Love by the Book (7 page)

“No, I'm fine, thanks. Actually, I should get going. It is a school night, after all!” I looked down at my watch and realized it was only seven o'clock. Oof.

As we walked out, we went past the other table and the fellow I'd chatted with gave me a long, brooding look. Ah, frisson. The Photographer picked up on the frisson and gave the handsome man a dark glance before putting his hand protectively on the small of my back. It was the most action I'd had all night.

The book goes into detail about the benefit—nay, necessity!—of encouraging male competition and inciting jealousy. Morally, flirting with one man while on a date with another isn't exactly a high point for me but there is something strangely thrilling and Discovery Channel–ish about pitting two guys against each other. It's evolution, guys! And didn't I say I was in this for science?

For the notebook:

Name: The Photographer

Age:
29

Occupation: See above

Nationality: English

Method:
The Technique of the Love Affair

Description: Dark hair, brown eyes, possibly the victim of one of those brain traumas from an Oliver Sacks book in which his personality was wiped out

Result: Flirting makes even the most painful social occasions more diverting

Popeye was back in town but his ardor seemed to have waned. He sent me an innocuous text at a suspiciously late hour on Friday asking what I was up to, which I ignored. It was possibly the first time I've chosen having the upper hand over having sex. Victory doesn't taste all that sweet.

I waited until this morning, Sunday, to reply as breezily and coquettishly as possible. The book encourages you to play suitors off one another and to make it seem as though you constantly have men clamoring for your attention. Thus:

Hello! Sorry I haven't got back to you—my weekend has been crazy! Have literally just got in from the night before and about to go to a
BBQ
now. How are you?

It wasn't strictly truthful: I'd stayed up late drinking wine on the couch with Lucy, yes, but it hadn't exactly been a wild night. And the
BBQ
was actually just me taking a book and a croissant to the park. But, hey, my prestige was at stake here.

The response was almost immediate:

My weekend has been much quieter than yours by the sound of things! What a popular girl you are . . . Would love to see you again soon . . . xx

So far, so good. I didn't respond and didn't have plans to—in order to maintain my prestige, I had to hold out on him as much as possible, especially since he had been kind of useless recently.

Incredibly, I also received a text from the Photographer saying he'd had a great time the other night and asking if he could take me to dinner next week. Maybe he was having an out-of-body experience during our date? Maybe he was a masochist? I wasn't compelled to dig any deeper, so I sent a polite decline. I know I needed test subjects, but I couldn't face another Q&A evening.

Today, a shock.

I was sitting at my desk putting together the costs for our new children's after-school program when my phone rang. I looked down to find my cell phone judging me.

Are You Drunk?

“Of course not,” I muttered to myself, “it's three forty-five in the afternoon!” The penny dropped. “Oh shit.”

I answered as I ran into the corridor.

“Hello?” I said, trying to sound breezy while catching my breath (now proven to be a physical impossibility).

“Hey, Cunningham. It's me.”

“Yeah, I know it's you. What's up, Adrian?”

“Why didn't you say so straightaway? And where are you? You sound like you're training in a wind tunnel.”

“I'm at work, jackass. Some of us have actual jobs. In offices. With computers and shit.”

“Hey, I worked today! I wrote for an hour and a half. Now I'm in the park, doing research.”

“The park can go fuck itself.”

“That's no way to speak of our city's green spaces.”

“What have they done for me lately?” I was now making for street level at full speed. I suspected I was going to need a cigarette for this. “What do you want?”

I heard a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “Look, I think I was a bit of a shit.”

I pushed open the emergency exit door and lit my cigarette—which was now a cigarette of triumph. “Yep, I can confirm that. Anything else?”

“I just wanted to explain what happened between us, because you're a nice girl and I'm—”

“A douchebag?”

“Now, that's not very nice, but yes, fine. A douchebag. I just felt like we were heading into relationship territory and I wasn't ready for relationship territory.”

I took a long drag. “First of all, stop talking like a pioneer. Second of all, I told you all along that I didn't want a relationship! I just made you eggs! And sometimes eggs are just eggs.”

Adrian laughed. “Yeah, I suppose. But you didn't eat them yourself! You made them just for me.”

“That's called being a nice person, asshole. It's not entrapment.”

“Well, anyway. I just wanted to apologize for disappearing like that.”

“Apology accepted.”

I took another drag and held it in, waiting for him to say something. Something like, “Can we go for a drink tomorrow and then have lots of filthy sex?” “Can we pretend these past two months didn't happen?” “Can we resume a twice-weekly almost-platonic sexual relationship?”

But it was Adrian, so instead he said, “Right, Cunningham. I'm off: research calls.”

“Yep. Bye, chief.”

And then he was gone. I stubbed out my cigarette, walked back to my desk and spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze.

Lucy and I dissected the phone call at length in the evening over wasabi corn cakes at the new Peruvian-Japanese fusion place that had opened up in Hoxton Square.

“Well, I suppose it's something that he apologized,” she said as she took a long drink from her pisco sour.

“I guess. Though what am I meant to do with an apology?” I nudged a bit of sashimi onto a tortilla chip and crunched. “Do you think I'll hear from him again?”

“I wouldn't be surprised, lovely. That one is like a recurring case of thrush. Just when you thought you were rid of it, the itching starts again. Anyway, enough about that knob. Let's plan our party!”

I had convinced Lucy to throw a house party in the name of science. While researching this month's book, I had come across a flapper's dictionary and in that dictionary, shining up at me like a little diamond, was the term “petting party.” And, from there, a dream was born.

Apparently, a petting party was a “social event devoted to hugging”—I think it was sort of like a rave, but without the ketamine (or whatever the kids are doing these days). How could I resist? I was hoping it would be like the game of seven minutes in heaven I played at my thirteenth birthday, only this time hopefully Joey Richardson's braces wouldn't get caught in my hair.

“Okay. I think we should keep it small. Why don't you invite Hayley and Georgie and I'll invite Cathryn? And then lots and lots of dudes.”

“Cathryn won't come, will she? It's too far east for her. Didn't she once confuse Hackney with Harlem?”

It was true, she had.

“Yes, but I should ask just in case and, besides, maybe Michael will have some cute single friends lurking around.”

A waifish waitress wearing a baby-doll dress and knee-high athletic socks appeared at our table, having been summoned by Lucy's frantic waves. “Yeah?” she asked, boredom etched artfully across her face.

Lucy acknowledged her with an eye roll before turning to me. “Do you want another sake, babe?”

“Yes, please!” I said brightly, beaming at the waitress. Ever since my bartending days back in college I'd made an effort to be nice to wait-staff, however incompetent or surly. I turned back to Lucy. “Okay, Saturday night, as many prospective men as we can handle. I'll invite Popeye to see if I can stir up some jealousy in him.”

“I'll invite Max. He's gone all quiet again so he might need a bit of a kick up the arse as well.”

“Perfect. Now. One question. Should I invite Adrian?”

“Lauren . . .”

I took a long sip from my fresh sake and tried to look innocent. “Well, he did call and apologize . . . maybe we could be friends!”

“Friends? You can't be in the same postcode without wanting to shag him.” She took a ponderous sip from her drink. “Though I suppose he would get to see you with Popeye.”

“Exactly! I could incite jealousy all over the place!”

“Fine. But I'm hiding the breakables.”

“You're a wise woman, Lucy.”

Inviting Popeye involved a certain amount of finesse. When I first broached the subject, he wasn't available because he had to go to the birthday party of a family friend. Regardless of whether or not this was true, I was getting tired of him not being around. If I'd been following
The Rules
, I would have never contacted him again. But
The Technique
had a different approach, offering up this little gem of advice: “Let your relations with men leave memories of seething fury and hatred rather than embarrassment.”

I've had enough embarrassing assignations in my time, the memory of some of which still have the power to stop me dead in my tracks and bathe me in the white heat of shame. Rage and fury, however, were largely uncharted territory.

I was never one for confrontation, but this time I was pissed off. After all of that knight-in-shining-armor shit I felt like he should just be a bit . . . better! Did the man not understand that it had now been several weeks since we'd had sex? It felt like I was slipping into another Adrian situation: ambiguous, lackluster and mildly infuriating.

So to get the rageball rolling, I sent this
Technique-
approved text message to him:

Well, I have been as pleasant as I could, but you are apparently determined to be dull, so I shall go and spend my time in more responsive company. Let me know when you are feeling more amiable!

His response was swift: five minutes later, a text flashed up on my cell phone.

Sorry, darling! I know, I've been a bore. I'll try to come to your party, I promise. Xxxx

He texted again the next day to say he'd canceled on the family friend and was coming to the petting party. Ha. Screw you, old family friend! I've got more prestige than you!

Adrian, on the other hand, accepted the invitation immediately, no finessing needed. Maybe it was a full moon.

Petting party time!

Lucy and I spent most of Sunday pawing through the rails at a vintage store on Holloway Road, looking for suitably flapper-ish outfits. I settled for a black, high-waisted, obscenely short playsuit and a feathered hairband and Lucy ended up with a cleavage-enhancing drop-waist dress and approximately three hundred strands of fake pearls.

We put bowls of cigarettes out for guests and filled the bathtub with ice and bottles of gin. Hair done and make-up applied, we started helping ourselves to the Tanqueray before the guests arrived.

Cathryn had gracefully bowed out of the evening, citing yet another family dinner. Being posh seemed to involve a lot of family dinners. But a couple of other colleagues had agreed to come, and Lucy had a bunch of her friends coming along (thankfully some of them male).

The doorbell rang at
8
p.m. sharp and from then on a steady stream of people flowed into the apartment. Some of them even looked vaguely familiar. Max turned up wearing a flat cap and holding his guitar. Popeye came with a bottle of Scotch and a guy wearing two polo shirts called Henry.

“How many of these people do you actually know?” I asked Lucy as I poured drinks for Popeye and Co.

“Hmm. About sixty percent?”

“Okay, that's reassuring. I know about ten percent. Thirty percent is a manageable unknown variable.”

At that moment, the opening strains of “Waterfalls” blared out over the speakers.

“I've got to go find Popeye,” I said, making a dash for the balcony.

It was a petting party, so hugging had to be a part of the evening. I couldn't figure out a seamless way to weave it in, so in the end I had made it a house rule that every time
TLC
's “Waterfalls” came on (which was surprisingly often due to my dubious iPod
DJ-
ing skills), everyone had to find a partner and hug through the chorus.

“Hello!” I said brightly. “It's hugging time!” I grabbed Popeye and Henry, and the three of us swayed gently to the chorus while I tried unsuccessfully to keep from burning myself with my cigarette.

Popeye obviously felt a little sheepish about the hugging and poor Henry looked like he was seriously considering hurling himself off the balcony. I suspected that when Popeye asked Henry if he wanted to go to a petting party, he'd slightly mis-sold the idea.

But after a couple of hours, the Jägermeister had made its appearance and everyone was hugging like it was going out of style. Henry in particular was clinging on to two of Lucy's more buxom friends like he was a shipwreck survivor and they were flotation devices.

“I have to confess, I've not been to many house parties. Well, not this sort of house party.” Popeye eyed the cement balcony, now full to the brim with drunk youths.

“There's booze in the bathtub and nineties hip-hop on shuffle. Whose kind of party
isn't
this?”

He smiled wanly. It definitely wasn't Popeye's kind of party.

At that moment, a pilled-up young man whose name I think was Felix sidled up to us and started stroking the hair on my left arm.

“Would you like to hear a poem I just wrote?” he asked.