Looking for Andrew McCarthy

‘He’s a bloke, right. And this girl comes up to him, right. And she’s twenty-one, right. And she’s a ballerina, right?’

All these things were, tragically, true. Big Bastard shrugged.

‘And?’ said Julia.

Big Bastard looked at Loxy. ‘Well, d’uh.’ Loxy didn’t return the look.

‘We’ll try and bring you back an appropriate present from America,’ said Ellie.

‘Like a big, pink, glazed American ham, to remind you of your face.’

‘Or an American goat, to remind you of how your room smells,’ said Arthur. ‘Duckie.’

‘Actually I’m thinking that I might just rent out your room when you’re gone,’ said Big Bastard to Ellie.

‘Who to? Rentokil?’

‘Oh, guys, can we go to Chicago as well?’ said Julia, lifting up the map of America for a second.

‘What’s in Chicago?’

‘Well, I reckon if the Hedgehog gets to look for Andrew McCarthy I should get a stab at the cast of ER.’

‘Nobody like you. Maybe I’ll rent it out to a gorgeous bird with really massive knockers.’

‘Don’t tell me – who can also do gymnastics?’

‘Maybe. It’s my flat. I could if I wanted to.’

‘Go ahead. Try it. You have my blessing. I only wish I could be there to watch when you’re laughed out of the International Homeless Big Titty Gymnast’s Convention in Munich.’

Ellie spread out a map on the floor.

‘Okay everyone, here are His last known movements,’ she announced.

‘He’s been in a play in New York, a film in Los Angeles and a film in Toronto.’

‘Hang on! No-one ever said anything about Toronto,’ said Arthur, worriedly. ‘November in Toronto – that’s not a holiday, that’s a Ranulph Fiennes expedition. It’s California or nothing.’

‘I don’t think he’s there now. Don’t worry. We’ll have plenty of time to have fun in the sun and hit the red hot Andrew trail!’

‘That red hot fifteen-year-old Andrew trail!’

‘Can we … are we going to go to Vegas?’ asked Loxy suddenly. The others looked at him.

‘Not for any reason! I don’t know why anyone would want to got there! It was just a random city plucked out of the air! I don’t care where we go. Ehm, are we going to … Pasadena?’

‘Make some more tea will you Loxy?’ Julia asked. He did so immediately.

‘I think we should definitely go to Vegas,’ said Ellie. ‘Then maybe as well as getting to meet Andrew McCarthy, Robert Redford might offer me a million pounds to sleep with him. What a holiday this is turning out to be.’

‘I’m really looking forward to this aren’t you?’ tried Loxy as he and Julia walked home through the pounding rain.

‘Uh huh. Well, if it shuts Ellie up for a bit. And Jeez, hot weather in November – I can’t wait.’

Suddenly, Loxy turned to her with a strange expression on his face.

‘Julia … I can’t think of a good way to do this, or to be dashingly romantic or anything but …’

He knelt down in the road. His right knee went straight into a puddle, but he ignored it. It was pouring.

‘I thought that … well, what Ellie’s been saying has really made me think about life, and where we’re all headed and everything, and I wondered if, well, when we got to Vegas … that you’d do me the honour of becoming my …’

‘What?’ said Julia, not paying attention. Then:

‘Oh MY GOD.’ She whirled around. ‘WHAT?! WHAT!!? TELL me you don’t have a ring.’

Loxy rummaged deep into his inside pocket and brought out the small box.

‘I bought this after our third date,’ he said, quietly. ‘I’ve been carrying it around ever since.’

All Julia could do was stare at him, getting increasingly soaked in the gutter as he gazed up at her imploringly.

‘Oh God, Loxy … but this is so soon. I mean, it’s only been …’

‘Two years.’

‘Really? It’s been that long? Christ.’

She walked forward a few steps then turned round looking thoughtful.

‘Don’t you love me?’ said Loxy, his voice quavering.

‘Of course I do. You know I do, sweetheart. It’s just that – God – I mean, getting married … that’s what grown-ups do.’

‘No, I think they let all sorts of people get married … especially in Vegas …’ said Loxy, disappointedly. He looked up at her again with big puppy dog eyes.

‘Loxy,’ she said, unaccountably angry with him. ‘I’m sorry. But I don’t know the answer to the question.’

‘So that means “no”, does it?’ he said, slowly.

‘No it doesn’t mean “no”!’ said Julia, stung. ‘It means … it means, oh my God, it means, you just said the most surprising thing anyone ever said to me and I don’t know what the hell to think about it.’

‘And you can’t think of a good way to let me down gently.’

‘No, Loxy. For God’s sake, it’s just a surprise, that’s all.’

He stuck his bottom lip out.

‘Well, I know how I feel.’

‘Yes, and you’ve had two years minus three dates to get used to it! Whereas I’ve had nineteen seconds! And that’s not fair! And, for God’s sake, stand up.’

Very slowly, Loxy put the box back in his pocket and stood up.

‘I feel stupid,’ he said.

‘You look stupid,’ she said, tenderly. The rain continued to pound down on both of them.

He started to laugh.

‘Great. I’m stupid and you’re finishing with me.’

‘I am not fucking finishing with you! Stop being a baby!’

She stalked ahead of him.

Already drenched, Loxy looked at the ground and started to splosh up and down in the puddles.

‘I’m laughing at clouds,’ Loxy started singing mournfully to himself.

‘You’re not listening to me. I just need time to think about this, okay? It’s just come out of the blue.’

‘… so high up above …’

‘Okay, Lox, I’m going to go home now. We can talk tomorrow.’

‘I’ve sun in my heart …’ splish splosh.

‘I’ll phone you tomorrow. I’ll think about it, I promise.’

She practically ran down the grey and empty street.

‘… and I’m ready for love …’ splish splosh splish splosh.

‘Wanky doodle dandy!’ said Ellie.

‘Can’t you at least try and be constructive?’ said Siobhan to her. ‘This is exactly the kind of crap you came out with when Patrick … went away.’

‘Actually, that is kind of how I feel,’ said Julia. ‘Just a random line of gibberish.’

‘But I don’t know what to say,’ complained Ellie. ‘Nobody ever asks me anything interesting. I get freaked out if someone asks me if I want large fries. Why don’t we all have another Bloody Mary. Then we’ll try and talk sense.’

‘I think those two things might be mutually exclusive,’ said Julia, but made up another batch anyway.

Julia had gone home and sat in the tiny darkened living room of her tiny darkened flat – she’d deliberately bought a small one-bedroom so that Ellie could never conceivably move in with her. She’d always liked the way it was furnished, although these days she was noticing just how much Ikea there actually was – and tried to think long and hard into the night, but she wasn’t really of a philosophical turn of mind. So after about fifteen minutes she’d phoned up the cavalry and after mass screaming, they’d marched around with Worcestershire sauce and celery sticks; even Siobhan was temporarily roused from her Medusa-like life-long evil plottings long enough to empathize. Which was pretty good of her, seeing as Julia suddenly had the exact opposite of her own problem. Arthur was excluded – he was going to be furious, as he’d always insisted he’d had just as many childhood wedding dress fantasies as they had, but this was a woman-thing deep down, no doubt about it.

‘I thought … if, or when it ever happened, it would be, like, just the most exciting moment of my life,’ moaned Julia, sucking loudly through a straw.

‘That’s because the people that made the whole thing up had never had sex,’ said Ellie. ‘It was a tossup between getting engaged or dying in the throes of having a bastard in a workhouse.’

‘Yes, thank you Catherine Cookson,’ said Siobhan. ‘Well, I say, if someone asks you, you should just say yes immediately. It’s going to fail anyway, and at least this way people buy you stuff and pay you lots of attention.’

‘Me and Loxy wouldn’t fail! We’d be fine! It’s just, I’d kind of hoped for amazing, not fine.’

‘When you first met Loxy you swore he was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to you.’

‘Yes, but that’s the same in every new relationship, isn’t it? It’s new person sex voodoo. I don’t think I wore pants for six months, and if I did wear them they were made out of polyurethane and feathers. But now … we’re just …’

‘Big pants,’ said Ellie suddenly.

‘What?’

‘You’re in the “big pants”, stage of your relationship. Okay, what pants are you wearing?’

Julia shrugged.

‘I’m wearing La Perla,’ said Siobhan.

‘Exactly,’ said Ellie. ‘You’re suddenly single, and you never know whether or not you’ll bump into John Cusack on the way home. I’m wearing special Marks and Sparks green pants, because if I buy white, black, pink or red, Big Bastard steals them off the washing line. Jules?’

Julia sighed. ‘Well, okay.’ She reluctantly tugged them over the waistband of her trousers.

‘Yeuch,’ said the other two simultaneously.

‘They are clean, thank you.’

But it was true that the outwardly fastidious Julia had a pair of massive saggy washed out grey knickers with a hole in them.

‘You’re just too comfortable. Your relationship has become a takeaway,’ Ellie said.

‘What?’

‘You remember when you started going out together? You used to lay the table? Light candles? Cook for him so you could pretend to be his mum and play house together? And now it’s just, sod it, let’s get a takeaway and eat it watching the TV and not talking to each other …’

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