Page 12 of The Snag List
‘AT MONTERAY VALLEY, WE DON’T SIMPLY OFFER A lifestyle; we offer a lifestyling. We build your bespoke life according to your personal needs. This interview with your personal life curator is the first step into being inducted into the Monteray Valley vision for living.’
Lindy smiled blandly as their life curator, Pierce, delivered this strangely corporate explanation. Beside her, Adam was nodding vigorously between glancing up and down at his phone. They were all in the back room in the house on Orchard Avenue, sitting on the fold-out garden chairs that were among the last things to be packed up. Tomorrow morning they’d be gone for good.
‘So,’ Pierce smiled neatly, ‘some background required for your on-boarding – how did you two meet?’
‘I’ll take this one, honey.’ Adam pressed a finger to her lips and swung himself up to standing.
The ‘how did you two meet’ question was the Adam Show, and he’d long perfected it.
He spread his arms wide. ‘Let me set the scene for you, Pierce. It was an Aussie karaoke bar and I’d sung the same song every night for nearly two weeks and every night I’d had home runs. With the ladies, to be clear. In my youth I was, as Lindy would say, “a fucking ride”.’ He paused to land an extremely cute grin, looking from Pierce to Lindy. ‘You guys are supposed to say “You’re still a fucking ride, Adam”!’
Pierce gamely parroted: ‘You’re still a …’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘Ahemm … ride, Adam.’
Lindy shook her head, grinning. It was probably highly inappropriate to make him say that – he was, in a sense, their employee at this moment – but Adam thrived on highly inappropriate. It made her husband pretty Marmite – people were either utterly repelled by his bombastic, brash ways or, like Lindy, fell for them even against their better judgement. He was fun and, to be fair, as he’d said, a bona fide ride.
‘Mrs Zelner.’ Adam cocked a finger in her direction. ‘I didn’t hear you there?’
‘It’s Ms Reid and please just get on with the story.’
‘OK so there was I, a young midwestern Brad Pitt, crooning to a room of beautiful women, one of whom – this one – pretending she wasn’t interested. Galling.’
‘I was embarrassed for you. You were singing ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’.’
‘I had a lotta guys rooting for me that night. They wanted me to bag lucky-thirteen but I was a goner. I knew it had to be her. I tried everything but I struck out with her that night. She broke my streak.’
‘I should clarify, Pierce, when he says “tried everything” what he really means is he was gross and inappropriateat mefor fifteen minutes and then staggered off to sleep in his friend’s car.’
‘“Give it to me baby, uh-huh uh-huh.”’ Adam made a beckoning gesture at her.
‘The worst part is he thinks he’s being obnoxious in an ironic way,’ she told Pierce.
This was the way ‘how did you two meet’ always played. They had it down pat after ten years together. All couples did this to some degree, Lindy found, though not all meet-cutes involved karaoke reenactments and regrettable white rapping.
‘She came back the next night, though’ – more cheeky grinning from Adam.
He is still very cute, she allowed. He kept his blond hair shaved now after the first signs of thinning. A good call. Sometimes Lindy would catch him from a random angle and be startled by the signs of age in him.And he must get it even worse with me. I haven’t bought a new bra since 2018. Her mind strayed to her underwear drawer, so packed that every time she opened it to get the one wearable bra and knickers she owned, she had to wedge it closed.I need to go through it, weed out the dross and start afresh with some decent underwear. Maybe there’s someone who does that out in Monteray?
‘Eh, Lindy?’ Adam was raising an eyebrow in her direction. ‘I said: she came back the next night, though.’
‘Right.’ She did love his total lack of pretence that this was anything other than a highly engineered and rigorously rehearsed meet-cute story. She cleared her throat. ‘The next night he was singing ‘Zombie’, which he dedicated to me.’
‘And,’ Adam picked up the thread, ‘she screamed across the whole bar: “This song is not romantic, you dopey sap, it’s about the Troubles!” I could barely understand her cos of the accent but I was enchanted. Next night, I did ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ just to see her mad again. She’s so cute when she’s mad.’
Lindy rolled her eyes. ‘I wasn’t mad – I was irritated because you were a douche.’
‘I was playing up to the obnoxious American stereotype.’ He spun round to Pierce. ‘And it totally worked.’
‘The next night he did ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, and I will admit it, he got me. I was at a very low moment. We had just eaten the last packet of Banshee Bones sent over from home.’
‘We kissed.’ Adam twinkled over at her.
‘I was thinking about Banshee Bones the entire time,’ Lindy finished flatly.
‘And scene.’ Adam bowed. ‘A hand for my lady wife.’ Adam clapped in her direction and then swooped in for a kiss.
Lindy was generally not one for public shifting but she let him for a minute before batting him off. He hadn’t kissed her in so long. To be fair, she hadn’t kissed him either. They never even cuddled now.
The beginning of the end of sex had set in a few years ago. It was probably around the time of the last bra purchase, so she couldn’t even blame the pandemic. Working together had definitely changed their relationship. It had become so transactional. As time went by, she found that the less sex they had, the less sex they had. It was like an awkward silence going on so long that the thought of breaking it was becoming more and more remote.If we suddenly did manage to have sex now, we would be forced to acknowledge that we hadn’t had sex in months. Months and months. What are we averaging? Four times a year?
