Love Lies

13. Scott

‘Let’s make this interview snappy, hey.’ I stare at Saadi and she understands. She understands that I haven’t got my rocks off, that I’m not even able to for another few days and frankly it’s pissing me off. That Fern chick was cute. Very cute. ‘Who am I talking to anyway?’

‘Dazed and Confused,’ Mark, my manager, informs me. He means that’s the name of the publication, rather than my state of mind. Although that would be accurate too.

Dazed and Confused position themselves as anarchic, feisty, real, grungy, edgy. Easy. They’ll want to talk about sex. Most people want to talk about sex with me. I’ve never been so vain as to believe my sex life is all-absorbing; unfortunately the western world disagrees with me.

‘So how did Adam Cooper’s bird wash up in your room?’ asks Saadi.

‘Fern,’ I say.

‘Yeah, Fern. She doesn’t look like a headcase.’

‘Why would you assume she’s a headcase?’

‘She’s issued Adam with this effing insane ultimatum. He has to ask her to marry him on her thirtieth or she’s going to walk.’ Saadi, a confirmed bachelor girl, shakes her head in bewilderment as to why anyone would want this.

‘It’s her birthday today. Is he going to ask her?’

Saadi shrugs. ‘Nobody knows. He’s been with her for four years but he can’t make his mind up. He keeps going on and on about her ultimatum. Should he propose? Shouldn’t he? His team are placing odds. He seems to think the whole thing is a bit of a laugh.’

‘Fucking idiot,’ I mutter.

‘Who?’ asks Mark, always on alert to my mood and nuances.

‘Well, she seems interesting. And I mean, four years, you’d know, wouldn’t you?’ I say.

‘Yeah, and you’re the expert, right? You’ve never managed a four-month relationship, let alone four years,’ says Mark with a weary sigh.

He’s getting a bit fed up with cleaning up my messes. Wherever I go, I am known for leaving behind me a bloody trail of broken hearts belonging to starlets, groupies and songwriters. At first, when I was really young, I would have sex with any girl that would let me. Soon they all let me, so I only had sex with really pretty ones. Soon they were all really pretty, so I had to find a way to make some other sort of selection. I once slept with a girl because she wore a trilby at a cute angle, and then another because she had more body piercings than I’ve ever seen before, another because she had a tattoo that started on her vag (it was a vine) and curled under and up all the way to her arsehole. She must have been on some serious drugs when she let the artist go to work on her; I thought she’d earned the attention. I slept with another because she said absolutely nothing at all and then I slept with another because she was there. That soon became the only reason I slept with someone.

‘Our Scott is a true romantic under all that bravado. He believes in love at first sight. You’d want to know by four days, wouldn’t you, Scott?’ says Saadi with a grin.

‘Well, who the fuck has four years to waste?’ I mutter.

Mark stares at me for a very long time and I think he’s going to say something important. He does, he says, ‘She’s got great tits, Cooper’s bird. Now enough chatter, we better get on with this interview. There’s a schedule to keep.’

To combine licentiousness with novelty takes genuine effort and a little bit of luck. I wonder is it possible that Fern is my little bit of luck? Could Fern be the antidote to all of that excess?