The Numbers Game (24 page)

            “Damn, I
really don’t think I could go out there again,” he said, speaking of women in
general, as if they were a battlefield.       “Really, is it worth it? Fifteen
minutes of satisfaction for a lifetime of pain?”

            Rick
grinned.

            “You
didn’t complain when Biffy had your time and attention.”

            “Oh so
that’s the secret now? Pay them to do their stuff and go away.” 

            “You have
to admit the practice does have its merits,” Rick said, reaching down to grab
another handful of shelled peanuts off the coffee table. He cracked one open,
threw the nuts into his mouth and discarded the cracked shell onto the already
towering pile on a serviette.  “At the very least it keeps hooligans and crime
off the streets. Isn’t that the argument for legalizing brothels, to minimize
rape and crap?”

            “Ah huh,”
Markie agreed, looking around once more. “This ain’t a bad place you know.”

            And not
just because it was far, far away from Lola. The C-Lounge, with its live Friday
afternoon acoustic band, looked like the sort of place where people ordered
cocktails, and girls knew how to hold a conversation. He imagined that Serena,
with all her sophistication, would love to immerse herself here, yet they had
never been here before.  When was it that they stopped frequenting trendy, new
locales? The past few years, their social life was dictated more than
invitations than preference.

            “From the
looks of it, they’ll have some good sorts here tonight,” Rick observed. “Got
anything else planned?”

            “No, I can
hang here.”

            Why not?
Markie sighed. It wasn’t like he was going to lucky at home. If anything home
was more of a bad omen these days, it reminded him of his impending departure
and move to Rick’s place. This sucks he thought to himself. He had gotten what
he always wanted – the freedom, in fact the permission to sleep with a mass of
women and all he could think about now was which suitcase to pack his stuff in.
What if he forgot to take something really, really important, would Serena mind
him coming back for it? Probably not, though he noted Serena hadn’t had that
need herself to drop in. Then again she was a girl and girls do sick things
like borrow each other’s underwear when pressed.

            For the
next few hours, Rick and Markie hung out at the C-lounge, feeling quite like
Important People. Only Important People seemed to be floating about,
distinguished-looking men in suits, and pretty women in stockings, all under
the age of thirty. One could almost smell the wealth in the air, without any
hint of the wannabe desperation. If he was a female looking for a nice rich
guy, this was where Markie would come.

            “How long
has this place being open for?” he asked the waiter, when he brought over
another bottle of red wine. The guy looked like all the staff here,
fresh-faced, tanned and eager, with a strange name like Indigo, Jasper or Mango
(it was Rexy in this instance).

            “Not that
long,” he replied, “but it’s going well. People like the easygoing atmosphere.”

            Yes they
did, it appeared. By eight o’clock, the C-Lounge was packed and the doormen
were letting in only folk with member’s badges. There were no second-rate
chicks here either; all looked like they could appear in magazines of some sort
or another. At this point Rick and Markie realized they were blessed to have
snagged one of the lucrative yellow couches. There weren’t many about and two
girls nearby, so model tall their knees were at Markie’s eye level, kept looking
wistfully their way. He had seen this look before,
if only you guys would
move over just a tiny bit…

            “Would you
like a seat?” Markie motioned to them, before Rick could object. You see Rick
had a secret issue with keeping his legs too close together; he said it made
his balls uncomfortable, that they needed room to breathe.

            “Thanks,”
said the brunette, and more attractive one, plopping close beside Markie. Not
that the blonde was unattractive; Markie thought her repellent quality was a
consequence of being scarred by Lola. “I haven’t seen you guys before.”

            Oh so they
were regulars. Talk about feeling like a new kid on the block. Markie pondered
on all the adventures he’d missed out on hitherto and whether it was okay to
sleep with seven women from the same place. Surely there wasn’t a law against
it, though keeping used stock away from each other would inevitably be a
problem.

            The
brunette, Clarissa, was a solicitor, twenty-five and looking for a long-term
relationship. She didn’t say that last bit as such but it was implied by the
word single. Damn and damn again. Clarissa didn’t seem like the sort one could
just sleep with and toss aside. Rick, on the other hand, loved the fact that
Siobhan, the blonde, was an “up-and-coming” anchorwoman on a cable television
station. You could tell he loved it, by the way he slung his arm across the
back of the couch, running his fingers through his hair every two seconds – the
stance was pure ‘come and get me’.

            For a
while Markie’s emotions played tug of war. Should he? Shouldn’t he? He decided
in the end that he couldn’t make a move. No way, this Clarissa was a nice girl
and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her feelings. But if she should
however make the move first then that was a different story…Markie crossed his
fingers and at about midnight God answered his prayers.

            “I’ve had
enough of this place. How about we go get a nightcap?” Clarissa suggested,
leaning over seductively. The more standoffish Markie was the more Clarissa
seemed to want him.      “We can grab a hot dog from the vendor outside.”

            “Sure,”
Markie said, not quite seeing the link between nightcap and hot dog, or was
there a deeper meaning implied?

            He clasped
the hand offered and together he and Clarissa weaved like a centipede through
the thick yet manageable crowd. There were no knocking drinks or stepping on
toes here at the C-lounge but even still Markie was happy to make to the finish
line. And that was when he bumped into Serena.

Chapter
16

Serena was not expecting
this, to bump into Markie and thus the fall hurt all the more as she plummeted
to earth.

            “Hey,” she
said, as she watched him drop the intellectual bimbo’s hand. Evidently it had
suddenly become as scorching as a hot potato.

            “Hey,”
Markie replied in turn, his shock absolutely palpable. He reminded Serena of a
chicken whose head had recently been chopped off, dying to run but unable to
because it had no idea where to turn.

            Before
Serena could add anything else, the crowd from behind hinted their annoyance by
pushing her forward, straight through the door. She let herself travel on that
tide, only because it gave her time to smother her own shock and nausea and
think of something more witty to say.
Hey
…what was she thinking? People
said hey to the milkman dropping off the milk and postmen doing the rounds? But
to a boyfriend who was frigging holding another girl’s hand, you said….

            Serena
paused, her mind going completely blank. She didn’t know what they said; she
thought it was her prerogative to say nothing. She dared herself to turn back
round, because even if she was speechless Markie had some explaining to do. But
when she turned, all she saw were lots of backs of heads and little less. Just
like that, with one poof of a magician’s smokescreen, Markie and the girl were
gone.

            “Oh God,”
she muttered, leaning against the first saving grace column. So that was what
it felt like to get a knife plunged straight into the heart. Temporary
dizziness, an unsettled stomach, shortness of breath, they were obviously
symptoms that went along with the territory. Maybe, just maybe, if she weren’t
about to meet Jasper, it would have hurt a lot worse. Actually not maybe, but
definitely so…Meeting gorgeous sweet Jasper who would never walk holding
another girls hand (letting them shower in his house was the limit) helped to
offset or buffer a bit of the pain.

            But not
all of it unfortunately; what this situation called for was an emergency best
friend therapy session. Serena reached into her bag, fumbling through the
lipsticks and condoms, while making gigantic I-Mean-Business strides to the
toilets. Tabitha would know what to do; she’d only been in this situation about
a thousand times before.

            “Hello?”
Serena called, cupping one hand over her ear. Not that it really helped; she
still couldn’t hear a thing.

            “Hello?” a
faint Tabitha said back, “is that you Serena?”

            “Yes, it
is,” Serena sighed, immediately feeling as if three hundred and thirty three
kilos has been lifted from her shoulders. “Oh Lord, you won’t believe what just
happened.”

            Before Tabitha
could even say
what?
Serena hailed a thousand bullets of the military
scale.
He’s a bastard, a bloody bastard, holding another girls hand and now
I can never even go back to him, even if I wanted to.

            “I knew
it,” Tabitha heaved five minutes later, when Serena had taken a break from the
assault. “I knew he was a good for nothing prick. That’s it, you’ve got to
break up with him, no more going back for sloppy seconds - you have your pride
and dignity to maintain.”

            “But I already
have broken up with him!” Serena replied. In most cultures, a three-month break
was just a nice way of saying good riddance pal.

            “You
have?” Tabitha exclaimed, sounding like another headless chook. “No Yosemite?”

            “Yosemite?
What are you talking about?”

            Then it
hit Serena, just as Jasper was making his sexy way towards her and she spied
Rick on the couch, almost sitting in the lap of another slut.

            “I’m not
talking about Jasper; it’s Markie who did the dirty.”

            “Oh.” Tabitha
went quiet and then cleared her throat. “But that’s okay; you guys were already
on the break.”

            “Oh forget
it,” Serena said, reaching for the red End button, for enough was enough.
“We’ll speak about this later.”
When your head is screwed on right and your
blinkers are off.

            God knew
she might have to wait forever for that moment.

            “Someone
ruffle your feathers?” Jasper asked when he finally reached Serena and squeezed
the tickly part of waist. Thank gawd someone up above had the decency and tact
to lend her this knight in shining armor. Tonight of all nights she needed to
have someone to kiss and cuddle. So what if it could be just about anyone with
two arms and two legs?

            “No, just
Tabitha. She’s been her usual egocentric, highly dramatic self.”

            Jasper
grinned. “Oh, let me guess, you’re saving her from another crisis? She dropped
her mascara in the toilet and can’t go out because all the supermarkets have
already closed.”

            “Something
like that,” Serena responded, burying her head into the warm curve of his
faithful neck. “But let’s not worry about stupid things like mascara and
cheating boys for now, okay?”

            “Okay,”
Jasper replied slowly, raising his eyebrows. He obviously detected something on
his telescopic radar and decided correctly to not go there. What a darling.
For
that you get to do everything that I will never let Markie do to me again.

            “How about
we give dinner a miss and go straight home?” Serena said, stifling a fake yawn.

            It was
funny how she had taken to calling Jasper’s place home, though if you thought
about it, it wasn’t like anywhere else more aptly fit the description. Tabitha’s
jungle cave was just that, a jungle cave and her real ex-home, at least on
paper, the one with the slime ball Markie in it, could be better described as
Bastard Screws Slut Haven. Really how could she ever go back there? Wasn’t
there some cardinal rule that says: Must Never Sleep In House Where Man Has
Screwed Other Women? Wasn’t that the test that separated good-time girls from
the angels?

            “You do realize
that if there’s no dinner first I’m gonna have to eat you all up?” Jasper
threatened.

            “Yes,”
Serena replied bashfully, trying to keep her mouth from breaking out into a Grand Canyon grin.

            Why let on
that that was actually what she was counting on...

Feck, feck, feck,
feck, feck!

            If Markie
could have it his way he’d be saying this word repeatedly for the next forty
days and forty nights. But he couldn’t because he had someone else to consider,
the very person who got him into this mess. Clarissa. He looked at her and
tried to discern whether her attractiveness had gone up, down or stayed exactly
the same since the awful encounter with Serena. Amazingly enough, the package
still looked okay, the greenish eyes may look a bit confused but the body and
face were as healthy and vibrant as ever.