The L Word

'Concentrate!' I said, checking my mirrors all of a sudden and stopping the car as children ran behind us.

'I can't do this.' She said.

The rear end of the Astra poked out across two parking spaces.

'Can we stop please? I'm not feeling good.'

'You're doing fine.' I said.

'I should go home.'

'You can do this manoeuvre. I'm positive.'

But her far-sighted look of determination was back.

'No, I need to stop.'

I turned my pen over and over in my hand.

'Look,' I started, 'what happened just then, maybe it's best if we can get you another instructor. I can get you another instructor to take over and you can carry on as well as you've been doing with them.'

'I don't want another instructor.' She said. 'I just want to get out of here.'

We swapped seats and got soaked as we stepped out.

When we reached her road I parked the car.

'I'll make it up to you,' I said as she sat with her hands in her lap, 'I'll schedule a lesson for free with someone else. You can get your money back that way and there won't be any awkwardness between us.'

'There's not awkwardness! There's something, something there and...'

She trailed off and crossed her arms and stared out the window.

'We'll cancel the lesson tomorrow, I'll get the Elephant & Castle centre to call you.'

'I don't want to cancel it.' She said.

I opened my mouth to speak but realised I had nothing.

She unlocked the door, grabbed her bottle and stepped out. It had begun to rain again. She lowered her voice and spoke flat and calm.

'Just don't cancel it.'

And she disappeared into the house.

I stared at her front door for ten seconds, twenty, thirty then smashed my fist on the horn and swore loud. I drove like an idiot and a maniac all the way to the next lesson.

***

The truth was I didn't want to stop seeing her but I didn't want her to stop learning because I had screwed things up for her with my internal psychological conflict.

It had become a choice between my lust and my professional duty and I wasn't sure which was going to win out.

Also there was something about Kate in there too.

I could have called a friend of mine, another instructor, and easily got him on board to take over. He was a good teacher, methodical, patient and interested in boys, not girls. He would have been perfect to take the heat off and she'd soon realise that there was nothing there; it was all generated by our proximity in the car.

I was feeling my age (not that I was old); but perhaps it was more accurate to say that in seeing how she was and how easy and fun life ahead of her seemed, I felt younger myself, and with that sensation I thought I could let go of my responsibilities and austerity and I connected with her and felt good about it.

But of course it was the wrong thing to do. People needed structure and rules and they needed to grow up and not do things that could cost them their job and screw around with the head of a girl who hadn't even gone to university yet.

Emma needed boys her own age.

Yet I knew that they would screw her over. She was a sweet girl; funny, intelligent, had interests in books and cinema and music and culture and dressed well and always looked great, and she didn't need some guy who left a comb in his hair and wore his trousers round his buttocks and ate cereal for lunch at six in the evening.

It was as if I was trying to strike back at all the girls I never got when I was nineteen. They automatically fancied the idiots, and I, a regular library user, never got a look in.

Well I was still the library user, and I flossed and drank peppermint tea and thought the Blair Witch Project was a really good film and if nineteen year-old girls thought that had finally beat the competition I was determined to find out what it meant.

***

'What are you up to? Why are you home so early? Did you run over a defenceless animal, hit a lamppost, clip a wing mirror?'

I grunted.

'"How are you Kate my love, how was your day? Here I've prepared dinner. Would you like me to help shave your legs?"'

'I forgot dinner.'

'What time did you get back?'

'Hour ago.'

'And you haven't put anything on? You've just been sitting there in your underwear looking at comics.'

'You read comics! I've been reading them; it's a unique medium!'

'Is it my dinner? Because I've been on the Victoria line, and my nose is packed with black dusty shit and my clothes are dirty and I'm starving and I haven't been in the shower since yesterday.'

'Alright! I'll put something in the microwave.'

I padded into the kitchen and the floor was freezing. I had forgotten to close the window. The freezer's top drawer had curry and stir fry frozen from last week. They were solid. I stabbed the curry with a fork and that didn't do anything so I hammered the frozen food onto a large plate and stuffed it in the microwave and set it to defrost. I came back into the bedroom and Kate was getting changed.

'Your phone went off.'

'Pass it?'

'Get it yourself; I'm half naked, unless you want the neighbours seeing me.'

She disappeared into the bathroom and I muttered that I didn't give a toss and grabbed my phone and collapsed back on the mattress.

When I read what I'd been sent I sat upright like I had been stung.

'What are we having?' Kate asked, coming back in.

'Nothing.' I said, shoving the phone under the covers. 'I mean, I put it in to defrost.'

I got up, scowled at her just for being pissed off when she came home, like it was my fault she had a crap day, and I ran into the kitchen in my boxers with my phone in my hand and leant on the counter. I didn't notice the cold floor tiles this time or the fact the microwave had stopped. I was a lot more interested in the text I had received from the number +447907145887.

"I wanted to say today was really weird but I'm not upset about it. I like you and I want us to keep working together. See you tomorrow x"

I stood very still and very quiet.

First, okay, how did she get my number?

Second, what did she mean by "I like you and I want us to keep working together"?

Was that another invitation like the one today? A message telling me our thing in the car wasn't just a momentary lapse of control, it was something more?

But what if the text had gone off when Kate was changing?

What am I thinking, it did go off when she was in there and what if she had looked at it, what would she think? "I like you"/"See you tomorrow" -- she'd find out about us! There'd be some sort of law she'd stiff me on and half my money and possessions would go to her and I'd end up on the streets...

And the "x"!

I paced around, toes going numb and listening to the running water down the hall.

I told myself to keep calm. Kate had not seen the text, clearly not seen it, as she was so normal when I spoke to her, well, as normal as she was being right now, which was really rude.

God, I was the surly one one minute, trying to hide a text from a girl I fancied the next, a girl who I shouldn't even fancy in the first place because she was my student and I was her teacher and I was in a healthy long-term relationship and had a flat and I watched Jonathan Creek with Kate because she asked me to and I was supposed to be making dinner and she was a lawyer and there was no way I could hide this from her, she'd seen my phone bill in the past and what if this became a regular thing, like Emma solicited sex via texts and my head became filled to exploding point with possibilities and connotations and scenarios and I had a hard-on too and why was that happening?

I filled a glass from the tap, sipped it slow, took big gulps and finished it off and stared out the window for a minute.

Gordon Brown was prime minister.

Top Gear was still running.

Frank Skinner was still not funny.

She had my number because I had given it to her; wrote it down like a good little horny driving instructor, feigning restraint and hesitation to make her really press the issue and now she had it, she'd be texting me and what would we talk about, current events? Art? Sex?

And then all of a sudden: where did it say on the text it was Emma that was the sender? Her number came up but not a name. She had put an "x" at the bottom but not her name, or someone had put the x there but not their name! Did she know I had a girlfriend and she was trying to hide herself? No, that was ridiculous, how could she know.

Was it actually Emma at all?

Of course it was; I knew was.

You just knew.

I took the plate from the microwave, mashed it with the convex side of a spoon and poked at the buttons on the microwave and stuck it back in. The dial moved, the numbers went up and it beeped.

I was on autopilot.

I peeled some potatoes and dropped them in a pan and boiled the water and sloshed it over the potatoes and turned the stove up and stood looking at the light switch and then the steam coming from the pot and the water frothing like detergent on a sponge and then I put the carrots and broccoli in and I put them in at the same time so I'd either have to have really soggy broccoli or really hard carrots.

'This is,' Kate mused, lifting her fork to eye-level, 'perhaps not your best work.'

'I don't feel well.' I said. 'I feel all jumbled up inside. Like a jigsaw.'

'What did you have for lunch?'

'I don't remember. I ate some prawns from this woman who brought her lunch with us.'

'You ate a stranger's prawns! Bloody hell it's your own fault if you're going to be so stupid.'

I whisked my forehead away from the back of her hand.

'I'm not sure I can eat this.' Kate said.

She wasn't being rude, it was the truth.

'Let's just watch Alan Davies.' I said.

I felt terrible about everything; the dinner, my feelings, the text.

It didn't intimate anything about mine and Emma's relationship to a bystander but it did to me. It meant she was prepared to contact me out of hours and having given her my number, it meant the same thing from my end.

But I had to forget it ever happened. Whatever it said or didn't say was a breach of our student-teacher boundaries. It might affect the dynamic I had with Kate.

But she was so young and so beautiful and so much more alive than either Kate or me... and I still hadn't replied!

Kate put her legs across mine and sat with a cushion on our sofa that we bought from Ikea. Caroline Quentin was on screen but I watched instead the wind blow the trees' leaves outside our window and saw it was still raining.

***

Knocking on the door woke me up. My face hurt, my body hurt and there was a bad smell in the room.

'Are you okay in there?' Kate called.

I slumped against the bathroom wall. I was in the dark and the floor was freezing. I was shivering and my fingers found the indentations of the loo seat that had rammed into my face when I passed out on it earlier. I hadn't flushed the chain and my teeth were soft and pitted from stomach acid coming up the wrong way.

'Try and get it in the bowl!'

My body shivered and I raised myself up and spewed.

A black depression descended on me.

'God what's that noise?' She whispered. 'I've left some water outside in your pint glass and your jumper is on the banister.'

Ten minutes went by and I wailed throughout them. I was an appalling person. I was killing my relationship; I was jeopardising my job and I would get blacklisted and locked up for being a paedophile.

'Either unlock the door and let me in or I'm going back to bed!' Kate said. 'I've got to get up early, I'm due in court tomorrow!'

'I'm sorry!' I said.

'Drink the water, you'll dehydrate yourself and black out!'

'I've got the tap.' I managed.

I discharged into the bowl again and heard Kate leave. I sprawled on the floor and vowed never to eat prawns. They were related to water fleas and woodlice.

***

A rattling noise woke me up. Daylight streamed across the bed, the open window blowing in gusts from an overcast morning. I checked my watch on Kate's nightstand; it was ten-thirty. My stomach was hollow and my mouth was foul, as if I had been eating raw meat for a week and not cleaned my teeth. My mobile beeped and vibrated. I should've set my alarm; it was probably the office texting to see why I hadn't checked in.

I spat in the bucket by the bed.

Well they would have to live with it.

"Where are you? I asked you not to cancel the lesson. You better not have or next time I'm out I'll run you over"

No "x" this time.

God, that wasn't important!

The office would need me to cancel all my appointments for today. I debated whether to get them to call everyone or do it myself. I thought about ringing Emma myself to tell her I couldn't make it, but then she might think that I didn't want to see her and was making excuses.

I would text her.

I wondered how to phrase it. It took my mind off how sick I was.

But I was also horny and slightly delirious, as you are when you survive a night of vomiting and wake up marginally better, and hoped that my mental state would stop me from making a delicate situation worse. Or better. Or whichever it was, better or worse, just not rubbish.

Our appointment had been at ten. It was now eleven. She was probably sitting on the step outside her house, wind tossing green-brown leaves in the air, tumbling them end over end, swishing them by her feet as I could imagine looking at her shoes, her not wearing any socks again, and me following the narrow curve of her ankles up into the white of her legs as they bulged at the calf and then came to the knee, my eyes travelling up until the billow of her skirt made it impossible to tell what I was looking at, her hands trying to keep the material still so she wouldn't expose herself, but when I studied her face, she would be shy and coquettish and her parted mouth and tongue crossing over to wet her lips would betray her.

But I knew this feeling. It was the horny text coming on: the moment when you sent someone you were trying to guard your feelings from an unmitigated sexual invite, possibly one of the stupidest things a man could do to a woman.

Yet, also the cleverest.

I nodded and smiled as I thought this like I was a genius.

Was I just starved and exhausted and turned-on? Would it let her know I was falling in love with the danger of it all and wanted to nail her to the wall or was it the right thing to do and was it going to be unprofessional?

I began:

"Dear Emma,

sorry for not replying last night, I didn't get your message until this morning --"

No, that was a lie and she'd probably have a phone that could tell when you opened the text.

"Dear Emma,

sorry for not replying last night, I forgot you had texted me until this morning --"

That was not only a lie but extremely rude and what one half of my brain now starting to direct my decisions did not want to say.

"Dear Emma,

do you own handcuffs, because I want to chain you to the bumper and fuck till you piss down my leg --"

What would be the consequence of me going all "Atonement" on her? At least she'd know how I felt.

"In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt."

I'd at least have to get rid of that "Dear Emma" crap.

I tried again:

"Emma, hey, this is..."

No, she'd know who it was and that "hey" sounded so lame. Maybe the right move would be to launch straight into it like she had.

"I'm sick and I'm not working today. I wasn't going to cancel the lesson. I think we should carry on together, for the sake of consistency. Call when you can reschedule, you won't get charged. I'll see you soon"

"See you soon" was keeping it friendly and I also liked the comma between "carrying on together" and "consistency". Without it, there was no doubt I was talking singly about our time spent driving.

I hit send and got up to go to the bathroom. A great weight, like a palette of bricklayer's bricks, slid to the front of my head and I steadied myself against the wall, stumbling to the sink.

I took a leak, cleaned my teeth, did not look directly at the light and crawled back into bed. I was now worse than I had been ten minutes ago.

The phone beeped; a reminder that it had received a text. It was Emma!

No, it was some guy I would've had at three thirty.

My mind worked over the connotations and possible responses of my reply. I wanted to jerk off earlier. Now the nerves had made me as small as your little finger.

The headache was killing me. I used the remote to start up the CD in our little bedroom unit. I didn't care what was in there, just anything to distract me.

Then, hearing the telltale drone of the phone's motor I paused Alanis and opened the clamshell. It fell in the pint glass.

'Dammit!' I said.

I fished it out and wiped it on the bed.

The phone was off. I prayed that didn't mean the thing was finished off.

The welcome screen appeared. It struggled for signal.

Finally it told me knew mail had arrived and would I like to read it now?

"You poor thing! What's wrong? X"

Trying not to read into the specifics of sentence construction -- the big X, the fact it was sent quick on the heels of my original message and that hers was left open for conversation -- I began to write back.

"Dodgy prawns. I got hardly any sleep so I won't be fit to teach --"

Then I stopped. She hadn't addressed any of the things I'd put in my text and if I replied right away she'd know I was waiting on hers and I had nothing better to do.

But I was sick!

Damn right I had nothing better to do. She'd be expecting a reply. Perhaps I could pretend I had been asleep and reply later. I knew the wait would kill me though, and I'd get no sleep thinking about it.

Why was life so tough? Why did relationships between men and women have to be so fraught with danger? If you were too keen you were perceived as desperate and if you restrained yourself or literally forgot about it you were both lazy and a bastard. It was a paradox you were all expected to conform too; but then Emma and I had known each other for weeks! Well for a few weeks. We were almost friends! Between friends there was no wait time. If Ed or Andy texted me or Keara or Soph I didn't think I had to play it cool or they would know how desperate I was. I could apply the same logic to Emma.

I checked the watch.

Only two minutes had passed.

I marched into the kitchen and ignoring the headache that wobbled like the bubble in a spirit level opened a packet of McCoy's and stared at a bird in the back garden.

The birds did not worry about wait times. They did not watch Swingers and think six days between meeting a girl and calling her was a good idea. They were the Heather Graham's of the animal kingdom. Actually all animals were the Heather Graham's of the animal kingdom. They saw their Jon Favreau's and they pursued them without delay and without stopping, and they didn't have this huge internal monologue that almost read like a book wondering if it was the right thing to do and what the other person would think.

Still.

I promised to text back by twelve.

At a quarter-to I was out the shower, feeling a lot cleaner, and very hungry. My headache was still there but had receded to the back of my brain having taken a hit from the cuprofen.

I kept the Kitchens of Distinction on in the bathroom and sat on the loo, which I had scrubbed, but I wasn't listening to it.

I checked the watch. Yes! Twelve oh-five.

Out came the phone, in went the message, time to make an omelette.

"Bad lunch from yesterday. Too tired to teach properly. Shall see you later in the week?'

It was nonchalant, concise and direct (kind of).

I put it to one side, cooked some lunch, felt a whole lot better half-way through eating it and sat in front of the DVD player. I would check the phone when I came in to clear up.