Gucci Gucci Coo (10 page)

She opened the mirror door and began sliding clothes along the rack. A gorgeous novelist definitely deserved her best shot. She paused briefly at a low-cut scarlet dress before wrinkling her nose and moving on. Too tarty. It practically screamed: “take me now!” She continued along the rack. Finally she pulled out a halter-neck top in pale raspberry silk. It was sexy without being too full-on. She teamed this with a pretty beaded A-line skirt in a slightly darker shade. She even managed to find a dusky pink halter-neck bra and pants. Not that she was planning for things to go any further than dinner, but coordinating underwear always made her feel good.

She left everything on the aubergine and olive duvet and went to run a bath. As she soaked in the tub, she burned lavender and jasmine candles, which was the nearest she had got so far to a garden.

When she arrived at Bella Roma—right on time—Duncan wasn’t there. She wasn’t too put out, since he’d phoned the restaurant and left a message apologizing and saying he was stuck in traffic.

The maître d’ offered to show her to her table, but she decided to go to the loo first.

There were two cubicles in the ladies’ room, one of which was occupied. She took the second and sat down to pee. Suddenly she heard a voice coming from the next cubicle. “So how are you?” Ruby stopped in midpee and frowned. Assuming there was some weird woman in the next cubicle, she didn’t say anything.

“No, come on,” the voice said again. “You all right? Please, speak to me.”

Ruby did some nervous throat clearing. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Really? That’s kind, but there’s no need.”

“Everything OK at work?”

“Erm, yeah…couldn’t be better. Shop’s pretty busy.”

“So, what are you doing now?”

“Umm, just having a quick pee, actually. You?”

There was a brief pause. Then Ruby heard the voice again. “Listen, Justin, I’ll have to call you back, babe. There’s some daft tart in the next cubicle answering all my questions.”

Desperate that the woman in the next cubicle wouldn’t see her and think she was completely barking mad, Ruby finished peeing, rinsed her hands and fled the ladies’ room as fast as she could.

When she got back into the restaurant, one of the waiters told her that Duncan had arrived and pointed out a table at the far end.

As she walked through the restaurant, she had no idea that the woman from the loo was following her. Suddenly she felt a sharp tap on her shoulder. She turned round. Standing in front of her was a brassy-looking woman in her midforties, wearing tight black leather pants and a crimson trout pout. “Excuse me,” she blasted Ruby, so that the entire restaurant could hear, “is this how you get your kicks, hiding in toilet cubicles joining in other people’s private phone conversations? I mean, how sad is that? Don’t you have a life?”

“Sorry. It was a genuine mistake,” Ruby ventured. “I honestly thought you were talking to me.”

“Yeah, right. Like I’d start talking to some strange woman in the next cubicle. What do you take me for, some kind of weirdo?”

Ruby wanted to say that actually she
had
taken her for a weirdo, but seeing how angry the woman was, she felt it was wiser to say nothing.

The woman delivered something that was clearly meant to be a haughty sniff but came out more as a piggy snort. With that she turned on what Ruby couldn’t help noticing were rather cheap, excessively high heels and teetered back to her table where a group of equally brassy, St. Tropez-ed women friends were waiting.

Ruby was aware that everybody in the restaurant had stopped eating to watch the exchange between her and the woman. Now, as they turned back to their food, she found herself glued to the spot, her face burning with embarrassment. She seriously considered making a run for it. What was the point of staying? Her gorgeous, sexy novelist was bound to think she was some kind of nutcase with a public toilet fetish.

Against her better judgment, she continued toward the table. It was curiosity that spurred her on. She simply couldn’t resist seeing precisely how gorgeous Gorgeous Duncan was—not that he would be remotely interested in her now, after what had just happened. She took a deep breath. “I forgive myself my past mistakes,” she muttered, remembering her affirmations. “I am beautiful and vibrant in my uniqueness.”

As she approached the table, all she could see was a man sitting with his back facing her, his body bent over toward the floor. He appeared to be struggling to pull something from a large black leather holdall. So engrossed was he that Ruby decided there was a distinct possibility he hadn’t overheard her contretemps with the brassy woman.

She watched as he continued to do battle with the overly full bag. Finally, Mary Poppins–like, he produced one of those beaded seat covers favored by taxi drivers. With great precision, not to say solemnity, he stood up and began arranging it over his chair.

Ruby waited for him to finish. Then, doing her best to conceal her amusement and disbelief, she introduced herself.

“Oh, hi, I’m Duncan,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you. Soph’s told me all about you.” It was his voice that struck her first. It was a low monotone. He hadn’t said much, but she could already tell that listening to him was going to be like listening to a car engine stuck in second gear.

They sat down and Duncan immediately began rolling his back and shoulders over the beads of the seat cover. “Oh, that feels good,” he said, starting to rotate his head as well. “It’s so important to get the right lumbar support.”

Ruby immediately felt rotten about sneering. Poor chap clearly had a bad back.

“It must be awful being in constant back pain,” she said.

“I’m not in any pain. There’s absolutely nothing the matter with my back…yet.” He wagged a finger in front of her. “But as I always say, prevention is better than cure.”

It turned out that Duncan had just hit forty and as a result had become obsessed with the health effects of getting older. Over drinks—wine for her, mineral water for him—he treated her to an artery-by-artery account of how the cardiovascular system deteriorates during a person’s fifth decade. As he spoke, she noticed his heavy forehead and elongated chin. With his fringe that had been separated into “curtains,” she couldn’t help thinking he looked—not to mention sounded—like a funeral director stuck in a nineties-style rut. It was clear that Soph’s idea of gorgeous was nothing like her own.

“So, I hear you’re a novelist,” Ruby said, anxious to get the conversation away from Duncan’s physical decline.

“Yes, I write murder mysteries.”

Now this sounded promising.

“I’ve completed six so far,” he went on. Wow, he was successful. Better and better. “And all of them in my own, made-up language.”

Ah. Oh…kay. “In your own language? I see. So, um, who’s your publisher?”

Duncan said he didn’t have a publisher as such, but was living in hope of getting one lined up shortly. He then went to great pains to describe the fundamental building blocks of his made-up language, which was called Brogan.

By the time the profiteroles arrived she was proficient in conjugating the verb “to be.” “Well done!” he enthused. “Now, then, let’s move on to the verb ‘to do’ or ‘to make.’ This is an irregular OL verb:
anrol
. So, I make is
eb anrol
. You make—familiar form—is
ip anrola
. He, she and it makes is
sa anrols
. See if you can remember any of that.”

Over espresso they covered the perfect and the imperfect tense, as well as the subjunctive. By eleven she could bear it no more and told Duncan that she’d had a wonderful evening, but really needed to get home as she had an early start. He offered to give her a lift, but, petrified he would try to seduce her by teaching her the genitive or ablative, she insisted on calling a taxi.

As they waited outside for a cab, Ruby sensed that Duncan was psyching himself up to saying something. Her heart sank. Any second he was going to suggest they go out again and ask her for her phone number. Naturally she would give it to him on the grounds that it would be too mean not to. She would then go home and spend all night trying to invent plausible excuses for not going out with him.

Several minutes and at least a dozen cabs went by—all with their for-hire lights off—but instead of asking for her number, he stood rolling on the balls of his feet, nattering on about how chilly the nights were getting now they were into September. She was about to put him out of his misery and simply hand him her card, when he said: “Look, Ruby, you are very nice and please don’t take this the wrong way, but as I always say honesty is the best policy and the truth is I don’t think there’s much chemistry between us.”

Relief shot through her. “Oh, right,” she said, thinking that for the sake of politeness she ought to at least sound disappointed.

“You see, I demand very high standards in the women I go out with. I look for a sharp, probing mind. I need somebody who will challenge me, somebody who can appreciate that in creating this new language of mine, I am in fact attempting to create a new reality.”

“I see.”

“The thing is that when I was trying to engage with you over semantic roles and clustering syntactic positions, you didn’t seem that interested. I’m sure that in many ways, you’re not a boring person, but—”

“Hang on, you think
I’m
boring?”

“Just a little, maybe, but please don’t take it to heart. I would hate you to see this as a rejection.” Before she had a chance to say anything, Duncan was hailing a taxi. The next thing she knew, he was holding the door open for her. “There is a man out there for you, I just know it. As I always say, every pot has its lid.” With that he slammed the door shut.

“Where to, love?” said the driver.

W
HEN SHE GOT
home, Ruby tried ringing Fi to inform her that as long as she lived she would never go on another blind date—at least not one Fi had organized—but the phone was off the hook. That could only mean that Connor was asleep and she didn’t want to be disturbed.

She brushed her teeth and took off her makeup. Then she fell into bed and began reciting a new affirmation—one she had just made up. “I am not boring. I have never been boring. I never will be boring. I am scintillating, articulate and intelligent. In company I dazzle people with my wit and insight.” She must have recited this a dozen times or more. Then she fell asleep and dreamed that she was teaching Sam Epstien how to conjugate the Brogan verb “to neck.”

Chapter 7

“Chanel, can I ask you something?” It was the following morning and Ruby and Chanel were getting ready to open the shop.

“Course.”

“Do you think I’m boring?”

“You? Boring?” Chanel said. “You’re the least boring person I know.”

“Really?” Ruby could feel herself blushing at the compliment.

“Of course, I don’t mind when you go on for hours about how yer mum analyzes you, but I can see it might get some people down. And then there was that time when that bloke cut you off on the motorway. You didn’t talk about anything else for days.”

“But he nearly killed me. I was in shock. You’d have been the same if it had been you he’d cut off.”

“And whenever you’ve got the slightest sniffle, you don’t stop moaning…”

“OK, but apart from the mum thing, the near-death experience on the motorway and my tendency to be a bit needy when I have a temperature of 103, I’m not boring?”

“Definitely not. What’s all this about anyway?…Oh, ’ang on, it’s got something to do with your date last night, ’asn’t it?”

Ruby admitted it had.

“Bit crap, was it?” Chanel said.

Until now Ruby had been dusting the countertop. She stopped, can of Pledge in one hand, duster in the other, and pretended to become lost in thought. “Hmm, I’m not sure that ‘a bit crap’ quite gets to the nub of it, really. I think ‘catastrophe’ would be a more accurate description.”

“Oh, right. So, better than some of the other dates Fi’s fixed you up with, then?”

Ruby managed to laugh. Then she told Chanel about Duncan. Chanel wasn’t amused. “A novel? In ’is own made-up language? And ’e ’ad the nerve to call you boring?” She shuddered. “Total weirdo if you ask me. I wouldn’t have ’ung around, I tell you that much.”

“I have to admit, he was a bit strange…”

“Yeah, like Jack McFarland’s a
bit
gay.”

Ruby began sorting through the mail while Chanel unlocked the front door. “Look, I know it’s short notice,” Chanel said, “but would it be all right if I took a couple of hours off later on? It’s just that I phoned this new Harley Street specialist just before I left this morning and by some miracle ’e’s got a cancellation at twelve. If me and Craig don’t take it, we’ll ’ave to wait until November for another appointment.”

Ruby said of course she could have the time off. “Like you have to ask,” she smiled.

“Great. Ta. I’ll make up the time. Promise.”

“Don’t be silly,” Ruby said, throwing some junk mail into the bin. “You work hard enough as it is.”

The door had been open less than a minute when Fi walked in. She looked frazzled and exhausted. “Hi, Chanel,” Fi said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

As they pulled away from their embrace, Chanel stood back to take a look at Fi. “Gawd, when did you last get a decent night’s sleep, 1485?”

“Something like that,” Fi said.

By now Ruby had joined them. “Hi, sweetie,” she said to Fi. “What brings you here? And who’s in charge back at the ranch?”

“Saul, but I can’t stop. I’m on my way to Waitrose and have to get back for Connor’s next feed. I just stopped in to say I’m really sorry about—”

“You know, Cancers need to watch their immune system,” Chanel broke in, shaking a warning finger at Fi. “If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re going to get seriously run down.”

“Tell that to Connor when he wakes five times in the night. By the way, he adores the crib mobile you got him. Thanks again, it was such a lovely thought.”

“My pleasure,” Chanel said, waving a hand in front of her. “Now come over here and sit down.” She led Fi to one of the chairs they kept next to the counter for heavily pregnant women.

Fi and Chanel had real soft spots for each other. Before Connor was born, Fi would sometimes help out at the shop during sale time and she and Chanel had hit it off straight away. Chanel loved mothering people, and Fi, having received precious little by way of affection from Bridget, rather enjoyed it. Plus, Chanel made her laugh.

“Right, don’t know about you two,” Chanel said, “but I’m feeling a bit precaffeinated. I’m off to do a coffee run.” She took her purse out of her bag and turned to Fi: “You look like you could do with a cup.”

Fi protested that she needed to get to Waitrose and didn’t have time for coffee, but Chanel managed to tempt her with the promise of a chocolate éclair.

After Chanel had gone, Fi turned to Ruby: “Look, I just had to come in and say sorry about Duncan,” she said. “Soph rang. Last night must have been miserable.”

“I admit I was a bit cross at the time—particularly when he said I was boring, but I’m starting to see the funny side.”

“He said you were boring? Cheek. I don’t think you’re at all boring. OK, you do have a tendency to go on about your mum. Then there was the time that bloke nearly ran you off the motorway. You bored on about that for weeks. And when you’re ill you’re pretty boring…”

“Yeah, yeah, but
basically
you don’t think I’m boring, right?”

“Absolutely. Look, last night was all my fault and if I were you, I’d be furious with me. All I can say in my defense is that I had no idea what Duncan was like until Soph rang me last night. She was in such a state. She’d suddenly realized how wrong it was to set you up with him without telling you what he was like. She told me all about him—the made-up language, the obsession with health, everything. Apparently he’s a lovely bloke when you get to know him, but he’s just a bit eccentric and not very at ease socially.”

“You don’t say,” Ruby said, examining the giant vase of white lilies on the counter and breaking off a damaged leaf.

“She told me that both his parents are physics professors. He was one of those hothouse child prodigies and the experience left him a bit peculiar. I’ll find you somebody else. Promise. My friend Kate’s got a mate who knows this conductor.”

“Orchestra or bus?” Ruby asked, only half joking.

Fi blinked. “Now you come to mention it, she didn’t say.”

“Look,” Ruby said, “when I told you I didn’t want to go on any more blind dates, I really did mean it. I love it that you care about me and want me to find somebody, but let’s just give the blind dates a rest for a bit, eh?”

Fi looked disappointed. “OK, perhaps you’re right,” she said.

Ruby decided to change the subject. “So, is Saul the new Captain Bird’s Eye?”

“Not exactly. They said he was too Semitic looking and didn’t his agent know they were looking for somebody to advertise fish suppers and not the Last Supper.”

“Ouch—seems a bit hard.”

“I know, but he’s got another couple of auditions lined up, so he’s not too down…. How did things go at St. Luke’s?”

Ruby explained about bumping into Sam Epstien again.

“Epstien,” Fi repeated, brow knitted. “That’s funny, Saul has Epstiens in his family. And I’m sure there’s an American branch. This Sam didn’t happen to say if he was a Teaneck, New Jersey, Epstien, did he?”

“No, we didn’t actually get round to that,” Ruby said with gentle sarcasm.

“Shame. I mean, they could be related…. On a second thought, scrub that. I’m almost certain Saul’s lot are Ep-
steins
to rhyme with ‘wines’—rather than Ep-
steens
. Two of them came to the wedding. Elderly couple. Lovely people. Now, what are their first names? Hang on, it’s coming. I’ll get there in a tick. Saul did tell me.…Bert? No, not Bert…. Buddy, that’s it. Buddy and Irene. Big in kosher pickles, apparently.”

“Really?” Ruby said with a soft laugh. “Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.”

“Oh, God, I’ve been wittering again. Sorry. It’s lack of sleep…. So, you’ve got a Jewish doctor after you. Talk about fulfilling every Jewish mother’s fantasy. Saul’s sister married a Jewish doctor. Saul’s mum always says it was the only thing that cured her postnatal depression. So, have you told Ronnie about Dr. Epstien?”

“There’s nothing to tell. We chatted and he said he would give me a call. That was it.”

“God, you’ll have to get something special to wear for your first date. Why don’t I come shopping with you?”

“Fi, I don’t even know if there’s going to be a date.” She told Fi what she’d told Chanel—that confessing she’d lied about her vaginal stamp and then having to tell him the true story would be just too embarrassing.

“Oh, come on, Ruby….” It was Chanel back with the coffee. “You know you want to go out with him. Allowing your vagina to come between the two of you is stupid.” Chanel wrinkled her brow. “I think that may ’ave come out wrong,” she said, “but you know what I mean.” She handed out cups of coffee and gave Fi a bag containing the promised éclair.

“All right, maybe I do,” Ruby said, easing off the plastic lid on her coffee cup, “but even if I can get over the embarrassment issue, he’s still a gynecologist.”

“Tell me about it,” Fi giggled. “I can’t remember the last time I was this jealous. You know…” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “sleeping with a gynecologist is my ultimate sexual fantasy.” She bit into the éclair, causing whipped cream to ooze from its sides.

“Blimey, you kept that quiet,” Ruby said.

“What do you want me to do, go round broadcasting to the world that I like to have sex with my legs in stirrups?”

“You serious?” Chanel said, grinning.

Fi nodded. “Absolutely.” She took another bite of éclair. “Saul found the stirrups on eBay. Some doctor was upgrading his equipment and didn’t need them anymore.”

Ruby was shaking her head, eyes wide with surprise. Not in a million years would she have guessed Fi was this sexually liberated. She wasn’t the type. She wore Sebagos. She recycled. She worked for her local branch of the National Childbirth Trust as a breast pump agent. This was the woman who had been utterly scandalized to discover Ruby and Matt had done it in one of the changing rooms in French Connection. And two years ago, when Ruby had presented her with a Rampant Rabbit vibrator for her birthday, she’d thought it was a paper towel holder.

“This feels so weird,” Ruby said. “All these years you think you know somebody and then you discover you don’t. How come you never told me? I told you about me and Matt doing it in French Connection.”

“I know, but this is far more kinky. Plus I knew how you felt about the whole gynecologist thing.”

“Of course,” Chanel chipped in, “the gynecologist fantasy is all about wanting to be dominated. It’s not something me and Craig ’ave ever got into. He’s a Cancer, and Cancers tend to be a bit conservative in the bedroom department, but I can see ’ow it would be pretty mind-blowing to act out.”

“Too right,” Fi said with a rich earthy laugh, which was so unlike her. “So, can you imagine what it would be to have real sex with a gynecologist?”

Ruby stood drinking her coffee, her eyes starting to glaze over. Try as she might to fend them off, she was having thoughts about being ravaged by Sam Epstien. Worse still, in her fantasy Sam was wearing his blue scrubs and she was lying on a gynecologist’s table.

Chanel seemed to pick up on her faraway look. “’Aving second thoughts about Dr. Epstien, then?”

The question jolted Ruby from her reverie. “No, not at all,” she said, aware of how defensive she sounded.

“Yeah, right,” Chanel came back, a trace of a smirk on her face.

“OK, what if I am?” Ruby said, feeling her cheeks burning. “Since when was changing your mind indictable?”

Chanel and Fi exchanged amused looks.

“Of course,” Fi said, “the domination issue aside, the other reason for wanting to sleep with a gynecologist is that they really know their way around women’s bits. How can they not be totally amazing in the sack?”

Ruby said she couldn’t imagine old Double Barrel being good in the sack.

“You’d be surprised,” Chanel said. “I bet ’e knows exactly ’ow to show Mrs. Double Barrel a good time.”

Ruby grimaced at the thought.

A
FTER
F
I HAD
gone, customers began to trickle in. While Chanel looked after them, Ruby sat at the computer in the stockroom, dealing with a pile of e-mail orders. The door was open and she could hear Chanel talking to people in the shop. She was being perfectly pleasant, Ruby thought, but she seemed less chatty than usual. She was clearly getting worked up about the appointment with this new doctor.

When it was time for Chanel to go, Ruby wished her good luck and gave her a hug. “I’ll keep everything crossed.”

“Thanks,” Chanel said, smiling, “but I’ve got this really strong feeling everything’s going to be OK and that this new bloke is going to give us some fresh ’ope. I know it sounds weird, bearing in mind what the last doctor told us, but I can’t ’elp thinking it.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Ruby smiled, giving her another squeeze.

Things started to quiet down in the shop and Ruby decided to pop into the kitchen and make a cup of tea. While the kettle boiled she grabbed a packet of potato chips. She’d go out for a sandwich later when Chanel got back. She was tearing open the packet when she became aware that her trouser waistband felt tight. She looked down and ran her hand over her stomach. It was bloated and straining against her trousers. Wheat always did this to her. Last night in the restaurant, the first course had taken ages to arrive. How many bread sticks had she eaten as she sat there listening to Duncan droning on? Six? Eight? Maybe more. Still, so long as she kept to protein and green veg for lunch and dinner, she’d be back to normal by tomorrow. She put the chips back in the cupboard and opened the minifridge. Inside was a raspberry yogurt, which was only three days out of date.