Fake Tan

Chloe draws the blinds halfway, to let in some light, and stares blankly at the open suitcase lying on the bedroom floor. She wears a confused expression, as if her brain is trying to process something. Picking up a wicker laundry basket, she shakes her head, before tipping its contents onto the bed. She begins sorting a tangle of brightly coloured socks into pairs, throwing each of the neat bundles into the half filled case. Although her hair and make-up have been pristine since 6am, it has now gone 8.30 and she’s still not dressed. As she leans over the bed to grab a few stray socks, the cord in her Cath Kidston dressing gown falls loose. She catches a glimpse of her naked self in the bedroom mirror and frowns. ‘What time are you leaving for the airport Gary?’ she says, readjusting her gown.
From the ensuite bathroom, over the sound of a gushing tap, Gary replies with a mouthful of toothpaste. ‘Ab-oo-en-a-am’’
‘What?’
He spits the white foamy mixture into the sink. ‘Nine O’clock, babe. Thought I’d leave early. The traffic on the M25 is going to be mental.’
‘OK. Well, I’ve packed a couple of miniature shampoos and shower gels for you. They’re in your soap bag.’
Gary enters the bedroom, his hair damp and disheveled, a Cath Kidston towel wrapped loosely around his waist like an untidy skirt. He props one leg on the side of the bed and starts rubbing furiously at it with the towel. He does the same with the other. His legs are smooth, muscular and clean shaven. ‘Don’t fuss, babe. I’m only going away for a few days. I can manage.’
‘I’m only trying to help Gary. You could at least be grateful.’
‘I am grateful babe, ever so grateful, but I’m sure the hotel will have plenty of soap and shower gel. It’s a five star. They’ll probably have Molton Brown and everything.’
He gives his genitals a quick rub with the towel, before using it to dry off his hair.
‘Yeah, but you know I like the free smellies Gary. I want you to bring them home for me. So while you’re away, can you just use ours please?’
Chloe says this in her best ‘little girl’ voice, pouting her plumped up lips and fluttering a pair of mink eyelash extensions at him. She had them done recently, by a specialist beautician in Maida Vale who she’d read about in Grazia. ‘It’s the same one Holly Willoughby uses,’ she had told Gary. She paid £150 for 120 lashes, or rather Gary paid for them, on his credit card. ‘Ooh, haven’t you got beautiful blue eyes’, the guy at reception had said to her. Gary laughed when she told him that. ‘I bet he uses that line on all the girls’.
‘He was paying me a compliment, Gary’, she’d said, ‘something that other men do to me sometimes.’ She didn’t mention the fact that the receptionist was as camp as Christmas.
Chloe likes ‘the gays’. She thinks they are all, without exception, incredibly stylish. Her best friend Rich is one and, according to her, has great taste in everything. ‘If you weren’t gay, Rich, we’d be the perfect couple.’ She tells Rich this all the time and they both giggle and put on silly American accents. It’s, like, their catchphrase.
Rich comes round most Monday nights, while Gary’s at the gym, to watch America’s Next Top Model with Chloe. They share a sofa, a bottle of Blossom Hill Rose and a couple of packets of Snack-a-Jacks. It was Rich that got her into Cath Kidston. Gary hates Cath Kidston. He calls it ‘girly, psychedelic vomit’.
‘Jesus, Chloe, it’s only a free fucking shower gel, what’s the big deal?’
‘Do you have to be like this?’
‘Be like what?’
‘Horrible. You’re always horrible to me.’
‘I’m not always horrible to you babe. I’m just saying stop getting so worked up about small things. Like hotel toiletries.’
‘Stop making fun of me.’
‘I’m not making fun of you.’
‘Yeah you are.’
Gary pulls on a pair of tight, black Emporio Armani briefs and, looking in the mirror, holds in his stomach while deftly manoeuvring the elasticated waistband over his love handles. Chloe stares open mouthed at his crotch. ‘You look like you’ve got quite a big packet in them pants’.
‘What do you mean ‘look like’?’
‘You know what I mean. They’re a bit risqué for work though, aren’t they babes? They’re the David Beckham ones I bought you last Valentine’s. They’re your special pants. What exactly are you going to be doing on this trip anyway?’
‘I’ve told you a dozen times babe, working. Besides, I thought you weren’t interested in what I do. You’ve said it yourself, it’s boring. As long as it gives you enough money to buy what you want in Bluewater, then its fine, isn’t it?’
‘Is anyone else staying in the hotel with you?’
‘Yeah, there’s a bunch of us from work, all lads. Brian, Steve, David…Christ Chloe, I’ll be fine, you don’t need to worry’.
‘Brian. You’ve mentioned him before. Is he the one that was having the affair with that slag?’
‘No, that was Roger. He left last year. He got made redundant.’
‘Who’s Brian then?’
‘Brian’s a temp. You know Brian? He’s the one that always calls in sick’.
‘Oh yeah, I remember.’ Chloe is silent. She begins fiddling with the cord of her dressing gown. ‘Are you taking your iPhone, Gary?’
‘Er, yeah, I should think so. Why?’
‘I thought you might just be taking your work Blackberry, that’s all.’
‘Of course I’m taking my iPhone. Why wouldn’t I be taking my iPhone? It’s got all my tunes on it. It’s a 10 hour flight. I’ll need something to do.’
‘Can’t you just read?’
‘Read? For fuck’s sake, I’m taking my iPhone Chloe. My iPhone. What’s the problem?’
‘I feel stupid now…it doesn’t matter. It’s just, well I’m quite into that ‘Angry Birds’ thing. I’m on level 10. It’s really addictive.’
‘I’m sure you’ll find something to amuse yourself while I’m away. There’s always shopping. Anyway, you shouldn’t be playing with my mobile when you’ve got your own.’
‘Mine’s an iPod Touch.’
‘So? Download ‘Angry Birds’ on that then!’
Gary squirts himself liberally with Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male. It was a Christmas present from Chloe, her favourite scent. Rich wears it all the time.
‘Gary, did you hear there’s this new app on the iPhone for gays?’
‘No’.
‘Yeah, there is, there’s this new app. Jeremy Clarkson was talking about it on Top Gear’.
‘Jeremy Clarkson’s not gay.’
‘I know he isn’t. I’m just saying. He was talking about it on Top Gear. Basically what it does is it tells you what gays are in the area.’
‘Why would I want to know that?’
‘I’m just making conversation babe. No need to get defensive.’
‘I’m not getting defensive.’
‘Yes you are. Idiot. So what this app does, right, is it pinpoints the nearest gays and then they can go and shag each other. Rich has got it on his phone.’
‘Has he?’ Gary seems surprised to hear this. He’s not normally prudish about sex though. On their wedding night, 7 years ago, he couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel room, so resorted to fucking Chloe in the disabled toilet of Croydon Park Golf Club while their guests were busy doing a drunken conga to ‘Oops Upside Your Head’. Chloe would even have gone so far as to say Gary was a bit of an exhibitionist. He was always trying to get her to shag him in the mixed sex sauna at their local health spa. She always flat out refused, saying the heat would play havoc with her extensions.
‘Yeah, he says he’s met a couple of guys from it. He does make me laugh, Rich. He said to me that he went round this one guy’s house the other week and – wait ‘til you hear this – the guy answered the door dressed as Spiderman. Spiderman, Gary! All Rich had said to this guy. when they were chatting, was that he wears a lot of Lycra. I mean of course he wears a lot of Lycra. He’s a professional dancer! Poor Rich, he said he didn’t know whether to go in or make a run for it. You do get some weirdo’s though. I mean, imagine if they did one of those for straight people?’
‘What, a Spiderman costume?
‘No! An app.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, women, they don’t think like that, do they?’
‘Think like what?’
‘Sex and stuff. They aren’t as casual as blokes.’
‘Don’t be so sexist Gary.’
‘I’m not being sexist, that’s the truth.’
‘I don’t know, there’s a few guys round here I wouldn’t mind a bit of fun with.’
‘Who?’
‘Well, that Terry in Number 16 for a start.’
‘What? Terry Falmouth? I used to play football with him. His breath stank. We used to call him Terry Foul Mouth.’
‘He’s got a fit body though. You’re just jealous. ’
‘Oh yeah? Well, maybe he’ll give you one while I’m away.’
‘Don’t say it like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘All casual like that, like you wouldn’t give a shit if I shagged Terry Falmouth.’
‘Of course I would babe. I’m only joking.’
‘Many a true word babes…’
‘Oh shut your face.’
‘You will text when you get there, won’t you?’
‘Of course I’ll text babe.’
‘Every night before you go to bed?’
‘I can do, but there’s a 7 hour time difference. You might not appreciate being woken up.’
Gary does up the last few buttons on his shirt and chooses a tie from inside the wardrobe. ‘Let me fix that for you,’ says Chloe. ‘You always do it a bit crooked’. He lifts his chin up to allow her access to his collar. ‘Skinny side out though, that’s the fashion at the moment’, he tells her.
‘You don’t need to tell me that babes’, she says, adjusting the knot. ‘It’s me that reads the fashion magazines, not you. Just think of me as your stylist. Your sexy stylist.’
She giggles, running a finger around the outline of his crotch, before leaning her face into his stubble. ‘Have we got time for a bit of you-know-what before you go?’
‘Jesus babe, be careful, those fake nails are sharp’.
‘Oh sorry, well, have we?’
‘I’ve got to leave in about 10 minutes, I can’t.’ He quickly lifts a pair of black trousers from the trouser press and pulls them up to his waist, doing his belt tightly, making sure to tuck in any overhanging shirt.
‘I do wish you didn’t have to go away Gary. I get so lonely being in the house on my own’.
‘It’s my job babe. I do it for both of us.’ He slips on a pair of shiny, pointed patent leather shoes, before crouching down to tie his laces.
‘I know that, I’m just saying. I’ll miss you, that’s all’.
‘And I’ll miss you too.’
Chloe flashes a glance at the open suitcase and chucks in another pair of balled up socks. They land, like a bull’s eye, on a bottle of Fake Bake.
‘Why are you taking the fake tan, Gary?’
‘Why am I taking what? Oh that. I just threw it in with my toiletries to be honest.’ Gary lifts up the bottle of tanning lotion and stares at it, as if he is puzzled as to how it got in the case.
‘You need fake tan on a business trip?’
‘I just thought I might need a top up.’
‘Does Brian like you orange then?’
‘What?’
‘Brian. Your boyfriend.’
‘Shut up, babe. Don’t take the piss.’
Later that evening, after Gary has left for the airport, Chloe is sat alone on the sofa, flicking through the latest heat magazine. She gives her friend Rich a call on his mobile for a chat, but gets an automated message from a robotic voiced woman saying ‘The number you have called is not available.’ She tries his number several times, but repeatedly gets the same message. When she calls again the next day, the dialing tone is an international one. She rings Rich’s mum, Beverley. ‘Bev, its Chloe. Chloe Stevens. Has Rich gone on holiday without telling me?’ Beverley tells her that Rich has gone on holiday to the USA for a week. She can’t remember exactly whereabouts. ‘How funny of him not to tell me,’ says Chloe and hangs up.
At bedtime, Chloe can’t sleep. Just after midnight, while shifting about restlessly under the Cath Kidston duvet on Gary’s side of the bed, she gets a text. ‘Hey babe’ it says. ‘Just arrived @ hotel. I have been gud and saved U the hotel smellies. All cool here. C U nxt wk. Luv U. G xx’.
Chloe texts back, ‘Thanx babes. U r a legend. Luv U 2’ and, with that, falls promptly asleep.