Mr. Commitment - Hardcover

Gayle, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385501005 ISBN 13: 9780385501002

Verlag: Doubleday, 2001

Inhaltsangabe

After four years together, Benjamin Duffy, a young stand-up comic/temp, faces his demons when his stunning girlfriend Mel asks for a commitment and issues an ultimatum that could turn his life upside down. 20,000 first printing.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mike Gayle is a freelance journalist and a popular advice columnist. He lives in Birmingham, England.

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A long-forgotten conversation

Her: [Pause] Do you love me?

Me: Of course I do.

Her:How much?

Me:I don't know . . . loads. To infinity and then some.

Her:[Contentedly] Good.

Me:That's that sorted, then.

Her:[Playfully] So what would you do if I ever split up with you?

Me:Are you going to do that?

Her:No.

Me:Then why are we talking about it?

Her:It's called conversation. People do it all the time.

Me:So let me get this straight, the question is what would I do if you hypothetically dumped me?

Her:Yes.

Me:Hypothetically nothing.

Her:Nothing?

Me:Well, as we're mad about each other it'd take me doing something pretty stupid for you to want to get rid of me. [Pause] Like if I started biting my own toenails or something. I'd dump me if I started doing that.

Her:Do you always have to be so logical?

Me:[Laughs] I'd be devastated. Destroyed. Dismantled. And other words beginning with "D."

Her:But what would you do?

Me:Do? [Pause] I would do everything in my power to get you back.

Her:Like what?

Me:Climbing the highest mountain, crossing scorching deserts, fighting man-eating tigers—that sort of thing. Granted there aren't that many tigers, mountains or deserts in Muswell Hill. But you get my drift.

Her:What if the odds were impossible?

Me:Then I'd die trying.

Her:What if I told you I didn't love you anymore?

Me:I wouldn't believe you.

Her:But you wouldn't ever give up trying?

Me:Nah. Some things you can't give up on, can you?

Her:Mr. Duffy, you've answered every single question correctly.

Me:Great, so what do I win?

Her:Me.



Let's talk about us

"Have I missed something here?"

It was an ordinary Thursday evening in January—at least I thought so. I was round at my girlfriend Mel's flat and it was to her that I'd aimed my question, as for some unknown reason she'd just turned off the TV even though I'd quite clearly been watching it. What really wound me up, however, was the fact that she'd used the remote control to do it, adding insult to injury. It was an unofficial rule of ours that I looked after all TV-channel-changing duties—in the same way that Mel got first grazing rights on the top layer of any box of chocolates that came into our possession. We'd arrived at these and various other rules through a process of trial and error over the course of our four-year relationship. These rules made me happy. I always knew where I stood. But when you abandon rules there's bound to be chaos, and right now what I had on my hands was a serious case of anarchy.

My obviously deranged beloved pursed her perfect full lips together and blew into the end of the remote haughtily as if she'd just battled the TV for my attention and won. There's no need for you to be quite so pleased with yourself, I thought. After all, it was only a repeat of Star Trek—the episode where Kirk and co. go back in time to earth in early 1920s America and Spock has to wear a woolly hat to cover his pointy ears. A young Joan Collins is in it, and Kirk, surprise, surprise, snogs her. I wasn't a Trekkie but I'd seen this episode a million times before and the more I thought about it the more irritated I became that Mel had curtailed my intergalactic viewing pleasure.

Mel, who had disappeared into her bedroom when I'd arrived at her Clapham flat, only to reappear an hour later and turn off the TV, was now looking at me intently as if studying some unknown creature under a microscope. Her face bore the look not of someone annoyed, or angry but intrigued. Even so, I signaled an internal green alert and continued to feel on edge. She stood up—still holding the remote control—and walked across the room to the table in the corner where a bottle of Chardonnay sat. She poured out two glasses of wine, put them on the coffee table, seated herself on my lap and kissed me.

Watching her carefully I began to wonder if she was trying to seduce me. Being seduced was a nice idea, but she really had no need to go to all this effort. When it came to Mel—who was beautiful in a wonderfully understated kind of way—Easy was indeed my first, last and middle name. No, this isn't about seduction, I decided. This is about me doing something wrong. There was something about this whole situation that had a suggestion of forgotten anniversary about it, only it wasn't our anniversary. Was it?

"It's not our anniversary," I said unsteadily, attempting to add a dash of confidence to my voice. "That's not until June eleventh."

"The eighteenth actually."

"Oh."

She smiled and kissed me again.

"It's not your birthday, either . . . that's not until April sixth."

"Nearly." She smiled. "The fifth."

"Oh."

She smiled and kissed me once more.

"It's not my birthday, is it?" I said, grasping at nothing. "I can't be so crap that I've actually forgotten my own birthday, surely?"

"What are you like?" said Mel, laughing. "Your birthday isn't until October the seventh."

All out of commemorative occasions, I continued to rack my brains. Mel loved any excuse for a celebration. It was bound to be something strange like the anniversary of the first time we had a Chinese takeaway, or four years to the day since we first cooked for each other or . . .

"I've got it," I said victoriously. "It's the anniversary of the day I first told you I loved you."

"It is?" said Mel quizzically. "Are you sure?"

"I dunno." I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. All I could remember about the day in question was that it had been the Friday Channel Four repeated the very first episode of Cheers. I'd been looking forward to the moment all week and then five minutes before it was about to begin, I'd felt a sudden urge to tell Mel about the intense emotional turmoil she was causing within my normally placid frame. Such was the sense of exhilaration caused by my outburst that we ended up missing Cheers altogether. It was worth it though. Well worth it.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Doubleday
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2001
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0385501005
• ISBN 13: 9780385501002
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 309
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland