CHAPTER 4 #2
At six o’clock, the doorbell rings and I am very much still in a towel.
I race back to my bedroom and slam the door.
Hair pulled back in a quick bun. Moisturiser for the face, mascara and brow gel because that will have to do.
Jeans, one leg at a time (no one wants an accident).
Big comfy jumper with a goose on the front.
Fuzzy socks. What does it matter? No one will be looking at me anyway.
‘There you are!’ Bee says in the lower, slower voice she usually reserves for client meetings. Her eyes move over me, and there is an almost imperceptible shrug of one shoulder: disappointment mixed with resignation.
‘You remember William, right Gertrude?’ she says.
He looks artfully scruffy, the guys’ version of no-makeup-makeup.
Effortfully effortless. His hair is tousled to look like he has just woken up, but a small glob of mousse gives him away.
His stubble suggests he hasn’t shaved in a few days, but the clean edges hint at a recent visit to the barber.
The one-button-too-far unbuttoned shirt gives a teaser of perfectly manicured chest hair. His hands look actually manicured.
‘I do,’ I reply. Don’t call him Will. Don’t call him Bill. Billy. Anything at all. ‘Lovely to see you again.’
‘You as well,’ he says, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. I’m assaulted by a waft of his cologne. It’s lovely.
‘And look!’ Bee squeals. ‘He brought flowers!’ Under normal circumstances, that might be wonderful, but Bee is in fact allergic to most flowers (ironic given her choice of profession).
This information is not offered up, but I do notice that the flowers remain on the coffee table a solid metre away from her. Hey, I got flowers for my room today!
‘And I brought wine,’ a new voice says from behind me. Arthur, brandishing a bottle of pinot noir. I nod in thanks and walk into the kitchen to pour it into four glasses.
‘I like your jumper,’ Arthur says, following me. He picks up two of the full glasses to take them back out into the living room. I raise an eyebrow. ‘What?’ he says. ‘Do you not like your jumper?’
‘I love this jumper. But it’s also a jumper that prompted a man on the tram to give up his seat for me, so I am suspicious of the compliment. Especially from a…frenemish acquaintance co-chaperone?’
‘Frenemish acquaintance?’ he asks, head tilting to the side as we both walk out with the wine.
‘Well, we kind of reached a nice peaceful place on the last date, and we don’t know each other well enough to be frenemies, so I landed there.
But we’re definitely not friends.’ He laughs and hands a glass to Bee.
I offer one to William. We clink glasses and sit on the couches surrounding the coffee table. This feels quite grown up.
‘Wow, you went to so much trouble,’ Arthur says as he cuts a large chunk of brie with our cheese knife, which is fashioned to look like a tiny axe.
‘It was nothing,’ Bee replies lightly, like we totally do this sort of thing all the time.
‘I hope you got a photo of that masterpiece before Art hacked into it,’ William says.
I did, and I have already sent it to Bee for her next reel.
The group conversation dissolves into two sets of two during the first glass of wine.
One set is talking. The other comprises two individuals inspecting their cuticles and wiping imaginary dust off the side table, respectively.
When Arthur retreats to the kitchen to get the bottle, I pluck up the courage to interrupt Bee and William. They are close on the couch, practically on top of each other, his hand resting on her knee.
‘So, William, how did you and Arthur meet?’
He smiles. ‘Way back at uni. I was DJing at the uni pub and he was a bartender. He makes the best mojitos!’ My mind flashes back to that one time at uni that I hooked up with a DJ and Bee told me that DJs were ‘gross’ and ‘dirty’.
‘Oh, so we’ll get you to choose the playlist for dinner then!’ Bee says.
I lean over towards Arthur and whisper, ‘And if they make us chaperone a third date, I’ll make sure we have plenty of mixers so you can get us smashed on cocktails.’
‘That’s surely the only way to survive this.’
No one has spoken to me in thirty-seven minutes, and it’s starting to remind me a little bit of a date I went on last year.
We went for burgers (which is the reason why Bee didn’t give me too much shit when I refused to go on a second date with him: ‘Grown men do not take their dates for burgers, Gertrude’).
And over the course of an hour and a half, this man (whose name I couldn’t remember even with a gun to my head) never said anything directly bad during the monologue I didn’t ask for, but I somehow came away with the impression that he had some less-than-suitable opinions, like how he had four coffees in one morning after giving up caffeine for a while so he now understood what it was like to be autistic.
Then he mentioned his favourite white-man-with-a-microphone podcast (which I looked up afterwards, and apparently all women secretly want to submit to their husbands).
Like, he hadn’t directly said the shit things but, being a bit of a detective, I could read between those gaping lines.
Not that anyone here is saying covert bigoted stuff, but the feeling of allowing a constant waterfall of chatter to run over me is familiar.
Bee would tell me that I’m reading too much into the fact that they’re ignoring me.
But what if I have, I don’t know, an off-putting vibe, and they’re all just trying to dig the night out from under me?
Maybe Arthur told William what I said, and now they both think I’m a judgmental bitch.
Or maybe (as Bee would also tell me) it’s not all about me.
After all, Arthur helped me pour the wine. William is probably just hyper-focused on the woman he likes. That’s an endearing quality. I should probably pay attention, get to know the guy for whom Bee is willing to overdose on antihistamines.
That might be easier if I felt like less of an empty chair.
Arthur doesn’t have any of these concerns, the lucky bastard. Arthur and Bee chat animatedly about soccer. (Go Matildas? I have no clue and fewer fucks to give—I play on my phone when Bee makes me watch.)
‘You know,’ William says, and I’m listening now. I do want to know. ‘I played state hockey back in the day.’ I don’t really get how that relates to the Matildas, but that’s on me for only just tuning in, I guess.
‘Did you really, mate?’ Arthur says. ‘How did I not know that?’
William shrugs. ‘For about three years.’
‘Huh. Learn something new every day.’
‘Hockey players are hot,’ Bee says, and the conversation moves on.
When I hear my name, I have just bitten off a big mouthful of homemade naan.
‘Gertrude,’ Bee says, stern. ‘Chew with your mouth closed. She turns to William. ‘I’m so sorry, William.’ He’s giving me a squeamish look. I don’t dare look at Arthur but he is undoubtedly wearing a look of schadenfreudian joy.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter at my lap, and a blob of chewed naan drops onto the edge of my plate. No one speaks. I quietly wipe it away with my napkin, scrunch it up in a ball, and tuck it under the lip of my plate.
‘You know what this reminds me of?’ Bee asks.
‘That time we were coming back from…which festival was it?’ She points at me, wagging a finger.
‘Beyond the Valley, that’s it. So, we were leaving BTV and the line to get out of the carpark was just horrendous, and Gertrude was feeling a bit poorly.
’ I had heatstroke. ‘So she opened the car door and just munted out the side!’ Her laughter tinkles from behind a demure hand.
‘But she took her foot off the brakes when she did it, so we just rolled into the car in front!’
Ha ha ha, isn’t this an amusing anecdote about a fun moment from our past? ‘There wasn’t any damage, it just scratched their bumper,’ I say.
She turns to say: ‘So, Arthur, William says you work in operations?’
I don’t listen to Arthur correct her that he’s actually in sales.
Instead, I get up to stack the plates, clashing them a little too loud to drown out the noise.
I can feel William look at me while Arthur and Bee chat.
He still doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me.
This level of intense scrutiny would make me uncomfortable at the best of times.
Right now it feels like he’s seeing something I don’t mean to show or don’t want him to see.
I walk out of the room with the plates.