Love, in Theory Page 2

  I take a breath. ‘So, who do you know here?’

  ‘I came with Kristen. Winters?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ I nod, trying to mask my distaste. I know Kristen from our days at St John’s College. My most distinct memory of her involves nearing her room for pre-drinks before a sports dinner in first semester – a time of constant hummingbird-hearted social anxiety – and overhearing her say in her characteristic high-pitched whine, ‘Why did you invite Romy and Alanna? Those country girls bore me to tears.’

  James doesn’t elaborate on how he knows my third-least favourite person from college. Or what he means by ‘with’.

  He asks me about my connection to the party, and I explain that I know Quinn, and a few other people, from law school. I’m at the point of trying to put an interesting spin on being a commercial lawyer when we hear a door bang open, a loud giggle and a low slurred laugh.

  I turn around to see Kristen falling out of a room at the top of the stairs in full frottage with a guy I don’t recognise; a lanky hipster in an ironic Hawaiian shirt. They don’t notice us, so engrossed are they in inhaling each other’s faces. I whirl back around to James. He looks unfazed, and shrugs as if to say, what can you do?

  I awkwardly gape for a couple of seconds, racking my brain for something to say. I glance back up the stairs – Kristen and Hawaiian Shirt have disappeared.

  James registers my dismay. ‘Romy, don’t worry.’

  ‘Bu–’

  ‘I matched with Kristen on Tinder. We only met up a few hours ago,’ he explains, ‘for a first date.’

  I breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Whew. First and only date, by the looks of it.’ Thank god I won’t have to comfort a distraught cuckold.

  He laughs, eyes crinkling. ‘Yeah, she suggested we swing by here after we’d had a few drinks. I feel like a bit of an idiot, and gypped that she’s never going to hit me back for those two Long Island iced teas, but hey’ – he blows out a melodramatic sigh – ‘that’s the price you pay. And if it paved the way to her finding the love of her life tonight, which Magnum PI could well be, then I’m happy to play my part in this cosmic concatenation.’

  I smile. Maybe getting out of the house wasn’t such a bad idea. ‘So Tinder, eh? What was it that made you swipe right? The mermaid hair? The pornographic proportions? Don’t tell me . . . was it the gleam of intelligence in her baby blues?’ I tease.

  He grins and gives me a chuck on the chin which, weirdly, doesn’t feel patronising. ‘Come on now,’ he chides me. ‘Do I look like a superficial guy?’

  He does. He’s tall, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Sweeping brown hair, an athletic build, trendy dark jeans and shirt. He looks like a cartoon G.I. I search for a way to respond.

  ‘You probably won’t believe me but I thought she had the coolest descriptor,’ he says.

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘“I live a sketchy existence.” With a pencil emoji after it.’

  ‘That’s pretty cute,’ I concede.

  ‘Yeah, I thought so. Not the usual Tinder drivel. And I’m a graphic designer, so the whole artistic thing appeals to me. Unfortunately, not hooking up with other guys also appeals to me . . .’

  I chuckle. I’m just about to ask if he’s had any other nightmarish Tinder experiences when we’re interrupted by Paloma, who must have just arrived. She is drunk off her make-up-smeared face and seems to barely register James when I attempt an introduction. ‘Rommyyy,’ she whines, ‘come dance!’

  I screw up my face but she’s not having a bar of it. She waves gaily to James as she tugs my arm and starts pulling me down the hallway.

  ‘Sorry, duty calls,’ I say as I’m whisked away.

  Back in the living room, someone has closed the French doors; a wise move given that a frenetic remix of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ is reverberating through the house at neighbour-unfriendly decibels. The room is hazy with smoke and teeming with dancing bodies. I surrender myself to the music and to Paloma, who dances with me like a demented marionette master.

  It’s midnight when I call it. Definitely pumpkin hour. I’m exhausted but exhilarated from dancing; first with Paloma and then, when she flitted off to flirt with her ex-boyfriend, Heinous Carl, with some of the other girls from law school. I always forget how liberating it is to dance without an alcohol security blanket; to be at once so acutely aware of my body and to feel suspended from it. I feel better than after a $30-a-pop Bikram class.

  ‘I’m just getting some air,’ I mouth to Quinn in a well-practised ghosting move. I press past the people milling in the kitchen, who have moved on from Hendrick’s to cheap Mishka vodka mixed with the cranberry juice I know Quinn always has on hand because she’s terrified of UTIs. I snatch up my jacket from the couch and slip out the front door.

  The night air is chilly, the street dark and quiet save for the glow and rumble of the party behind me. I stand for a moment, savouring the stillness.

  ‘Romy?’

  I look over my shoulder. James pulls the front door shut behind him.

  ‘What are you still doing here?’ I ask, surprised. ‘I thought you’d left. In fact, I assumed you’d be listening to Joni Mitchell and halfway through a pint of Ben & Jerry’s by now . . .’

  ‘Alas, the Bridget Jones moment had to wait. I ran into a mate from school. We ended up having a long chat. He told me all about his boat renos and powerlifting, which took at least a couple of hours. I traded him a story about my tragically broken heart.’

  ‘Well, jokes aside, I hope your next Tinder foray is more successful.’

  He cocks his head. ‘Hey, tonight wasn’t a total bust.’

  I draw my jacket tighter around me. The cold is starting to set in. I don’t know quite what to say, and for some reason I find myself avoiding his eyes. ‘Well, it was nice to meet you,’ I manage. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around?’ I start towards the gate.

  ‘Hold up,’ he says, jogging after me. ‘Which way are you headed?’

  ‘I’m over in Glebe, just going to grab a bus.’

  ‘From Oxford Street? I’m walking that way too.’

  He falls into step with me. We walk in silence for a couple of minutes, chins tucked against the cold.

  I catch sight of the 440 bus as it lumbers past, brightly lit and barren. I turn quickly to James. ‘That’s me – I’m going to try to catch it.’ I give a little Nemo fin wave, mentally curse my profound awkwardness, and before he can say anything, start to leg the twenty metres to the bus stop. I reach it just as the bus does, and stumble on board. As I collapse onto the front seat, the doors sweep shut. I peer out the smeary window, searching for James’s face. But before I can make out anything in the inky darkness, the bus pulls away.

  2

  Monday morning arrives and, like an arthritic knee portending a storm, I begin to sense that the week ahead will be intense when Graeme, the employment law partner and my direct boss, stomps in just before 8 am, muttering about all the clients who bombarded him with idiotic requests over the weekend. Rather than stopping for his morning moan, he beelines for his office, flinging his newspaper on his PA Barbara’s desk on the way. Built like a Dickensian coal factory owner, replete with wobbling jowls and a thick neck indicative of sleep apnoea, he’s surprisingly speedy, having a kind of stress-induced agility. So stormy is his mood that nobody points out the big black ink smudge on his forehead. Evidently, he has been using his newspaper as a makeshift sunshade on the way in to the office again.

  I spend the morning fielding his email demands for various bits of research. It’s a small group, the employment law team; just Graeme, an almost mythical special counsel who is always out ‘meeting clients’, two senior associates who are on secondment to a client out in Macquarie Park, Graeme’s no-nonsense PA Barbara, the occasional paralegal or seasonal law clerk, and me, the graduate lawyer completing the second of two year-long rotations. Because of the size of the team, and Graeme’s propensity to work frenetically with same-day turnover, the trad
itional hierarchical allocation of work (partners delegating to senior associates delegating to junior lawyers) is eschewed, with Graeme assigning work directly to me. This has its benefits – I’m given a fair bit of responsibility, and much more interesting work than other graduate lawyers, whose bread-and-butter is document review. But sometimes I wish there was a buffer between Graeme and me, to shield me from the madness.

  The lowlight of the morning is definitely when Graeme interpolates his requests for memos about redundancy consultation requirements and repudiation of the employment contract with a demand that I find, and schedule him an appointment with, a dermatologist. It’s the kind of menial task typically left to Barbara, but she has unapologetically taken an early lunch. Graeme’s requests usually require a slew of follow-up questions to contextualise the issue, but I decide that on this occasion, no further information is necessary.

  Around 2 pm, a client meeting distracts Graeme, and I escape to meet Paloma and our other friend, Cameron, for lunch. The three of us have been good friends since college orientation, remaining so even after I left abruptly in second year, and by some miracle ended up in the same graduate program. Since starting work at Birchstone McCauliffe, we’ve become an inseparable unit.

  We perch on the steps outside our building, a towering glass monolith in the banker belt of the city. Our firm takes up a respectable seven floors, leaving the remainder for a couple of small hedge funds, a commercial property group and an international policy institute.

  Paloma wears huge Tom Ford sunglasses, hiding from the bright, early afternoon sun and most likely a two-day hangover (her motto is ‘A weekend not wasted is a weekend wasted’). Cameron scrolls through his work emails on his phone, emitting occasional moans like a pitiful ghost.

  ‘I barely saw you Saturday night,’ Paloma says accusingly.

  ‘Um, we danced for like an hour,’ I remind her. ‘I left around midnight, but I believe it was you who gallivanted off at Carl’s slimy beckoning long before then.’

  Paloma doesn’t bat an eyelid, although it’s difficult to tell through her sunglasses; she has the Posh Spice po-face down pat.

  She expertly deflects. ‘That’s right, I stole you away from that beautiful guy. Which, I recall, wasn’t easy. You were very engaged.’

  I dig my plastic fork into my limp salad and flick a rocket leaf at her. ‘Yeah, I met a nice guy. James. A bit too beautiful, or rather, too self-assured, if you know what I mean –’

  ‘Tall guys always are,’ Paloma says knowingly.

  ‘– though, to be fair, I barely spoke to him. Funnily, he came with Kristen, who ended up getting with some other guy.’

  ‘Did anything happen?’ Paloma asks.

  I shudder. ‘Ugh, I don’t know. I only witnessed a few seconds of disturbing face-sucking before they disappeared. Though that was enough to scorch my eyeballs.’

  ‘No, I mean with you and James.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Isn’t he your type, the raffish jock? Or do you steer clear of those now, post-Adam?’ I grimace reflexively, but she doesn’t notice. ‘I know you’re into ripped nerds – improv Jackson, case in point – pretty much anyone tall, funny, verging on dickish . . .’ She continues with fervour, going so far as to remove her sunglasses and narrow her eyes at me. ‘No, seriously. James – would you date him?’

  ‘Calm down!’ I laugh. ‘I mean, he’s on Tinder so he’s probably just chasing tail . . .’

  ‘My cousin met her fiancé on Tinder,’ Cameron pipes up, not breaking from his typing. He releases another email with a whoosh.

  I ignore him. ‘. . . and he didn’t ask me to hang out or for my number or anything. So it’s a moot point.’ I stab a piece of cucumber a little too forcefully, splattering balsamic onto my grey dress. I fish a tissue out of my handbag and dab at the stains, but only succeed in working them further into the fabric.

  ‘So, up for debate then?’ Paloma says brightly.

  ‘No, common usage “moot point”. No more legal definitions, or cross-examination, for the love of Harvey Specter.’

  We eat in silence for a few minutes before I relent a little. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to meet someone. Actually, I was talking about it with my parents over the weekend and I realised I do need to be more proactive.’

  ‘Did they give you the “biological clock” spiel?’ asks Paloma drily.

  ‘Not quite. They introduced me to the idea of optimal stopping theory.’ I outline the basics of the theory for them. ‘So it’s time pressure in the sense that my next relationship is probably going to be it. My best chance of happiness. And to add to the stress, my parents also pointed out that my prospects of meeting anyone are dismal given my current social life.’

  Paloma and Cameron are steadfastly silent, which I take as consensus.

  ‘It’s just . . . ugh –’ I let out a rattle of frustration ‘– How do people even get together these days? Besides just drunkenly hooking up enough times that, ipso facto, they’re in a relationship?’ I can’t help but make a moue. ‘It was so easy to find your life partner back in the day. All you had to do was wait for a Darcy or Bingley to roll up to your village, hope you weren’t the Mary of your sisters, and wait for him to comment favourably on your pianoforte playing. Or add him to your dance card at the naval ball. Or just grow up on the same block and at some point agree to share a malt at your local milk bar. Whereas now, it’s impossible.’

  Cameron looks at me with bewilderment. ‘You want to return to a time when you just had to wait for some guy to proposition you? Based on how much land you had and how wide your hips were?’

  ‘Well, I’d have been fine on that point,’ I parry. ‘The hips, not the land . . .’

  ‘And when you had no say in the matter? Your family or some village matchmaker would decide if the guy was good enough.’

  I shrug. ‘My parents have pretty good judgement.’

  ‘Didn’t you have a bowl cut until you were thirteen?’ Paloma sniggers.

  ‘And when you were bound to marry someone from your tiny social circle?’ Cameron continues. ‘Did you know that at one point, “courting distance” was literally twelve miles; how far a man could comfortably ride on horseback to spend a bit of time with his sweetheart, and return home, in one day?’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ I hold up my hands in surrender. The undergrad anthropologist in him is clearly itching for a debate. ‘Obviously I’m not bemoaning social progress. I’m just saying that modern dating is confusing. Even in the ’80s and ’90s they had social norms like the “good ask”; you know, a clear and specific invitation to go on a date. And people unabashedly setting up their friends on blind or double dates. Whereas nowadays, everything is so casual. Online dating has spurred this paradox of choice problem – a million potential romantic futures and no reason to choose just one. Plus, no-one knows where anyone stands. It’s depressing.’

  Cameron clucks his tongue. ‘I think you’ve got it wrong. Yes, there’s less certainty these days. That’s the necessary corollary of people no longer coupling up for convenience and commerce, and dating with a singular view to marriage. But surely dating apps have reintroduced some of the structure that we lost with, like, formal matchmaking and gentleman callers. I mean, everyone on the apps is looking for human connection, right? They’ve signed up to chat, probably meet, maybe date. And the research shows that people on dating apps are more likely to cite themselves as being “willing to commit” than the general populace. So you’ve got all these people at your fingertips, with full profiles, which is a lot better than a beer-goggled sweep at a bar on a Friday night. And you don’t have to risk being shot down in person; all you have to do is swipe.’

  I let this sink in. It makes sense, in a strange way.

  Cameron pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘All I’m saying is that if you’re serious about dating, the smartest thing to do is get on the apps.’

  ‘Agreed,’ says Paloma, chasing down a couple of Panadols with a s
wig of coffee. ‘We don’t have anyone to set you up with, you’re not going to meet anyone at this place –’ she jerks her head back towards our building ‘– and you’re obviously too shy to make a move on attractive, single guys you meet at parties.’

  I’ve just sat down and given my computer mouse a shake when Graeme pops his (now smudge-free) head around my doorframe. ‘My office in seven minutes,’ he barks. He always does that, giving overly precise time allotments. I don’t know whether it’s because he’s accustomed to working almost minute-to-minute (we keep timesheets based on rounded six-minute units, so Graeme may just be trying to bill for two units before he sees me), or because he thinks it’s cute.

  ‘We’ve got a new client – Quest, some kind of environmental consultancy group, who want us to draft a termination letter to their CEO. Apparently he’s agreed to step down, but it’s a bit of a delicate situation given the nature of his departure.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘My office in six and a half minutes!’ he hollers as he walks off. I sigh.

  Exactly one billable unit later I’m ensconced in Graeme’s office, which is a hoarder’s den of paper, folders, dusty decaying plants, various bits of suiting and Christmas cards dating back to the early 2000s. I gingerly remove a half-eaten pita bread from his second chair and sit down. Graeme ignores me for a couple of minutes while he checks his local squash matrix, then phones Barbara and asks her to dial him into the Quest teleconference.

  After perfunctory introductions, the head of HR dives straight in. ‘Look, it’s not pretty. Rob’s a great CEO. Early sixties, sharp as a tack, almost like an uncle to our staff. He’s been the darling of the organisation for years. But the other day after a staff meeting, one of our PAs found a notebook Rob had been using. Along with meeting notes, it contained some – ah – indecent jottings about one of the girls in the office. Something in the nature of an erotic fiction piece.’