Shameless (19 page)

Caroline set down her dessert spoon, took a sip of wine, and stared at Martin across the table, trying to gauge his reaction to what she had just told him and not getting very far. “So,” she said finally. “What do you think?”

Martin frowned. “Let me get this straight. You saw Graham with another woman, which confirms what I said all along, that he is in fact heterosexual and not the closet case you always insisted he was. Then you bumped into him in the street, and he invited you for coffee, and you said no.”

“Yes,” Caroline said, already feeling guilty for editing out the part about Dylan and Phil and the fact that she had spent the past forty-eight hours smothered in Nix.

“Well, I don’t get it,” Martin said. “I thought you said you wanted him back. So why say no?”

“It was a bit awkward at the time,” Caroline mumbled. “I was rushing to get to work. And he is seeing someone else.”

“He’s only seeing someone else because you drove him away with your wild accusations,” Martin said, and was immediately taken aback by how accusatory he sounded. There was a long pause.

“Yes, well, I fucked up,” Caroline said finally. “Anyway, what’s been happening with you? Met anyone nice recently?”

“There was this one guy . . . ,” Martin began, then trailed off. “Look, I’m sorry for snapping just now. I didn’t mean to sound so unsympathetic.”

Caroline smiled to show there were no hard feelings. “No, it’s okay, really. I was stupid. I’ve been kicking myself ever since.”

“Well, don’t kick yourself. Just call him and tell him you’d like to meet for a drink or something. What’s the worst that could happen?”

She shrugged. “He could tell me to piss off, I suppose. Anyway, enough about me. Tell me about this guy.”

So for the next ten minutes, Martin talked about Ben, and the night they had spent together, and how it was the closest thing to real intimacy he’d felt in a long time, and how he’d left several messages, and how Ben hadn’t returned any of them. When he finished, he poured himself another glass of wine and forced a smile. “And that’s about it,” he said, staring into his glass. “Another one bites the dust.”

“Well, it’s his loss,” Caroline said gently. “I think you’re really strong.”

He blushed. “Strong, why?”

“Because you don’t play games. Because you aren’t afraid to let your feelings show.”

He laughed. “Hang on a minute! This isn’t like you—the queen of denial! I thought hiding your feelings and playing hard to get was all par for the course.”

She shrugged and lit a cigarette. “A girl can change her mind, can’t she? Actually, I’ve changed my mind about quite a few things lately. And trust me, playing games is a waste of time. If you know what you want, the best thing you can do is just go for it.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Maybe I will,” she said, pushing her plate away and reaching for the ashtray. “Well, that was a lovely meal,” she added brightly. “But I’m afraid the after-dinner speeches are getting a bit morose. How about a line of coke to liven things up?”

“I had one earlier,” Martin said, clearing the plates and carrying them into the kitchen. “I didn’t feel a thing. Maybe I’ve done too much and it just isn’t working anymore.”

“You can never do too much coke,” Caroline shouted, reaching into her handbag for the final gram purchased with the proceeds from her date with Dylan. The crabs had already been obliterated. By the time this gram was finished, there would be no link with him left.

Martin reappeared with the bottle of champagne Caroline had brought, which had been chilling for the past hour and a half. “What about when your nose caves in?” he said. “Like that girl from
EastEnders
, Danniella Westbrook?”

Caroline grinned. “That will never happen to me. At the first sign of trouble, I plan to have the insides of my nostrils lined with solid gold. Believe me, cosmetic surgery has an answer for everything.”

Twenty minutes later they were deep in coke conversation, each feeling the urge to confess things they had previously held back from mentioning, and ranting at one another without even realizing it.

“The problem with straight men,” Caroline said, “is that they’re never really straight with you. They don’t know what they want half the time. And even when they do, they’re afraid of telling you in case you trample on their fragile little egos. It’s no wonder so many women are willing to give lesbianism a try. I don’t think I could, though. Women are too emotional. We analyze things too much. Put me in bed with another woman and we’d probably end up discussing our relationships with our mothers for hours.”

“Gay men are exactly the same,” Martin said. “If anything, they’re probably even more uptight than straight men because they feel like they’ve constantly got to prove something. I mean, I like men to behave like men. But some of them take it far too seriously. You should see some of the personal ads in the gay papers. It’s all ‘straight-acting’ this and ‘straight-looking’ that. And some of the photos! Half of them look as if they’re constipated. What’s wrong with smiling? Is it only women who are allowed to smile? Actually, I wouldn’t mind being a lesbian. Although, having said that, a lot of them don’t smile very much, either.”

“Maybe
we
should just get it together,” Caroline joked. “You never know, it might be fun.”

“Forget it,” Martin said. “Madonna and Rupert Everett tried that and look where it got them.”

Caroline laughed. “I’ll bet he never gave her crabs, though.”

“Maybe not, but he didn’t do her acting career any favors. They should have called that film
The Next Best Thing to a Telemovie.
It was awful.”

“Did I mention that I caught crabs?” Caroline asked, knowing full well that she hadn’t.

Martin stopped and stared. “Crabs? Seriously? Who from?”

“Well, you remember Dylan?” she began, and proceeded to tell him the entire story, beginning with the meeting at the Sanderson, moving on to the encounter at the Fridge with Phil and the crisis at work, and ending with the irritating indignity of the past two days.

“No wonder you were freaked out when you bumped into Graham,” Martin said before telling her the tale of the one-legged man—partly to make her feel better, and partly out of a compulsion to get it off his chest and solicit a little sympathy into the bargain.

“We’re a right pair, aren’t we?” Caroline said when he’d finished. “Still, it could be worse.”

“Really?” Martin asked. “How?”

“Well, we could be all out of coke for a start,” she replied, and began chopping another line.

By the time Neil arrived home shortly after midnight, Caroline had left and Martin was sitting in front of the television, wired to the eyeballs and watching a late-night movie without really concentrating.

“I see you finished off your coke, then,” Neil said as he walked into the room.

Martin looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Your coke,” Neil repeated. “I found a wrap last night when I came in, on the floor outside your bedroom. I guess it must have fallen out of your wallet. I put it back in the drawer in the bathroom. Anyway, I’m going to make myself a cup of tea. Fancy one?”

“Please,” Martin said, and waited for Neil to wander off into the kitchen before dashing into the bathroom and searching through the bathroom cabinet. Sure enough, the wrap was there, not in the bottom drawer where he usually kept it, but in the second drawer down.

“Have you seen my copy of
QX
?” Neil shouted. “I thought I’d left it in my room, but it doesn’t seem to be there.”

“I’ll just go and get it,” Martin called back, running into his room and returning with the magazine. “I was having a quick flick through it earlier,” he explained, handing it to Neil.

“Thanks,” Neil said. “There’s a personal ad I thought I might reply to. It’s in under the ‘Tongueworks’ section. Sounds quite promising.”

“Great,” said Martin. He paused. “Um, Neil, I’m really sorry about this, but the thing is, when I took the magazine from your room, well, I think some coke might have fallen onto the floor when I picked it up. I hope you don’t mind. It was an accident.”

Neil thought for a moment, then laughed. “That wasn’t coke. That was just me filing my toenails this morning. I was going to tip it down the toilet, but then someone phoned from work and I forgot. Stop looking so worried. There’s no harm done. I’ll just Hoover it up in the morning.”

Martin forced a smile. “Good,” he said. “That’s a relief.” Then he ran into the bathroom and threw up.

Eighteen

C
aroline had arranged
to meet Graham at a tapas bar in Camden Town at eight. Camden wasn’t a part of town Caroline frequented very often. For her, it would always be the stomping ground of solemn student types with green hair and blue Doc Martens. Nor was she particularly fond of tapas bars. Tapas was for people who liked to eat between meals, which invariably meant people who didn’t have to watch their weight. But she wasn’t about to question Graham’s judgment. She was surprised that he had agreed to meet her at all, especially at such short notice, and was amazed when he turned down her initial suggestion of an afternoon coffee in favor of a potentially more intimate arrangement. The fact that he was free to meet her on Saturday night, when she would have expected him to be spending quality time with his skinny new girlfriend, meant that Caroline spent much of Saturday afternoon fantasizing that Graham and his mystery woman had already split up. The fact that she was meeting him at eight, and not three as she had first suggested, meant that she spent the rest of the afternoon slowly working her way through the various beauty products cluttering up her bathroom shelves, finally emerging with barely an hour to go and a face that bore witness to the power of Max Factor.

She took a taxi into Camden and arrived at the bar twenty minutes late to find Graham already seated at a table. It looked as though he’d spent a fair amount of time getting ready himself. The red shirt he was wearing was one that she had helped him pick out, and he was sporting a fresh haircut, complete with a fresh razor rash on the back of his neck. He looked happy to see her and, if she wasn’t mistaken, slightly nervous. He stood up to greet her with a polite peck on the cheek while all around them Camden couples snuggled together over candlelit tables.

“You made it, then,” he joked as she sat down.

She smiled. “Yes, sorry I’m a bit late. The traffic was terrible.”

There was an awkward silence as she puffed away furiously on a cigarette and he scrutinized the wine list before finally settling on a bottle of Chilean red. Caroline made a mental note that a bottle of wine would take far longer to drink than a couple of glasses and wondered how long Graham was expecting this meeting to last, and whether she should waste time with small talk or cut straight to the chase.

“You look good,” he said, pouring the wine.

“You, too,” she replied brightly, and they both laughed.

Caroline took a sip of wine followed by a deep breath. “Look, Graham,” she began. “I know you’re probably still angry about the way I behaved before, which you’ve every right to be, obviously. And I’m sure you’ve probably got other plans tonight. So, if I can just say what I . . .”

“Hang on a minute,” he said. “Why do you say that?”

“Say what?”

“That I’ve got other plans tonight.”

Caroline hesitated before answering. “Well, I just assumed that you’d be seeing your girlfriend later.”

“Girlfriend? What girlfriend? I haven’t got a girlfriend. What makes you think that?”

“I saw you,” Caroline said quickly, and immediately regretted the way the words came out, like an accusation. Now he was going to think that she’d been spying on him again. “I think it may have been last Saturday,” she went on as casually as she could. “Anyway, I was in a taxi, on my way home after a few drinks with . . . a friend. I think it might have been somewhere around Edgware Road, or possibly Baker Street, somewhere like that. And I just happened to see you. With a woman. You looked pretty close, so naturally I assumed . . .”

Graham looked confused for a moment. Then he broke into a smile. “That must have been Charlotte!” he said, laughing. “Of course! Wait till I tell her about this. She’ll wet herself. Believe me, Charlotte is just a friend.”

Hating the thought of Graham and his new female “friend” sharing a joke at her expense, Caroline felt her temper rise. “ReaIly?” she said. “I don’t remember you ever mentioning a friend called Charlotte before.”

“That’s because I only met her recently,” he said, still chuckling quietly. “Trust me, even if I was looking for something more than friendship from Charlotte, which I’m not, I don’t think I’d get very far. I’m not her type. For one thing, she’s a lesbian.”

Now it was Caroline’s turn to look confused. “But . . . ,” she began. “But . . .”

“But what?” Graham asked. “But she doesn’t look like a lesbian?”

“Well, no. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t.”

“And how many lesbians do you know exactly?”

Caroline thought for a moment. “I’ve met a few,” she said finally. Then, sensing that she was digging herself into an even bigger hole than the one she was in already, she tried to bluff her way out. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”

“No,” Graham said with a smile. “It’s not the point. The point is that you have an uncanny habit of jumping to the wrong conclusions about the kind of person I am and the kind of people I sleep with. But that’s partly my fault, so why don’t we just agree to let it go for now? There’s something I’d like to clear up first. I wish I could have done this three months ago, but I needed more time to get my head around it first. The reason I suggested we meet tonight and not this afternoon is that there’s something I’ve been wanting to explain to you, and I think the best way to explain it would be to just show you. So, will you come?”

“Where to?”

“You’ll see,” he said, looking at his watch. “It’s still a bit early yet. Why don’t we get a bite to eat, finish our wine, and then go? Don’t worry. It’s not very far.”

It was barely even ten, and already John’s party had reached that point where people were starting to wonder whether it was time to make their excuses and leave. The host clearly wasn’t in the best of moods, largely due to the nonappearance of his boyfriend. And without Fernando there to provide them with drugs, some of the guests were beginning to get into a panic over where their next chemical high was going to come from. It was Saturday night after all, and nobody wanted to wind up at a club two or three hours from now, devoid of artificial stimulants. Most of them wouldn’t have the first clue how to behave.

“Fernando is coming, isn’t he?” Camp David asked as he followed John into the kitchen, hoping to find a line to tide him over until the serious dealing began and he could avail himself of other people’s generosity as they entered into the party spirit.

“Of course he’s coming!” John snapped, removing a bottle of champagne from the fridge and attacking the foil with a kitchen knife and a ferocity that was enough to warn off all but the most determined of coke whores.

“Do you have any idea when?” David inquired, standing his ground and smiling innocently. “Or is that all part of the surprise?”

John glowered at him. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said sharply. “Now if you don’t mind, I do have other guests.”

He swanned back into the living room, where Martin and Neil were deep in conversation with the two Steves while an assortment of John’s friends, colleagues and mere acquaintances milled about with half-empty glasses and pained expressions. Martin had already exchanged a few words with Shane, John’s friend from the airline, and was a little taken aback to find that Shane seemed to know far more about his breakup with Christopher than he did. He was about to get to the bottom of this when Shane’s boyfriend, Yuichi, appeared, chattering hysterically about something he’d overheard in the bedroom and leading Shane away with a firm grip.

“No word from Fernando yet, then?” Neil said as John made his way toward them.

“No, Neil,” John replied. “Though judging by those blocked sinuses of yours, I’d say you’ve shoved quite enough coke up your nose for one week.”

“It’s just the start of a cold,” Neil protested.

“You should try euthanasia,” John said, snatching Neil’s glass and refilling it with champagne.

“I think you mean Echinacea,” Neil laughed.

John smiled icily. “I know exactly what I mean.”

“I had a chat with Shane earlier,” Martin said. “He seems to know an awful lot about me and Christopher.”

John’s face gave nothing away. “Really? I can’t think why. Maybe they have a friend in common. Anyway I wouldn’t worry about it. Nobody takes anything Shane says seriously. You only have to look at his taste in men to see why.”

“Who are those two over there, John?” Neil asked, gesturing toward a rather overweight, not terribly attractive man in an orange T-shirt with
MASSIVE
emblazoned across the chest, standing huddled in a corner with a far younger, far prettier boy in a white vest.

“The one in the T-shirt is a DJ,” John replied. “I forget which clubs he works at. And before you ask, yes, the other one is his boyfriend.”

“What’s a boy like that doing with him?” Martin asked. “He’s not what you’d call a catch, is he?”

John looked at Martin as if he were mad. “Er, hello? Didn’t you hear what I just said? He’s a DJ! Anyway, from what I hear, you’ve been getting more than your fair share lately. First that cowboy, then allowing Neil here to drag you to a bar full of leather-fetish men. What are you trying to do? Sleep your way through the Village People?”

Before Martin could come back with a smart reply, Shane and Yuichi reappeared, followed by David. All three were clearly wired on coke and giggling hysterically.

“We’ve been admiring your computer, John,” Shane said. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those sad queens who spends all day looking for sex on the Internet.”

John scowled. “Of course not. In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a boyfriend.”

“Me, too,” said Shane, sliding his arm around Yuichi’s narrow waist. “The only difference is, mine is actually here.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” David said, wagging a finger at Shane. “The only sex I ever get these days is with people I meet on the Internet. And at least in cyberspace nobody can scream at you for not being safe.”

“You mean you don’t actually meet these people?” Martin asked, confused.

“Oh no,” David replied, happy for an opportunity to discuss his sex life. “It all happens right there on the screen. The secret is to think up a good screen name, one that will get them going. Having the word ‘Muscle’ in there helps. Or you can always do what I do, and pretend to be straight.”

John laughed. “Straight? You? I can’t believe anyone falls for that.”

“You’d be surprised what people will fall for,” David said, narrowing his eyes. “For example, tell them that you’re twenty-eight, cute and curious about gay sex, and they’re soon hooked. There’s this one queen I have a wank with fairly regularly. He says he works as a security guard for an airline, which I assume means he’s a trolley dolly. Maybe you know him.”

John bared his teeth in what just about passed for a smile. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m choosy about the kind of company I keep.” And with that, he flounced off in the direction of the bathroom.

“Don’t take any notice of him,” Neil said. “He’s just pissed off because Fernando hasn’t turned up.”

Shane nodded. “I wonder what’s happened to him?”

“Maybe he’s been stopped by the police,” the first of the two Steves suggested.

“Another dealer we know was busted last week,” the second Steve added mournfully, shaking his head. “It totally ruined our weekend.”

“Well, I hope Fernando isn’t sitting in a police cell,” NeiI said. “Aside from the fact that it would make John even more of a nightmare than he is already, I’ve ordered a gram of coke, some K and four E’s for later. I assume we are still going to Crash?”

“I suppose so,” Martin replied. “But we should probably wait and see if Fernando shows up.”

They didn’t have to wait very much longer. Martin was about to resume his earlier conversation with Shane about his breakup with Christopher when there was a sudden flurry of activity. The buzzer rang, and John came dashing out of the bathroom and ran toward the door to greet his rather late and already much-missed boyfriend. There was the sound of the front door opening and voices being raised. A few minutes later John reappeared, closely followed by Fernando, who as usual seemed prepared to let John do all the talking.

“Okay, everybody!” John said, raising his voice to be heard over the general murmur of conversation, most of which involved at least some degree of speculation as to the reason for Fernando’s late arrival, and whether or not he was fully equipped to deal with all the requests that were about to be made of him.

“I hope he’s got my drugs,” Neil whispered to Martin. “After this, l’ve got a feeling I’m going to need them.”

“Can I have a bit of quiet, please!” John shouted, glaring at Neil, who returned his gaze with a frosty smile. “Thank you. Now, I asked you all here tonight for a reason, and now that Fernando has arrived, I can reveal what that reason is. I’m sure most of you know that Fernando and I have been seeing each other for just over three months now, which is practically a year in gay time. And I’m sure there are some people here who might be a little surprised that this relationship has lasted as long as it has, given my track record.”

This prompted a ripple of laughter, together with shouts of “tart” and “tramp.”

“Yes, very funny,” John said impatiently. “Believe me, nobody is more surprised than me. But the fact is that it has lasted, and I think the time has come for us to acknowledge that in some way. And it’s for this reason that I’ve decided to ask Fernando to move in with me.”

The room fell silent. All eyes were on Fernando, who simply stood there saying nothing, with a shell-shocked look slowly spreading across his face. He reminded Martin of a trapped animal, suddenly realizing that the cage he has been lured into doesn’t have an exit.

“Well?” John said, turning to him with a slightly worried expression. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

Fernando stared back at John, then gazed around the room at all the openmouthed guests. “Hmm,” he mumbled finally, turning to face John and shrugging his shoulders. “Erm, maybe.”

Caroline stood outside the busy pub on Camden High Street and watched in disbelief as Graham pushed open the door. This had to be some kind of joke. The Black Cap was one of the oldest, most famous gay pubs in London. She knew this because she’d walked past it one afternoon with Martin, and remembered him telling her that drag queen Lily Savage performed there before making the leap into television. Caroline couldn’t understand it. After all that she and Graham had put each other through over the past few months, after all the things she’d accused him of and all the confusion he’d caused with his secret meetings and his funny phone calls and his mysterious lesbian friends, Graham was actually taking her to a gay pub. Just what the hell was going on? Was he about to turn around and tell her that he was gay after all? Was he trying to orchestrate a situation whereby she and Charlotte somehow met and got it on together and he was given the chance to fulfill the ultimate straight-male fantasy of watching two women having sex? Was it all an elaborate scheme designed to make her see the error of her ways? Had he wandered into the wrong pub by mistake?