Every Rom-Com Ever, Chapter 2

Still halfway through turning his head to glance towards the door, Mark found himself staring at the torn-out notebook page in front of him, “How did you get into being a William Doores impersonator?” still conspicuously written right there at the top. Thinking back on this moment in later days—which he did far more often than was probably good for him—Mark would realise that there were a number of perfectly discreet ways of getting rid of that piece of paper. He could have simply tucked it away in his pocket. For extra discreetness, he could have mumbled something about a shopping list as he did so. He could have surreptitiously put his hand on it and then dragged it off the table. He could have picked it up and scrumpled it into a ball in front of his mouth while pretending to cough. But Mark did none of those things. Instead, he slammed his hand down on the paper, scrunched it into a ball without any diversionary coughing noises whatsoever and stuffed it into his mouth. The waitress, already a couple of tables away by now, glanced back at the noise, but didn’t pry.

“What was that?” asked a bemused William Doores. At least, it definitely looked like William Doores.

“It was...” Mark looked around frantically for inspiration. A shopping list! Wait, no, then he’d have to explain why he’d suddenly eaten it. “Um...” he spotted the complimentary bread basket, still untouched. “Bread,” he mumbled through a mouthful of paper.

“Bread?”

“Yes.” Mark immediately regretted the lie, but couldn’t think of any way to back out of it. He managed to chew the notebook page out of the way a bit. “Have some.”

William Doores sat down. He didn’t take any bread, but he didn’t ask any awkward questions either.

“It’s, um...” Mark struggled to swallow the mostly-chewed notebook page. “It’s really good of you to come here.”

“Anything for a free lunch.”

Mark laughed, really hoping he wasn’t serious. Yeah, really it should be him paying for the meal, but there had to be some kind of get-out clause if the interviewee had more than a million times more money than you. Doores’ bank balance probably had more digits than his had pounds. He poured himself a glass of water, trying to wash down the paper.

“I suppose we might as well get started. Was there anything you wanted to ask in particular?”

“Um...” Mark opened up the notebook. The big question, or one of the little ones? Big or little? Big or little? “I guess the first thing would be...” Screw it. “You’re famously, er...you seem to like to stay out of the spotlight, mostly...as it were.” He glanced back towards the kitchen, making sure the waitress wasn’t about to come back and take their orders. “What made you decide to come to this particular interview?”

“Well, Mark...” Mister Doores leaned back in his chair, fingers arched. “It’s actually something of a hobby of mine. It’s no secret that I don’t like the mainstream media—always the same people, always the same questions—but with amateurs, it’s different. Amateurs are real people with real ideas, and your blog was the most amateur I’ve ever seen!”

“I’m...um...glad you liked it.” Mark almost took another big swig of water, then stopped. Suddenly he had to pee. Setting the glass back down he scrawled an approximation of Doores’ answer in the notebook, wondering if there was any way he could make it sound better. If he wasn’t allowed to record this thing, he couldn’t be expected to get it a hundred percent, word-for-word right, could he? He flipped back to the page of questions and hastily picked another. “Mister Doores. Of your...”

“Oh, please,” said Mister Doores. “Call me ‘William.’ Or ‘Will.’ Otherwise this is going to be really awkward.” He might have had a reputation for being eccentric, but in person he was almost as ordinary as his neat, gelled-back businessman haircut.

“Right,” said Mark. “Thanks. Of your many business ventures...”

“Good afternoon. Can I get you anything?” The waitress had returned to the table.

“Yes, I, um, uh...” Mark stammered, mentally trying to work through his carefully researched interview question. “Yes please,” he managed at last.
“Could we have the wine list?” asked William.

“Of course.” She handed it to him while Mark silently panicked over the expense. “And there are your menus.”

Mark stared in horror at the prices. Maybe he’d be able to sneakily use his phone to take out a loan. Then he took a look at the food. That was the other problem: he had no idea what most of this stuff was. The things he did recognise—lobster, truffles, caviar—were obviously way too expensive to go for, even by the standards of this place. On the other hand, he didn’t want to just pick the cheapest thing on the menu either. That might look bad.

“I’ll just let you decide.” The waitress smiled and turned to leave.
Mark breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least he’d have some time to think about it.

“Actually,” said William, “I’ve got to be somewhere this afternoon.” He turned to Mark. “Do you mind if we just order now?”

“No, no.” Mark shook his head, looking a little too nonchalant. “That’s fine.”

Mark stared at the menu, looking for something—anything—he knew, something that wouldn’t eat too far into his overdraft. In the background, he vaguely heard William Doores order something French-sounding (though he didn’t like to check exactly what it was or how much it cost) and a glass of wine that sounded like it should have been served in a hollowed-out ice swan with gold flakes floating in it.

“And for you?”

“Alright.” Mark cleared his throat to buy a couple more precious seconds. “I will have...the...” suddenly, he spotted something: “langoustines.” He vaguely recognised that one. It was that thing in The Odd Couple that was like spaghetti. He briefly considered trying to pronounce the name of the sauce, but stopped himself just in time. It would not sound smart.

“And to drink?”

“Just water’s fine.” He tried to ignore the uncomfortable sloshy feeling in his stomach. “Thanks.”

“That’ll just be a few minutes.”

There was an awkward silence as she made her way back to the kitchen to pass on the order.

“I can’t help but notice you seem a bit distracted,” said William.

“No, no.” Mark forced himself to smile. He crossed his legs and tried to stop thinking about how he was going to pay when the cheque came. “Just thinking about how I’ll write this up later. And, um, another question.”

“Go on.”

“Mister Doores...”

“William.”

“Oh, yes, right. Um.” He glanced at the notebook again. Better just read it word for word. “Of your many business ventures, which do you think has contributed most to your success?”

“Hmm.” William arched his fingers again, regarding the front of his surprisingly modest cream suit. “Probably Squirker.”

Mark was taken aback. “The...the social network?”

“Yes.”

“Wasn’t that...well...a huge failure?”

“I think we hit about 15,000 members? Yeah, it didn’t go well at all.”

“So...how was that a success?”

“It wasn’t. But it was a definite lesson in how not to do things. It was a wake-up call. When that site finally went under, that was the moment I stood up and said ‘I want to do better.’ And after a few false starts, I did.”

The bartender came over with the bottle of wine, which Doores approved with a nod. The bartender poured out a glass.

“So your message to people is to, like, pick themselves up when they fall? That sort of thing?”

“If I’m being honest, my message to people is really more that they should buy stock in my companies and keep giving me lots of money.” He lifted his glass and took a sip. “Your thing’s good too, though.”

“Okay,” Mark laughed, writing that down. “That’s a good answer.” He took another sip of water, basically just because it was there. He still really had to pee. “But, um,” he began again. “You do actually make some very generous donations to charity. Which cause do you feel most strongly about?”

“I do give a lot of money to donkey sanctuaries.”

Mark noted that down. “Okay. That’s not what I expected to hear.”

“They have the saddest ads on TV. Every time I see one of those ads, I end up giving them another few thousand pounds. Naturally I’ve also done quite a bit to help with bigger things—vaccinations, food and water, education for third world countries—but there’s just something about donkeys. They always look so sad. Don’t you think so?”

Mark scribbled “donkey charities” into his notebook, pretty sure he’d be able to remember the rest of that answer. This guy was definitely eccentric enough to be the real deal. “Um. I guess so. I’ve never really thought about it.” William Doores definitely did have an eccentric side, that was for sure. He skimmed through the questions in his notebook once more. There was one thing he hadn’t actually written down, but now he wondered if it might actually be a good one to ask. “Who’d win in a fight?” he asked, casually. “Superman or Batman?”

“What kind of question is that?!?” Doores positively exploded.

“Sorry! Sorry!” People were looking.

Mister Doores didn’t seem to notice either the stares or Marks frantic apologies. “Superman,” he said. “Superman every time. Batman doesn’t have laser eyes, he doesn’t have super strength, he’s not invincible, he can’t fly. Absolutely no contest. Superman every time. Superman, Superman, Superman.”

Mark put pen to paper. “Passionately pro-Superman,” he scrawled, still reeling slightly from the shock of Doores’ outburst. For a minute there he actually thought he might have peed a little bit. Still, he took another gulp of water. He didn’t exactly mean to, but he was freaking out and it was something to do. Something that didn’t involve coming up with a new question or using one of the ones he’d so carefully come up with in the days before. Suddenly, he got an idea.

“Is there anything you’d like to talk about, Will?” he asked. “Something I can pass on to my readers?”

“No, not really.” Will leant forwards, resting an elbow on the table. Wasn’t that supposed to be bad manners?

“Are...are you sure?” Mark knew he didn’t have it in him to keep this interview going for the whole meal. He desperately needed this. “I mean, you’re a billionaire. If you wanted to, you could...I don’t know...blast your way across the Sahara in a solid gold rocket sled. You must be into some pretty cool stuff, right?”

Will laughed. “It’s not like that. It’s really not.”

“Well then.” Mark waited, cheap-stylish pen poised, trying to ignore just how much he really, really needed to pee right now. “What’s it like really?”
Will leant back and spread his hands. “Okay. When you’re a billionaire, you’ve got more cars and a fancier house and your own private jet—where you get to choose the movie, by the way—but day to day, things aren’t really so different. I get up, I have breakfast, I take care of work all day, and then in the evening I kick back and relax, just like anyone else.”

“Okay, that’s interesting.” Mark put “normal-ish” in his notebook. “So what do you do to relax?”

“Well...” Will leaned forward, laughed and slumped back again. “No. No, it’s too embarrassing.”

“No no no, go on!” It had to pay to be a little bit pushy here. This was the kind of thing that would really get the blog out there. Whatever it was, it had to be good.

“Okay.” William Doores leaned forward once more, speaking quietly. Mark leaned in to listen. “The truth is...I’m quite a fan of rom-coms.”

“Seriously?” It was kind of a lame revelation.

“Yeah!”

“Why exactly?”

“I don’t know. They’re just always good. You’re always rooting for the people in them. There’s no bad guy, no monster: just two people who want to be together, and fate. And along the way, there’s all these wacky hijinks and zany best friends and cute awkward moments...you know, dinners with parents, drunken parties, embarrassing secrets revealed. And then at the end, there’s the race to the airport. The heartfelt speech. The grand romantic gesture.” He paused, his eyes fixed just slightly up, somewhere in the middle distance. He sighed. “There’s just something about them. I love how there’s always some misunderstanding that runs the length of the film. How the couple always breaks up at some point but you know they’ve just gotta get back together: they’ve just gotta. How they so often manage to work the title into an important conversation somewhere. I don’t know what it is about them, but I must have seen just about every rom-com ever, and I’ve loved every one.”

Mark sat, pen in hand, wondering how he was going to get all that down. He’d got as far as “hijinks.” “Wow,” he said, trying to match Will’s smile. “That’s...that’s really something.”

Will Doores wiped a tear from his eye with the corner of a napkin. “I know it’s silly, but...”

“No, no!” Mark noted down “crying” as subtly as he could. “I get it, man. I totally get it. I know what you mean. And I think this’ll really let my readers see the real you.”

“Gentlemen.” The waitress had come back with the meals. “The salmon niçoise...” she placed Will’s plate neatly before him, “and the langoustines with Sandefjord sauce.”

Mark stared at the...things on the plate in front of him. This was not spaghetti. This was not spaghetti at all. Spaghetti didn’t stare back.
The langoustines sat elegantly arranged atop a bed of salad. At least, as elegantly arranged as anything with that many legs, claws and feelers could be. He half expected them to scuttle off the plate, half for a team of men in hazmat suits to sweep in and take them away for dissection. Was this what rich people actually ate? Was the threat of your meal bursting out of your chest and running around after Sigourney Weaver somehow part of the appeal? He forked a bit of lettuce. William Doores was already tucking in. “How is it?” asked Mark.

“Good, good. Yours?”

“It, uh...it sure is. Mmmmmm.” He ate the bit of lettuce, then just sat there, his knife and fork hovering just over one of the hellish creatures in front of him. Didn’t you need, like, a steak knife for this sort of thing? They looked crunchy. Really, really crunchy. Three staring, crunchy bugs. From Mars. What if bits of them were poisonous? Like that weird Japanese fish (which, he thought, he’d probably have preferred right now given half a chance). He couldn’t possibly be expected just to eat the whole thing, head to tail.

“Everything okay?” Doores stopped munching to look up at Mark.
“Yeeeaah.” Mark forced himself to smile. “Just...checking through my notes. Do you, um, have any pets?”

“A horse and some greyhounds. For racing. They don’t live at my house or anything.” He took another bite of salmon. “Oh, and I’ve adopted a lot of donkeys.”

Any excuse to pick up a pen instead of a fork. “How many?”

William twirled his fork in the air, thinking. “About...eighty, I suppose? They just keep asking for three pounds a month.”

“Wow,” said Mark. “You are really generous.” Please, please, please offer to pay for the meal. Please.

“Thank you.”

“How is everything?”

“Very nice, thank you.” William smiled.

“It’s good, it’s good.” Mark tried not to fidget around too much as he answered. He really, really, really shouldn’t have had all that water. “Thanks.”

There was an awkward silence as she walked away.

“Are you sure everything’s alright? You haven’t touched those langoustines.”

“I’m. Um. Saving them.” Mark tried to ignore how badly he needed to pee. Wait...if he left now, he realised, he could look these things up on his phone and find out what you were supposed to do with them. “I’m sorry,” he said as nonchalantly as possible, “could you excuse me for just a minute?”

There it was. Not ideal—Mark would have liked to have had an uninterrupted interview—but the most sensible thing he could do under the circumstances. He pushed his hair out, stood, and immediately caught his foot on the table leg.

Mark began to topple. Gravity, his arch-nemesis, had caught him by surprise. Not this time, he thought. Not this time. He could feel the table leg pressing between the top of his foot and the tongue of his shoe. Trying to wiggle his foot free would be pointless. Instead, he hopped forwards with his front foot, trying to move it underneath his centre of gravity. The sole of that shoe made a deafeningly loud noise as it slapped against the swanky polished floor of the restaurant (unavoidable), the table lurched as his back foot dragged it along behind him (regrettable), and he fell over anyway (deeply, deeply depressing). Somewhere behind him, in the absolute silence that had suddenly filled the room, he heard stuff falling over on the tabletop.

Picking himself up, Mark surveyed the damage. The langoustines were still there. That really bummed him out. The carafe of water was also still standing. Well that was something. It would have been embarrassing if that fell over—especially if it smashed. William Doore’s food was still there too. Again, that was good. And the wine glass...still upright! But empty. Clearly Mister Doores must have put it there after it spilled all over his cream suit. And this meal had seemed expensive before.

Okay. There were a lot of people watching. There wasn’t a lot of time to act, but Mark knew he had to plan his next move carefully. The main thing was to make some kind of token gesture to help. “Don’t worry, Will,” he said. “I got this.”

What were you supposed to do with stains, though? Mark remembered. You had to keep them wet. Picking up the carafe, he sloshed some water—not too much—over Mister Doores’ jacket. He managed to do it without flinging too much ice at him, though a slice of lemon did get stuck to the fabric. “Oh, wait! It’s salt. You use salt on wine stains. I’ll just...” Mark tried desperately to look like he knew what he was doing. “I’ll just get some salt on this. It’ll come right out. You’ll see.”

Acting quickly, he put down the carafe and stepped back to make a grab for the salt cellar, resting just out of reach on his side of the table. Unfortunately, he stepped onto a piece of ice. His foot skated across the floor, escaping the situation with a speed he wished the rest of him could match. Instinctively, he put a hand down on the table. Or, he would have done had the plate of langoustines not got in the way. He just caught the edge, pushing it down with really quite impressive force and speed. The rest of the plate responded in an equally impressive manner, flinging its payload of spiny, leggy crustaceans into the next two tables. A woman screamed.

Mark had to admit, this wasn’t going well. Picking himself up once again—and with considerable care—he got hold of the salt cellar and shook some of its contents in the general direction of the spreading stain on Doores’ shirt. He’d got out of the chair and was now standing with his back pressed to the wall, looking on with an expression of mild horror on his face.

Mark’s efforts to fix the stain were, to be honest, a bit pathetic. “Might, um...might need some more, um, salt.” There was only a tiny amount coming out of the shaker. He wasn’t sure any of it was even reaching the suit. The waitress was on her way over. The bartender had practically already arrived, several towels slung over his arm. “I’m sorry. I...really have to go.”

Only slipping on the floor just a little bit, Mark hurried away towards the bathrooms.