Sushi for Beginners - Marian Keyes [128]
‘My boyfriend is taking me out for dinner.’
‘Your boyfriend? Oh, you mean Marcus Valentine? And he’s taking you out for dinner?’ Joy sounded jealous. ‘All men want to do is get drunk with me. They never feed me.’ She paused and Ashling knew she was going to say something gross. She wasn’t disappointed. ‘The only thing my fella feeds me,’ Joy said gloomily, ‘is his mickey. You realize that if Marcus is taking you out for dinner on a Saturday night, he means business?… Business,’ she repeated with emphasis. ‘No more stunts like the last time, saying you have to get up for work in the morning.’
‘I know. And the hairs have already started to grow back on my legs.’
Ashling knew exactly what she was going to wear on Saturday night. Everything, right down to her nice underwear. It was all entirely under control. Then suddenly she took violently against her lipstick. She’d worn the same colour for what felt like years, buying the same again when one ran out. And all because it suited her! What tosh!
Mag-hags got through lipsticks like they got through men – speedily. She needed a new lipstick to redefine her. It was imperative that she track down the right one, and until she did everything felt wrong.
Saturday morning was spent obsessively foraging, but nothing suited. They were either too pink, too orange, too frosted, too shiny, too dark, too pale or too shimmering. Experimenting with being someone else, she tried on a vampy dark-red colour and viewed herself in the mirror. No. She looked as though she’d been on a fourteen-hour spree, drinking red wine which had congealed and solidified on her mouth. Attempting a smile, she looked like Dracula. The sales girl came running. ‘That’s fabulous on you.’
Ashling managed to escape and the hunt continued. The back of her hand, criss-crossed with red stripes, looked like an open wound. And then, just when hope was fading, she found it. The perfect one. It was love at first sight and Ashling knew with a deep warm conviction that everything was going to be all right now.
Marcus was picking Ashling up at eight-thirty, so at seven o’clock she poured herself a glass of wine and let the preparations commence. It had been a long time since she’d gone for dinner with a man. She and Phelim had had a lazy, comfortable routine of takeaways and only ever went to restaurants when they’d had enough of delivered pizzas and curries. Meals out had been strictly utilitarian exercises in nourishment, not seduction – they’d employed other methods for getting each other into bed. When Phelim was in the mood he used to say, ‘Beast with two backs, any takers?’ and when Ashling was instigating matters she’d command, ‘Ravish me!’
And what would sex with Marcus be like? A terrified, excited fizz lit her nerve-endings and she pawed for her cigarettes. Joy couldn’t have picked a better time to arrive.
She complimented Ashling on her clothes, pulled down the waistband on her jeans and admired her choice of thong, then asked, ‘Did you remember to put conditioner on your pubic hair?’
Ashling winced and Joy looked wounded. ‘These things matter! Well, did you?’
Ashling nodded.
‘Good girl. How long is it since you had sex? When Phelim went to Oz?’
‘When he came home for his brother’s wedding.’
‘And you’re really going for it with Mr Valentine?’
‘Why else would I put conditioner on my pubic hair?’ Anticipation rendered Ashling irritable.
‘Excellento! So you like him?’
Ashling considered. ‘I could really come to like him. We get on well, and he’s attractive but not too attractive. People like me never get off with male models or actors or the kind of men that people say, “God, he’s really good-looking.” You know what I mean?’
‘You’re freaking me out. What else?’
‘We like the same kind of films.’
‘And they are?’ Joy enquired.
‘Ones in English.’
Phelim had showed an irritating tendency to think of himself as an intellectual and often talked about going to foreign and subtitled films. He’d never actually gone, but used to distress Ashling by reading aloud reviews and suggesting