by Marian Keyes
We held our breath and listened. Daniel was right.
Someone was knocking on the door.
Thank God, I thought fervently, relief making me dizzy.
Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God! Pencil me in for charitable work, kindness to the poor, contributions to church funds, bad skin, anything you like, but thank you God for giving me back Gus.
“I’ll answer it, Lucy.” Charlotte swayed to her feet.
“You don’t want him to think you’ve been worried. Just look casual.”
“Thanks,” I said, rushing to the mirror in panic. “Do I look okay? Is my hair all right? Oh no, look at how red my face is! Quick, quick, someone give me lipstick!”
I ran my fingers through my hair and flung myself onto the couch, trying to look unconcerned, and waited for Gus to roll into the room. I was so happy I couldn’t sit still. I was looking forward to hearing whatever elaborate and imaginative excuse he might make. No doubt it would be hilarious.
But a while passed and he didn’t appear. I could hear voices in the hall.
“What’s keeping him?” I hissed, anxiously perched on the edge of my seat.
“Just relax.” Daniel rubbed my knee. He stopped abruptly when Karen stared pointedly at his hand, then at him, then at his hand again. She had a peculiar expression, which kind of slid off her face. I realized that she had been trying to arch her eyebrows quizzically, but it had lost something in the inebriation.
More time passed and still Gus didn’t appear. I realized that something was wrong—perhaps he hadn’t come in because he was injured—and after a few minutes I couldn’t bear it anymore and, throwing my veneer of unconcernedness to the wind, I went out to have a look.
There was no Gus.
Just Neil from downstairs.
Neil was in a bad mood, complaining about the music and wearing a very short robe.
I had been certain that Gus was on the premises and it took a great leap of imagination for me to grasp that, he actually wasn’t. I squinted drunkenly past Neil, wondering why I couldn’t see Gus hovering behind him. And when
it hit me that Gus hadn’t arrived after all, I could hardly believe it.
The disappointment was so intense that the ground literally rocked beneath my feet. (Then again, it might have been all the wine I’d drunk.)
“…You don’t have to turn the music down,” Neil was saying. “But for pity’s sake, change the tape. If you have any compassion, any feeling for a fellow human being, you’ll change the tape.”
“But I like Simply Red,” said Charlotte.
“I know!” said Neil. “Why else would you play it for eight weeks nonstop? Please, Charlotte.”
“Okay,” she agreed sulkily.
“And would you mind playing this instead?” he asked, handing her a tape.
“Get lost!” spluttered Charlotte. “The nerve of you, this is our apartment, we’ll play our music.”
“But I have to listen to it too, you know…” whined Neil.
I lurched back into the front room.
“Where’s Gus?” asked Daniel.
“Don’t know,” I muttered.
I got very drunk, and at some late hour, I think it was about half past two, I decided that I would find Gus. Maybe I could get his new number from the man I had spoken to in his old apartment.
I sneaked out to the hall to the phone. If Karen and Charlotte knew what I was doing they would have tried to stop me. Luckily they were all really drunk. They had stopped playing strip Trivial Pursuit because Charlotte had insisted on putting on some Spanish music. Then she demonstrated the steps that she had learned at her flamingo dancing lessons and made them all join in.
I knew what I was doing had desperation stamped all
over it, but I was drunk, I had no willpower. I had no idea what I would say if I did get through to him. How could I explain that I’d found his new number and tracked him down without seeming like a woman obsessed? But I didn’t care.
Surely I had every right to find him and speak to him, I reasoned drunkenly. I deserved an explanation.
But I wouldn’t be angry with him, I decided. I would be friendly and would calmly ask why he hadn’t come.
There was a tiny sober little part of me that said I shouldn’t call him, that I was behaving like a crazy person, that I was compounding my humiliation by trying to trace him, but I didn’t listen. I was in the grip of a compulsion and I couldn’t stop myself.
But no one answered the phone. I sat on the hall floor and let it ring until I got the recorded message telling me that my number wasn’t being answered—hey, thanks, I would never have noticed otherwise—and in frustration I slammed the phone back on the cradle. I was barely aware of the tumbling and commotion in the front room.
“No answer?” asked someone. I jumped.
Damn! It was Daniel, en route to the kitchen, probably looking for more wine.
“No,” I said, angry that I’d been caught.
“Who were you calling?” asked Daniel.
“Who do you think?”
“Poor Lucy.”
I felt terrible. It wasn’t like the old days when Daniel laughed at me and made fun of my misfortunes. Things had changed and I didn’t feel as if Daniel was my friend anymore. I had to hide my feelings from him.
“You poor little thing,” he said again.
“Oh shut up,” I said sulkily, looking up at him from my position on the floor.
We had somehow crossed a line. All that light-hearted sparring had become real and nasty.
“What’s wrong, Lucy?” Daniel crouched down to where I was slumped on the floor.
“Oh, don’t start,” I spat. “You know what’s wrong.”
“No,” he said. “I mean, what’s wrong with us?”
“There is no ‘us’,” I said, partly to hurt him and partly to avoid the confrontation that I felt was imminent.
“Yes, there is.” He gently put his hand on my neck and began stroking the area under my ear with little circles of his thumb.
“There is,” he said again. His thumb sent odd shivers through my neck and down into my chest. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe too well and then, to my disbelief, I felt my nipples begin to harden.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I whispered, staring up into his handsome familiar face.
But I didn’t pull away. I was drunk, I was rejected and someone was being nice to me.
“I don’t know,” he said, sounding shocked. I could feel his breath on my face. Oh Christ, I thought in horror, as Daniel’s face came closer to mine. He’s going to kiss me. Daniel! Daniel’s going to kiss me, even though his girlfriend is only two yards away and I’m so drunk or upset or whatever that I’m going to let him.
“What’s keeping Dan?” said Karen’s voice, as she flounced out into the hall.
Saved by the belle!
“What are the pair of you doing down there?” she screeched.
“Nothing,” said Daniel, getting to his feet.
“Nothing,” I gasped, clambering to mine.
“You were supposed to be getting ice for Charlotte’s ankle,” said Karen in a fury.
“Why, what’s happened?” I asked, glad of the diversion, any diversion, as Daniel made for the kitchen.
“She tripped doing her flamingo dancing,” said Karen coldly. “And she’s sprained her ankle. But it would appear that Daniel would rather sit on the floor and chat to you than help poor Charlotte.”
I went back into the front room. Charlotte was stretched out on the couch, giggling and saying “ouch” as Simon massaged her foot and looked up her dress.
There was almost no wine left, just dribs and drabs in the bottom of bottles, but I made my way around the table drinking everything in my path, until it all ran out. I was desperate for something to drink and suddenly there seemed to be nothing.
An argument broke out because Charlotte insisted that her ankle was broken and that she should go to the hospital, and Simon s
aid that it definitely wasn’t broken, it was only sprained. Then Karen said that Charlotte should stop whining and then Simon intervened and told Karen to shut up and not to say nasty things to his girlfriend, and if Charlotte wanted to go to the hospital then to the hospital she would go. Karen asked Simon who had made his dinner for him that evening and Simon replied that he had heard all about Karen and the work she had made Charlotte do and that if anyone deserved thanks for the food that evening it was Charlotte…and on and on.
I sat, gulping a half-bottle of red wine that I had found abandoned behind the couch, swinging my legs, enjoying the argument.
Karen shouted at Charlotte for telling Simon that she had done all the cooking. Charlotte had done nothing! Nothing! Just peeled a few carrots and that was all…
I smiled over at Daniel, forgetting for a moment what had happened, or nearly happened, in the hall. He grinned
back, then I remembered what had happened, or nearly happened, in the hall, so I blushed and looked away.
I found some gin and finished that. And I still wasn’t drunk enough. I was sure that I had a bottle of rum in the cupboard in the front room but search as I might, I couldn’t find it.
“Gus probably stole it,” suggested Karen.
“He probably did,” I said grimly.
Eventually I admitted defeat, went to bed, alone, and passed out.
Chapter 41
I jerked awake at about seven o’clock—it was Saturday, after all—and immediately knew that something was wrong. What was it?
Oh yes! I remembered.
Oh no! I wished I hadn’t.
Luckily I was badly hung over, so I was able to go back to sleep.
I woke again at ten and the realization that I had lost Gus hit me like a clunk on the head from a frying pan. I got up and dragged myself down the hall and found Charlotte and Karen in the kitchen cleaning up. There was so much leftover food that I could have cried, but I didn’t because they would have thought that I was crying about Gus.
“Morning,” I said.
“Morning,” they replied.
I waited. I held my breath, hoping that one of them would say, “Oh, Gus called.”
But they didn’t.
I knew there was no point in asking if he had called. They both knew how important it was to me. If Gus had called they would have excitedly told me immediately. In fact, they would have come to me with the news, they would have awakened me.
But even knowing that, I still found myself asking tentatively,
“Did anyone call for me while I was asleep?”
I couldn’t stop myself. In for a penny, in for a pound. I was hurt—why stop now?
“Er, no,” muttered Karen, not meeting my eye.
“No,” agreed Charlotte. “No one.”
I had known that was the case, so why did I still feel so disappointed?
“How’s your ankle?” I asked Charlotte.
“Fine,” she said, looking sheepish.
“I’m just running out to buy the paper,” I said. “And then I’ll be back to help with the cleaning. Does anyone want anything?”
“No thanks.”
I didn’t even want the paper. But a watched pot never boils and if I did a vigil around my phone, Gus wouldn’t call. I knew that if I was out of the house there was a better chance he might call me.
When I let myself back in, I held my breath, waiting for Karen or Charlotte to run down the hall and say, breathlessly, “Guess what? Gus rang,” or “Guess what? Gus is here. He was kidnapped last night and they just let him go a few moments ago.”
But no one ran down the hall and breathlessly told me
anything. I was forced to go, cap-in-hand, to the kitchen, where I was handed a tea towel.
“Did anyone call for me?” I found myself asking, hollowly.
Again, Karen and Charlotte shook their heads. I shut my mouth grimly. I’m not going to ask again, I decided. I was tearing myself apart with disappointment and I was embarrassing them.
I followed the advice of thousands of women’s magazines and Kept Busy. Keeping Busy is supposed to be very good for taking your mind off runaway men and, as luck would have it, there was an alarming amount of cleaning up to be done after the excesses of the previous evening—although I hadn’t expected that I’d have to do any of it. I thought that I’d be given compassionate leave, that because Gus had dumped me, everyone would be nice to me, that I’d be given a special dispensation and Karen would let me off my chores.
Not a chance.
Karen wasted no time in setting me straight.
“Keep busy,” she said cheerfully, as she loaded me up with filthy plates. “It’ll take your mind off him.”
That made me feel even more upset—I wanted sympathy, I wanted kidglove treatment, I wanted to be treated like a convalescent invalid. What I didn’t want was to do the cleaning up.
And anyone who says that Keeping Busy is a distraction from heartbreak is mistaken, because I Kept very Busy that day, and I thought about Gus constantly—how cleaning the bathroom was supposed to make me feel better about Gus disappearing had me baffled. All that happened was the one form of misery was temporarily exchanged for another.
I vacuumed the entire flat, I washed the unbroken plates
and glasses, I put the broken plates and glasses into a trashbag and attached a nice little note for the garbagemen so that they wouldn’t cut themselves. I emptied mountains of ashtrays, I covered bowls of untouched food and put them in the fridge, where they would take up valuable low-fat yogurt space for three weeks and grow mold before they would eventually be thrown out. I tried to get the candle wax out of the carpet and couldn’t, so I moved the couch to cover it. And I thought continually about Gus.
My nerves were shot. The phone rang all day long and every single time I jumped and twitched and frantically prayed, Please God, let it be Gus. I didn’t dare pick it up, just in case it was Gus. Answering the phone was tantamount to admitting I cared and that would have been unforgivable. Karen or Charlotte had to leave their pot scrubbing (in Charlotte’s case) or their dancing around spraying air freshener (in Karen’s case) and do it for me.
And, as befitted a rejected woman, I insisted that they observe a five-ring interval before answering.
“Not yet, not yet!” I begged, time after time. “Let it ring a bit longer. We can’t let him think that we’re waiting for him to call.”
“But, we are.” Charlotte looked puzzled. “At least you are.”
It made no difference. Only one of the calls was for me, and that was from—of all people—my mother.
“What took you so long to answer?” she demanded when Charlotte sadly handed me the receiver.
And suddenly it was Saturday night.
Saturday night had always played a starring role in my life. It had been a thing of beauty, a bright spot in a dark world, but an empty Saturday night, a Gus-free Saturday
night—well, I was shocked to find that I was almost frightened of it.
Every Saturday night for the previous—had it only been six weeks?—had been taken care of because I had been with Gus. Sometimes we had gone out, and other times we stayed in, but whatever we had done, we had done it together. And now I felt as if I had never, ever had a free Saturday night before in my life, so alien did it feel to me.
It had taken on a certain malevolence, as though someone had flung a snake at me and told me to amuse it for a few hours.
What was I supposed to do with it? And with whom? All my friends were paired up with someone. Charlotte was with Simon, Karen was with Daniel, Daniel was with Karen and anyway Daniel wasn’t my friend anymore.
I could have called Dennis but that was a ridiculous idea. It was a Saturday night, he was a gay man, he would be at home shaving his head and revving up for a night of unbridled hedonism.
Charlotte and Simon invited me to go to the movies with them—as Charlotte said, the movies were about all she could stomach after the imbibing of the
previous evening—but I didn’t want to go.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of being a third wheel—I had no problem with that, after all I’d done it many times in the past, and the first ten thousand times are the worst—but I’m ashamed to say I was afraid to leave the apartment in case Gus arrived.
Like a fool, I was still hoping that I might hear from him. In fact, what I actually hoped for was that, at around eight, he would arrive in a borrowed, too-big jacket and a badly knotted tie, having made the mistake of thinking that Saturday night was the night for the dinner and not Friday.
It was possible, I told myself weakly.
Things like that happened sometimes. Maybe it would happen to me and I would be saved. I could draw back from the edge of the abyss laughing because I hadn’t needed to be there at all.
Karen and Daniel didn’t invite me to join them in whatever they were doing. Somehow I hadn’t expected them to. Anyhow I didn’t want them to. I felt so uncomfortable around Daniel that we were barely speaking to each other. And I blushed when I remembered how I had thought that he was going to kiss me the previous evening, when it was obvious, in hindsight, that he was only being nice because Gus had stood me up. How could I have thought such a thing? I asked myself in mortification. And worse again, how could I have thought that it was a nice idea? It was Daniel, after all. It would have been like thinking that kissing my brother was a nice idea.
Everyone left and I was alone in the flat on a bright Saturday evening in April.
Somewhere in between Gus entering and exiting my life, winter had changed into spring, but I had been too busy enjoying myself and falling in love to notice.
I found rejection that much harder to cope with when the evenings were bright.
At least when it was dark I could draw that curtains and light the fire and snuggle and hide and feel quite cozy in my aloneness. But the brightness of the spring evening was embarrassing. It highlighted what a failure I was—my rejection was too visible. I felt as if I was the only person in the whole world sitting in, alone, on a Saturday night.
After eight o’clock came and Gus didn’t, I moved down one more step on the stairs of misery. Why couldn’t I have just tumbled straight to the bottom and gotten it over and done with? I understood the wisdom of pulling a