Tuesday Talk: A story Inspired By A Song

following on from the December series I ran on Discovering Diamonds...

This story was previewed as an exclusive to my Newsletter Subscribers

Read the story. Guess the song.

Clue:

 

I watched you come in through the door, that quick glance you gave into the hall mirror, the expansive stretch of your arms as you greeted our hostess with your traditional three kisses, cheek, cheek, lips. God, I felt my skin crawl. She, laughing, took your trendy trilby hat and the real-silk scarf, slid those expensive leather gloves into the cashmere coat pocket and handed everything to the nearest waitress. Everyone was looking at you, the rock-star walking into the room, the guy with the Oscar-winning actor’s face, the multi-millionaire. James Bond, Johnny Depp, George Cluny all rolled into one. More kissing as the women flocked to greet you, more of your surreptitious touches on their ‘does my bum look big in this?’ backsides, (yes.) And you also touched up two very good looking young men, I noticed.

What really made me grit my teeth, through the essential false smile stuck on to my face, was the way you pretended to remember everyone: “Hello darling” – “Lovely to see you my dear”. You really hadn’t a clue who you were talking to did you?

It had been a decent enough party up to that point. Pre-Christmas always was a time for the rich and upward-heading to pretend they were all laid-back and super-dooper happy. The diamond earrings, sapphire necklaces – I feel I want to say ‘and that was just the men!’ but that would be unfair, it wasn’t their fault that you turned up. Nor would it have been at the doing of our Hostess with the Mostess, your invitation would have come from her Hubby. I hate that term, hubby, perhaps because I’m British and it isn’t a word we use much in the wrong part of Kent. Americans use it all the time. I have been here in the US for two-months, started at San Francisco, then travelling across various States, visiting and staying with friend to friend, catching up on Old Times. I hadn’t bargained on quite such an old time catching up on me though, here in Chicago. Last I’d heard of you, you were shacked up with a rich young widow in Budapest. This was my last evening. I was flying home back to Blighty at a I-didn’t-know-it-even-existed early hour in the morning. Home for Christmas. My bags were tucked away in one of the back bedrooms, I intended to slip away just gone midnight. Had a cab booked.

I digress. Several of the guests would have been invited by ‘Hubby’, he was the Main Man, the bloke with the money, the man with his finger on the pulse of Big Business, although how much that pulse was in need of emergency C.P.R., I could only guess. In my experience, rich people who threw these huge Christmas parties were probably on the verge of bankruptcy. The ploy was to openly and ostentatiously try to hide the fact, just in case there was some turban-clad genie waiting in the New Year with a magic solution. Our host, I guessed, was hoping to broker a huge payoff deal with you. Was that why you had been invited? Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether the poor b*stard and his simpering, size 8 wife went belly-up or not. The pair of them were tossers. No, to be fair, he was the tosser, she was a blank-minded out-of-a-bottle-blonde who had been swept up by his charm and he had married her for her looks. Nothing else. She didn’t have anything else, apart from that slim-line waist that a man could span his hands around.

And you were doing just that, right there in the middle of the room, laughing with everyone as Hubby urged you to prove it, that a man could touch his fingers together circled around her Barbie-thin waist. I felt sick again as I watched from the sidelines. Oh, and of course, you just had to kiss her again, and oops, as you released her, so accidentally brushed your hand against the swell of her Double-D boobs that were billowing out from her low-cut micro-mini black dress.

I met you, oh, many years ago now. I was still a child really, for all that I was seventeen. Naïve is the most appropriate word. Beyond Uncle Bob’s lecherous slurps, seventeen and never been kissed. I was at college and yes, we met at one of those rave parties that were all the rage back then. Stupid, clichéd, but it was true – our eyes met across the crowded room and you swept me off my feet. Literally as it happened, for it was, co-incidentally, Christmas, and when we went outside for a breath of fresh air… I’ve always wondered, did you slip on that patch of ice by chance or was it deliberate? Did you deliberately pull me down with you as you fell? Nowhere else seemed icy, but we were both hot and sweaty from the over-crowded party, and even hotter and sweatier after you'd picked me up off the floor and stole my virginity up against the club's kitchen wall.

I’d fallen in love with you that first moment. Hopelessly plunged into passion. I gave up college, followed you like a little puppy dog. Huh, more like a lamb to the slaughter. You had money and position, even then, your Mummy’s-Boy money. She’d passed away when you were twenty and left you a spoilt, rich man. A very  spoilt, very rich man who had no need to work for a living but could dabble in whatever he fancied whenever he wanted. Which is why everyone loved you, of course. You moved in the top circles, knew everyone who needed to be known - including royalty and presidents; financed promising businesses, movies, rock groups, athletes. Politicians. Had doubled your wealth by the time you were twenty-five, which is when I met you.

I’m not showing off, blowing my own trumpet, if I say I was pretty then. My skin is a little wrinkled now and my girth is more akin to a Cabbage Patch Doll rather than Barbie, but my eyes still sparkle, I’ve still got the gorgeous smile that you were always raving about. The one you grew bored with after six months, after we’d flown to the Philippines in your private ‘plane for that ‘special event’ that you just had to attend. I hadn’t realised that you only took me along because I was something pretty to drape on your arm and something for you to use to bargain with. I only discovered it on the second night when I couldn’t find you at that party – yes another one, your main hang-out has always been the parties you ought to be at, hasn’t it? I found out that you had been making love to the wife of the fifty-something ratbag you were doing your next big money-making deal with. He told me straight out, assuming I knew and had consented to the wife-swapping. He needed your support so had, at your suggestion, given her to you, and you'd reciprocated the gesture. She was even younger than me. Sixteen, maybe still only fifteen? Poor kid. Let’s not be coy, that man, your next business partner, raped me. You’d given me to him to have 'fun' with. Prostituted me in order to win the deal. You didn’t want me after that. I was ‘used goods’. You cleared of with not even a goodbye. Left me to wake up in that dreadful man’s house to make my own way home, with nothing but my clothes, passport and a wedge of money to pay me off. I never saw you again until tonight. You were a bastard then. You still are.

I couldn’t leave this party yet, I had obligations, although I had to fight down the urge to run away. I was sick, violently, in the loo. I’d been heading to the hidden-away one that the staff used, for a desperate pee. You really ought to be more careful, screwing the wife of the host, your supposed present best friend…

Yes, it was me you bumped into as you came out of the smallest spare bedroom buttoning your flies. I heard her voice inside, caught a glimpse of her as she hastily dressed.

You smiled, showing perfect white teeth, apologised.

“No problem, sir,” I answered in my best imitation American accent. I’d started disguising my British nationality after the first week, fed up with all the stupid remarks: ‘You from In-ga-land? You know my grandmother? She must be a neighbour, she lives in Warsaw.’  *

You didn’t give me a second look as you swaggered off down the stairs, whistling like you always did after an easy conquest.

You are so wrapped up in yourself, you didn’t recognise me, did you? But then why would you? You wouldn’t expect me, the forty-something who had finally found the courage to actually do things, to be moving in the same circles as you? To be frank, I hadn’t expected to be there either, but the friend I was staying with had to be there, and she felt guilty at leaving me alone on my last night, so had found me something suitable to wear and smuggled me in. And of course, you wouldn’t notice us, the staff, the hired waitresses.

Small revenge, petty I know: my last little performance as a waitress before I collected my bags and headed for the waiting cab. I served you a glass of cold, bubbling champagne.

I wonder how long it took for the three sachets of liquid laxative that I added to work?

© Helen Hollick
 * p.s: I'm not being rude about my American friends with the 'You know my grandmother? She must be a neighbour, she lives in Warsaw' quote - this was actually said to me by a waitress in a Virginia restaurant! 

Can you guess the song?

You’re so Vain by Carly Simon

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZmCJUSC6g

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© exists for lyrics, but not for an ‘idea’