See Chiara was a woman, of that she was sure, an independent motherfucking woman who was at liberty to do what-in-the-hell she wanted. ‘I’ll also fuck who the fuck I want too’, she boasted to Jemima and Christina, her post teen entourage. They nodded, and cooed. ‘And whatver the fuck I want!!’, Chiara extrapolated for good measure.
The thing with Cliff, before one immediately feels sorry for him, is that he had a screw loose, he was an egg sandwich short of picnic, a hatter shy of tea party; he may have had a sweet disposition, but he also possessed a plainly irritating ability to keep coming back for more. Even if more simply meant to be told to go fuck himself again (something which incidentally he enjoyed being borderline autosexual).
Cliff, with his soft round face, white teeth perfectly arranged like rummy tiles, straw blonde hair that curled cutely above his mother-me blue eyes, Cliff, had both the persistence and intelligence of a wasp. Telling him to go away was as useless as educating his hymenopteran brother to whistle instead of buzz.
‘Fuck off, Cliff’. His epitaph had already been chosen for him, and Chiara for one, as well as Jemima and Christina would have danced on his grave, so long as it did not involve getting their patent leather shoes all dirty. So then, how did it come to pass that Cliff succeeded in persuading Chiara out on a date?
~
After school was finished one afternoon, Chiara and the girls were hanging out by the lockers. They were waiting for Finn, a sweet, bumbling classmate of theirs. Finn was also handsome, or would have been minus the puppy fat. Jemima had admitted to Chiara in one of the few moments they spent together where she was allowed five minutes to speak, and one of the fewer moments still when Chiara actually listened, and remembered something about someone else, that she, Jemima, had a crush on Finn. ‘Innie the prettiest thing?’, she asked Chiara in hope more than expectation of any kind of encouragement. ‘Huh’, had been Chiara’s monosyllabic reply.
Anyhow, as Finn loped around the corner into the corridor, where unbeknown to him, he was about to accosted by the Three Witches, enter stage left, Cliff. Whistling tunelessly, Bottom from Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Chiara’s complexion darkened. Jemima and the other one (Christina?) hadn’t noticed – in Jemima’s head Finn approached her in slow motion, satchel swinging behind him, as a romantic film score positively swooned to a crescendo..
..Finn walked straight past without so much as looking a her. Pe-doing!!! Back to reality. And now, in his place was Cliff, Jemima’s best friend’s nemesis-cum-stalker.
‘FUCK OFF, CLIFF!’, all three girls shouted in unison. And yet, faced by this female hurricane, Cliff stayed rooted to the spot, without so much as a curly hair on his straw blonde head lifting in the feminine gale. The girls gawped at him. Chiara for one was somewhat taken aback, although she tried to mask this with her usual I’m-still-to-young-to-be-a-sex-kitten-but-so-fucking-what expression. Cliff cleared his throat, and spoke, his voice as clear and thick as honey. ‘Chiara’, he began, ‘I am here to ask if you will let me take you to dinner’.
~
Of course, Cliff’s middle name should have been Persistence. He was a stubborn young man, a stubborn and determined young man capable of sensational thoughts, as well as benefitting from being entirely unhinged. If Cliff had had a less comfortable and affluent upbringing, putting a gun in his hand could have resulted in mayhem, Columbine, Westfield High etcetera; mercifully, his father was very successful in Mergers and Acquisitions, and would you believe it, twice as belligerent, twice as cuckoo. Nevertheless, Cliff had all the characteristics to make him a highly successful human being too, at least in terms of status and wealth.
Cliff did well at school because he tried his guts out; Chiara preferred to write love letters to college boys she would never send, or, using a compass, scratch a tally of all the boys she had ever taken to bed into the top of her desk, the tally looked like this: I.
For relationships to begin, and to give love any chance to put down her roots and blossom (I am using the analogy of a rose here!), there needs to be something of a catatonic moment along the way. A moment when Shezamm! You realise right before you is the girl of your dreams, or the boy, depending on your sexual proclivity. There and then, flanked by her post teen entourage, Jemima and Christina, Chiara was struck right between the eyes by a visitor from the future. She came face to face with providence!
~
‘Fuck off, Cliff’.
Chiara is sunning herself by the infinity pool, wearing nothing but pearly white bikini bottoms.
Thirty years on, there is irony in her voice.
Cliff, dutifully desists from splashing water over her, and goes back to swimming lengths, up and down in the shimmering blue, the midday sun kissing off the marble front of the Rhode Island
And, inevitably, how they shared their first kiss on warm leather seat of the taxi cab back home.
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