Chapter 3

When I rang our apartment’s door bell that Friday night, she answered the door with a smile and looked better than I had ever seen her. While I had lost weight, was pale and drawn, my ancient somewhat crumpled tuxedo, despite Mum’s best ironing efforts, was very loose-fitting and hanging off my shoulders, she looked amazing and was dressed to kill in a new sparkly black dress, cut strikingly low at the top and hitched mouth-wateringly high at the hem, with sheer black stockings and glossy black high heels, which meant she towered a good couple of inches above me. Her hair was thick, healthy and shiny, falling onto her bare shoulders and she looked absolutely gorgeous.

She didn’t invite me in, just accepted the flowers coldly and chucked them on the hall table unceremoniously, grabbed her coat and came out without even offering me a kiss on the cheek.

Damn, that didn’t go well! OK, he who holds the remote doesn’t need to put up with that shit.

I rewound five minutes, composed myself outside the door, and rang the bell again. As soon as she answered the door and before she could say anything I boldly said “hi”, held up the flowers and asked had she got a vase for these?

Taken aback as she was with my taking charge, she allowed me to enter, march to the kitchen and run the cold tap while she dug out a vase from under the sink, rewarding me with a very nice view of those twin assets I discovered I had missed so much. As soon as she was upright I hugged her briefly and kissed her lightly on both cheeks, not giving her an opportunity to object, complimenting her quite truthfully on her attractive appearance.

As I unwrapped the fragrant blooms and arranged them tastefully in the vase, I suggested to her that, as she didn’t want to alarm her hosts about our current marital difficulties, we should hold hands when we got there and ought to start off doing that as we started to walk so we would be more comfortable touching one another after such a long absence.

Terry agreed hesitantly, “It makes sense, I suppose.”

“Good girl,” I said confidently and kissed her lightly on the lips, this time.

She bit her lip uncertainly, regarding me as some alien who had body snatched her former recalcitrant mate.

“Come on,” I said to her, “grab your coat, slowcoach, or we’ll be late.”

I was enjoying this and was confident of success in moving on our stuttering relationship towards what it once was this evening. Terry remarked on how upbeat I was, I think she was rather unnerved and uncomfortable, unbalanced, which at the time I was totally happy about.

When we arrived and was greeted at the door by Gwendoline, a feisty grey-haired history professor I had met a dozen times before, I began to slip off Terry’s coat and lightly kissed the point where her bare neck and shoulder met, before removing the coat and handing it to our host. I then proceeded to clutch Gwendoline to me and kissed her two cheeks confidently. There was a first time for everything and was in a good, confident mood.

We walked into the lounge to meet and be introduced to the already assembled guests, apparently we were the last guests to arrive. We were then herded by Gwendoline’s partner Charles into the dining room where we were individually cut out of the herd and sat at our assigned places. To my chagrin, the couples which had stood together for the original quick intro, were separated into singles at the table, an oft-experienced phenomenon of dinner parties which I had hoped would be otherwise on this occasion. I found myself sat between host Gwendoline on one side and some fat tart who had come with this flash American math professor, over here on exchange from Yale. He was positioned opposite us next to Terry, with a ginger-haired long-faced Doctor of Divinity on her other side.

The other participants, Charles as co-host, the good Doctor’s horse-faced wife, a buck-toothed microbiologist and his man-friend, Manuel, who seemed to be a house husband, completed the tableau extraordinaire.

I thought about rewinding at that point, especially when Clinton, from Yale, who was about 40 to 45 years old and tall, dark but greying at the temples, thin with a world-weary face, sneered at me as he moved his chair round about 45 degrees to virtually face Terry. His fat girlfriend spilled over her chair to similarly invade my space and, having heard I was about to start working in a medical research lab, began to jabber away at me about chemical experimentation, particularly where the resultant precipitates could be taken orally for stimulation or sublimation.

Something didn’t smell right. OK, it might have been Blubber-Hips’ acrid body odour, but the whole contrived scenario in front of me had my nasal hairs twitching in alarm. However, I of anyone here, could afford to be patient and see how things developed. Intervention, even after the event, was now always an option for me. I couldn’t lose, could I? Who was holding all the cards? Who was in control over my, and Terry’s, bright future reunited? Moi, naturellement.

Gwendoline and Charles served the starters, some chilli-flavoured seafood mush on toast and the first round of thin, dry wine splashed into the outer of four different cut glass goblets at each place setting. I declined the wine, thank you, wanting a clear head, after all my evening might be several times longer than theirs, depending on the number and extent of replays I was forced to induce.

I settled for the jug of iced water as I announced to all present my recent elevation onto the wagon of sobriety, as Theresa glared at my boorish manners in the exalted level of present company.

“It’s all right,” I assured hostess Gwendoline, “I’ve also given up chewing baccy and spitting as well as sniffing glue for Lent and would, for once, refrain from lighting my farts this evening.”

Clinton the Yank guffawed, I appeared to have hit his funny bone. No-one else’s.

Well, I thought, at least one guest appreciated my presence. I thought the Doctor of Divinity was going to choke on his fish slush butty.

In response, Terry angled her chair 45 degrees towards Clinton, who took the opportunity to laugh in my face. Rewind time, I thought.

As I played the scene back to where we were all standing immediately before sitting precisely where Charles dictated, a shocking thing happened. It was completely unexpected, by me at any rate.

All but one of the other players acted normally, if you call acting out actions in reverse, normal. The exception was Clinton, who sat in his seat staring at me, his eyebrows lifted and a look of amazement on his face, which was mirrored on my own face. At the point where all were standing, except the pair of us, I got up quickly, grabbed Terry and sat us down where Bubble Buttocks and I had warmed the chairs earlier (or is that “later”?)

I looked defiantly at Clinton, who grinned back at me and said, “Nice one, Bob”, in his American accent, and shuffled round to sit the other side of Terry.

Charles and Gwendoline were a little confused, as was Terry, who tried to get up after sitting and before Clinton reseated himself.

That was when I smelled the rat, the seating arrangements were clearly known by Terry, perhaps even organised by her with Charles and Gwendoline’s connivance. This was a bloody set up and I got a very bad feeling about it, not helped by the phenomenon of Clinton not rewinding to the positions where they were like everyone else.

‘What was going on?’ I asked myself.

Something wasn’t right and I started to feel uncertain of the outcome that this evening had once appeared to promise me.

The toasted turbot titbits did the rounds once again, in my new rewound version of the world and I suspected Clinton’s world also and once more I eschewed the offered wine and filled my virgin glass with iced water. Clinton joined me on the wagon this time, I think we both realised this could be a long old night. I wished I’d brought a change of underwear and my shaving kit. I wondered what either Terry or Clinton’s agendas were and suspected to my dismay that they were one and the same.

The second course was a monkfish fillet smothered in white sauce. Gwendoline tried to keep me engrossed in conversation during the course and I turned back to see Terry accepting a forked morsel from Clinton like they were old lovers. That definitely wasn’t right.

I wondered where this Clinton chap had come from. It had been over five months since I was employed by the University and I was sure he never crossed my path while I was there. Yet Terry and he were intimate.

Rewind time? You betcha!

But that didn’t go right either, I wanted to rewind a minute, but I immediately lost control of the “remote” (OK, reader, what else could a layman call control of the passage of time?) to this Clinton fellow.

Time slowed to virtually a stop. A slice of fish clearly too big for the implement fell off Miss Piggy’s fork and was suspended in mid-air, a gobbet of saliva expelled in agony, at the one that got away, was frozen millimetres from her open maw. Clinton and I were still active in our own shared timeline, each wrestling for control of the remote and Clinton winning hands down.

Damn, it was no contest, I was toast.

Clinton sneered again, it was definitely a look that he had made all his own.

“Give it up, Bobby, you haven’t a hope in hell of beating me, I can tell by your grip on the timeline that you’re a rank beginner. I am a master and you’ll never beat me. I’ve been the master of my timeline for over thirty-five years. How long have you been rewinding, a coupla months I guess?”

“So,” I replied truculently, “This is about my wife and I, not you and me, I need to get my life together and my life is me and her together. No other scenario is acceptable to me. Get out of my ... what is this, a timeline?!”

“Never gonna happen, I want Terry, even more than you do, and it’s a given, my friend, she’s not just mine for the taking, she’s already mine. Give it up or it’ll end bad for you, it’ll be even worse for her, believe me.” Clinton smiled evilly.

I wanted to get that smug bastard, I wanted it bad, but not as much as I wanted Terry. I knew I’d have to have my wits about me if we were to come out of this with some chance of a future for both Terry and me.

“OK, we are going back to real-time again now, Bobby. Behave yourself Bud, or you’ll be screwed even more than you are already. Don’t mess with me. I mean it!” Clinton spat, his ugly face cruel, vindictive.

We were back in play, Jelly Tits’ suspended fish course hit the deck in a spray of bread sauce.

Terry accepted the offered morsel from Clinton and held it in her teeth as she turned to me, smiling as she chewed it. They were lovers already, probably had been for months, since when she had picked the argument that drove me to storm out of her life, it now seemed forever ago. I had lost her long ago and she had set me up this evening to rub it in.

I had that sinking feeling, I was going down without a lifeline within reach.

“Hey, Bobby,” Clinton’s ugly thin face appeared in my field of vision from behind my ex-lover, smirking at me, mirroring in his own way my wife’s self-satisfied smile. “Like the fish course, Bud? I love it, so does Terry here, don’t you my sweet?”

“Love it, darling,” Terry said, filling my nightmare with despair, she fluttered her eyelids downward, as did Clinton. I followed with my eyes to where their eyes focussed. There, between her legs I saw a sight which drew out the breath from my lungs like a solid punch to my solar plexus. Clint’s hand was under the hem of her short dress, thrusting in and out furiously. He withdrew and held up a glistening finger.

“Wanna lick, Bud?” Clinton laughed.

“I do!” Terry ran her tongue along the length of his finger. “Mmmm! Nice!”

“What’s it taste like, baby?” Clinton said as he drew the finger completely into his own mouth and sucked. “Go on, babe, tell him.”

“Like you and me, darling,” said Terry, smiling beatifically, holding my gaze fearlessly, defiantly, daring any response from me.

“Oh, yes, it smells like both you and me, baby!” Clinton added, “Looks like we are making babies here and you, Buddy Bob, are outta the game for good!”