Perfect Blend: A Novel (17 page)

“Which would I choose?” She felt sick. Her heart was racing. The game was up. She was about to make a complete idiot of herself. This date was over before it had even begun. “I guess it has to be a toss-up between the—”

“I know what you’re going to say: the Guggenheim and Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.”

“What can I say? You took the words out of my mouth.” Oh, thank you, God. Thank you. I will never, ever doubt your existence again.

“You know, it’s funny you being a fan of architecture because I’m actually a bit of a coffee nerd.”

“Really. You’d get on brilliantly with my boss, Brian, then.”

“My favorite comes from a company called Hacienda La Evita.”

Amy frowned. “Evita? Don’t you mean Esmeralda? It’s Hacienda La Esmeralda. Brian ordered some recently. Goes for hundreds of pounds a pound. It’s right up there with Crema Crema Crema.”

“Of course it’s Esmeralda. My mistake. Anyway, I just ordered some from Guatemala.”

“But Hacienda La Esmeralda comes from Panama.”

“Does it? You sure? I could have sworn …”

Her face formed a broad grin. “Okay, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m guessing here, but you don’t know very much about coffee, do you?”

“Not as such.” He couldn’t have looked more embarrassed. “The truth is, I was trying to impress you. You must think I’m a complete twit.”

She was fighting to keep a straight face. “No, I don’t. Not at all. I just think that you didn’t work quite so hard at your predate prep as I did.”

He burst out laughing. “I don’t believe it. You mean you mugged up on architecture?”

“I know as much about architecture as I do about molecular physics. In other words, next to nothing. I spent the last few days boning up on it just so’s you wouldn’t think I was an idiot.”

“Well, it worked. You sounded like you really knew your stuff.”

“Why, thank you,” she said, smiling.

“So does all this date prep make us two insecure individuals who get overly anxious before a date?”

“No, it makes us nice, considerate people who think it’s important to be able to engage in intelligent conversation about the other person’s work and interests.” She paused. “Okay,
and
it makes us insecure and overly anxious.”

“I’m sorry that my effort was so paltry.”

“Hey, c’mon,” she said, patting the back of his hand. “The thought was there.”

“Do you want to know something?” he said.

“What?”

“I’m really not that keen on coffee.”

“No? Me, too.”

“I always think the aroma promises more than it delivers.”

“I couldn’t agree more. I’m forever telling Brian that. It really winds him up.”

“What I really love,” he said, “is hot chocolate.”

“Me, too!”

“But it has to be the really good stuff.”

“Absolutely.”

“At least seventy-five percent cocoa solids.”

“At least.”

“With whipped cream and minimarshmallows. On a really freezing day, you can’t beat it.”

“But don’t you find it’s sometimes difficult to find minimarshmallows? The supermarkets only ever have the big ones.”

“Ah,” he said. “Have you tried aquarterof.com? They have all that kind of stuff.”

“No. I’ll take a look. Thanks for the tip. God, we sound like a pair of old codgers. We’ll be onto supermarket coupons next.”

They were both laughing now. The tension was broken. They were out of the starter’s gate and off.

They spent the next couple of hours talking nonstop, unaware of people coming and going around them. Sam got up a couple of times to fetch them more drinks, but apart from that they were engrossed in each other. She told him about her time in PR, how she was desperate to break into journalism but wasn’t having much luck. “Editors keep telling me it’s not my writing that’s the issue and that my instincts about what makes a good story are right, but I’m often too late with it. By the time I come up with an idea, it’s already been done. And nobody will commission me to write something because I’ve got no track record. It’s so catch-22.”

Sam nodded. He said he had a couple of friends who freelanced for the nationals. “Took them ages to break in. But they did it in the end. You just have to be patient and persistent and develop a very thick skin.”

She laughed. “Believe me, I’m developing the rear of a rhinoceros.” He asked her if there was anything she was working on right now, and she told him about Mrs. B supplying “illegal” school lunches. His eyes widened. “That’s a brilliant story.” Like Brian and Bel, he said he could see TV picking it up. “This could really make your name.”

“Maybe—if I can persuade Mrs. B to give me a quote longer than three words.”

Eventually the conversation returned to architecture. Sam told her how his fascination with buildings had started when he was eight or nine. “I got a copy of the
Guinness Book of World Records
, and I became obsessed with skyscrapers. For the next couple of years I collected pictures of the world’s tallest buildings: the Sears Tower, the World Trade Center, 40 Wall Street. Then there were the chimneys and towers: the Eiffel Tower, Battersea Power Station. I had photographs all around my room. All I wanted to do was design the tallest building in the world. I hardly ever stopped drawing. I would fall asleep at night over my sketch pad.”

She said he sounded like Charlie.

“He’s good at art?”

“Yes. He seems to have a real gift, but I’ve got no idea where he got it from. I have a bit of a flair for color and interior design, but I can’t draw or paint to save my life. And as far as I know, his father had no artistic talent.”

“As far as you know?”

She paused. She hadn’t intended to discuss how Charlie came into the world, at least not on their first date. Sam picked up on her hesitation.

“I’m sorry. I was prying. This really is none of my business.”

She ran her finger over the rim of her wineglass. “Charlie was conceived by an anonymous donor. The only information I received was a list of his physical attributes, interests, and aptitudes.”

“Please, you don’t have to say any more.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

She explained about her mother’s early menopause and how she was frightened of waiting too long to get pregnant. “I could have frozen my eggs, I suppose, but I was frightened of something going wrong. You know, the freezer breaking down …”

“And your eggs coddling.”

She laughed. “I was going to say ‘frying,’ but ‘coddling’ is better.”

She was surprised that she was revealing so much, so soon. Sam was a very good listener.

He said he couldn’t imagine how she’d coped on her own. “My sister’s twins screamed solidly for the first three months. Sometimes, when my brother-in-law was away, I’d go around there to help out with the feeding and burping. I’d stay a few hours, and afterward I was totally knackered. It was such a relief to walk out of the door and into the pub.” He paused. “Tom and Jo are four now. They’re great little chaps … heavily into gorillas.”

“Huh. With Charlie it’s snakes.”

“So, have you gotten him one?”

“What? No. You must be joking. I hate snakes.”

“That’s a shame. Little corn snakes make great pets, and they’re harmless. I used to have one when I was a kid. We used to feed it mice. You buy them frozen. It used to be my job to thaw them out in hot water.”

“Oh, God,” she said, screwing up her face in disgust. “If I needed another reason not to let my child have a snake, then that is it.”

He was chuckling. “Spoilsport.”

She found herself asking him about his parents. It turned out that Sam’s father had walked out on his mother, leaving her with three children under eight. “She raised us all on her own. He never sent her a penny.” He paused. “So are your parents together?”

“They were until a few months ago. Now they’re separated and talking about divorce. It’s strange. You have this picture of them growing old together, and suddenly your mum’s dating a shaman and your dad’s hooked up with an erotic poetess and about to get a penis extension.” She blinked. She couldn’t believe she had just made the penis extension remark. It was the wine. It had gone to her head and caused her to lose all brain-to-mouth coordination.

While her face burned with embarrassment, Sam seemed perfectly comfortable with the subject of penis extensions. “I’ve often wondered,” he said. “Do you think that if you agree to have a penis extension, all those spam e-mails stop?”

Feeling at ease again, she laughed. “Maybe I’ll buy one and find out.”

Their talk turned to midlife crises. They both agreed that whereas the midlife crisis was now recognized along with the quarter-life crisis, during which twenty-five-year-olds panicked about their lack of professional and personal achievement, nobody had acknowledged the three-tenths life crisis that affected the over-thirties. “It’s the time when you first start to realize you’re growing old,” he said. “One day you hear your favorite tune … in a lift … You start keeping more food than booze in the fridge.”

“You start watching the weather forecast. You refuse to have sex in single beds. You can’t drink cheap wine anymore.”

“But in case you’re forced to drink it, you carry antacids in your pocket.” He paused. “Speaking of antacids, how do you fancy getting something to eat?”

She giggled at his segue and said she would love to.

They walked along the riverbank. It was dark now. The reproduction Victorian street lamps—designed to give foreign tourists a fake taste of Ye Olde England—had just come on, giving off a mellow yellow light. Couples were strolling arm in arm, chatting, stopping for a kiss, disappearing into restaurants and bars. A fancy white motor cruiser went by, people laughing and drinking up on deck. A pub had a blackboard sign outside offering Pimm’s at half price until eight o’clock. They’d missed that. It was after nine. A mother and father duck led a line of fluffy ducklings up onto the bank and stood quacking for a bit before turning around and waddling back into the water.

All the restaurants along the river were full. In the end they wandered onto the High Street and found an Italian place that Amy had been to before and knew was good.

They ate veal escalopes and sautéed potatoes cooked in garlic and rosemary and talked about movies. He loved the Coen brothers.
Fargo
was one of his top films ever.

“Mine, too. Didn’t you just love the wood-chipper scene? It was gross but utterly hysterical.”

He said she was the only woman he had ever met who had loved that scene. She could tell he was impressed. “Okay,” she said, “so where do you stand on Woody Allen?”

“Old stuff great. Gone off in the last ten years or so.”

“I agree. Wow, we are really bonding!” She paused. “Okay, final test. The Harry Potter movies.”

“So-so scripts. British kids can’t act—”

“—is the correct answer. I think we are done.”

This man was funny, intelligent, and sexy, did date prep, and even shared her taste in movies. Surely he was too good to be true.

As he drove her home, she decided there had to be a catch … like he had a wife.

“So, Sam, you ever been married?” The wine she’d had earlier was still affecting her and making her direct, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Nah. I came close a couple of years ago, but in the end it didn’t work out. She took a job in Australia.”

“And you don’t have any secret vices?” she persisted.

He shrugged. “Not really … Okay, actually there is one.”

Aha.

“What?”

“Well, I’m kinda into …”

Bondage? Threesomes? S&M? Cocaine? Which was it?

“Yes?”

“Cake.”

“Cake? I’ve not come across that. What do you do? Inject it? Snort it?”

He was laughing. “None of the above. I’m talking about cake as in cake. You eat it. Victoria sponge is my favorite, closely followed by coffee and walnut. I’m addicted.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. I wasn’t with you.”

“So why all the questions?”

“No reason. Just curious, that’s all.”

Because this was their first date and she didn’t want things to get too heavy, she couldn’t tell him what was on her mind—that as a single mother, forming lasting relationships hadn’t been easy and she didn’t want to fall for him only to have him let her down.

By then they had turned onto her street. He pulled up outside her flat and turned off the engine.

“I really have had a great time tonight,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“So, would you like to do this again?”

“Yes, please. Very much.”

“Fantastic. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He leaned toward her. Finally, his lips met hers—a sweet, tender first kiss.

Chapter 8

“
SO HE DIDN’T
assume an automatic right to tongue action?” Bel said, phoning on Monday morning for a full report on Amy’s date. She was on her way to the studio to record her pilot warnings. Amy was on the bus, heading to work.

“Nope.”

“That is so refreshing. Even on a first date most men make a beeline for your tonsils. Don’t you just hate that?”

Amy agreed that she did. Thinking back, it was what Duncan had done.

“So when are you seeing him next?”

“Saturday. We’re going to the Tate Modern and out to lunch afterward.”

“If you’re going to the Tate, make sure you catch the Didier Le Boeuf exhibition. There was a huge piece about it in yesterday’s
Sunday Times
. Supposed to be amazing.”

Amy had never heard of Didier Le Boeuf. Bel explained that he was famous for his installations. “Some of them are massive. The one everybody’s raving about is a chain-link fence. And it’s possible you might even bump into him. According to the piece in the
Sunday Times
, the man has an ego the size of the planet and likes to hang around the gallery, hoping to catch snippets of praise. He even gives impromptu lectures, apparently.”

Amy thought that neither Didier Le Boeuf nor his installation sounded hugely appealing, but she made a mental note anyway.

The bus pulled in at Amy’s stop. She stood up, moved along the gangway, and waited for the hiss of the automatic doors.

“So you really like this Sam?”

“Definitely. He’s intelligent, funny, incredibly sexy. He’s even into kids. He used to help his sister with her baby twins. I just worry that he’s too good to be true.”

“Hey, come on—has it occurred to you that maybe he isn’t and that this is your time?”

Amy shrugged. “You think?”

“Absolutely. Stop trying to find fault. Enjoy it.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“Okay, I have news: Ulf stayed over—Saturday
and
Sunday.”

“No.”

“Yep. He only just this minute left.”

“So … how was it?”

“Nice.”

“Nice?”

“Yeah. It was different. Enlightening, educative—a bit like the Norse saga evening.”

“You mean boring.”

“No. I mean it was very Scandinavian.”

Amy giggled. “You mean lots of hot tub action?”

“I don’t have a hot tub.”

“Ah, there is that. What, then?”

“Well, we were on the couch making out, and suddenly he asks me how I’d feel about us becoming more intimate. I said I’d like that, and he says: ‘Can I have permission to touch your breast?’”

“Wow, that’s spontaneous.”

“Yeah, so anyway we carry on, but he insists on asking permission before he touches a new bit of me. I keep telling him I’m his adventure playground and he can touch any bit he wants, but he seems to have a mental block. I’m thinking it’s maybe some PC thing they have in Sweden. But on the upside he is such a sweetie. He’s kind and respectful. So different from Jurassic Mark. He needs to loosen up a bit, but I know we’ll get there.”

“’Course you will,” Amy said, her tone cheery and reassuring. She wouldn’t have upset her friend for the world, but she suspected that after the way Jurassic Mark had treated her, Ulf’s kindness and gentleness were little more than a novelty. Like all novelties, it would wear off.

Amy rang off as soon as she reached the café. Brian was standing behind the counter, head down, cleaning the coffee machine. He didn’t hear her come in.

“Hi, Bri. Wassup? You seem miles away.” It was only then, as he looked up, that she noticed. “Omigod. I am loving the hair.” It was very short but not cropped. His sideburns had been trimmed and left long. “Really suits you. Puts years on you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No. I mean in a good way. You always look so young. This makes you look more mature.”

He shrugged.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?”

“It’s not the hair,” he said. “I love the hair.”

“What, then?”

By then Zelma had emerged from the kitchen with a bacon sandwich. “A treat for Mr. Grumpy here. Not that he deserves it.”

Brian put down his cleaning cloth. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be in a mood. It’s just that nothing in my life seems to be working out right now, and it’s really getting me down.”

“I’m guessing this has something to do with your date with Rebecca,” Amy said.

Brian took a huge bite of sandwich and started chewing. “She’s shaving herself.”

“I’m not with you.”

More chewing. “She’s shaving herself for marriage.”

What was this? Some trendy prenuptial ritual she hadn’t caught up with?

“I think what he’s trying to say,” Zelma piped up, “is that she’s
saving
herself.”

“That’s what I shed.”

“You mean she’s into the whole abstinence thing?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said, swallowing. “I’m crazy about this girl. We met up again on Sunday after I got the haircut. She seemed to be really into it and kept saying how hot I looked. Anyway, we had lunch out, and afterward we went back to her place. She put on some music. I put my arm around her. It was all starting to get smoochy and cozy, and then she came out with it.”

“So she’s a virgin?”

“No, and that’s the bit that really pisses me off. She’s been in several relationships. She describes herself as a ‘born-again virgin.’”

“How does that work, then?” Zelma said.

Brian took another bite of sandwich. “She’s had an operation.”

“What?” Amy said. “To sew it back?”

“Yep.”

Zelma flinched. “Oy.”

“You ought to see her Facebook page. She goes into all the gory details.”

“So what is she?” Amy asked, “Some kind of religious nut?”

Brian shook his head. “No, she just wants to experience—let me get this right—‘the joy of being deflowered by the love of my life on my wedding night.’ I asked her where this left us, and she said for her abstinence was the only choice.”

“Look, you’ve only just met,” Amy said. “Maybe she’ll change her mind after a few weeks.”

“I don’t think so. She takes this thing very seriously. I wouldn’t mind waiting a few weeks, but I’m mad about her.”

“You know, in my day,” Zelma piped up, “we waited.”

“No, you didn’t,” Brian said. “You just pretended to. There were thousands of shotgun weddings.”

“Well, my Sidney, God rest his soul, never laid a finger on me until our wedding night. I remember it like it was yesterday. Three wonderful performances and a rehearsal.”

Amy frowned a question. “A rehearsal?”

“You know,” Zelma said, lowering her voice. “Nobody comes.” She let out a cackle.

“Zelma!” Amy was snorting with laughter. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

“You think my generation never told a risqué joke? You should have lived through the war like I did and heard some of the dirty stories they told … and I was only a child.”

“My question is this,” Brian said, shoving the last of the sandwich into his mouth. “Would it be morally acceptable to stay in the relationship and have sex with other women?”

“You cannot be serious,” Amy said.

“I’m perfectly serious.”

“You’re going to cheat on her from the get-go?”

Zelma was looking heavenward, open-palmed.

“Yes. I don’t see an alternative. I cannot survive without sex.”

“Then you have to be honest and tell her that,” Amy said.

“On the other hand,” Zelma said, “you could make do with solo sex. At least you’re doing it with somebody you like and there’s no performance anxiety. And you don’t have to pay for dinner first.”

Amy and Brian exchanged wide-eyed looks. Both of them were struggling not to laugh. This was a side of Zelma they had never seen before.

Zelma picked up on this. “Hey, I lived through the sixties. I saw
Hair—
”

“Your Sidney took you to see
Hair?”
Amy said.

“Good God, no. He would have been scandalized. I went with a couple of girlfriends. Sidney never knew.” She turned to Brian. “So you’re really going to cheat on this poor girl?”

Brian shrugged and said that maybe he would give it a few weeks. Meanwhile, he would brush up on his seduction techniques.

“Ah, now you’re talking,” Zelma said, a faraway look in her eyes. “Sidney used to buy me a half pound of chocolate liqueurs every Saturday night, regular as clockwork—never missed. Later on, he’d go upstairs for his bath. We could only afford to bathe once a week because of the cost of the electric. Afterward, he’d Brylcreem his hair and I’d be waiting for him in my see-through baby-doll nightie and dripping in Youth Dew. I kept that nightie for years. He loved seeing me in it. Of course, eventually he got his cataracts and it didn’t quite have the same effect.” With that she picked up Brian’s empty plate and disappeared into the kitchen.

“So how are you going to woo Rebecca? Do you remember that dreadful line you used when we were students and you went out on the make?”

Brian grinned. “You may mock, but I had many successes with that line.”

“Bri, there is no way any woman is going to fall for ‘I’m a meteorologist, and I’d like to study your warm front. Let’s go to an isobar and have a drink.’”

“But they did. Back then I could laugh women into bed.”

“Well, maybe that’s what you have to do now.”

“You think? Perhaps I could wow her with my
Seinfeld
impressions. There’s that great one I do of George: ‘I’m a great quitter. It’s one of the few things I do well. I come from a long line of quitters.’”

Amy was forced to admit that the voice, the delivery, the stance were perfect. “‘My father was a quitter. My grandfather was a quitter … I was raised to give up.’ I could work on that.”

Just then there was a knock at the door. It was the deliveryman with that day’s bread and pastries. Brian went to the door still reciting lines from
Seinfeld:
“‘Hello, Newman … You’re an anti-dentite … These pretzels are making me thirsty.’”

Amy was smiling and shaking her head. “Yeah, that’ll get her straight into bed,” she murmured.

MRS. B FILLED
two large schooners with sweet sherry and insisted that Amy call her Dymphna. In her tiny council flat, surrounded by her china saints and framed prints of the Holy Father suffering unspeakable agonies on the cross, she verged on chatty.

“Now, then, Amy, will you be having some cheese and onion Hula Hoops? Or I’ve got bacon flavor if you’d prefer. Oh, yes.” She held out a plastic bowl that was meant to look like cut glass. It was decorated with an image of the Holy Virgin cradling the bloodied corpse of her deceased son.

Amy put down her notepad and pen and helped herself to some Hula Hoops. “No, cheese and onion is fine,” she said. “Actually, they’re my favorite.”

“Mine, too.” Mrs. B was aglow, apparently delighted that the two of them shared a taste for cheese-and-onion-flavor Hula Hoops. “I find the bacon repeats on me, don’t you?”

“Er … not really … So, Mrs. B …”

“Dymphna—please.”

“Sorry. Dymphna … Don’t you think it’s irresponsible to be buying kids pizza and KFC at lunchtime, when the country is facing a huge obesity problem and the government’s spending vast amounts providing healthy school meals and promoting healthy eating programs?”

“The kids like JFK.”

“You mean KFC.”

“What did I say?”

“JFK.”

Mrs. B looked blank.

“JFK was the American president,” Amy said. “John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

“Would that be right? And here’s me thinking that the K stood for ‘Kentucky.’ So it’s Kennedy Fried Chicken, then?”

Amy scratched her head, not knowing quite how to proceed.

“You see,” Mrs. B went on, apparently in no need of an answer to her question, “the kids like the junk food. It’s got some taste. You know, a bit of a kick.” She took a small, ladylike sip of sherry.

Amy made the point that the so-called taste was produced by high levels of fat, sugar, and chemicals.

“But kids are growing. They need energy. Fat and sugar give them that. Oh, yes. When I was a child, growing up in Dublin after the war, all we had was boiled vegetables. There was barely a scrap of flesh on our bones. And our spirits were crushed. We were dead behind the eyes. Walking corpses we were.”

“But these kids aren’t starving. Quite the opposite. They have plenty of choice. They choose to binge on food that makes them fat. We live in a country where nearly forty percent of the population is obese, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“You say obese. I say well covered. There’s no shame in a person having some meat on his bones.”

Amy noticed that Mrs. B’s eyes were filling with tears. “What is it, Dymphna?”

She took another sip of sherry. “You want to know?” she said, her tone verging on tart. “Right, I’ll tell you. I clean half a dozen houses locally. None of the women I work for eats a square meal. Turn them sideways and they disappear, but they all think they’re fat.”

Amy was forced to note the point that Dymphna was extremely slim. Did she diet?

“Heaven help us, no. I got the TB when I was a child. I never could put weight on after that … Look, it doesn’t bother me what these rich women do to themselves, but I can’t abide it when they starve their little ones … particularly the girls. Babies they are …”