Blokebusters Page 33

  “I think you had a wasted visit. She’s going to sell and walk away.”

  Joshua shook his head in amusement before fixing Matt with his unblinking stare. The one he always saved for attorneys, when he’d come up against them in court. As soon as Matt swallowed he knew he’d created the desired impression.

  “Are you incredibly rich?”

  “No,” Matt prayed he wasn’t going to ransack the house looking for valuables. There weren’t any.

  “Massively well hung?”

  “N-not really.” Best not lie, Matt thought, he might demand proof.

  “Any special talents at all?”

  Matt shook his head, lasagne-making wasn’t really a talent – lots of people could do it. And his Michael Caine impression wasn’t so hot even if it did always make Georgia giggle.

  “So why the fuck is Georgia with you? Are you blackmailing her or something? Hypnosis?”

  “She loves me.” Don’t pass out; don’t pass out, Matt chanted silently. He could see sparklers in front of his eyes, a precursor to fainting. His head was a balloon drifting upwards to reach the ceiling. There was danger in the air and he breathed slowly and deeply to recover his composure. Something brushed against his leg and he noticed Gyp stroll into the room and jump into his favourite chair, opposite Joshua. Joshua stared at Gyp for several seconds, without speaking he slowly removed something from his pocket, at first Matt thought it was a mobile phone but then realised it was too much shaped like a gun to be a phone. Joshua pointed it directly at Gyp.

  “Wh-wh-what the hell are you doing?”

  “A bit of target practice never goes amiss.”

  Matt scooped Gyp from the chair, Gyp had curled up to go to sleep and disliked the disturbance; he clawed at Matt and fought his way free of his arms deciding to try the bed upstairs for some quiet.

  “Even the cat doesn’t want to be near you,” Joshua said.

  “Right, I’ve had enough – get out of my house now or I’m calling the police.” Matt edged his way to the hall in case he needed the phone. Joshua terrified him and it wasn’t purely because of the gun; he had an air of authority and ruthlessness about him, like he’d stop at nothing to reach his goals.

  Joshua rose to his feet and headed for the front door.

  “Jeez – what a wuss. A real man would throw me out, not threaten me with a telephone. No wonder I excite Georgia so much, she’s forgotten what it’s like to have a real man. I think I’d better start sleeping with her – she could do with some fun. ”

  The thought of Joshua making love to Georgia caused something inside of Matt’s brain to snap. It didn’t matter about the gun. It didn’t matter about anything in that moment. He pulled Joshua around by his shoulder and swung a punch at him. Joshua saw it coming and dodged it. He retaliated and punched Matt hard and low in the stomach; there was surprisingly little sound other than Matt slumping to his knees and gasping for air.

  “I see this isn’t going to be easy. I came round so we could reach an understanding but I guess it’s just not going to work like that. So let me put it this way: I’m gonna have your business and your wife. Get over it.”

  “Go to hell,” Matt spluttered, fighting for breath. He wished he could switch his mouth off before he got himself shot. It wasn’t a great time to start being assertive.

  “I’m so scared.” Joshua followed up his punch with a further hard kick into Matt’s ribs. Matt fell backwards against the stairs, unable to stand.

  Joshua watched him strain to regulate his breathing. He wanted Georgia divorced, not widowed. Satisfied that he hadn’t seriously hurt Matt, he left without another word.

  *

  Matt sat on the floor for a while. Even when his breath returned he was shaking too much to stand. He wanted to vomit but felt too weak to manage it. How could he feel so battered without any bloodshed? He’d never been so frightened in all his life. Joshua could have shot him. He could be dead. He ran a cold, shaky hand across his face to wipe away the cool sweat drenching his face. The thought of Georgia being with such a bully, working with him, spending her days with him – it couldn’t happen. Nor would it happen after she heard what had gone on. He pulled himself upright against the banisters and staggered into the living room, sitting in the seat that barely twenty minutes ago had contained Joshua. But how could he tell her? And did he want her to choose him simply because he was a better option than a psycho? He wanted to be chosen for the right reasons, not out of sympathy. No, he wouldn’t say anything, not unless his plan for their anniversary failed.

  Why were good-looking people such a hassle, he wondered? Joshua had stubble, which suggested laziness towards ablutions; he was clean-shaven and always washed his hands after going to the toilet – even if no one else was around to know. So why did Joshua look so much sexier? Joshua was rude, he bypassed social niceties preferring cruel and crude speech; he was polite and caring. So why did the neighbour go silly at talking to Joshua? Joshua wouldn’t have a nice meal waiting for Georgia when she got home from work – he did. Joshua wouldn’t let her hang her Cary Grant posters down the stair wall – he had. Joshua wouldn’t be grateful for a kiss or a cuddle – he was. Joshua probably didn’t even own a television – he didn’t need one; he was probably too busy having sex. Matt glanced at his wide screen TV and the unit next to it storing close to 200 DVDs. He sighed as if it proved everything. Gyp leapt into his lap from nowhere, making him jump. His paws were agony against Matt’s bruised stomach but he scooped him up and kissed him. Joshua wouldn’t have done that either.

  Georgia wasn’t aware of Matt’s ordeal until they went to bed.

  “Matt, where did you get those bruises? They look painful.” She crawled across the bed to the side where Matt was undressing to get a closer look. He cursed himself for forgetting to switch the light off.

  “An accident in the shed – looks worse than it is,” he shrugged.

  “Oh come on, what could you be doing in the shed to get a bruise like that on your stomach?” She leant over to get a closer look, her face inches from the spot that Joshua had punched and kicked.

  “You’re right. I lied. An evil bandit stormed the house and demanded my wife for his sordid pleasure. I defended you and got into a fist fight, taking a killer blow to the solar plexus.” He got into bed and pulled the duvet up to stop her staring at the bruising.

  “No need to be like that. I only want to know what happened.”

  “Sorry. It was the heavy oil can, it fell on me.”

  “Ouch. It must’ve hurt.”

  “You could always kiss it better for me,” he said and was delighted to see her head move down his body, “… and anything else that takes your fancy while you’re down there.”

  Chapter twenty-five

  Matt woke early Friday morning and watched Georgia sleep. Today had to work. He felt restless so got up; his stomach cramped as he sat upright and he glanced down at the purple expanse spreading across where his six-pack was… or would be if he had one. It was probably in there somewhere. He wandered into his office. The palm seedling was dead. It had gradually been turning browner and mouldier for a while but the awful truth could no longer be ignored. He picked up two pieces of paper from his desk – Georgia’s client sheets for that evening. Georgia’s alarm sounded and he went back into the bedroom.

  “Happy anniversary,” he said.

  “Happy anniversary to you too.”

  Not that she ever believed him, but he thought she was at her most beautiful first thing with mad hair and bleary eyes; she looked so young, so innocent – so utterly different to the polished sophisticate who left the house barely an hour and a half later.

  “Do I get a kiss?” he asked shyly, like he’d walked her home after a first date.

  “Do you want one?”

  “It would be nice.” He sat on the bed next to her and they kissed. Intimacy felt awkward after so many arguments and neither quite knew what to say. He rubbed her hands. “You’d better get washed.
”

  Both her evening clients wanted a straight-from-the-office look so she selected her suit with the short skirt. Matt’s eyes plummeted to her legs when she walked into the kitchen.

  “You look great.” He passed her a card. She gave him a card in return. There was silence as they both read, trying to take some hope for the future from the messages written within. Both had kept it bland.

  “I’ll give you your present tonight – you won’t be late,” he said.

  “OK. I’ll save yours for then too.”

  “You’ll miss your train if you don’t go.”

  *

  Georgia stared at the photo of Matt on her desk; he hadn’t looked that happy for a long time. She traced his jaw and lips. She knew he wasn’t classically handsome and that most blinkered people dismissed him as a nerd, but to her he was gorgeous. There’d never been anyone who could get near the feelings he created in her. His beautiful, kind mouth that naturally fell into a wonky smile. His soft, brown eyes, even his long nose – every bit of him was fabulous. Maybe she should tell him. She picked up the phone and dialled home; the answer machine kicked in and she hung up. It was too personal a message to deliver to a machine.

  Her secretary brought her post in.

  “Could you sign these too? They’re Jeff’s but he’s not in today.”

  “Sure. Where is he?” If he’d had a day off pre-arranged he’d have bored her about it in advance.

  “Ill apparently.”

  “Let’s all pray it’s something serious.”

  She waited until her secretary had left before taking out her client sheets for the evening. She was familiar with the first one but hadn’t read the second. The Rabbit’s name was Matthew – at least she wouldn’t have any problem remembering it. His wife loved him but was scared that she was neglecting him by working too much. Georgia didn’t have much sympathy for her; from the answers on the questionnaire he seemed lovely. The wife should focus a bit more on what mattered.

  *

  Matt hadn’t ignored Georgia’s call. He wasn’t home. At the precise moment she called he was on a train into Liverpool Street station. He got the Tube to Holborn and walked down to Covent Garden. When Georgia and he had started dating, Covent Garden was always their meeting place as it was equidistant from both their universities: Georgia at LSE, him at King’s. They used to spend hours window-shopping at all the one-of-a-kind goods on offer in the independent, quirky shops, planning what they’d buy when they had the money. Now they had the money and all the shops had gone, forced out by rising rents and replaced by the sorts of stores you’d find anywhere. It was tough to resist finding metaphors in it all. He wandered around looking at the various clothes shops, aghast at the amounts people were willing to spend in order to look awful when he could do it for next to nothing, until he found an appropriate-looking establishment. Waiting for a group of excitable Japanese girls to get out of the way, he went in. As always, the staff seemed repelled by him; he was holy water to their Dracula. Normally, he’d turn tail and run but not today. He hated shops where they didn’t seem to have much stock, it made him afraid to touch anything. He walked up to the assistant at the till.

  “Can you make me look smart and stylish please?”

  The assistant looked around nervously for back-up. Matt noticed.

  “Don’t look at me like that – I have credit cards and an IQ of over 130. Serve me.”

  The manager appeared at the sound of Matt’s raised voice.

  “Can I help you sir?”

  Matt could tell from his expression he suspected Matt was a crank.

  “I don’t know where to begin really,” he said and was amazed to hear all his concerns flowing out of his voice with such ease that it didn’t feel like him speaking. “My wife – the woman I adore, is being pursued by another man. He can offer her things I can’t; he’s suave, polished, exciting… well, you get the idea. If I were her, I’d pick him over me. Only she doesn’t know how dangerous he is. He did this to me.” He lifted his shirt and the shop staff all gasped; he hoped it was at his bruise rather than his un-toned midriff. “She says she loves me but I’m not a fool,” he sighed and was pleased to see that his audience were solemn-faced. “I’d die without her. She’s the only one – the only one who’s ever bothered with me. So you see I’ve got to show her that I’m still the man for her. I want to sweep her off her feet tonight.”

  All four staff had gathered round him to listen. One of them, a man so small it looked like he’d been shrunk to seventy-five percent of his full size, piped up, “Don’t think I’m being rude but I reckon you need more than a suit. You need a haircut, a facial and proper shave, a manicure and some aftershave. Then you should come back for a suit.”

  “Ooh yes,” the rest agreed. The manager added, “We’ve got a terrific navy Helmut Lang that would be perfect. Come back after your haircut.”

  “I don’t want a hat,” Matt said.

  “Who said anything about a hat?”

  “Helmet Long.”

  They sniggered suspecting he was teasing. They smothered their giggles when they realised he wasn’t.

  “I wouldn’t know where to go for a haircut.”

  “There’s an excellent salon up the road. Wait a minute and I’ll call them – make them fit you in,” the manager said. Matt heard him on the phone and picked out some of the conversation, most notably “desperate case”, “at least an hour”, “the works”, and “don’t let a trainee loose on him”.

  “They can see you now. Come back here afterwards and we’ll find you a nice suit and shirt. I’ll call Miguel at the shoe shop down the road and tell him to expect you later as well.”

  “Right. Thanks.” They pointed Matt in the direction of the salon. “Maybe I should tell you my size so you can think about what you’ve got for me.”

  The weedy one spoke up.

  “Sir, I think we’ve all seen enough men to know your size.”

  Matt wondered why it sounded so lewd.

  *

  It was an odd afternoon. He quite enjoyed the haircut at first; it was the first time he’d paid someone to cut his hair other than a fat man in an apron. He’d never ventured into a unisex salon before. His barber’s walls were covered in posters of half-naked women and adverts for Durex. This place had art and sculpture. He thought it was a wind-up when he was provided with a tray of nibbles and a glass of Pimms.

  “You have wild hair,” the blue-haired stylist told him. He didn’t know if it was a compliment or whether she was identifying a problem so tried to wear an ambiguous expression, fretting over whether he should entrust his hair and his marriage to a woman with stalagmites growing from the top of her head. “We need to go very short to get it under control.”

  “Do whatever you want – as long as it will compliment a Herbert Lom suit.”

  The manicure and shave made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like being prodded by strangers and particularly hated the facial. How Georgia stuck face packs and moisturiser he couldn’t fathom although he had to concede that his skin did glow afterwards, but he felt like his masculinity had taken a knock.

  He was bored by the time the stylist poked about his head at odd bits of hair with wax. They’d made such an effort with him that he didn’t want to be rude, but he started fidgeting in the chair.

  “There we are – all done,” the stylist said excitedly, suggesting that until that moment Matt couldn’t have known what it would end up looking like. He smiled at his reflection. He hadn’t ever looked so – what was the right word? Polished. Not even on his wedding day. Matt wasn’t vain but he realised this was the closest he’d ever come to being handsome. Never in his life had he applied the word to himself. His hair was terrific. Short at the back and sides, marginally longer on the top and almost flat except for a perky tuft at the front. He couldn’t recall his hair ever being so tidy.

  He didn’t flinch at the bill and tipped all the staff generously. His stomach rumbled so he purchased a s
andwich, carefully selecting one with a filling that wouldn’t give him breath issues later on, and ate it whilst walking back to the clothes shop. For the first time in his life he felt fire in his belly; he was a large boulder rolling down a hill gathering momentum.

  “Sir, I wouldn’t have recognised you but for the repulsive t-shirt,” the manager said.

  Matt let it pass.

  “Make me smart,” he ordered and the staff brought out various outfits to show him. After he’d tried on three expensive suits and made each one resemble a mailbag, the staff readjusted their definition of the word ‘smart’. They bitched about him in the stock room.

  “Have you ever seen anyone look like that in Paul Smith?”

  “Well, you know the saying – you can’t polish a turd.”

  “If he was my man I’d take him in hand, she’s let him dress far too poorly, for too long. He’s past saving if you ask me. If any other customers had seen him in that Ralph Lauren – well, it’s too horrible to consider.”

  “Yes but it’s down to posture, isn’t it? He stands like a marionette with a snapped string.”

  An hour later, two of the staff were close to tears.

  “Don’t blame yourselves,” Matt consoled them. “It’s me. I’m a hopeless case.”

  “I think the navy Helmut Lang is sir’s best option. At least it fits. Mostly,” the manager said.

  Matt had rattled them. He knew he’d enter into shop folklore: The man who couldn’t look smart.

  “I agree. Let’s call a halt before I give your employees a collective nervous breakdown.”

  He bought the suit and a white shirt and changed into it.

  “Sir? May I recommend you swap your current undergarments for these?” The manager’s arm discretely entered the changing room. Matt took the box of Calvin Klein briefs from him.

  “Thanks.”

  It was a long time since Matt had worn a tie. He was amazed to learn that there were eighty-five different kinds of tie knots. The weedy assistant helped him out and tied a mid-size knot. The navy tie alone cost £50 but Matt made sure he didn’t show his horror. He paid and they all wished him luck. The manager held the door open for him and blocked his exit.