Androshorts - The Perfect Jezebel

"I'll take her up some lunch," he said and smiled that wistful smile again, "she does miss me, said she doesn't like sleeping on her own!"

That was a shock.

OK, I knew she didn't like sleeping on her own, nights that Tony hadn't been there, hadn't Jaguar Jeff, My Mate Mike and Pilot Pete climbed into her bed to comfort her in his absence?

I so wanted to say something, BUT sensible Andrea stepped in and told me it was really none of my bloody business.

I took a deep breath to calm my angry inner thoughts,

"Well you take her something nice for her lunch," I said, "She'll be tired out."

"Yeah," he said with a wink, then looked at me with a hint of the old meaning. I was soon to find out why. "Andrea, I don't suppose I could impose on your good nature could I? Over the holidays I've not been able to get a lot of shopping in..."

"Oh TONY!" I said, my fury rising, but still keeping a laughing smile on my face, "Sainsbury's is JUST over in THAT direction!" I pointed eastward, "They'll be open until four o'clock today," I patted his cheek perhaps a HINT to hard, "you won't want to wake up Anna-Louisa by checking her cupboards will you, hang on though, you don't have her key!"

"But..."

"Tony," I sighed, "please, tell you really aren't THAT stupid?" I stalked away from him, any positive feelings I'd had for my one-time lover had disappeared in flurry of stamped feet and hastily closed doors before he tried a second time to 'appeal to my good nature' and have me make the woman he was going to be fucking instead of me a bloody sandwich.

The new year started, and other than the quickly done and soon finished squeak-squeak-squeak from above, I rarely saw or heard of Tony or Anna-Louisa. Over one of our regular coffees Jane told me that Anna had been a bit of a pain in the arse to her, complaining about almost anything that she and Rick tried to do.

Anna worked early, could they PLEASE keep the TV down, their kitchens were adjacent, did Jane HAVE to clunk the pots and pans so loudly, she could hear every time her microwave pinged.

"Honestly," she said, "I think that snooty bitch must have grown up in a convent with a vow of silence."

I sipped my coffee,

"Unless she's in bed," I said, "My bed is directly under hers and she does make a bit of noise sometimes."

"Is that with Tony?" she said getting a bit cheeky.

"Most of the time..."

"Yeah," she said picking up a cookie I'd baked especially, "I'd noticed the different cars in Tony's spot."

"And that's not the only one of Tony's spots they were taking up."

"Do tell!"

I explained about Tony telling me they were getting quite serious, but I could hear the change in the 'squeak-squeak to work out which pilot she was getting it from; and I named them.

Jane admitted that she had photographed the strange cars on our parking area and sent them to the management company as ordered but could only really quote the vehicles and not their drivers, so my information was new to her.

It was quiet in the house and Anna-Louisa was on regular Atlantic long hauls again and I only knew she was there when the squeak-squeak-squeak would happen above me. I would speak to Tony occasionally and asked him one time when he was going to be putting his flat on the market.

"Oh no," he said shaking his head, "Anna-Louisa still thinks we need to keep our own places."

"Are you still paying her to live there?"

"Well, gas and electric."

"Food?"

"Well, I'd need to buy food wherever I lived, wouldn't I?"

"Yes, I suppose." I said but thinking to myself 'not when you came and spent Saturday night and Sunday morning with me, you didn't'.

I'd noticed that he was hardly going out on a Friday and Saturday anymore and mentioned that.

"Settling down in my old age," he said.

"And it's not that you don't have the money anymore?"

"Bit," he said matter-of-factly.

"Just be careful Tony OK?" I said looking across to our car park, happy that Anna-Louisa's car was at Heathrow with her, "If she can't afford to live in her flat without dragging money out of you..."

Tony rolled his eyes,

"It's not like that," he said, "Anna and I..." he started again, "Anna-Louisa and I are in love."

"What?"

"Yeah," he said with a soft smile I'd never seen from him, "a first for me;" he paused, "I mean when we... were..."

"Yeah Tony, we were 'special, I remember you telling me but it to me it seemed like I was just sex and free weekend food for you; perhaps I should have charged you rent and catering."

"Don't be like that," he said "you and me... we were different, we were..." he struggled for a simile, even though I'd already given him 'special'.

"Like I said, weekend sex and free food Tony, that's what I was to you, a reason you never had to go grocery shopping."

"I'm sorry..." he said slowly.

"You're sorry?" I cut in. "What? Sorry for dumping me when the fashion model arrived?"

"Noooooo!" he managed to drag out, "I'm sorry... you feel that way."

"So not sorry for dumping me?"

"Look, I didn't 'dump you'!" he made two-finger exclamation marks in the air, "We were never 'together', were we?"

"No Tony," I said with a deep sigh, "after sleeping with each other for the best part of a year, we abso-fucking-lutely weren't together were we!" I opened the front door, "And Anna-Louisa is in love with you?"

"Yeah!" he beamed a confident smile to me.

"But doesn't want you to move in permanently?"

"Not yet."

"But you're 'together'?" it was my turn to make the exclamation marks. He nodded, "exclusive?"

"Yeah," he said as if it was some kind of divine revelation to him.

"Ooooohkay!" I said with a big nod, I was so close to telling him about the other blokes, "Tony, be careful... OK?"

"What do you mean?" he snapped at me.

He was happy. Did I really want to tell him about the three pilots? Spoil that happy place he was in?

"Nothing mate, absolutely nothing." I walked away.

Perhaps Anna-Louisa would turn over a new leaf, stop shagging her mates whenever he had a few nights away. I had the photos and car registration numbers still and could remember their names with my own particular shorthand.

That night I heard Tony's unmistakable squeak-squeak-squeak from above and listened to Anna-Louisa's much quicker and more limited narration, I was actively waiting for it to become 'Cheers mate, very nice, thanks' to him.

The three pilots had all scored well generally, but Pilot Pete definitely seemed to have raised the passion stakes when screwing the woman Tony said was in love with him. She might just have been staying in practice of course.

One spring early Saturday morning I watched as Tony was collected from the front door in one of his football club's minibuses and I remembered he'd told me that they had made it through to a cup qualifier and it was a late match at a real stadium up country, with a night in Premier Inn's or local B&B's either celebrating or commiserating.

I thought about that.

There was no sign of Anna-Louisa or her car, and I thought I'd heard her early start that morning. I went off to work and had a quiet Saturday arranging some Euros for one customer, dollars for another and brochures for a couple of older passers-by with an interest in the Orient Express all the way to Venice for a Golden Wedding anniversary. I watched them walk back through our little precinct, 50 years together and still holding hands. That was what I wanted.

I got home and pulled into our road to see the dark 'Toned Fitness' Ford Transit out on the road and amongst the traffic and the black Range Rover in bay two again.

Anna-Louisa was in love with Tony was she? If so, how come it was Pilot Pete's turn again?

I didn't know anything for sure, but a few minutes in my flat let me know that they probably weren't surfing the internet or watching telly.

Again, the 'squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak' was the longest ever, but hadn't increased in volume to any extent, but the actual satisfaction level of her grunts, groans and exclamations had increased exponentially. Her final 'Ooh Pete!' was worthy of a dozen Harlequin romances.

Jaguar Jeff and My Mate Mike had been very good, lasted much longer than her regular paying guest, but none of them got anything like the applause and cries of encore like Pilot Pete. Perhaps he'd become the regular substitute for Toned Tony.

I was still pretty pissed though. Anna-Louisa was a bloody martinet, a user and abuser, taking advantage of a good-looking bloke that perhaps wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box and, let's be honest, screwing him for his rent money.

I listened to her groans of pleasure for as long as I could stand it, taking my jealous anger to my sitting room and turning on my TV, loud enough to drown out my upstairs neighbour in her throes of orgasm; while I'd had a few (mostly on my own) I did think hers sounded pretty genuine, and different from the ones she had with Tony.

As I was just getting into a movie my doorbell, the top one of the four, rang. I hoped it would be Tony, back early from the match and struggling to find his keys in the torrential rain that had started an hour before.

I trotted out in my onesie, opened the door, to see an Deliveroo-Death-Rider pulling their blue plastic moped dangerously out and around Tony's badly parked, dark van, their soaked waterproofs glistening against the fluorescence of the streetlamps.

Looking down onto our welcome mat, there was a brown paper bag from Burger King slowly disintegrating against the rain thrashing down on it.

I left it there, shut the door and went back to my movie regretting not stealing the tall cups, one of which MIGHT have contained a milkshake.

Ah well.

Back on my sofa, I thought about contacting Tony and telling him to come home now because I could hear moaning coming from upstairs and his true love could have been unwell.

Nah.

Still none of my business, and the self-obsessed dickhead would make it about me, rather than his real one-and-only that was upstairs having sex with someone that wasn't him.

Karma came home the next day, or rather Tony did.

While his usual drunken colleagues of the night before were either sleeping off the score-draw their team had achieved or working through the last of the cooked breakfasts, Tony's minibus, full of older, more sensible fans who'd had an early night and needed to get home to cut lawn's, finish plumbing the bathroom, decorating the lounge or something equally grown-up and sensible was dropping him off.

I stared out of my kitchen window waiting for my kettle to boil, I could see a rather confused and haggard looking Tony stood in the road with a small rucksack, looking at his van and scratching his head and wondering why it wasn't where he'd left it 26 hours before.

This could finally be it, I thought to myself and making my mug of tea craned from the furthest kitchen window to see what was happening, as Tony was now investigating Pilot Pete's black Range Rover only really visible from HIS kitchen window.

I took my mug into my bedroom, opened my high window for better effect and listened intrigued.

In the silence I texted Jane telling her to peak out of her lounge window and see who was back early. It was a little too AM for Jane and Rick, but I knew she'd be pissed if she missed the fun.

I heard the front door open and ran to look into my front door spyhole and across to where Tony was opening his front door. I could make out him tearing across the small table in his hallway and the wooden bowl where he always left his van keys, not finding them.

Next, he was out and walking up the stairs. I ran back to my bedroom and listened.

There was a distant bing-bong of the doorbell, a call and the rattle of the handle, he still didn't have her key obviously. Standing on my bed I could hear her voice.

"Shit! It's my boyfriend Tony! Get up, go and lay on the sofa and pretend to be asleep, put your bloody clothes on first! Take those blankets!"

"Boyfriend?" I could hear from a deep male voice.

The thumping of feet on floor told me that Pilot Pete was probably obeying instructions, and she was probably pulling on something as well.

I ran back out to my front door, my pulse racing, desperate to finally hear the bitch get her comeuppance. I opened it just a crack, closed my eyes and listened.

"Hi Tony!" she sighed loudly, more so than she ever had before and I guessed was giving him a hug, "You're back early!"

"Yeah," I could hear him say, "my van's not on my parking spot, you do know all the stuff inside isn't covered by my insurance overnight unless it's in my bay and covered by my CCTV don't you."

"Well..." she spluttered.

"Who's the Range Rover belong to?"

"Oh..." she said, the panic evident in her voice, "That's my friend... Pete, he was pilot on my flight last night and couldn't go back to Southampton." She eased into her story, "I said he could crash on my sofa."

"Yeah, and you moved my van off of MY drive to park his car on it. Thanks!"

"Tony?" she whined, "Don't be..."

"I'll have to wipe my CCTV for yesterday, if the insurance company find out it wasn't..."

"CCTV?" she stuttered.

"Yeah, it covers the whole car park, records to a hard drive in my bedroom. We all get to take advantage of lower premiums because of it."

Her voice resonance changed, from concerned scarlet woman to angry consumer.

"You never told me!" she snapped.

"What?"

"You never told me I could get cheaper car insurance?"

"No." he retook some of the lost impetus, "That's because you aren't renewing your policy until August. So, the Range Rover..."

"How... how much cheaper," she said, the financial side of her brain pushing her infidelity to the back.

"Who's is the Range Rover?!" he snapped; her tone suggested that he'd never dared to talk to her like that before.

"It's my friend Pete, I TOLD you!" She paused, "you're still bloody drunk, I can smell the booze on you from here, I'm not prepared to discuss this with you right now, go to YOUR flat and sleep it off in YOUR bed!"

Fuck but she was good, had to give her at least a BAFTA nomination for this performance.

"Where's my van keys!"

"They're in here somewhere... TONY!?"

The angry fitness instructor had obviously stormed into Anna-Louisa's flat.

"Tony! I'm sooooo sorry," it was Pilot Pete, I pulled my front door closed and stepped into my living room to hear the mumbled conversation above. He went on about his Range Rover being an 'Overfinch' and the V8 engine and refinements putting its value in the region of £200,000 and the owners club had reported them being stolen to order and put into containers and shipped to Eastern Europe. He'd not had a chance to get home to his nice safe garage because of an early flight he had to be on, in an hour.

I could hear Tony agreeing with him that it was probably the safer place to be.

I wanted to scream, 'but you and the lying bitch didn't know it was covered by CCTV! AND MORE IMPORTANTLY YOU SPENT MOST OF SATURDAY FUCKING HER!!'

My phone bleeped and I looked at the screen.

'Thanks Babe! Couldn't have missed this! But the lying bitch will still get away with it!'

I responded that she was right, and should we intervene?

'Leave that with me.' She replied.

Back to my kitchen, Pilot Pete was driving off our car park with a wave to Tony, his arm proprietorially around his 'girlfriend'. In moments he was reversing his van back into 'his' place, grumbling that the bloody thing wasn't even close to the kerb.

That was easy, having listened to her and Pilot Pete the evening before, she'd had other things on her mind that outweighed effective parallel parking.

Suddenly, there was Rick with his big SLR camera he used for his media and publicity business.

"Oh shit," said the professional photographer, "Your boyfriends gone, missed him again, damn!"

Anna-Louisa turned to face him; her face ashen.

"W...what?" she said.

"That car! You do know that's an Overfinch Holland and Holland Special Edition, if your boyfriend still has the matching shotguns that go in the safe at the back, that's more than a quarter of a million quid's worth there Anna, possibly more!" Tony looked confused for a moment, and Anna-Louisa just stared.

So, Rick continued, "Bloody hell hun, that's the kind of boyfriend you need, when that truck was here last time, ooooooh when was it," he looked at the jetting Jezebel, "February? I said to Janey that judging by the car he drove, you picked yourself a good one there; landed gentry Anna, a car like that?

As my father used to say 'there's always room for an entrepreneur, but there is NO substitute for rich parents! When's he coming back again?" No one moved, "Only, could you give him my card, I'd LOVE to get some pictures of that truck!"

Anna-Louisa took Rick's card silently and staring off into space, while Tony still looked confused, occasionally pointing in the direction Pilot Pete had driven off in.

"I know you'll be pretty busy with other things honey, the way you two looked at each other yesterday when you came back from dinner, but do give him my card, please Anna... ANNA?"

"Yes..." she said, "I'll give him your card for fuck's sake!"

"Sorry," said Rick, finally realising he might have said the wrong thing, "I'll just... err..." he backed away and into the front door still hanging open from his rushed entrance into the scene.

In the imaginary BAFTA ceremony playing in my head, Anna-Louisa's 'go sleep it off in your room' monologue had seemed guaranteed the prize, but as the lights came up and the elderly sitcom actor said, "and best actor in a drama goes to (sounds of ripped envelope), Rick for 'That Lying Bitch and the Overfinch' by 'Flat 1 to 4' Productions!"

I cheered mentally in my head and made a note to invite my nice upstairs-neighbours to dinner again.

"What?" said Tony.

"Tony," she said, "Baby... it's not like that, not like that at all!"

There was a thump at my door, and still in my PJ's and dressing gown I walked slowly to it.

"Hi Tony," I said, adding, "did you win?" with all the innocence I could. Not imaginary BAFTA winning quality of course but it was still an honour just to be nominated. I decided to work on my performance some more, so stepped out to just outside the front door, taking the place Rick had just given up.

"Anna-Louisa..." he stammered, "has she..."

"Has she what?"

"Men... in her flat..."

"Yeah, a few."

"A Few?" I held up three fingers, "And you knew?"

I looked at Anna-Louisa,

"None of my business mate," I said with as much of a smile as I could manage.

"But I told you we had something going on!" He said snapped, "You knew I was I love with her!"

"Tony, we need to talk about this..." said Anna-Louisa.

"Talk about what?" he replied with a snap, "the fact that we're all but living together yet your screwing different men as soon as I'm not there."

"Tony, can we please TAKE THIS DISCUSSION INSIDE!"

"Why? Andi seems to know what's going on."

"WELL ANDREA SHOULD MIND HER OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!" yelled Anna-Louisa at me.

"Like I said Anna, it's none of my business. But my bedroom is directly below yours and not to put too fine a point on it, your bed squeaks, like EVERY TIME. I know which cars are allowed on our car park and noticed when Tony's van was put out on the road. The fact that I left for work the same time as your pilots did..."

"Pilots?" snapped Tony as if their employment made it worse, "Fucking PILOTS?"

The noise from the front of our property now had Jane out to watch what was going on.

"Oh, the gangs AAAAAAAALL here," said the accused, "the 'We hate Anna-Louisa' Club, you got anything you want to add?"

"Nah, think you've pretty much got it covered," Jane smiled, "And the 'We hate Anna-Louisa Club? You know who started that?"