Equal Opportunities Page 7

  I laugh a bit at that. ‘Well, not really. I haven’t managed to catch sight of him. So I’m not a stalker, or at least not a very successful stalker.’

  Mercury nods encouragingly and takes a long glug from his glass. ‘I see. Well, you seem a little stuck there, darling, all het up with nowhere to go…’ Mercury lets his words fade away into his glass. I know my dead-end talk is starting to bore him now. There really is nothing much else to be said about my David obsession. So I know what’s coming. Mercury waits a couple of beats before launching a new conversational attack. ‘So, incidentally, and I meant to ask this yesterday, but somehow I couldn’t get a word in: how does our lovely waiter-boy fit into all this?’

  Mercury knows all about my Thomas-crushing of course. And he heartily approves. In fact, I think he has something of a soft spot for Thomas himself, ever since the time I took him to La Lucas on my night off and arranged things so we had Thomas pouting and sulking sexily over our table as he took our orders and refreshed our drinks. Actually, Mercury brings up the subject of Thomas a little too often in our conversations. He even gets impatient with me sometimes about the fact that, when it comes to my Thomas-crushing, I have been happy just to look and not touch. I think he likes to think that if he were me he would have been far more proactive in that department.

  Sometimes I wonder about the root of Mercury’s continuing interest in every twist and turn of my love life. He has followed it like a soap opera since we met and hit it off back in October. I suspect he would quite like to be a rather kinky thirty-three-year-old heterosexual woman, and through me he is living his vicarious dreams.

  I screw up my forehead, not sure for a moment how to answer his Thomas query. I’m so hooked on David I’ve all but forgotten who Thomas is for a moment. But, eventually, I get with it. ‘Thomas? Well, he doesn’t really fit in. I don’t really know where I am with Thomas. Well, I do, I suppose – I’m nowhere. He’s so damn pretty. So pretty he makes me all tongue-tied. I can’t really seem to get it together to hold more than a casual conversation with him. It’s totally different to David. I mean, maybe before I met David I thought Thomas was worth thinking about, or, at least, dreaming about. But not now. Not now there’s David, because David is in a different league, really. Just the thought of him. Just the thought of the wheelchair. The fact he can’t walk. It just does it for me. It does it right down to my bone marrow. Thomas is history. The only thing I am interested in him for now is the fact that he looks a bit like David.’

  Mercury looks rather disappointed. ‘Yes, except we must remember that at least with waiter-boy you know where he is, whereas with wheelchair-boy, well, we have something of an impasse.’ Mercury – ever the sexual reductionist.

  ‘True,’ I say, looking sadly down at the plate of smoked salmon which has appeared in front of me magically, as if brought by elves.

  Mercury clearly picks up on my melancholia, because he says, ‘Oh darling, I’m sorry. But it does look as if Tiny Tim has slipped through your fingers. Why on earth didn’t you think to get his telephone number whilst he was still dazed from your expertise in the bedroom department?’

  ‘Well, I suppose because I just thought it was a one-night thing.’

  ‘Or you wanted it to be a one-night thing, because having sex with poor cripples is so bad and wrong?’

  I blow out a long plume of smoke before I say anything. And then what I say is, ‘Oh. Oh, fuck.’ I guess this is what comes of letting seen-it-all, done-it-all gay guys know all about your sex life. They do tend to be rather astute.

  Back at home and in my lonely bedroom, my laptop sits unopened on my desk. Just the sight of it makes me feel sick with guilt. Two ‘meetings’ with Mercury in two days and neither of us so much as mentioned my dissertation.

  My plan for today was supposed to be: track down David and make a date with him for later, have lunch with Mercury, work on dissertation for a couple of hours, go round to David’s, and make the most of my evening off from La Lucas by tying him down on his bed and fucking him into the mattress with a strap-on. And from that to do list, I have managed to have some lunch. To think that this morning the likelihood of me keeping that date with Mercury seemed slim to none.

  I’m drying my hair after a productivity-avoiding bath when Carrie appears in the doorway.

  Her lips are moving but I can’t hear a thing over the buzzy roar of the hot air baking my Louise Brookes bob into place.

  ‘What?’ I say, yelling as I slide the switch on the dryer to off and the droning subsides through various pitches of humming and whining into silence.

  ‘I said, “some blokes called round after you”,’ says Carrie, clearly irritated at having to repeat herself.

  ‘Oh. Who?’

  ‘Well, they didn’t say.’ She shrugs as if that was obvious.

  I hold the hairdryer in my hands, feeling the weight of it. God, Carrie is annoying me right now. The urge to throw the hairdryer at her is very strong. ‘Oh,’ I say, not caring, but wanting to get rid of her, ‘did they say anything interesting?’

  ‘Not really. Just that they were looking for you.’

  ‘Oh.’ I shrug and turn back to the mirror.

  Carrie looks at my reflection and gives a sort of shifty smile. ‘Sorry,’ she says, sounding sincere. ‘Actually, though it’s a shame because one of them was really quite nice-looking, not the one in the wheelchair, the other one.’

  ‘Not the one in the … what?’ I drop the drier. I do a sudden about-face, from giving off powerful leave-me-alone vibes to practically wrestling Carrie to the floor so I can pump her for details.

  Of course, when Carrie has filled the suddenly very interested me in with every last detail of my gentlemen callers I’m jubilant. Over the moon, even. Well, up to a point, because what can I do now? David came looking for me. Got my address somehow. So far, so strike up the band, but where does it get me? He’s not here now and for some reason the bloody weird idiot didn’t leave a message, or a number, or the slightest hint as to which of the many suburban sprawls on the outskirts of town is the one he drove me to a few days ago.

  So I end up doing something rather sad. I stay at home, confined to barracks in the dumb hope that he calls back.

  But I’m still waiting, all forlorn and Rapunzel-like, over twenty-four hours later, when Thursday evening rolls round and I have to leave the house for work. I’m pretty down by this point, pretty flat from pining after David. Even the promise of a shift with pretty, sparkly Thomas can’t lift my sunken spirits.

  The only slight consolation in this misery pit is the fact that my enforced twenty-four hours of home-alone time have done wonders for the word count on my dissertation.

  ‘Are you working tomorrow night?’ Stacey barks suddenly, as she pokes her head out of the back door, making me jump out of my illicit cigarette break. (And why exactly am I smoking out by the bins? I’m meant to be a social smoker and last time I looked La Lucas’s dustbins weren’t exactly world-class raconteurs.)

  ‘Huh?’ I say, in a smoky croak that gives me time to figure out what she said and process an answer. ‘Um, yeah, actually.’ Because I am, even though I’d much rather be at home waiting for David to call.

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame. There’s a party at my place.’

  ‘Oh, um, ah, well,’ I say, with what I hope is a convincing note of disappointment in my voice, enough to mask the fact that, really and truly, the last thing I want to do is interrupt my David-obsessing time to watch second-year biology students being sick after too much cheap vinegary wine.

  ‘Well, if you want you could always come after. It’ll still be buzzing then. Thomas could probably give you a lift; he’s coming after work too.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ And suddenly I’m torn. What I want, what I really, really want is to go home straight after work tomorrow night and every night for the rest of my life, in case David calls back. But somehow Mercury’s remark that at least I know where I can find Thomas floats to the top of my consciousnes
s. And a lift to the party with the beautiful Thomas is so, so tempting.

  Mary Taylor, you fickle, fickle woman.

  Friday then becomes, in my mind at least, David’s last chance. I have to draw the line somewhere. Even if I am almost paralysed with lust when I think about the way his legs felt slightly cooler than they should have done. That alone is enough to make me feel slightly wobbly and melting inside.

  And then, crushingly, despite my wishing and even, at one rather desperate stage, praying, David doesn’t show up on Friday, although I’ve waited in for him all day. So I pack my David-related fantasies up in a big old mental box, slip it under the bed in my brain’s spare bedroom, and set a course for Operation Flirt-with-Thomas.

  The trouble with Thomas, though – something I’d almost forgotten as I pitted him against David in my lust-addled brain – is he’s a little bit too pretty, a shade too good for me, just ever so slightly – whisper it – out of my league. Admittedly he is very similar looking to David, but the rough and nasty fact is that, my predilections aside, David’s disability does make him a more accessible proposition. More available. But then, I wouldn’t stand a chance of seducing a fully functioning David. I know for a fact he wouldn’t look twice at a girl like me.

  Maybe because it’s party time, Thomas seems slightly less aloof and Mr Untouchable this evening. Although, perversely, his aloofness is a big part of his attraction. I have an occasional delicious fantasy of breaking that ice-prince façade with a well-tested mixture of sensory deprivation and cock-teasing. Mmmhmm. I’m pretty sure that chilly mask would slip if I had him tied down on my bed and blindfolded, while I grazed his aching cock with my lips until it was screaming for release – and so was he. But that fantasy is just a remnant of the way I used to keep my home fires burning before I devised my endless David fantasies.

  So I’m missing the sneer, but even in a slightly more friendly mode Thomas is still the hottest dish on La Lucas’s menu, or probably on any menu within a twenty-mile radius. So I shouldn’t complain. And his being a little more approachable is quite useful if I am going to be sharing a car with him later.

  Maybe the real reason I am finding him less intimidating is simply that, since David, I just don’t fancy him so stupidly, achingly much. Or perhaps I don’t fancy him so much because I am finding him less intimidating. But I don’t have enough lifetimes to try and unravel that conundrum, so I just shove it to the back of my mind while I get on with waiting tables and ferrying plates of overpriced slop.

  Either way, the upshot is that I can cheerfully confirm that I still want that lift to Stacey’s party and even playfully bump elbows with him once or twice over the counter without losing the ability to breathe or stand upright.

  And it must be our lucky night, because even though it is a Friday, it’s a quietish one, so before the clock strikes twelve we are both out of the kitchen, out of our uniforms and driving towards the seething student heartland and Stacey’s shabby shared house.

  David

  I’ve driven past Mary’s house, what, five times? Six? More than twice a day since Wednesday, anyway. I haven’t stopped. What would be the point? I’d have to get someone to ring the bell for me and how fucking lame would that look? Yeah, that’s right, about as lame as driving past her house over and over again without stopping. But, well, I guess I was hoping I’d see her on the street or something. But no show. Either she doesn’t actually live there or she’s become a recluse.

  So I’m back to square Larry, picking him up to drive him to mindless-girl’s party in the hope that I can persuade him to give me Mary’s number. I reckon I’ve got a good chance, especially if the pulling power of having a crippled mate is as potent as Larry seems to think. So I’m basically prostituting my misfortune in order to get Mary’s number out of Larry. Well, why ever not? It’s about time this fucking disability found a way to earn its keep.

  Larry doesn’t pick me up until really late. He has some geeky appointments in the virtual world of EverQuest to attend to first. And he also claims that being too early would look lame. I get his point, but even an internet-loving freak like me finds it hard to understand why Larry wants to spend time online rather than at a party full of potential conquests.

  So it’s past ten by the time we arrive. Not that I’m complaining, being here under duress and all that.

  Although, really, the party isn’t so bad. The student house it’s being held in is reasonably flush to the street, so I could get over the threshold with just a bit of a bump from Larry, and inside it’s only mildly annoying in a non-fitted-fluffy-carpets-rucking-up-under-wheels kind of way. I settle myself in a corner of the sitting room. The kitchen is a non-starter because everyone is standing up, and there’s only so much staring at people’s groins I can take.

  This is the first time since the accident that I’ve been to anything like this, apart from my cousin’s wedding, so I feel a bit awkward and spacey. But it’s OK. My expectations are pretty low. However, that might well be no bad thing, I realise, as I am open to being pleasantly surprised.

  A nice if slightly dazed-looking girl offers to fetch me a can of lager, and I accept, taking it smilingly as she perches on a stool next to me. We haven’t made small talk for more than about ten minutes – so we haven’t progressed much past ‘so, what do you do?’ – when she says, ‘Do you think this outfit is too tarty?’

  ‘Um.’ I look at her. She’s wearing very, very tight jeans tucked into brown boots and a sparkly red top. The top is very low cut, very hello, here are my tits.

  ‘My boyfriend thinks it is,’ dazed girl continues. ‘He actually said if I wore it he wouldn’t come with me, and he hasn’t come, can you believe that?’

  ‘Er, well.’ I stop talking and cough to clear my throat. Is this girl flirting with me? ‘Well, I suppose it depends what look you’re going for. If you’re asking me then, yeah, it’s sexy.’

  ‘See, right,’ says dolly daydream, ‘it’s sexy. That’s what I said.’

  ‘Well, your boyfriend sounds like an idiot to me.’ Wow. This is weird. First Mary, then Larry’s assertion that I am a good pulling accessory – which might not exactly be a direct sex-link but at least links me to some kind of sexuality in a sideways sort of way – and now this.

  Then dizzy-daydream-believer stops my rather excitable train of thought dead when she says, ‘God, thanks. You are so useful. It’s like my roommate, Rosy. She’s got this gay friend back at home and she asks him everything, like advice on clothes and stuff, and it’s really useful being able to get a male perspective without having to worry.’

  I open and shut my mouth several times while she says all this, becoming more and more incredulous, until eventually I can get a word in. ‘Hang on. Hang on, what? I’m not gay. Did someone tell you I was gay?’

  She looks quite shocked. I’m not shouting but I’m maybe slightly on the assertive side, certainly more assertive than Miss-completely-unworldlywise expected some crippled boy in a wheelchair to be.

  ‘Uh, sorry, no. I didn’t mean that, exactly. I just meant, well, you know.’

  And then, and I can hardly believe this is happening, even though it is happening, right here, right now, to me, she looks at my groin. She stares right at it. And continues, ‘With you being well, what do they call it? Is it just impotent, or is there a special name for men who can’t do it, when they’re like you?’

  ‘What?’ I probably seem confused, but I’m not. This situation is very, very non-confusing.

  And then her jaw just drops. As she realises her mistake, I don’t know which one of us is more embarrassed. I’m pretty mortified by the whole situation, but I’m staring into the befuddled eyes of a pretty, if pretty gormless, twenty-two-year-old, who has chosen to presume I am a eunuch and is clearly panicking behind her pupils as she tries to figure a way to climb out of the almighty pit she is stuck at the bottom of. And while I’m weighing up whether or not to haul her out myself, I hear a voice that owns my soul say, ‘David?’<
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  I look up. I look across the room at her. She’s right there, frozen in the doorway. And her face. My god.

  She just … she can hardly move, she wants me so much. I didn’t think I could still do that to people.

  Mary

  There’s a lot we could say to each other. A lot I could ask. But questions float away – feathers in the wind, never quite coming to land.

  Questions like: ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Why didn’t we exchange numbers?’ ‘Why did you come to my house?’ ‘Why didn’t you come to my house again?’ I find I don’t need to say any of these things. I find I don’t care. All I need to say is one question: ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Right outside.’

  And just as we are leaving I bump into Thomas. And I barely even look at him. He’s nothing more than the most minor of minor distractions. He just can’t compete.

  The car journey is hard. I don’t want to talk too much. I don’t want to break the spell. I just want to be fucking David immediately. But it’s hard to sit in silence, so in the end I say, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Have you, uh, have you been thinking about me?’

  ‘Nothing. Um. Nothing else.’ He swallows. Hard. God, that nervous swallow is so sexy. It makes me want him even more.

  And maybe it’s that that makes me take a chance, that makes me spill what might be much too much. I say something. Something big. ‘I don’t think this is going to be a one-night thing. Or even a two-night thing. I hope you agree but I just, oh god, David, I want you so much.’