Chapter 13
13
DAY THREE
Now
Jesse raced up the stairs, two at time, and into the lights of Oxford Circus. Even though the sun still lit the sky at 7p.m. in the middle of June, the illuminations of the shopfronts, buses and adverts still stood out and made Jesse narrow his eyes to adjust. Nike Town was in front of him, and under a giant swoosh stood Minnie, chewing the inside of her cheek as she looked to all four corners of the circus, almost missing what was right in front of her.
Jesse was two minutes late; he didn’t like being late.
‘So sorry!’ he said with a flustered smile.
‘Ah!’ she said in relief. ‘I’m Minnie, pleased to meet you!’
Jesse didn’t have time for that today, plus he thought they’d moved beyond it, so he nodded and smiled quickly.
‘Sorry, I got stuck on the Central Line and?—’
‘Oh! Don’t worry! I hadn’t noticed.’ Minnie was just pleased by how keen Jesse looked, how miffed he seemed to be late. An anxiety had started to creep in during the latter half of the two-week gap between saying goodbye to him on the tube and meeting him tonight. A fear that he might back out of their agreement; it was so hastily made. But he was here, and he seemed like a very different man to the one she had met in the cafe a month ago. He looked like he gave a shit; that he wasn’t just humouring her any more.
‘The thing I booked started at seven; sorry, it was the best I could find.’
‘“The best you could find”? This sounds intriguing…’
‘Well, I don’t know about that.’
To Minnie’s complete surprise, Jesse looped his arm loosely through hers, so he could guide her across the road, looking both ways hurriedly, south to Regent Street.
‘Where are we heading?’
‘This way…’
He was half-running half-walking as Minnie kept up by running on her tiptoes.
‘Hang on!’ she laughed, as if she couldn’t keep up, when she could. ‘Where are we going?’
He didn’t answer; his focus was on Regent Street and getting across that, as they dodged couples, families and tourists. They dashed past the Apple shop and Burberry, Jesse leading them, Minnie laughing, as he weaved them into a side street tucked between Regent Street and Mayfair. Jesse was so worried about missing the start, he hadn’t even realised their arms were looped together as they stopped outside a bar in a courtyard with ‘The Sinking Heart’ written over the door in a red font. He quickly let go.
‘What are we doing here?’ Minnie asked cheerfully.
‘Cocktail class,’ Jesse declared. ‘To help with your audition.’
Minnie and Jesse pushed through a set of double doors that opened to carpeted stairs going down to a plush-looking bar with illuminated circular ‘windows’, each lit with frosted glass, as if it were the sky and they were on a cruise ship that had been abandoned before its maiden voyage. At first sight the place seemed closed, but at the bar to the left of the bottom of the stairs, Jesse and Minnie saw a small group of people and a man with silver cropped hair wearing a floral waistcoat.
‘Ahh, our last couple!’ the man said as he looked to the foot of the stairs and pressed his palms together.
‘Er, yeah we’re not a coup—’ Jesse went to say.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ Minnie whispered, hitting Jesse on the arm as she skipped down the bottom step. ‘This is great!’
‘One of you must be Jesse?’
‘That’s me,’ Jesse said, raising a hand as he peeled off his jacket and slung it on a nearby banquette. Minnie followed suit and did the same; her leather biker jacket was far too warm for today, and she slung it on top of Jesse’s.
‘And you are…?’ the man said, studying Minnie with enchantment.
‘Minette,’ she said, formally.
‘Minette?’ Jesse said under his breath, giving her a double take.
Minnie responded with a look as if to say, and what of it? A face that sat somewhere between indignation and flirtation.
‘Minette, I must say you have the face of the Absinthe fairy,’ the man said.
Minnie wasn’t sure if the man had paid her a compliment or not, but she said, ‘Thank you,’ all the same.
‘Jesse, Minette, these are your fellow cocktail crafters today. I’m Thomas, your master mixologist here at The Sinking Heart, a ship where your troubles and your misdemeanours will drift to the bottom of the sea.’
‘Sounds good,’ Minnie said, quietly and agreeably.
‘If you look at your colleagues’ lapels you will see I have put each person’s name on a sticky label – don’t worry, it will not ruin your chic clothes – and if it does, white spirit will do the trick!’
One of the women in the group said, ‘I hope not,’ only half in jest.
‘The labels act as a convenient prompt so we all know whom is whom.’
Minnie stifled a laugh. This was going to be fun. Jesse was more apprehensive, worried that the class he’d booked would be disappointing.
Thomas pointed to the other end of the group.
‘We have Greg and Kathleen, James and Maya, Alison and Michelle and here we are, Jesse and Minette, how wonderful. Are we all couples today?’
‘We’re friends,’ Jesse and Minnie said, at the same time as Alison and Michelle said, ‘We’re sisters.’ Alison and Michelle looked nothing like each other, and were used to having to explain they were related. Thomas didn’t seem to care much; he needed to get on before the bar started to get busy, so he began with some mixology basics.
‘There’s a reason classic cocktails have endured,’ he said sagely. ‘No gimmicky names or “twists on twists” in this class…’ Jesse and Minnie looked at each other guiltily after their Beyoncé bastardisations of a fortnight ago.
‘I won’t tell if you don’t tell,’ she leaned in and quietly whispered under her breath.
‘We will be starting with the most requested cocktail in the world. Anyone know what that is?’
Easy , thought Minnie. She’d worked too many events not to.
‘The margarita,’ she said, rising on the balls of her feet and smiling.
‘Well done you,’ Thomas said, like a proud uncle.
As Thomas demonstrated how to make the perfect margarita, he imparted wisdom that went beyond the four key ingredients (tequila reposado, ice, fresh lime juice and triple sec… the salt rim was optional, he conceded). He was obviously very particular about his cocktails and the methodology in making them: alcohol was the most important ingredient and ice second; mixers were something to heed – cocktails should contain alcohol, ice and fresh natural ingredients; flavours should be balanced; and if you didn’t make your cocktail look appealing, there was no point in making one.
‘It absolutely has to look covetable and drinkable. Anyone can throw together some ingredients but the art of making a cocktail is to make the imbiber feel special,’ Thomas declared with a haughty smile, as he raised his demonstration margarita.
Minnie and Jesse watched him take a showy, ceremonial sip and both suddenly felt terribly thirsty.
When the group broke to make their own, Minnie made a mental note to change her audition tack: she had imagined herself as a flamboyant flairer of a cocktail shaker, like Tom Cruise in Cocktail but killer. But the more she observed Thomas, the more she could envisage a cooler, calmer, more understated audition playing out, and she felt grateful to Jesse for this priceless insight.
‘Thank you,’ Minnie said, as she pressed lime halves on a juicer. Thomas had advised them to squeeze half their limes on a juicer, and the other half with their fingers, to really feel the difference in how their nectar was procured. (‘Machinery yields more; but to really taste a cocktail you have to feel the ingredients,’ he advised ostentatiously.) Minnie was looking down at the zingy liquid and pulp gathering in the juicer, almost blushing at the thoughtfulness of Jesse’s playdate activity. ‘This really is kind of you.’ She kept her gaze down lest he see how much she cared.
‘No problem,’ Jesse said, happy he had made her happy. Bubbling at the anticipation of tasting their beautifully crafted drinks.
Once each of the group had blended their own margarita, Thomas asked them to reconvene in their semi-circle in front of his trolley, coupé glasses all poised in varying shades of pastel yellow, pale gold and green.
‘Now, what are we drinking to?’ Thomas asked eagerly, starting at one end of the line.
‘My Christmas present!’ Kathleen said, taking a large slug. ‘Only took us six months to get some childcare,’ she quipped. Greg drank to that.
‘Our wedding anniversary,’ James said, as he looked at Maya and smiled. ‘Seven years,’ they both said in unison as Maya raised her glass back and Thomas moved down the line.
‘The end of my treatment,’ Alison said boldly. ‘I rang the bell on five months of chemo last week.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Thomas said softly. ‘This group! Alison my darling, cheers to you.’ He raised his glass again and took a sip. Jesse and Minnie, standing next to the sisters, smiled, as they saw a tear loaded with heartache and relief run down Michelle’s cheek.
Minnie didn’t know how to follow that, and she didn’t want to have to explain her audition and jinx it. She paused and looked at the ice cracking in her glass before raising it. Jesse noticed her margarita was the same colour as her eyes.
‘To friendship,’ she said, turning briefly to Jesse as her lips met her glass. Her margarita actually tasted good.
Thomas looked to Jesse at the end of the line expectantly, who glanced down at his trainers for a second. A flit of a frown creased his face as he galvanised himself and looked back up.
‘To my dad.’ Jesse raised his glass gently. ‘It would have been his seventy-seventh birthday today and it’s very weird this being the first birthday without him. Without seeing him clock up another year.’ He gave Minnie a quick guarded look, then swallowed hard to gather himself. Minnie could see his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Deep breath.
‘And it’s Father’s Day tomorrow. Another reason I’m drinking to him.’
Jesse raised his glass and looked up to the ceiling before taking a sip. Minnie drank to Jesse’s dad as well.
‘Cheers,’ she said quietly.
Minnie didn’t realise Jesse’s dad had been so old. Her dad was only in his late fifties and he had five children, but they had started young. She felt terribly sorry for Jesse’s loss, and pictured his lonely and quiet childhood with an ageing father. For a brief second Minnie wanted to squeeze Jesse’s hand so badly. So she did.
The second cocktail was a Manhattan, first mixed in 1870 at the Manhattan Club by the mother of Winston Churchill of all people, Thomas said, as if it was a surprise to him too. Jesse’s lacked finesse and Minnie’s was a bit too strong for her liking. The third was a French Martini, during which Thomas invited Minnie to come round to the other side of the bar to make hers. This helped Minnie get into the character of Veronica Valla – and everyone except Jesse wondered why Minette sneered and smouldered a little as she shook her stainless-steel cocktail mixer.
By the fourth – an espresso martini to wake them up – and Thomas’ only nod to modernity (‘Created here in London, by the don Dick Bradsell…’) – Jesse and Minnie were both starting to feel drunk: their ‘cheers’ were more slurring, their eye contact lingering, the energy shifting. Was it the cocktails or a suppressed sizzling feeling inside?
‘Thank you,’ Minnie said, again, to Thomas, and the classmates dispersed into the bar with their espresso martinis and the other Saturday night revellers. Jesse and Minnie pulled up a plush stool each, put their drinks on the high table in front of them, and made themselves comfortable. ‘That was really lovely of you.’ She squeezed his hand, and not for the first time that evening, he felt it like a shot.
‘You’re welcome,’ Jesse said, taking in his drink. He licked the coffee-coloured foam from his top lip. ‘I’m just sorry the bartender wasn’t hot. I was hoping for Tom Holland for you, he was more like Tom Baker.’ Minnie felt his deflection like a punch in the stomach.
Friends. Absolutely not allowed to fall in love.
‘Huh?’ Minnie said, buying time, still trying to get her head around this fact – this handsome friend, who had been holding her eye so beautifully and was going through his own shit and turmoil, had been trying to set her up with a barman.
‘Tom Baker. You’re probably too young. He played Dr Who.’
‘I know who Tom Baker is!’ Minnie scoffed a little zealously, lest she show her disappointment. Of course she knew who Tom Baker was. Doctor Who number four, national treasure, and her eldest sister’s godfather. ‘And I’m not much younger than you, I don’t think…’
‘Thirty-one,’ Jesse said. ‘Almost thirty-two.’
‘Wow you look older!’
‘Thanks,’ Jesse laughed. ‘People always say that. I think it’s just my bad dad hair.’ As he said it he ruffled his temples. He didn’t want to ask Minnie how old she was.
‘Well people always think I look younger than I am, which pisses me off when I’m going for kickass female roles.’ She took an inelegant drink of her espresso martini. ‘Which is why I reallllly want this one. So thank you.’ She put her glass down and pressed her palms together.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Oh!’ Minnie remembered with excitement. ‘I almost forgot in the rush to get here! Summer of Siena has been given the green light.’
‘No way!’
‘Yes! Amazon Prime are showing it in their autumn schedule. All legal issues are resolved.’
‘Congratulations, that’s amazing. And that’ll help boost you with your Paris audition surely, no? Saying you’re the star of a hot new Amazon show…’
‘Maybe.’
‘So what happened with the legal issue?’
‘Oh I don’t really understand, but the publisher realised that their author will do much better for it airing than with legal wranglings holding it back.’
‘I bet.’
‘It’s going to be international – they’re launching on Amazon Prime in the US at the same time as the UK!’
‘That’s brilliant.’ Jesse smiled to himself as he took another sip. He was genuinely happy for her. ‘You’d better start flying then, get over there.’
Minnie curled her nose and tucked her hair behind her heavily studded ear. ‘Buzzkill!’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’m pretty sure the launch party will be in London.’
‘Or it could be LA?’
Minnie gave him a mock scowl. ‘Most of the cast and crew live in London or Europe. I’m sure they’ll do it here.’
Minnie put her little finger in her drink to chase the decorative coffee bean out of the glass so she could eat it.
‘Have you ever been to America?’ she asked, curiously.
Jesse had. A few times.
His parents had taken him to Disneyland when he was a child, tagging it on to a work trip of his dad’s. He was quite an anxious boy and didn’t like the theme park rides, but he did love going to an observatory with the best views of the Los Angeles cityscape, glimmering in the twilight. He’d loved how beautiful the lines of the city looked, lit and transient, as if the grids and the skyscrapers might move at any second.
Jesse went back one summer during university with Hannah; they flew into Los Angeles and took Greyhound buses all the way to New York, stopping at different cities across the Union. Visiting the Grand Canyon in Nevada, the Book Depository in Dallas, Beale Street in Memphis and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington along the way. Hannah hadn’t wanted to see Jesse’s view of Los Angeles from the observatory. She’d told him to stop going on about it. The city felt hot and grimy and she just wanted to get the hell out as soon as they could.
Jesse glossed over that part but told Minnie about Disney, about Los Angeles in the glittering twilight. About how he’d travelled across the US by Greyhound, which could be practical for her except for the whole getting to and from America part. He told her how he had been to New York for work a couple of times.
‘ La La Land ,’ Minnie said smiling.
‘What?’
‘That view from the observatory. Griffith?’
‘That’s right, it was Griffith Park.’
Jesse remembered how beautiful the lines of the observatory building were too.
‘It’s where they dance in La La Land . You know?’
Jesse hadn’t seen the film but his friend had designed the poster. The Deco font. The yellow dress. It looked stunning. He hadn’t realised it was set at the observatory he had been to as a child.
‘Oh, right.’
‘And Rebel Without a Cause was filmed up there,’ Minnie said with authority. ‘It’s classic LA, apparently.’
All Jesse knew was that his parents had driven him up to Griffith Park at sunset and they had stood on the white terrace enjoying the most magical view of his life. He remembered his dad placing a loving palm on his shoulder blade; he recalled being terrified of his father dying, even then. He realised he must have known he wasn’t immortal.
Jesse broke himself from his dark and sad spiral.
‘Well now it feels wrong that I’ve been there and you haven’t,’ he said.
‘No, no! I like hearing about places I won’t fly to. What else did you see there?’
‘We did walk the Walk of Fame…’
Minnie looked down at her drink. She didn’t want to tell Jesse that her mother had a star there, it would ruin the game.
‘I remember looking for Harrison Ford and being really hungry, and then being confused by how excited my parents were to see Angela Lansbury’s star.’
‘What’s not to love about Angela Lansbury?’ Minnie gasped, as if it were obvious.
Jesse laughed. ‘Well I’ll know your name soon! Minette…?’ Jesse lingered on the question mark.
‘Whoa whoa whoa that’s against the rules! You still have the napkin, don’t you?’
Jesse patted an imaginary pocket against his heart.
‘I do.’
‘Good.’
‘Anyway, I’ll take a picture of your star next time I go to LA.’
Minnie wondered if he perhaps he was flirting.
‘Cheers to that!’ she said, as they clinked their almost-empty glasses and their heads drew in together. Jesse looked at her and held her gaze for a fraction longer than either felt comfortable with within the parameters of the game; with the mess and confusion in their hearts.
What are you playing at mate? he thought.
Do not fall for anyone. It’s against the rules. Minnie was a stickler for the rules.
‘Food!’ Minnie said sharply. ‘We need food!’
‘Yes, yes…’ Jesse was flustered. ‘I should have sorted something to soak up the cocktails, especially after last time.’
Minnie batted her hand as if it hadn’t mattered.
‘Shall we go and get some dinner?’ he suggested. ‘There are some nice places over the road.’
Minnie shook up her hair.
‘I have a better idea. My friend’s restaurant in Camden Town. It’s the prettiest food you will ever see on a plate in London.’
Jesse thought that sounded wonderful.