An Idiot in Love (a laugh out loud comedy) (22 page)

              Tentatively pushing the handle, trying not to make a sound, I opened the door and peeked through.              

              I could see the hallway through the gap. The door opposite leading to a bedroom was closed; the door further down the hallway which led into the living room was still wide open, the light striking through and bathing the laminated hallway floor.

              I stuck an ear to the gap and listened. I could hear the muffled noises of fabric against fabric, either Katie was getting undressed or she was polishing her whip.

              There was no back door to the property and no chance I could get to the front door with Katie in the way.

              Peeling the door away from the jamb I made for the bedroom, praying it held a window large enough to aid my escape.

              The bedroom was as clean and inviting as the bathroom, but the walls were decorated in just as many drawings as the living room. I saw the window on the other side of the room. It was big enough for me to get through.

              A picture above the bed caught my eye and I stopped. It was bigger than the others and I had initially assumed it to be another drawing, but this wasn’t from Katie’s hand, this was Katie herself.

              She was naked and snarling at the camera. She lay on her front, her silky body lying flat over a white table op. Her breasts pressed tight against her ribcage, her buttocks lifted slightly into the air as she sensually caressed the table top with the tip of a thin strip of pubic hair.

              I was impressed. I knew she would be hiding a great body, and even the best body in the world wouldn’t have forced me to stay, but I was mesmerised. The photo was professional, sensual. She looked stunning.

              I thought about turning back, going into the living room and putting up with whatever Katie had to throw at me, but the thought was fleeting.

              I moved over to the window, sidestepping around the bed. My hands were on the frame when Katie walked into the room.              

              I turned at the sound of creaking floorboards to see her standing in the doorway. She was naked, her form silhouetted by the halo-glow from the hallway light behind her. I was spellbound by the silken curves of her body: her long, toned legs; her flat stomach, defined by gentle curves of muscle; her pert but ample breasts.

              ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she didn’t sound mad, but there was a touch of malevolence in her voice.

              ‘I--i--’ I tried to work out an excuse but it didn’t come and the longer I waited the more stupid I looked. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said simply.  I didn’t want to turn my back on her, fearful she would pounce, but I knew if I stared any longer I would change my mind.

              I turned around, gripped the window and pulled, it didn’t budge. The wood creaked in response but the pane didn’t move. I tried again, harder, but it still refused to move.

              ‘That window doesn’t open,’ Katie said plainly behind me, she still hadn’t moved from the doorway.

              ‘
You’re shitting me
,’ I mumbled, my face flushing red, partly from exhaustion, mostly through embarrassment.

              I turned to face her but couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘I need to leave,’ I said staring at the floor, ‘you mind if I use your door?’

              Katie replied by stepping aside, leaving the beckoning light from the hallway to blare through unobscured.

              I trudged forward. My heart picked up its pace when I passed her. I half expected her to jump me, but she didn’t move. She allowed me to drift into the hallway.

              ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, ducking my head back in the bedroom, allowing myself one last glance at her naked form. Now that I knew she wasn’t setting herself up to jump on me and murder me, I felt bad for her and felt a need to reassure her, or at least clean the air. ‘Maybe we can do this again sometime?’ I said with a broad smile.

              She glared at me ferociously, the anger now evident in her eyes.

              ‘Okay,’ I ducked back out of the bedroom, worried I had kick-started her rage. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you.’

13

The Quick and the Dead

              ‘Speed Dating!’

              It had been three weeks since my night with Katie, the flame-haired athlete-come-dominatrix. It had been three days since Matthew was able to make it an hour without bringing up the night in question and laughing hysterically.

              ‘Speed Dating?’

              He was onto step two of his master-plan to get me laid by as many women as possible, and as usual, I had no idea what he was talking about.

              ‘Speed Dating!’ Matthew repeated, his eyes ablaze with euphoria.

              ‘What is that?’ I asked.

              ‘It's exactly what it sounds like,’ Matthew exclaimed.

              ‘It sounds like your dream come true.’

              Matthew beamed, fluttering a number of leaflets he held under his chin, as if to cool his excitement in case he swooned. ‘Exactly,’ he said, thrusting one of the leaflets at me.

              ‘“A room full of single women, thirty minutes to see them all,’” I said, reading a random passage from the brightly coloured leaflet. ‘Is this like an orgy?’

              ‘I wish,’ Matthew said, his eyes drifting upwards for a moment as his mind conjured and then stored that wish for later. ‘It’s this new American thing; you rush through a couple dozen dates in an hour or so. It’s like the ultimate blind date, coz if you don’t like ‘em, it doesn’t matter; you only have to put up with ‘em for five minutes.’

              ‘Five minutes?’ I said, already feeling anxious. Most of the time it took me more than five minutes to tell a girl my name. ‘That doesn’t seem like enough time at all.’

              Matthew shrugged this off. ‘If you like them you can swap numbers at the end, if you don’t,
meh,
’ he shrugged again. ‘What’s five minutes of your life?’

              ‘It sounds demeaning.’

              ‘I don’t--’

              ‘For them,’ I quickly added.

              ‘They’ll love it I’m sure, if not, then why would they show up?’

              ‘Maybe they’re desperate?’

              I saw the glint appear in Matthew’s eye and couldn’t help but smile.

              ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it a shot.’

              I was nervous about meeting a succession of women in such a short time, so I knocked back a few bottles of beer before the event, but the alcohol did little to ease those nerves.

              ‘You’re not going to chicken out on me are you?’ Matthew warned with a quizzical raise of his right eyebrow.

              ‘No, I’ll go,’ I said truthfully. ‘I just don’t feel comfortable with it.’

              Matthew took something out of his pocket. ‘I had a feeling you’d be like this,’ he told me. ‘So I brought these, just in case,’ he hovered his hand above mine, I opened my palm and he dropped two small blue tablets onto my sweaty flesh.

              ‘What are they?’

              ‘Valium. Sedatives. They’ll calm you down, be right as rain.’

              I looked at him suspiciously, he grinned back.

              ‘What you doing with sedatives?’

              He shrugged impassively. ‘You remember that dancer girl I was with?’

              ‘Jennifer?’

              ‘
June
or
Jessica
.’

              ‘It was Jennifer.’

              ‘Whatever, it’s beside the point. She was loud right? Annoying really, never shut up. Hyper little bitch as well,’ an affected look crossed his face as he recalled his two week relationship with the hyperactive dancer.

              ‘I remember,’ I said slowly.

              He looked at the Valium in my hand and gently shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well…’

              ‘You drugged her!’ I blurted.

              He took a step back, pretended to look insulted. ‘I didn’t. Honestly,’ he held up his hands. ‘I mean I thought about it…’

              ‘You’re disturbed.’

              He grinned, ‘I agree.’ He checked his watch, ‘Now come on, pop the pills, we gotta get going.’

              ‘You sure they’re legit?’

              ‘I got them from my doctor. I told some lies, said I had some psychological shit going on.’

              ‘And what were the lies?’

              He feigned a mocking laugh. ‘Funny fucker, pop the pills, let’s go.’

              The Speed Dating event was held in the back-room of a large local club, a room which usually catered for bingo nights and birthday parties.

              A number of two-seater tables -- differing in sizes, colours and wood, suggesting more than a few had been borrowed for the event -- decorated the middle of the room. Each table had a small glass vase placed in its centre and two chairs tucked underneath its sides.

              A fully stocked bar ran the full stretch of the left side of the room whilst the right was bare except for one large table, operated by a peppy middle-aged man and woman.

              The middle-aged twosome gave Matthew and me a form, a pen and a smile.

              ‘Have you done anything like this before?’ The woman asked, her eyes flicking between Matthew and me.

              ‘Has
anything
like this been done before?’ I wondered, scanning the form. It was a list of women’s names with an empty box by each.

              ‘Well, there have been a few events,’ the man butted in, his smile just as wide and genuine as the woman. It was creepy. ‘We met at one of these just last year,’ he said proudly, putting a gentle arm around the woman’s shoulders. ‘We fell for each other straight away, exchanged numbers and were married five months later.’

              She snuggled into the crook of his arm and wrapped her own arms around him, squeezing tightly and then quickly letting go.

              ‘Isn’t that sweet,’ Matthew said, the sarcasm not evident in his voice but clear in the look he gave me.

              She leant across and gave her husband a kiss on the temple. ‘He was number six. He was the perfect man. Tall, dark and so, so, so
incredibly
handsome...’ she trailed off longingly, staring into his eyes.

              ‘Handsome? What happened?’ Matthew asked, ever the one to kill the moment.

              The man looked at him unsurely for a moment and then slowly found a laugh. ‘Ah you Brits, and your humour,’ he said.

              ‘You had much success with this Speed Dating over here?’ I asked; keen to change the subject in case Matthew tried another, more successful insult.

              ‘We’ve only done two events before this,’ the woman declared, finally moving out of her husband’s loving grasp to pass a form and a smile to another aspiring SpeedDater. ‘The first wasn’t as popular as we had hoped, but we learnt our lesson, spread the word a bit more and managed to pull off a very successful night second time around. A lot of people came; everyone had a lot of fun.’

              ‘And there are even more people here tonight,’ the man added. ‘It should be a floozy.’

              ‘Indeed,’ Matthew said grinning at the choice of language. ‘So when does it start? Do we just jump right in now?’ he wondered, looking across at a large gathering of anxious woman on the far side of the room.

              ‘Oh no, you can’t talk to the single ladies yet,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘The event begins in five minutes, take your seat now. I’ll call you when it’s time.’

              We did as instructed and found two tables next to each other, the chairs less than a metre apart.

              Ten minutes later the American woman stood, rang a bell to attract attention and then declared, ‘Every man please take a seat. One to a table, there is enough tables for everyone.’

              A short bustling followed as eager males filed into the chairs.

              ‘You will get five minutes with each of our gorgeous single ladies,’ she continued, gesturing towards the women and to a small stopwatch around her neck. ‘After the bell rings--’ she held up a silver bell, jangling gently in her bony fingers ‘--I want you to switch seats, moving clockwise around the room. No dallying please, we need to keep things going. I’m sure our lovely men will demand your attention but you need to move on. At the end, all forms will be handed in, and once the votes have been counted on both sides we’ll see how many matches we have and you can exchange those telephone numbers! Are we ready to SpeedDate?’

              The crowd mumbled in reply.

              The women moved like a swarm, smiles of expectation on their faces, glasses of wine in their hands.

              There was a moment of silence, an eerie peace which blanketed the room after the sound of the bell, and then the women began to seat themselves and the room erupted in a cacophony of awkward greetings, rehearsed one-liners and feigned laughter.

              ‘Hello, my name is Cassy.’

              My first date: tall, blonde, tanned, a fresh yellow flower in her golden hair; a hint of an Aussie accent on her bright red lips.

              ‘Hello.’

              I didn’t know whether to go for a handshake or go for a kiss on the cheek. I decided for the handshake. I reached over the table and offered my hand; confident I would head-butt her if I tried to kiss her.