“He’ll be completely vile,” I assured Charlotte as I prepared to leave. “Do I look all right?”
“I keep telling you, you look lovely. Doesn’t she, Si?”
“What? Oh yes, yes, lovely,” agreed Simon, heartily. He was just dying for me to leave, so he could have sex with Charlotte.
“And, Lucy, he might be nice,” she said.
“He’ll be awful,” I promised.
“You never know,” said Charlotte darkly and wagged a finger at me, “he could be The One.”
And to my horror, I found myself agreeing with her, or at least hoping that she was right. She had a point—he might be nice, he could be the exception that proved the rule, he might not be an anal-retentive, axe-murdering, astonishingly ugly, emotional cripple.
Hope, that fickle foolish creature, that emotional prodigal son, was making a guest appearance in my life. In spite of all the times hope had let me down in the past, I had decided to give it one more chance.
Would I ever learn? Am I addicted to disappointment? I wondered.
But then there was a surge of excitement through me—what if he was great? What if he was like Gus, only more normal and not so dippy and without the minimalist approach to phone calls? Wouldn’t it be wonderful? And, just supposing that I did like him and it all worked out, I could still be within Mrs. Nolan’s timeframe. I would have time to go to America to meet his family and organize a wedding within six months.
Chapter 46
I was meeting him at eight o’clock outside one of those boring steakhouse restaurants that proliferate in central London, to cater to the masses and masses of Americans who visit the city every year.
Chuck had said—for a moment my head swam because I could hardly believe I was having dinner with a man called Chuck—Chuck had said I would recognize him by his navy raincoat and a copy of Time Out. By his navy raincoat and copy of Time Out so shall he be known!
I had no intention of loitering outside the restaurant waiting for him to arrive, thus leaving myself at his mercy if he turned out to be a total horror. Instead I cased the joint from across the road and pretended to be waiting for a bus. With the collar of my coat up I kept my eyes trained on the doorway opposite.
I had butterflies in my stomach because, while I fully expected him to be untouchable, there was always a small chance that he might be nice.
At five to eight my subject arrived, navy raincoat and copy of Time Out all present and correct.
From my lookout perch he seemed fine. Well, at least he looked normal enough. Only one head, no obvious disfigurements, no extra limbs, no missing limbs—at least none that I could see. I couldn’t speak for his toes or his penis on such short acquaintanceship.
I crossed the road for a closer look.
Not bad, not bad at all.
In fact, he could even have been described as handsome. Medium height, tan, dark hair, dark eyes, nice bones, a strong face. There was something about him that reminded me of someone…who could it be? It would come to me later.
Hope buzzed around in my chest. He wasn’t my usual type, but things had never worked out with any of my usual types, so what the hell, I might as well give this a chance.
Maybe I owe you one, Charlotte, I thought.
He had seen me; had noted my matching copy of Time Out. He spoke. No spit landed on my face. This was looking good.
“You must be Lucy,” he said. Nil points for originality, minus several million for ugly pants and ten out of ten for no hare lip or stutter or dribble.
Yet.
“And you must be Chuck?” I asked, not exactly breaking any new conversational ground myself.
“Chuck Thaddeus Mullerbraun the Second, all the way from Redridge, Tucson, Arizona,” he grinned. He stuck out his hand and gave me a hefty, hearty handshake.
Oh-oh, I thought.
Quickly I pulled myself up short. It wasn’t his fault—Americans always did that. Ask them anything, anything, from “is there a god?” to “Can you pass the salt, please?” and the first thing they do is tell you their full name and address. As if they’re afraid that, if they don’t keep reminding themselves who they are and where they come from, they’ll just disappear.
I did find it a bit odd. What if someone stopped me in the street and asked me the time and I replied, “Lucy
Carmel Sullivan the First, all the way from the top floor apartment, 43D Bassett Crescent, Ladbroke Grove, London W10, UK. Sorry I don’t have a watch, but I think it’s about one-fifteen.”
It was just a different custom, I reminded myself, like Spaniards having their dinner at two in the morning. I should be embracing this contact with a different culture. Vive la difference!
But wait.
Lucy Mullerbraun?
I think I liked Lucy Lavan better, I thought wistfully, but there was no point pursuing that line of enquiry at this particular juncture.
Or at any juncture, ever.
“Shall we?” he suggested politely, indicating the door into the restaurant.
“Why not?”
We went into the vast restaurant where a small Puerto Rican man showed us to a window table.
I sat down.
Chuck sat down opposite me.
We gave each other halting, nervous smiles.
I started to speak, and he started to speak at the same time. Then we both stopped and neither of us said anything, then at the same time we both said, “You first, no really,” then we both laughed, then we both said “Please, you go first.”
It was kind of endearing. It broke the ice.
“Please,” I said, taking charge, afraid that the double act could continue all night, “You go first, really, I insist.”
“Okay.” He smiled. “I was just going to tell you that you’ve got beautiful eyes.”
“Thank you.” I smiled back, flushed with pleasure.
“I love brown eyes,” he said.
“So do I,” I agreed. So far so good. We’d obviously got a couple of things in common.
“My wife has brown eyes,” he said.
What?
“Your wife?” I asked faintly.
“Well, ex-wife,” he corrected. “We’re divorced now, but I keep forgetting.”
What was I supposed to say to that? I didn’t know he’d been married. But so what, I decided, getting a firm grip on myself, everyone has a past and anyway he never said he hadn’t been married either.
“I’m over it now,” he said.
“Er…good, good,” I said, trying to sound encouraging.
“I wish her well.”
“Marvellous,” I said, heartily.
A little pause.
“I’m not bitter,” he said bitterly, staring bitterly at the tablecloth.
Another little pause.
“Meg,” he said.
“S…sorry?” I said.
“Meg,” he said again. “That’s her name. Well, it’s actually Margaret, but I always called her Meg. A little nickname, I suppose.”
“That’s nice,” I said weakly.
“Yes,” he said, giving a very whimsical, faraway smile. “Yes, it was.”
An awkward silence followed.
I was aware of a faint sinking noise. It took me a moment or two to realize that it was the sound of my heart. The sound of it on an express elevator, no-stops-allowed, one-way-ticket, to my boots.
But perhaps I was being negative.
Maybe we could help mend each other’s broken hearts. Perhaps all he needed was the love of a good woman. Perhaps all I needed was the love of Chuck Thaddeus Mullerbraun from—where was it—somewhere in Arizona.
The waitress came to take our drinks order.
“A glass of your finest English tap water for me,” said Chuck, leaning back in his chair and slapping his stomach. I had a horrible feeling that his shirt was nylon. And what was that about tap water? He was drinking tap water? Did he have a death wish?
The waitress gave Chuck a filthy look. She knew a cheap
skate when she saw one.
Surely he wasn’t expecting me to have tap water also?
Well, I was sorry, but he could go to hell, because I wanted a drink. A real drink.
Start as you mean to go on.
“A Bacardi and Diet Coke,” I said, trying to sound like it was a reasonable request.
The woman went away and Chuck leaned across the table. “I didn’t know you drank alcohol,” he said.
Maybe we wouldn’t be mending each other’s broken hearts, after all.
He might as well have told me he didn’t know I had sex with small children, he said it with so much distaste and disgust.
“Yes,” I said a little defiantly. “Why not? I enjoy a drink now and again.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay. Okay. That’s cool with me. That’s okay.”
“Don’t you drink yourself?” I asked.
“Yeah, I drink,” he said.
Thank God.
“I drink water,” he continued. “I drink sodas. That’s all I need to drink. The best goddamn drink in the world—a glass of ice-cold water. I don’t need alcohol.”
I braced myself. If he tells me he’s just high on life, I’m leaving, I promised myself.
But, alas, it was not to be.
And on with the conversation, such as it was.
“Your…er…Meg doesn’t drink?” I asked. “Alcohol,” I added hurriedly, before he started playing semantics with me again.
“Never touched alcohol, never needed to,” he bellowed.
“Well, it’s not as if I need to,” I said, wondering why I was bothering to try and defend myself.
“Hey.” He stared at me intently. “You gotta ask yourself—who are you trying to convince? Me? Or you?”
You know, now that I looked at him properly, he wasn’t so much bronzed as orange. Not so much tanned, as tangerine.
Our drinks arrived. Chuck’s glass of water and my Instrument of the Devil and Diet Coke.
“Are you ready to order?” asked the waitress.
“Hey, we just got here,” said Chuck rudely.
The woman slunk away. I wanted to run after her and apologize, but Chuck engaged me in what could laughingly be called conversation.
“Have you ever been married, Lindy?” he asked.
“Lucy,” I corrected him.
“What?” he asked.
“Lucy,” I said. “My name’s Lucy.”
A blank stare from Chuck.
“Not Lindy,” I said, by way of explanation.
“Oh, I see,” he said, with a big, jovial burst of laughter. “Excuse me, excuse me. I gotcha. Yeah, yeah, Lucy.”
He laughed again. A big, thigh-slapping bellow.
It took him quite a while to stop laughing, actually.
He kept shaking his head in disbelief and saying things like “Lindy! Well how about that?” and “Ha, ha, ha. Lindy! Can you truly believe it?”
Then he put on a down-South red-neck accent and said something that sounded like “Waall, tie me down you hog and whup ma hide with molasses!”
At least I think that was what he said.
And the face that looked so strong on first meeting was actually immobile, unmoving, rigid. I sat with a fixed smile on my face and waited for him to calm down and then said, “In answer to your question, Brad, no, I’ve never been married.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, his face darkening with annoyance. “The name’s Chuck. Who’s this Brad guy?”
“It was a joke,” I explained quickly. “You know…you called me Lindy. I called you Brad.”
“Yeah, right.” He stared at me as if I was completely crazy. His face was like a slide show—one static image after another, with little gaps of nothingness while he cleared one emotion and waited for the new one to arrive.
“Hey, lady,” he demanded. “Are you some kind of wacko? Because I got no room for wackos in my life right now.”
I clamped my mouth shut to stop myself from asking him just when he might have room for wackos in his life, but it was difficult.
“It was a joke,” I said nicely. I thought I had better appease him because I was just a little bit alarmed at his abrupt change of mood.
He probably belonged to a gun club. There was a slightly odd, kind of manic look in his eyes that I hadn’t spotted when I first met him. And there was something weird about his hair…what was it?
He stared at me and nodded his head slowly (I couldn’t help noticing that while his head moved, his hair seemed to stay in the same place) and said, “Right, I get it. This is humour, right?”
He flashed a mouthful of teeth at me. To let me know he appreciated my humour.
…It wasn’t just that it was obviously blow-dried and flicked…
“That was an example of humour, hey? Yeah, pretty good.”
…And of course it was thick with hairspray…
“I like it, yeah, yeah, I like it. You’re one funny little lady, arencha?”
…Could it be a wig?…
“Mmmm,” I murmured, I was afraid to open my mouth to speak in case I spewed all over him, right into his brushed-denim lap.
…Although it was more like a helmet, actually, all rigid and sticky…
He picked up a bread roll and shoved it into his mouth in one bite and chewed and chewed and chewed, like a cow chewing the cud. It was disgusting.
I could hardly believe what he did next.
It was not so much that he broke wind. It was more like he took a hammer to it and shattered it into a million pieces.
Yes, he broke wind, long and loud and unapologetically.
While I was still reeling from the shock of that, the poor waitress came back to take our order, although I was sure I would vomit if I was required to eat anything. But there was nothing wrong with Chuck’s appetite. He ordered the biggest steak on the menu and asked for it rare.
“Why don’t you just get the entire cow brought along to the table and you can get it to climb up onto your plate?” I suggested. I had nothing against people eating red meat, but it was so nice to be mean to him that I wasn’t able to pass up the chance. But unfortunately he just laughed.
Such a pity, a waste of good nastiness.
Then he decided that it was time that we got to know each other better, time to share life experiences.
“Hey, ya ever go to the Caribbean?” he barked at me. And, without waiting for my answer, launched straight into a description of the white sands, the friendly natives, the great tax-free shopping, the wonderful cuisine, the cut-price all-inclusive deals he could get because his brother-in-law worked for a travel agent…
“Well, he’s not technically your brother-in-law anymore, now that Meg has divorced you, is he?” I interrupted, but he elected not to hear me. All his attention was focused on himself.
On and on went the lyrical description. The beautiful cabana he had stayed in, the phosphorescence from the tropical fish. I was patient for as long as I could, until I couldn’t take anymore. I very rudely interrupted a description of the clean, clear, blue water on which he went sailing in a glass-bottomed boat.
“Let me guess,” I said sarcastically, “you went there with Meg.”
He looked up at me quickly, as suspicion clanked onto his immobile face.
Then I gave him a dazzling smile, just to confuse him.
“Hey, how d’ya guess?” He grinned at me.
I sat on my hand to stop myself from punching him in the face.
“Oh, feminine intuition, I guess.” I giggled daintily, certain I could feel vomit lapping at the back of my teeth.
…And speaking of teeth, what was wrong with his?
“So you’d like to have a relationship with me, Lisa?”
“Er…” How could I tell him I’d rather have a relationship with a leper without offending him?
The leper, that is.
“‘Cos I gotta warn you,” he grinned, “I’m a pretty choosy guy.”
Where was my dinner?
 
; I no longer cared.
“But you’re kinda cute.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. Don’t bother, please.
“Yeah, on a scale of one to ten, I’d give you a…let’s see, yeah, I’d give you a seven. No, let’s say a six point five. I gotta deduct a half a percent because you drank alcohol on the first date.”
“I think you must mean half a point, not half a percent, you’re talking about tens, not hundreds, and what’s wrong with drinking it on the first date, as opposed to any other time?” I demanded coldly.
He frowned slowly at me. “You got a big mouth on you. You ask a whole lot of questions, ya know that?”
“No, really Chuck, I’m very interested in knowing why I’ve lost half a point with you.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll tell ya, I’ll tell ya. Sure, I’ll tell ya. You realize the signals that drinking alcohol on a first date gives out, Lisa? You see the kind of statement you’re making about yourself?”
I stared blankly at him.
“No,” I said sweetly. “But please do enlighten me.”
“Huh?”
“Enligh…er, please do tell me.”
“A-V-A-I-L-A-B-L-E,” he spelt out slowly.
“Sorry?” I said, confused.
“Available,” he said impatiently. “It says to me that you’re available.”
“Oh, available,” I said, understanding. “Well, perhaps if you had spelt it properly I might have realized what you were trying to say.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Hey, what are you trying to say here? That you’re smarter’n me or something?”
“Nothing of the sort,” I said politely. “I was just letting you know that there are three As in available.” God! He was nasty!
“No man has any respect for a woman who is a drunk,” he said, looking with narrowed eyes at my Bacardi and then at me.
This had to be a joke. It had to be some kind of setup. That was the only explanation. I looked around the room, half expecting to see Daniel sitting at one of the other tables laughing hysterically.
But I recognized no one.
Oh dear, I sighed to myself, I wish this was over. What a waste of an evening. Especially a Friday evening, when there were such good things on TV.