DISTRACTION

 ‘Beautiful.’

When Jeff sighed Lynn bloomed, but she kept her head down in case he saw. How could a comment on a stupid dress dilate her capillaries and raise her temperature so? An ancestral signal of submission; she might as well roll over like a dog, flatten her ears like a cat. He was not some God bestowing blessings, he was a bald banker of average height with an obvious love of fine dining. In the wild he would be a beta at best. They were not in the wild, they were in an English pub in a small town, sitting on high stools with a snow-covered car park for a view. Was it his gravel voice, the way his lip curled when amused, his smell? Civilization – Pah! Might as well strip her naked and give her a tree to call home.

Her daughter would tell her to, ‘Enjoy the moment and to try to be a normal person for once.’ Lynn would try. She would look up and say, ‘Thank you,’ like a normal person, in a minute when she’d stopped blushing.

‘The two tone is really something, isn’t it?’

The car, of course; he was admiring his lemon-yellow Porsche 911 on the other side of the glass. Lynn’s ablutions had been a waste of ceremony: the perfume, the gunk on her cheeks, the hairbrush that found a parasitic interloper from the gorilla enclosure, the dress and heels that turned her into a cartoon. Staring at a hunk of metal that had once been happy to be the diary entry of The Big Bang – she thought about space and time and rewinding it back to the bonobo enclosure that afternoon, before the sun dipped and the moon rose too soon and she had been forced to re-join the homo sapiens she pretended to understand.

His car was the other woman in this relationship. It was everything she was not: chic, sassy, sleek as a snow leopard. It lay close to the ground, draped in a dusting of snowflakes, waiting for him to finish wasting his time with the person wrapped up like a Christmas cocktail, the one who smelled of wet hay no matter how often she showered.

The bar turned steamy with revellers falling in out of the cold, their voices loud, their outfits even louder. Mariah Carey crooned through the sound system; ceiling lights smouldered against green tinsel and cinnamon scented candles threatened to ignite drunk polyester in all directions. A woman dressed as Santa’s slutty helper stumbled in and caught Jeff’s eye, but only for a moment. Not even an ample blossom could keep him from his car.

‘A hundred and fifty grand of perfection, but that chrome around the windows just makes it sing.’

Man vs machine, flesh vs electrics. How could she compete with this outstanding mortgage money of a car? Mention her own silver trim that she hid each month with a bottle from Super Drug?

‘You’re lovely by the way.’ He finally looked at her. ‘It’s not a competition.’

Such clarification gave her suspicion shape, gave it arms and legs and monstrous carbuncled skin. It sat down on the stool next to her and knocked her drink with its warty hands.

‘Careful babes, that’s Dom Pérignon vintage.’

This strange man, who she’d been removing her clothes with for almost six months, was like nothing she had encountered before. He was detached from the human cacophony, just like her, but in very different ways. She played deaf and wore men’s clothes; he was made up of materialism, self-aggrandising and delusion, but she had worked with enough great apes to spot an act. Once the expensive clothes were off, once all the add-ons – the money, the handmade shoes, the overwhelming cologne – were stripped away, he was gentle and selfless. When he whispered, ‘I’m coming to find you,’ revealing he knew she was lost inside that body of hers and what he did with that fundamental part of his, always ‘finding’ her – well, it made it possible to forgive the bravado over and over again, until they were too exhausted to speak, let alone judge.

It wasn’t all about sex. There was the food too. The odd dinner here, a flash hotel on some golf course there – where the staff stared at her biceps and mud-covered boots before remembering to smile. Occasionally she got her way and they slept in a tent in a forest. An experience that made him repeat, ‘Invigorating,’ as he clung to her as if she were a cliff face. When they lay together, he invariably became the person she knew he was: the kind, wrapped around, head on her chest man, who was calm, centred and didn’t need all those other things to realise he existed.

Still looking out the window, he grabbed her thigh and squeezed, and the way he took a swig of his Guinness and smiled at his Porsche made her feel a part of something – a ménage à trois with a computer on wheels. More than once she had caught him stroking the gearstick at the same time as her. But whenever her anxiety got too much, she reminded herself that the first time they had climbed inside each other hadn’t been in his flash car, it had been in the back of her van, her dirty, messy van. Something which took them by mutually horrified surprise.

***

She heard his voice before she saw his face.

‘The penguins will have to go!’ he’d barked at the administrator from inside the flimsy Portakabin. The parakeets panic-called announcing a predator in their midst. There was something about his tone that made her think of her History A-level, of despots and guns and failed revolutions. It made her want to march right back to the bonobos and watch them eat, but she had to get permission to boil forty eggs first.

If she could take on Boris the gorilla’s infected anal gland, then she could deal with the strange sounding man on the other side of the door. She knocked and entered and was hit by a cloud of mango vape smoke. The man didn’t even pause to acknowledge her.

‘What do they offer, really? People don’t want a reminder of climate change. Come on, ship ‘em back to Atlantis, or wherever. Better yet, let’s have a cull and then a fund-raising banquet using the bastards.’ This was a can-do man, the kind who pushed his way to the front of the queue, who would make a casserole out of the family pet to save a few pounds on cremation.

‘Penguins,’ he said in her direction and presumably only did a double take because she was a head taller than him. ‘They look delicious. Gamey, like pheasant.’ He mimed loading a gun and pointing it at the sky.

‘They are flightless birds,’ said Lynn.

‘Lynn – Jeff; Jeff – Lynn.’ David, her beleaguered boss, introduced them. ‘He is a banker.’

Lynn raised an eyebrow.

‘An actual banker – from the actual bank.’

‘Oh.’

‘Jeff here is the person who is going to help keep us open, hopefully.’ He looked about as hopeful as Reggie the depressed penguin in shed 9.

Studying a spreadsheet on his laptop, Jeff reached out to shake her hand. She rubbed her palms on her combats, not thinking about anything as calamitous as a connection, not thinking about anything really, because all that mattered was the OK on the bonobos’ expensive snack and getting back to work. But then their fingers found each other and sickness struck – a quiver in the belly, the accelerated heartbeat that requires another. This had happened a couple of times in her life but surely she was now immune from it, due to a bad case of middle age and her vocation. By the look on his face he too felt a little queasy and it wasn’t just because her hands were sticky with lemur urine. After they let go Jeff started coughing uncontrollably and Lynn sniffed at the artificial scent of his hand cream as if it were a toxic substance. The apes wouldn’t like it one bit.

‘You two O.K?’ asked David.

Jeff scowled. Perhaps it was because she smelled of a zoo and he smelled of Milan and never the twain should meet.

‘I know it’s asking a lot, but can you give this gentleman a lift to the station in an hour or so, when he’s finished shafting me?’

‘Come on mate, that’s not fair. I’m here to help. Bring it in,’ The average man of average height went to fist pump, but David ignored it and Lynn, taking pity on him, offered her own fist. Jeff looked confused, put his hand in his lamb’s leather jacket and changed the subject.

‘It’s all about streamlining; getting the most out of these furry, feathered, and scaly bastards. Perhaps we should be thinking Cabaret. Got any performing monkeys?’ He turned to Lynn and smiled in a way that took off all her clothes. Lynn zipped up her bright orange uniform hoodie, even though it was warmer in the cabin than a pre-sheered sheep in springtime.

‘Lynn has a fine voice,’ David spoke quickly. ‘But she isn’t for hire, and she would be out of your price range if she was.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’

Jeff smiled with all his teeth and David sat a little straighter in his swivel chair. Lynn nodded and tried to look manly, to become part of the unspoken conversation.

‘Sorry to disturb, David. Can I give forty eggs to the bonobos?’

‘Only if you give this total banker a lift to the station when we’re done?’

‘Mate!’ Jeff feigned shock. ‘It’s not my fault that my car is not designed for the outback.’

‘This is Yorkshire. So, Lynn, what do you say?’

‘I think it’s a bad idea,’ said Lynn.

‘A terrible idea,’ said Jeff.

‘So that’s agreed then. We’ll just be another hour or so. Come back then, yeah?’

‘Well, I was hoping to get on with Boris’s anal gland.’

David winced.

‘You can do both.’

Jeff winced and backed up against the wall.

‘If I must.’

It was a quiet journey to the station. He brushed imaginary hairs off his jacket; she itched her ear like she had a tick behind it, which she probably did. The country roads seemed bendier than normal, the tractor that came round the corner too fast (and made the banker scream) nearly collided with her numberplate and it took several attempts to mount the bank so it could pass. It was a horrible minute when his thigh brushed up against hers and she could feel his pulse. Everything took too long and there was nothing to say, not a conversation bridge to cross. She didn’t care about crypto currency and he couldn’t give a monkey’s about things with a heartbeat, unless they were served with a peppercorn sauce. She could have asked him about his fine shoes that were now covered in mud, she could have told him she was perfectly happy alone and could he please not touch her again with his manicured hands, because then she would need a shower before going back to work, but she said nothing, just drove in embarrassed silence.

‘Well, then.’

‘Yes, well.’

It was time for the banker to get out of her van, but he just sat there, seatbelt on, staring at the station flower baskets dangling from the entrance. They oozed colour with lusty abandon. The sun was burning a hole in the windscreen. Why wasn’t he leaving? It was no use, the hoodie had to be taken off, immediately before she expired.

‘You won’t close us down?’ she asked as she threw the top into the empty compartment behind them.

‘I’ll do my best not to, but you lot have made a right mess of things.’ He sounded angry, like he needed to be placated, like he needed comfort, like he needed things not to require complicated solutions, like he needed to be happy. In the distance a train honked its imminent arrival, the one that would take him safely back to London and out of her life. They didn’t hear it because they were scrambling after her discarded top and because they were tearing each other’s clothes off next to a pile of walnut tree branches and rusty spades.

That was six months ago and weren’t things supposed to have changed by now? Her daughter kept using terms like, ‘next level,’ and ‘evolve,’ as if the relationship was a rare species. That was what this date, this dress, this bar was all about – progress.

‘Where are we going with this, Jeff?’

That sounded normal, just as she had rehearsed. She might have gone up a little high on his name but it could be attributed to a frog in the throat, a mild cold coming on.

‘Onwards and upwards.’ He stroked her thigh a little higher than was appropriate. She brushed it off; he pulled back.

‘Well, the Porsche and the golf courses and the forest floors are all very well, but I would like to be normal. Do normal things and maybe be a couple properly, a proper couple.’

Jeff looked around the bar like he was 007 and they were deep in a mission that she had chosen to accept but now she was changing the rules, and this could most definitely put them in mortal danger. He looked at the other normal people with their elf costumes and their loud voices, at the man chanting a football song as he tripped and spilled his pint. Jeff smiled tightly, pulled on his pink shirt collar and stroked her square jaw, her defined biceps, her calloused hand.

‘Babes, you know I adore you, but I’m not looking for anything other than distraction right now. I have a stressful job and my own kids to look after. Being a widower is tough. You’re sweet and funny and fucking sexy but let’s be frank, this is what it is, just a wonderful distraction. You understand, babes, don’t you?’

‘Distraction from what?’

‘Life. The day to day. You are the ice cream sundae on a beach, the fun fair ride, the sweet treat that you indulge in but can’t make part of daily life, or, you know, you get cavities.’

Lynn nodded and held her breath. How long could she go before she fainted? If she opened her mouth it would open her tear ducts too and that would be alarming.

‘Good, good.’ He squeezed her thigh a little too hard. ‘I love how you take it all on that big chin of yours. That’s my monkey girl. My very own bonobo.’

He got up to, ‘take a piss,’ and she whispered, ‘Bonobos are apes, arsehole.’

The car keys… he’d left the car keys on the table alongside his bulging wallet. The Porsche horse logo reared up, coaxing her, tempting her. Her nemesis sparkled from under a sheet of powder snow, oblivious to a plan that was hatching in the mind of a woman who had never done anything wrong in her life. She’d never stolen a sweet, never lied, never intentionally hurt anything. And where had it got her, the coveted status of ‘distraction.’

‘Are you leaving?’ asked the slutty elf with a slur.

Lynn relieved his wallet of three hundred pounds.

‘Oh yes.’

She stepped out of the bar and bent down to give the homeless guy by the entrance the wad of stolen cash. He looked startled but moved fast to hide it.

‘Merry Christmas,’ he called after her as she slid into the driver’s seat.

‘Hey lady,’ she told the machine as the dash lit up. ‘Your man said we needed to get better acquainted, so let’s go for a ride.’ As if in agreement, the seat began to warm her cold thighs. The windscreen wipers revealed an image of her lover scrabbling for his jacket in the bar and pushing his way through the revellers. A particularly merry Santa made his exit just slow enough for Lynn to pull out into the road and drive away. She gave him the finger as she did so.

She didn’t hear him yell out, ‘Fucking whore!’ but it wouldn’t surprise her if he did, for Jeff was a man who believed that everyone had a price.

Lynn thought about driving the one hundred and fifty grand of perfection off a cliff; instead, she drove it to her brother’s garage where she knew he would still be working. He whistled when he saw it and indicated that she should park it in the shed. They had a frank discussion about revenge and financial woes, and because he was intimate with criminality, he said he could do something about both her problems in one swift transaction.

Jeff didn’t message her again. He didn’t pursue the stolen vehicle either. David said it had something to do with a wife who wasn’t very dead after all.

Three months later the zoo received a cash injection of just under a hundred thousand pounds.

There are days when Lynn thinks about his artificial smell and how happy he was when he washed it off and put on hers, but most days she just thinks about bonobos and their snacks and how many eggs the Porsche bought.

***

(Photo by the prolifically talented Alice Herrick )