Love from London (11 page)

My shoes sound loud in the empty space as I walk over to another picture. This time, there cup is even closer, as though the viewer has stepped into the photograph and is reaching out to touch something. It’s a totally beautiful image but also really jarring.

“These are powerful,” I say, but what I want to add is that they are messing with my sense of reality. That
he
does. That just being in proximity to him makes me feel off-kilter.

“Thanks,” he says. “Want to sit down?”

“I have to go soon, I think,” I say and wish I’d bought that pocketwatch so I could use it as a prop.

“You do?” he walks closer to me.

“Yeah,” I look at the floors, suddenly transfixed by the grains in the wood so I don’t have to look at Asher’s face.

“Is this because I behaved like such an intolerable martyr and stormed out at Christmas? Or because you have that boyfriend…Jacob?”

Now I click into action and remember how let down and guilty and humiliated I felt then. “Yeah, actually, it is. Why do you think you have the right to just breeze into a room and act all charming and English and everything — I mean, obviously you’re not acting, I know you’re English — but you’re so…and I don’t even have a boyfriend. Jacob
was
my — I’m not even going to get into that with you.” I’m flustered and talking and mile a minute but Asher stands there and takes it, listens to what I have to say. “And you didn’t even bother to tell me your Arabella’s brother? How screwed up is that? Like, hello, let’s make out and then find out…”

“Hey — hold up there. You kissed me, first of all, before I even got the chance to tell you. Besides, it’s not shocking news — I mean, what the hell else would I have been doing at Bracker’s just wandering around seducing young red heads?”

“You didn’t seduce me, for the record,” I say, defensive as ever. “I don’t know! Maybe I thought you were the…”

“The what?” Asher cracks a smile.

I can’t help but start to laugh, realizing how ridiculous I’ll sound admitting this out loud, “The gardener?”

“Dear God you Americans are so trapped by the British films and literature you read at school.” He backs away from me and takes a seat on one of the old bar stools. He links the heels of his shoes on the rungs and sighs. “Yes, that’s me — Lord Lascivious wandering the grounds looking for innocent young girls on which to prey.”

“I’m not…” I stop short of defending my girlhood and my innocence and then reconsider. “I never said you were lascivious.”

“No?”

“No.” He’s staring at me and I can’t tell if he simply finds my Amerciana amusing, he wants me, or wants me to leave. So I walk to another wall and check out another picture. This time, the shot is of another cup, a grainier image in black and white, very very close up so at first I can’t tell exactly what I’m looking at, then it hits me. It’s the tea cup in the topiary garden at Bracker’s.

“Is this…” I turn around and ask him a question without really asking it. He nods.

I walk over to him where he’s seated on the stool and stand there, waiting for him to talk or tell me what he’s thinking but — he’s a guy — that’s an impossibility.

“I’m thinking I need to kiss you,” he says.

“I thought all guys kept their thoughts to themselves,” I say and take a small step toward him. In the mother-may-I game, this would be the equivalent of a baby step.

“I’m not every guy,” he says and, right as the words are coming out, pulls me between his legs, keeps one arm on my waist, the other at the back of my neck and kisses me. I’m still holding Chris’s letter, my bag is on shoulder, my scarf half-wrapped around me, and all of these slide to the ground. I press myself into Asher’s body, feeling the heat from him and wanting to — he interrupts my thoughts by kissing me so deeply that I can’t think, can’t do anything but be in the moment with him until:

“Are these for sale?” A plucky old woman in a Chanel suit and two-tone tassled heels asks, completely ignoring the fact that she caught us practically ripping each other’s clothes off in the middle of the gallery.

Shaking off the mind-melding make out, Asher, his hands on my ass says, “Why, yes, in fact, they are.”

As ladylike as possible (ladylike=demurely trying to readjust my shirt so it covers my belly, picking my dropped items off the floor without my jeans revealing too much butt), I collect myself and stand off to the side as Asher crosses his legs (ahem) and stays seated, explaining his artistic motivations to the lady. I note that he never once mentions cost, and neither does she. Ah, the silent subtleties of the superrich.

“I’d like this one,” she says and points to the tea cup topiary one. Dashed are my hopes of hanging it back in my room at Hadley. My room which is currently and cruelly inhabited by Lindsay Parrish, I suddenly remember with horror.

“Oh, that one’s just been taken,” Asher smiles at me and stands up. “I am sorry.”

The woman thinks for a second and I’m just about to say he shouldn’t have even though I want it — him — it — both, but Chanel says, “Never mind. I’ll take the other one. You’ll need to install it at my daughter’s house by Monday morning at seven. Will that be possible?”

“Of course, Madam,” Asher assures her and gives me a wink. Already, we’re both — I’m sure — thinking about the weekend ahead. Today’s Thursday which means tomorrow I head out to Bracker’s for a blissful three days…with Asher. Asher rings up the sale and when the lady is on her way, walks me to the door.

“Until tomorrow?” he smiles and kisses me again on the mouth. I have to push away before I find myself too hot and bothered to leave.

“I guess so,” I say. Then, because I can’t ignore the facts I add, “I just worry that Arabella’s going to be really upset with me.”

“Why?” he asks. “It’s not as though she specifically forbid you to date me, right?”

“Actually, she did,” I say but am totally hung up on the fact that he said
date
him, which semi-clarifies what it is he and I are — or will — do together — and puts my fears of just a hook-up at ease for now.

“That’s ridiculous,” he says. “She has no right to decide who I go out with — or who you do for that matter.” He turns the tables so fast I have to stop thinking about the kiss, the possibilities ahead so I can focus. He goes over to the desk in the corner of the room and pulls something out of the top drawer and marches over to me with his hand outstretched. “Here,” he says and hands me the envelope. I open the little metal clasp and slide out the negative inside.

“Oh, thanks, Asher — really,” I say when I see that he’s secured the snapshot taken at the club with me and Arabella sandwiched between royals. It’s so cool, though, that I wonder if maybe I should send it to Mable. I decide to tuck it away in my journal and add it to my pile of
I have to tell yous
for later.

Asher goes right back to where we left off. “I mean, aren’t you just the slightest bit offended that she — Arabella — your friend — is picking, or ruling out, your next boyfriend?”

“To be honest, I never really thought of it that way.” I tuck the
boyfriend
reference away to snack on later and go on. “I sort of assumed you and she had all these issues and that since she knows me really well and…”

“Look,” Asher takes his hand and puts it on my face. “I want to get to know you more, and be with you — in whatever way that happens, but I want to know that you’re not hiding. It wouldn’t be right.”

“So I’m just supposed to confront her and tell her that I…”

Asher shrugs. “Ideally, yeah. I don’t let anyone control me — I do what I want when I want to and I won’t let my sister of all people, tell me otherwise.” He pushes his angry tone aside and holds my hand. “See you soon.”

I want to see him soon. I even want to see him naked soon, seriously, but I just don’t want to deal with calling Arabella and talking to her. I couldn’t now, anyway. Even if I went to her flat she’d be rushing around packing for her fabulous weekend away in Amsterdam with Toby and then she’d leave in a huff and I would feel like crap all weekend. If I call her it’d be worse because you can’t talk about stuff like this on the phone — she’d think I felt like it’s not a big issue, and it clearly is for her. Then I think about something Asher said. If he won’t be controlled by anyone else, why should I? Just because their weird sibling sufferage makes them have competitive tantrums, doesn’t mean that Arabella should control Asher and that he should control me. So I decide to hold off on telling her, and get ready for my own wild weekend.

Outside, a clock rings, the sky is silvery blue, just abut dark, and inside my la las are falling flat. No, not those lalas, I think as if Chris were here to giggle with me.

“No more flat
las
,” Galen French orders and plays a scale for me yet again. “Listen.” He la-la-las himself to near breathlessness, his deep Irish brogue hidden in the perfect pitch.

“The Choir said I sound too American,” I say out of nowhere.

In mid la, Galen smirks. He sits at the piano and plays some tune I don’t know and speak sings to me. “You know that’s a bunch of bullocks…”

“I do,” I speak sing back. “But what can I do?”

“Don’t repeat words for starters…and then forget The Choir. Focus on yourself, your voice, your energy. You have a lovely voice.” He stands up. “But you expect everything to come easily — a very American trait…”

“You shouldn’t generalize,” I sing like heavy metal rocker.

Galen goes for operatic, “Most generalizations eventually turn out to be truths. Regardless, I’d like to see you put as much effort into your vocal range as you do with Poppy Massa-Tonclair.”

I stop singing and ask, “How do you know what kind of work I do with her?”

Galen stops touching the piano keys, stands up, rifles through some sheet music and hands some to me. “PMT — yes, we’re all aware of her menstrual moniker — and I are friendly.” He points to the sheet music. “Let’s end early tonight. It’s late and I want a pint and a good curry. Kindly study those sheets I gave you and at least try to hit some notes next week, okay?”

I blush at the critique, though I’d say it was fair, and at the word
menstrual.
Even though I am pro-woman and even sang the praises of maxi pads on the radio in my past life in Boston, hearing it from my vocal coach is off-putting. Of course, Galen’s mention of PMT makes me wonder if he’s friendly with her or friendly with her with a wink. Maybe Keena knows — she is PMT’s daughter, after all, though they keep their distance during term.

“Have a nice pint,” I say and know I could join him but I don’t. It’s common practice for LADAM students to socialize with their teachers, even in intimate settings like dinner parties or bars or pubs. I still find this odd. Keena does it all the time and Fizzy’s had lunch with Sally Yarmouth (note: Sally Yarmouth did not eat as she was on a tea fasting regime but did tell Fizzy about her love of marshmallows and men with facial hair) a couple of times. I just don’t want to know that much detail, maybe. Or maybe I’d want to with PMT, but it might make me more nervous. Once you open up the well of family history or personal info, you can’t go back. So if I then wrote a paper on the nature of parenting as seen in modern fiction or something, PMT would then probably interpret everything I wrote through the lens of my absent and perpetually perturbing mother. Plus, rumors (or, to be oh-so-British
rumours
) abound regarding bedding down with the faculty. Not that the rumors have proved true as of yet.

Back at the Bat cave, which the dorm resembles, I push past the chain-smoking throngs in the hallway outside my room and climb — literally — over a guy who’s passed out on the floor looking none too well.

“Do you think he’s okay?” I ask some stranger and point to the drunkee.

A couple people shrug, while one girl bends down and wipes the soon-to-puke boy’s brow like she’s auditioning for the role of Nurse in that Hemingway book. “I’ve just rung the porter, who will ring the nurse, and I’ll tend to him in the meantime.”

“Okay,” I say. “Let me know if you need anything.” Not that I have the necessary medical degree to care for the guy, nor the interest in being puked on, and I definitely don’t want my already grim room to turn into the infirmary, but I feel like I have to offer. It’s the least I can do considering I have no real interest in hanging out with the rest of the masses in the hallway. At some point, they’ll migrate to the student pub and then come back here and stand in the vicinity of my doorway until four in the morning when they’ll either slop to their own rooms, hook up in someone else’s room, or wander around banging on the doors until some friend or fellow partier lets them crash.

If the scene looked like more fun, I’d be game. But the truth of it is that Arabella was right: Keena and Fizzy notwithstanding, most of the students I know or have at least a nodding relationship with, have off-campus housing. They rent flats — even crappy ones with someone sleeping in the living room — or have trust funds and own their own, or — like Arabella — have ones on permanent loan from their parents.

The more I deal with nights like this, the more appealing living with Arabella sounds. The apartment is awesome, the location is central and chic, but it’s not just the fact that I’d feel like I’m skirting around the reality of being a normal student. On top of that is the fact that if I really want to date Asher (which I am sure of) and he really wants to date me (which I am mostly sure of), I can’t have Arabella know (which I am definitely sure of).

Basically, the situation sucks.

In my room, I take out my weekend bag and begin to fold clothing to take with me to Bracker’s. Even the shouts of
Fucking Hell
,
Hell-ooo
and
Oh, he’s been sick on my foot
don’t distract me from my thoughts of the next few days: me, Asher, celebrity photo shoot, good food, great bed, incredible stories from Clementine about her rise to stardom and the music industry.

Then a knock at my door: I open up to see that yes, in fact, the passed out boy has vomited on the carpet and some girl’s foot and that the ancient mailroom master has a message for me.