Green (4 page)

And I'm here, the loser onion boy in the rain shadow of Frank's dumb porn display, and it's more than possible that we could both be looking like idiots.

‘Put it down,' I tell him. ‘I'll never have sex in my whole life if you don't put that down.'

‘Oh,' he says, a little surprised. ‘Okay, sorry.'

And my outburst costs us a customer, but it had to be said.

Then for quite a while nothing happens. Frank stares at the same three physio students, continues to deliver them heaps of eye. They laugh and show him the finger and stay right where they are, squirting more cask red into their plastic cups and looking impressively unenticed.

‘Jeez, we're not doing so well,' Frank says, swigging a mouthful of Creme de Menthe right from the bottle and swaying subtly to the left and then back again.

‘I think people have enough meat for now. There'll be some back for seconds.'

‘You know that's not what I mean.'

And the day's about to get easier. He's about to join me in the tail spin. His confidence has risen to foolish heights and he's about to do the Icarus thing. It's a semi-regular pattern, and I can pick when it's going to happen. From Greek mythology, Frank has learned nothing.

‘I can't believe we could both leave here today without pulling some action,' he says, totally believing it. ‘I don't know what's going on. What's going on?'

‘The usual. The 70 per cent of the time for you 100 per cent of the time for me usual, dickhead.'

‘Might have to pick up a mag on the way home. Would you be up for that?'

‘What, buying you another porn mag?'

‘No. Go you halves. The usual.'

‘Frank, this is very depressing. No one even wants our food any more.'

‘What is this?' he says. ‘It's still only the fucking afternoon. I can't believe we're gone already.'

‘Yeah, but it's too hot. Too hot to eat this stuff.'

‘I don't care if they eat it or not. We're not cooking it so people can eat it. Will you stop talking about the fucking food?'

I'm finding it easier to deal with in terms of the food, but all of a sudden Frank's finding nothing easy. A shitty kind of silence seems to descend upon us. The three women, now no longer being worked on by Frank's eye, seem to have noted the substantial semi-circle of space in front of us, and seem to be smirking. He tips a couple of steaks and another tray of sausages onto the barbecue, but half-heartedly and only so that he's got something to do.

And I actually like Frank better when he's depressed, but it's not as though I don't feel guilty about it.

Fat spits and the sausages sizzle and one of them sticks on the hot metal and rips and Frank mutters something that begins with, ‘Can't even fuckin' . . . '

‘It's okay,' I tell him. ‘I quite like the crunchy bits. That one can be mine.'

At the edge of the crowd, one of the three women (the one with the nose) crushes their empty wine cask under her foot and starts to make her way over to the bar. And then the other two start heading our way. They must have seen Frank put the new stuff on. I give him a nudge, and his instincts have kicked in by the time they get to us.

‘Can I tempt either of you ladies with my meat?' he says, mustering his most seductive patter from somewhere and emphasising the word meat as much as possible.

‘Not really,' one of them says and smirks again. ‘Not our scene.'

‘Can't believe you've come all this way for Philby's onions,' he says, and I could kill him for it, but it's already too late.

‘No. Listen,' she says. ‘We were just thinking. You guys, you're working hard, and you're not looking too cheery. Specially you.' Looking at me. Which is bad, since Frank's still looking pretty glum. ‘We were thinking, you'd be due for a break round about now, wouldn't you?'

‘For sure,' Frank says, as though all the eye work's paying off and the day's finally starting to make sense.

‘Yeah. That's what we were thinking. And, well . . . ' she pauses, looks at the one who hasn't spoken, and gets a nod. ‘We were feeling like a bit of a break from this ourselves, hey Lisa?'

‘Yeah.'

And even Frank is gawking at them, at the possibilities of this, and how easy it's looking for both of us. Even Frank doesn't think he's this good with the eye, and knows it's the kind of scenario he normally only lies about when we're driving to uni, not something that actually happens. And even though, in the usual way, I don't expect I'll be able to speak for the next couple of hours, it might not be a problem, since I guess I'm with Lisa, and she doesn't seem like much of a talker.

‘So what have you got in mind?' Frank says, pretty sure of what they've got in mind.

Am I ready for this? No. No way. Can I stop it? Can I go home now? Could I please meet someone nice, and have some say in what happens to me? My hand pokes around with the tongs, and shakes. I imagine Lisa without clothes, and me in the vicinity. The shake gets worse.

‘Well, this is the interesting bit,' the non-Lisa one says. ‘You know that totally bullshit guy fantasy? The one about getting to watch two lesbians?'

And Frank says, ‘Yeah,' just as I'm saying ‘What?'

And she looks at me and says, ‘That fantasy. The one about watching two women doing it. Well, we just thought, we were feeling kind of sorry for you. And sometimes we quite like to be watched.'

And she's saying this right at me, so I have to say something back, but all I can say is, ‘God. Are you serious? Isn't it kind of a private thing?'

She gives a shrug. ‘All right. Just asking. Just thought it could be, you know, fun.'

‘Um,' Frank says, to stop them going, as he makes a big deal of turning a steak that doesn't need it.

‘Yeah?'

‘You'd be thinking, like, now? Inside somewhere?'

‘Yeah.'

He turns the steak again, two or three times.

‘Oh, I could be up for it,' he says. ‘It's getting hot out here. And I reckon we've fed everyone. Hey Phil?'

And now I remember a few times when we've bought the mags. And how we often, well, usually, end up with one featuring an alleged lesbian scenario. And that whenever Frank's made me chip in, the lesbian scenario always ends up in his half. There may be a pattern at work, and one not quite covered by Frank's usual explanation of, ‘Hey Philby, twice the norks.'

‘Um,' he says, in a way that makes it clear there's more to it than um. ‘Any chance of one of you, you know, giving me a bit of a working over?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Oh, you know, physically. Whatever. Nothing funny. Just, like, with something. Like a belt, or . . . '

‘Aw, yuk. What do you think this is?'

‘Hey, just asking.'

And Lisa says, quietly but firmly, ‘I think I could.'

‘And could you, you know, talk and stuff?'

‘Not much of a talker.'

‘I'm not looking for anything fancy.'

‘Maybe, then. But, you know, it's not totally sexual. To be honest, you really shitted me off all last year at any of the faculty things we had. So, you know, I'm up for it.'

‘Look, if we're being honest, I don't mind if you hate me,' And he passes me his tongs and says, ‘You'll be right?' And I nod and he says, ‘Well. Girls. What are we waiting for?'

He picks up his bottle of Creme de Menthe, and the three of them walk off into the crowd, like people on their way to a lecture, no hint of what they're planning.

And now that I think about it, all the leather and pain stuff tends to end up in Frank's half of the mag as well. Actually, it's possible that we've never bought a mag that hasn't had at least one alleged lesbian scenario and something to do with riding crops, but the whole pain thing makes me very uneasy, so I've never complained when Frank guts the raunchy bits and I end up with only the articles. Which, come to think of it, always seems to be the way.

And the third of the women, the one who went inside first, the one with the nose, is now out again with a jug of red wine, and she comes over to me.

‘So they've gone, have they?' she says.

‘Yeah. Frank and your two . . . friends? Yeah.'

‘Not your thing, hey?'

‘Well, no, to be honest. I don't actually get it.'

‘So what do you get?'

‘God, not much really.'

Somehow it's easy to say this to her, so I tell her I've never had brilliant results with girls, much as I'd like to. It's almost like talking to a guy, talking about girls with a lesbian, and knowing there's nothing at stake. So I tell her, sort of as a joke, that I think it must have been easier in other centuries, and I run my poetry theory by her. And she laughs, but nicely. I've never told anyone my poetry theory before.

And I say to her, ‘Maybe you can help me. I've got this thing. This thing where I can't get started. It's like, I can't even start a conversation with a girl, a straight girl, in case it doesn't work out. Frank says I should play the numbers, and not care if it doesn't work out, but I just don't think that's me, because I do care. And I'd like to, you know, get to know them a bit. I can't start the conversation maybe partly because I like it. I like the talking. I like the idea that one thing leads to another when you're ready for it to, but I don't think that's how things work. It's a dumb idea.'

‘Is this some line?' she says, and laughs.

And I laugh too, since we both know how useless a line would be. ‘No. I'm not that dumb.'

I ask her her name, realising I can't keep thinking about her as Lesbian Number Three, and it turns out it's Melissa.

It also turns out that I like her and, without the possibility of sexual tension, that's much easier to do than usual. In other circumstances, though clearly not these, I could find her attractive. But even as things are we could be friends, which wouldn't be so bad.

I can make her laugh, and she seems to like it. I certainly do.

She takes Frank's tongs and we cook the food together for the people who want seconds. She tells me a few things about girls, straight girls, and I don't mind listening, even if she is making them up.

Demand dies down again, and it's just the two of us, turning things.

‘You're looking a bit sweaty there,' she says.

‘Well, yeah. It's thirty-seven degrees and I'm stuck behind a barbecue.'

‘You know what? I think it's somebody else's turn.'

‘Probably.'

‘A swim'd be good.'

‘I've been thinking that all day.'

‘Yeah, but I live in a flat a couple of streets away, and we've got a pool.'

‘Oh, that'd be great. So are you going to round up a few people?'

‘No, I hadn't really thought of it that way. I was thinking you and me. It's not a big pool, but it'd be nice. And No one ever uses it. And maybe we could have something to eat other than this shit,' she says, turning a steak I'm in the process of thoughtlessly charring.

‘Oh yeah?'

‘Yeah.'

She pours herself more red wine from the jug, takes a sip.

And I'm thinking, can you actually ask someone if they aren't a lesbian? Can you actually get someone to confirm right now that they're the lesbian you'd thought they were, so that you can relax again and get back to the conversation.

‘Yeah. Just us,' she says. ‘A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou,' in a voice that turns self-consciously Elizabethan at the end.

She shuffles a few crispy onion bits.

‘Oh right. Once more into the breech, dear friends,' I say in something like panic, then crash internally as I contemplate simultaneously the sudden strange obstetric overtones, and the fact that I think the next line has something to do with our English dead. ‘Sorry. I . . . '

‘It's fine. I like
Henry V.
It was a bit of a surprise, but . . . '

‘Can I've another go?'

‘Sure. Got anything less war-like?'

‘That's the plan. Um . . . give me a sec.' Someone wanders up and I dish out another couple of overdone sausages, thinking frantically, thinking till I'm in such a knot it almost hurts. But there's nothing. Nothing that'll work. And, damn it, I've come so far. Tail spin. Nose dive. Warning. This woman may not be a lesbian. ‘No,' I tell her, and then I hear myself continue, ignoring the loud internal voice that's shouting, idiot, idiot, shut up you stupid dumb virgin, ‘I'm stuck. I've got one from Marlowe, but it's a bit much. For just having a swim.'

‘That's okay.'

‘Even with the wine and bread. And the thou. A bit much.'

‘It's okay.'

Frank lurches out from behind the building, waving his empty bottle and stumbling down the stairs. He staggers over our way, lifts up his apron front and shows me welts.

Where his shirt's gone, I don't know. And his shorts too, unfortunately. And did Lisa get his underpants as part of the deal?

‘Snug fit you've got down there, Frank,' I tell him, but he just says ‘Woo-woo, woo-woo,' jerking his right hand up and down as though he's pulling on something round about shoulder level. ‘Woo-woo.' Like The Little Engine That Just Did. ‘And they reckon rubber doesn't show,' he shouts. ‘They should try the tubes on the Bunsen burners in Two Twelve.'

‘They've practically perished. They're pretty grungy. They'd sting.'

‘Oh, yeah. And she really fucking hated me. You too.'

‘What?'

‘I kept saying to her, it's Frank, it's Frank, but all she wanted to scream was “All men are bastards”.' He burps, in a dangerous kind of way, as though there's much more than gas at stake. ‘Fuck,' he says, in a deep, spooky voice. ‘I smell mint.'

And he scrambles for the rockery.