Guilty Pleasures (7 page)

Tonight the French dinner for businessman Jackson Rivers went quite well. The food was great, the service was smooth, and the musicians were sluts.
 

I’m calling their agent tomorrow to complain. That singer flirted shamelessly with a guest, an old man at that, and the cello player! Well! Best leave it unwritten—trust me.
The decorator is coming to fetch that horrendous four-poster bed tomorrow and bringing in the props for the Fashion Victims event.

In kitchen news: Will Pecklise seems amiable and willing to work. I like him. He has the sweetest smile, and kind eyes. There’s a gentleness . . . something vulnerable and appealing about him. I’m crossing my fingers that this one is a keeper!

I must be in tomorrow at three in the afternoon. I’m too tired to write any more. Going to sleep now.

Chapter 5

Get your woman to tell you what she wants. Really listen to her; it’s the sexiest thing you can do. Get her to share her fantasies in a non-bedroom environment such as a romantic dinner, making out on the beach, or in an elevator. Never be shocked and never show surprise at what she might reveal. Never say, “No shit, you slut!” And never,
ever
laugh.

“HA! HA! HA! You want me to dress up like that cartoon fella, Tintin, in pink bloomers and do WHAT?” A word of advice: if she mentions cattle prods and SS uniforms, gracefully excuse yourself and
don’t come back
.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

Lance woke relaxed and rested after an unheard of twelve-hour sleep. He’d missed his morning run, but decided to make up for it at the gym. He stretched and yawned, casually scratched at his groin and rolled out of bed. He was famished. Sauntering to the kitchen, he put together the makings of a very late killer breakfast: soya rolls and yogurt, tofu cheese, and crunchy wheat germ cookies.
 

Yum
. He prepared his multivitamin yogurt shake and sat down to his first healthy, balanced meal in two days. He was sure a thin film of fat was already obscuring the razor sharp definition of his abdominal muscles. He’d have to burn extra calories to maintain his optimum condition. He couldn’t avoid the food at Guilty Pleasures—lethal though it was—so, he’d have to sacrifice whatever would be left of his free time to his body maintenance, putting in extra hours on his treadmill.

Today he was free. He had no clients, agent calling for editing meetings about his book, nothing.

He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. Whatever its nutritional shortcomings, the food at work was definitely tastier. He resolved to engage in a purification routine. He’d start with a good workout, burn out those toxins, sweat out those free radicals zapping at his cell walls. Then it would be a sweat bath with scented eucalyptus seedpods, a wheat germ and aloe vera face pack, and an ice-cold carbonated water power shower to finish things off.

Three hours later, refreshed, invigorated, and with a sparkling clean, moisturised epidermis, Lance felt like his old self. Balance and tranquillity were the very foundation of his well-structured life. He sighed contentedly and accessed his e-mail’s in-box and scanned through it.
 

“Mum, Mum, and Mum again. George about tonight. Requests for schedule availability from prospective clients, and yes!”
 

Lance double clicked to open Millie’s e-mail, surprised at his own eagerness. He grinned; it was good news. Millie wanted him back on Tuesday, at four in the morning for the market run. Soon, she would just want him. Lance quickly replied, telling her he’d be there. Before signing off, he confirmed his monthly booze-up with George and sent an out-of-office message to the list of enquiries from eager clients.
 

Once things were taken care of, he walked into his closet to select a complete wardrobe for Wilfred. Boxers, socks, and undershirts—all one-hundred percent Egyptian cotton. He picked out assorted bowling shirts in various shades and patterns. One was Hawaiian with toucans. He also added clinging short sleeved T-shirts, close-fitting sweaters in coordinated colours, one pair of pleated pants for fancy, and three pairs of five-pocket jeans for the wear and tear at Guilty Pleasures. He added a baseball jacket and a black leather bomber jacket. For shoes, he kept his two-tones, a pair of penny loafers, and black varnish wingtips. It was perfection; seductive yet practical. If the need for more formal wear arose, he’d go shopping.
 

For tonight, since he was meeting George for drinks, he chose a sharply tailored white linen shirt and narrow cut black pants that left little to the imagination.
 

Deadly.
Not that he’d be getting any. He’d be holding George’s hand while his best friend whimpered about his current girlfriend, Sheila, and consumed huge amounts of light beer and salted peanuts. Still, a man had his image—and standards—to live up to. He put on his favourite Neil Diamond CD while he got ready, humming along to “Longfellow Serenade.”

At nine thirty on the dot, Lance walked into his favourite pub, Thor’s Hammer, looking good and feeling sharp. He winked at Dora, the bartender, gave George a high five, and slung himself onto the barstool next to his friend. “George! What’s up, bud?”

George was his best and only male friend. They’d met when they were five years old and the relationship was still going strong thirty years later. George was Lance’s only claim to a successful long-term relationship.
 

Lance’s mother didn’t count. She’d cut the cord when the doctors had. But now in her sixties, beauty fading and humour souring, she desperately tried to regain some kind of a foothold in his life; some claim to a vestigial filial affection she’d never fostered when he was younger. Lance doled out his attention in the same carefully metered fashion he’d received hers.

George was the brother he’d never had, the one person he came clean to, and their mutual trust had sustained them both through their uncertain multiple divorce-ridden childhood and adolescence. But the two were complete opposites: Lance was meticulous, George slovenly. Where one was rational, the other emoted.
 

Lance sought understanding and control of the female universe through the intricate labyrinth of the feminine libido. George believed unconditional love and acceptance, freely given, would lead him to the nirvana of reciprocity. Their lopsided search sometimes led to insight, more often to hangovers, and once—in George’s case—to a bothersome STD vigorously eradicated with penicillin.

George’s current project was a militantly unfaithful—he thought it was a test to his devotion—brassy, busty brunette rejoicing in the name of Sheila Valginsky. Sheila used George shamelessly, relishing his unflinching adoration in the face of the crassest abuse. Lance sometimes thought of George as a dung beetle, going through life in a dogged backward march, stubbornly convinced his ball of shit would turn into a five carat diamond.
 

Tonight George was glowing. He seemed about to burst out of his skin with joy. “Lance!” George’s grin threatened to split his cheeks. “My man! You look good!”

“Right back at you.” Lance was surprised to see that so did George. His hair was cut, his scruffy soul patch removed. He was wearing a V-neck black T-shirt, without a political slogan
,
and neat jeans, instead of his usual Woodstock survivor gear.
 

“Born in the seventies, live in the seventies, die in the seventies” was George’s motto. The occasional flashback in fashion sometimes brought George into sync with the rest of world, giving him a sporadic claim to being
cool
, but now a strange metamorphosis seemed to have overtaken George, gifting him with startling radiance.

“I have something to tell you, and someone I want you to meet.” George’s smile was contagious.

“What? Who? I haven’t seen you this hyped since you were ten and your mum snuck you into a Modern Talking concert.”

“It was The Cure.
You
liked Modern Talking.”

“Whatever. Spill, my man.”

“I found her, Lance. Or rather, she found me. I can’t tell you . . . okay, here goes, I’m married. I got married on Thursday.”

“What?” Lance exclaimed.

“Don’t faint! Here, Dora, a stiff one for my buddy,” George called to the bartender. “Here, Lance, have a drink; breathe, man, breathe.”

“One
Loki
coming up.” Dora slapped down a shot glass with a clear blue liquid roiling inside.

“God, not Sheila, please George, not Sheila. I know you, George. You’ll never let her divorce you, and I’ll be connected to that woman for the rest of my natural life.”

“Calm down, Lance, it’s
not
Sheila.” He gestured over Lance’s shoulder. “Come here, babe. I want you to meet Lance.”

A tall platinum blonde stepped out of the crowd and into George’s arms.
 

“Francine, this is Lance. Lance this is Francine Fromage. The
one
, Lance! The
one
!” George’s smile impossibly broadened.
 

“Allo . . . Lance, it is so nice to meet you!” Her voice was soft, as was the French accent. Francine was as unlike Sheila as chalk to cheese. Sheila was a brassy, bold, and bosomy brunette while this girl seemed serene, reserved, and a 32AA cup at most. Her fine-featured beauty reminded Lance of Gwyneth Paltrow. Her smile was as radiant as George’s.
 

“Hello, Francine, is it?” Lance asked. “So . . . how did you two meet?”
 

“Since I deal in Victoriana, Francine called me for info for her research on Dickens, especially private letters and diaries. We’ve been e-mailing each other for two years, but now her book’s coming out—she’s a writer, by the way—and her publishers wanted to photograph her in his old haunts. So she phoned me on Monday, asking if we could have coffee, and I couldn’t, but then I did—at the last minute, you see—and I just knew. She knew, too, and it was magic.”
 

Lance gulped at his drink and gagged.

George smiled fatuously at Francine. “We talked all night and she missed the photo shoot, and I told her I wanted to talk to her for the rest of my life, and she said she did, too, only with that really cute French accent, and we just did it.” George paused, lowered his voice, and tenderly quoted Charles Dickens’
Great Expectations
. “ ‘I can see no shadow of another parting from her.’ ” He touched his mouth to her palm, their eyes locked in a smile of astonishing complicity.

Lance choked down his third Loki and gestured for another.

“Can you believe it? All these years, and we were speaking nearly every day, and we didn’t know . . .” George laughed and kissed Francine.
 

“Mon amour . . .” she whispered.

Lance noticed she turned to him at exactly the right moment, her every movement seeming to mirror his. They touched constantly, their shoulders brushing, their palms joining, and were quite oblivious to anyone or anything else in the room. He bet they finished each other’s sentences. They seemed a picture perfect example of a sudden attack of the real thing: true bloody love. He felt betrayed. He had counted on George to be just as dysfunctional as he was, counting on his company for a slow descent into a crotchety old age, rather like Walter and Jack in
The Odd Couple
.
 

Well, that was one dream down the drain
. Lance downed another Loki as consolation. “That’s great, George. Just great.”