The Flirt

388 Pages·2008·1.47 MB·English

by  Kathleen Tessaro

The Flirt
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Kathleen Tessaro

Contents

La Vie Bohème 1
A Self-Made Woman 8
Tea for Table Five 17
45 Chester Square 24
Free Lunch or a Shag 33
Armenian Plumbers 42
The King of the Tennis Ball 45
A Stranger at the Garrick Club 49
111 Half Moon Street 55
A Subtle Twist of Fate 58
The Interview 69
The Rules 77
Professional Massagers of the Female Ego 82
La Dame aux Camélias 88
High Tea at Claridge’s 95
A Brief History of the Professional Flirt 111
The World’s Most Exclusive Hairdresser 114
Another Moriarty Original 121
A Man’s World 131
Nick the Nose 136
Make Me a Willow Cabin at Your Gate 142
The Cardinal Rule 153
A Clean Break 160
The Ghost Chair 166
The C Word 170
Breakfast at Graff 176
Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large 186
Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large 196
No Ordinary Mark 203
Drip, Drip, Drip 207
Professional Massagers of the Female Ego at Large 210
To the Lighthouse 214
The Savoy 216
All Hail Athena 225
Love According to Flick 231
The History of the Cyrano 235
The Perfect Plan 239
The Perfect Plan 242
Venus Blinks 245
The Invitation 248
On the House 252
It’s Me…Emily 254
Walk with Me 256
Into the Care of Mr. Lewis 265
International Polo Player 271
Leticia Eats 277
The Last Resort 283
The Next Generation 287
Waiting 290
Meant for Better Things 296
A Suitable Client 302
Unusual 307
The Opera 311
Liberty 316
Professional 322
Perspective 325
Two for the Price of One 331
Domestic Harmony 339
Faux Pas 344
Speed 349
A Deadly Virus 352
The Good Wife 356
A Cold November Evening 366
Life Jogs On 370
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Kathleen Tessaro
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
La Vie Bohème
T he ad appeared in the Stage in the second week of
September, when the Edinburgh Festival was offi cially
over and real life made its unpleasant appearance again
in the collective consciousness of the large number of unemployed
young actors who populate the London area.
It read:
Unique situation available for an attractive, well-mannered, morally
flexible young man. Hours irregular. Pay generous. Discretion a
must.
Please send photo and brief romantic history to:
Valentine Charles
111 Half Moon Street
Mayfair, London
Hughie Armstrong V enables-Smythe was sitting at his usual
table, next to the window in Jack’s Café, armed with a pen he’d
nicked from the waitress, a strong cup of builder’s tea and his
mobile phone, which was running out of credit. Outside, the sun
was radiant, the air sharp with a brisk autumn breeze. Elderly
shoppers, dragging battered tartan trolleys, paused to examine
the merits of the half- price bleach in pink plastic baskets outside
2 J kathleen tessaro
the Everything For a Pound shop on Kilburn High Road. Others
hurled themselves into bargaining sessions with the red-faced Irish
butcher, his bacon suspiciously reasonable.
Here, Hughie was among his people; living the front-line,
hand-to-m outh existence of a jobbing actor in NW6, still quite a
rough neighborhood according to his mother, despite the recent
boom in house prices.
Spotting the ad, he circled it and leaned back, satisfied. In his
trade, buying the Stage and circling ads was considered an entire
day’s work. He lit a fresh cigarette to celebrate.
He’d only just started smoking; Marlboro Lights. It was a dis-
gusting habit. He’d picked it up from his girlfriend Leticia, who
was full of the most delightfully disgusting habits known to man,
of which smoking was easily the most socially acceptable. At
twenty-three, it made him feel sophisticated. But then Hughie
needed all the help he could get, especially as Leticia was a great
deal older than him and more sophisticated than he was ever likely
to be. Although they’d only been (he was thinking of calling it
“going out.” But was it really going out if in fact you never went
anywhere or did anything but just met several times a week in
strange, dark places to have wild, wordless, pornographic sex?
Probably not. The proper social heading was more likely to be
“seeing one another,” which they’d only been doing for about two
weeks), Hughie was already violently in love.
Ah, Leticia!
What was not to love?
Everything about her was p erfect—from her glossy, black bob,
doelike brown eyes and soft, pink Cupid’s bow lips, to the way she
screamed, “Spank harder, you horny little bastard!” in the alley-
way behind the bespoke lingerie shop she ran in Belgravia.
Closing his eyes, he silently thanked the Lord above, as he did
many times a day now, for the particular good fortune that forced