Gucci Gucci Coo Page 9

  Remodeling the bathroom should have taken ten days, tops. It had already taken nearly three weeks and there was still the tiling to do when the plumbing was done. Heaven only knew how long the kitchen was going to take. Ruby had thought about looking for somebody else to do the work, but she’d decided against it. Ivan might be slow, but he was good at what he did. Before taking him on, she’d been to look at Ronnie’s neighbor’s new kitchen and been hugely impressed.

  There was another upside, though. Once the kitchen and bathroom were finished, there was no more work to be done. Everything else was finished. The rewiring had been done. Ditto the painting and decorating. Last week, new wooden floors had gone down and a few days ago her brown leather sofas had been delivered along with new blinds. All she needed to think about now were cushions, rugs and lamps. The fun part.

  She loved her flat—especially now that the renovations were coming to an end—because it was cozy and womblike. It was her refuge, her safe haven when the going got rough. Of course, she knew that it was too small. She badly needed a study so that she could move her computer and all her papers off the dining room table. She also hankered after a garden—somewhere to sit with a glass of wine on a warm summer’s evening. She wanted to smell lily of the valley, honeysuckle and sweet peas. Since it was a top-floor flat, she had thought about converting the loft and maybe seeing if she could get permission from the council to build a roof terrace. But she’d been so busy doing the place up and running the shop that her plans hadn’t extended beyond her head.

  Ivan was standing in front of Ruby now, red faced and breathless from the effort of getting to his feet.

  “You sure you’re feeling all right?” Ruby said gently. She suspected that Ivan had a heart problem. She’d broached the subject of his breathlessness once or twice, but Ivan always insisted it was caused by nothing more than the mild asthma he’d had since childhood.

  He inhaled deeply and straightened. “No worry. I em good now.”

  “Sure?’

  He nodded.

  “So, how’s the loo coming along?” It was a redundant question, since she’d just passed the toilet sitting in the hall, still in its wrapping. If she hadn’t had a guest loo she wasn’t sure what she would have done.

  “Bollocks,” Ivan announced.

  “Blimey, things that bad, eh?”

  “I do not understand,” he said, arms outsretched, palms turned heavenward, “the English bollocks.”

  “I’m not sure they’re much different from Ukranian ones,” Ruby replied, wondering precisely where the conversation was going.

  “But I just buy new ceestern yesterday and already the bollock it ees kaput. The overflow keep on overflowing and I cannot feex eet. I think bollock is too small.”

  A light went on. “Oh, you mean ball cock. My ball cock is kaput.”

  “Da, that is what I say…bollock.” Ivan had only been here a few months and his plumbing vocab wasn’t yet up to speed.

  “No, Ivan, it’s pronounced ball cock, not bollock. Bollock is something quite different.”

  “Yes, bollock. Eet is what I say.”

  “No, Ivan, it’s not…”

  “I go back to plumber’s merchant tomorrow and return bollock and ask for new one. Then maybe I feex it.”

  She wasn’t sure how to approach this. “You know, Ivan, I don’t think you’ll get much joy asking the bloke behind the counter for a new bollock. Might be better to ask for a replacement cistern.”

  “Ah, yes, thees is good. But still I tell him, his English bollocks are too small. In my country we have much bigger bollocks.”

  Ruby cleared her throat. “Good, well…excellent. I think I’ll just leave sorting this one out to you.”

  Once Ivan had left and she’d swept up some of the mess he’d left in the bathroom, there was no time to write the letter to Claudia Planchette. She made time, though, to put in a quick call to Chanel. She didn’t want to pester her, but she was worried about her and simply wanted to check that she’d got home OK and was hanging in there. Craig answered and said he was taking her out to dinner and that they were determined to find a new doctor. Ruby said nothing. Despite having suggested to Chanel that she make an appointment with one of the doctors at St. Luke’s, she couldn’t help thinking now that they were clutching at straws.

  After she got off the phone, she went into the bedroom to choose something to wear for her date. The room was just about big enough for her bed and a small wardrobe. Since it was so fashionable again, Ruby had wanted to hang patterned wallpaper. Fi had convinced her that a pattern would make the room seem even smaller, so Ruby compromised. She bought a couple of large wooden panels and covered those in fancy seventies aubergine and olive wallpaper instead. She hung one over her bed in place of a headboard. The second she put on the far wall facing the door, so that people noticed it the moment they walked in. Everybody, including Ronnie, said how well the wallpaper panels worked. What Ruby didn’t say was that she’d nicked the idea from Changing Rooms.

  Ruby’s wardrobe was overflowing—not because she was always buying clothes, but because the wardrobe was so small and because she hadn’t had a clear-out in ages. She knew the rules. If you haven’t worn an outfit for more than a season, dump it, but she never could. There was always that vague feeling that maybe high-waisted tapered jeans and bat-sleeve sweaters might have their day again. The fact that bat-sleeve sweaters had only ever had a very brief and less than triumphant day in the first place always seemed to escape her.

  She opened the mirror door and began sliding clothes along the rack. A gorgeous novelist definitely deserved her best shot. She paused briefly at a low-cut scarlet dress before wrinkling her nose and moving on. Too tarty. It practically screamed: “take me now!” She continued along the rack. Finally she pulled out a halter-neck top in pale raspberry silk. It was sexy without being too full-on. She teamed this with a pretty beaded A-line skirt in a slightly darker shade. She even managed to find a dusky pink halter-neck bra and pants. Not that she was planning for things to go any further than dinner, but coordinating underwear always made her feel good.

  She left everything on the aubergine and olive duvet and went to run a bath. As she soaked in the tub, she burned lavender and jasmine candles, which was the nearest she had got so far to a garden.

  When she arrived at Bella Roma—right on time—Duncan wasn’t there. She wasn’t too put out, since he’d phoned the restaurant and left a message apologizing and saying he was stuck in traffic.

  The maître d’ offered to show her to her table, but she decided to go to the loo first.

  There were two cubicles in the ladies’ room, one of which was occupied. She took the second and sat down to pee. Suddenly she heard a voice coming from the next cubicle. “So how are you?” Ruby stopped in midpee and frowned. Assuming there was some weird woman in the next cubicle, she didn’t say anything.

  “No, come on,” the voice said again. “You all right? Please, speak to me.”

  Ruby did some nervous throat clearing. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “Really? That’s kind, but there’s no need.”

  “Everything OK at work?”

  “Erm, yeah…couldn’t be better. Shop’s pretty busy.”

  “So, what are you doing now?”

  “Umm, just having a quick pee, actually. You?”

  There was a brief pause. Then Ruby heard the voice again. “Listen, Justin, I’ll have to call you back, babe. There’s some daft tart in the next cubicle answering all my questions.”

  Desperate that the woman in the next cubicle wouldn’t see her and think she was completely barking mad, Ruby finished peeing, rinsed her hands and fled the ladies’ room as fast as she could.

  When she got back into the restaurant, one of the waiters told her that Duncan had arrived and pointed out a table at the far end.

  As she walked through the restaurant, she had no idea that the woman from the
loo was following her. Suddenly she felt a sharp tap on her shoulder. She turned round. Standing in front of her was a brassy-looking woman in her midforties, wearing tight black leather pants and a crimson trout pout. “Excuse me,” she blasted Ruby, so that the entire restaurant could hear, “is this how you get your kicks, hiding in toilet cubicles joining in other people’s private phone conversations? I mean, how sad is that? Don’t you have a life?”

  “Sorry. It was a genuine mistake,” Ruby ventured. “I honestly thought you were talking to me.”

  “Yeah, right. Like I’d start talking to some strange woman in the next cubicle. What do you take me for, some kind of weirdo?”

  Ruby wanted to say that actually she had taken her for a weirdo, but seeing how angry the woman was, she felt it was wiser to say nothing.

  The woman delivered something that was clearly meant to be a haughty sniff but came out more as a piggy snort. With that she turned on what Ruby couldn’t help noticing were rather cheap, excessively high heels and teetered back to her table where a group of equally brassy, St. Tropez-ed women friends were waiting.

  Ruby was aware that everybody in the restaurant had stopped eating to watch the exchange between her and the woman. Now, as they turned back to their food, she found herself glued to the spot, her face burning with embarrassment. She seriously considered making a run for it. What was the point of staying? Her gorgeous, sexy novelist was bound to think she was some kind of nutcase with a public toilet fetish.

  Against her better judgment, she continued toward the table. It was curiosity that spurred her on. She simply couldn’t resist seeing precisely how gorgeous Gorgeous Duncan was—not that he would be remotely interested in her now, after what had just happened. She took a deep breath. “I forgive myself my past mistakes,” she muttered, remembering her affirmations. “I am beautiful and vibrant in my uniqueness.”

  As she approached the table, all she could see was a man sitting with his back facing her, his body bent over toward the floor. He appeared to be struggling to pull something from a large black leather holdall. So engrossed was he that Ruby decided there was a distinct possibility he hadn’t overheard her contretemps with the brassy woman.

  She watched as he continued to do battle with the overly full bag. Finally, Mary Poppins–like, he produced one of those beaded seat covers favored by taxi drivers. With great precision, not to say solemnity, he stood up and began arranging it over his chair.

  Ruby waited for him to finish. Then, doing her best to conceal her amusement and disbelief, she introduced herself.

  “Oh, hi, I’m Duncan,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you. Soph’s told me all about you.” It was his voice that struck her first. It was a low monotone. He hadn’t said much, but she could already tell that listening to him was going to be like listening to a car engine stuck in second gear.

  They sat down and Duncan immediately began rolling his back and shoulders over the beads of the seat cover. “Oh, that feels good,” he said, starting to rotate his head as well. “It’s so important to get the right lumbar support.”

  Ruby immediately felt rotten about sneering. Poor chap clearly had a bad back.

  “It must be awful being in constant back pain,” she said.

  “I’m not in any pain. There’s absolutely nothing the matter with my back…yet.” He wagged a finger in front of her. “But as I always say, prevention is better than cure.”

  It turned out that Duncan had just hit forty and as a result had become obsessed with the health effects of getting older. Over drinks—wine for her, mineral water for him—he treated her to an artery-by-artery account of how the cardiovascular system deteriorates during a person’s fifth decade. As he spoke, she noticed his heavy forehead and elongated chin. With his fringe that had been separated into “curtains,” she couldn’t help thinking he looked—not to mention sounded—like a funeral director stuck in a nineties-style rut. It was clear that Soph’s idea of gorgeous was nothing like her own.

  “So, I hear you’re a novelist,” Ruby said, anxious to get the conversation away from Duncan’s physical decline.

  “Yes, I write murder mysteries.”

  Now this sounded promising.

  “I’ve completed six so far,” he went on. Wow, he was successful. Better and better. “And all of them in my own, made-up language.”

  Ah. Oh…kay. “In your own language? I see. So, um, who’s your publisher?”

  Duncan said he didn’t have a publisher as such, but was living in hope of getting one lined up shortly. He then went to great pains to describe the fundamental building blocks of his made-up language, which was called Brogan.

  By the time the profiteroles arrived she was proficient in conjugating the verb “to be.” “Well done!” he enthused. “Now, then, let’s move on to the verb ‘to do’ or ‘to make.’ This is an irregular OL verb: anrol. So, I make is eb anrol. You make—familiar form—is ip anrola. He, she and it makes is sa anrols. See if you can remember any of that.”

  Over espresso they covered the perfect and the imperfect tense, as well as the subjunctive. By eleven she could bear it no more and told Duncan that she’d had a wonderful evening, but really needed to get home as she had an early start. He offered to give her a lift, but, petrified he would try to seduce her by teaching her the genitive or ablative, she insisted on calling a taxi.

  As they waited outside for a cab, Ruby sensed that Duncan was psyching himself up to saying something. Her heart sank. Any second he was going to suggest they go out again and ask her for her phone number. Naturally she would give it to him on the grounds that it would be too mean not to. She would then go home and spend all night trying to invent plausible excuses for not going out with him.

  Several minutes and at least a dozen cabs went by—all with their for-hire lights off—but instead of asking for her number, he stood rolling on the balls of his feet, nattering on about how chilly the nights were getting now they were into September. She was about to put him out of his misery and simply hand him her card, when he said: “Look, Ruby, you are very nice and please don’t take this the wrong way, but as I always say honesty is the best policy and the truth is I don’t think there’s much chemistry between us.”

  Relief shot through her. “Oh, right,” she said, thinking that for the sake of politeness she ought to at least sound disappointed.

  “You see, I demand very high standards in the women I go out with. I look for a sharp, probing mind. I need somebody who will challenge me, somebody who can appreciate that in creating this new language of mine, I am in fact attempting to create a new reality.”

  “I see.”

  “The thing is that when I was trying to engage with you over semantic roles and clustering syntactic positions, you didn’t seem that interested. I’m sure that in many ways, you’re not a boring person, but—”

  “Hang on, you think I’m boring?”

  “Just a little, maybe, but please don’t take it to heart. I would hate you to see this as a rejection.” Before she had a chance to say anything, Duncan was hailing a taxi. The next thing she knew, he was holding the door open for her. “There is a man out there for you, I just know it. As I always say, every pot has its lid.” With that he slammed the door shut.

  “Where to, love?” said the driver.

  WHEN SHE GOT home, Ruby tried ringing Fi to inform her that as long as she lived she would never go on another blind date—at least not one Fi had organized—but the phone was off the hook. That could only mean that Connor was asleep and she didn’t want to be disturbed.

  She brushed her teeth and took off her makeup. Then she fell into bed and began reciting a new affirmation—one she had just made up. “I am not boring. I have never been boring. I never will be boring. I am scintillating, articulate and intelligent. In company I dazzle people with my wit and insight.” She must have recited this a dozen times or more. Then she fell asleep and dreamed that she was teaching Sam Epstien how to conjugate th
e Brogan verb “to neck.”

  Chapter 7

  “Chanel, can I ask you something?” It was the following morning and Ruby and Chanel were getting ready to open the shop.

  “Course.”

  “Do you think I’m boring?”

  “You? Boring?” Chanel said. “You’re the least boring person I know.”

  “Really?” Ruby could feel herself blushing at the compliment.

  “Of course, I don’t mind when you go on for hours about how yer mum analyzes you, but I can see it might get some people down. And then there was that time when that bloke cut you off on the motorway. You didn’t talk about anything else for days.”

  “But he nearly killed me. I was in shock. You’d have been the same if it had been you he’d cut off.”

  “And whenever you’ve got the slightest sniffle, you don’t stop moaning…”

  “OK, but apart from the mum thing, the near-death experience on the motorway and my tendency to be a bit needy when I have a temperature of 103, I’m not boring?”

  “Definitely not. What’s all this about anyway?…Oh, ’ang on, it’s got something to do with your date last night, ’asn’t it?”

  Ruby admitted it had.

  “Bit crap, was it?” Chanel said.

  Until now Ruby had been dusting the countertop. She stopped, can of Pledge in one hand, duster in the other, and pretended to become lost in thought. “Hmm, I’m not sure that ‘a bit crap’ quite gets to the nub of it, really. I think ‘catastrophe’ would be a more accurate description.”

  “Oh, right. So, better than some of the other dates Fi’s fixed you up with, then?”

  Ruby managed to laugh. Then she told Chanel about Duncan. Chanel wasn’t amused. “A novel? In ’is own made-up language? And ’e ’ad the nerve to call you boring?” She shuddered. “Total weirdo if you ask me. I wouldn’t have ’ung around, I tell you that much.”

  “I have to admit, he was a bit strange…”