Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women (23 page)

It was Valentine’s Day. Amateur hour for would-be romantics, which was why we were squashed at the bar of a new tapas restaurant, fighting for elbow room to protect our sloshing glasses of Rioja from the people on either side of us. Both couples featured guys talking loudly to their wives or girlfriends about the intimate and casual atmosphere of the candlelit cellar and the authenticity of eating dinner with a white-jacketed bartender in such close proximity — as if the location hadn’t been the only place they could get a seat after forgetting to make a booking on the busiest night of the year.

‘So who’d have thought it, eh? Here we finally are, the two of us, out on the supposed night of love,’ I said, during a quiet moment.

‘I know! Although you know I’m normally a happy-go-lucky person, zis is always a time of year when I get a little down.’

I topped up Delphine’s wine, which I thought might cheer her up a bit.

‘And the other guys from the office couldn’t make it in the end?’ I asked.

‘No, Jamie decided to go home for the football, and Janice had some emails to send. It is just us, you and I.’

There was a twinkle in her eye as she rested her hand on my forearm. My arm jerked slightly in surprise at the physical contact, and I gave the wine glass I was holding a bit of a swirl and a sniff, as if I’d almost splashed its contents over the bar on purpose.

‘So tell me more about zat black eye. It is almost gone now.’

After I’d picked myself up off the floor of the Euston station platform and watched Rob walk away from me in the opposite direction to his wife, I’d sat there on a bench for a while, staring down the tracks towards Manchester. I felt numb from the stress and emotion, and the growing realisation that I’d found out what I wanted in life, tried to get it, but been told I couldn’t have it. Turned out, finally finding a bit of courage wasn’t enough. I didn’t move for ages, just occasionally poked the skin around my swelling-up eye, deliberately focusing on the bits that hurt.

Then the phone in my pocket went off. A spark of hope saw me reach for it. Maybe it’d be a message to say I love you too, come and meet me at Watford Junction. It was a bit less romantic than that; it was from Delphine and just said,
I can’t believe you were such a bastard to me at the party… Λ‘
.

It could be worse, I thought: if it’d been Janice I’d upset I’d be heartbroken and unemployed. Then I thought, For all I can remember I could well have pissed her off as well. If I had, I probably wouldn’t find out till it emerged my work PC was at the centre of an online credit-card fraud scheme for donkey-porn enthusiasts. But I didn’t care, to be honest — at that moment I would have welcomed the shame and the sack, if I could be bothered to care at all.

I didn’t reply to Delphine’s text. On the list of people I’d been a bastard to over the past twenty-four hours, the person I’d not shown enough sympathy for over her obnoxious boyfriend was not really near the top. Then for the next few days I sat in my flat and went back over the things I’d done in the past few weeks — the bits I was ashamed of, embarrassed about, and sometimes even proud of. Angus called a couple of times, but I didn’t speak to him either. He just left increasingly anxious messages, torn between anger at what I’d done to Rob, and concern that, full of remorse, I might be planning to get in a hot bath with a plugged-in toaster. There was an unspoken desire to get more detail on what was undeniably the best piece of gossip from our group in the past decade in there too, so I felt as if he was coping without my input.

When I finally went back to the office I ignored or snarled at everyone around me, particularly the people who in all innocence came up to me and said how lovely it had been to meet my girlfriend at Jamie’s place, and how nice she had seemed. They got an even shorter response than the people who pointed out that last week hadn’t my black eye been on the other side? As if I were faking an injury for effect, but had applied the green and black eye make-up to the wrong eye that morning.

Work did at least bring a bit of normality back to life — aside from the times word got out that ‘Tyson’ Taylor was to go and hide in the stationery cupboard because there were reputable clients on the office floor. The guys had been good though; knowing I was bothered about something, and suspecting there was a woman at the centre of it, they’d been very sympathetic — particularly Delphine.

‘This black eye?’ I said. ‘The second one we’re talking about? Not the one I got resisting a citizen’s arrest before grassing up my date? I got a text from her the other day, by the way. From what she said if she goes down for nicking that Gap top I might need to consider witness protection.’

‘I still can’t quite believe that. You’re so bad but you act so nice!
“Toujours le tranquille”
, as we say in French.’

‘Right. And that means?’

‘It’s always the quiet ones.’

‘Bad dates and serial killers, that’s us.’

‘But the second eye?’

‘Yes, well, I’ve been keeping it to myself. Something I’m even less proud of.’

‘Really?’

Delphine leaned in closer towards me. Her elbow on the bar with her head resting on her hand, she looked up at me with big dilated pupils turning those blue eyes almost black.

‘You know Hannah, my friend from the party?’

‘Her.’

It was amazing how with a syllable and a slight shift in head angle Delphine was able to transform local climactic conditions from getting quite hot to decidedly frosty.

‘Yeah, well, you know she’s married to my best friend?’

‘Right?’

‘Former best friend, really. Well, it was him.’

‘You took your best friend’s wife as a lover?’

Delphine said lover as ‘lovairr’ and looked impressed, as if my personal circumstances were putting me in with a chance of becoming an honorary French citizen.

‘No,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t quite like that. But we fell out. Neither of us was behaving very well.’

‘Something like this happened to my bruzzer. Have you all kissed and made up?’

‘Not exactly, no. Hannah went away for a while and I haven’t been in touch with Rob so I have no clue how he’s doing.’

‘Oh, he is fine.’

‘I’d like to think that for him, but I don’t know if he will be.’

‘No, no. He’s fine. I spoke to ‘im.’

I leaned back and looked at her.

‘You spoke to ‘eem? I mean him?’

‘He called me a few days ago to go for a drink. I said no.’

‘Because he was marri—’

‘Because he sounded a bit desperate. And was not a very good kisser.’

‘You’d kissed him?’

‘He kissed me. In the pub when the two of you were supposed to be going to the cinema? But it’s OK, I’d let him. I was just feeling a little down the night we met, not like my usual self. I told Alex, and we had a fight about it, and I felt better.’

‘Where is Alex anyway?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve had enough of him now. I told him I would be busy this week, and he has been calling, and texting and asking am I OK, and is there anything he can do, and what is wrong? He is such a little boy.’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I didn’t realise. Sorry to hear that.’

‘I tried to tell you before, but you’ve been so…angry and distant.’

I shrugged my eyebrows, acknowledging my bad-boy reputation.

‘With this fighting, and all these women chasing you, I’ve not even had the chance to tell you about the dream I ‘ad about you last week.’

‘No, I didn’t know about—’

She leaned forward and whispered something in my ear, her breath sending a shiver down my spine. She moved her head back slightly from my ear so she could look straight into my eyes from close range and watch my reaction with a salacious grin, before moving back in to quietly detail the apparently satisfying conclusion to our dream encounter.

‘Wasn’t that wicked, no?’

I tried to rearrange my features so I didn’t look like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. I looked like a nonchalant rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.

‘Yes, that really s…sounds like something,’ I stuttered, ‘especially considering in real life I’m not the least bit ambidextrous. And never even been horse-riding, so wouldn’t usually have access to that…equipment.’

She took a sip of her drink, and openly assessed me, her tongue gently moving over her lips, savouring the wine.

I sat there and tried to remember what relaxed people sitting at tables did with their hands.

‘Shall we go for another drink?’ she asked.

‘Hff, school night, best get home…’ I said, scrunching up my face to hide my fear.

‘I was zinking of a drink
at
my home.’

In case I didn’t get what she meant, Delphine underlined her intentions with a foot slowly slid up my calf.

Thoughtfully rubbing the knee I’d banged when I jumped six inches off my stool, I realised that after months of daydreaming about this situation, it was happening. Admittedly I was not taking the lead as much as I usually did when imagining it, but still… After months of trying too hard, of being instantly responsive to her emails and sensitive to her moods, I discovered all I’d needed to do all along was get behind on my correspondence and be on the wrong end of a very brief fist fight.

For the first time in my life I managed to get the waiter’s attention for the bill at the first attempt. We sat and looked at each other while we waited. It actually felt as if she were undressing me with her eyes. I sucked my stomach in, and took a couple of big swigs of my near-full glass of wine.

Which was just as well, as it meant there wasn’t much left in the glass when I told her thanks, but I’d be passing on her offer, and she threw the last of its contents in my face.

Back home in time for the second half of
Sex and the City
on the comedy channel, I ordered a takeaway — what the tapas lacked in substance it made up for in price — poured the last of a three-day-old bottle of wine, and fired up the laptop. Which was not a euphemism. A few minutes of booting up later, and after a few clicks through my
new Internet homepage with its remembered username and remembered passwords, I was checking in online, with soullyforyou.com. Before I could even check online statuses I got a message.

SuperDan82
: Late for you tonight.

FunnyGal483
: Hot date, of course. What’s happening?

SuperDan82
: You’ve missed three nipples, and five life-sapping puns.

FunnyGal483
: Has Carrie mentioned she’s a writer yet?

SuperDan82
: She’s a writer?!?!

FunnyGal483
: She made a passing reference once in an episode, easily missed.

SuperDan82
: So. This hot date?

FunnyGal483
: You know it was supposed to be an office gathering of the hopeless and unloved? Turned out to be just the two of us.

There was a pause in the communication.

SuperDan82
: Really?

FunnyGal483
: Really. But nothing happened. Well, someone got a drink thrown over them. But aside from that nothing happened. You don’t think I’m too foolish saving myself for the right person do you?

SuperDan82
: From personal experience I’d say you’d be a fool not to.

FunnyGal483
: And how is life with you Mr 82?

SuperDan82
: Well, you know how I mentioned I’d gone to a Buddhist retreat in Bali to get away from life and find myself?

FunnyGal483
: It was the latest of your list of desperately elaborate excuses not to ask me for coffee…

SuperDan82
: Well anyway, I’ve had a look around, and it turns out I’m not here. Also it rains a lot, and you can’t move for students.

FunnyGal483
: I hear that about Indonesia. So what now?

SuperDan82
: I don’t know. Still a lot of things to work out, but I think I’m going to have to get on with normal life to do it.

FunnyGal483
: Does that mean you’re planning to ask me to meet up with you some time soon?

SuperDan82
: I dunno…one of the great things we have here is that we can be anybody we want and not worry about the reality.

FunnyGal483
: Is that your way of telling me you’re not as good-looking as you appear in your picture?

SuperDan82
: I’d say in that case the reality is better.

FunnyGal483
: Oh really?

SuperDan82
: Yep. And may I say the picture you’ve FINALLY put up of yourself looks stunning.

FunnyGal483
: Why thank you.

SuperDan82
: Has anyone ever told you you bear a striking resemblance to Sienna Miller in a perfume ad? Maybe it’s just the big bottle of Hugo Boss you’re rubbing against your face.

FunyGal483
: Didn’t have time for a shower that morning…

SuperDan82
: You’re all class. I’ve been thinking, though, why do we keep watching these old shows?

FunnyGal483
: I dunno. Habit? Nostalgia? Frequent nudity and strong language from the start?

SuperDan82
: I think maybe it’s escape to somewhere where any personal crisis can ultimately be solved in
around 40 minutes. Real life messes aren’t that easily cleaned up.

FunnyGal483
: Maybe not. But when you step out there in the real world and let yourself get messed up, you discover that life can be even better than television.