Ring a Ding Fling?

“I can get Cary Grant on the phone. Would you like to speak to him?”

On New Year’s Day, I wish myself a happy new year and hope for new opportunities, like everyone else I knew. New Year’s Eve was a small affair—just a gathering of friends in our apartment. Then, when I least expected it, there was this phone call on New Year's Day. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

He was in his fifties. A former ballet dancer working in the entertainment industry. He swept me off my feet.

And who am I? I was a twenty-something university student working a summer job. I sold dresses in an open-air market. The summer was so hot, sitting in a rented booth in the Byward Market with my erstwhile business partner, who didn’t do half the work I did!

Melanie would breeze in after a weekend with her boyfriend and ask to see how many dresses I had sewn. Then, when I went to the market and sold every last one on the first day, she would expect to get half of the profits! Even her boyfriend was upset with her.

Melanie was such a ham. “It was my idea! To sell dresses!” she would protest. A theatre arts student, the bright lights were calling. She'd just make stuff up if her lines didn't get her somewhere! Melanie even whistled like Audrey Hepburn. Like in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You know how Holly Golightly needed a taxi, and she whistled so incredibly loud with her fingers in her mouth? Melanie even looked like Audrey Hepburn!

But I digress. The big news was the man I met down on the market. Claude Dupont. He would drop by and chat me up when no one was around. As I said, he was a man in his fifties and a former ballet dancer. Full of compliments. Suave, debonaire, and worldly wise. As they say, he had a twinkle in his eye. Maybe more than one.

I ate escargot for the first time with Claude. It made me gag when he told me it was a snail. He laughed so much with that easy laugh of a man with everything to look forward to and nothing to worry about. Nothing that a bankroll couldn’t handle. He even guessed that I took several years of ballet lessons! He said he could tell by the way I walked!

His job was a hard one. Some kind of consultant in the entertainment industry. In other words, he was paid to know important people. That is why he knew Cary Grant. He knew hundreds of people, agents, artists, fashion designers, actors, and directors. The stories he told, why I can hardly remember them all!

He would always start a story in a restaurant where he would pick up the tab. After complaining that he was lonely because he had to travel constantly, he would start in with a confidential, lean across the tiny table calm voice with his favorite words, “Don’t tell a soul..but…” Then I was mesmerized and convinced I would read all about it in the gossip magazines next month!

Melanie said that he just wanted one thing. Sure, I was used to that. But he had lots of money and no trouble entertaining himself any way he might want to. Besides, he made it clear that “I wasn’t that kind of girl.” It's being old-fashioned in a good way, I guess.

He was not the type that would take his wedding ring off before he came to see me! Surprising really. So I didn’t brush him off. Besides, he wasn’t even married. I will never forget how he proved it to me. Showed me his wallet. No pictures of anyone. Then he showed me his cards—memberships in all kinds of prestigious organizations, the names of which I have forgotten. Finally, there was what he cherished the most: a shiny ID with a picture of him as a young man. This plastic card said he was a National Ballet of Canada dancer! It was old, of course, well worn but undoubtedly authentic.

I knew enough about ballet that at the national level, you have no life beyond dancing. And he was at that level for ten years! And one more bit of proof. When I had a headache at a 5-star restaurant, I took some painkillers out of my purse and was about to swallow. He grabbed my hands and made me put the pills away! He said he ruined his liver by taking too much of that. Eight, ten, or more pills a day! Why? When he was still dancing, his body constantly ached from how demanding ballet was. Of course, I felt sorry for him. 

When I trusted him the most, he opened up to me—our last evening at yet another five-star restaurant. He looked so lost when he described how lonely he was. He said he had an apartment somewhere but no dog or cat, and he hardly spent time there. He was constantly on the move.

He explained it this way. Important people expect to have everyone available. Not just on the phone. Available means physically present. So when you are on a first-name basis with hundreds of celebrities, you could be expected to be anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, except maybe at Christmas. Then, no one wanted to talk to him.

I could see tears in his eyes. Real tears. He even apologized.

“How could I be so lucky to be in the presence of an angel?” he asked. “I could worship you!”

Now, I must be honest. That shocked me. That and the part about how he wanted to have a baby with me! A baby bump? It was more like a speed bump to any sort of relationship with a man I hardly knew! I wished him a good night and excused myself.

#

“I must go! I wanted to see you before I left,” said Claude at the hotel's doorstep, his travel bags with him. I had only been seeing him for about three days. I hadn’t slept with him. And he never asked me to.

‘Where are you going?” I asked.

“New York, then after that Los Angeles. I don’t know when I will be back in Ottawa. I wish you were coming with me.”

I shrugged my shoulders. It was too much. Struggling university student cum jet setter was not a good fit!

Suddenly, he had an idea. “I tell you what! Give me your phone number, and I’ll call you.”

“Ok,” I heard myself say.

#

New Year's Day. What a letdown. Really. It's New Year's Eve that everyone talks about! I get up late, of course, a little hung over. Melanie was plastered, going in and out of the washroom, rehearsing lines for a free New Year's Day spectacle at Major Hill’s Park. She was complaining that the room was moving. At least I wasn’t as far gone as that!

The landline rings with that long-distance ring that no one hears anymore. I'm afraid to pick up the phone because I'm half expecting to hear an operator asking me to accept the charges for a collect call, but no, it is Claude. He's super happy and a little hungover himself.

“Darlene, my darling, is it you?”

“Hello, Claude!” I say.

“How do you know it is me?” he asks with that boyish charm I was so used to.

“No one else calls me darling!”

“Right, right,” he says. “Hey, listen, I’m at this huge meet and greet in New York. There are so many stars and important people here. Would you like to talk to Cary Grant? I told him that you are a beautiful young woman. He wants to speak to you!”

At first, I was annoyed that Melanie was staring at me, lying on her back in her pajamas on the sofa with her bare feet dangling in the air. The nerve of that girl! At such an important time as this!

But she was holding her script in one hand and making faces at me, pretending to be talking to Claude, exaggerating everything she might say as Holly Golightly would.

Now Cary Grant was waiting in the wings! It was too much. I had to stop myself from laughing. An Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant movie! How silly is that?

“Have an excellent time, Claude," I said, unable to contain myself any longer as Melanie fell off the sofa, her wrist to her forehead, in a swoon.

"No, I don’t want to speak to Cary Grant!" I giggled. "Just wish him a happy new year! And many happy returns!”