The Juliette Society(62)

Bob is saying grace at the head of the table with his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed in prayer. I have my head bowed too, but I’m peeking above my hands, like you do as a kid when you go through the motions but you don’t really get it and you don’t really believe. It’s a habit, I’ve never grown out of that habit. Pretending to say grace.

My family are Catholic so it’s not like I didn’t have plenty of practice, but I always felt like such fraud at family dinners for faking and not believing. I’d bow my head but mumble the words so I didn’t feel like I had to commit to them and sneak a peek at everyone else at the table to see if I could catch them out doing the same. My brother always did it right. But my elder sister was just like me, rebellious, and while everyone else was giving thanks to the Lord, we’d compete to see who could stick out their tongue the furthest and for the longest without getting caught. And later, when we were old enough to work out what it meant, we’d flash each other the finger as well.

I look up and around the table. Bob is saying grace the way he speaks in those TV commercials of his. Gena has her head bent in supplication, her eyes tightly shut, and this strange pained expression on her face as she repeats after Bob. And Jack, he’s doing the same as me and when our eyes meet across the table, he grins.

While we’re eating, the dog, who’s already been fed, is trotting around and around the table with the squeaky toy in its mouth, stopping off at each place around the table, dropping the toy and looking up expectantly, waiting for playtime. When one person doesn’t show any interest, it moves onto the next. At some point, it decides it’s not getting the attention it deserves and the toy isn’t having the desired effect.

So instead, this dog, Sebastian, it takes a dump on the edge of the dining room. It leaves a perfect little turd sitting right in the middle of this beautiful imported Moroccan rug, so that it almost looks like part of the design and it’s virtually invisible.

This is this dog’s idea of being cute. Leaving a turd in the middle of the room as a conversation piece. Like the canine Marquis de Sade. It takes a dump, without making a fuss or a scene, while we’re eating – Jack and Bob and Gena and I – not five feet away, and not one of us notices. Not until Bob gets up to refill our drinks, steps right in it, skids like he stepped on a banana skin and falls flat on his ass. And it’s so comical that I almost burst into hysterics, were it not for the fact that Bob explodes in a such a rage that Gena has to take him off to another part of the house to calm him down. And Jack and I are left to finish the meal on our own, feeling awkward and embarrassed as if we’ve seen a part of him that we weren’t really meant to see. Eventually Gena reappears.

‘Bob’s just having a rest,’ she says, explaining that the campaign has really pushed Bob to the limit, because he’s given it his all. ‘That’s really not like him at all,’ she says, apologetically.



We don’t see Bob again until the early evening when he and Gena come down ready to go out for an evening commitment – a charity fundraiser he just can’t get out of.

Jack and I have been sitting out on the deck all afternoon, sunning ourselves on the loungers and taking in the view. And at one point, he leaned into me and whispered, ‘Bob and Gena are going out.’

I smiled and gave him a look that said, and what are you saying?

But I already knew exactly what he meant. We were going to have the run of the place to ourselves. And we could do what any young couple would do when left to their own devices in a stranger’s house.

Jack’s really thrown me for a loop now and I can’t work out what’s got into him, because he’s not just into it, he initiates it. We’ve been on this break and, even before that, I haven’t been able to rouse his interest for weeks and suddenly it’s like he’s a new man. It’s like the first time we got together, the first time anyone gets together, and we fucked like bunnies anywhere and everywhere we could.

Jack’s not without daring but spontaneity, it’s not really his strong suit. He always likes to be organized, he always likes a plan – even if it’s concerning surreptitious sex in the boss’ house – unless someone else is making the decision for him, unless it’s me.

We wave Bob and Gena goodbye as they drive off in Bob’s car, a beautifully kept 1968 cherry-red Cadillac DeVille convertible – what else. As they circle around the drive, Gena waves back, calling out over the sound of the engine, ‘Now, you kids be good and don’t wreck the place.’