Under My Skin (4 page)

Larry is standing near the jukebox. One eye is black and half closed and there is a golden light on his face. He makes me a club sandwich, just the way I like it, toasted rye bread, fresh tomatoes, potato chips and sour cream on the side. I sit at the counter and eat very slowly and in between cracking eggs he smiles and winks over at me. It takes me an hour to eat
everything and he always laughs about this. Sometimes I think I don’t have enough teeth or else the ones I have are not sharp enough.

‘Baby…’ he says and he is pretending to be sad now. ‘You’re eating all our rent.’ Then he sits down smiling and starts to smoke. When he offers me one I say, ‘No thanks – that’s last month’s gas.’ He goes to the freezer and finds two beers and then he hands one to me.

Larry’s eyes are very dark and he has wild eyebrows and long bristling lashes and he is more than six feet tall – but when I think about Larry I don’t see any of that because there are other things about him that are secret and more important to me.

He has a scar, a thin white line just over his top lip and curling down and around his mouth. Sometimes it stands out like a whiplash on his bright tanned face. A dog bit him as a child and it gave Larry a slightly crooked Cupid’s bow. And when he laughs, only I can see that one of his teeth folds slightly over another, and when he is smiling like that, he is really lovely to me. His hair is dark with a slight curl, the kind of forest you can almost hear grow. He reads something once and he remembers it for ever and he sees things about me – that I can’t even see. He hates people who are mean with their money and he loves Frank Sinatra and he
loves
New York.

When the last couple leaves he turns the sign and Vertigo is steady and finally empty at ten minutes after three. He smiles at my silence and changes the record on the jukebox. Then he leans on one elbow and looks into my face. When he sits down again his leg leans and rests against mine and I feel his life and his warmth moving towards me, the nearness of it, his golden inner glow.

On nights like this he tells me about his family and the
kind of boy he was growing up – and how his mother is a strong-willed and sometimes angry woman; and how his father had a stroke and lost his voice – and all of his hair. Now he uses a little notebook and pen to write everything down. He tells me how they sent him to university and what a disappointment he is to his family because he left a degree in economics to be a short-order cook.

But tonight things are suddenly different – because Larry looks right into my eyes and out of nowhere there are four really awful words.

‘We need to talk.’

Yesterday Matilda asked me who my favourite New Yorkers are and I replied, ‘Woody Allen. Art Garfunkel and Meryl Streep.’ Then she sent me hers – ‘Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Whitman and Benjamin Cardoso.’ The last person is a Supreme Court Judge. Larry told me and now I feel too embarrassed to email her for a week.

Outside it is beginning to rain and inside my whole world is falling apart.

‘The thing is…’ Larry says and then – lucky for me – the telephone begins to ring. He looks at it and so do I and we both know it is probably ‘Mr Friendly’, the debt collector, again. We listen and count the rings and then Larry gets up and bolts the double doors.

He sits down again and says, ‘Listen…’ and this time I interrupt. He looks like a cartoon character in his white chef’s coat, with his black eye and his favourite beanie hat.

‘I got you something,’ and I pass the black eye patch over
the table. He smiles at this. A real Larry smile. And in that second everything seems to change. He takes off his little hat and puts the pirate patch on. Then he leans over and puts one hand on my head and through my hair I can feel the weight and the warmth of his hand. He swallows and sighs and I am thinking, ‘OK, here it comes.’

‘It’s like this…’ he says, and outside three girls begin tapping on the glass door.

‘We’re closed,’ Larry shouts but they are not going away.

So I get up and open the door a crack.

‘Could you go away?’ I ask them. ‘I’m being dumped.’

‘Oh!’ they all reply together and then they say, ‘Sorry!’ and they hurry off down the wet street.

When I come back to the table Larry has lit a candle and turned off the lights.

‘There will never be anyone like you,’ he says, and then in a very soft voice he says, ‘Ever’, under his breath. I feel as though I should say, ‘Thanks’, or something but inside I am packing up all my feelings and thoughts.

And then he says my name and what a little name it is – and what a meaning and it has never felt further from the truth – but he says it again, whispering it now, and his eyes are filling up.

‘Will you marry me, Hope?’

Yesterday I looked up
dyslexia
and wrote it into my notebook.

n. A learning disorder marked by severe difficulty in recognizing and understanding written language, leading to spelling and writing problems. It is not caused by low intelligence or brain damage.

When Doreen read the part about brain damage, she looked at me and asked, ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

This morning Larry makes Eggs Benedict with cinnamon toast and blueberry pancakes. For lunch he cooks fresh scallops and roast figs with garlic cream and Parma ham. For dinner he feeds me pink fillet steak with black pepper and cream. We drink wine, three bottles, and make each other laugh. He closes early and tells everyone he meets, ‘From now on I’m cooking for my wife.’

Mr Costello stands with his back to the fireplace. There are four candles on the piano and his wife stretches her fingers a little so she is ready to play. They have moved the yellow couch back and closed the curtains and the dark wooden blinds. For three days the rain has fallen and now on a wet Tuesday night everyone stands in a loose circle around the bride and groom. The air smells of warm apple pie and on a table near the window there are eight bottles of Heineken and a jug of mulled wine. Doreen is of course my bridesmaid. She is wearing a white tennis skirt and her nice black suede pumps. Larry has a black top hat he found at Oxfam and the pirate’s eye patch. I am wearing my leopard print coat and my favourite red Converse runners. And Mrs Costello is standing by and smiling, ready to turn the music up.

Juna arrives and gives me away. This takes two steps on their carpet – one foot landing on a big red rose and the second on some giant green leaves. We did not want a church wedding because me and Larry don’t believe in God or any of that stuff. One day I went into Vertigo and we’ve been together ever
since. In our world everything happens by accident – and so we asked Mr Costello if he would read out the vows and if we could get married in their flat downstairs.

‘Do you, Larry, take Hope to be your lawfully wedded wife?’ asks Mr Costello.

‘I do,’ Larry says and he has taken off his hat.

‘Do you, Hope, take Larry to be your lawfully wedded husband?’

‘I do,’ I reply and then our rings are exchanged. These came from a pawnbroker in Dublin. Mine fits on my index finger and Larry has to wear his on his thumb.

‘You may kiss the bride,’ Mr Costello says and then he looks at us over his glasses.

‘Kids, a promise is a promise,’ he says.

Email to Hope Swann
From Matilda Vaughan
Hope,

I am so happy for you. I can’t imagine anything more romantic than marrying your first love. Tell me everything… are there any photos? What is the ring like? I would love to see you in your dress and veil.

(By the way… don’t tell anyone… but I think a certain man in my life… is going to pop the question too. He hasn’t said anything yet – but I feel so sure… when you meet the right guy, Hope… you just know.

Much love,

M x.

Jonathan Kirk stands on the cream marble stairs and when he smiles he looks almost as young as me. There is a red carpet in the reception with blue lights on either side. He beckons,
he waves and he guides me in. The second interview goes like this. It is just myself and Jonathan and we are sitting on two red couches near his desk. The quote on his wall says, ‘If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.’

When he speaks he puts one foot over his knee and talks for an hour. He tells me that great brands need great ads, that great ads come from great clients, that we are all here because we want to make great ads, that there is no overtime system but we all stay until the work is done and how does that sound?

‘Great’ is the only possible response.

‘If you work for me,’ he says, ‘I expect you to come up with solutions, don’t bring me your problems, and if there is a problem with a client – I would rather you told me before the client does.’

This seems like a contradiction to me but my response is to swallow quietly and breathe.

‘Why do you want to work in advertising?’ he asks and then, ‘Let me tell you why I work in advertising. Last night I was watching TV and three of the ads in the break were ours. Now I don’t know about you… but I get
aroused
by that.

‘Is there anything you would like to say?’ And now he is leaning forward and being friendly and kind.

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘If I was having a dinner party I would ask Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Whitman and Benjamin Cardoso.’