The Case of the Missing Boyfriend (14 page)

Tom snorts as if this is somehow cute or funny and returns to his texting operation. I, for my part, turn back to the window and watch New York spinning by, and calculate the pros and cons of letting myself have a business trip fling.

Pros: He’s fit. He’s funny. He’s good looking.

Cons: He’s a client. He’s a client. He’s a client.

For, of course, that’s the biggy. I have known many a contract crumble to dust because someone, somewhere, shagged the wrong person.

But then, if, as Tom says, it’s really Levi’s running the show . . .

But even then, one-off business-trip sex is pretty slutty. Do I really want to live up to my chavvy name? But do I really want my vagina to heal over through lack of use either?

‘Hey,’ Tom says, squeezing my shoulder to get my attention. ‘We’re here.’

That squeeze somehow shifts the balance in Tom’s favour. It’s been a long time, too long in fact, since anyone squeezed any part of me.

The Excelsior is exactly as a New York bar should be. Lots of dark wood and low suspended lights. A big jukebox in the corner . . . Big slatted wooden blinds fill the large windows, making the place feel intimate and private.

There are only perhaps twenty people here for now, mostly men, all very casual/chic, very Abercrombie and Fitch.

‘This OK?’ Tom asks, returning from the bar with a bottle of beer and my white wine spritzer.

‘Perfect,’ I tell him. ‘Lovely.’

‘So do you go out much in London?’ he asks. ‘I had such a great time when I was there three . . . no, four years ago.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Quite a bit. Probably not as much as I should. You know what it’s like when you live somewhere.’

‘Sure,’ Tom says. ‘And is there a Mister Chav or do you go out on your own?’

I laugh, shake my hair, and notice that I am being outrageously flirtatious. ‘Not now,’ I say. ‘There was once. Now I just go out with friends.’

Tom nods. ‘The city is better when you’re single,’ he says.

I take a sip of my wine and Tom smiles at me, and then slips into an amused grin. I assume that it’s because he has noticed that I’m flirting with him.

And then he glances behind me, as if lost in thought, smiles broadly and slides along the bench seat until he’s only a few inches away.

I’m a little surprised that the moves are coming so fast, and wonder, as if I am watching someone else, how I will react.

I suppose it depends on what happens next. And how it feels once it happens.

What does happen next is that a very tall, thin, dark-haired man looms over our table. ‘Hello,’ he says, looking at Tom, and then me.

‘Hello!’ Tom says. ‘CC, meet Ron. Ron, CC.’

‘Oh!’ I exclaim, holding out my hand and freezing my face before it can form a frown. ‘Hello!’

Ron shakes my hand but looks at Tom as he says, ‘You’re so lucky. I was just about to jump in a cab over to Avenue C when I got your text.’ He looks at me and adds, ‘Mister Last-minute- invitation here!’

I look from Ron to Tom. Tom shrugs. ‘I just wanted you to meet CC here,’ he says. ‘I thought you would really enjoy each other.’

I can’t help it any longer. I start to frown. Either Tom here is setting me up with Ron. Which, seeing as we were getting on so well, looks more like
fobbing me off
on Ron. Which despite Ron’s ideal dark, swarthy looks, would have to be classed as somewhat insulting. Or this is some dastardly piece of industrial espionage on behalf of one of Grunge!’s competitors whom Ron works for. Or Tom is hoping for some weird kind of threesome – which would be really exciting and of course completely impossible to go along with, and which would
really
upset the apple cart in terms of our business relationship.

As Ron heads off to the bar for a drink, I try not to look too wide-eyed and wait to see what’s going to happen next.

He returns almost immediately and grabs a spare chair from a nearby table. He seats himself opposite at which point Tom slithers back along the bench to his original (distant) position.

‘Sorry,’ Ron says. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

‘CC,’ Tom volunteers. ‘She doesn’t like her name so she just goes by CC, don’t you?’

I nod. ‘That’s right,’ I say.

‘It’s actually Chelsea, which in England is a real trailer-trash name, which is why she prefers CC. Isn’t that right?’

I cringe at this brutal explanation and wonder if my mother would be as devastated as I suspect if I changed my name by deed poll.

Ron nods. ‘I see,’ he says, sounding like he doesn’t see at all.

‘So what do you do, Ron?’ I ask, trying to move away from a subject which is starting to seriously irritate me, and at the same time determined to find out why Tom has brought him here.

‘Oh!’ Ron says. ‘That’s a bit like your name. I try not to talk about it.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Because?’ No one is sparing my feelings here. I don’t see why I should start wearing kid gloves.

‘It’s a bit of a cliché,’ Ron says.

I nod. ‘I see,’ I say, using exactly the same tone of voice as Ron just did.

‘Ron is a hairdresser,’ Tom volunteers. ‘He has some very famous clients.’

I nod. I think that I must have drunk too much. It seems as if everyone is speaking in tongues.

‘And that’s a cliché because . . .?’

Ron frowns at me, and then stands. ‘I’m going to put some music on,’ he says, then to Tom, ‘Explain to your friend, would you?’

I watch Ron cross the bar and turn my frown upon Tom. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Call me stupid, but . . .’

‘We’re partners,’ Tom says.

I nod. ‘In his hairdressing business?’

At the very moment I say this three things happen.

The first is that the intro to ‘Enough is Enough’ by Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand starts to drift from the Jukebox, apparently chosen by Ron.

The second is that a big bearded biker at the bar, behind Tom’s head, kisses the little Asian guy sitting on the bar stool opposite him. On the mouth.

And the third is that I manifest what I’m pretty sure must be the brightest, reddest blush my face has produced since Nigel Perry kissed me in the middle of the netball court.

‘I . . . I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I scare myself sometimes.’

‘No. He’s my
partner
,’ Tom says. ‘We’re a couple.’

‘Yes, yes, I get it,’ I say. ‘Doh! Gosh. Sorry.’

Tom shakes his head in confusion and glances over at Ron, beckoning him with a nod back to the table, but Ron rolls his eyes and turns back to the jukebox.

‘Is that OK?’ Tom asks. ‘I mean, if you’re not cool with that . . . ’

I shake my head. ‘Oh, I’m very cool with that, Tom,’ I say. ‘Nearly all my London friends are gay. I’m probably London’s biggest fag hag. I don’t know why my gaydar is so dodgy tonight.’

Tom nods and grins. ‘Cool,’ he says. ‘I knew you’d be cool. I can usually tell. Ron! Come over here!’

I take a heavy swig of my drink and exhale slowly.

‘This is awful, sweetheart,’ Tom says when Ron returns. ‘Why did you put this on?’

‘It’s funny,’ Ron says. ‘And ironic.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s just awful,’ Tom says.

Ron looks at me and shrugs, a little camply, I now see. ‘You choose,’ he says. ‘Ironic, or awful?’

I bite my lip and shake my head. ‘I think it’s exactly like life,’ I say. ‘Awful and funny and ironic. All three at the same time.’

If It’s Fun, It’s a Sin

The next morning I wake up feeling good, almost joyous in fact. My hangover is surprisingly lightweight.

I yawn and stretch luxuriously on the hotel bed. The sheets, which up until now I have been too stressed to notice, feel crisp and fresh.

I lie and reflect on my successful night out on the town. Once my fag-hag credentials had been established, things had become much, much more fun with Tom and Ron. After a couple of drinks in the Excelsior, they whisked me further across town to Club 40c.

Here, I felt immediately at home amidst the fifty/fifty straight/ gay mix. I even had a dance with Ron at one point which was nice in a make-believe kind of a way.

Today being, for them at least, a work day, the evening had wound up just before one a.m. when they dropped me off at the hotel. This probably explains the lack of anything seriously resembling a hangover.

All in all, other than Ron’s not being straight and not having a farm, I couldn’t have hoped for a better night. My working relationship with Tom is now forged in steel, and I have a couple of new clubbing friends if I have to come back to New York for work, as I hope I might.

Showered and dressed in simple jeans and a pullover, I head out into the sunshine. It’s a beautiful spring day and my only agenda is to find the three coffee shops Tom listed for me and have a walk in Central Park. I’m sure the girls from work will all be asking me what shopping I have done, but strangely for someone in my field, shopping has never really done it for me. Though I do spend a fair bit on clothes (many of my clients pretty much expect this of me), in fact, I tend to shop like a man:

I often feel a bit of a failure as a tourist because of my lack of any kind of ambitious agenda. I know people, indeed, have dated men, who arrive in each new city with an alphabetic list of museums to be visited.

I never want to do much more than sit quietly in a café or coffee shop and watch the locals being themselves. That’s what, bizarrely, interests me about other places.

Right now I am heading for Union Square where Tom has told me I can get a perfect American breakfast.

My day goes exactly to plan, which is, after all, the advantage of non-ambitious plans. The Coffee Shop is perfect, with bar-stools and long swoopy counters and a gum-chewing waitress with a notepad clipped to her belt. I overdose on calories by ordering the special: pancakes with eggs, bacon, strawberries, maple syrup, and cream. Only in America!

I head down as far as Wall Street and watch the city traders (
all
wearing blue shirts with white collars) dosing on caffeine. I stand and wave at people on the departing Staten Island ferry which feels silly but rather lovely.

A couple of times I think that it would all be nicer if I had someone to share it with, but I remind myself that this is a business trip and that even if I did have a boyfriend at home, the feeling would be the same.

On my way back up to Central Park, I walk along Fifth Avenue (Audrey Hepburn requires this of me) and I even find five minutes to pop in and buy a pair of Marithé + François Girbaud trousers and a jacket. The exchange rate, I calculate, makes this a good enough deal for me to momentarily consider forgetting Central Park in exchange for more shopping time. But thankfully I resist – feeding the birds at the John Lennon memorial is the perfect end to my perfect blip-visit of a day.

Then it’s back to the hotel, and off to the airport.

By eight p.m. when I arrive at JFK I feel like I have had not one day, but one week’s holiday.

There are moments in life – and I would have to admit that I don’t have them as often as I would like – when everything just comes together, and when, even being single, I feel happy, relaxed and confident. Some days, like today, I feel, as the French would say, so comfortable in my skin, that I could almost cry with the joy of being alive.

On top of my great night out and my perfect New York day, two more things happen at the airport which lock me definitively into my happy zone.

The first is that Peter Stanton phones to congratulate me because Levi’s, apparently, loved our campaign and will be coming over to London shortly to discuss possibilities for collaboration.

The second (and this one is a bit shallow, but does nevertheless make me giggle with joy), is that I get bumped up from economy to business class, no doubt because of my new Girbaud outfit and oozing smile.

As our plane swoops out over the Atlantic, and as the squares of sunshine from the windows sweep through the cabin, I take my first sip of complimentary champagne.

‘This is more like it,’ the man beside me – an elegant fifty-year old – declares.

‘Yes,’ I say, smiling. ‘It is.’

‘Business wasn’t so good for a while,’ he says. ‘So I had to plump for economy. It’s good to be back.’

I grin at him and raise my glass. ‘To business class!’ I toast. ‘Charles,’ he says, raising his own glass and then proffering a hand. ‘C . . . Charlotte,’ I reply.

Air travel is such a strange experience. It’s such an intimate thing, to travel alongside a stranger for so many hours, to eat together, take in a film, snooze side by side. In economy I think that it’s so intimate, that like neighbours on the same landing, most of us consider that it’s better not to take the risk of ever getting to know them. In business class, there’s just enough room – as elbows don’t actually touch – to take that chance.

He is, he tells me, South African, but left when he was twenty. ‘I could never stand apartheid,’ he says, ‘which is why I left. Ironically, my parents, most would say, deservedly, lost pretty much everything when apartheid ended, so there’s not much point going back. Of course, I visit them, but . . .’