Annie Christie's That Long Hot Summer
Episode Two
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Daniel can't bring himself to ask Shelley out. But his colleague, Mike, has a cunning plan to help him.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Daniel can't bring himself to ask Shelley out. But his colleague, Mike, has a cunning plan to help him.
Daniel and Mike stood in the face of a veritable tropical paradise. It was warm, it was humid and Mike was sure there were drips of condensation hitting the top of the television.
If Daniel had been in the mood to explain – if he felt he could have explained – the explanation would have gone as follows.
He’d bought the tropical plant. By mistake rather than on a whim. It was his way of distracting himself from Shelley but it actually got him talking to Shelley. And once she’d spoken to him once, and smiled at him three, or was it four times, and given him the answer to the competition question – he felt a sort of compulsion to go back and see her again. But what reason could he have to go back. Only to buy something. And what did he need to buy?
He had looked around the bare house. Light fittings. That was it. The plaster walls were okay as far as they went and there was a central pendant light in the sitting room, but in the back room – what used to be a dining room but which Daniel used for his ironing – there were two wires sticking out of the walls – wires that really just needed wall fittings. For the first year he’d wondered why the electricians hadn’t just finished off the job when they’d done the refurbishment. For the second year he’d realised that they had left it to ‘owners choice’ and since making choices wasn’t something he liked to do, he promptly forgot all about it. He was busy at work. He didn’t need that much light to do ironing after all.
~~~
So. Light fittings it was. One Saturday he got up early, and went out to the supermarket. On a mission. He would talk to Shelley. He would ask her what she knew about light fittings.
Of course it didn’t work like that. Firstly, she wasn’t there. Secondly, he picked some light fittings helped by Darren. Or was it Darrell? Which was fine except they weren’t in stock and Darren or Darrell told him he had to come back another time. He paid for the lights he didn’t have and he left. Armed with a receipt for the lights and a date to pick them up by. They said they’d text him when they came in but a text never came.
So he went in after work on the following Wednesday. This time Shelley was there. He panicked. She was in the garden section, watering things and he got confused. Could he ask her about the lights if she was in the garden section? Before he had a chance to get his thoughts straight she called out to him
‘How’s the Euphorbia?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Your plant,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said, amazed that she’d remembered both it and him. ‘It seems to be doing okay.’
She came closer to him.
‘And you?’
‘Me?’
‘Are you doing okay?’ she asked.
That totally threw him.
‘Yes, thanks. You?’
It was a conversation. Off and running. Sort of.
‘Looking forward to getting out of here,’ she said.
‘You don’t enjoy your work?’ he asked.
‘It pays the bills,’ she said.
‘Ah. Yes, bills,’ he replied. ‘My job does that too.’
That was as much disclosure as he could handle for one day. He picked up the nearest plant. ‘How about this?’ he said, hoping to divert her onto a topic that she obviously liked and which would stop her talking about him.
‘Peace lily?’ she said. ‘Good choice.’
‘Then I’ll have the peace lily,’ he said.
And they took it to the checkout, where she began to ring it through the till.
It was only then that he remembered the lights. He pulled the receipt out of his pocket and handed it to her.
‘They said they’d text,’ he said. ‘You know, when they were in. And…’
‘And you believed them?’ she laughed.
‘You don’t know much about this store, do you?’
‘Uh, no,’ he confessed.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘They never hold things in stock and they never come when you order them.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘So you have a number of choices,’ she said.
‘Either you can cancel the order and find some lights that are here. Or you can wait –which may be indefinitely. Or you can come back on the off-chance, depends on how lucky you feel. Or you can give me your number and I’ll deliver them to you personally.’
He panicked. She would come to his house. It was what he wanted more than anything but… the house that hadn’t bothered him for three years now seemed like a complete mess and without the lights and… it was too much to compute.
‘I’ll come back,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ she smiled. ‘Just peace it is then.’ And she handed him the peace lily.
‘See you again,’ he said, hoping he was letting her down gently. When he walked out the self-opening doors, which didn’t self-open until just before your nose hit the glass, he realised that he’d just blown it. He’d refused an offer of help. Of friendship. He might not get it again.
~~~
‘And that’s why the room is full of tropical plants,’ Daniel told a baffled Mike.
It was only the incredulous look on Mike’s speechless face (a first in the three years they’d worked together) that told him he’d just given rather too much again.
‘So, back up the truck,’ Mike said. ‘You wanted to ask the girl out on a date and you bought some lights which never came and…’
‘And I kept going in there, hoping they might come and every time I went in there I bought another plant. Or two plants and…’
He pointed to the sitting room.
‘And it kind of got out of hand.’
‘But the lights?’ Mike fortunately was still focussing on the lights, not the girl. Daniel was thankful for small mercies.
‘What about the lights?’
‘When did they come?’
‘They haven’t come yet.’
‘And the girl?’ It had to come. Wondering about the lights wouldn’t have held Mike off indefinitely, Daniel realised he should have known that. He was bound to follow the path all the way. It was his instincts as a good research chemist after all.
‘I’ve told myself that when the lights come I’ll ask her out.’
Mike sighed.
‘What’s wrong?’ Daniel asked.
‘You’ll never ask her out,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ Daniel asked.
‘Look, bro. It’s not the way to do it. You can’t… well you can’t live your life like this. Three years in a house and no house-warming and no paint or paper on the walls and no lights in half the rooms and the other half of the rooms in danger of electrocution because of the heat and humidity… and thinking all the time that when the conditions are just right you’ll find just the right words and… it doesn’t work like that. It’s like Chemistry, dude, you have to experiment to get a result.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘Okay, well, we should have a party.’
Daniel noted, with some fear, that it was a we now. That Mike was taking control of his life. This, he noticed, always happened. It had always happened since… since his parents died. Before then they’d been in control of his life. And then, aged twenty two, they had died in a car crash. He’d just graduated. He had a job offer. He took it. He used the money from their joint will, which wasn’t a lot for two lives fully lived, to buy the modest terraced house he now lived in, a stone’s throw from work. That was more than enough change and choice-making for him. He was still coming to terms with it all. Still adjusting. And now Mike, the first and only person he had regular interaction with, wanted to take control. Make his choices for him. He felt a mixture of fear and something that might have been a sort of gratitude. But he knew it was wrong. He was on his own. He had to make his own choices. He couldn’t let Mike take over his life. Not even on a small level. It wouldn’t end well.
‘Why a party?’ He sounded as stressed as he felt.
‘Because if we have a party we can invite the girl and if you get talking to her she might just like you and you can ride off into the sunset together.’ There was a pause. A long pause. Daniel was used to them. He knew it was his turn to speak but he didn’t have anything to say. He rode it out.
‘And apart from anything else,’ Mike said, breaking the silence, ‘if we make it a painting party, we can get your house habitable as well.’
It was so easy for Mike. Like chemistry. Just knock a few ideas together and come up with a solution. Daniel only wished it was that easy for him. But it wasn’t.
‘I don’t want to invite people round until the house is done up,’ he said.
‘And when will that be, bro? Another three years? Come on, live dangerously.’
That made Daniel sweat. Live dangerously was not in his capacity. Life was dangerous enough without taking it on at its own game. His parents hadn’t lived dangerously. But they’d died. They’d lived quiet, ordinary lives and…
‘Okay. If you don’t want to…’ Mike backed down. ‘But can we at least turn this bloody heating down to something habitable and watch the match?’
They did. Crisis averted. For now.
If Daniel had been in the mood to explain – if he felt he could have explained – the explanation would have gone as follows.
He’d bought the tropical plant. By mistake rather than on a whim. It was his way of distracting himself from Shelley but it actually got him talking to Shelley. And once she’d spoken to him once, and smiled at him three, or was it four times, and given him the answer to the competition question – he felt a sort of compulsion to go back and see her again. But what reason could he have to go back. Only to buy something. And what did he need to buy?
He had looked around the bare house. Light fittings. That was it. The plaster walls were okay as far as they went and there was a central pendant light in the sitting room, but in the back room – what used to be a dining room but which Daniel used for his ironing – there were two wires sticking out of the walls – wires that really just needed wall fittings. For the first year he’d wondered why the electricians hadn’t just finished off the job when they’d done the refurbishment. For the second year he’d realised that they had left it to ‘owners choice’ and since making choices wasn’t something he liked to do, he promptly forgot all about it. He was busy at work. He didn’t need that much light to do ironing after all.
~~~
So. Light fittings it was. One Saturday he got up early, and went out to the supermarket. On a mission. He would talk to Shelley. He would ask her what she knew about light fittings.
Of course it didn’t work like that. Firstly, she wasn’t there. Secondly, he picked some light fittings helped by Darren. Or was it Darrell? Which was fine except they weren’t in stock and Darren or Darrell told him he had to come back another time. He paid for the lights he didn’t have and he left. Armed with a receipt for the lights and a date to pick them up by. They said they’d text him when they came in but a text never came.
So he went in after work on the following Wednesday. This time Shelley was there. He panicked. She was in the garden section, watering things and he got confused. Could he ask her about the lights if she was in the garden section? Before he had a chance to get his thoughts straight she called out to him
‘How’s the Euphorbia?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Your plant,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said, amazed that she’d remembered both it and him. ‘It seems to be doing okay.’
She came closer to him.
‘And you?’
‘Me?’
‘Are you doing okay?’ she asked.
That totally threw him.
‘Yes, thanks. You?’
It was a conversation. Off and running. Sort of.
‘Looking forward to getting out of here,’ she said.
‘You don’t enjoy your work?’ he asked.
‘It pays the bills,’ she said.
‘Ah. Yes, bills,’ he replied. ‘My job does that too.’
That was as much disclosure as he could handle for one day. He picked up the nearest plant. ‘How about this?’ he said, hoping to divert her onto a topic that she obviously liked and which would stop her talking about him.
‘Peace lily?’ she said. ‘Good choice.’
‘Then I’ll have the peace lily,’ he said.
And they took it to the checkout, where she began to ring it through the till.
It was only then that he remembered the lights. He pulled the receipt out of his pocket and handed it to her.
‘They said they’d text,’ he said. ‘You know, when they were in. And…’
‘And you believed them?’ she laughed.
‘You don’t know much about this store, do you?’
‘Uh, no,’ he confessed.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘They never hold things in stock and they never come when you order them.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘So you have a number of choices,’ she said.
‘Either you can cancel the order and find some lights that are here. Or you can wait –which may be indefinitely. Or you can come back on the off-chance, depends on how lucky you feel. Or you can give me your number and I’ll deliver them to you personally.’
He panicked. She would come to his house. It was what he wanted more than anything but… the house that hadn’t bothered him for three years now seemed like a complete mess and without the lights and… it was too much to compute.
‘I’ll come back,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ she smiled. ‘Just peace it is then.’ And she handed him the peace lily.
‘See you again,’ he said, hoping he was letting her down gently. When he walked out the self-opening doors, which didn’t self-open until just before your nose hit the glass, he realised that he’d just blown it. He’d refused an offer of help. Of friendship. He might not get it again.
~~~
‘And that’s why the room is full of tropical plants,’ Daniel told a baffled Mike.
It was only the incredulous look on Mike’s speechless face (a first in the three years they’d worked together) that told him he’d just given rather too much again.
‘So, back up the truck,’ Mike said. ‘You wanted to ask the girl out on a date and you bought some lights which never came and…’
‘And I kept going in there, hoping they might come and every time I went in there I bought another plant. Or two plants and…’
He pointed to the sitting room.
‘And it kind of got out of hand.’
‘But the lights?’ Mike fortunately was still focussing on the lights, not the girl. Daniel was thankful for small mercies.
‘What about the lights?’
‘When did they come?’
‘They haven’t come yet.’
‘And the girl?’ It had to come. Wondering about the lights wouldn’t have held Mike off indefinitely, Daniel realised he should have known that. He was bound to follow the path all the way. It was his instincts as a good research chemist after all.
‘I’ve told myself that when the lights come I’ll ask her out.’
Mike sighed.
‘What’s wrong?’ Daniel asked.
‘You’ll never ask her out,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ Daniel asked.
‘Look, bro. It’s not the way to do it. You can’t… well you can’t live your life like this. Three years in a house and no house-warming and no paint or paper on the walls and no lights in half the rooms and the other half of the rooms in danger of electrocution because of the heat and humidity… and thinking all the time that when the conditions are just right you’ll find just the right words and… it doesn’t work like that. It’s like Chemistry, dude, you have to experiment to get a result.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘Okay, well, we should have a party.’
Daniel noted, with some fear, that it was a we now. That Mike was taking control of his life. This, he noticed, always happened. It had always happened since… since his parents died. Before then they’d been in control of his life. And then, aged twenty two, they had died in a car crash. He’d just graduated. He had a job offer. He took it. He used the money from their joint will, which wasn’t a lot for two lives fully lived, to buy the modest terraced house he now lived in, a stone’s throw from work. That was more than enough change and choice-making for him. He was still coming to terms with it all. Still adjusting. And now Mike, the first and only person he had regular interaction with, wanted to take control. Make his choices for him. He felt a mixture of fear and something that might have been a sort of gratitude. But he knew it was wrong. He was on his own. He had to make his own choices. He couldn’t let Mike take over his life. Not even on a small level. It wouldn’t end well.
‘Why a party?’ He sounded as stressed as he felt.
‘Because if we have a party we can invite the girl and if you get talking to her she might just like you and you can ride off into the sunset together.’ There was a pause. A long pause. Daniel was used to them. He knew it was his turn to speak but he didn’t have anything to say. He rode it out.
‘And apart from anything else,’ Mike said, breaking the silence, ‘if we make it a painting party, we can get your house habitable as well.’
It was so easy for Mike. Like chemistry. Just knock a few ideas together and come up with a solution. Daniel only wished it was that easy for him. But it wasn’t.
‘I don’t want to invite people round until the house is done up,’ he said.
‘And when will that be, bro? Another three years? Come on, live dangerously.’
That made Daniel sweat. Live dangerously was not in his capacity. Life was dangerous enough without taking it on at its own game. His parents hadn’t lived dangerously. But they’d died. They’d lived quiet, ordinary lives and…
‘Okay. If you don’t want to…’ Mike backed down. ‘But can we at least turn this bloody heating down to something habitable and watch the match?’
They did. Crisis averted. For now.
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
That Long Hot Summer is Annie's third McSerial written for McStorytellers.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
That Long Hot Summer is Annie's third McSerial written for McStorytellers.