Love from London (13 page)

“You have a hottie here, don’t you! All this fuss about poor you and Jacob betraying you…and you have a boy of your own. Is he a Brit? Tell me all.”

I breathe in deeply through my nose and hold my hands in front of me in over-zealous yoga meditative pose. “I cannot say. I am a supremely evolved creature with no need for dishing details.”

“You are so full of shit,” Chris says, slaps a credit card down on the table, and motions to the waiter. “Let’s go get wasted and you can tell me everything.”

A mere hour later and I may as well be reporting live on
Entertainment Tonight
about the status of my quasi-relationship to all of trendy London. Chris buys a round of vodka-jelly shots served mini martini glasses for all the well-heeled heiresses and Euros who surround us. My American heartache is clearly amusing. Each time I finish one or start to pout about Mable or Jacob (for some reason I cannot shake the image of him kissing Lindsay) another shot appears in front of me.

“That’s enough,” Chris waves the next shot away. “I need her to be coherent enough to tell me the rest.”

“He’s so hot,” I slur.

“Jacob?” one Euro asks. It’s loud in here, so we shout practically everything, or read lips. I shake my head but too vigorously so I feel nauseated. “Not Jacob, Asher.” His name sounds funny in my mouth. Asher. Ask her. Ash, er. “His name sounds drunk.”

“No, Sweetie, you do,” Chris laughs. He sits near me, protecting me, enjoying the club, Icon, and its scene. He’s getting checked out right, left, and especially center, and loving it.

“The thing is, he’s Arabella’s brother, so I can’t. Or she doesn’t want us to.”

One posh listener interjects, “But if she’s really your best friend, won’t she understand?”

Even in my liquored haze, it makes sense. Kind of. “Maybe,” I say. My stomach is starting to churn and I have to focus on Chris’s eyes in order to keep from spinning. “But couldn’t you also say that if I’m really her best friend, I wouldn’t even think of doing the one thing she begged me not to?”

Later, tucked into my bed with Chris asleep on the floor, I can hear Fizzy and her latest conquest having grand old time in the next room. Keena must be home at her mother’s house. My head hurts, my belly has that puffy post-drinking gross feel, and I lie on my back with my hands on my hips, looking at the dancing shadows on my ceiling. Right now, Mable is in her hospital bed at Mass General. I wonder if she’s okay, and for a second I have that telepathic thing where you know the person you’re thinking about is thinking about you. I know I’m supposed to call her later on, but I can’t wait.

I pull my down coat on over my pajamas, shove my feet into my boots, and go to the phone booths yet again. Note to self: international cell phone would be lovely — find sponsor. After being routed through the operator, using my calling card yet again, and getting hung up on not once but twice, I’m finally put through to Ellison 414.

“I knew you’d call. I just knew it,” Mable says. I know she’s grinning by the way her voice rises at the end of the sentence.

“Stephen King moment?” I ask. It’s our code for the times when we know we’re thinking the same thing.

“Completely. I wish you were here. I’m watching bad tv and drinking high calorie protein shakes.”

“Yum, sign me up!” I say. As soon as we’re talking I feel calm and centered, but also far away form her — so much has happened that I normally would have told her.

“How is Poppy Massa-Tonclair?” she asks. Leave it to Mable to ask the right question first. “I can’t believe you know her now. I have every single book she’s ever written — even an anthology she edited — on my shelf at home.” She says at home like it’s a place she hasn’t been to in a long time. “What’s she like, anyway?”

“In a word, incredible. She knows every writer, every poem, every essay and novel — and she’s kicking my ass into gear.”

“Maybe you’re the next Poppy!”

“Yeah, right,” I say. “That’s me — putting the list back in journalist. All I do is write lists, not epic works of fiction.”

“We’ll see,” Mabe says. Then, since she can tell what I’m about to say, stops me before I launch into it. “Let’s not, okay? We’re not going to go though the what ifs scenario, okay? There are too many possibilities in this life time — we’re much better off just dealing with what we have in front of us, the reality of the situation at hand — or breast.”

“I can’t believe you can make fun of yourself like that when you’re stuck in the…” I burst into tears. “I’m sorry, Mable, I know I’m not supposed to get upset — and that you want me to…” I can’t talk through my tears. “But you’re like the one person that I have who…”

“I know, Love. I know.” I can hear something in the background, probably a nurse or a resident coming to examine or poke her with a needle.

“Is that a doctor?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “Dr. Green Day. I switched to MTV”

“You’re channel surfing while I’m crying my heart out to you?” I laugh.

“No, my butt rolled onto the clicker.” I can hear the music faintly and Mable’s breathing. “Miles came to see me.”

“Miles your ex-fiance?”

“No, Miles the road measurement. Yes, my ex-fiance.”

“What did he say? How’d he know where you were?”

“Your dad spilled the beans.”

“Heh — funny coffee distributor humor. So, what’d he have to say?”

“He still loves me,” Mable says and sounds happy about it. “We might get married.”

“What?” my voice is loud, echoing in the empty middle-of-the-night hall. “You’re engaged again and just telling me now?”

“It’s not definite or anything, but will you be my maid of honor, again?” Mable asks.

“Of course I would — that’s great — great!” I’m bursting and know that I’ll wake Chris up to tell him. “When’s the big day?” I love using clichés like that at times like this.

Mable’s voice drops slightly. “Oh, we don’t know that yet. It depends on everything this week. You know how it is.”

I want to say that I do, that I know how major surgeries go, or how the outcome of this one will be, but I don’t, so instead go for the ever-brilliant, “Oh.”

“But let’s hope for the best, okay?”

I nod, even though it’s a gesture she’s blind to, and hang up, and trudge back to bed.

Here’s a brief (read: non all-inclusive list — all-inclusive would require my own personal secretary) list of places visited with Chris during my day of Touristy London Crap (his title, not mine). I’ve been so busy going to class and being a regular student that I’ve bypassed some of the typical traps, and I’m glad to have Chris around to make me go out.

1. The Tower of London (old, crows, those Beefeater guys in costumes that make you want to do stupid things to get them to laugh until you realize every tourist ever has done the same thing)
   
2. Hard Rock Café (am I a JAB — jaded and bitter — to think that it’s just not a big deal? I’ve been to the one in Boston and this is the same thing but with mad cow beef potential and more Sex Pistols paraphernalia than I need with my fries)
   
3. Picadilly Circus (lights, camera, action)
   
4. Trafalgar Square — read: me and Chris posing on lions looking cheesy but having fun…until Chris got shat on by a pigeon and got pissed off because I couldn’t stop laughing
   
5. The Tate (coolest art around)
   
6. Abbey Road (how can you pass up a chance to imitate the infamous walking across the street a la John, Paul, George, and Ringo?)
   
7. And so on and so on….
   

“You have completely exhausted me,” I say to Chris and flop down next to him on a bench in Hyde Park.

“That’s a shame,” he says. “Actually, it was kind of the point.”

“What do you mean?”

Chris hands me a pen. I study it. “Lovely,” I tell him.

“Hey — it’s Britain’s finest.”

The pen is shaped like a guitar and has the Hard Rock logo on it. “Does it really write?”

“You’ll have to try it, I’m not sure. But I got it for you so you could go back to recording your thoughts on paper.” He shakes his head. “Don’t look at me like I’m daft, you know you haven’t been writing in your journal much — you told me that. All I’m saying is that you’ll wish you kept a better record of everything that’s happening so you have something to look back on when it’s over.”

“Is that why people write, do you think? Or is it to try to make sense of what’s happening at the time?” Chris doesn’t respond, which is okay, since the questions were more for me anyway. I watch the sky darken. In the distance, a couple of people are trotting by on horseback (note to self: do not leave London without trying this). “How’d you get to be so smart?” I ask and poke him.

“From watching you, Dad,” he says in his American after school special voice.

“Speaking of dads,” I say. “I gotta find a phone and call mine.”

“On his cell?” Chris asks and stands up. He’s decked out in the tackiest tourist stuff we could find (and that he could waste his money on); polyblend sweatshirt swathed in the British flag, sweatpants that read
I heart London
with the heart over the crotch, and a glittery hat that uses rhinestones to spell “God Save the Queen”.

I smile at him and say, “Can it really be only a couple of months ago that you were in the closest?”

“I know — so little time, so much change.” He twirls for my approval. “But don’t judge me on this outfit alone — you know I’m still half Lacoste.”

“I know, I know. Believe me — you’re still very Hadley.”

“Aren’t we all?” he says and points to my cuffs. The Hadley Hall sweatshirts have wrist bands that rip off very easily and the students who have been there for a while (pretty much everyone but the freshmen) tear them off. Guys tend to throw them out, but they make decent hair ties, so girls keep them around for that purpose. Without even thinking about it, I’ve started to fray the cuffs of my current shirt (an Arabella cast-off, Juicy, if truth be told) in order to have the stretchy teal cuff for my hair.

“Have I really become so used to the moneyed life that I’m ripping hundred dollar sweatshirts just to get a hair band?” I ask and annoy myself.

“It’s like stealing a car for its parts, right?”

“Is it? Look, there’s a phone box — let me get in touch with my father. Wait here.”

Chris nods, hands me my dad’s new number (how weird that my friends seem to know more about my dad’s current day to day than I do), holds my bag like a good non-boyfriend and leans against a wall to wait for me.

“Dad?”

“The one and only,” he says. “I’m using one of those ear pieces.”

“Welcome to the mobile age.”

“I don’t know why I waited so long.” He pauses. “Maybe it’s because I was afraid no one would call me!” He’s joking, but the connection isn’t great, plus there’s background traffic noise, so this suddenly seems sad — like he really wouldn’t have had anyone to justify the cell phone purchase. Or maybe that he did it so that Mable would always be able to reach him. Anyway, calls like this are like email — it’s hard to read the tone.

“I would always call you,” I say.

“I know, I know. And now…” he beeps his horn and I can tell he stops himself swearing at some bad driver for my sake. “Now I have a solid couple of numbers on my fast-dial menu.”

“Me, Mable, who else?” I laugh. Dad laughs, too, but doesn’t tell me. “What, do you have some new woman in your life?”

He avoids my questions. “Anyway, enough about this thing. How’s it all going there? Did you get the package we sent — haha?”

“Thanks so much, Dad. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but it worked. I was totally shocked to find Chris at school. And it helped — helps, I mean, having him here with me this weekend. Not to mention it was a good break from my lectures — I swear I know more about Nelson, knights, and Brit lit than I ever could have fathomed.”

“Great, listen, about Mable…Unless you hear otherwise, assume everything’s fine on Tuesday. I don’t want you planning your days around calling home.”

“I’m trying not to assume much, these days,” I say but don’t get specific. “It seems like every time I do, I’m wrong anyway.”

“True enough — but I’ll leave a message with the porter just so you know the operation is over and done with.”

“I miss you,” I say and sound like I’m thirteen but don’t care. I wouldn’t want him here for the whole time, but it’d be nice to grab lunch and then have my freedom again. “Oh — and what’s the deal with Lindsay Parrish living in my room?” I know Chris said she’s in the guest room but it sounds so much more dramatic to say my room, like she’s invaded my headspace, which in a way, she has.

Dad puts on his administrative tone, “It’s not that bad, Love. You make it much worse sounding than it really is. She’s in the guest room for another couple of weeks — a month, tops, while they reinsulate Fruckner…and she’s on good behavior.”

I don’t pry about that last comment, but I’d like to believe my dad has her on a short leash — I’d like to have her on a leash, come to think of it — but that’s considered hazing, and a sure-fire way to get kicked out of Hadley. But a girl can dream…

“Make sure Chris gets back to Heathrow tomorrow night. I excused him from swimming practice and classes on Friday so he could get to you, but he’s expected back at the dorms by late check in.” Late check-in exists primarily to annoy the dorm parents, who have to wait up for the wealthy boarders who have gone off to sun themselves or party somewhere for the weekend — it also exists to bust people who take an additional day off after a weekend of visiting their off-campus amours.

Which, by the time I’m off the phone, Chris apparently has — an amour, that is.

“Let me get this straight,” I say as Chris and I walk to the bus. “In the time it took me to do a transatlantic dial, you got a date?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” he says and runs his fingers through his hair, tugging on the sides like he always does for some invisible, but in his mind crucial, lock adjustment. “Don’t judge me, Love — I’m like a gay spokesperson at Hadley with tons of responsibility and no action. Not that it’s bad for my college apps to have a Head of Gay Student Union or whatever.”

“Yeah, maybe I should start a club or something — can I just say how much I dread filling out those things?” Essays and transcripts, recommendations and scores — it’s enough to cloud even a great day.