Love by the Book

by Melissa Pimentel

“Hands off the merchandise!” I said. “Touching me doesn’t come cheap. You owe me forty pounds.”

  He looked startled, then shook his head and smiled as he walked away.

  Lucy grabbed my wrist. “What is WRONG with you?”

  “I think you’ll find it’s called flirting,” I said smugly.

  “You’re acting like an arse.”

  “That’s the whole point! Think about how many douchebag guys we’ve fallen for in the past. There’s got to be something in it.”

  We watched Sleepy Eyes lope off to the bar; his white T-shirt was translucent with sweat and clung to the muscles on his slim back.

  Lucy grasped my arm, hard. “You have to sleep with him. It would be some sort of crime against womankind if you didn’t. Please stop being mean to him.”

  “I’m not being mean! I’m doing the power switcheroo!”

  She shook her head. “If you blow it because of this bloody experiment . . .”

  “Hey, that’s science you’re talking about!”

  We spent the next hour pressed against the back wall, listening to a band comprised entirely of banjo and ukulele players, while pouring as much alcohol down our necks as we could get our hands on. I spotted glimpses of Sleepy Eyes through the crowd, leaning against the side of the stage and talking to a man I quickly recognized as the aviator from the other night. Thank God Cathryn wasn’t here.

  “Speak to him!” Lucy said, giving me a little shove.

  “No way. Not yet.”

  “I don’t know how much more ukulele I can stand.”

  “We’ll go soon, I promise. I’ll buy you a cocktail at Happiness Forgets.” I was doing a lot of friend-bribing this month.

  Twenty minutes passed, and I was about to give up when Sleepy Eyes made his way across the room back to Lucy and me. He was so languid, he was practically a liquid.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, running his fingers through his dark curls and revealing a sliver of torso in the process. “Band stuff.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “You’re fired.”

  “Fair enough.” He took a pack of Marlboro Reds out of his back pocket. “Smoke?”

  I felt Lucy place her hand on my back and give me a firm shove.

  We walked outside and sat down at an empty table around the corner. He pulled out two cigarettes, tapped them on the inside of his wrist and offered one to me. I hadn’t smoked Reds since a brief stint with a Frenchman last October and I felt my lungs contract in protest on the first puff.

  “I can’t believe you smoke these things,” I said, pleased to finally have a genuine criticism I could launch at him.

  He shrugged.

  “They’re pure rat poison and arsenic.”

  He shrugged again.

  “You would smoke them, though. You should just go whole-hog James Dean and roll the pack up in the sleeve of your T-shirt.”

  Another shrug. “They fall out.”

  “Whatever,” I said, sulking visibly. I gave up. It was like trying to anger a turnip. I stubbed out my cigarette and stood up. “I’m going to get going.”

  He turned to me and gave me that slow smile, then stretched himself over the table, slid his fingers through my hair and kissed me. He bit my lip as he drew away, then smiled again. “Later,” he said, and sat back down to finish his cigarette.

  I went back inside, grabbed Lucy and pulled her out of the bar.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look as though you’ve been drugged.”

  “He kissed me,” I whispered.

  “Thank fuck for that! Why are we leaving?”

  “Because I said I was going to leave right before he kissed me. I was trying the power switcheroo.”

  “So he kissed you and then you just walked away?”

  “What else could I do? He didn’t exactly beg me to stay! He just sat back down and smoked his stupid gross cigarette!”

  Lucy stopped short. “Lo, you’ve got to go back there! A hot drummer just kissed you. Do you have his number?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have yours?”

  “No.”

  “For fuck’s sake! How are you going to see him again?”

  “I don’t know, okay?! I have no idea. Maybe he’ll track me down?”

  “No offense, babe, but he doesn’t seem inclined to track down his own pants, never mind a woman who just spent an evening telling him how shit he is.”

  “You’re right,” I mumbled.

  “Now, we’re going to go back there and you are going to get his number. Isn’t this month meant to be about you being the man?”

  “Kind of.”

  “And how long has it been since you had sex?”

  “Too long.”

  “Well then, be a man! Go back there and get him!”

  I knew when I was beaten. We turned around and trudged back to the bar to find Sleepy Eyes standing outside.

  “Thought you’d left,” he said as we bustled past.

  “Lucy forgot her scarf,” I said, ignoring the fact that it was a balmy July night.

  Sleepy Eyes raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes, silly me!” Lucy sang. “I’ll be right back—you stay here!” I owed her at least three drinks by that point.

  I rocked back on my heels, looked up at the sky and tried to whistle. I could feel him watching me but couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I thought I might explode in some sort of awkwardness immolation.

  He leaned against the wall and started whistling, too.

  After a few minutes, Lucy emerged empty-handed. “Couldn’t find it,” she said. “Someone must have got there first.”

  “Big demand for scarves these days,” Sleepy Eyes drawled.

  “You’re so right,” Lucy said. “Are we ready to go? Do you have everything, Lauren?” She gave me a significant look.

  “Um, yep, I think so . . .” I started to walk away, then turned back to Sleepy Eyes as though just struck by a brilliant thought. “Actually, we’re having a get-together in a couple of weeks. Just dinner with a few friends. You should come. Maybe. Whatever.” I had just skipped ahead by several missions and was in unfamiliar territory.

  “Cool,” he said. “You got a pen?”

  I pulled a Bic out of my bag and handed it to him. He took my wrist and wrote his number on the inside of my arm. I felt like I was back in high school (or what I imagined high school would have been like if I’d been popular).

  “Cool,” I said, hoping my face wasn’t too bright a shade of magenta.

  I linked my arm through Lucy’s and we sauntered away as casually as we could manage until we knew we were out of his sightline, then dissolved into hysterics.

  “I’m gonna get laid! I’m gonna get laid!” I sang while doing a little jig.

  Lucy clapped her hands together. “He is soooo fit! Well done!”

  “It’s all down to you, my friend. You were like my spirit-guide back there.”

  “I hate to see a gorgeous man go to waste. Now what’s all this about a dinner party?”

  “Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that . . .”

  The book’s final mission was to throw a dinner party and invite a bunch of interesting people, including any people you’d managed to successfully game over the month.

  “Sounds like a laugh,” she said. “I’ll invite Tristan. It’ll be fun!”

  “It’ll be something,” I muttered.

  I got my trusty notebook out when I got home and jotted down what I knew about him:

  Name: Sleepy Eyes

  Age: I don’t think I want to know. 23?

  Occupation: Part-time drummer, full-time hipster

  Nationality: English

  Description: Slim, curly brown hair, dark-brown eyes, looks like he f
ell out of a dumpster (in the best possible way)

  Method: The Rules of the Game

  July 17

  Today’s mission was to note down interesting upcoming cultural events in a possible-date diary and to read a men’s magazine in public and ask a male passerby for his opinion on one of the articles.

  I went to the bookstore on my lunch hour, sneaking in past the new owner as he was busy debating Albert Camus’s football career with an irate Frenchman wearing a trilby.

  I thumbed through a copy of Time Out and jotted down notes in my notebook. This wasn’t the first time I’d made notes of upcoming cultural events, but if I followed the book’s guidelines, it would be the first time I actually attended aforementioned cultural events rather than brushing them off in favor of sitting in my living room and watching back-to-back episodes of Biggest Loser USA while drinking wine and eating stale seasonal chocolates.

  When I first moved to London, I felt a constant low-level guilt about not spending every free moment gallery hopping and attending free experimental jazz concerts, but after a few months I realized that no one who lives in London actually does any of those things. Time Out is basically just a list of things you might have gone to if you hadn’t been so busy getting drunk in your local pub or nursing your hangover in your living room. I felt infinitely comforted by the thought.

  But this month was going to be different, or at least I was going to do a better job of pretending that it was going to be different. Events noted down included a food festival on Columbia Road, an art installation in Hanover Square and a debate on gender politics in Bloomsbury. I was already mentally preparing excuses as to why I hadn’t gone to any of them.

  First part of the homework done, I turned to the men’s magazine. The book encouraged readers to read Cosmo and then flag down a woman and ask her opinion on a particular article. I couldn’t imagine any man doing this without expiring from embarrassment, as most Cosmo articles are about sex tips involving gelatin and nipple tassels.

  I figured the male equivalent was Maxim. I flipped through the first few pages and realized there weren’t all that many conversation-sparking articles in it. It was mainly photos of women in their underwear and guys with bloodied heads. I soldiered on.

  “Excuse me,” I asked a man in his early forties who was stationed firmly in front of a rack of computer magazines. “Would you say that this is accurate?” I pointed to a random article about something called “felching.” I assumed it was some sort of muddy obstacle course invented by the Marines.

  “Sorry?” he said, looking flushed.

  “Felching,” I repeated. “Apparently it’s all the rage with guys at the minute?”

  “I’m afraid I really couldn’t comment on that,” he said and hustled away.

  “Christ, I’m sorry I asked,” I muttered.

  I looked back down at the article and started to read. I felt my ears begin to tingle, then burn. There was no mention of running or rope climbs, but there were some pretty disturbing pixelated photos accompanying the article.

  “That poor man,” I whispered.

  I tried to slip out of the shop unnoticed, but the bookseller caught me just as I got to the door.

  “What, you’re not going to purchase any ridiculous nonsense pitted against your own gender today?”

  “I’ve got everything I need, thank you,” I said. “By the way, Camus wasn’t a defensive midfielder, he was a goalkeeper. Everyone knows that.”

  He looked at me appraisingly. “How on earth do you know anything about football?”

  I was incensed. “Um, how dare you impose your gender stereotypes on me? Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t know about sports, you know.”

  He sighed. “Get off your high horse, Germaine Greer. I was referring to your nationality, not your gender. I have never met an American who knew anything about football. Real football, I mean. Not your . . . helmeted nonsense,” he said witheringly.

  “I’ll have you know that I played soccer for ten years. My team won state three years in a row.” I felt so smug I was practically levitating.

  He had the momentary good grace to look suitably impressed. “Well, I’m not entirely sure what ‘winning state’ means but it sounds quite good.”

  “It is,” I said, pulling myself up to my full height and slightly puffing out my chest. “We beat Mount Alvern in a penalty shoot-out for the title in my senior year.”

  “Nail-biting stuff.”

  I nodded sagely, ignoring his sarcasm. “It was.”

  And with that, I walked out of the shop, feeling enormously pleased with myself. There was nothing better than having the last word.

  July 19

  I arrived home and kicked aside a pile of recycling that had accumulated by the door.

  “Lucy?” I called as I turned on the light. “Are you in?”

  No reply. Presumably she was at Tristan’s again. It was starting to feel like I had a two-bedroom apartment to myself—albeit a shitty, decrepit one. It was great in a way, as I could turn up Ani DiFranco very loud and dance around the living room without incurring any judgmental looks, but it was also kind of lame. I missed ranting with Lucy over the television, and my childhood fears of being murdered in my sleep had come back with a vengeance now that I was alone every night. I kept double-checking the locks and looking under the bed for serial killers. It was embarrassing.

  I dug through the pile of mail on the kitchen counter and found another postcard from Meghan: a close-up photograph of an ear. I flipped it over and read the message scrawled on the back in bright purple ink.

  “I would rather die of passion than of boredom” —Vincent van Gogh.

  Saw this and thought of you. Just don’t go hacking off any body parts in the process.

  Love, Meg

  I sat down with a glass of wine and a salad I’d assembled from the fridge dregs and gave her a call.

  The phone rang many, many times before she picked up.

  “Hello?” she said, audibly panting.

  “It’s me. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Hey, kid! Sorry, Maud was beating the shit out of Harold and I was trying to separate them.”

  “How does a kitten beat the shit out of an eighty-pound dog?”

  “Trust me: where there’s a will, there’s a way. How are you?”

  “Eh, I’m okay. Got your postcard. Don’t worry, I’m still fully intact.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I let out a deep sigh.

  “What’s up with you? You sound like shit.” Trust a sister to tell it like it is.

  “I’m just a little lonely. A little homesick. Lucy’s met this amazing new guy, so she’s never around, and work’s a little tough at the minute, and I’m following the dating advice of some douchebag . . . I’m a little filled with ennui, I guess.”

  “So come home already.”

  “I can’t come home. You know that.”

  “Kid, you can always come home. The past isn’t as scary as you think it is. It’s not some monster living in the closet, waiting for you.”

  I glanced over at my bedroom door. “I’m not so sure of that.”

  She sighed. “Speaking of which, I saw Dylan the other day.”

  A little pocket of bile bloomed in my stomach. “You did? Where? Did you talk to him?”

  “At Sangillo’s. We talked for a second, but he was three sheets to the wind so it wasn’t a very stimulating conversation.”

  The thought of him drunk at Sangillo’s filled me with an inexplicable sadness. “Did you talk about me?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “No, but he wasn’t exactly in a great frame of mind.”

  I felt a prick of guilt. It was my fault, I knew it. I took a sip of wine and changed the subject. There was nothing I coul
d do to unknow it, but I could sure as hell ignore it.

  I got off the phone soon after, promising that I’d think about what she’d said about coming back home. The thought of Portland swelled in front of me: the clapboard houses painted in blues and greeny-grays, the Eastern Promenade in the height of summer as the boats sail past, the quiet that descends on Old Town once fall settles in and the tourists clear out. I went onto the balcony and lit a cigarette, pushing the memory out of my head. I stared out across the London night. Portland wasn’t home anymore. For better or worse, I’d made my choice.

  July 23

  After nearly a month of radio silence, Adrian turned up again like a bad but not entirely unwelcome penny.

  I was at work, pretending to write a press release for an upcoming exhibition on electromagnetism (“It’s hair-raising!”). Really, I was sketching out my “adding-value” story. The book asks you to think of personal anecdotes that convey your charm, sense of humor, bravery and general panache and then store them in your conversational armory for the right moment.

  The only one I could come up with was when I spent a summer riding a pony on the farm near my house, culminating in a blue-ribbon win at a show-jumping competition, only to return the following summer to find that Jason had become too fat for anyone to ride and had been sent to that great big glue factory in the sky.

  I was putting the final flourishes on Jason the pony when my phone flashed up with a text.

  Adrian: Drink?

  Me: It’s 11:30 in the morning. I’m at work.

  Adrian: Later?

  Me: Maybe. What time?

  Adrian: 7?

  Me: Okay. Will meet you in Blue Posts on Berwick St.

  Adrian: That place is gash.

  Me: Then you’ll fit right in.

  I arrived at 7:30, factoring in Adrian’s laissez-faire attitude toward timekeeping. He strolled in at 7:50, just as I was gathering my things to leave.

  “Where are you off to, Cunningham? You wouldn’t stand a man up, would you?”

  “Do you think it’s normal to be almost an hour late?”

  He smiled infuriatingly. “Sorry, time escaped me.”