The Numbers Game (7 page)

            The door,
Serena remembered; the garage wasn’t big enough for the passenger door to
completely stretch out its metal hand. Brent too had forced her nicely onto the
driveway, before she dragged him by the collar with both hands inside.

            Tabitha
shook her head.

“Sorry
babe but I think tonight its three strikes and you’re out.”

The other two strikes
hadn’t surprised Serena. To the contrary, she was happy to get them off her potential
bedmate list. They were Duane and Tyson from her college years.

            In the pit
of her heart Serena had hoped maybe both had dropped off the face of the earth.
You never know, with the power of wishful thinking and all. But no, they had
both picked up the telephone when Serena tapped in the once-precious numbers.
Not that she’d ever called them before but she remembered the figures as if
combinations to a bank safe nonetheless. Maybe because once upon a time the
digits had stared at her from the bedside cabinet for a full four weeks - or at
least until her period arrived.

            Serena was
even less surprised that Duane and Tyson had never moved on. Eight years later,
they were both still cut from the same cloth. Sharing smelly cramped flats with
eight other guys, eating cold pizza every night and in their spare time, they
probably cultivated the same gardens – marijuana plants needed love just like
daffodils you know.

“They
sound like twins,” Tabitha had observed, earlier on in the night.

“Yes
unfortunately,” Serena groaned. “You remember them, don’t you? The two big bull
shite artists.”

“So why
even bother?”

“You never
know, maybe they’re now big gorgeous dickheads.” Serena shrugged. “Then I
wouldn’t mind so much.”

Except
Serena should’ve known the chances of a drug experimentalist looking good a
decade later were slim. Honestly from the look of Duane, their first stop,
you’d have thought his eyes had disappeared into his skull. All that remained
were thin razor-sharps slits, leaving little scope for his dirt green pupils to
navigate by.

“What the
hell is that guy on?” Tabitha exclaimed, staring at the paper bag in his hand.
Serena assumed it was the bottle shop Duane was returning from.

Tabitha
hadn’t even noticed the eyes; all she could see was his profile which hid at
least fifty per cent of Duane’s patheticness. Before them was a slouched
shrunken man who looked like he used a cardboard box for a bed. Dreadlocks
obviously eradicated the need for a brush and Serena was sure if you dared to
run your fingers through his wiry beard, you would without a shred of doubt
bump into a creature or two.

“Um, he
did a bit of mushrooms and dope back then.”

“A bit?
Are you frigging sure? It looks like he’s swallowed a truck load of the stuff
every day since.”

“I don’t
know,” Serena replied, embarrassed. How the hell was she supposed to know?
They’d only spent one night together, and even that was a drug-fuelled blur.

“Forget
about this one. Even I, with little standards, can see this type will leave you
in the gutter.”

“Would
that be my ex’s actual home you are speaking of?”

            Tabitha
laughed. “It could be worse Serena; it could be a lot worse.”

            Actually
it probably couldn’t be. In comparison, their second prey, Tyson, had seemed
like a half-God. He scored himself the first point by having the decency to
dress himself in jeans and not tracksuit pants.  I know, I know; it should go
without saying that a boy is going to be wearing jeans but after the shocking
state of Duane, Serena didn’t know what to expect.

            Anyway
Tyson had passed the first test, fashion-wise – but only by a slim breath.
Speaking openly, nothing turns a girl off sooner than a vicious flannel shirt
or high neck skivvy.  Tyson wasn’t wearing either of the two but he was wearing
orange which in Serena’s eyes was just as bad. She decided to forgive the faux
pas; the shirt itself wasn’t so bad and it wasn’t his fault she had an aversion
to all things horribly bright. Maybe it simply reflected his bright sense of
humor.

            Then again
maybe not. Could she just be delusional after all the impatient waiting and
hiding in the car like a terrorist? Serena hadn’t known what to expect when
she’d invited Tabitha on this cruise mission.

“Here,”
she’d said yesterday, slamming a scrap of paper with three addresses on the
table. “This is all I have for now, three boys who have never moved.”

“How you
know they haven’t moved?” Tabitha had asked.

“Because…”
Serena had smiled slyly.

“You
didn’t?”

“I did.”

            At the
time Serena had been immensely proud of herself. The master of many voices, she
had picked up the phone and asked to speak to so and so in a commanding voice.
The recipients had all been edgy, who wants to know?

“Just tell
them it’s market research.”

            Beep,
beep, beep, the phone invariably lost its connection then.

            Thank gosh.
All she needed was a confirmation and the plans were set. Seeing their names on
paper though – Brent, Duane and Tyson - hadn’t been very exciting though. They
reminded Serena of times when she regularly drank too much and wore too short
skirts. Her mom had called it her “finding herself phase”; Serena reckoned it
was more like the losing it stage.

            She had
lost her nuts with Tyson long ago and a part of her was still petrified of him.
He had grabbed her thin wrists and stapled them both to the bedpost with a
thick heavy scarf. Then pulled off her skirt and used it as a blindfold. It was
Serena’s first dip into the world of sado-machoism, a place where passion was
with intertwined with pain, where heat mingled with sporadic shivering.

At the
time, the fact she was scared excited the hell out of her. Moving through fear,
that was what it meant to be alive. Another part of Serena however thought
Tyson to be a psycho loony, who should be locked behind bars. He was cute but
even cute could sometimes be eerie. He was the type that made you think a
secret video camera was hidden in the closet, and that in his spare time he
surfed the net for child pornography.

“So why
are you bothering?” Tabitha asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Well
kinky can be good. Right?”

“Don’t try
and convince me, girl. You need to convince yourself.”

Serena had
paused, watching his figure from the house with three similarly dressed friends
(only in yellow and green).  It was like seeing the Wiggles in slow motion,
only a younger version of the group.

“I think,”
Serena started, taking in a deep breath. She couldn’t really afford to be too
picky but something deep inside gnawed at her with this one. ”I think Tabitha,
with this one too I’m going to have to give it a miss…”

“Uh oh.”

            Markie
lifted his head from the paper.

“Uh oh,
what?” He asked Rick who was sitting on the couch with the sports pages spread
about.

“I’ve just
realized you’re in dog poop,” Rick chuckled, leaning over David Beckham’s
pretty boy face.

“Because
his team lost again? Don’t think so,” Markie replied, shaking his head, “those
boys are made of steel.”

“I’m not
speaking about soccer; I’m speaking about your break.” When he said the word
break, Rick flicked two imaginary inverted commas down through the air.

“What
about it?”

            To Markie,
there was absolutely nothing wrong with his situation. Still high from last
weekend’s lay, he felt younger and fuller of energy than he had in years.
Drinking passion and raw sex from Biffy must have been just the elixir his body
was craving.

“Well how
often did you and Serena get up to it before?”

            Markie
cringed.

            Oh great.
Rick was going to attempt his ‘let’s-confess-what-we-do-in-the-bedroom” talk.
Again. Ever since they were in high school, Rick had pestered his friends to
swap experiences as if football cards. While other boys were more than happy to
do it, Markie was the quiet type. He liked to keep things like that – intimacy,
sexual experiences, love - to himself, rather than sprinkle it around the field
for feed. The rare moments he had divulged left his memories cheapened and charred.

“We did it
often enough.”

“Two,
three, four times a week?”

            “Yeah,
something like that.”

Why state
actual numbers?

“How many
women did Serena say you could sleep with?”

“Just ten,
I have another nine to go.”

“And how
many weeks do you have left.”

“As of
today its eleven weeks and one day.”

            Rick
smiled and kicked back his feet.

            Markie saw
what his friend was getting at. How mate are you going to go from regular sex
to shrapnel? If you sleep with all ten in the space of two weeks, you’ll have
to spend the rest of the jail term in celibacy. Suddenly it was all a matter of
timing, something Markie wasn’t crash hot at.  As a businessman, he was used to
getting what he wanted now. From hereon he’d need to tread carefully.

“I can do
it Rick,” Markie decided. “Save the action for Saturday nights and rest of the
time, take care of myself.”

“Whatever
you say,” Rick smiled. Or was it the same snide smile as before? Either way, it
read
I so glad I’m not in your shoes friend.

            Who was
Rick to talk though? To date, the man had slept with only fifteen women,
apparently.  Fair enough Markie only had three up in his sleeve, Serena
included, but in the space of twelve weeks, he’d be giving Rick a run for his
money.  Markie however kept these comments to himself.

            After all,
he knew what it was like to have your ego bruised.

One thing Markie
didn’t know too much about was the art of picking up. He didn’t fall into the
category of picker-upperers, unlike ninety per cent of the male population.

“Because
you’re a pretty boy, like that Beckham,” Rick snorted.

“Go to
hell.”

            There were
insults one could take and there were ones you couldn’t.

“But it’s
true. Look at how you and Serena got together.”

            He was
speaking of their first acquaintance, the infamous fairytale moment. If you
asked any ordinary bloke where they’d met their girl, they’d tell you stories
about slobbery pashes on a dance-floor at the blue-light disco or better still,
a wink across a beer garden. Markie and Serena had met on more conspicuous
terms. Whilst both traveling on the Orient Express during a whirlwind tour of
Europe the strangers found had themselves habiting the same sleeping car – the
number 3544.

            Strangely
enough when he first laid eyes on her, he felt a jolt of history together as
deep as the 3544. The aforementioned car happened to be stored during the
depression at St Dennis and Paris and during the war the car was kept at Limoges where it was used as a shady brothel. Markie didn’t know all this at the time – he
only decided he cared when he saw Serena sitting there with an open book and a
head full of history.

            Even
before he heard her speak, Markie had been mesmerized. The girl before him was
beautiful. She had caramel hair and jade eyes, which looked like a pond with random
rocks thrown in. Her body was petite and slender, like a mini supermodel but
there was definite cleavage, of the FHM variety. In those first moments of
study, Markie hadn’t been able to pinpoint from where this young woman could
have sprung from. She looked European, but where in Europe he couldn’t say. She
looked French but without the snooty nose, German without the milky skin,
Russian without the lost soul. He waited until the suspense was almost killing
him before he approached her.

“Pardon
Madame, parlez vouz anglais?”

            Markie
figured that this was the safest, given they were in France, on their way back
to Paris. From experience he’d learnt the French didn’t take too kindly to
other languages being spoken in their country and just in case she was French
he didn’t want to offend her.

“Oui,” the
pretty young girl had grinned, closing the book.

            Out of
curiosity – he couldn’t help himself, Markie had taken a peek.
Murder on the
Orient Express
by Agatha Christie, he whispered out loud, disappointed
somehow.

“You speak
English?”

The girl
nodded.

“Where are
you from, if I can ask that is?” Right about then Markie had bent down to her
level, causing stop traffic in the corridor.

“I’m from
America, San Francisco to be more specific,” she said, her soft eastern voice
willowing away with the sights.