Notes on Etiquette

This was published in Sport 35, and is part of my forthcoming collection, Coming up roses

1.

Janice cleans her nails with her silver hairpin. They are gritty from when she plunged her forefinger and thumb into the window box of rhenunculas to extract a half-smoked cigarette. She had buried it when she heard her buzzer ring last night, and as Peter had climbed the ninety-three steps to her apartment, she had executed a dance of the seven veils to shoo away the smell of smoke. She had been so pleased with herself for going without cigarettes for a four-martini-date that she had thrown the rest of her Malboro Lights into the bin outside the corner deli. "You coulda just handed them to me," called the local homeless guy after her swing of straight brown hair. "Saved my arm from this filthy trash."

Janice balls up the grit and flicks it onto the floor boards. She slides the clip back into her hair and looks at herself in the mirror. She knows she isn't really this way, that her sucked-in cheeks and cocked eyebrows slacken as soon as she turns away, but this arrangement is more pleasing, more Garbo than reality. She wonders how Peter saw her. Whether he found her striking or odd. Toby, her ex-boyfriend, told her she looked like a horse, that blue blood means inbred. He swiped her father's ring off her bureau, saying she wouldn't miss it anyway, she had too much. But she does miss it. Like she misses her father. By the time she got hold of Toby's new cell number, calling from a phone box so he couldn't ID her and refuse to answer, he had already pawned it and spent the money on a rare R. Crumb comic.

Janice lights the cigarette. It tastes earthy, but she hasn't watered her window box in a while, so it isn't damp. She wonders whether Peter is going to call her today. She doesn't think so, she knows the three-days-post-date phone rule. But still, they had so much to say to each other, poised like lemon slices on the rims of their bar stools, scalloping each other's sentences. She wants to talk again. He works in Wall Street, but really he's a film maker, and that is appealing to her. Although she likes her men a little artsy, a little indy, they're usually the ones who need her money. Peter bought the drinks last night, and even though he didn't accompany her home, she was sure that there was something between them, that he must have a no-sex-on-the-first-date policy even if she doesn't. Damn, why won't he call?

2.

"Swing the golf club a little more. Put your whole body into it," says Peter.

Janice adjusts her scarf (Hermes, her mother's), straightens her skirt, which has twisted along with her swing, and lifts the golf club again. She pulls in her stomach and smiles at the camera. She knows it's only digital but she feels celluloid. "Golf Etiquette, point two," she elocutes. "Quiet. Golf requires a lot of concentration, so don't go chattering across the green. Imagine you're in a library, and the little flags are the librarians with their fingers pressed to their lips. When you're drinking cocktails after the game, that's when you can gossip about Miss Hunter's recent engagement, or Mr Eagleton's new Polo horse. Compose your anecdotes for later, and watch this." The club cracks the dimpled ball into an arc. Janice shields her eyes from the sun and follows its descent into the creek. "Fuck," she says.

"CUT!" says Peter. "That's great. You were hot. I think we got it that time." He folds up the camera and zippers it into his bag. He pulls Janice towards him and slides his cool hand under her shirt. He yanks up her skirt (which has yet again twisted, the zipper running down her belly) and runs his finger around the elastic of her underpants.

"What, here?" says Janice.

"Why not? It would be exciting."

Janice watches as another ball charts the contour of the hill, hits the grass and trickles into the hole. "Maybe we should go to your place instead."

"Oh, no. My place is kinda a mess. All my equipment and shit."

"I still haven't seen your place. When are you going to invite me over?"

They are interrupted by the roar of a golf cart, carrying a fat white-haired man and a thin white-haired woman. "Is that a hole in one?" she hears the man say. "I say it is. Look, Sherry, a hole in one!"

"My, aren't you clever," says Sherry. She pats the white haired dog in her Louis Vuitton tote bag. And then the moment is gone.

3.

As Janice zips up the pink dress, she thinks of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Somehow this is making her feel like a whore. Is Peter parodying her, from his oh-so-righteous, Irish-Catholic, I-grew-up-in-the-Bronx stoop? She majored in Irony, sarcasm intersecting cigarette drags in the coffee shop after literature class. Surely she should have some input. The dress he's picked out is nipped in at the waist, and has a full skirt, a sweetheart neckline and little capped sleeves. Her jeans and T-shirt have collapsed on the dressing room velvet stool.

"That's perfect. You look the part. But we need some gloves. White ones." Peter turns to the shop assistant, and her mascara-laden eyelashes radiate precisely. They don't clump like Janice's. Alone in front of the mirror, she picks off a glob, and not knowing where else to put it, she applies it to the inside of her handbag.

"I'm sorry, sir. Why don't you try the glove counter at Saks?"

"Great idea." Peter takes a sash of hair and wraps it around Janice's forehead. "What do you think, a little more Hepburn?"

"Oh, yes. Absolutely," says the assistant. "Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of my favourite movies." She winks at Peter, and Janice briefly gets the impression that the assistant has been through all this before.

Janice slumps on the stool in her underwear, her flesh pleating her torso. She's thinking of the time her mother did this to her. Yanked her down from the tree where she was climbing, her shorts peach-stained, her feet tough from bark and gravel. Took her to the department store and dressed her in white, with a lilac ribbon, for the garden party. How she picked her scab in the changing room and bled on the dress, and her mother was angry at having to buy the stained garment. Rita, the maid, plunged the garment into cold water the minute they got home. The rusty blood dispersed. That didn't spare Janice from the slap on her thigh, the supper she refused in the nursery. She regretted the stand at four am, and sneaked down the stairs for cookies. When she opened the pantry door, there was Rita, sitting on the flour bin, sobbing. She started at the sight of Janice, her elbows flew out and knocked preserve jars off the shelf. "Your father's gone," she said, as an unbuckled lid emitted a clot of blueberries.

"Where?" asked Janice.

"I don't know where. Ask your mother." She pulled the pantry door shut between them. Janice crouched down and ate the blueberries that seeped out through the crack.

She never wore that white dress, but it haunted her closet. She remembers her mother railing at Rita for not putting plastic baggies around the tags when she washed it so that she couldn't return it. Rita quit after that, and Janice was left to answer the door to guests who hadn't heard that the garden party was off. They spent the rest of the summer alone in the big house, first eating the chicken, the potato salad, the cakes and slices that had been prepared the day before, then moving onto scrambled eggs and beans out of cans. The ring was the only thing Janice managed to keep of her father's, and she put it on a chain around her neck, under her T-shirts so her mother wouldn't see. Rather than packing his clothes in the trunk, they had a bonfire before they returned to the city. Her mother toasted marshmallows over his burning shirts and pants, but Janice refused to eat them. To her they tasted like charred flesh. "That damn Rita. I wish we never hired her, the slut. It was your father that insisted. He wanted a harem, but she wasn't enough for him. Oh god, what did I do to deserve this?"

Janice drew her legs up to her chest and shivered, even though the flames were hot.

"Are you done yet?" calls Peter from the other side. Janice passes the pink dress through the curtain. She sits on the stool until she thinks she can hear the squiggle of his fountain pen on the receipt, then she pulls on her grey and blue faded clothes and follows the pink dress out. "Why, thank you," she says as Peter hands her the bag. It is wrapped in mint green tissue. It rustles.

"To Saks?" asks Peter. "Or should we stop in for a drink first?"

"A drink would be good." She fumbles in her bag for a cigarette.

"Do you have to smoke on the street?" says Peter. "You really should give up."

She shrugs and returns the cigarette to its pack. He's so uptight about the rules that don't even belong to him.

4.

"Point of etiquette number four." Janice lifts her martini to the camera. "Don't spend your evening at the buffet table. Who wants to talk to a girl with her mouth full of shrimp? Mingling is the name of the game." She stretches out her hand. "How do you do? Handshakes must be firm and dry. Smile, but discreetly check your teeth first to make sure you don't have crackers stuck to them. Say their name, and remember it. Say a little rhyme in your head if it helps. Like Nancy Gnocchi Nose. Don't stay too long, Mingle and tingle. A girl must maintain an air of mystery. Excuse yourself after a few minutes and introduce yourself to someone else." Janice turns her head a little, takes a sip of the martini. She spins to show the tulle underskirt of her new dress.

"That's great, hon. You're a natural. This is going so much quicker than usual." Peter puts down his camera and slumps into Janice's salvaged hair-setting chair. He slurps at the martini that has been waiting for him, and pulls out the olive, before he's even made it half way through. "And this apartment has such fantastic light."

"What do you mean, quicker than usual? Have you done this before?"

"No, no, no. Of course not. I mean quicker than my usual projects. The Day at the Races movie, you'd think that I'd get enough footage in one day, but no, I had to keep on going back again and again. The bookies didn't want to be filmed unless I placed a bet, the ladies pulled their hats down over their faces, I wasn't allowed near the horses and then my battery ran down when I came across a male jockey that looked just like the young Elizabeth Taylor. It was a nightmare." He takes another slurp of his martini and looks at his watch. "Oh shit, is that the time? I gotta go, I'm meant to be meeting some friends."

"Oh, can I come?" She hasn't met any of his friends yet.

"Uh, I don't know. It's just a group of guys from the neighbourhood, they're kinda coarse, I don't think you would like them."

"I like coarse. I'm only finger bowls and fine china for your camera, Peter."

"It's a guy thing. They're all married, y'know. They want to go to one of those hooter bars, I don't understand. I'm not into that kinda thing."

"Whatever. Listen, my mom's coming to town next week. Would you like to meet her?"

"Sure, I'd love to meet your mom. But I might be tied up at work, I can't guarantee anything."

"So will I see you later?"

"I'll call you."

"Please do. We haven't even talked."

"Whaddaya mean, we talked plenty. I got it all here on film." He smiles, and it's open, tiled with teeth. He kisses Janice on the cheek and slouches, loose-boned, to the door. "Later."

Janice wonders what she will say to her mother if he doesn't show. She had offered him to her, her handsome, artistic, financially independent boyfriend who only sometimes makes her feel cheap. After all these years of stoners and garage band musicians. She knows that her Dartmouth degree, her fluency in French and excellent knowledge of Grecian vases is not enough for her mother's endorsement. But she's sure Peter will tip the balance. He knows how to hold a knife, even if he learnt it in a book.