Кэндес Бушнелл - Four Blondes

"No." She took in what I was wearing. "And take that off," she said. "Everyone is going to think that you're a prostitute. Only prostitutes wear designer clothes. With fur.”

Okay. "Cocktail?" I asked.

"You know me," Claire said. "Oh, by the way. I've decided to become a housewife. But without the husband or kids. Did I tell you about this fabulous floor waxer I just bought? Secondhand, but it's lovely. I don't think you can get things like floor waxers anymore.”

At the bar, we ran into Hamish and Giles, two Notting Hill media types whom Claire knew. Hamish had a sweet face like a baby and was in a dither over his romantic life: He was trying to decide whether or not to marry his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Giles said that he might have to swear off casual sex because he kept running into women he'd slept with, and things were getting "complicated." Ah. Casual sex. Now we were getting somewhere.

Or so I thought.

"The worst thing about casual sex is the cats," Giles said. "All these single women have cats!”

“Can we talk about my girlfriend?" Hamish asked. "I don't know what to do. She's threatening to leave ...”

"Cats are the ultimate put-off," Giles said. Obviously, he'd had the girlfriend discussion a few too many times. "Once I was thinking about seeing a woman, and Hamish said, 'Giles, don't be ridiculous. She has a cat.' If s not the cats, so much, but the way they talk about the cats. 'Ooooh, look at little PooPoo.' Ifs disgusting." Giles took a sip of vodka. "I haven't mastered the relationship thing. But I'd prefer to have a girlfriend. In London, we don't have dates. We just go out together. And in London, a snog is a down payment on a shag. Once you get down to snogging, you know you're in. In New York, that isn't true.”

I agreed, pointing out that in New York, it was entirely possible to kiss someone and then say, "See ya," and never see him again. And if you did see him again, it was considered good form to pretend that the snog never happened. This rule also applies if you have gone further than the snog and have actually shagged.

"Oh, here we have this fake kind of chivalry,”

Giles said. He seemed a little bitter about it. "The next morning, guys will say, 'Thanks very much. It was a lovely shag,' but it doesn't really mean anything.”

"I'll tell you everything about sex if someone will please tell me what to do about my girlfriend afterward!" Hamish said.

We all looked at him.

"Well, British men have this bad rap for being crappy in bed," Hamish said, somewhat desperately. "But I think we're getting better at it. We try to have some foreplay and we will, you know, perform oral sex. I've tried to get better in the sack. I read my mother's women's magazines to find out what to do.”

"Yeah, but they don't show you pictures of a clitoris!" Giles said.

This comment was so pitiful, I didn't know what to say.

"I can't do the casual sex thing because I fail at the post-post-coital portion," said Hamish. "Should you call? What do you say if you do call? I haven't gotten to that part of the manual.”

"You pray for an answering machine," Giles said. "Inside, I'm really a trembling mess," Hamish said.

"I'm not good about being friends with women afterward, which is stupid, because if you are friends, you leave the door open for a shag six months later.”

“The whole thing is just too fucking complicated," Giles said. "Now I'm trying to only shag girls I think I might want to have a relationship with. It's important to be choosy. Besides, I want to have kids. In fact, I'm desperate to have kids. I've wanted to have kids since I was about sixteen.”

"That reminds me. I have to go home. To my girlfriend," Hamish said.

"What’s with this marriage and kids bit?" I asked. "How should I know?" Giles said. "That's the thing about Englishmen. We're not very analytical. We don't go to shrinks." He paused, then looked at Claire. "Hey. Don't you have cats?" he asked.

We left.

"See what I mean?" Claire said. "London is just impossible. I would go to New York, but I'm afraid to fly. Why don't you come over for a nightcap, and I'll show you that new floor waxer?”

And then I got the phone call. From this Judy person. My supposed editor at the newspaper. That was paying me to write this stupid story. I had to have lunch with her the next day.

Judy was, to my mind, a "typical" Englishwoman. She had long, stringy brown hair and a pale face and wore no makeup. She drummed her half-bitten fingernails on the table. She was a no-nonsense kind of gal.

"Well," she said. "What have you found out about sex in London?”

"Mmmm ... er ... can I have a cocktail?" I asked hopefully.

She nodded to the waiter. "So?" she demanded. "Frankly," I said, "I've never been anywhere where the sexes are so disparaging about each other. When it comes to, ah, actual sex.”

"Meaning?”

"Oh, ifs just that ... " I looked at her and thought, Hang it. "Ifs just that Englishmen say that Englishwomen are terrible in bed and vice versa.”

"Really?" she said "Englishmen say that Englishwomen are bad in bed?”

I nodded. "They also say that Englishwomen don't know how to give blow jobs." I examined my naturally perfect nails. "What is this obsession with blow jobs, anyway?”

"Public schools," she spat.

"They also say that ... Englishwomen are hairy and don't care about how they look.”

Judy leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and regarded me smugly. She was scaring the shit out of me. No wonder Englishmen are a dithering mess. "Englishwomen are not like American women. That’s true," she said. "We don't care about things like coloring our hair. Or our nails. We don't have time to get our nails done here. We're too busy." Oh, I thought. Like American women aren't?

"Men and women understand each other here.”

She gave a short laugh. "Englishmen understand that we're all they've got. In other words, they're stuck with us. And if they don't like it, well, they get no sex at all.”

"That might be a good thing," I said. "For you, I mean.”

She lit a cigarette. Smoke came out of her nose. "It seems to me that maybe you haven't been doing your research.”

"Now listen," I said. "I'm perfectly willing to be reasonable about this, but—”

"That's not good enough," she said. "You're going to have to find an Englishman, a real Englishman, and you're going to have to shag him. And don't call me until you do!”

Oh dear. All I could think about was my poor bottom.

There's only one thing better than being single, American, and in London over Easter weekend. And that is being single, American, in London, and in love over Easter weekend.

I wasn't planning to fall in love. Okay, I thought I was, but I didn't really think it would happen. Especially since I'd met dozens of men, and although they were all very charming and amusing and would talk about things New York men wouldn't, like novels, I hadn't found one of them appealing enough to go to bed with. To tell you the truth, they all looked a little ... grubby. You got the feeling that if they took their clothes off, you might find something you really didn't want to know about.

Plus, this assignment was beginning to drive me crazy. I knew it was, because two days earlier, Grasshopper had apparently checked into the Halcyon Hotel in Holland Park at three in the morning. It's all pretty much a blank as to how she got there and what happened after she did, but it appeared that she had eaten a hamburger, and that somehow, in the past forty-eight hours, she had become a complimentary member of three private nightclubs. Apparently, she had also done something to the staff at the hotel, because every time one of them saw her, he or she would look at Grasshopper with a terrified expression and scuttle away.