Chapter 35
35
Monday 4 July
11:25 p.m.
Celebrated Fourth of July ironically with the usual suspects (
avec
Eric!) at my place, in honor of Linda’s unofficial moving out.
Since it was American Independence Day, Ben, who had dual US-British citizenship, and Linda, who I doubt has actual work and had my house key, had decided to take charge of the decorations. The house was decorated with blue, white, and red pom pom balls and crepe streamers, with a carpet of irregular-size silver balloons. My bar table was covered with bottles of bourbon, rum, whiskey, and vodka, and there were Ikea glass tumblers and an ice bucket with ugly mass-produced ice cubes. Very “Ice Bucket Challenge,” not Eric Deng at all.
I was very nervous, not just because I’d been inhaling helium and still sounded like Alvin the Chipmunk. Eric was different from the people I hung out with. Eric was, how can I put it politely, well—he was much more well-adjusted than most of the so-called adults I knew. Also he was older. I was mostly worried that Linda would rip him to shreds. Linda . . . oh, Linda was a bloodhound, and she’d been fed very few scraps in terms of my love life over the past nine years or so since I’d been in Singapore. She’d never approved of Ivan, and I wasn’t expecting her to like Eric either. She had such high standards for people dating everyone else but herself. I warned her to be nice, and she replied something like, “The Don will apportion grace and magnanimity as befits the supplicant.”
Honestly, I really don’t know how we became friends.
Linda and Ben were at my place by seven to help decorate the living room (the door to my bedroom had been safely locked up—I couldn’t risk Eric wandering in and seeing the amount of stuff I had). Everyone else started arriving around eight. The alcohol, it must be said, was flowing very freely. By the time Eric was due to arrive, everyone was cheerfully wasted, except for me. I had the performance sweats: I needed my friends to like, to approve of, Eric. I don’t know where this group approval system comes from—it must be some kind of evolutionary hangover from back in the day when everyone had that one cave to hide out in from mammoths or icy vortexes, and you didn’t want to be the person bringing back a mate who smelled like warm fungal soup or who went around dry-humping the wood pile, so you got a few of your more discreet buddies to check them out, and if the potential mate didn’t pass the test, all the buddies basically clubbed the mate to death to protect the species. Same thing.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured Eric saying something about how he didn’t believe in miscegenation and all of my mates jumping on him in a whirl of Looney Tunes limbs. These were the kinds of deep dark things that you unearth sometimes months, years into a relationship. Plus he didn’t have a digital trail, like Ratfink Orson. Urgh. Naturally I was a mess by the time he rang the doorbell. I had to steel myself with a fortifying shot of bourbon.
“Hi, everyone, this is Eric!” I chirped, barely stopping myself from shouting “Deng!” as I led him in. Thankfully I was back to normal. Voice-wise.
He was wearing a deep blue and teal batik long-sleeved top and beige chinos. And—I did a double take—white Adidas Stan Smith trainers, with green trim. Why was he wearing Stan Smiths? He never wore anything other than suede loafers or dress shoes. It looked super incongruous.
And . . . and . . . were his chinos . . .
slim cut
?
“You like?” he stage-whispered.
“Hmm-mmm,” I replied. Best to say nothing if you were still digesting the visual stimuli.
Linda breezed up to him and shook his hand. “I’m Linda,” she said, before I could introduce her.
Eric smiled and shook her hand. “And I’m Eric.”
“So I’ve been told,” Linda replied breezily. “Now, I’ve made my famous truth serum, and you and I are going to go to a corner and you’re going to divulge your deepest darkest secrets.” She handed him a mug of her proprietary blend of twenty-one-year-old Yamazaki whiskey, neat, her preferred drink.
“Do I have a choice?” Eric joked, smiling as he accepted the mug, not at all freaked out when he really should have been. She had been known to bite. Literally.
“Be nice,” I called anxiously to their backs as Linda hustled him away to the balcony.
“I won’t,” Linda shouted back. Then she slid the sliding doors closed and I saw two cigars being lit.
—
They came back almost an hour later while we were streaming the live coverage of the Fourth of July celebrations and drinking. I watched Eric closely for signs of trauma, but he looked fine. Linda was now in her friendly networker mode, smiling and touching his arm now and then as she chatted with him. She threw me a wink and mouthed, “He’s legit.” I wondered what they had discussed, and more specifically, what she had gotten Eric to disclose about me.
I was glad to see everyone, especially Linda, getting along with Eric, and vice versa, despite the difference in age (and maturity). Linda was particularly joyous, twinkling under Jason’s warm attention and Ben’s undeniable jealousy. Ben and Valerie left around
midnight. Linda and I hung back to talk in my room while Jason and Eric chatted on the balcony and smoked more cigars. Apparently things were going well with her and Jason, and they were making plans to spend Christmas in the Philippines. (How many days of leave does this woman have??)
“Oh, and I think Eric’s a solid guy. I made him run the gauntlet of questions and he didn’t even flinch. He’s an honest bloke and he’s terribly into you.” She patted my back. “I didn’t get it before, but now I do. He’s the unconventionally sexy kind, in a deviated septum, dad-ish way.”
“Stay away from him,” I said immediately, alarmed by the dad reference.
Linda chortled. “It’s OK, I’m good with who I have.” She said this with a soft smile on her face. “But as your oldest friend, Andrea, I’m a little surprised. I feel like you’re taking the easy route.”
I was scornful. “Choosing Eric is choosing the
hard
route. The man’s got a young daughter and he’s from another generation. But I think he’s worth it.”
“Yes, I understand that he is a good catch, Andrea, but let me try and put it in a way you’ll understand. It’s like aiming for second-class upper when you should be getting a first-class degree.”
Now I was annoyed. “Eric is first class, Linda.”
“OK, fine, let me use another obtuse analogy: it’s like getting first class in medicine when all you wanted to be is a pharmacist.”
“How dare you?” I said in richly shocked tones.
Linda shrugged. “Look, you know me. I’d rather get a third in pharmacy than medicine, so long as it’s pharmacy I’d rather be
doing
.” She gestured at Jason who was standing by the window in a sleeveless top, looking conventionally sexy and perfect. Honestly, if that was third class, something had to be majorly deviated under his shorts.
When it was time for Jason and Linda to leave, all of us helped to move her remaining stuff from the living room and the spare room into a rental lorry. I know this sounds strange, dear Diary, but when the last box was loaded and the lorry drove away, I felt a twinge of regret, mostly because I could no longer borrow the sweet bags that Linda had left at my apartment. But then Eric gave me what started as a shoulder massage and—yum.