Am I Right or Am I Right? (7 page)

But I
was
sure. It was the Fridge.

I moved towards the restaurant, but Jason separated from a crowd and I stopped. It wouldn’t have taken much to go over and check, peer in through the window at the customers, but suddenly I was scared of knowledge and its implications. I smiled at Jason and we collected our tickets.

From:
Miss Moss

To:
Calma Harrison

Subject:
Sonnet

Calma,

I’d like you to try a Shakespearean sonnet! As you know, the sonnet form is (essentially) fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, with a specific rhyme scheme. The Shakespearean form has a rhyme scheme of
ababcdcdefefgg
—in other words, you finish with a rhyming couplet. Have a look at Shakespeare’s sonnets—you will already be familiar with a good number, like sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”—but don’t be put off. I’m not expecting work of his standards!

Write about a person who is, or was, important to you (we might as well keep to the subject matter that old William was obsessed with).

All the best,
Miss Moss

When Kiffo Died

Some things are best forgotten, Mother said: When spinning days are steeped in pain enough, Why resurrect what’s buried in the head? But if we
can’t
forget…that’s when it’s tough, When images revolve against our will And in our dreams press heavy on the eyes—A red-haired boy, a car, a bike, a spill Of earth and sky, a crumpled form that lies Beside a road. The imprints of these things Are stamped upon my mind. I see again His hair, his freckled face and memory brings The dead to life, refreshes like the rain.

When Kiffo died I knew I’d lost a friend.

I did not know the void would never end.

Chapter 13

Just your average date, part two

Jason was drop-dead gorgeous. He was wearing dark chinos and a collarless shirt. My head broke into a sweat as soon as I saw him. He smiled and I worried that a thin sheen of perspiration would slide from under my hat and baste my face, like those portable water features.

If Jason noticed anything about my head, he didn’t say anything. The hat I was wearing was floppy all right, but close examination would reveal an absence of tresses flowing down my back. I tried to keep facing him. He’d find out soon enough, but I wanted to be in control of the timing.

We picked up tickets. He paid, thank God, and I didn’t protest too much. Independent creature though I am, the fact that my checking account held one dollar and twenty-four cents militated against chipping in. Jason suggested we have a drink before the film started, as we had forty-five minutes to kill, and I was happy with that. For one thing I wanted to get the revelation over with as quickly as possible. If he hated my scalp, there was still time to call the date off. I didn’t want to be sitting next to someone in the cinema and know he would sooner have his toenails ripped out with red-hot pliers than be seen there by any of his friends.

It was getting to make-or-break time.

We sat down outside Giorgio’s, a little Italian coffee shop on the outskirts of the mall, and ordered two hot chocolates. Jason wanted to sit outside to smoke and I didn’t object. If you were going to do a grand unveiling, then it was fitting to do so in front of the entire city. Maybe there’d be speeches and a ribbon-cutting.

“Love the hat,” said Jason. God, his eyes were gorgeous.

“Thanks,” I said. I took it off.

There were gasps all around. Traffic screeched to a halt. Passersby stopped and stared. The only sound was of jaws hitting concrete and the smash of coffee cups as twenty waiters dropped their bundles. A caged parrot in the shop window fell off its perch.

Actually, I’m not sure any of that happened. It might have been my imagination. You’ll have to use your judgment.

Certainly there was a lull in the conversation. Jason froze, the cup against his lips, a thin smear of hot chocolate giving him an artificial mustache. Actually, it looked cute. Finally he put the cup back on its saucer and wiped his top lip.

“You’re bald,” he said.

“There’s not much that gets past you,” I replied. “What gave you the first clue?”

Jason: It suits you. (
You look like a bouncer.
)

Calma: Do you really think so?

Jason: Sure. It’s distinctive. It’s different. (
It’s shit.
)

Calma: I like to be individual.

Jason: Did you get it done for Shave for a Cure? (
Or am I dealing with someone who’s two sandwiches short of a picnic?
)

Calma: Yes. A spur-of-the-moment thing. I thought, “Hell, why not?” It’s for a good cause.

Jason: Nice one. (
I’ll create a diversion and make a run for it. With luck I’ll be able to shake her off after a couple of miles.
)

Calma: I thought you might hate it.

Jason: Of course not. (
Of course I do, you bald drongo.
) It was just a shock, that’s all. (
To find I was dating an extra from
Lord of the Rings.) Actually it accentuates your features. (
Who was that bald guy in
The Addams Family?)

Calma: Is that good?

Jason: Absolutely. (
Not.
)

You see, part of the problem is that when someone is saying all the right things, you don’t know if they are saying all the right things because they feel they need to say all the right things or whether they are saying all the right things because those are the things they want to say.

Do you see what I’m trying to say? It’s a tricky one.

And then I got the answer. Jason laughed. He tried not to. In fact, he was taking a sip of his chocolate and he ended up inhaling part of it. So he’s spluttering with laughter and asphyxiation, and that started me off. Some people at adjoining tables laughed as well. It was infectious. And I knew it wasn’t malicious laughter. You can tell these things. Jason was laughing because he was happy to be there. So was I.

It took a few minutes to recover. Just when we thought we had it under control, we’d start again. Eventually, though, we got a grip.

“So you don’t feel like you’re on a date with Uncle Fester, then?” I said.

“Hey, one of my favorite characters. Honest, it looks wicked. David Beckham in his shaved phase.”

“And that’s a compliment, is it?”

“They don’t come much higher.”

It was such a relief. I mean, I had done that rationalization business about shallow people judging on superficial appearances, but it would have hurt if he’d left me there at a coffee shop, all bald, dressed up, and nowhere to go. And if I was honest, I had to look at it from another perspective. What if Jason had turned up radically different from what I had been expecting? What if he’d had a huge boil covering part of his face? Would I have laughed it off, or would I have visited the ladies’, climbed through a back window, and slipped off into the night?

I think I know the answer, but you can’t tell for sure unless it happens.

We talked and he was really good company. I like the British sense of humor and he had it in spades. All the magazines I’ve ever read said a sense of humor is the biggest turn-on for women. I think that’s true. It’s certainly true when you’ve got a guy with a sense of humor
and
the kind of looks that turn your legs to jelly.

The start time of the film was approaching and I got up. Jason put a hand on my arm.

“Can you sit down a moment and tilt your face toward the tablecloth?” he said.

“Why?”

“There isn’t a mirror around and I need to check my hair.”

Bastard.

I really liked this guy.

The film was pretty good. It had pirates, which is always a positive sign, and the swashbuckling was awesome. There was scarcely one swash that didn’t get a damn good buckle before the final credits. You can divide pirates into two categories, I decided. There was your heartthrob pirate with flashing teeth, bulging biceps, and full tights, and your unsightly pirate with missing limbs, decaying teeth, and speech impediments.

I tell you, if you were a pirate in those days and couldn’t afford decent private medical insurance, you were in deep shit.

Anyway, like I said, the film was fun. It didn’t stretch the mental faculties, but the special effects were good and few people of my acquaintance judge the quality of films by any other criterion. I saw Vanessa. She came over during the previews and asked if I’d put my hat on, since I was dazzling row H. Everyone’s a comedian these days. I introduced her to Jason in a whisper and asked if she’d like to meet up afterward, but she said no. She was going straight to her dad’s place. I have to confess I wasn’t disappointed.

When the film finished, Jason asked if I’d like to go to a club or something. I didn’t. For one thing, the lightness in my purse was getting to me and I felt uncomfortable about Jason paying for everything. Anyway, I wasn’t in the mood for flashing lights and loud music. I had visions of standing in the middle of the dance floor, my head acting like one of those suspended disco balls. To be honest, I just wanted something quiet, so I suggested a walk.

We strolled along the banks of the river that runs through the center of town. Plenty of people were out. It was Friday night, after all, and the riverside is the hub of social life in my city. The weather was mild. The river glittered under streetlights and a nearly full moon shimmered on its surface. Knots of people sat looking out over the city or laughing and chatting in cafés. We didn’t say much. At one stage Jason held my hand.

We sat on a bench overlooking the water, his knee pressing against my leg. I suddenly felt nervous. Jason squeezed my hand and turned toward me.

“Calma?” he said, looking intently into my eyes.

“Yes, Jason?” I whispered, desperately trying to keep blood from flooding my face. I’d read somewhere that Indian mystics can control metabolism by sheer willpower. If someone can slow their heartbeat to three beats a minute, then surely I could stop a blush in its tracks. There was silence for ten loud heartbeats: about four seconds. I lifted my face to his and closed my eyes.

“Who do you think is going to win the Premiership?”

I scrunched my eyes tighter, as if this was an agonizing question I had been pondering the entire evening. I puffed my cheeks out and blew through shuddering lips. Tricky, tricky question. I tried to drag up the name of the one soccer club I knew. Luckily, Jason continued, which gave me more time to dredge the murky depths of memory.

“I mean, you did say you wanted to continue the conversation about soccer.”

I nodded violently.

“Sure. It’s just…well, there’s a number of teams that could win….”

“But on current form?”

“Oh. On current form. Well, I’d have to say…and I’m sticking my neck out here, taking a bit of a punt, don’t quote me…I’d have to say…Liverpool.” The name popped into my mind at the last moment and I grabbed hold of it gratefully.

“But they’re twenty points behind the leaders.”

“I know, but there’s still time.”

“With six games to go, you reckon they’ll overtake Crewe Alexandra?”

“On current form, yes, I do!”
Be confident, Calma, and keep it simple.

“What, even though the maximum points available are eighteen and they’re twenty points behind Arsenal and Crewe Alexandra aren’t even in the Premiership?”

There was silence for a couple of seconds. “Stranger things have happened,” I said, on the principle that I didn’t have anything left to lose.

He laughed and his eyes got these terrific crinkles around them.

“Well, no. They haven’t, actually.”

“When did you know?” I said.

“That you didn’t know your midfield from your flat back four? Right from the start. I was cracking on about stuff and you were like a rabbit caught in the headlights.”

“Does it matter? That I lied to you about it? I mean, I’m interested in learning and everything. If you want, you could teach me—”

He kissed me on the lips and my stomach, previously at a cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet, plunged to a whisker above ground level. His mouth was warm and he tasted faintly of cigarette smoke and popcorn. My first kiss! (If we forget Kyle Colby in Year 5, who did it for a bet and wouldn’t talk to me afterward.) There, on the bench, by the river. It was soft, and plucked at something just beneath my rib cage. I felt dizzy.

“Does it seem like it matters?” he said when we broke off.

In the mellow afterglow I told him the real story behind my hairdo. It wasn’t something I had anticipated revealing, but it seemed right to get all the little deceptions off my chest. I thought he would see the funny side of it and he did. We spent so much time laughing.

It was a brilliant date. I mean, I know there are some of you out there who’d consider a date a complete failure without popping a pill, experimenting with some of the trickier maneuvers in the
Kama Sutra,
getting shit-faced on cask wine, and ending up marinating in your own vomit on the floor of the ladies’ room at the local nightclub.

Well, call me old-fashioned, but I couldn’t imagine anything nicer than walking along the riverbank, watching the lights of the city, hand in hand with Jason. Frangipani petals were blowing in the balmy evening breeze. Cupid had my heart in his sights at point-blank range and was in the process of loosing the arrow when I saw her again.

The Fridge.

She was walking slowly on the path directly opposite where we were standing. On the other side of the river. Like me, she was giving all the signs of being insufferably content, bathed in her own emotional glow, gazing into the night sky as if the world had been born afresh. Like me, she was hand in hand with a guy.

I couldn’t see who it was. She was on the outside and obscuring my vision so I only got tantalizing glimpses. Other people were strolling by and that didn’t help either. I grabbed Jason’s hand hard and looked for the nearest bridge over the river.

“Come on,” I said, and pulled him back from where we had come.

Jason may have been puzzled, but to be fair to him, he was game. Maybe it was all that interest in soccer, but he didn’t seem averse to a late-night sprint with a bald chick for no apparent purpose. Then again, I didn’t give him much option. I held onto his hand with a viselike grip and towed him over the bridge. The Fridge had been some distance from us when I started and I wasn’t confident we’d catch up, even though she had been wandering along like a drugged wombat.

Sure enough, by the time we made it over the bridge, the crowds had swallowed her and her mysterious companion. I scanned faces and Jason panted for breath. Clearly his interest in sports didn’t extend to actually doing any, unless there was an Olympic category in marathon smoking.

“I’m knackered,” he said, gulping for air. “I hate to sound like a total wally, but was there any point to that?”

“I thought I saw someone.”

I didn’t feel like telling him more. It was our first date, after all. Anyway, what was there to tell? I smiled at him and tried to recapture the romantic moment we had enjoyed prior to spotting the Fridge. But my smile felt artificial and I knew the evening was effectively over.

I felt upset by the Fridge’s behavior. I suppose it was something as simple as jealousy. She had a private life, something from which I was being deliberately excluded, as if she didn’t even trust me to be pleased for her. Why would she do that? There was only one answer. Because I
wouldn’t
be pleased for her. Not if the guy was my dad. I didn’t see him properly, true. It’s not something that would stand up in a court of law, granted. But logic told me it had to be him. The more I thought about it, the more I felt sad. Worthless. I suddenly wanted to go home.

I turned to explain this to Jason and my eye was caught by a figure sitting on a bench across the river. The very bench that had been the scene of my first kiss.