“Mmmm,” I said, getting excited, “what about strawberry flavour? Or mango? Or, no, no, wait…what about blackcurrant?”
“Whatever you want,” called Daniel from the far side of the table. “You choose for me.”
“Well, in that case,” I said, “why don’t we try the lemon flavour to start with and then maybe try a different one in a while?”
When I had been younger, I had been dazzled by cocktail lists, wanting to try everything, wanting to work my
way through the menu in alphabetical order, never having the same thing twice, but I had been far too frightened of getting drunk to actually do it. And I suppose what I was suggesting with the flavoured vodkas was just the grown-up version of that. I was still frightened of getting drunk, but that evening, somehow I felt I could live with it.
“Lemon it is,” said Daniel.
As soon as Gregor had left, Daniel hissed across at me, “Come over here. You’re too far away.”
“No,” I said nervously. “Dmitri told me to sit here.”
“So what? You’re not in school.”
“But I don’t want to annoy him…”
“Lucy! Don’t be such a wimp. Come over here.”
“No!”
“Okay, I’ll come over to you then.”
He stood up and moved his chair several feet around the table, and sat down almost on my lap.
The two glamorous young-professional couples at the next table looked appalled and I threw them a kind of rueful, poor-me, look-at-this-maniac-I’m-with, I’m-very-refined-and-I’d-never-do-that-kind-of-thing-myself look, but Daniel just looked delighted.
“There!” he smiled. “That’s much better. Now I can see you.” Then he started moving his knives and forks and glasses and napkin over to near mine.
“Daniel, please,” I said desperately, “people are looking.”
“Where?” he asked, looking around. “Oh yes, I see.”
“Now will you behave?” I thundered with righteous indignation. But I had lost him because he’d made eye contact with the better looking of the two women at the next table and was up to his usual tricks. He looked at the woman and she blushed and looked away. Then he looked away and she looked discreetly at him again. Then he looked at her and caught her looking at him and gave her a smile. Then she smiled back at him and I have him a thump on his arm.
“Look, you stupid bastard, I didn’t even want to come out with you tonight!”
“Sorry, Lucy, sorry, sorry, sorry.”
“Just cut it out, okay? I’m not going to spend my evening with you talking over my shoulder to the woman at the next table.”
“Fair enough, sorry.”
“You were the one who wanted me to come here with you, so you’d better have the bloody manners to talk to me. If you wanted to flirt with someone then why did you invite me?”
“Sorry, Lucy; you’re right, Lucy; forgive me, Lucy.”
He sounded humble but he certainly didn’t look it.
“And you can knock off that naughty little boy smile,” I continued.
“Sorry.”
Gregor arrived with two hefty glasses filled with a bright yellow liquid. It looked as if it had come straight from Chernobyl, but I thought it might seem ungracious to say so.
“Christ,” said Daniel doubtfully, holding his glass up to the light. “It’s rather radioactive looking.”
“Shut up,” I said. “Happy birthday.”
We clinked glasses and threw the vodka back.
I immediately felt a tingling, warm kind of glow start to radiate out from my stomach.
“Oh God.” I giggled.
“What?”
“It’s definitely radioactive.”
“Nice, though.”
“Oh very.”
“More?”
“Oh, yes, I think so.”
“Where’s Gregor?”
“Here he is.”
Gregor was making his way toward us and Daniel flagged him down.
“We’ll have two more of those Gregor, thanks,” said Daniel.
Gregor looked pleased. If it was possible for someone to look totally heartbroken and pleased simultaneously. “Pink ones please,” I called.
“Strawberry?” said Gregor.
“Is it pink?”
“Yes.”
“Strawberry then.”
“And I suppose we’d better think about having something to eat.”
“Fine,” I said, picking up my menu. The strawberry ones came and they were so good that we decided to have two more.
As I said, “They’re only small. There can’t be much harm in them.”
The two new drinks came—blackcurrant this time—and we drank them.
“They don’t last long, do they?”
“More?” enquired Daniel.
“More.”
“Food?”
“I suppose we’d better. Ah, here’s Dmitri now. Anytime you like with the raw turnip, Dmitri,” I said jovially. With a shock I realized that I was enjoying myself.
“I’ve something to tell you, Lucy,” said Daniel, suddenly getting all serious on me.
“Well, go on then,” I said. “For a moment there I thought I was cheering up but I think it’s best if we put a stop to that.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it.”
“I can’t forget it, you idiot. You’ll have to tell me now.”
“Oh all right, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s about Ruth.”
“Tell me.”
“I broke up with her. Not her with me.”
Was that it? I thought, slightly dazed. And then I remembered about my mission to keep Daniel in his place.
“You bastard! How could you?”
“But I was bored, Lucy. I was so bloody bored. It was a nightmare.”
“But she had big tits.”
“So what?”
“You’re very callous.”
“Oh, Lucy, I’m not. I tried to be nice to her.”
“Did you make her cry?”
“No.”
“You’re still a bastard.”
Daniel looked slightly upset, a bit tearful. The vodka was making us both a bit emotional.
“I’m sorry I told you now,” he said, sulkily. “I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll have to put up with it.”
I gave him a little smile. Suddenly I didn’t seem to care that much about Ruth. None of it seemed to really matter somehow.
“That’s very philosophical of you, Lucy.”
“I know, I feel very philosophical.”
“That’s funny, so do I.”
“What do you think it is? Maybe it’s the vodka?”
“It’s got to be.”
“I feel kind of funny, Daniel, sort of sad like I always do, but happy too. Happy in a sad way.”
“I know,” he said eagerly. “That’s exactly how I feel. Except I think I feel happy like I always do but sad in a happy way.”
“This must be how Russians feel all the time.” I giggled. I felt very lightheaded and knew that I was being silly, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t sound silly, it seemed very important and true. “Do you think Russians drink so much vodka because they’re philosophical and miserable, or are they philosophical and miserable because they drink so much vodka?”
“That’s a tough one, Lucy.”
“Why don’t I ever meet the right woman, Lucy?” asked Daniel, seriously.
“I don’t know, Daniel. Why don’t I ever meet the right man?”
“I don’t know, Lucy. Will I always be lonely?”
“Yes, Daniel. Will I always be lonely?”
“Yes, Lucy.”
There was a little pause while we both smiled sadly at each other, united in our bittersweet melancholy. Thoroughly enjoying it, actually. At some stage food arrived. It might have been then.
“But, Dan, you s
ee, it doesn’t matter, because at least we’re being essentially human. We’re in touch with the pain of being alive. Will we get another drink?”
“What colour?”
“Blue.”
Daniel leaned back in his chair, trying to grab a waiter. “The lady wants two more of these,” he called, waggling a glass around. “Well, she doesn’t want two for herself…or maybe she does, actually. Do you, Lucy?”
“The same again, sir?” asked Gregor. At least I think it was Gregor. I gave him a melancholy smile and he gave me an identical one back.
“The exact same as this,” said Daniel. “Except two of them. No, make it four. And…oh yes,” he called after him, “they have to be blue.”
“Now, where were we?” said Daniel, smiling sweetly.
I was so glad I had come; I felt so fond of him.
“We were talking about existential pain, weren’t we?” said Daniel.
“Yes,” I said. “Indeed we were. Would I look good with my hair the way that girl has hers?”
“Where?” he asked, turning around. “Oh yes, you’d look even better than her.”
“Good.” I giggled.
“What’s it all about, Lucy?”
“What’s what all about?”
“All of it, you know, any of it? Life, things, death, hair?”
“How do I know, Dan? Why do you think I’m so depressed all the time?”
“It’s good, though, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Being miserable.”
“Yes.” I giggled. Again. I couldn’t stop. He was right. We were both miserable, but we were soaring, almost ecstatic, in our misery.
“Tell me about you getting married.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“That’s what you always say about everything.”
“What?”
“That you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did Connie go berserk?”
“Totally. She accused me of being pregnant.”
“Poor Connie.”
“Poor Connie, my eye!”
“You’re very hard on her.”
“No, I’m not.”
“She’s a good woman, you know, who only wants the best for you.”
“Ha! That’s easy for you to say because she’s always nice to you.”
“I’m very fond of her.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about your mother.”
“I don’t care.”
“You can be very stubborn, Lucy.”
“Oh, Daniel.” I laughed. “Stop it, for god’s sake. Has my mother paid you to tell me nice things about her?”
“No, I genuinely like her.”
“Well, seeing as you like her that much, you can come with me on Thursday to see her.”
“Fine.”
“What do you mean, ‘fine’?”
“I mean, ‘fine.’”
“Don’t you mind?”
“No, of course I don’t mind.”
“Oh. I mind.”
A little pause.
“Can we stop talking about her now, please?” I asked. “It’s making me feel depressed.”
“But we were miserable anyway.”
“I know, but it was a different kind of miserable. A nice miserable. I liked it.”
“Okay. Will we talk about the fact that we’re all going to die anyway and that none of this matters?”
“Oh yes, please. Thanks, Dan, you’re an angel.”
“But first,” declared Daniel, “more drinks. What colour haven’t we tried?”
“Green?”
“Kiwi fruit?”
“Perfect.”
More drinks came and I know we both ate a lot, but afterwards I was at a complete loss to actually say what I’d had. I believe I liked it though. Daniel said that I kept saying that it was delicious. And we had a wonderful conversation. I can’t really remember much of it now, but I know that it had something to do with everything being pointless and meaningless and that we were all doomed and at the time it made perfect sense to me. I was completely at peace with myself and the universe and with Daniel. I can vaguely remember Daniel thumping the table and saying fervently, “I couldn’t agree more” and stopping one of the waiters (Gregor? Dmitri?) and shouting, “Listen to this woman, she speaks the truth.”
It was a wonderful evening and I probably would still be there shouting “Purple! Have you any purple ones?” if Daniel and I hadn’t noticed at some stage that we were the only customers left and that a row of short, bulky, dinner-jacketed waiters were lined up behind the bar staring at us.
“Lucy,” he hissed, “I think it’s time we left.”
“No! I like it here.”
“Really, Lucy, Gregor and the rest of them have to get home.”
I felt very guilty then.
“Of course they do. Of course they do. And it’ll take them hours to get back to Moscow on the night bus, the poor things.”
Daniel shouted for the bill—the reverential behaviour we had assumed on our arrival had long disappeared—and the bill came, very promptly. Daniel looked at it.
“That national debt of Bolivia?” I inquired.
“More like Brazil,” he said. “But what does it matter?”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “Anyway, you’re loaded.”
“Actually, I’m not. It’s all relative. Just because you get paid a pittance, you think anyone who earns above a pittance is loaded.”
“Oh.”
“All it means is the more you earn the more you can owe.”
“Dan, that’s wonderful! That’s such a profound economic truth—in the midst of life we are in debt. No wonder you have such a good job.”
“No, Lucy,” said Daniel sounding hoarse with excitement. “That’s wonderful, what you just said, it’s so true—in the midst of life we are indeed in debt. You must write that down. In fact we should write down everything we’ve talked about tonight.”
My head was spinning slightly with how wise both Daniel and I were. I told him how wise and wonderful I thought he was.
“Thanks, Daniel,” I said. “This has been fabulous.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“It’s been great. So much makes sense now.”
“Like what?”
“Well it’s no wonder I never felt like I belonged anywhere, because I’m obviously Russian.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because I’m miserable but I’m happy. And I feel like I belong here.”
“You might just be drunk.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve been drunk before and I’ve never felt like this. Do you think I could get a job in Russia?”
“Probably, but I don’t want you to go.”
“You can come and visit me. You’ll probably have to anyway, when you run out of girls to go out with here.”
“Smart thinking, Lucy. Should we go to this party Karen told us about?”
“Yes! I’d forgotten about that.”
Chapter 17
“Did you give them a big tip?” I hissed at Daniel as we finally left The Kremlin, waved off by the assembled staff.
“Yes.”
“Good. They were nice.”
I laughed all the way up the stairs out of The Kremlin and I laughed even more when we got out into the cold night air.
“What a laugh. That was great fun,” I said, leaning against Daniel.
“Good,” he said. “Now behave, or we’ll never get a taxi.”
“Sorry, Dan, I think I’m a bit drunk, but I feel so happy.”
“Good, but please shut up for a minute.”
A taxi stopped. It had an angry-looking man driving it.
“Smile,” I sniggered. Luckily he didn’t hear me.
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In I clambered, Daniel pulling the door behind us.
“Where to?” asked the man.
“Anywhere you like,” I said dreamily.
“Eh?”
“Wherever you want,” I said. “What does it matter? Because in a hundred years’ time you won’t be here, I won’t be here and your cab certainly won’t be here!”
“Stop it, Lucy.” Daniel elbowed me, trying not to laugh. “Leave the poor man alone. Wimbledon, please.”
“We’d better stop at a liquor store and get some booze for the party,” I said.
“What’ll we get?”
“Vodka? It’s my new favourite drink now.”
“Fine.”
“No, I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m drunk enough.”
“So what? Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“Yes, but I think I’d better stop.”
“Don’t.”
“No, I must. We’ll get something else, something not so strong.”
“Beer?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Or will I get a bottle of wine?”
“Whatever you like.”
“How about Guinness?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Lucy, for God’s sake. Stop being so meek and tell me what you want! Why are you always so self-effacing and…”
“I’m not being meek and self-effacing,” I laughed. “I really don’t mind. You know I’m not much of a drinker.”
The taxi driver gave an outraged snort. I don’t think he believed me.
We could hear the music as soon as the taxi turned into the street.
“Sounds like a good party,” said Daniel.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I wonder if the police will come—the true mark of a great party!”
“Oh no. The neighbours are bound to call the local cop shop, so we’d better get in there and start enjoying ourselves fast before the whole thing is closed down.”
“Don’t worry,” I said soothingly. “Many cop shops are called but few parties are closen.”
Daniel laughed.
A bit too much, I thought.
The vodka was obviously still doing its job.
Then there was a little scuffle while both Daniel and I tried to pay the taxi driver.
“I’ll get it.”
“No, I’ll get it.”
“But you paid for dinner.”
“But you didn’t want to come.”
“All the same, fair’s fair.”