it seems to have worked on this guy, at least for now.”

  “Why do you sound gutted? Shouldn’t you be pleased to have cracked the secret?”

  I squinted as I tackled my pinky nail. “I don’t really want to go around acting like some feminine zombie for the next sixty years, so I’m kind of rooting for it to fail.”

  “Well, I think it sounds brilliant. I might need to give it a try after all. Max has gone quiet on me again and I have zero prospects on the horizon.”

  “No!” I cried. “You have to have a normal life and bring me back stories from the real world! Speaking of which, how was your night?”

  Lucy let out a long sigh and took a sip of her coffee. “Hayley and I went to the Electricity Showrooms for the eighties night, which was decent, but full of bridge and tunnel types. So of course we ended up in the Horse and Groom until three in the morning.”

  My eyes widened. “I am so jealous. How was it in there? Man, I miss that place.”

  “Same as always. I was harassed for an hour by a man called Boomer who was wearing a woolen hat and kept talking about his ex-wife’s dog. He was a good kisser, though. Asked for my number at the end of the night so I gave him Amy’s.”

  Amy was the evangelical, teetotal former roommate of Lucy’s who was an obsessive tidier of shelves and alphabetizer of spices. Lucy had never forgiven her for dumping her rum and had taken to giving out her number to Shoreditch’s weirder male inhabitants. Lesson learned: don’t mess with a girl’s liquor.

  “See? That’s so much more fun than being all demure and elusive and shit. I circled a room like a neutered piranha for hours while you were out enjoying your youth and making out with crazies. Science sucks.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “Um, excuse me? You were told you were amazing by some incredible mystery man with great arms who is now probably going to buy you dinner. So fuck off.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, taking a sip of now-tepid coffee. “But if Popeye turns out to be a psychopath and cuts me up into pieces and stores me in a meat locker, you won’t think I’ve got it so good.”

  “Oh! I forgot!” Lucy suddenly jumped up from the couch and ran into the kitchen. She returned holding a postcard covered in tiny sailboats. “This came for you.”

  I flipped it over.

  “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”—Christopher Columbus

  Good luck on your scientific adventure—just make sure you don’t capsize!

  Love, Meg

  I smiled and tucked it into the pages of my journal. She always knew just what to say to make me feel brave.

  April 19

  The first date with Popeye was a resounding success, and I didn’t end up in a meat locker at the end of it. I had to work late that night so we blew off dinner and went to the pub instead for a drink.

  He chose a cozy little pub in St. James’s that dated back to the seventeenth century. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, and when I asked him about it, he shrugged and said he was a traditionalist.

  He really wasn’t kidding about that. It seemed like he was on a one-man mission to bring back the Arthurian age.

  I walked in and he stood up immediately, took my coat, hung it up, pulled my chair out for me and went to the bar to buy me a drink. It was like being in the eye of a chivalry tornado.

  He was polite, considerate, attentive. He asked questions, he complimented me, he bought drinks without awkwardness or hesitation. I don’t know where this guy had come from but I definitely wasn’t complaining.

  After his allotted two hours were up, I sweetly told him that I had a big day ahead of me (a slightly more probable excuse on a Wednesday night) and said goodnight. Polite kiss on the cheek and one last yearning look at his truly excellent ass as he walked away, and I was back home to gush to Lucy about how eerily perfect he seemed.

  This was confirmed when he called the next day to ask me to dinner on Saturday. Annoyingly, Rules girls aren’t allowed to accept weekend dates past Wednesday because we are just Too Damn Busy and our time, like everything else about us, is precious. So we made a date for the following Saturday, which gave me an extra week to fantasize about him picking me up and tossing me around in exciting sexual positions.

  April 27

  I had prepared notes ahead of tonight’s date with Popeye:

  Name: Popeye

  Age: 26 (A younger guy! In your face, gender stereotypes!)

  Occupation: Consultant (A fake job if there ever was one, but never mind)

  Nationality: English

  Description: Really, really hot. Have I mentioned the arms?

  Method: The Rules

  We arranged to meet at a little Italian place in Soho, so after an a
ction-packed day of exercising, painting my nails and eating cheese and crackers while watching a Food Network Cake Wars marathon, I made my way to the West End. I found the place pretty quickly, so I hid around the corner and smoked cigarettes until I was five minutes late. I’m a modern woman and very happy to sit on my own in a bar most days (maybe that just makes me a modern alcoholic?) but I hate being the first person to turn up on a date. I want the guy to be early, preferably with a drink waiting for me.

  I walked into the dimly lit restaurant. There was Popeye, lifting some kind of manly, brown-colored drink to his lips with a massive forearm. He was definitely an alpha male: the type who not only had a firm handshake but who also did that thing where he put his hand on top of yours, just to emphasize his genetic dominance. This was a man with Darwin on his side. In spite of myself, I found this kind of thing hot. My stomach did a very, very small flip.

  Once again, he stood up immediately when he saw me, kissed me on the cheek, slipped off my jacket, pulled out my chair and pushed me into the table in one fluid movement. It was like being mugged by gentlemanliness.

  He sat down and pushed a cocktail across the table to me. “I’ve ordered this for you. I hope you like it—house specialty. How are you? You look gorgeous.”

  “Thank you.” I took a sip of my drink, which was shocking pink and sickeningly sweet. Not my kind of thing at all, but I necked it nonetheless and tried my best to look demure while doing so. “Great place. I’ve never been here before.”

  “It’s one of my old favorites. Went to school with the owner.”

  At that moment, a well-dressed man with impressively slick hair magically appeared holding several dishes of delicious-looking Italian tapas. Normally I hate tapas as it involves sharing, but I could make an exception for this.

  “Hello, old chap! Always a pleasure to have you in my humble establishment, especially when you bring a gorgeous creature like this with you.” The slick-haired man smiled and kissed my hand.

  Popeye made the introductions. “Joff, this is Lauren. Lauren, this is my dear friend Joff. He’s as much of a wizard in the kitchen as he was on the rugby field!”

  “I was nothing compared to our man here. He used to eat up the turf like nothing else. Still got that cauliflower ear of yours, you ugly bugger, you?” Joff enveloped Popeye in a bear hug from behind. It was still the most macho thing I’d seen since the log-rolling competition at the Maine state fair.

  Popeye shrugged him off. “You’re one to talk, mate! You lost about eight teeth in the scrum.”

  “All in the name of glory. Anyway, I do apologize: I’m keeping your guest waiting.” He turned toward me. “Would you like some champagne? Of course you would. A woman like you should be bathing in champagne. I’ll send the waiter straight over.” With that, he evaporated in a puff of smoke.

  “Great bloke, Joff,” Popeye said. “And he obviously has great taste.” He reached across the table and touched my hand.

  The waiter suddenly appeared at my elbow and began pouring champagne into glasses. I don’t like champagne—always gives me a headache and I can never fit my nose into the champagne glass—but I was forbidden from turning my nose up at any of Popeye’s date decisions, so I had to live with it. Tough life, I know.

  He raised his glass in a toast. “To you. The most beautiful woman in the room.”

  We clinked glasses. He smiled. I narrowed my eyes. Where the hell did he come from?

  “I feel I did the talking for both of us last time,” he said. “I want to know everything about you.”

  “Oh, there’s not much to tell,” I said, trying to exude quiet mystery.

  “Okay, well, let’s start with the simple things. Where are you from originally?”

  “Maine. A little city called Portland.”

  “What’s it like there?”

  “Oh, you know. Small-town America. Lots of land, lots of sea, lots of coffee shops. The usual.”

  “Sounds like heaven. What brought you over here?”

  “Work, mainly. And the weather, of course.” Shit, I’d made a joke. That was definitely against the rules.

  Popeye laughed more heartily than the comment deserved. “Ah, yes, the great British weather. Beautiful, isn’t it? Although I do think there’s something to be said for taking a bracing walk in the countryside and then hiding in a pub when it pisses down.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  “Personally, that’s the sort of thing I love to do with a girlfriend. Book a really gorgeous B&B someplace and whisk her up the M4 to the Cotswolds for a weekend away.”

  “That sounds . . . nice,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to make of this.

  “That said, I love quiet nights in, too. Whipping up a cozy meal for two and opening a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”

  “Just one bottle?”

  He gave me a slightly disapproving look, then laughed. “Oh, Lauren. You’re a gem.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

  The waiter reappeared with two menus, but Popeye took them both.

  “We’ll start with the insalata di polpo and move on to the pollo alla cacciatora.” He gazed over the menu at me. “You eat meat, right, darling?”

  “Yes,” I said. Though usually I like to know what type before I eat it, I thought silently, but the book forbade me from saying anything. In the eyes of The Rules, Popeye was being a gentleman and protecting my delicate female brain from making any decisions—and I should just shut up and be grateful.

  “I hope you don’t mind me ordering,” he said as the waiter whisked away the menus and glided off to the kitchen. “I’ve eaten here a thousand times so I know the best things on the menu.” He reached his hand across the table and intertwined our fingers. “And you deserve only the best.”

  The evening went on as it had begun. It was as though I was a prospective employer and Popeye was trying very hard to get the position of My Boyfriend, even though I hadn’t realized I’d been advertising. He fed me food off his plate. He told me that he was good with people but also enjoyed his own time. He mentioned that he wanted to go to Paris with someone special one day.

  Honestly, if I’d produced a written test and asked him for a urine sample, I’m pretty sure he would have happily agreed to both and would have passed with flying colors.

  I couldn’t help wondering why on earth this gorgeous man was trying so hard to win me over. What sort of deep, fetid secret must he be hiding? Because, surely, someone this attractive and successful and charming had swathes of women falling at his feet and didn’t need to try so hard to win my approval? Unless he had something seriously, horribly wrong with him . . . images of meat lockers started flashing before my eyes again, but I swiftly swept them aside and took another sip of champagne.

  The food came, was eaten and plates were discreetly taken away. The champagne turned to wine and flowed like there was no tomorrow. He continued to ride around the room on his white steed, asking if there were any damsels in distress who needed rescuing. At one point, a man started coughing loudly and Popeye leaped to his feet and asked if he needed the Heimlich maneuver. Turned out he was just getting over a chest cold.

  I couldn’t decide how I felt about this charm offensive. It was so entirely different from what I was used to, and maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. It was a little weird being the focus of so much attention, but it beat sitting on Adrian’s couch watching him play Championship Manager on his laptop and occasionally being asked if I wanted some more potato chips. And Dylan and I were together for so long, our idea of romance was taking out the trash so the other person didn’t have to. All this chivalry was a nice change.

  And so, at the end of the night, when the taxi pulled up in front of my building and he asked if he could come up for a cup of coffee, I said yes.

  So it was entirely possible that this whole gentl
eman act was just a clever ruse to get me into bed. But you know what? I was fine with that. Really, aren’t most people being polite to one another in the hope that it could lead to them getting laid? Even when I’m doing something charitable for someone outside of my sexual demographic (an old homeless woman, for instance), I’m secretly hoping that there’s some really hot guy who’s watching me be charitable and thinking, “God, look at that girl being charitable—how incredibly attractive. I must fly her to Fiji on my private jet.” I’m pretty sure Doctors Without Borders runs almost entirely on doctors looking to impress the opposite sex with their selflessness.

  Besides, it had been a while since I’d had sex—we’re talking at least a month here—and it was basically our third date, so Rules-approved. (I was counting the night we met, yes, so sue me. Months, people!) We went up to my apartment and I made him a cup of Tesco’s finest instant coffee granules, which was inevitably left to cool on the counter as we got down to business.

  And down to business we got. If I thought I’d seen an audition in the restaurant, I was mistaken. That was only a warm-up.

  He picked me up. He spun me around. He put me down briefly so that he could undress me with his teeth (I was worried about the dress, but he was surprisingly deft with his incisors), then picked me back up and spun me around again. He stood in front of me and peeled off his own clothes like a former Chippendale and, I have to admit, the show was spectacular. The arms were just the beginning: the man was Michelangelo’s wet dream.

  In spite of the display, there was something slightly . . . off about the whole thing. He choreographed sex in the same way he had choreographed dinner. He had a vision in mind, and I was just another actor on his stage. And not a principal character, either: I felt like the Greek chorus in The Bacchae. At one point, during a particularly complicated set of moves, I caught him watching himself in the mirror. Not me. Himself. He was basically starring in his own porn film.