by Carol Mason
‘Speak for yourself!’ she says, and tops me up a little too keenly. Golden fizz fizzes over the poly cup, decadently watering the grass.
‘Don’t spill it then! For God sake…’ I admonish her. ‘Here,’ I hold my glass out to her. ‘Fill up what you spilt.’
The garden is an absolute disaster, even worse than when I saw it last, because we just had some relentless rain and then a few days of sunshine. The grass is about two feet long, and weeds are strangling all the once-lovely plants in the borders. We talk about everything, including my thought that, if I do decide to keep this place, I could bring my mother here to live with me.
‘Do you want to graduate onto the concrete step?’ I ask her, when we’re almost through our first bottle, and I want to follow the last patch of the evening sun.
So we do. And then we find ourselves with two very sore bums. ‘You gotta get better patio furniture than this, hun!’ Sherrie says. A pleasant-looking man walks past us with his black Lab, looks across the stone wall, smiles. Sherrie’s gaze follows him down the street.
‘Couldn’t you handle some nice sex right about now?’ she asks me, and lies back, awkwardly settling herself against the step, tilting her face up to the last of the evening rays.
‘I haven’t thought about it in a while,’ I lie, still remembering my confused but horny dream.
‘That’s not the answer to the question.’
I glance at her lying back like that with her eyes shut.
‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘Okay, yes, I could handle it.’
She opens her eyes, turns her head slightly, looks at me. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
I scowl. ‘What can I do about it? Call upon Jonathan to send me a lover? I tried that once. It didn’t work.’
She sits up, rubs her back, says, ‘Man, I’m uncomfortable.’
I titter. ‘Me too.’
She sits cross-legged, grips her champagne cup between her knees. ‘Start giving off ‘available’ signals. If a nice man walking a black Labrador looks at you in that certain way, give him it back, hun. Don’t look so unapproachable.’
‘What? Him? Oh, I’m sure he’ll be married with a couple of kids.’
‘That’s perfect.’
‘No it isn’t!’
‘If you’re scared of falling in love again, Ange, a married man will at least get you back in the sack. And if he doesn’t really have feelings for you, but he’s bored at home, he’ll really go for it. It could be a lotta fun.’
‘Seriously, can we….’
‘Change the subject?’ She delves in the plastic bag, pulls out the second bottle. With some deft manoeuvrings, she pops the cork. ‘You need lube-ing up,’ she tells me. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve a bottle to go. Who knows what might be along in the meantime?’ She cranes her neck down the street. ‘Irish Wolf Hound approaching with one tall, dark –’
‘Stop it!’ I elbow her and we giggle as we thrust out our glasses to catch the drops.
~ * * * ~
That night I fall asleep thinking of kindness. Yes Jonathan was good to Ms Elmtree when he sued the property developer for her. And yes I used to run to Safeway and get her the odd bag of groceries. I only lived beside her little more than eighteen months, yet in looking at her, I saw what my mother could become in twenty-five years. Essentially family-less and left to her own devices. And I hoped that anything that I might do for my elderly neighbour might somehow get done for my mother, by some sort of divine karma. I might not believe in promises made by dead husbands, but I do believe in karma…
But still, was our little bit of neighbourly kindness enough to deserve being left a house? I remember the strange way she told me about Jonathan sitting in his car. I wonder if he ever told her about losing all our money; if she knew more than she was letting on. Then again, she knew I was forced to sell our house, so maybe that’s why she came to my rescue. But the lawyer told me when the will was written. It was before I sold.
Maybe I’ll never truly know how I’ve come to inherit a house. Maybe sometimes it’s best not to wonder too much.
~ * * * ~
‘I don’t usually think creatively in the shower,’ I tell the room, ‘but an idea did come to me the other morning that I think might carry the right mix of message and drama that we are looking for in a campaign approach.’
It’s my third meeting with Epilepsy Canada. Our previous two discussed strategy and now we’ve moved on to the bit that everybody likes and wants to get their hands on: the fun part, what the campaign’s going to look like. My art boards with my terrible attempt at drawing, lay face down on the boardroom table, alongside cold coffee and a plate of peanut butter cookies, in this tiny room on a warm late summer evening.
Crystal, Bill, Giles, and Kye, the good-looking PE teacher, are present. I notice—again—that Kye has a habit of rotating his pencil—I remember it annoying me in the first meeting. I wonder if it’s because I’m boring him. The upshot is though, it makes me look at his hands. They’re evenly-tanned, with long and quite artistic fingers, and very clean, pink nails. Somehow you could look at those hands in isolation, and know that the owner of them would be a very fit, fresh and attractive young fellow in his twenties: a PE teacher, perhaps, maybe of Nordic descent.
‘With the limited media that we can afford,’—focus, Angela; focus,—‘we need a singular, powerful message that will take epilepsy right into the hearts and minds of a broad target base—everyone from young people to old. It’s a lot to ask of—’
The pencil comes sailing out of Kye’s hand, as though he’s flicked it right at me.
‘Any single, visual message,’ I finish, trying not to react.
‘Sorry ‘bout that,’ he says, and lunges across the table to get his pencil back.
Bill titters.
I’ve lost my train of thought. ‘Erm…remembering…. yeah… that… the bus shelter ads and the limited print media campaign are there mainly for awareness and to trigger a call to action... I think a powerful creative route would be to go with…’ I unveil my 3’x3’ white board…. ‘Tada!’ I skim their faces, the looks of surprise, and engagement.
In the centre of my whiteboard I have drawn an image of the human brain. The brain is all rigged up like a bomb hooked up to a detonator. Underneath, in bold black type, is the simple tagline: Living With Epilepsy.
Kye whistles. Crystal smiles. Bill scowls, wags his pen at the board. ‘Don’t we need to have more writing to say that living with epilepsy means your brain is essentially a ticking time bomb?’
I shake my head. ‘The image says that. The line connects the idea. You don’t need to explain the obvious. In advertising, less is definitely more. All we need is a line underneath indicating the website, and the 1-800 number—the call to action. Powerful advertising demands—and will get—action.’
‘I agree,’ says Crystal. ‘If you have to explain the joke then you’re assuming the listener is slow.’
‘I think it’s very good,’ Giles says. ‘Powerful.’
‘It kicks butt,’ Kye adds, which makes me smile.
‘Let me show you how I see it translating to the website…’ I tell them now that I seem to have them on side…
~ * * * ~
As I’m packing up my stuff to go, Crystal says, ‘Angela, may I talk to you?’
‘I’ve been meaning to call you and ask you how busy you are. I mean, with your work.’
Oh God, I don’t need more things to do that I’m not getting paid for. ‘Oh, erm –’ I’m slow to make up bullshit on my feet.
‘The reason I ask, Angela, is that I’m very interested to talk about how Write Strategies could help me. It seems that half my staff at Zeit can’t write as well as they think they can. I would quite like to talk about hiring your consultancy services.’
‘You would?’ I perk up. I catch Kye looking at me, as he slowly puts papers in his bag, the last to leave the room.
‘I don’t know how it would all fit, but may I have
my HR person call you tomorrow for a chat?’
I reach out and offer her my hand, trying to contain my glee behind an air of professionalism. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
As I’m about to leave, she says, ‘We’re very impressed with you here. We’re glad you came to us.’
I smile broadly. ‘Thank you,’ I tell her, and when I get out into the corridor where she can’t see me, I dance up and down.
~ * * * ~
I walk out of the building into the early evening sunshine, still smiling. Kye is sitting on the wall. For a moment I think he must be waiting for a ride from somebody. I stop a few feet in front of him. ‘Sounds like you’ve got something to celebrate,’ he says.
‘My first client, possibly,’ I beam. ‘With a bit of luck.’
‘First client?’ he narrows his eyes at me, looking amused. ‘But I thought you were a really successful writing coach.’
I smile again. ‘It’s called selling yourself. It’s in the things you don’t say.’
‘I must remember that,’ he says. ‘You certainly had me convinced.’
‘Have a good night,’ I tell him, giving him a quick glance over before I start walking.
‘Hold up a minute,’ he says, after I’ve gone a few steps. I stop, turn around. ‘Would you like to go get some real dinner? Something a bit more substantial than peanut butter cookies?’
When I don’t immediately answer, he says, ‘Maybe even a beer with it?’
~ * * * ~
He’s hard inside of me.
Definitely more substantial than peanut butter cookies.
Different to Jonathan. I’d almost forgotten what variety is like.
How did we get here? I can’t quite believe how fast I fell into the sack. This might actually be an all-time record. If you don’t count Jonathan.
His body is even nicer with his clothes off. We stick and slather, and when he moves away from me to admire my body. His heart isn’t into it, of course. I know that. But his body is. I’d forgot what sex is like without love. We had a great chat. We connected. We drank a few drinks. And then I ended up naked with him moments after he walked me home and gave me a seemingly innocent kiss.
It’s good.
He isn’t into my feet, doesn’t care to kiss my toes, or the backs of my knees, or the inside of my elbows. But he goes a long time, and the rhythm is nice.
‘I’m one half German and one half Swedish, actually,’ he says when we’re finished, answering the question I asked him about an hour ago.
I laugh. I fall off him and flop onto the other side of the bed, and we lie there on our backs, panting and smiling. We lie like this for a few minutes, until we’ve recovered; it takes me longer than him; I’m obviously out of shape, or out of practice. My eyes skim over his bare chest, the handsome quite devastatingly sparkling white teeth and blue eyes, as he props himself on an arm and looks down at me. ‘You’re quite the surprise,’ he says.
‘I bet you’re quite the PE teacher. I bet you have legions of lovesick teenagers after you.’ It feels nice to flirt, to make silly, light conversation. He’s so handsome that I almost feel intimidated lying naked beside him.
‘Legions,’ he jokes. ‘No. Not really.’ Then he smiles immodestly. ‘Well, maybe one or two.’ He likes himself. Sure he does. How could he not?
‘I hated PE in school,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, don’t tell me you were one of those girls who whines and gets prissy when they have to play soccer.’ He shakes his head. ‘I hate chicks that wimp out. I get really pissed off when they won’t even make an effort, when they come whining with all their lame-ass excuses.’
‘You’re twenty-six,’ I tell him, after a while of studying the healthy face, blond hair, blond eyebrows and lashes. Not really that much younger than me, really, yet it feels like lots.
He strokes the inside of my thigh. ‘Is there a reason you have to keep repeating my age?’
His fingers feel fantastic. What am I doing in bed with a twenty-six-year-old? I don’t tell him he’s the first person since my husband. I don’t even mention Jonathan, and he doesn’t either.
‘So do you have a girlfriend?’ I ask him, instead.
He looks the tiniest bit coy, and I don’t know whether it’s spontaneous or he’s putting it on. ‘Oh, not sure I want to answer that. Might incriminate me.’
‘Go on.’ I prod his chest. ‘You must have one.’
‘Off and on.’
‘What’s that mean?’ I prod him a few more times. ‘You mean off and on, as in sometimes, you have a girlfriend?’
‘I mean there is somebody. We’re off and on.’
‘What are you at this moment?’
He studies me, pretends to give my body the once-over. ‘At this moment..? Off. Definitely.’ Before I can say any more he quickly says, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of taking a year off and going to live in Sweden.’
‘When?’
‘Maybe after Christmas, depending if they’ll let me at work.’
‘That’ll be good for you.’
How nice. He gets to go and bonk lots of Swedish girls… He draws circles around my breast now with his middle finger. I tingle again. This is definitely not going to be permanent, so I might as well make the most of it.
‘Sooooo,’ he says. ‘Are we going to do this again?’ He runs the finger down the centre of my stomach, to my navel then back up. I notice he doesn’t ask much about me. In fact, very little, even over dinner. When we’re not talking about him, or things he wants to talk about, we tend to just eat in silence.
I push whatever negatives there might be far away. ‘Yeah, right now mightn’t be a bad plan.’
~ * * * ~
Sherrie splutters wine all down the front of herself. ‘You didn’t!’
‘I did!’ I grin at her across my couch, and point to my bedroom door. ‘In there!’
‘It makes perfect sense.’ Her eyes go from my bedroom, back to me. ‘I mean, if you’re still nursing that idea that Jonathan’s going to send you a lover… then yeah, of course, it all fits that he’d send you a handsome young Phys-Ed teacher who donates his free time to a worthy cause. I mean…’ She looks up at the ceiling. ‘Great job Jonny baby. I never did like that idea of you sending her that weird Greek, or the married Brit with the wife who felt up a stripper. That sucked. But this one… I do believe you got it right this time.’
I stretch my legs out so my feet are on her lap, and dive into my wine glass again. We started off renting a DVD but it was lousy so we packed it in after about twenty minutes and just sat talking instead, and cracked open another bottle of wine.
‘What’s he like, this Kye who Jonathan’s sent you?’
Jonathan wouldn’t send me Kye. ‘In the sack?’
‘No! In the staff room. Does he clear away his coffee mug? Does he always read the notice boards? Is he one of these great intellectuals who talk about the brain as an extension of the bicep? Of course in the sack you turkey!’
‘Oh…. young. And fit. And enthusiastic… And quite, quite big,’ I tell her and she just about spills her wine again. ‘It’s his age though. That’s the real problem.’
‘He sounds quite mature… volunteering his free time.’
‘He is. Well, sort of. But he’s into himself, not in an arrogant way, but he knows the girls like him. And he definitely thinks like a single lad. Besides, he’s moving to Sweden for a year at Christmas. He wants a break from his job and wants to take off and live his life. He’s got no commitments. He has an on-off thing with his girlfriend… I don’t think he’s the type to let that stand in his way.’ I’m as certain of it as I was that Sean isn’t moving to Seattle. ‘He’ll get there and screw legions of really beautiful natural blondes.’
‘I bet he didn’t have any complaints about you not being a natural blonde!’
I grin again, feeling myself blush thinking how eager I was for him. ‘He didn’t actually.’
She chortles. ‘I can’t believe you were goin
g to sit and watch a movie before you told me this!’
‘It’s not really that revolutionary though is it? I mean, sex. We all do it. Okay some of us haven’t done it in a while. But the bigger, better news that you’re forgetting is that I have my first client! That’s what we really should be talking about—not men. Why do we always talk about men? Isn’t the job the best thing that came out of last night? It should be, but with the thought of Kye on top of me, I’m not so sure.
‘To your first client.’ She holds up her glass. ‘You go girl!’
We toast.
‘Who needs men, Ange? Look at all the good things that are starting to happen. You have a job of sorts. You have a home that you don’t have to pay for! You have a proper place to live!’
‘I do! And I think I’m going to live in it. There’s still going to be bills to pay, so I still have to get some income coming in, but I actually think I can live there. I think it’s the right thing to do.’
‘You have a home, you have a client, and you’re getting laid,’ she shakes her head and looks at me in a moment of truth. ‘How the heck did all that happen Ange? How did it all just fall into place?’
‘I don’t know, Sherrie. I really don’t know.’
But in a very weird way, I think I do.
Twenty Three
On Saturday morning, I ring my mother to see if she’s heard anything from the doctor. Also, I wanted to tell her I’ve downloaded the immigration papers off the Internet and am slowly wading through the forms, to start the process of sponsoring her to come live with me.
The phone rings and rings. Strange: she’s usually home at this time. I’ll have to remember to try her again in a couple of hours.
~ * * * ~
The Salvation Army van comes and gets the furniture belonging to Ms Elmtree that I decide I don’t want to keep—her bed, the seat she always sat in by the window that looks grotty now, and a few other things. Then Richard helps me strip the kitchen and living room of the ancient floral wallpaper. We work together comfortably, without talking, with the radio on the classic rock channel: the Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black back-to-back with David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes, as we pull long and satisfying strips of paper off to reveal a knobbly surface.