Tales From A Broad (28 page)

Thereafter, from time to time, Frank would stop by and sit catty-corner to me. Like the day he came down wearing a walkman and just sat there. I finally acknowledged him when I finished typing the 29 names on the bcc part of the memo that I had to get out to fifty bazillion people along with ten pages of photocopying each that I hadn't done yet. I was a bit frazzled since it was nearly 5.30. He slouched into a chair, all full of nonchalance, which I knew was really ‘damn I like watching you', and said nothing. I said nothing. I kept on madly typing. ‘I am pleased to enclose the excerpt from
Fruiti de Lane
by Natalie Plattau.' (Whose last book,
Over There
, sold 75 copies – the exact number of her close friends and relatives – and was about her three years as an expatriate.) ‘This is Ms Plattau's diary from her two years spent studying roadkill from around the world. Be sure to catch it in next month's
Uncommon Pets
magazine.' I had a few more lines to type and all the copying and stapling to do, but FSR Esq. started talking.

‘Do you like music?' he asked.

‘No. And I don't like colours either,' I said.

He laughed.

‘See you later. You look busy,' he said. I looked up to make amends just as he was leaving. I would have put my head back down to the typewriter, but I couldn't help noticing his gait. It was eons slower than a New Yorker's. It was by degrees more casual. It was easy and fluid, unhurried, cool, unflappable. The cowboy boots were doing their thang, scraping across the floor, transporting FSR Esq. into his saddle again. I couldn't take my eyes off him. Though there was nothing nearly acceptable, sartorially speaking, above the boots, there was promise. We could do something with that rancher's bod – long, thin, elegant and broad-shouldered. Indeed we could. He loped away to the elevator. I put everything down and ran after him. We went to a bar. I got fired and five years later we were married but I'll not digress on all of that because at least
75
of you – the exact number of my close friends and relatives – already know all about the courtship of Fran and Frank.

Okay, Frank will be a little warm in these clothes tonight but he doesn't dance like I do – crazy, frenetically. I always thought I was a good dancer until the damn video camera made a point of proving that I am actually spastically jangling to a meter even the Chipmunks can't achieve. It's like everyone around me is hearing something different to what I am. It's like I'm furiously applauding instead of clapping to the beat … so fast my hands could turn into butter. Maybe Frank moves at the speed of light so it just looks like he's standing still, leaning against the wall.

Before I can finish my thesis about attire and why a caged hamster married Brer Tortoise, Simon and Melanie arrive. Melanie has the same dark skin, black lustrous curls and wide-set, violet eyes as her daughter. Her father was Scottish and her mother Maori, traits visible in her colouring and high warrior brow. Her mouth is expressive, her lips shapely but thin. She has a heart tattoo on her wrist and has an artsy demeanour, wearing flowing caftans and gauzy shirts that look very sexy on her. If I didn't appreciate her, understand her like I do, I might think she was dishevelled and her clothes frowzy. She has a good, impulsive, explosive laugh. But, if I didn't know her, appreciate her like I do, I might sometimes wonder what the hell she's laughing about. It could be something from yesterday, it could be the part about ‘Your table is ready' or ‘Is this your son's cup?' It doesn't take much. She's that easily tickled. And, well, it does come with the territory, you know, being creative and all, but some
might
say she's completely unstable.

Simon is British, but was raised all over the world, left in boarding schools and often sent to live with relatives while his parents researched … things. He has peach hair and light skin – in fact, he's pretty darned monochromatic all over. Indeed, at first glance, he's featureless, but if you squint and catch him in a shadowy overhead light, you can see that there
is
a nose, a mouth and eyes – they're just reticent, very British, very reserved. He shows signs of genius – intensity, wit, impulsiveness. I just wish I could understand the half of what he is saying. His voice is low, his accent is thick, he uses a few big words I don't know, and he's usually pissed as a potter by the time I see him. Simon and Melanie are in Singapore for only a short while and we hope that means what it usually does – three more years – but Melanie hates living here for some reason. Some people just do. I thought she liked it when I saw her sleeping under the stars a few weeks ago. You can't do that everywhere, enjoy a slumber in the great outdoors. Turned out she was too tired to make it all the way home and thought she'd just lie near the fish pond and her unfinished vodka and rest her eyes for a minute. It wasn't her fault that the sun was up before she was. Simon had a bit more stamina. He made it as far as the grocery store steps. Pearl was babysitting so it was okay.

Simon and Melanie are famous for their fights. They make me and Frank look like mourning doves, but that's just because we usually get on each other's nerves when there aren't others distracting us, like at home, in the car, on vacation, in elevators, etc. To Simon and Melanie, the world is their home, their car, their elevator, and that's all there is to it. Whether it's camping down with the fishes or shouting ‘I'll fucking kill you! You fucking piece of shit …' over the seesaw at the colourful playground, they are honest, wear their hearts on their sleeves, and are down-to-earth and full of life. There's no one better I can think of to ring in the New Year with.

We'll be going to Sam and Valerie's party later. The big scandal is that Brenda decided to have a dinner party even though she knew about the Markses' party.
Yes, can you believe?
She even managed to bag a few seminal couples, enticing them with her idea of having an elegant New Year's Eve with a candlelit midnight dinner and fancy dress. It was predetermined who would go to Brenda's and who to Valerie's by the established bonds of friendship. The groups overlap, but if forced to choose allegiances, they will find themselves in different camps. Brenda's minions are more expatty, more
Town & Country
, know all the right restaurants, clubs, trips and schools. Valerie's group knows a lot about where you can sneak in wine and duck the corkage.

Frank is not ready so the three of us have a drink on the balcony. In fact, his delay is bringing us dangerously close to still being here when Sadie and Natalie come down, as they inevitably will, in costume to put on an entirely ad-libbed show that has no end. It's the performance version of ‘The Song That Gets On Everybody's Nerves'. Here comes the whispering, the giggling. I hear Sadie back-kick Huxley into the wall, ‘No, Huxley, you're not in this part!' They goof their way through a few minutes, only to be interrupted by a thunderous booming upstairs. ‘I can't fucking find it!' It's just Frank banging around looking for something. Frank's always losing things.

‘Out of the way, Huxley,' Frank says harshly. ‘This doesn't have anything to do with you. Fran, do you have any idea where my leather satchel is? I have all my cards in it. I can't go out.'

‘Come on, we'll just take cash. We're only going for a drink and then to the party. Frank, watch the show, I'll get money from the coffee can.' I go to the kitchen and take it down but it's empty. Shoot.

‘All right, let's just take out cash from the machine,' I suggest. ‘Carry on without us, won't you girls. Oh, Sadie, don't cry. It's a great show; practise for tomorrow.'

We leave and go to the ATM, but it spits my card back.

‘This is just my luck. The machine isn't giving any more tonight.'

We head to a wine bar I've spotted to try for some tapas and champagne before going to Sam and Valerie's. When we're at the street, Melanie stops and flails her hand.

‘What are you doing?' I ask her.

‘Hailing a cab,' she answers.

‘Why?' I ask.

‘How else can we get there?'

‘Melanie, it's three blocks away.'

‘Yeah. Here's one.'

It passes us, lighting up its ‘for hire' sign.

Not many more come by and after 15 minutes we use a cell phone and go through the whole Comfort Cablinks thing.

‘Is this 9-082-4 …'

‘Yes.'

‘Going to Bayshore, is it?'

‘No.'

‘But you are 9-082-4 …'

‘Yes. I'm going to –'

‘Leaving from lobby J?'

‘No, actually –'

‘You have moved from lobby J, is it?'

‘No, I'm standing on the street!'

‘Is this Mrs Flank?'

Finally, it is understood where I am and where I'm going and before I hang up, the taxi is there.

The driver has to travel two miles in the wrong direction just to get to a spot where he can make a u-turn. He turns and doubles back, and when we get across the street from the very spot where he just picked us up, he makes a right, passes a school, a shop and stops. We're there. It wasn't even three blocks from where we stood, a five-minute walk.

The place is empty. I'm not sure why because it's really quite nice. There's a long, smooth bar and a couple of pool tables, votive candles and dark walls, oriental rugs and tables all along the periphery, with sofas and cushions. Maybe the crowds come later. We go to sit at one of the plush tables.

‘Ah, sorry
lah
, that one is reserved, you see.' The waitress indicates the paper tent on the table that says ‘reserved'.

I notice that all the good seats are ‘reserved'. Only the plain tables scattered in the middle – the type that wobble when you put your elbows on them, as you sit hunched up in your cold, hard chair – are not. I don't want to be seated in the centre of a big, empty room in an uninspired metal chair, apologising for tipping the table, whilst staring at the good seats.

‘Look, there's no one in here. We're just going to be about an hour, or less even,' I say.

‘We reserve these tables for our members,' the waitress answers.

‘Members? What's that?'

‘It's $500 a year.'

‘And?'

‘And $500 the next year.'

‘Okay, but what
is
a membership?'

‘You get to have the reserved seats.'

‘Yeah?' we all ask.

‘And, you get a bottle of your choice of whiskey, vodka or gin when you join,' she explains.

‘Doesn't that take business away, you know, if everyone gets a bottle of liquor to take home?' Simon asks.

‘Oh, we keep it here behind the bar.'

‘So you can charge for the mixers,' Melanie whispers to us.

‘Bloody hell, $500. Do you have many members?' Simon inquires.

‘We don't have members yet. We just opened a week ago.'

We crack up. Simon takes the sign off the table, sits on the overstuffed library chair and says, ‘Here's the deal, love, if you get 50 members in the next 50 minutes, I pledge that we will give up our seats peacefully. How 'bout you get us some Moët? Thanks, me duck.'

The champagne comes to us warm. It seems the refrigerator hasn't arrived yet, but they bought a few bags of ice. We wait while it chills in the ice bucket. We gaze upon our uncorked bottle, silently. Our conversation is in there. As soon as the first sign of sweat drips down the neck of the bottle, Simon thumbs it open, pours four glasses and begins his stories, ranging from white-water rafting in New Zealand to going to sleep in Spain and waking up in New Delhi. I am too outclassed to win them over with my limp little tale about hitchhiking for two years. Compared with them, I was just faking it all that time, waiting for Daddy to spank me and bring me back to finish up college. But I tell it anyway; it's all I got. They love the part about when I fell asleep in a car and woke up in the middle of a cow pasture.

Frank tells his story from Switzerland. (He usually saves this for Christmas Eve.) He'd been travelling for a while and had developed a stomach upset on the leg to Switzerland. He dropped off his bags at the hotel and planned to kill time until his room was ready, an estimated three hours. On his way back to the hotel, he stopped at a pissoir. ‘My, what a clean Johnnie On The Spot this is,' he thought as he unzipped his fly. And basking in the relative comfort of his environment, zipping back up his fly, he unleashed the fart that had been grieving him for so many hours. Unfortunately, and ever-so-unFrankly, the fart was, by definition, not a fart at all; it had substance. He made it back to the hotel and adopted a haughty tone so as to put the staff to the task before they could determine his soiled state. They poked around on the computer for a moment and told him his room was ready but they would need a moment to deliver his luggage. ‘Fine, fine,' he flicked his hand, disguising his relief. He went into his room and immediately dropped his drawers and started running a bath. The doorbell rang. ‘Bellhop, Sir. We have your bags.' He looked at his underpants. He heard another knock. ‘Sir? Sir?' He wrapped a towel around himself, opened a window, grabbed a hanger and scooped the loaded underpants onto the hook. He extended the armed hanger out the window and swung it around until the centrifugal force was powerful enough to send those babies flying. He returned the hanger to the closet and opened the door. He hadn't bathed yet and the man gave him a very Swiss–French ‘pee-yew' face. Who cares, thought Frank. He felt better now and took his bath. He was even well enough for a little room service and a glass of wine and a tawdry pay-per-view movie. He fell asleep around nine. The next morning he woke up early, full of brand-new-day energy, and pulled the curtains aside to breathe in the fresh, dewy air. He looked out at the mountains, proudly showing themselves against a cloudless sky. He heard the clattering of silverware and muffled conversation. It was coming from below his window. Just one floor down was an outdoor terrace café where the waiters were setting up for breakfast. They'd just begun. In only a few moments, they would start putting plates, napkins, silverware, coffee cups, saucers, milk, cream, sugar and maybe a vase of flowers on the table just below Frank's room. The table just below Frank's room, where his briefs had landed. They lay there still, as yet unnoticed, smack in the middle where the vase of flowers would go.