Felicity And Conroy

When the knock came at her door, Felicity smiled. She placed her feet gracefully onto the floor from her recliner, putting down her almost empty glass of wine as she did so.

Felicity pushed her hair back out of her face and opened the door. There, as she had suspected, was Conroy, still wearing his date suit underneath his coat and holding a 1978 bottle of Rhone de Calais in his left hand. Typical art dealer, except Conroy's hair was set free from its pony tail on weekends.

Tonight, Thursday, it was up.

Conroy stepped into Felicity's flat, smiling about at the familiar surroundings; the globe that span on a wooden orb; the Indian chandelier that he had initially walked into on his first visit; the bookshelves brimming with old tomes and best sellers and research papers. "That was a deliciously clever way of saving my face."

Felicity's smile disintegrated into a frown. "I'm sorry?"

"Oh, you know. Getting me to come over here . . . without me having to ask and admit that my night was a complete and utter fiasco."

Felicity nodded, her smile returning. "Oh dear. What gave me away?"

"Well a couple of things really. One, after you asked me to come over this evening to help you fix your freezer, I remembered that you had a fellow over the other evening who attended to all your fridge needs - presumably, a freezer problem would not have been beyond his realms."

Conroy handed Felicity the wine and began taking off his long, grey overcoat.

"And also, and it pains me to admit this, that although it was at first a wonderful boost to my ego, I have to say that you and your rather sizable brain would certainly be far and away more adept at fixing a freezer than I would."

Felicity nodded, taking Conroy's coat from him and hanging up it on the metal coat stand beside the door.

"Well done. Those are excellent reasons. Of course, there is the small matter of me not having anywhere to place a freezer in my humble complex. Still," she smiled as Conroy looked rather sheepish, "Your deductions reached the correct conclusion so no problem."

"No problem?!" Conroy remarked, looking heartily embarrassed. "You were only saying earlier on how important it is to seek a cause from the appropriate root or some drivel. Now you mean to tell me it doesn't actually make any difference whatsoever?"

"It's quite charming that you remember me so accurately. I'm blushing."

"Can't believe I didn't notice there's no bloody freezer," mumbled Conroy rather grumpily, ducking beneath the chandelier.

"Why do you think getting the fridge fixed was so important?" Felicity called over her shoulder, standing on a stool to reach up to the mugs.

"Would you ever consider getting one?" Conroy asked, sitting down rather awkwardly on the sofa. Which was unlike him.

"God, no," she answered quickly, stepping down off the stool with two, rather forlorn looking mugs in her hands. "It would free up space in the fridge and encourage more gluttonness behaviour. And make me switch to white. Which I have no intention of doing."

Felicity moved across to the sofa with the two mugs and the glorified red bottle of Rhone de Calais under her arm.

"My mother tried to make me drink white when I was twelve. Never took. Another way in which I take after my dear father." She poured a sizable amount into Conroy's mug and then poured a matching quantity into her own.

"Good to hear," Conroy replied, lifting up his mug and chinking it together with hers, not bothering to inquire why she hadn't got out the wine flutes. He took a lingering swig from it, breathing in as he did so.

He breathed in deeply and watched as Felicity sipped from her own mug and the listened as she explained in her soft voice about the crisis happening at a photo shoot down in Dorchester earlier on that day.

Conroy had been friends with Felicity ever since Cambridge. He'd done History of Art, she'd been an engineer.
Conroy, ever the lucky lad, had gone straight from his course to a paid internship at Cunningham Art House. Prestigious. Wealthy. He'd been picked out of eight hundred and ninety other applicants. And, while he did like to enjoy himself, Conroy worked harder than he'd ever worked at university there. Always one of the first to arrive, always the last to leave, aside from the owner, that is.

Felicity had not been as lucky. Although she had got a starred First in almost every module she took at Cambridge, she was currently working for her father who was a professional photographer. Most of the time, she was simply driving him to and from different shoots and although he paid her generously, she couldn't wait to find a proper job.

But, as she said to all of her friends, at least I don't live at home any more.

Conroy still quite understand how Felicity had managed to come away from her college owing nothing but seventy five pounds to the canteen. He was almost certain though that Professor Almondan, a charming, unmarried man of forty seven, had had something to do with it.

When Felicity came to the end of her story about the slippery roads and what a nightmare it had been to get off the M25, Conroy finally felt he had to ask her something.

"So come on. Tell me."

Felicity frowned once more. "Tell you what?"

"What made you believe that my evening was going so badly that you had to phone me out of it?"

"I didn't know it. But I knew if you were having a good evening no freezer would drive you away but if you were in fact having a diabolical time then it would serve well as a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' call. So to speak."

"Quite."

Felicity smiled slowly, her lips wrapping around the mug as she sipped her wine. "What happened anyway? Was the woman not a fan of Andy Warhol and the whole gang?"

"She was, as a matter of fact. No, the trouble was that she was quite keen to come back to my flat . . . "

"What's the matter with that?" Felicity lifted up the Rhone de Calais and hastily filled Conroy's mug back to the top. "I thought that that point of the date was to get back into the swing of things?"

"Well it was. Except that she wanted to bring her boyfriend with her."

Felicity blinked.

"Samantha is something of a sexual exhibitionist. And, not only that, but after she and I performed, I was expected to do the same with Rodger so . . . "

"So . . . over and out?"

"Rodger that."

Conroy took the Rhone de Calais from Felicity's hands and took a swig straight from the bottle before refilling both of their glasses.

"Can't believe she had a boyfriend. That's really the sort of thing people should tell you," Felicity mused, taking another sip of Rhone de Calais.

"Quite," murmured Conroy, taking the bottle and pouring what was left into Felicity's mug."Not that I'm not grateful for the invite but . . . did you know she was seeing someone?"

"I have to admit, I had heard a rumour," admitted Felicity demurely, giving Conroy an apologetic tilt of her head. "But I didn't know for sure. I would have told you."

"Don't trouble yourself about it," said Conroy, waving away her unsaid apology. "What about the fridge guy?"

Conroy thought later he may have imagined it but he could have sworn that Felicity looked rather stricken for a fleeting moment before she responded. "What about him?"

"Anything going on there?"

Felicity rolled her eyes and got up from the recliner, pulling her knee length pastel jumper's sleeves down a little. "Nothing you want to hear about."

"Oh, come on! I'm interested now. What happened?"

"Nothing! He thought it was a date, that was all. It was awkward. Then he left."

Conroy ventured, tentatively, "I got a missed call from you that night."

"Yes you will have done," said Felicity, crossly. "I sat on my phone."

"OK. Just thought you might have wanted some help. Or something."

"Help? . . . " repeated Felicity. Then she laughed, "Oh for the love of God, Roy! If Mr Fridge had sexually harassed me do you really think you would be who I called first?"

"So he did try then?" grinned Conroy, giving himself a shake for being melodramatic. It had only been a missed call.

"Oh, please! Once I let him know it wasn't a date, he couldn't get out quick enough," chuckled Felicity in her soft voice. "He didn't even finish his tea."

"God. The things we have to endure to find romance in this City," groaned Conroy, leaning back on the recliner so his head was on Felicity's lap. "We're good people. We're twenty two. We're good looking. This sort of thing shouldn't be happening to us."

Felicity took a piece of his hair between her finger and thumb and stroked it fondly. "I know."

"What happened to us, Fee?" whined Conroy. "Why did we ever break up? I don't even remember now. Was it a good reason?"

"Seem to be remember it being important at the time, yes," replied Felicity dryly, her lips catching into a side smile.

"What was it again?"

Felicity pursed her lips and looked thoughtful. "Well, I suppose it was for a number of reasons really. You were into the philosophy of Damien Hirst and Jean-Paul Sartre and you cried in 1999 when The Verve broke up. Then again in 2007 when they got back together. I liked novels by James Joyce and Chuck Palahniuk and films by Nancy Meyers. You were spending two terms in Milan, I was working on my dissertation. But I suppose the main reason was that you were fucking Jessica Bryson behind my back."

Conroy winced for a second. Then joked, "Yeah, see, I knew you'd remember why."

"Don't worry, Roy," said Felicity smoothly, still stroking his hair fondly. "Romance was never dead. It's just been sleeping with somebody else, leaving you cold at night. To repent your many, many, many sins. You see what I'm saying?"

Conroy shook his head, still on her lap. "No. But that's OK. Just knowing that you know is enough for me. I'm sure you'll let me know as soon as a vacancy opens up again."