Someday My Prince Will Come

by Jerramy Fine

  Maybe this was the partner in crime I’d been looking for! Oh, how wonderful would it be to have a real female friend again!

  The flat itself was tiny but gorgeously furnished. A big bay window, glass tables, white sofas. There was no dryer, and the washing machine (which was in the kitchen) was the size of a mixing bowl—but that had been the case in every London flat I’d seen so far. So other than the dreadful laundry facilities, it was perfect. And very grown-up.

  “I have a good feeling about you,” said Rebecca. “If you want the room, it’s yours.”

  I was told my whole life that I shouldn’t make impulse purchases, but in this situation I had to!

  “I’ll take it,” I said. And less than fifteen minutes after meeting her, I handed Rebecca a check for the deposit and a full month’s rent, and tried to ignore that I probably could have rented a huge five-bedroom house in America for exactly the same amount.

  Sounds sane so far, right? Miss Laura Ashley and I sipping Earl Grey and gossiping wildly in our glamorous flat overlooking Lord’s Cricket Ground. Well, for a while that’s exactly what it was like. But soon things started to get a little creepy.

  It was fairly subtle at first…. One day Rebecca told me that she never watches R-rated movies. A week or so later, she asked me to explain the difference between marijuana and cocaine. (As if I looked like someone who might know!)

  Granted, I’m not a fan of horror movies, and much to my parents’ disappointment I’m anything but a drug connoisseur—but still, these comments struck me as exceptionally odd for someone her age.

  Then things started to get weirder. I noticed that her side of the shelf in the bathroom began to fill up with exactly the same makeup and hair products that I used. If Rupert or Adam called, she wouldn’t tell me and she was obsessed with trying to get me a job at her bank. (Like I had any skills that would be even vaguely useful to a bank.) It was all very disturbing.

  Adam suggested that I rent Single White Female and watch it with her to see her reaction. But it was an R-rated movie so that plan never would have worked and I don’t think she would have made the connection anyway.

  When I told Rupert about my flatmate predicament, he grinned immediately. “I bet she’s a lesbian,” he said. “She must be in love with you! Can I move in and watch the two of you snog?”67

  But I really don’t think Rebecca was a lesbian. I think she just really wanted to be me. Or even worse, really wanted me to be her best friend.

  Like clockwork, Rebecca e-mailed me every Thursday afternoon to see if I would join her and her banking friends for after-work drinks. And in the beginning, I agreed. (Hey, I’m not one to turn down a chance to meet handsome English bankers!) But each time I took the tube all the way to Canary Wharf 68 to meet up with her near her office, these so-called banking friends never materialized. Instead, Rebecca would corner me in the least social part of the bar, and then talk to me for hours about herself and how wonderful she was. How skinny she was, how clever she was, how rich she was, and so on. If I tried to change the subject, she would look at me blankly and then go right back to talking about herself.

  On top of it all, bars in Canary Wharf were the first I’d seen in London that resembled anything close to the friendly, relaxed atmosphere found at a typical American happy hour. I was shocked to see that these cute English banker guys (albeit only when suitably drunk) actually approached girls they didn’t know! However, if any cute English banker guys ever dared to approach the two of us, Rebecca would quickly shoo them away. “You’re really not our type,” she would tell them and then she would turn her undivided attention back to me.

  I quickly learned to come up with excuses every time she invited me out for a drink—which was, as time went on, beginning to happen almost daily.

  One evening Rebecca and I were busy cooking dinner in the kitchen (actually I was the only one doing any cooking because did I mention she eats nothing but rice cakes? That’s right. Nothing. But. Rice cakes.) when she said to me, “I have been invited to two amazing parties this Friday night. One is at my vice president’s huge house and the other is at this fantastically trendy club in Notting Hill. There are going to be some amazing guys. You must come along!”

  The parties did sound like they had potential, so against my better judgment, I agreed.

  On Friday night, I came home from work early and got all glitzed up for our big night out on the town. I was applying the finishing touches to my eye makeup when Rebecca poked her head into my room and said, “Jerramy, let’s not go to those parties to night…let’s just go out by ourselves.”

  I was livid. And spent the next five hours trapped in the corner of a quiet bar listening to how wonderful she was. I learned my lesson that night, and after that I turned down Rebecca’s invitation for drinks every single time without an ounce of guilt.

  I continued to flee to Oxford on the weekends (considering I was sharing my apartment with a borderline stalker, I kind of had to) and one Saturday night I found myself at a Moroccan-themed bar with Rupert and the usual suspects, all of whom I may or may not have kissed on previous occasions.

  The bar was dark and loud and crowded and as I was making my way back from the ladies room, I suddenly realized that I had lost my group. Just as I was beginning to wonder if they had accidentally left without me, I noticed that another one of Oxford’s many Hugh Grant look-alikes was standing across the room and staring at me. On closer inspection, I realized that I recognized this particular look-alike but I couldn’t place him. Had I seen him in Tatler recently?

  I’d been downing gin-and-tonics for several hours and all inhibitions had been thoroughly erased long ago, so I walked right up to him.

  “Forgive me for being forward,” I began, “but you look very familiar. Do I know you?”

  “Jerramy, how you trample on my heart. We met at a dinner party last year.”

  I still couldn’t remember. (But might I take a moment to mention that he also sounded like Hugh Grant?)

  “You sat next to Rupert, you wore a lovely black skirt and a tiny bright blue top, and if I recall correctly, you brought a superb bottle of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.”

  Wow. It doesn’t surprise me that he remembered the alcohol, but to remember what a girl was wearing? That requires superhuman concentration for a guy. I was impressed.

  “We never got a chance to talk properly,” he continued, “because the whole thing turned into some wild, drunken, orgy-style party.”

  I laughed. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? They seem to happen so easily in Oxford.”

  “Oh, but Oxford does them so well.” His accent was killing me.

  He told me his name was Fergus and before I knew what was happening, the two of us were seated in a dark, Moroccan corner and chatting away.

  “Tell me, Jerramy. Do you think it is Britney Spears’s wholesome sexiness or sexy wholesomeness that is so sadly underrated?” Fergus was so silly and so serious at the same time and the combination was agonizingly attractive.

  “Sexy wholesomeness—definitely,”69 I replied.

  Right then, a girl of about eighteen wearing a slinky black dress walked unsteadily over to our table. She was visibly distraught, visibly drunk, and looked like she was trying not to cry.

  Instinctively, I grabbed her hand. “Are you alright?”

  “My boyfriend just broke up with me,” she stammered. She was shaking really hard now and I squeezed her hand. She knelt down beside our table, talking between hiccups.

  “You two look like such a happy couple,” she sobbed. “I thought if I came over here it would give me hope…that I might be happy someday…and a couple…and that things might turn out okay…” Her words dissolved into tears.

  “It will turn out okay,” I whispered. Fergus looked utterly perplexed, trying desperately to comprehend this strange female-language.

  The girl looked up, wiped her eyes, and gave an embarrassed smile, “I’m sorry to intrude on your evening.”

 
“Not at all,” said Fergus. “It was our plea sure to give you hope.”

  As the girl walked away, Fergus said, “Now that was depressing, wasn’t it? Let’s leave this place before someone else tries to sponge hope off of us!”

  I laughed and followed him outside. Somehow, it had become 2:30 A.M. Rupert was still nowhere to be found. “Fergus, what am I going to do? Rupert has my wallet, and my phone, and I’m supposed to be sleeping on his sofa to night!”

  Fergus seemed unworried. “My wholesome and sexy Jerramy, don’t fret. I’ll take care of you to night. After all, apparently when I’m with you, people get the odd impression that there is hope for me! So much hope for me that I can share it freely with others!”

  We found his friends, who were standing in a taxi queue of at least a hundred people. “Come on, chaps!” Fergus bellowed. “Forget taxis! We are young! We are strong! We have hope on our side! Let us walk home!”

  No one could resist his swaggering confidence, so we drunkenly linked arms and began our journey home. Five minutes later, the sky opened and it began to pour. All the boys started to run and suddenly I realized I was the only girl in the group, not to mention the only one wearing high heels. Normally I don’t run unless there is a fire or someone is chasing me, but the thought of my perfect Barbie curls frizzing into a Medusa-style nightmare compelled me to run as fast as my heels would carry me.

  Finally, finally, finally we got to the house. But it was locked! All of its occupants were still out clubbing! My clothes were soaked and water was still gushing down from the sky. I had to get inside before the damage to my hair became irrevocable!

  “I know,” said one of the boys (I think his name was Tom). “I’ll climb onto the roof and break in through a window.”

  Genius. Let’s get arrested while we’re at it. But Tom seemed impressively adept at such criminal activity and minutes later, I was in a warm, dry house and quite certain that the owners would forgive me once I met them. And as we dried off and put on dry clothes belonging to the owners, I prayed that someone in this group actually knew them.

  We settled on the sofas, cracked open the wine, and began talking utter nonsense—the kind of poetic, circular nonsense that can only be produced by drunk, arrogant young people at 4 A.M. Through it all, I tried to work Fergus out. Just like Hugh Grant, he was so subtle and proper that I couldn’t tell if he was actually flirting with me or just being polite and friendly. I tried to subtly flirt back, but by 5 A.M., I gave up. He was just being polite.

  I said good night to the boys and found myself a spare bed. As I lay there, it dawned on me that I had drunkenly followed six male strangers through the broken window of a temporarily abandoned house—possibly everything my mother had warned me never to do. But still, I felt perfectly safe.

  Just then, Fergus came stumbling into the room looking for blankets. He kept tripping over things in the dark and his adorable clumsiness made him seem more like Hugh Grant than ever.

  “The rest of the chaps have selfishly claimed the other beds for themselves,” he whispered through the darkness. “Would you mind terribly if I slept in here on the floor?”

  I whispered back, “Don’t be ridiculous. This bed is huge. We can share.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want you to think I am being inappropriate.”

  “Fergus! Don’t be silly! Get in here!”

  He got in next to me, making sure to keep as far away from me as possible. I am so bad at reading signals. He really, truly was just being polite and friendly. He didn’t like me in that way at all.

  Suddenly, the watch on Fergus’s wrist began to beep and flash. He sat up and looked at it, frantically pressing buttons to make it stop. “Jerramy! It’s daylight savings time! We have gained a whole extra hour to talk rubbish!”

  And so we had. So we lay there, side by side, staring at the ceiling and talking into the darkness.

  “I just had déjà vu,” Fergus said.

  “Really?” I asked. “I never know what to think when that happens to me. What do you think it means?”

  “I like to think it means my life is going exactly as it should. And that the moment is so meant to be, it was already preprogrammed into my mind.”

  Okay, it was 5 A.M. (again.) Time to be brave. “So, you think lying in this bed with me, right now, was meant to be?”

  He was silent. All I could hear was our breathing. We had both turned our heads and our lips were millimeters apart.

  I was used to guys that pulled me aside and pinned me to things and started kissing me without even knowing my name! But with Fergus, I was so nervous, I was shaking. This had never happened to me before. Finally, after an eternity of anticipation, we kissed. It was sweet, tender, innocent. Like your first teenage kiss—without any of the awkwardness.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” he whispered. “But I thought for sure you weren’t interested.”

  “What?” I whispered. “I thought you weren’t interested!”

  “Allow me to prove you wrong.” And we began making out like teenagers. Later, Rupert told me that Fergus lived off a huge trust fund. But at the moment, I didn’t care if he was a pauper.

  In the midst of our fumble, Fergus stopped. “Let’s make one thing clear. I let you get away at that dinner party, but I am not going to let you get away again.”

  “Clear!” I giggled. And we carried on kissing. He was adorably shy at first, but it wasn’t long before his hands landed firmly on my bottom.

  “What have we here? By George! I believe I have discovered America’s greatest export.”

  I giggled again. “I do what I can for Queen and Country.”

  Fergus stopped and looked straight into my eyes. Dawn was beginning to filter through the darkness of the room. “Jerramy, you are a dream. We are going to have a splendid relationship.”

  We fell asleep soon afterward and in the morning when I tried to take a cab to Rupert’s house, the cabbie told me to save my money because he lived across the street. Rupert laughed hysterically when I called to tell him where I was.

  I never did meet the owners of the abandoned house, but Fergus carefully entered my phone number into his mobile and kissed me good-bye at Rupert’s doorstep.

  “I shall ring you tomorrow, Miss Fine. And I shall take you to my favorite pub in London.” We kissed again. “And then I will take you away for the weekend.” We kissed again and I closed the door.

  That was the last time I saw Fergus.

  Seventeen

  “What allows us, as human beings, to psychologically survive life on earth, with all of its drama, is a sense of purpose and meaning.”

  —BARBARA DE ANGELIS

  Splendid relationship, indeed.

  The Fergus episode affected me deeply and I decided to take a break from Oxford for a while. But back in London, Rebecca remained relentless. I was literally running out of excuses and about a month later, I finally caved in.

  I figured one more drink couldn’t hurt. Besides, I’d been feeling under the weather that week so I would force myself to make it an early night. That Friday evening, I took the Jubilee Line to Rebecca’s offices and as I ascended the enormously tall escalator into Canary Wharf, I marveled again at London’s incredible diversity. It was like fifty mini cities all crammed into one, each beautifully unique. Compared to the ancient buildings and winding streets found in the rest of London, Canary Wharf was ultramodern and its giant skyscrapers sparkled gorgeously along the river. It was the beginning of November and the air was so icy I could see my breath.

  Rebecca came running toward me as soon as I came out of the station. “Jerramy! There you are!”

  I could see the hem of her floral Laura Ashley skirt poking out under her long black coat. Just one drink, I told myself. Then I’m out of here.

  “We are meeting a bunch of my banking friends to night,” she said.

  Yeah, right. Unlike me, those imaginary banking friends are smart. They never show up. I mentally braced m
yself for the tedious evening ahead.

  “Actually,” she continued excitedly, “We are meeting a few members of my staff. You’ll love them. They are such partiers!”

  Yeah, right.

  We arrived at the bar, and what do you know, banking friends and banking staff were nowhere to be found. I ordered a double gin-and-tonic to dull the pain. The bar was packed with lively young professionals, but not surprisingly, Rebecca managed to inch me into an isolated corner.

  “Jerramy, I’m sorry to keep bringing this up, but why do you think my boyfriend broke up with me?”

  For the love of God. Do we have to talk about this again? Maybe he realized you were a lunatic! Maybe he realized you had no personality! Maybe he realized you ate nothing but rice cakes and watched only PG movies!

  I smiled at her sympathetically. “Rebecca, I’ve told you. It has nothing to do with you. It was him. He just wasn’t ready for a relationship.”

  She nodded vigorously. “You’re absolutely right. Because you know what? He used to tell me how beautiful I was all the time!”

  Oh God. Please make it stop.

  Apparently, my prayer was heard. Just then, the double doors of the bar swung open and about half a dozen young male bankers bounded over to us bringing a gust of cold air with them.

  I was in shock. Rebecca had actually told the truth about her staff coming out for drinks. And they were cute! And they were English! And they did look like partiers! Oh God. Did I look okay? I quickly scanned my outfit: black trousers, rose cashmere V-neck, kitten-heel boots, adequate hair day. Could be worse.

  “Jerramy, this is my boss,” said Rebecca, acting as if she had just introduced me to the Prince of Wales. I have no idea why she was batting her eyelashes at him like that. The boss was quite a forgettable guy in his fifties and even though he probably made heaps of money, he was wearing a cheap leather jacket.

  Rebecca made a big sweeping gesture to the younger members of the group and announced, “And these…are my staff.”