The Numbers Game (9 page)

“Listen
you’re a smart guy, surely you can tell the difference between a bad seed and a
good seed.”

“No,
they’re all the same to me!”

            One look
at Markie and Rick could see this was a desperate situation. So he laid down
the law as simply, concisely and best as he could. What is listed below is
nothing less than the truth.

Bad girls (these are
the type you want):

Think Jersey Shore and
girls about as attractive. They drink beer and shots. Swear out loud. Always
leaning forward and flicking their hair. Forgetting to cross their legs or
sometimes leaving them a bit open. They wear g-strings or nothing at all and
frequently go without a bra. Their midriffs are often bared and showing off
bellybutton rings or a back tattoo. .They smoke heaps and when they flirt its
over-the-top and presumptuous. Conversation is either frivolous (what’s
happening on the latest reality show) or nonexistent. No good woman in their
right mind would leave their partner alone with this sort for a minute, no
matter how trustworthy their boy is.

Good girls (save these
for when you want to get married)

Think Prom Party
Princess. They are always in a group of similarly demure-looking friends. Quiet
spoken and shy, she drinks only wine (one per hour) or bottled water. Their
clothes are flattering but they almost never ever show off ALL their curves.
Lots of whispering to her friends, who then try and suss you out. They have
great smiles and curious eyes that skirt over your way but which they never do
anything about. They never wear loud colors or provocative outfits, no
outrageous dancing on bar tops and if you can get them to speak, it is usually
about how they want to change the world.

“Does that
make sense?” Rick asked.

“Sort of,”
Markie frowned, “Though honest to good, Serena falls into neither of those two
categories.”

“Okay so
it’s a bit generalized, so what. The point I’m trying to make is that the
female species in general can be looked at as black and white.”

“You did a
good job.”

“Thanks
but now it’s your turn. Tomorrow night, we’ll go out and see how well you can
differentiate the good from the bad.”

“You’re
giving me a test?”

            “I
wouldn’t want to throw you out like raw meat in the jungle.”

            “What’s my
reward if I do well?”

            Rick
smiled. “I think mate, you might get that party in your pants you’re looking
for.”

            “And if I
fail miserably?”

            Markie had
to consider all the possibilities. Rick looked at him in dismay.

            “Trust me,
Markie you don’t want to go there. The nice girls eat up nice boys like you
alive. Worse yet…” Rick paused for the full effect. “Nice girls don’t know how
to throw up. They don’t know and won’t want to ever, ever let you go.”

            Markie got
the picture. In this instance, good girls were the bad ones and bad ones were
first-rate. He’d have to get use to this. Beware the evil angels, whose
sweetness was undoubtedly a poison. Hello queen bitches, whose mouths
undeniably needed to be washed out with soap but at least they knew how to go
down with it.

Reluctantly Markie
prepared himself for a night on the town.

            Deep down
all he really wanted to do was stay home and watch the clash between Manchester
and Arsenal on cable. Now that was going to be a game: full capacity crowd and
the usual rough English antics. But no, Rick insisted his friend get off his
shoddy ass and go out on a hunt instead, on a Tuesday night, of all things.

            “You’re
not wearing that?” Rick asked, as he filtered through the front door.  His
voice sounded shocked and appalled all at once, as if Markie’s mother had
infiltrated his body. 

            “What’s
wrong with it?”  Markie looked down at his outfit and what he saw was fine:
black shirt and beige colored cords. Okay so he was hardly adventurous in his
style but since when has that been a crime?

            “Did
Serena take off with the iron?”

            “No it’s
in the laundry.”

            “Oh,” Rick
tried to hide his smirk. “Isn’t it about time you learnt how to use one?”

            Damn. Of
course, you don’t just throw something out of the washing machine into the
cupboard! Markie had forgotten there was something in between.

            “No, but
it’s really time I got myself that cleaner.”

            Or Serena
back. She would never have let Markie leave the house looking like a mess.
Since her departure, the house looked as if a hurricane has charged through it.
Once tossed, clothes never make their way back up off the floor. Dishes lay
squished in the dishwasher, unpacked since they finished the last cycle or two.
He could never remember if they were dirty or clean so he sent them through
another wash, just to be sure. In the living area, it was a little scarier.
Even Markie treated the place as if it was a minefield, hop-scotching and
tiptoeing across the paper, glass, and plastic debris. He wasn’t used to living
in filth; it’s just that without Serena there to press the point of cleanliness
there didn’t seem to be any point.

            “I really
should stay in and clean this mess.”

            “Bullshit,”
Rick said. “Women love seeing this crap. It brings out their nurturing, ‘please
let me help you’ side. The moment you clean it up you’ll be labeled as either a
fag or neurotic Jerry Seinfeld clone.”

            Damn
Markie couldn’t have that. He needed to make sure he sent out the right
message. For the next three months, whether he liked it or not, he would forget
about loving Serena and concentrate on living the life of a single boy.
I am
single, I am single
, he affirmed to himself all the way to the club. It
wasn’t working.

            The place that
Rick took him to wasn’t a typical weekend dance club but rather an ordinary
sort open mid-week. Markie preferred to call it a pub or better still a
drinking hole. Macy’s, as it was so named, looked like the sort of place
Liverpool’s supporters back in England would be rushing to celebrate after the
winning of a game. It was dark and seedy, with a thick mist of smoke
intermittently being cut by a spinning fan.

            “Mmm, I
can’t wait to see what they have in store for us here,” Markie said, as they
pushed their way through saloon doors. For some reason, he did not think the
sort of woman he was after resided here.

            “That’s
where you’re wrong,” Rick replied. “Going out mid-week and to places like this
are exactly what your social calendar should be filled with.”

            “You have
two minutes to explain,” Markie said, taking in the surroundings: the velour
couches in purple and orange; the cheesy bartenders with missing teeth and
cigarettes tucked behind their ears, the men with big beer bellies. In less
than five seconds, he saw all he needed to see and had little reason to stay.

            “It’s like
this,” Rick said, “you have girls that save their play for Saturdays night and
you have those who train hard every night. Which of the two is more likely to
jump your gun?”

            Such was
Rick’s rationale.

            “I’m not
sure. Could it be the same one but only uglier?”

            Like that
chubby thing balancing her butt on the bar stool for example, I’m sure she’d go
for it, or the giraffe with a gorilla head smoking by the poker machines.
Markie glanced around and saw a half dozen of these mutations spread across the
room.

            “You mean
to say you wouldn’t give them a go if they wanted to?”

            Markie
nearly fainted. Was Rick for real? He couldn’t possibly be speaking about these
aliens...He couldn’t be.

            “Hell no!
I wouldn’t sleep with just anything.”

            “Really?”
Now it was Rick’s turn to be surprised. In the world according to Rick, it
didn’t matter what shape or form the female came in as long as it wasn’t
diseased or attached. “You’d say no a freebie?”

            “I
wouldn’t exactly call it a freebie.”

            To Markie,
nothing came for free. Even when you thought you were getting a great deal, you
ended up paying for it in other ways: whether it was in favors, obligations,
guilt or as was in the latter case, nightmares and regret. Markie had his
standards and they weren’t something he was willing to stoop below.

            “I think
I’ll stick to the good-looking ones mate,” he said, with a slap to his friend’s
back.

            But you
never know, give him five hours in this murky place, a caseload of beer and
maybe, just maybe Markie might score a complementary pair of beer goggles. No
he doubted it; even if he was delirious, no amount of drugs and intoxication
could make his manhood go up with a freak.

            Markie
took a seat at the bar and ordered two beers.

            “Friend, I
hate to tell you but I don’t think either of us are gonna get lucky here
tonight.”

            “Speak for
yourself,” Rick huffed. He looked around the half-empty pub to see whether
there was any talent he had previously disregarded. Then he looked at his watch
again; ten o’clock he was probably thinking, still enough time for an
absolutely horny stunner to walk in through that door. But to save you the sad
story, she never did come.

            When it
came time to pack up their stuff, Markie asked himself: since when had they,
owners of a prestigious advertising agency, become such bloodthirsty
desperados? Something had to change and quickly at that.

The first thing Serena
decided when she got home from work was that the spying would have to end.

            No more
behaving like a celebrity stalker, sleeping in cars, hunting down ex-men who
were now more like L-men (L standing for loser that is). Continuing to do so
would make her a loser too and she didn’t feel like joining the club just yet.
Unfortunately in the space of a week, Serena had slipped from feeling terribly
hopeful to terribly disillusioned - all because her chunky list of twelve had
disintegrated into eight. No point in counting Sean as an option, given he was
gay and a part-time dickhead.

            If Markie
were to see her now, sitting in Tabitha’s African jungle nightmare in her
jammies eating Pizza Shapes dipped in tofu crap, Serena would die of
embarrassment. Where was her class, her undisputed sophistication? Back at the
ranch, Markie was probably riding horses while Serena was spending evenings
playing Trivial Pursuit and watching Twin Peaks reruns. Not that there was
anything wrong with that…

            “I thought
you said being single was cool,” Serena complained that night as she and Tabitha
were giving themselves pedi and manicures. “But this is no different from being
back at home. Except now my partner is a girl.”

            “Welcome
to the real world,” Tabitha tooted. “Soon we’ll be squabbling like a married
couple and avoiding each other at home.”

            Serena
thought that was impossible. One simply could not ignore Tabitha no matter how
hard they tried. Even when out of sight, one could hear her vocal cords
magnified in the shower or chatting away on the phone at the most unseemly
hours of the night. Serena herself couldn’t remember the last time she had
picked up the phone at eleven o’clock and called anyone to just say hey, hello.
She and Markie had a habit of pulling the plug out every night at nine. 

            “I’m
afraid this stuff is normal, most of San Franciscans go into hibernation
mid-week,” Tabitha continued. “At least we have my list though, if we’re
desperate.”

            The list
she was speaking of referred to the Wicked Adventure List that stood pinned to
the refrigerator door with a naked well-endowed man magnet. Serena was there
the day Tabitha had started it and pure boredom was the motivation: Tabitha had
had enough of watching crap TV while eating takeout and decided then and there,
there HAD to be more to life. She promptly purchased the latest edition of the
Lonely Planet San Francisco guide and also began clipping out the entertainment
section of newspapers in her spare time.

            Among the
first things added to the list were currently available pottery classes, trivia
nights, life drawing courses and poetry readings.  Tabitha of course was
initially un-contactable during this stage, which drove Serena into a frenzy
whenever she needed a shoulder to lean on or permission to borrow her furry pink
boots. Back then her best friend was out every single night, doing any one of
the hundred exciting things written on the Wicked Adventure List. Thankfully
since Serena’s arrival, Tabitha had sensed the urgency and given it all up.