Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (19 page)

“You look great, Willow, that dress is amazing—it really suits you, you are so lucky being able to wear yellow.”

“You are so lucky being a catwalk model!” Willow countered.

“I’d trade in these legs for those boobs any day,” Kayla went
on in her usual sweet ritual of trying to show lesser beings that she was just like them, even in the rain, which she obviously hated.

“Shame, really, that you never get long legs and big breasts in one package,” Serious James said out of the blue, cupping his hands in front of his chest in an ill-advised mime. Willow and Kayla looked at him. He was wearing a sort of parka with the hood up, which made him look like a vaguely menacing sex pest. “I mean, I suppose you could. I expect there are women with big breasts and long legs, but probably not real ones, not real breasts, I mean. Probably implants and I don’t think implants are sexy at all. I mean, they’re not supposed to point straight out when you see them naked, are they, and I think that the whole sex with a big-breasted woman thing would be spoiled because I’d be feeling them and all I’d be thinking about would be that little silicone sack in there, and that’s not sexy. What I mean is that a naturally shaped woman, whatever that shape might be, is better than one who’s been surgically enhanced—”

“James, shut up, bro.” Daniel clapped his friend on the shoulder and handed him a beer. “Stop talking before these two have you arrested.”

“It’s the cold. I’ve got hypothermic delusions,” James complained, and yet he was out here too, waiting for Daniel’s un-seasonal cooking. Daniel really did have a knack for getting anyone to do anything for him.

“Is that your routine?” Kayla asked James. “Is that what you’re doing on Thursday, only it’s not really very funny?”

Willow repressed a smile. Sweet-natured and beautiful as Kayla was, she had a natural talent for tactlessness that Willow liked about her the most, even when it was directed at her.

“No, honestly, it’s me not being able to talk . . . around women that I . . . admire,” James confessed, dipping his head
so his hood slipped back, revealing his tousled blond hair. “I’ve always been the same since school.”

“Apparently you told Lexi the name of every star in the sky, she said you were the most interesting man she’s ever met—you didn’t have any trouble talking to her!” Kayla said, adding, a touch bitterly, “And she’d just got the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue.”

“Lexi is very nice. She’s very . . . tall. I like her, but I don’t, you know . . .” James flushed crimson. “I like her as a person.”

“I know, I think that’s why she’s so obsessed with you.” Kayla giggled. “No one ever liked Lexi as a person before, which is hardly surprising—she’s a bitch.”

James smiled at Willow before examining the top of his bottle of beer. “That’s why I’m still single. I’ll either have to marry a beautiful deaf girl who can’t hear the offensive drivel I come out with or someone I don’t find attractive at all but can enjoy witty banter with. It’s my only hope. How’s your hearing, Willow?”

“Willow’s not deaf, James!” Kayla shook her head, rolling her eyes at Willow. “Just try to relax and be yourself, like you are around Lexi. Apparently
that
person is a dream date. Okay?” Kayla patted him, just short of on the head, and wandered off to where Daniel was incinerating shellfish, leaving Willow and James alone, each furiously fumbling for something to say to the other.

At a loss, Willow watched as Kayla draped her long arm around Daniel’s shoulders and rested her head against him, a sweet casual gesture of affection. It must be nice to be that relaxed with another person, even if it was an illusion. Kayla really didn’t deserve the way Daniel talked about her.

“So,” James said out of the blue, clearly having geared himself up for a conversation. “How’s work?”

“Oh, the same self-serving, narcissistic, cannibalistic
frenzy that it always is,” Willow remarked. James laughed, a little too enthusiastically. Then there was silence again. After one more excruciating moment of awkwardness, Willow took pity on him.

“How’s the stand-up going?”

“Not bad, actually.” James hazarded a rather sweet, lopsided smile. “I’ve got my first ever paid gig next Thursday. When I say paid, I mean fifty quid and a couple of pints, but still, it’s come out of all the open mike stuff I’ve been doing, so it’s a step up, of sorts. It’s in a pub near Battersea Bridge. Maybe you could come along, a bit of moral support? With everyone else, I mean?”

“Well, I could do with a laugh,” Willow said politely. “It’s just I’ve . . .”

“Oh, that’s brilliant, I’d really love it if you would, I think it would make me really go for it. . . .” They both spoke at the same time, James realizing seconds too late that Willow was turning him down.

“But of course if you’re busy . . .” James’s neck flared scarlet.

“No, no, I
will
come. If I possibly can I will,” Willow found herself saying, because she couldn’t bear his discomfort and disappointment anymore. “I do have this complicated work thing and this other complicated sort of family thing that might get in the way, but providing the situation is stable and doesn’t look like it might go nuclear then I will be there.”

“Right.” James nodded. “Right. Well, thanks. I mean, it’s no big deal, one way or the other. You do work in a talent agency, right? Not a bomb disposal unit?”

“Fair point,” Willow said, her wry smile rendering him unable to look at her, opting instead to study the horizon, where London’s jagged edges tore at the soft-pink evening sky.

“I do get a bit caught up in my work sometimes,” Willow said. “But honestly, I’m not making it up, it is a really delicate
situation. I can’t tell you about it . . . which makes me sound like I think I work for MI5, I know. But my point is, I’m not trying to think up an excuse because I don’t want to come.”

“Really?”

“Really. I will be there if I can. I actually think you are very brave. If a bit mad. It’s a fine line, isn’t it, between people laughing with you or at you?”

“I’d settle for near me,” James said. “Well, if you can make it then we’re all going for a drink afterward, that’s assuming I’m not in the emergency room with serious head trauma from all the objects that will be thrown at me. Seriously, Willow, it would be so cool if you were there.”

Willow pursed her lips, tried not to say what was on the tip of her tongue, and then failed, just as she knew she would.

“What is it, really, that you see in me?” she challenged him. “I don’t mean all the fluff you trot out. I mean really, why are you trying to go out with me?”

James looked perplexed. “Why wouldn’t I? You’re great.”

“What do you mean by great?” Willow pressed him. “I’m overweight, I’m well over thirty-five, I’m divorced, I’m married to my job, I barely function in any kind of relationship, I don’t really like people . . . in fact I don’t have that much going for me at all. Is that why? Have you picked me because you think I’ll be grateful?”

“No, n-n . . . not at all,” James said, clearly flustered. “Is that how you see yourself, Willow? Really?”

“It’s not how I see myself, it’s how I am.” Willow shrugged, crossing her arms.

James looked away from her for a moment, studying the skyline, gradually softening under the enveloping darkness.

“I’m trying to get you to go out with me,” he said so softly and carefully that Willow had to lean a little closer to hear what he was saying, “because I really, really fancy you. And because
you don’t let anything frighten you, or stand in your way. And although you do frighten me, quite a lot, especially at the moment, and admittedly I don’t know you that brilliantly well yet, I know enough about you to know I want to know more. And I really do think that if you got to know me a little more, you’d like me back.” James chanced a smile. “For example, I’m persistent, an excellent quality to have in a boyfriend, plus I don’t let my fears conquer me, either. If I did, I’d be running down the stairs and far away from that extremely attractive scowly, cross face you are doing, instead of standing here still talking.”

Willow almost smiled, which gave James the courage to look at her again.

“And for the record, all those things you seem to think of as faults, they are things I like about you.”

“So you’re a fat freak?” Willow asked him sharply. “With a fetish for big girls?”

“You really have no idea at all about men, do you?” James said, which gave Willow a moment’s pause. “Beautiful is beautiful, it’s got nothing to do with size or weight. And you are beautiful. And frightening. I might have a slightly kinky thing for scary women, I won’t deny that. But I am quite clearly born to live life on the edge. Most of us accountants are.”

This time Willow’s almost-smile curled upward, her opaque anger with and mistrust of James’s fondness for her clearing for a moment.

“I almost made you laugh,” he said, holding her gaze for a second or two before dropping his eyes to the floor.

“Almost,” Willow agreed. “Although I still think you are insane for liking me, if you actually do like me and this isn’t some sort of plot to gather material for your act.”

“Have you only ever known despicable men? I mean, I know you know Daniel, but surely you’ve worked out by now that we aren’t all bad, haven’t you?”

Willow didn’t know how to answer that question so she remained silent.

“Well, almost making you laugh is a start,” James added, that sweet smile slowly returning.

There was a moment of silence between them while Willow tried to process everything that James had said and he tried and failed for some time to think of something else to say.

“Those are stunning shoes, by the way,” James said eventually, gesturing at her feet. “You have the most beautiful ankles, like . . . like . . . oh, I really didn’t think about where I was planning to go with that sentence.”

“I tell you what, let’s just leave it at that and say no more about it,” Willow said, repressing a smile.

“Talking to you is just like talking to Annabel Fisher,” James said.

“Who?”

“This girl at school. She was in the year above me, a real warrior queen, pink hair and attitude, you know the sort. I had the hugest crush on her, only she didn’t like me because I wasn’t cool, I was last of the boys in my year to have a growth spurt and I had a bit of a stutter, back then. Didn’t stop me, though, I was like a little kamikaze Romeo—I’d be there every break time trying to have a conversation with her. It never worked, but like I said, I’m nothing if not persistent.”

Willow looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Brave, more like. You must be brave to want to do stand-up, I’d never have the guts.”

“Perhaps.” James shrugged. “Courage in all things, that’s sort of my motto. If I lose in life, I never want it to be because I was too afraid to try.”

For the briefest of moments the two held each other’s gaze, and Willow got the feeling he was about to say something more.

“James, I thought I told you to stop talking out loud to women,” Daniel called from inside, where he was laying out prawn and chicken kebabs. “Come inside and eat. I need to ask Willow about you know what.”

“You know what?” Willow looked at James, who instantly looked guilty.

“What?
What?
” Willow hung her coat up as she followed the others inside, awkwardly sidestepping James, who was waiting behind her for the coat hook, so that the side of her bosom brushed the back of his hand.

“Oh, God, I didn’t—”

“I know.” Willow smiled at him; it really did seem that he couldn’t do anything right around her. It was like looking at the reverse image of Daniel, with all his dark good looks and smooth talking. James was blond, Celtic-looking, with his greenish eyes, although there was a total lack of silver tongue to go with it. He was tall and unruly, where Daniel was compact and neat. James was one of those people who was born to be untidy, with his white shirt buttoned up wrong and his hair giving the very strong impression that he’d recently gone through a hedge the wrong way.

She leaned in closer to him, enjoying the paralysis of uncertainty as she whispered in his ear, “Your buttons are done up wrong.”

Leaving James to defluster, Willow followed Daniel into his living room and slid onto a chair, conscious of the James-size space that Daniel and Kayla had left next to her. “What do you want to ask me?”

“
Venus at the Mirror,
” Daniel said, leaning over so that he could remove a piece of folded paper from the pockets of his jeans. “Painted in 1615 by Rubens. He was in his late thirties at the time but he’d just married his second wife, who was sixteen. How’s that for an age gap? Those were the days.” Daniel
spread an image of the painting out in front of her. “She was this gorgeous big blond girl, she featured in most of his work from that point on, which is why when people describe larger women they often call them Rubenesque.”

“Code for fat, you mean,” Willow said, taking the color photocopy that Daniel handed her and smoothing it out on the table. It showed the image of a porcelain-skinned woman from behind, her large bottom topped with generous hips nestled into velvet cushions, ripples of flesh shimmering down her back. Her long blond hair was tossed over one shoulder, and you could only see the reflection of her face in a mirror that was being held by a rather knowing-looking boy, possibly a cherub, whose gaze was most certainly not directed at her face. To the right of her a black male servant looked rather bored.