Charlie and Pearl (12 page)

I get the hiccups often, he burps a lot.

He likes to sleep with only a sheet on top of him; I like a sheet plus a blanket plus a duvet. As a result he would push his half on to me so I would end up with double the weight, so I would push it all back on to him and it would start a duvet chucking war then meant we would both be irritable and tired the next morning.

He likes things clean and tidy and in their right place. It drives him
crazy
that I leave clothes lying all over the house. It’s just the way I am. When I’m watching TV and I decide it’s time for bed I usually grab my PJ’s and change in front of the TV so I don’t miss what I’m watching, stripping right there. I will eventually get around to picking them up, but he can’t sleep if he knows they’re lying out there so he does it for me. When I make my coffee in the morning I leave the jar out, lid off, a sugar trail and the teaspoon on the bench while I go into the lounge to drink it and eat my toast. Again, I fully intend on putting them away after I finish my breakfast but it bugs him so he cleans up and puts things away.

Oh and the smells, it’s true what they say about boys. It’s worse first thing in the morning when we wake up. I swear the air in the room is nearly green with all the noxious gas he’s farted out during the night. Not nice. And he doesn’t see anything wrong with it
.
In fact, he actually thinks it’s funny when he farts and I pull a face and say “You’re disgusting”. He just grins at me and says “I do it because I like your re
action”, which has the desired effect of making me laugh.

Still, w
here’s the romance in that?

CHARLIE

She can be bad tempered and cranky when she’s tired
,
b
ut very sweet and affectionate when she’s not,
which
more than makes up for it. Part of the problem is she stays up so late almost every night. A typical night routine has started to go a little something like this
I’m learning
:

“
Come
to bed” I say, because I know exactly what she will be like in the morning if she doesn’t go now.

“No, I’m watching this.”

“You don’t even know what it’s called do you?”

“I do so!” she protests, even though we both know she doesn’t.

“You will be tired and grumpy in the morning if you don’t go to bed now.”

“I have watched....” she makes a show of checking the clock, “the last hour and a half of this programme. If you think I am going to miss the ending you are wrong.”

“Is it going to enrich your life in any way?” I point out reasonably.

“Are you?” she rather
grumpily
points back.

And then the next morning when she is stomping round the house, tired, tearful and in a foul rage because her hair won’t ‘go right’ and she has ‘nothing to wear’ she might shout at me, “Why didn’t you make me go to bed?” and I will just sigh and hand her a coffee because I foresaw this exact situation.

I like how naturally we seem to have fallen into a relationship. Not that I would dare call it that to Pearl, she made it very clear we’re just...well
I’m not sure what the word is for it really
. I’m just taking it day by day.

PEARL

A few
weeks later we had our first argument.

It wasn’t even over anything important. I was
, I will admit,
a
touch
cranky, tired and bored. Living by the beach and not having to work every day might sound ideal but I promise you, it gets old pretty quickly.

There are only so many walks, naps, you can take. Magazines you can read before you get sick to the sight of Brangelina and, I never thought I’d say this, Johnny Depp.

I tried baking cookies but burnt the bottom of them even though I baked them for 3 minutes less than the 18 minutes the recipe recommended. Charlie declared them delicious but I had a feeling he would say that if I served him raw chicken. I cried when they came out of the
old bench oven that had seen better days and I realised I’d overdone them
. I’m not normally a crier but suddenly anything set me off. The cookies, a dead baby bird on the lawn one morning, when the newspaper delivery I’d signed up for turned out to be delivered by a moron and he threw my first one in a giant puddle so it got
all
saturated and I couldn’t
even
read it
, it just disintegrated in my hands. I cried,
then I called the store and cancelled the delivery.

Oh and don’t get me started on baby adverts. I’d never noticed them before but now every third one seemed to feature chubby, bouncing, babies, be it for nappies, no tears shampoo, breastfeeding, or even babies selling cars! There were laughing babies, crying babies, even one advert with an annoying rapping baby. I flicked the channel angrily/sadly every time one came on but sometimes the tears would well up involuntarily and I would have to turn my face to avoid Charlie’s questioning looks.

The night we argued he’d been pretty much at my place for over a week non-stop. Since Pete died the bookshop had been closed, out of respect and until the family figured out what they wanted to do with it. So Charlie came out for dinner the night after our ‘first night’, and then he stayed, and stayed, and stayed some more. Don’t get me wrong, I was fond of him, getting fonder by the day, but he was so, adoring and so...there all the time, rubbing my shoulders, making me cups of tea, suggesting walks, baths together. All perfectly normal things couples in the first flush of a new romance do, and I’m sure that had the timing been different I would have handled it differently, but instead I lost it. Pushed him away one night when he went to snuggle next to me on the couch and yelled at him to give me some “space and some damn breathing room!” I felt so bad straight away because the look on his face was like I’d kicked a puppy, but you know how sometimes, even when you know you’re behaving abominably, you just can’t stop yourself? It was like that. I knew I was being an unreasonable bitch but once the words were out of my mouth I defiantly wasn’t going to take them back.

He was frustratingly understanding.

“You’re absolutely right” he said, soothingly, “I’ve been over here too much and of course you need some alone time, we both do. I’m sorry”.

Which just annoyed me. Nothing like a rational person to make you feel even more irrational.

“You’re damn right I need some fucken space!” I yelled. “Every time I turn around I trip over you, you’re like a bloody dog or something!”

“I’ll go” he said

“Good!”

“
I’ll
call you tomorrow?”

“Oh my god, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said have you?”

“I am, yes, I just...”

But I didn’t wait to hear the rest, stomping off instead to my room where I slammed the door, threw myself on the bed and listened to him leave.

I should have felt
bad or sad or something
, but instead I felt
a tiny bit
relieved, which made me feel horrible.

For which I blamed him.

CHARLIE

Huh. I can’t say I saw it coming. I thought for sure they would sell the shop, but instead I was called to a meeting at Pete’s house with his sisters and some city lawyer and for a brief second I thought they were going to actually give it to me but
of course
they didn’t. Instead they want me to run it, be a Manager
,
w
ith a
nice new salary
to match the title. I would have free reign over every decision, they
assured me
. The ordering, the shop layout, everything would be up to me. They would organise an accountant to take care of the money side of it, but I would do everything else. I got the feeling they expected me to jump at the offer straight away but to be honest I had mixed feelings.

There was the fact the something I sti
ll considered ‘temporary’ would, if I accepted, suddenly
fall into the category of ‘permanent’.

And e
ven though I wasn’t excited by the idea of going to university or doing my OE I hadn’t
completely
ruled either out. Not just yet.

But the first thought that crossed my mind when they offered me the job was Pearl. I knew she wasn’t here in the bay forever, even though she’d given me no indication for how long she was planning on staying. I knew she used to work in an office in the city but she’d left the job, or was fired, I wasn’t totally clear on that.

Would she stay, if I took the job?

Or, when she left, would she want me to go back with her?

It was too early to ask her any of these questions, especially after the other night when she accused me of suffocating her. Wow, did she overreact. As limited as my experience is of woman, I am aware about ‘monthlies’, and hormonal issues. So I figured she must have been having her period and I did what she asked and I left.

It’s taken everything I have not to call her since. Rangi ad
vised me, over a few pints, to ‘
play it cool
bro
’.

“Let her do the chasing” he said, “make her think you have other options’.

So I haven’t called her, although I have checked my cellphone about a million times a day to see if she’s messaged me.

Which she hasn’t.

By the end of the second day
after they offered me the job,
I
still
hadn’t heard from her so I
accepted
.
Upon reflection, and with some encouragement from mum, I realised t
here were too many uncertainties
in my life to add to them or to
make any kind of rash decisions
,
so I decided that the job made a safe kind of sense. At least for now.

“You can always resign...” mum said, “you know, if you and Pearl...”

Yeah. If me and Pearl...

Dreams are free.

The next morning I was
at the shop right on the dot of
7.00am. It was sad to walk through the door and see Pete’s handiwork everywhere; he had after all been running this place for over 30 years, so his touch and taste were in everything.

But t
hat didn’t mean that a small part inside of me wasn’t rubbing its hands together in delight at the idea of having free reign. I’d had ideas over the years. For displays, events, none of which Pete was interested in implementing.

Here was my chance.

I rearranged a few things, ripped all the cardboard down from the windows. The light it let in made a
huge
difference
to the overall atmosphere
. It would do for a start.

PEARL

For the first day
after the argument
I simply enjoyed the silence. I didn’t have to talk to anyone if I didn’t want to, and I chose not to. Some people
can be
uncomfortable in the
ir
own company. Not me
though
, I am my own best friend. I know what I like and I know what I don’t.

The peace was delicious.

The second day I woke up remembering the things I said to him and
the guilt hit
. But not bad enough to call him. He had to be reminded of what I’d said; that I wasn’t ready for anything serious. I still meant it, although I realised my actions of late might have given him a different impression. Whoops. Which was why it was so important for me to not back down now
,
t
o back off a bit and give us a both
a bit of
space and perception.

The third day I was restless. I couldn’t believe
he
hadn’t
bothered to call,
or even
to send me a text.
Had I been so completely wrong about how he felt about me?
Was I arrogantly assigning him feelings to which I had not the first clue about?
No, I knew I wasn’t, the whispered I love you made sure of that. But then...
an explanation
?