Geli Voyante's Hot or Not (4 page)

‘I’m a wild card,’ I mutter.

I’m starting to feel uneasy,
but then it hits me.
Bill and Monica. Hillary and Obama
. Oh sweet Lord – he’s talking about the US Presidential nomination race. Of course he is. Theo has no life outside of politics. Oh. My. God. I am an absolute disgrace to the human race. I have just babbled on thinking we’re talking about
marathons
and now Theo will think I am some sort of closet US politics fan when really I don’t give two hoots about it.

‘Like Rudi?’ he asks.

I’m nearing the finishing line where I’m so close to stumbling and revealing I thought we were talking 26 miles, 385 yards, not fifty states of boring voting.

‘Exactly!’

Rudi, New York’s ex-mayor. I know that. 

Theo
grins and it’s the most gorgeous sight I have ever seen, which includes the sunset over Cape Town. It automatically cancels out the fact we are
voluntarily
talking about
politics
.
US politics
.

I’m about to tell Theo how Jeeves runs the London marathon and how he raised £15,000 la
st year for Great Ormond Street when I catch myself in time and remember that this has nothing to do with real marathons. I can hear Jerry laughing hysterically in his pod. I’d like to believe he’s watching something on YouTube but I know he’s laughing at me. He knows I know
nothing
about US politics. 

‘I
’d better go and get that tea.’ I smile at Theo realising I need to make a sharp exit and keep my credibility. ‘We should talk about their causes though when I get back,’ I find myself saying however.

Idiot, Geli.
Idiot
. What do I know about political campaigns and running causes? Theo looks like I’ve just announced I’m taking him to heaven on my return from the kitchen. OK, that grin was worth my remark.

‘I’d love to,’ he practically roars at me
, in such a happy voice it sends shivers up my spine. ‘You know, I’m really seeing a different side to you today. Maybe we should go out for lunch?’

Forget shivers up my spine
; my whole body is exploding. Forget Glinda and her Tiggy council of war. Finally! Theo has
finally
seen my inner beauty and it’s all thanks to the New York marathon/US nomination race. Who cares if Tiggy marries Calvin? I have Theo!

‘Great!
’

I manage to
smile calmly at him, even though panic has kicked in, which is over-riding the desire I have to jump Theo in his pod and…
y’know
… After all, lunch does not leave me much time to Wiki and Google everything I can to keep up this bluff.

A huge snort of laugh
ter erupts from Jerry’s pod.

‘I’ll get the tea.
’

But first I turn my attention to Jerry and what’s going on in his pod
to cause such hilarity. As suspected, no YouTube.

‘What’s so funny, Jerry?’ I ask through gritted teeth,
knowing the answer full-well.

He’
s really restraining himself from exploding into fits of giggles, the little
girl
that he is. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he giggles. ‘
After
your lunch with Toblerone.’  

I ignore
his smirk. ‘Tea?’

‘Love one.’ He giggles
again.
I should pour it over him.

Jerry’s meanness aside
though, I guess today isn’t going to be another same old, same old day after all.

In the kitchen, thankfully, I do bump into Sara, our psychologist columnist. Whilst I do want to rush off and scour the Internet for US Presidential nomination snippets in preparation for lunch – lunch! – with Theo, I need to ask Sara why I have Trouble with men in the first instance. This is equally as important, if not more so, because I do not want Theo to depict me this way.

At work it’s
OK between us because every male in the Gherkin – our view of London is so spectacular – sees me as sweet, lovely and un-sexy which, of course, includes Theo. This is probably because of
New News
’ strong insistence on old-fashioned family values. I think they only emphasise those values because they want to balance out how phallic the building we inhabit looks. Either that or all the men feel a little intimidated by it and this makes them behave themselves because they know us women folk are secretly comparing them...

Theo has never seen me
outside the building so he could never form a non-Gherkin view of me. I know from past experience that me outside the building with a male colleague equals Trouble, as happened with Callum from Accounts.

Callum
took me for a coffee outside the safety of the Gherkin because he had been told to have a friendly word with me as my expenses claims were getting “a tad dramatic”, to quote Callum’s boss, the evil Malcolm.

I
ssues like this are always dealt with beyond the
New News
building as
New News
believes in aura and doesn’t want our office tarnished with negative influences. I only found this out at the disciplinary hearing, where the full-tale emerged.

We
grabbed a cab to take us to The Wolseley for afternoon tea; Callum’s instructions said Starbucks, the one by the Tube station, and to use a free drinks voucher he had. The Wolseley and cab were exactly the kind of expenses Callum should have been advising me against. In a friendly
New News
manner, of course.

This
all happened back when my column was relatively new and I didn’t get as many bills taken care of by management as I do now. My three favourite words aren’t “I love you” – the chance of hearing that sentiment would be a fine thing – “on the house” or “half price” have become my lullabies.

At
Callum’s disciplinary hearing he did insist he tried to tell me off but strangely found he couldn’t. In the Gherkin he’d always been able to stand his ground; something strange happened that afternoon and he seemed to… I don’t know…
fall in love with me
? I recollected for the panel how he couldn’t stop staring at me or laughing at my rubbish jokes. He even ordered us a bottle of Dom. It didn’t quite go with the cream scones, but free champagne is always free champagne.

I guess I should have been more surprised – this wa
s the man who would reject a receipt for splashing out on a Venti from Starbucks; he bitterly reimbursed a Tall like the money was coming out of his pocket – yet bizarrely he offered to extend what I thought was our afternoon treat. We went for a Nonshing Kyphi body treatment at the Sanctuary, by which point I had stopped blinking in disbelief at his bill-paying change of heart and I didn’t think twice at his suggestion of an early dinner at Clos Maggiore. (OK, I was a little bit tipsy.)

I suppose I
should
have twigged from the rather romantic table we had, as well as the second bottle of champagne, but the first time I learnt that Callum was supposed to be telling me off for my expenses that afternoon was at his disciplinary meeting.

The
memory of my delightful afternoon is tainted now by recalling Callum’s not-so-delightful screaming that I had bewitched him, projected a hypnotic desire onto him outside the safe zone of
New News
, and that I was nothing more than a “cock-tease” as I’d not invited him in for “coffee” after he’d spent all his (
New News’
) money on me. I swear, I was clueless to his intentions, but I knew from that moment on it was safer not to expose myself to any male outside the
New News
sanctuary for fear that they too would become infected by the Callum virus.

Luckily
, my bewildered statement was believed and Callum was transferred. I was told not to worry about my expenses because
New News
would always take care of the bills, as long as I didn’t take action against them for Callum’s sexual harassment… I wasn’t sure what harassment they were referring to as I’d enjoyed my afternoon but who was I to question the ruling of the almighty HR floor when I was still on probation?

When I got
hauled into a disciplinary hearing after going out with Jake, another Accounts man who bumped into me when I was walking into the building and asked me out, I twigged it would be safer to keep away from my work colleagues in a social context. Since these incidents I’ve only seen females or Jerry outside of work – he’s gay, he’s immune – which makes me very apprehensive about this lunch with Theo. I know I’ll be the one sent away if the Callum virus hits Theo. He’s their star columnist; I’m
me
.

Despite my recent feelings of boredom,
I
like
working here. There is no way I want to be sent to the
Yummy Mummy
magazine and have to choose what’s Hot or Not in parenthood because I’m not at that stage of my life yet. Or, even worse, be sent to the pre-teen mag
Cupcake
and have to dictate what’s Hot or Not for the tween crowd. I’m
so
over my childhood, it’s untrue; plus, I freely admit I’m kind of jealous of the little blighters.

You can see
why I need to talk to Sara and use up valuable research time to find out how I can stop Callum disease from afflicting Theo. She’s qualified to write the psychology column here, so she’s good enough for me. Besides, I can hardly phone Glinda when I share a pod-wall with the topic of conversation, can I? 

‘Hi Sara,’ I chirp. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Not bad, not bad.’ She stirs her tea.

Her mug reads “I love Freud” in the “I love New York” t-shirt style (only Hot in the New York scenario – “I love my cat” doesn’t make the grade in my column).
It’s ironic because, of course, she hates Freud, despite her column perspective often being Freudian-based. Her
New News
take has to be less based on the statistical scientific research and brain dissections that she studied at Cambridge, and be more Jerry Springer meets Michael Parkinson. It’s a brash sort of politeness, an extreme take on the heart of the problem.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why
Parky really retired? It’s because he found out I was going to declare him Not Hot in my column to Jonathan Ross’ Hotness. He announced his retirement before my column was published, saving him the humiliation of having to quit after my column caused his ratings to plummet as they inevitably would have done. It’s cruel my job sometimes…

B
ack to Sara. Her answer is always “not bad, not bad” because she maintains you should never expose any flaws and try to remain neutral like Switzerland when out and about in
New News
territory. Sara, if you ask me, is wasted here with regular thoughts like this but being surrounded by the clever people has its advantages.

‘H
ow are you?’ she asks, squinting at me seriously as she takes in my outfit, a simple affair of black bootcut Miss Sixty jeans, a deep purple chiffon blouse and an over-sized chunky grey cardigan. Sara believes that our outfits represent the feng shui of our minds, though this doesn’t apply to her. She’s wearing a weird thick green woollen dress with boring flat black boots.

‘In Trouble,
’ I state, causing Sara to twirl her shiny black curls erratically, a sure sign she’s giving this her full attention.

‘Column-wise or man-wise?’

‘Man.’

‘Lunch?’

‘That’s the issue. Theo wants to take me out for lunch.’

‘Theo!’ Sara declares
, making frantic eyes at me.

How
rude! She doesn’t have to imply that Theo and I going to lunch is
that
shocking…

‘Where’s that tea, Geli?’ Theo interrupts, making me jump out of my skin.

Ah,
that’s
what her frantic eyes meant. Maybe Glinda is right. Maybe I am a
little
paranoid. Only a little though. I’m sure it’s
mostly
justified.