Chapter FifteenPlastic vs. Glass
On the evening of the engagement party Danny arrived early to check the venue and immediately began to worry that he had misjudged the event. On the walls were sultry posters of muscular men wearing jockstraps and biting their lips. On the tables were miserly bowls of mixed nuts, a lone almond in a sea of salty peanuts. But the detail that bothered Danny the most was the prospect of drinks being served in red plastic cups. This wasn’t a student house party. His friends were grown-ups with careers and businesses: he couldn’t ask them to toast their engagement with a plastic cup. The weary manager replied that he had supervised hundreds of these parties with older people, younger people, serious, or silly – it didn’t matter who they were, glasses were always smashed and if Danny wanted glassware he would need to put down a deposit.
Determined his guests should be able to clink their glasses, Danny hurried to the cash machine near Soho Square taking out two hundred pounds, plunging his account deeper into an overdraft from the ring and hiking holiday – paranoid that this marriage might be perceived as the fake plastic version of the real thing, his mind looping the lyrics from Radiohead’s classic song ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. He returned to the bar with the cash clenched in his fist as though he had won it in a backstreet poker game. After carefully counting each twenty-pound note the manager said, ‘Glass it is.’
At this point Luis turned up clean-shaven with a smart haircut from one of London’s oldest hairdresser’s, a historic establishment in Mayfair which counted Charles Dickens among its lists of patrons. Luis was an expert at collecting tokens of British identity which he wore on his sleeve like Scout merit badges. Standing in the doorway, surveying the space, he appeared serene, wearing a Dunhill burgundy top and black Burberry trousers. Danny was wearing a vintage sixties suit found in a charity shop for the sheer novelty since he never wore suits normally and wanted to show this was a special occasion. With a skinny black tie and beat-up leather shoes he looked like an impoverished artist at the opening night of his first exhibition, while Luis looked like the gallery owner. Luis walked over, taking a read of his fiancé.
‘You’re worrying?’
In a breathless flurry Danny listed the problems.
‘They were serving the drinks in plastic cups. There are no fresh lemons. The tequila is nasty, the gin is worse. The snacks are the saddest I’ve ever seen. The DJ wishes he was in Miami, not some middle-aged disco. And there are naked men over the walls.’
Luis instantly ordered the problems: those which could be fixed and those which could be improved. First, he reassured Danny, ‘It’s going to be a great night.’
Danny shook his head.
‘I wanted it to be perfect.’
Luis was struck by the word – perfect, wondering aloud what it meant. Danny’s eyes darted about.
‘You don’t like the venue, do you?’
Luis appeared surprised.
‘When did I say that? I love this bar. I’ve always loved this bar.’
Danny was too alert to the emotional undercurrents to let the comment pass by.
‘But?’
Luis pondered whether to remain silent.
‘We’re not performing the greatest hits of our relationship.’
Before Danny could respond Luis wrapped his arms around him as though trying to squeeze the anxieties out of him.
‘Let’s go through the list. The tequila? That’s an easy fix. We can pay the bar to use a nicer brand. The same with thegin. What else? The snacks. Let’s replace them. We can find some better food. We have an hour. We’re in the centre of Soho. We can do this.’
With an upbeat energy, Luis guided Danny out of the bar and around the corner of Winnett Street to a small Italian restaurant called Bocca di Lupo. It had opened a few years ago; he had eaten there with clients. Taking the lead, Luis launched into an eloquent explanation about how they were hosting an engagement party and the caterers had let them down. They needed platters of meats and cheeses – he knew that they didn’t normally provide a takeaway service but it was an emergency and it would mean the world to them if they could help. Danny watched in admiration at how Luis won them over, something he could never have done. The owners offered a selection of cheeses including Lingotto d’Oro, Caprino and Ruoto Del Re, none of which Danny had heard of. He watched as they artfully presented a selection of thinly shaved meats including wild boar and fennel salami, decorated with sprigs of fresh herbs. Admiring the care with which they arranged the food Danny remarked, ‘Who knew that cheese and meat could be so emotional?’
They looked at him as if to say: everyone knows this. While Luis paid for the platters, the staff congratulated them on their engagement and handed them free buckwheatcrackers, the most useful engagement present they could have wished for.
Back at the bar Danny selected a smoother tequila, switching up the premade sickly-sweet margarita-mix syrup to an agave and fresh lemon mix while Luis transformed the snack table, adding supermarket sunflowers to some empty bottles of wine. With barely five minutes before the party was due to start Luis checked, ‘And no speeches tonight, right?’
Danny offered a qualified agreement.
‘I was going to thank everyone for coming.’
Assessing the size of the small room, Luis wondered, ‘You invited everyone on the list?’
Danny swirled the drink around in his glass.
‘I might have invited a few more.’
Foreseeing trouble, Luis asked, ‘How many more?’
Soon there were over a hundred and thirty people packed into a space intended for sixty. Some of the guests Danny didn’t even know and had never met, having encouraged invitees to bring friends, partners, husbands, wives and colleagues, promising a hedonistic celebration of love – not the low-key pitch he had made to Luis, which was a few quiet drinks with a few close friends. The free wine, gin and tequila were finished in the first hour with guests buying Danny more drinks than he could handle. Though he hadvowed to stay in control and preside over the party with ambassadorial charm, by the second hour he was drunk, on the booze for sure, but also on the sheer amount of joy packed into that small room.
