The Cocktail Bar by Isabella May

Author:Isabella May [May, Isabella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crooked Cat Books
Published: 2018-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

GEORGINA

He sat there like a flump before Hyde Park’s bandstand, head down, cigarette balancing between his crinkled, unappealing lips, feeling about his leather jacket for a lighter – she guessed that’s what he was looking for, anyway. As she walked closer to him, and the amateur trombonists began to practice their tooting, while a bigger throng of Sunday afternoon strollers deposited themselves on stripy Victorian repro deckchairs, Lennie located a shiny silver rectangle, unclipped it, lit his fuse and drew in a large puff.

She’d suggested they meet here for purely selfish reasons – collaboration aside; it was a shorter distance from The Esmeralda and its world of pomposity, saving another taxi fare and Georgina’s legs. Yes, she should have returned immediately after her lunch break to complete the final quarter of the poncy weekend ‘Brunswick Mixology Course’, but the opportunity to meet with Lennie was now or never. The Hooray Henry running the show was sure to understand when she explained she’d “been mugged, had had to call in to the local police station…” and then of course he’d probably feel sorry for her, lend her a few notes which she’d ‘forget’ to reimburse… or River could just put it down on expenses.

The thing was, in a couple of days Lennie would be back in Los Angeles, his touting for new band members in London had been a full-blown disaster, he’d admitted via his text message, with Bear and Alex loafing about in Camden’s bars and pubs as opposed to putting any feelers out. All of which had only bolstered Georgina’s confidence, further loading a weapon whose trigger Lennie would surely be only too obliging to pull.

Plus the fact, there was only so much exhibitionism anyone could take from that pair of Manchester-band-hair-cut plonkers from Up North, who thought they were God’s Gift at everything and, seemingly delighted in showing her up at any and every opportunity at the training bar. It had hit her for six, this shocking revelation that she wasn’t quite hip enough for this city and the idiots it attracted when they’d pulled out the ultimate trump card: sniggering at her attempt to serve them Cosmopolitans during the role play exercise, causing her to spill the contents of the tray all over the hotel’s pristinely cream carpeted floor, regardless of the fact she could normally handle such a trivial part of her job day in and day out with ease in Glastonbury. Here she was a small fish in a very large pond, and the moment when she could hop aboard that coach headed for Somerset at six-thirty pm could not come quickly enough.

“Georgina, sweetheart, you’re looking ravishing… if I may say so, my dear, how lovely to see you again.”

Lennie dive-bombed in for a highly unsophisticated kiss – thankfully on just the one cheek – as the French horn hit a bottom F, and the stench of stale tobacco, fresh smoke and last night’s booze joined in. Any brownie points for using her full name went straight out the window and into the Thames.

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