Chapter 10 – The Prospect of Sleeping Alone
A man walks into a bar...
Nothing unusual in that. He's walked into this particular bar practically every night. Tonight though, there's a difference. Sabine is away.
She has a modelling assignment in Manchester. Not a very glamorous assignment, it should be said, just catalogue work but it pays the bills. This will be their first night apart in – how long have they been together? Ten weeks is seventy nights, plus two 'coz it's Wednesday. This would have been their seventy second night together.
"Hi Dan. Why the long face?" Ernesto's by the door, doing the meet and greet bit as usual.
"Evening Ernie. Sabine's out of town for three days. Remember?"
Ernesto should remember. He's given her the time off.
"What you need my friend, is beer. The world of the single man always looks better through green glass." Ernesto accompanies Daniel to the bar. "Gail." He calls over one of the bar staff, a very cute, very petite and very outspoken South African faux redhead. "Gail. Give Dan his usual. Someone's stolen his favourite toy." With a pat on the back for our hero, Ernesto leaves him to it.
"Missing her already? Man! You must have it bad." Gail knows all about Sabine's absence. Two other girls are away on the same job. "Heineken. Right?"
"Cheers." He watches the bottle in front of him, the wisp of vapour in the neck, the ice water trickling down the sodden label.
A striped drinking straw pops into the neck of the bottle, bobbing up and down. It snaps him out of his reverie.
"You didn't pick it up so I thought perhaps your hands weren't working again." Gail grins at him. It's hard to be down when pretty girls are teasing you. Daniel finds his spirits lifting.
"Sarcastic wench." He picks the straw out of his beer, flicking it at her. "I actually only came in for dinner. Can I order a steak sandwich and some of those baby baker things?"
"Sure Honey. Barbeque sauce, sour cream and chive or salsa?"
Daniel looks at her blankly.
"Dip? With your BBs."
"Oh. Barbeque I guess."
"And how d'you take your steak?"
"Rare"
"That's one steakwich, still bleeding, a side order of BBs and barby sauce, coming right up."
Gail disappears for a moment to pass his food order through to the kitchen. Daniel catches himself checking her out. Nice wiggle. He looks quickly back at his beer and, at last, picks up the bottle and drinks.
"So Honey." Gail's back. "What time is she calling you?"
"She texted me earlier to say she'll ring sometime after nine." There's no point being coy about it.
"Ok, well this is how it works: If you sit there for two hours contemplating your beer, people will begin to think this isn't a fun place to be. Seeing as how Ernesto bought you the beer, the very least you can do is look cheerful so as not to scare off his paying customers. Deal?"
"Deal." Daniel manages a wistful smile. And pushes an empty bottle across the bar. "More beer please."
"There you go" Cold Heineken materializes in front of him. One of the waitresses – She's new. He doesn't know her name – puts his sandwich on the end of the counter. Gail brings it over. "Eat, drink and try to be merry." She nicks one of his baby bakers, popping it past her pearly teeth, winks and leaves him to his own devices.
"Honey, I don't want to be a ball-breaker, 'coz I know you're trying but Ernesto hires eye candy for a reason and all you've looked at for ten minutes is your plate." Gail has come to collect his empty plate and, blatantly contradicting herself, break his balls.
"Are you and Sabine related? You sound just like her, apart from the German accent. Anyway, I did check you out when you went to the kitchen."
"And I thought I was losing my touch. Another Heineken?"
"Why not. One for the road."
Daniel did make it his last too, before settling his bill and heading on home with an hour to spare.
Sabine's day had been tiring. There's nowhere near as much glamour in the modelling business as people think and this was about as unglamorous as it got. She'd spent the afternoon having the middle two feet of her body photographed in about a hundred different pairs of panties. And what had she to look forward to tomorrow? Bra and brief sets and a couple of basques that, but for the fact she was being paid, she wouldn't wear in a month of Sundays.
There'd been about a dozen girls on the shoot, all different sizes. Afterwards, a couple of the dressers had offered to show them what nightlife Manchester had to offer midweek. Sabine stuck with the group as far as a restaurant with a half decent salad bar but headed back to the hotel after dinner, more interested in calling Daniel than crawling bars.
Chapter 11 – Phone calls and interruptions
"Hi Liebchen, how was your day?" One ring. That's all the phone managed before Daniel got to it.
"Guten abend, Liebling. Modelling is langweillig. I want to come home."
"Langweillig? – Oh! Boring."
"Yah. Boring. So I can come home. Yah?"
"Liebchen, you can come home any time you want. God knows I miss you. But I thought you needed the money."
"Yah. I need the money. So I must stay and be bored."
He can practically hear the corners of Sabine's mouth turning downward.
"What's the hotel like?"
"Ok I think. But I must share a room. The agency only paid for two rooms for four girls." She doesn't sound overly happy about this either.
"Who are you sharing with? Anyone I know?"
"No. Jules und Teresia are in the other room. I am with Karen. She does not work in Southside. I think you will not know her."
" I had dinner in Southside tonight. Gail was giving me a hard time for being down in the mouth."
"Down in the ...?"
"Glum, unhappy. I wasn't very cheerful because you're so far away."
"So. Did she show you her tattoo?"
"No."
"Tomorrow you must ask her to show you. It will cheer you up."
