Cecelia Ahern 2-Book Gift Collection: The Gift, Thanks for the Memories. Cecelia Ahern
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him had said. Another suit. And then there was another. Shoulder pads to shoulder pads. Pin-striped suits and diamond socks. More polished shoes and briefcases containing spreadsheets, pie charts and forward-looking market predictions. None of them were drinking coffee after all. He should have known. He hadn’t known, but as he watched them backslapping and laughing loudly, he wasn’t in the least bit surprised, and so, at the very same time, he had known all along.
Bruce turned around and spotted him. ‘Lou!’ he shouted across the room in his heavy Boston accent, which caused heads to turn, not at Bruce but at the handsome and quite pristine man that he was shouting at. ‘Lou Suffern! Good to see ya!’ He stood from the stool, walked towards Lou with his hand extended, and then, gripping Lou’s hand firmly, he pumped it up and down while thumping him enthusiastically on the back. ‘Let me introduce you to the guys. Guys, this is Lou, Lou Suffern, works at Patterson Developments. We worked together on the Manhattan Building I was telling you about and had a real wild experience one night together, wait till we tell you about it, you’ll never believe it. Lou, this is Derek from …’ And so Lou was lost in a sea of introductions, forgetting each name the second they were introduced and pushing the image of his wife and daughter out of his head each time he shook a hand that either squeezed his too hard, was too clammy, limp, or pumped his shoulder up and down. He tried to forget that he had forsaken his family for this. He tried to forget as they poo-poohed his order of coffee and instead filled him with beer, as they ignored his attempt to leave after one pint. Then after the second. And after the third. Tired of a discussion each time a round came around, he let them change his order to a Jack Daniel’s, and as his mobile phone rang he also let their adolescent jeers convince him not to answer. And then, after all that, they needed to convince him no more. He was there with them for the long haul, with his phone on silent and vibrating every ten minutes with a call from Ruth. He knew at this point that Ruth would understand; if she didn’t then she was an extremely unreasonable person.
There was a girl catching his eye across the bar; there was another whisky and Coke on the counter. All sense and reason had gone outside with the smokers, and it was shivering outside, half thinking of hailing a taxi, the other half looking around for someone to take it home and love it. And then, too cold and frustrated, sense turned on reason and resorted to fisticuffs outside the bar, while Lou turned his back and took sole care of his ambition.
Lou realised he was far too drunk to chat up the attractive woman in the bar who had been giving him eyelashes all night when, in the process of joining her table, he stumbled over his own feet and without noticing managed to knock over her friend’s drink into her lap. Not the pretty one’s lap, just her friend’s. And while he mumbled something he regarded as highly smooth and clever, it seemed to her to come across as rather sleazy and offensive. For there was a fine line between sleazy and offensive and a sexy chat-up line when you’d had as much to drink as Lou Suffern. He appeared to have lost the swagger of charm and sophistication that he’d possessed in heaps when he had first walked in. The droplets of whisky and Coke that stained his crisp white shirt and tie appeared to be more of a fashion don’t for these sophisticated businesswomen, and his blue eyes, which usually caused women to feel like they were falling from a height directly into his aqua pools, were now bloodshot and glassy and so didn’t have the desired effect. When intending to undress her with his eyes, he’d instead appeared shifty, and so, too drunk to get anywhere with her – or her friend, whom he’d also tried to come on to after bumping into her coming back from the toilet, where she was trying to clean the red wine he’d spilled on her suit – the more sensible option seemed to be to walk back to his car. And drive home.
When he reached the cold and dark basement car park underneath his office building – a walk that took twenty minutes longer than it should have – he realised he had forgotten where he’d parked his car. He circled the centre of the car park, pressing the button on his key and hoping the sound of the alarm or the flashing lights would give it away. Unfortunately he was enjoying the spinning so much, he kept forgetting to study the cars. Finally, a light caught his eye, and when he spotted his car in his allocated car space, he closed one eye and focused on making his way to his Porsche.
‘Hello baby,’ he purred, rubbing up alongside of it – though not deliberately out of love but because he’d lost his footing. He kissed the bonnet and climbed inside. Then, finding himself in the passenger seat, where there was no steering wheel, he got back out and made his way around to the driver’s side. He climbed to the right-hand side and, once settled, he focused on the columns of cement that held the roof up and watched them swaying. He hoped they wouldn’t sway on top of his car as he was driving home. That would be both irresponsible of them and an expensive misfortune for him.
After a few moments of trying to get the key into the ignition and scraping the metal around it with the tip of the key, he finally turned it around the right way and it slotted inside. At the sound of the engine he cheered, then pushed his foot on the accelerator to the floor. Finally remembering to look up at where he was going, he screamed with fright. At the bonnet of the car stood a motionless Gabe.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Lou shouted, taking his foot off the accelerator and banging on the windscreen with his bruised right hand. ‘Are you crazy? You’re going to get yourself killed!’
Gabe’s face blurred then, but Lou would have bet his life that he was smiling. He heard a knock, he jumped, and when he looked up he saw Gabe peering in the driver’s window at him. The engine was still running and so Lou lowered the window a slit.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi Gabe,’ he replied sleepily.
‘You want to turn the engine off, Lou?’
‘No. No, I’m driving home.’
‘You won’t get very far if you don’t take it out of neutral. I don’t think it’s such a good idea to drive home. Why don’t you get out and we’ll get you a taxi home?’
‘No, can’t leave the Porsche here. Some crazy will steal it. Some looney tune. Some homeless vagabond.’ He started laughing at that, quite hysterically. ‘Oh, I know. Why don’t you drive me home?’
‘No, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lou. Come on out and we’ll get you a taxi,’ Gabe said, opening the door of the car.
‘Nope. No taxi,’ Lou slurred, moving the clutch from neutral to drive. He pushed his foot down on the accelerator and the car jumped forward with the door wide open, then it stopped, then lurched forward again and stopped. Gabe rolled his eyes and hung on to the passenger door as it jumped forward like a cricket with an anxiety disorder.
‘Okay, fine,’ Gabe said finally after Lou had driven – although driven not being the operative word – all the way to the exit slope. ‘Fine, I said.’ He raised his voice as Lou lurched forward again. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
Lou climbed over the gear stick into the passenger seat and Gabe sat in the driver’s seat with trepidation. He didn’t need to adjust the seat or mirrors as he and Lou, it seemed, were exactly the same height.
‘You know how to drive?’ Lou asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you driven one of these before?’ Lou asked, and then began laughing hysterically. ‘Maybe there’s one parked beneath your penthouse,’ he laughed.
‘Buckle up, Lou.’ Gabe ignored his comments and concentrated on getting Lou home alive. That task was very important at this point, very important indeed.