May I Have A Word?

Warning: Allusions to sex

“Come sit, Liz.”

“Damn it! She already knows my name,” I thought to myself as a shudder ran down my spine, a slow-moving glacier that froze my nerves little by little and all at once at the same time.

I stared at the woman --- she who’d sunk a sizable amount of her savings for a last minute plane ticket and a hurried hotel reservation, she who’d spent ten and a half hours up in the air and navigated the maze of Heathrow for the first time just to see and have a word with me --- at the opposite end of this corner booth in a Brixton restaurant. She was a petite, spritely thing, dwarfed even more so by the loose white tunic-style maxi dress she had on. Peeks of grey showed in her tight blonde bun that showed off her delicate features. Tiny red veins, most probably traced by her tear glands just before her arrival at the restaurant, radiated from her cocoa-coloured irises.

The pixie-esque foreigner certainly didn’t look like a woman who could render someone who made a living out of words, like me, speechless, and yet, there I was. All I could do was to follow her command pronounced with a distinctive Texas twang.

“I’m Debra, by the way,” she said, extending an arm towards my frightened self. She slightly bit her lip before continuing with a query. “Did you know…?”

“No, I didn’t,” I replied, shaking my head.

“But of course.”

Debra then put her elbow on the table and cupped her chin with her hand. Her brown eyes scanned my fox-like face intently, as if her mind was trying to process every single feature, before I saw a flash of defeat in them.

“Well, you’re even more beautiful than I imagined, you know. Auburn waves, large cornflower blue eyes, tall, lithe figure --- but of course, you’re perfect,” she declared to me, sighing so deeply, it sounded like a cry.

“I assure you, Debra, I’m not,” I replied. “You know very well that I…well…”

Just like that, a silence crept up between us two, like a boa constrictor that slithered its way around the Amazon, pouncing on its prey and strangling it until all of the air was robbed from the unsuspecting creature. If I didn’t say anything, I knew it would consume me whole.

“Listen, Debra. I’m…”

“Good evening, ladies! What would you be having today?”

We both turned our eyes on the clueless server with the bright smile staring at us. As if on autopilot, I grabbed the menu and scanned to see if my usual meal combination was available.

“May I have the smoked salmon and crème fraîche bucatini, as well as a glass of Riesling?”

“Ah, it figures,” I heard my dinner companion mutter to herself. “Of course, she’d order something fancy, just like…”

“And for you, Madame?”

Debra then thoughtfully scanned through the menu before smiling, as her eyes seemed to stop at an item.

“You know what? It’s my first time in Britain, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be back. Why don’t I get a steak and mushroom pie,” she replied, her gaze now burning into me. “I mean, I’ve been curious for a while now about what it is about English meat pies that make the expats go crazy.”

I winced internally as she thanked the server and sent him away. With the chirpy restaurant employee gone, the serpentine quiet once again crawled in the space between Debra and me and choked out all the air in the restaurant.

“I guess I should ask you...,” Debra stated, the chill in her Texas drawl almost covering up the trembling in her voice.

“Fire away,” I answered, attempting to mask the thrashing of my own heart.

I noticed Debra’s chocolate brown eyes hone in on the press badge from The Guardian tucked into the pocket of my cherry red Yves Saint-Laurent handbag.

“So, you’re a journalist, if I remember correctly,” asked Debra, a tight-lipped smile forming on her face. “Is that how you met Ed?”

I gulped as I tried to wring my brain for an answer. I knew I was normally so glib; my friends called me Lizzie Parrot, after all. However, as Debra’s searching eyes trained in on me, I felt all of my linguistic prowess melt away like snow on the first day of spring.

“Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s how we…you know..,” I managed to string together.

As I sat across the woman who was never supposed to fly to London, thoughts of my first encounter with Edwin Hunt flooded my mind.”

Ed and I met when we were covering a new transport bill being passed in Parliament. After all the fiery discourse and verbal repartees, I stood behind the microphone the House of Commons had set up for us reporters during question time. As I turned away to walk back to my seat, I noted a flash of brilliant aquamarine flood my eyes….and that it was connected to a face --- the chiseled, unlined, astonishingly handsome face of the Los Angeles Times’ London correspondent.

“Who…is…,” my neurons fired into my brain, spraying fragments of colour into my eyes like fireworks.

As I walked back to the chair I had occupied just five minutes before, I felt my eyes glued to the Atlantic Ocean blue of Ed’s own. When Ed took his turn posing his query, the lilt in his Southern California accent sounded to me like the greatest symphony. I practically stumbled into my seat when I finally reached it, my eyes trained in on the mesmerising American with the scintillating blue eyes.

“Right, be professional, Liz,” I remember commanding myself, a little bite in my inner voice. “It’s not like he will…”

“Two follow-up questions: firstly, is this seat taken?”

I looked up, and there they were: Ed’s aquamarine eyes twinkling with desire and love…well, I thought it was…

“No, it’s not,” I replied, a wry smile on my face . “You may take the seat beside me if you’d like. Very much so.”

“Perfect….just like you,” he told me, a wide, cheeky grin that melted my heart that moment on his face. “And for the second question, well…”

“Well, what?”

“Well,” he deftly said, his brilliant blue eyes on my cornflower ones. “Are you taken? God, you’re so beautiful.”

That was that, then. That journalistic coverage at Parliament quickly transformed into three years of Ed and me uncovered in bed crying each other’s names and tumbling into passion and tenderness, our undulating bodies entangled like twigs in the nest I thought we’d built together, and me drowning in the pools on the top half of his face. It certainly felt like bliss.

Then again, of course, it did. Ignorance can sometimes create a space where not even words can conquer the exaltation. How was I to know that as I plunged further and further into those oceanic eyes that on the other side of the Atlantic, Ed had…?

Once again, face-to-face with the personification of the truth that came to see me from America, I felt a sense of urgency. I did not want the boa to consume me again.

“Debra, listen, I’m very s…”

“Goodness me, he’s right. There really is something special about you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re the first one I didn’t find out about from rumours, you know. Ed actually spoke about you to me when he went back to the States for a vacation two weeks ago. Of course, when he did, he handed me a Manila folder with papers…specific papers,” Debra stated softly, gently, almost whisper-like. From the other side of the booth, I saw her cocoa eyes well up with fresh tears. She bit her upper lip as she stared intently at my confused face.

“There’s something I want you to have,” she announced, reaching into her large black handbag. She then procured a small green velvet box and placed it on the table.

“Open it, Liz.”

With trembling hands, I lifted the lid and gasped as I stared at a platinum ring with a one-carat cushion cut diamond in the middle. Five pave stones on each side flanked the centre gem. On the band, the date 21 February 2005 was inscribed.

“Oh, Debra,” I sputtered out, my voice trembling. “Is this your…?”

“It’s yours now. You know, I’ve never seen him smile as brightly as when he told me about his 'Pretty Parrot’. I actually saw a spark in his eyes.”

“Debra…”

“I still want him to be happy, so….,” she continued. A single teardrop rolled down her plump cheek. “Don’t worry. Actually, when I first called you up, everything had already been signed and filed.”

I stared at the woman across me who'd flown all the way from America as I recalled that midnight phone call that made me dash to the loo and vomit on the toilet. I remembered how as Debra’s Texas drawl came through the wires, I had realised that both of us had been victims of Ed’s words --- me, of “Divorcé. Although, my ex is still hung up about me.” She, of “Sorry, the paper won’t allow foreign correspondents' partners to join us in the cities we're assigned in.” As the electric signals that carried our enlightening conversation surged through the undersea cables, so did a kinship. We were two women from opposite ends of the Atlantic bound by one truth we both discovered amidst a wall of lies: that yes, words can build, but it can also destroy and blindside.

After that telephone conversation, it was easy for me to make a decision. But of course. There would be no more boa constrictors, neither the silence, nor me, thrust upon the role of hissing, venomous slitherer.

“I packed my bags as soon as your call ended, just so you know."

Debra looked into my cornflower eyes as a smile, the very first wide one I’d seen since first arriving at the restaurant, crept across her delicate face.

“I can’t say I didn’t know that you would,” she replied, chuckling. “Either way, thanks for letting me have a word with you.”

***********

To: Mr. and Mrs. Henry and Debra Carson

Together with our families,

We,

Michael Aaron Townsend

and

Elizabeth Sarah Francis,

Request the pleasure of your company as we join together in matrimony.

Saturday, 20 October 2029| Shangri-la Hotel at the Shard