Chapter 11
11
I’d first met Joey Armstrong over twenty years ago, in Manhattan, when I was clinging on to my last few months in Arrested Development.
For most of my twenties, my boyfriend Shane and I had moved from country to country, doing unskilled, seasonal work. Four summers in a row, we ran a bar in Santorini. Another summer was spent on a yacht in the Aegean, me as hostess/cleaner/fixer and Shane somehow passing himself off as the chef and captain.
In the offseason, we taught English in Madrid, did several stints in a canning factory in Munich and spent one grueling winter in the car plant in Turin.
The work was always tough and the money meager. But we were happy and adaptable, absolute marvels at landing into a new job, in a new location and gearing up fast . Our real reward was freedom. Knowing that we could just throw everything we possessed into a rucksack and leave with an hour’s notice was exhilarating.
But around the time I turned twenty-eight, I sensed that the life I loved was about to abandon me. The physical work was exhausting, starting afresh again was no longer fun and being perpetually penniless was starting to scare me.
I was only in the US because Mum and Dad had sprung for my plane fare. They’d lured Helen and me along because, although they wouldn’t admit it, they’d become nervous travelers. Fear of undertipping was top of the list, but what if they hailed a cab going uptown when they wanted to go downtown? Or missed out on the 10 percent tourist discount at Macy’s?
No one turns down a trip to New York but Helen and I were extra pleased because we’d get a good gawk at Rachel’s boyfriend, Luke Costello, whose sexiness was the stuff of legend.
Luke was one of the Real Men, a gang of Irish lads in Manhattan, who appeared to have time-traveled from the early seventies. Their hair was long, their jeans tight and Eddie Van Halen was their god. (Well, one of them. They had a few.)
Before Rachel had slept with Luke, she and Brigit had sneered most cruelly at him and his pals. But all that came to an abrupt halt when Rachel fell in love.
Luke was dark, smoking hot—and unexpectedly obliging. Not every boyfriend would be game for doing the touristy stuff Mum and Dad enjoyed: a musical on Broadway the first night, dinner in a cheesy deli in Times Square on the second.
The third night was in a bar, packed with friends of Rachel and Luke. The Real Men were the star attraction.
“Christ on a cracker,” Mum muttered at the onslaught of crotchtasticness. “I need to go to confession.”
I, who had always admired those who swam against the tide, was charmed. The Real Men loved what they loved and made no apologies. Who could fail to applaud a man who rocked leather jeans with totally unnecessary lacing down the sides? (Johnno.) Or who showed up in public in a denim jacket worn over a naked chest? (Shake. Naked apart from the dense carpet of caramel-colored curls which festooned his pecs. Shake’s superpower was his hair, I was told. More than once.)
And they were so nice. Gaz, kitted out in a Black Sabbath singlet, his hair back-combed into a candyfloss ball, was sweet . Johnno was very funny. Shake, who’d initially seemed dickishly over-confident, quickly dropped the preen-y fa?ade and we began talking hair-dryers.
During a lively discussion on the merits of leave-in conditioners, I noted the arrival of another Real Man, as tall as Luke. Unlike Gaz and the rest, the new arrival spurned statement clothing. His black jeans, barely hanging on his hip bones, were cut low. The sleeves of his white T-shirt were rolled all the way up to reveal sinew-y arms, multiple tats snaking their way up and around taut biceps. His fair, shoulder-length hair hung in his eyes. And, oh my God, his mouth .
This new man scanned the crowd, his gaze passing over me. For an atom of time the smooth sweep of his search seemed to falter, but recovered so quickly I decided I’d imagined it. He kept searching until he’d located Luke and moved towards him. There was a brusque man-hug, then, their heads close together, an intimate conversation followed, with lots of nods and the occasional flash of a smile.
They were Light and Dark. Except that the dark one—Luke—had such cheerful energy. And the man with the light hair and light-colored eyes was dark .
Whoever he was, he and Luke were tight.
I must stop staring. “Rachel.” Blindly I reached out a hand to touch her. “Who is he?”
She flicked a glance across the bar. “Oh. Joey. He’s Luke’s best frie—” Then, “Oh my God, NO, Anna.”
“What?”
She was laughing. “No, no, no, no, no! Joey’s awful. He’s angry, he breaks hearts and enjoys it.”
“I only asked who he was.”
Her look was sympathetic.
“If he’s that bad, why is Luke mates with him?” I asked.
“A complicated, man-loyalty thing. It’s really only women that Joey is mean to. Listen to me, for a while everyone thinks they fancy him. Then they sleep with him.” She paused. “Or spend five minutes in his presence. And that’s it.” She drew a finger across her throat. “Game over. His nickname is Narky Joey. To be honest, we pity him.”
“But, Rachel, his—”
“—mouth. I know. That’s what they all say. Hey!” She seemed concerned. “What about Shane?”
How to put it into words? “Shane and I? I think we’ve…outgrown each other?”
“That’s very sad,” she said. “But Joey is not the answer.”
She was wrong. But we could agree to disagree. Even though Rachel didn’t know that that was what we were doing because I just smiled and said, “Yep.” No need for unnecessary discord.
I got myself another drink and moved about the room, acting oh-so-sociable. But even without seeing Joey and his slinky snake-hips, I could have told you their precise location at all times. Pretending to be fun (just in case he was looking), I’d moved away, circling the place, talking to everyone. Finally I let myself start my return journey, approaching him from behind. On the edge of a booth, half in, half out, his back was towards me.
Just as I reached him, as if he had sensed me coming, he swiveled his entire body, so that his thigh blocked my path. I looked at the long, lean muscles and wanted to claw his jeans off.
“Hey.” He looked up from under his hair. “Who are you?”
“Anna. Rachel’s sister.” Then, going for brazen, “Who are you?”
His lips pressed together, he took a moment. God above, the sculpted beauty of that mouth. “Joey.” One of his front teeth was slightly chipped. I was helpless .
From behind me came a shock invasion—Helen. She stuck her head over my shoulder. “What’s going on here?”
“Fuck.” Joey’s blink was followed by a long, slow smile. “There’s two of you?”
“Nope,” Helen said. “Only one. And it’s me.”
That was it. All over. I’d witnessed this shift countless times. Helen and I were the same height, build, hair, just about everything. But our energies were unimaginably different. I was on the timid-to-normal part of the scale whereas Helen operated way up at the other end, between unpredictable to terrifying. Most men, especially risk-takers, were wild about her. Joey and she were made for each other. Briefly, at least.
I swallowed back my devastation and, unnoticed, slunk away.
Ten minutes later, Helen seized my arm. “Stay with Rachel and Luke tonight. I need the hotel room.”
“Joey?” My mix of jealousy and despair was awful.
“Joey, indeed.” Helen smacked her lips together. “Very. Fucking. Sexy. Christ, the mouth on him.”
The next day, when I was permitted to return, I wanted to know everything—and nothing.
“Joey in the sack? Not bad.” But she wouldn’t go into detail. “Get ready. Rachel and Brigit are taking us for brunch.”
Over eggs Benedict, it was no surprise that the discussion turned to Joey.
“He was okay.” Helen sounded cagey. She focused on Brigit. “You slept with him a couple of times. How was it?”
“Oh my God, are you joking? It’s all about him,” Brigit said. “I don’t know what I was thinking of. Well.” She seemed to be speaking to herself. “I was very drunk. That was the first time. And the second time was the next morning and I was so hungover I was incapable of caring. What about you?”
“I made him beg.” Helen smirked. “That was funny.” After a long pause she admitted, “Then it went to shit. You’re right, Brigit. As soon as he stuck it in, I could have been just anyone. He was going like a train for thirty seconds, then it was all over. Like all over.”
Rachel frowned. “But didn’t he take care of you?”
“Nope,” Helen said.
“Me neither,” Brigit echoed.
“Nothing?” Rachel was shocked. Which said a lot about what getting it on the regular from Luke Costello must be like.
“All I got from him was, ‘Your panties are on the floor. See ya,’?” Brigit said.
“My story? He whips himself out of me, gets rid of the condom and starts throwing his clothes on,” Helen said. “Couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. Swear to God, it was less than two minutes from initial penetration to the hotel door closing behind him.”
“He’s probably the most selfish man I’ve ever slept with,” Brigit said.
“Same.” From Helen. “And such a waste because his dick is huge.”
“Is it, though?” Brigit was thoughtful. “It didn’t just seem gigantic because he’s so skinny?”
“Nah. Massive.”
“He’s not skinny,” I heard myself say. “He’s lean .”
“Oh.” Helen was wide-eyed as understanding, then a hint of guilt, appeared. “Something you’d like to tell us, Anna?”
“No. Just…”
“…the facts are important.” Helen was trying to make things right. “Anna’s correct. Lean not skinny. That’s Joey.”