Mr. Commitment (16 page)

I felt my body deflate in humiliation. “But I thought . . .”

“Well, you thought wrong. Has your position on togetherness changed?”

I didn’t answer.

“Yes, well, mine hasn’t either!” She stood up and came over to sit on the bed next to me with her head in her hands. Her anger disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. “Now look what we’ve done,” she said. “What about this friends thing we had going?”

“It’s still there,” I said dejectedly. “Just as long as we stay away from £4.99 bottles of red wine.” I searched around for my underwear. It felt ridiculous being the only one naked in the room. “Can you pass my clothes, please?”

Mel picked up my jeans off the floor and threw them at me playfully. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“You came around to seduce me. Looking all cute and worn out.”

“I did no such thing!” I protested.

She laughed. “Why not? Aren’t I good enough to seduce, eh?”

“What about you?” I said accusingly. “You only invited me round here because you were jealous that I was together with Alexa. All this time I’ve had to listen to you go on about Rob 1, but it was okay, because
you
had someone else. The minute I found someone else, though, you didn’t like it, did you?”

I knew I shouldn’t have said it. Yes, it was true. Yes, it scored a few points on the self-righteous scoreboard. But was it worth it? Not at all. Yet another
LEAVE WELL ALONE
option that I’d failed to exercise.
Why do I always say the wrong thing at the wrong time?

Mel didn’t say another word to me. Instead she got dressed, put on her jacket and shoes, grabbed her briefcase and hermetically sealed the door with a slam so forceful something fell and crashed on the floor next door. I got up and looked into the living room. Fat Buddha was lying smashed on the floor with his head rolling toward the sofa. I picked up the pieces sadly and placed them on the coffee table.

I walked back to the bedroom and looked out of the window. I watched as Mel got into her car, slamming the door shut behind her. It was a bizarre scene to watch, because all the time I kept thinking,
Her hair is still wet.

. . . and your plan is?

“
D
uffy, it’s Mel.”

“Hi,” I said cagily. It had been two weeks since I’d last heard from her. “When did you get back from Tuscany?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“How was it . . . your holiday, I mean?”

“It was all right,” she said dismissively. “I don’t think the food agreed with me. I kept being sick all the time.”

Was it too much to ask for Rob 1 to be ill too? A touch of gastroenteritis. A smidgen of dysentery. A tinge of beri-beri. “Did Rob suffer too?”

“He couldn’t go in the end. Something came up at work.”

Excellent! Better than disease—penalized by hard work.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said airily.

“I’m sure you are,” she said sardonically. “But none of this has anything to do with why I’ve called. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said last time we were together. You were right: I think I
was
jealous about you and Alexa. It was wrong of me to invite you round and to let what happened happen. I suppose I just wanted to see if you still wanted me, and if you’re truthful you wanted to know exactly the same thing. You have to admit it, Duff.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Of course you do,” she persisted, her voice revealing a complete lack of doubt. “Don’t forget how well I know you.”

“Okay, you’re right,” I admitted finally. “But where does that leave us? You still have feelings for me. I still have feelings for you. You want one thing, I want something else, and to top it all we’re both seeing other people.”

“The way I see it,” said Mel authoritatively, making it clear that she’d given the matter a great deal of thought, “we’ve got to face up to the fact that, irrational as it may seem, we still mean a lot to each other but want different things from life. We were together for a long time, and that kind of intense feeling isn’t just going to disappear. We undoubtedly still feel the need to be part of each other’s lives—”

I interrupted. I could feel that Mel was going into over-analyzing mode—finding fifteen different ways of saying exactly the same thing. I’d had enough. I just wanted her to get to the point. “. . . and your plan is?”

“If only you knew how annoying that is, Duffy!” she snapped exasperatedly. “My
plan
is that as we can’t live with each other and we appear to be unable to live without each other, we have to do the mature thing. The adult thing.” She still wasn’t getting to the point.

“And that is?”

“Well, the way I see it, one of us has a well-developed conscience while the other likes to pretend that he hasn’t, even though I know he bloody well has. And so in the same manner that criminals are sometimes forced by courts to face up to their wrongdoings by meeting the victims of their crime, we should meet each other’s new partners.”

I coughed nervously. “You’re joking, right?”

“It totally makes sense, Duff.”

“On Planet Psychotic perhaps, but here on earth I think you’ll find that what you’ve suggested is deranged.”

Mel continued, unruffled. “Once we meet each other’s new partners they’ll both become real. This way I can convert the image of Alexa as ‘that bitch off the TV who’s sleeping with my ex-boyfriend’ to ‘Alexa, the human being who finds herself in the middle of this terribly entangled situation.’ She becomes real.”

“But aren’t you forgetting one small thing?”

“What?”

“I’ve already met Rob 1 ‘that tosspot who’s going out with my ex-girlfriend,’ so I can be excused from this nightmare. He didn’t become ‘Rob 1 the unfortunate individual caught up between two people who’ ”—I chose my words carefully—“ ‘have strong feelings for each other.’ I loathed him before I met him and totally despised him after the event. It’s just the way it goes.”

“Let me explain this to you, Duffy,” said Mel, adopting a businesslike tone I suspected she used at work with difficult clients, “in terms you can understand. We can’t carry on being friends if we don’t try to do something to rectify this situation. That’s no phone calls. No meeting up together. No letters. E-mails. No communication whatsoever. I know it’ll be difficult but it’s the only way if you won’t do this.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. “Anyway,” her voice was much lighter in tone now she’d got my attention, “you haven’t met Rob properly at all. He’s a really nice guy. He likes you. He told me so.”

It was all I could do to stop myself from tutting contemptuously. “I bet he’s told you he’s not jealous that you phone me either; that he’s happy we’re still in each other’s lives; that it doesn’t bother him when you mention my name . . .”

“Yes,” snapped Mel.

“Mel, these are guy lies! Can’t you see that? It’s not in our natures to like He-Who-Was-There-Before-Us. It’s natural selection. The selfish gene.”

“Look, I’m serious. We have to do something. And we have to do it now.” She played her trump card. “Have you got a better solution?”

“No,” I said.

“Then it looks like we’re going with mine, then, doesn’t it? Next Saturday night. You and Alexa come round to mine. I’ll make something nice and we’ll sort out this whole thing.”

“But won’t they think it’s suspicious that we’re suddenly having this meeting? I mean, you’re not going to tell Rob 1 about what happened, are you?”

“You know what a terrible liar I am. I feel like I’m going to be struck down by a bolt of lightning every time I tell my mum that I didn’t skip breakfast, but this would hurt Rob too much.” She paused. “How would Alexa react?”

“She’d be really mad,” I lied. I hadn’t the faintest clue what Alexa would think. “Absolutely furious.”

I
t was the day of the dinner invitation and I’d just arrived at Alexa’s. I was wearing a dark burgundy suit without a tie in a bid to look both smart and casual. Alexa, however, had insisted on dressing up. She was wearing a purple top that had all the seams on the outside by a Dutch designer whose name I couldn’t pronounce, and black wide-legged trousers from Joseph. I knew all this information about the labels because she’d insisted that I accompany her on a shopping spree in New Bond Street for the whole afternoon. It was a truly frightening experience. Not only did she not bother looking at a single price tag the whole time we were out, but she deliberated over a pair of shoes for three hours and still didn’t buy them. Shopping for soft furnishings with Mel was a doddle compared to this.

“Come in,” said Alexa, holding open her front door. I followed her into the lounge. “Do you want a drink? I’m having a glass of wine.”

“Yeah, go on, then,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. I looked down at Alexa’s feet as she handed me the glass of wine. “Are those what I think they are?”

“Yes.” She laughed. “The second I got home I knew I wanted them after all. I called a cab and went straight back to the shop and bought them. And even if I do say so myself, they look fantastic.”

“They do,” I said. I took a moment to take in her whole outfit. “In fact all of you looks fantastic.”

“You don’t look too bad yourself.”

She sat down next to me and took a sip of her wine. “I’ve got to tell you something that I know you’re not going to like,” she said.

“What is it?” I asked, hoping she was going to deliver the “this isn’t working out” speech. It had been obvious for quite a while that Alexa and I were never really meant to be. She was beautiful, fun to be with, and for all her pretensions actually quite down to earth, but she wasn’t right for me. Though cured, I was still feigning impotence—a sign, if any were needed, that things weren’t quite right—and when I’d explained Mel’s suggestion to her earlier in the week she’d said yes without even blinking an eyelid. No one normal should want to meet their current partner’s ex-partner that much. If it had been the other way round and Alexa had wanted me to meet any of her ex-boyfriends, there would’ve been no way I’d have done it. We just weren’t suited. I didn’t mind, though, because I really did think we could be friends—especially as, technically speaking, we hadn’t seen each other totally naked.

“It’s about the audition,” she said.

I stopped breathing.

“The executive producer called me about an hour ago to let me know she’d made her decision. I’m sorry, but you didn’t get the job. I tried really hard to swing it for you. I really did, but they kept going on that you weren’t what they were looking for, whatever that means. But they don’t know anything. Don’t worry about it, Duff. Something else will come up soon, I’m sure.”

I drained my glass of wine and didn’t say anything. I purposely hadn’t been thinking about the audition, because I knew that if I gave it any thought at all, by the time I’d finished churning out vast numbers of hope-filled “what ifs,” it would become the biggest thing in my life. Unfortunately, it was only now as I sat on this sofa, not saying anything and feeling like the whole world was collapsing around my ears, that I realized how misguided I’d been. Despite my efforts, the audition had been the biggest thing in my life this past few months. It had been the one thing keeping me afloat. It had been the best thing that had happened to me in the eight years of being heckled, ripped off and lied to. It hurt not to have it happen. It hurt more than I could bear. I looked at Alexa and then at the room that I was sitting in. None of this felt right. This was all wrong.

“You win some, you lose some,” I said eventually. “Who got it in the end?”

She picked up a scrap of paper by the telephone. “Some guy called Greg Bennet. I think I even met him at one of the auditions.”

“Grim-looking, balding man with a massive Napoleon complex, talks a lot about football?”

“Yeah,” she said, puzzled. “Come to think of it, when I spoke to him he did say that he knew you too.”

I’ve had enough,
I told myself.
This is the end.
“I’m quitting comedy,” I said, letting my thoughts roam free. It felt odd saying those words at long last, and yet at the same time I was relieved.

“Not because of this stupid audition, surely?”

“Exactly because of this stupid audition. I’ve given this comedy lark my best shot for over eight years, and this audition was the biggest thing that’s happened to me in all that time. Maybe it’s a sign. I don’t know, maybe it’s time I realized I’m going to be one of the ones who doesn’t make it. I’m not bitter.” I paused. I wasn’t fooling anybody, least of all me. “No, I
am
bitter. I’m as bitter as it’s possible to be. I’ve given up everything chasing stupid dreams. Too much. Now it’s time to bail out before it’s too late.”

“This is a bad idea. You’re really talented, Duffy. You’ve just had a knock back. We all get those once in a while. You wait. Take a few weeks off, forget all about the audition and then everything will look different.”

“Did you know,” I said, wondering how I was ever going to tell Alexa that I didn’t want to see her anymore, “that Margaret Thatcher once said, ‘If a man finds himself a passenger on a bus, having attained the age of twenty-six, he can account himself a failure in life’?”

“No.”

“Yeah, she did. I read it in an article in the
Guardian
last year. I pinned it on the cork notice board in the kitchen.” I sighed heavily. “Do you know how I get to work every day?”

“By bus?”

“For the last three years,” I said. “I’m two years past Maggie’s sell-by date and I’m still catching the bus. That’s why I’m giving up comedy. I need to get real. I need to stop traveling on buses.”

“Come on, Duff. What would you do? Get a permanent office job? You’d be banging your head against the walls within a week.”

I shrugged. “I could go back to college maybe. I don’t know. Do something constructive.”

“You’re just feeling depressed about not getting the job. Everyone knows what it feels like to be disappointed. There’ll be other auditions, other opportunities.”

“Maybe.” I sighed again. “And maybe not.”

“But that’s not all, is it?” she said, her eyes searching my face.

“What do you mean?”

“Us.”

“Us?”

“Yes, us.”

Alexa had obviously developed the same mind-reading technique that Mel possessed.

“Yeah, well, I was going to get round to ‘us.’ The thing is—”

“You’re still in love with your ex.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“I know, but it’s true. You were going to string me some old line about things not working out between us, because you’re too scared to admit what’s really going on. I’m no expert on love, but I am a woman. It’s totally obvious you’re still in love with Mel. There are only three reasons why any man would agree to go to dinner with his ex and her new boyfriend. One: he’s mad. Two: he’s stupid. Three: he’s still in love with her. You’re not mad or stupid, so what’s left? You talk about commitment like it’s an alien concept. This thing that you just can’t do. But all this time hasn’t it dawned on you that ‘commitment’ is what you’re doing right now? I read this brilliant thing once in a book: ‘What’s the difference between involvement and commitment? Think of eggs and bacon. The chicken was involved. The pig was committed.’ You, Mr. Duffy, are, probably always were, and definitely always will be, a pig.”

Alexa’s words slowly began to sink in. “So what you’re saying is I’ve been acting like a fool because I’m already committed to Mel . . .”

She nodded.

“So if I’m already committed to her, then it’s ridiculous being afraid of commitment. So there’s nothing stopping me from . . .” I stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

“I know,” said Alexa.

“Aren’t you mad at me or anything? I’ve led you a right dance: I’ve helped you spend hideous amounts of money on clothes you needn’t have bought, and if that’s not enough, I wouldn’t sleep with you even though you practically begged me.”

“Well, now you put it like that . . .” Alexa started to laugh. She leaned forward and kissed me. “Look, firstly I love buying clothes. Secondly, you’re kidding yourself if you think me and my brand-new shoes are staying in tonight pining for you while you’re proposing to your ex-girlfriend. And thirdly, rejection is good for the soul. Even if you are TV’s Hottest Totty. Duffy, you’re a nice guy, you really are, and I hope we can be friends, but the real reason I’m not bothered is because at the end of the day I’m just a sucker for a happy ending.”