Bella Summer Takes a Chance (35 page)

Single in the City (Book One)

Take one twenty six year old American, add to a two thousand year old city, add a big dose of culture clash and stir

Misfortune Cookie (Book Two)

Would you move 6,000 miles to be with the love of your life?

The Twelve Days to Christmas (Book Three)

What if his proposal had an expiration date?

Read on to begin the
Single in the City
series

Excerpt from
Single in the City
copyright © 2010 Michele Gorman

Single in the City

1

Every other storefront is a sandwich shop without a low-carb advertisement in sight. Are Londoners really willing to embrace the doughy delights of an Atkins-free world? It’s a thrilling prospect for a girl raised in a culture plagued by cellulite boogeymen.

            The customers are directing the deli man with the unnerving efficiency of Starbucks regulars babbling coffee instructions.

            ‘Next.’

            That stuff in the metal bowl is unrecognizable beneath all the mayonnaise.

            ‘Next!’

            ‘Tuna fish sandwich, please.’ Is that
corn
mixed in there?

            ‘Bap?’

            ‘Sorry?’

            He’s pointing to a roll.

            ‘Okay,’ I shrug.

            ‘Butta?’ he says.

            ‘What?’

            ‘Butta!’

            But a what? ‘Oh, no thanks, no butter.’ Who puts butter on a sandwich?

            ‘Salad cream?’

            Now what? ‘Uh, no.’

            Carefully he arranges a tablespoon of dry tuna on the roll.

            ‘Um, can I have mayonnaise?’

            ‘Tsch. I did ask,’ he huffs, reaching for the salad cream bottle. A pea-sized blob lands judgmentally on the flaky filling. ‘Salad?’

            I don’t see any salads. ‘No, no salad.’

            He closes the sandwich and starts wrapping it.

            ‘Uh, can I please have some tomatoes?’

            The lady next to me is staring at me like tomato is a dirty word.

            ‘You didn’t want salad,’ he accuses.

            ‘That’s right, no salad. I want tomatoes.’ There she goes again, like I’ve said hairy penis.

            ‘Tamaydas?’ he mimics. The lady sniggers.

            ‘Yes, please.’ I can feel my face going red. Red as tamaydas.

            Congratulations, Hannah. You’re an expat.

What am I doing? I’m living in a room too small to open the closet without standing on the bed, in a city I’ve never set foot in before, whose language I obviously don’t speak, 3,000 miles from everyone I know.

           
ex·pa·tri·ate

            1: (
noun
) A person living in a foreign land.

            2: (
verb
) To withdraw oneself from residence in or allegiance to one's native country.

            That makes me a noun with slight verb tendencies.

            Thinking about it now (admittedly a little late), I probably got carried away with the idea of starting afresh. Perhaps Stacy was right; a new haircut would have done the trick. But sometimes we’re swept up in a seemingly unstoppable tide of events. Or we do something impetuous and very very stupid. The verdict could go either way in my case, given that I’ve just landed upon England’s gentle shores without the faintest idea how I’m actually supposed to build myself a new life. I’m not an expat in the traditional sense. I haven’t just finished school, with a network of associates to beg for a job. This was no overseas posting, with the usual electronics allowance to buy my flat-screen TV and flat iron whose voltage won’t set my hair on fire. I don’t have British cousins or a long-time family friend in the city. I arrived at Heathrow with a freshly minted passport, 5,000 dollars and a vague idea that an adventure awaited me in London.

            You know how, in any group of friends, there’s always one who organizes the nights out, the holidays and surprise parties? That’s not me. I’m the one most likely to arrive at the wrong theater/restaurant/airport and miss the whole thing. So here I am, jetlagged, with no clear plan beyond dinner.

            ‘Stace? It’s me.’

            ‘DO YOU LOVE IT?!’ Stacy’s been my best friend since we were seven. Being at least 50 per cent responsible for my being here, there’s hope in her question.

            ‘I haven’t even unpacked yet.’

            ‘How’s the hotel?’

            It declared itself ‘charming’ on its website. Translation: last habitable during Queen Victoria’s reign. Its rooms are perfumed with Eau de Oodles of Noodles and there are dust bunnies in the corners from the Thatcher era. Evidently this is what a hundred bucks a night buys you in London.

            ‘I hate the owner.’ Not just because she looks like a slightly less feminine Mrs. Doubtfire and has sofas that need flea-bombing. ‘She asked me if my husband was joining me. When I said I don’t have one, she made that face. You know the one.’ Like I’d just confessed to an STD.

            ‘Brutal. What'd you say?’

            ‘Nothing. You know me.’ I’m wittiest in retrospect.

            ‘You’ll come up with something eventually. Have you seen any royals yet?’

            ‘Between Terminal Five and the hotel?’

            ‘Right. I guess it’s still early. You could go see them now.’

            ‘Stace, you can’t just drop in on them, you know.’

            ‘Well then, what
do
you plan to do?’ She sounds disappointed by my unwillingness to stalk the Queen.

            ‘English stuff, obviously.’

            ‘So?’

            I made a list on the flight. ‘So, have a pint at the pub, go for tea, try fish and chips, ride the double decker buses, uh . . .’ I guess it was more of a doodle.

            ‘Call me when you get back. I want all the details.’

            ‘Will do.’

            ‘And Han, I just know this is going to be great.’

            ‘Sure.’ Stacy’s confidence is legendary, if sometimes rather premature.

            She wasn’t like that when we were little. She was painfully cautious, hanging back till she worked out whether a situation was likely to hurt her or not. Ever the compliant friend, I was her canary in the coalmine. Then fate blindsided her where I couldn’t help. Her dad skipped town, leaving them a note propped on the kitchen table. That was the last anyone saw of her vulnerability. Eventually she believed her own bravado and the confidence became a natural part of her. Being the world’s cheerleader must get exhausting but I’m constantly grateful to have her on my team. And I think she’s happy, as long as she doesn’t think too much or dig too deep. As her best friend, it’s my job to keep those shovels out of reach. It’s remarkably easy ‒ I’m not exactly the poster child for careful reflection. I did, after all, move 3,000 miles out of spite (well, spite and a realization) . . .

            Sometimes small events can have long-lasting consequences. A simple conversation about my sister’s weekend plans a few months ago set the wheels in motion for me. She’d told me she was running errands, maybe renting a DVD. She’d done the same thing every weekend for at least two years. This was a woman who used to get arrested more often than she got her roots done. She seemed constantly to be chained to something in protest. What had happened to my cool, slightly felonious sister, the one who was interesting?

            ‘I don’t need to be interesting,’ she’d said. ‘I’m past all that.’

            Chillingly, those were Mom’s words. How did that happen? We’d made a pact to be vigilant against the creep of Momness, not to let it insinuate its way into our personalities. And yet Deb believed that her life didn’t need to be interesting. And yet, who was I to cast stones? I hadn’t met any new friends, or tried anything new (or anyone for that matter), or even gone to New York in months. They call it a come-to-Jesus moment when people face their own mortality and realize that things haven’t turned out as they’d hoped. I’m lucky I didn’t have the same epiphany from a hospital bed. In that moment it dawned on me: my life wasn’t a dress rehearsal. At twenty-six I was cruising into a lifelong holding pattern. Is that inevitable? Do we march methodically towards middle age, shedding our sense of adventure, our desire to spread our wings as we go?

            It was then that I realized something even worse, something I dreaded more than running into my ex and his model girlfriend at the supermarket while wearing pajamas after a three-day ice-cream binge. I was becoming my mother. I once had exciting plans for my life. Suddenly I didn’t even have exciting plans for my weekend. Knowing me, I’d have cultivated this vague sense of doomed future, dying a bitter old woman in Stacy’s basement, if fate hadn’t intervened one morning a few weeks later. But that’s a story for another time.

It’s taken less than a week for me to be sick to death of my own company. I wake up in the mornings and there I am. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, just me. Entire days have passed without saying more than ‘excuse me’ and ‘sorry’ while walking into people. Soon I’ll lose the ability to form whole sentences. I’ve got to do something.

            A few streets away from the hotel I spot a perfectly nice-looking pub with an ivy-overgrown sign above the door. Red velvet curtains are drawn across the bottom of the little leaded glass windows, so I can’t see inside. I can hear a noisy crowd though. They’re laughing, sharing stories and jokes while I skulk out here in the drizzling afternoon. They’ve probably been friends for years, safe in that cocoon of companionship that I took for granted. I should be in there, not standing out here letting my hair frizz.

            But what am I supposed to do when I get inside (after scanning the room meaningfully as if searching for my friends)? I’d feel as conspicuous as a third nipple. Have you ever gone alone into a bar, or sat by yourself in a restaurant? I don’t mean fiddling with your phone to look busy while waiting for someone. I mean when they clear away the other place setting and leave you to stare at your cutlery. Having a built-in friend like Stacy meant I never had to. I didn’t even go through those first days and weeks of junior high, high school or college worrying that I wouldn’t have any friends. God, I may have just moved to a country where I won’t speak to anyone who doesn’t give me a receipt at the end of the conversation.

            Maybe this isn’t a good idea. I can’t see inside without going inside. What if it’s a biker bar? Or a gay bar? Or they’re in the midst of a Nationalist Party rally? It’ll be dinnertime in four hours. I should save this adventure for tomorrow. Besides, it’s raining, and cold. And I have a pimple on my forehead . . .

            And my jeans are baggy at the knees, and it’s a Tuesday, and, and, and. Could I be more self-defeating? Think of the great pioneers of our time. Amelia Earhart flew solo all over the world. She disappeared doing it, but that was probably just bad luck. Walking into a bar alone can’t
kill
me. At worst, it’ll maim my self-confidence.

            Okay, pimple or not, I’m going in.

            It’s dimly lit by the kind of wall sconces you see on the fronts of garages, except they look original, possibly installed by Edison himself. The ceiling is ornately plastered, deep red walls and dark wooden paneling envelop us. There are video games along one wall and tables scattered with a few patrons. The spindly wooden chairs don’t match. At least there aren’t any obvious rally meetings, or bikers. The room hasn’t ground to a silent, suspicious halt at this stranger’s intrusion. In fact, it feels quite familiar. Happy groups of young professionals? Check. Heady blend of pheromones and beer soaked into the carpet? Check. Requisite loner propping up the bar? I don’t see anyone alone. Okay, maybe that’s me. Free barstool and a cute bartender to ply me with drinks? Check and check!