The Telltale Condom

They were shooting a commercial on the Isle of Skye. It was a miraculous time in the advertising world, the anything-goes successathon of the late Clinton years. If the art director said the commercial needed to be filmed on the Isle of Skye, everyone packed up and flew to Scotland. And here they were.1

He was the copywriter; he and the art director together had come up with the concept of writing a commercial that could only be filmed in the Scottish Highlands. The year earlier, they had created a print ad ¬– a print ad, for God’s sake – that could only be photographed on a beach in Tahiti. Just amazing.2

She was a production assistant with the film company. He had noticed her right off, the way her light cotton tank top clung to the contours of her unbound breasts, the exposed flesh between the tank top and her low-slung jeans, the way the jeans perfectly cupped the arc of her ass. She was wearing fancy cowboy boots, and she held a clipboard to her chest like a schoolgirl clutching her books. There was a lot of time to kill on a shoot, a lot of standing around waiting, and it was easy to chat her up. The hot chicks from the LA production companies always flirted with the out-of-town agency guys. It was part of the film set camaraderie, or maybe just part of the sell.3

The whole production company and all the agency people dined that night at a hotel up the hill from the harbor, a traditional Scottish feast to celebrate the shoot’s successful conclusion. Dinner was on the production company, although of course it would be billed back to the agency, marked up seventeen percent. The hotel was a huge, once-elegant sprawl of a building, by far the biggest building in the small town. Atop a steep knob, it loomed over the harbor and the high street, a grand Edwardian with gables and spires and chimneys. As you approached it from below it resembled nothing so much as a supersized version of the Bates home in Psycho. The effect was more than a little heightened by the fierce gale that was raging, flashes of lightning intermittently turning the rain to shimmering silver curtains. 4

The hotel was warm and civilized once you got inside. It was one of those places that seems to exist only in the United Kingdom, a hotel or holiday resort that desperately aspires to be the kind of experience that their elderly Tory clientele desires – a vanished world of humble servants, formal dress, horrid carpets, and brutal food. 5

It was just before the start of the season, and the Royal Kylelachen was training its youngest staff – sixteen year old school leavers – to impersonate miniature nineteenth century butlers, their chubby little bodies stuffed into ill-fitting black tie and tails. They bowed, they madamed, they stepped gracefully backward when the order had been taken or the service delivered, discreetly withdrawing without showing their hindquarters to the table. A senior staff member literally looked over the shoulder of each trainee as he worked, creating which inevitably made them tense, self-conscious, and uncertain. Orders were mistaken, forks fumbled, formalities forgotten. Each faux pas was greeted by a stern reprimand, and the pale Scots skin of the acolytes blushed a deep flaming red in their humiliation. The atmosphere might have been uncomfortable, had it not seemed so much like a participatory theater re-enactment of a Monty Python sketch.6

Eoin, the cameraman from Glasgow, charmed everyone with his barely decipherable burr. When they adjourned to the downstairs bar after a meal of dark stringy meat and mashed turnips, Eoin commenced an impromptu seminar on the wonders of single malt Scotch Whiskey.7

Single malt, to their American ears, sounded somehow less good than whatever the alternative was, but they soon learned otherwise. “You wouldn’t blend wine with bull piss, would you?” he said in vehement denunciation of the American taste for blended whiskies. “So why would you blend Islay with Speyside?” No one knew what the fuck he was saying, let alone what he meant, so they all just kept drinking.8

At some point a fiddler started fiddling – maybe he’d been playing all along – and people were up and dancing. Everyone from the crew – the film company, the agency, the local crafts and techs, the cast – danced with everyone else. Men danced with other men without being gay; man-suited uptight women AEs partied like it was 1999, and Stan even enjoyed a slinky, smiling dance with the commercial’s stunningly beautiful star, her long red hair flowing like a symphony as she skipped to the fiddler’s beat. 9

It was several dances later before he got to Shara. They smiled at each other in friendly recognition, and concocted an earnest jig between the two of them. The fiddler played faster and faster, whipping a mid-tempo jog into an orgiastic frenzy, drew it out as far as the dancers could stand, then brought the tune to a flourishing close and begged permission to take a break. 10

Stan and Shara collapsed into each other’s arms, holding each other up, and Shara leaned forward to give him a playful kiss. Playful for just a moment, and then just a soft dart of tongue, testing, his tongue reciprocating, and then things just went all to hell with a huge sloppy wet lip-lock that went on until they both ran out of breath.11

“Whew,” she said. “What was that?”12

“I think we better sit down,” Stan said, though for the moment he hoped she’d stay right where she was, blocking the cast and crew’s view of the huge tentpole in his pants. He put his arm around her and helped her across the dance floor and found a seat. “Can I get you another single malt?” he asked.13

“I think I need to think about getting down the hill,” she said. “Can you call me a taxi?”14

“I think so,” Stan said. “You’re a taxi.”15

“You’re drunk,” she said. “Walk me down the hill, then?”16

“How about if we just roll down?”17

“Sounds right,” she said.18

It was still raining outside – not just raining, but dumping the entire earth’s daily ration of precipitation down upon this small soggy corner of the Highlands. They each had a hooded nylon parka, dark blue, with the client’s logo printed discreetly at the breast. It offered the illusion of protection, but they knew they’d be soaked, drenched, and inundated no matter what, so they resigned themselves to fate and set off down the gravel path towards the port, and the quayside hotel the agency and film company people were staying at. 19

The path was more waterfall than walkway, and they had to clutch tight to each other to keep from falling over. Flashes of lightning occasionally ripped the sky, illuminating a blasted volcanic landscape with great gushing torrents cascading off every ridge, but the thunder was distant, muffled. They somehow made it to the hotel without getting washed away, and rang the little bell activated by a small chain through the door, an admonishingly blunt “After Ten P.M” card affixed beneath it. The film company had thought it would be charming to put everyone up at a small, family-run inn, but they hadn’t counted upon Mrs. MacTavish, the cranky, unsmiling proprietress.20

Mrs. MacTavish, who reminded them both of Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz, eventually roused herself and let them in, then turned around and grumbled her way back to bed. They were both staying on the second floor – she in 201, he, at the other end of the long hallway, in 208. After all they’d been through, he thought it only chivalrous that he walk her all the way to her door. 21

She worked the lock open with the big, awkward skeleton key, then turned to him and said, “Do you have protection?” So that was how the young people did it these days, he thought. 22

He had had affairs, but never with a woman he had picked up (or been picked-up by), and never a one-night stand. It was a unique moment for him, and one he was not well prepared for – he had met his wife as a freshman in college, and had never had an actual date, with anyone. It was strange how, the proposition being presented as a fait accompli like that, it made it a fait accompli for him morally. It was probably a fait accompli from the moment they’d kissed, but he’d been able to pretend it wasn’t. Now, there was nothing he could do about it. It was already done. He would have to live with his mistake, and figure out later how to deal with it.23

His mistake was not so easily accomplished, however. He did not have protection, since he had not had an affair in seven years. And since his wife had told him that one more would be his last, and he had not, consequently, given much thought to having one. Where the hell did one buy a rubber at near-midnight on a remote Scottish Isle?24

“In Europe, every town has one pharmacy that stays open twenty-four hours,” she said. “They rotate, so each pharmacy only has to do it once a week or wherever. I’ll bet there’s one here.”25

There was a pharmacy among the small collection of shops along the quay; it was closed, but there was a handwritten note in the window indicating where that night’s open pharmacy could be found. They stumbled arm in arm back up the hill and into the main town. Everything was long since closed, but they spotted the pharmacy’s lit neon green cross and rang the doorbell. The pharmacist came to the door, sized them up, then buzzed them in.26

Stan had figured that he’d find the pharmacy and wander around until he found the condom display, just like at an American drug store. It didn’t work that way. The store consisted of two long glass-topped display counters. Everything was behind the counters; you had to ask, even if you only wanted toothpaste.27

“I’d like some condoms, please,” he said. The pharmacist was a matronly looking woman with curly hair, red fading to gray. She reminded him of his kindergarten teacher.28

“What sort would you like, then?” she asked. “Would you like the ones with the protruding ribs, for extra pleasure? Or perhaps the extra-lubricated.”29

Was she mocking him? He didn’t know. “Whatever you recommend,” he said. She frowned, and handed over a five-pack of Black Excelsiors. 30

“I don’t need five,” he said.31

“They only come in fives, love,” she said. “Reach for the stars.”32

He held out a handful of Euro change and she found the coins she needed.33

“Bon chance,” she called after him as they walked back out into the rain. 34

At breakfast the next morning they were sober and subdued. They had to be; they were stupefyingly hung over, and embarrassingly barrel-gaited. “It was nice,” she said.35

“I wish I could see you again,” he said.36

“Don’t wish,” she said. “Just be glad.”37

He spread orange marmalade on his cold toast and looked around the breakfast room, wondering how many of the others could tell a story just like his. They all looked guilty enough, that was for sure. The things you never knew about the people you know best.38

His eye was drawn to something hanging on the wall at the far end of the room, an embroidered sampler mounted in a picture frame. He focused his blurry vision and tried to read. Jesus is always with you in this house, it said. “Lookit that,” he said to Shara, laughing, and she turned and looked, and laughed too. 39

“Great,” she said. “He was probably with us last night, too, and he knows everything.” She took one more sip of Nescafe, then put down her cup. “I got to go get packed, check in with the crew. I’ll see you at the ferry, okay?” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on his forehead. He started to stand up for a hug, but she was already gone.40

He went back to his room and packed up his few belongings. He never brought more than he could fit in a carry-on bag. Mrs. MacTavish was manning the front desk when he went to check out. Did she never sleep? She sure as hell looked like she never slept, and acted like it as well. She was in an especially foul temper this morning, scowling fiercely as if his money were covered in poisonous slime, and she could not wait for his disgusting presence to vacate her hotel. He licked his dry lips and took stock of the situation. Best he could figure, Shara’s bedroom was right above the small apartment off of the lobby. The brass bed had been creaky, and banged noisily on the uneven hardwood floor, but all that had surely been drowned out by their drunken screaming and her fire-alarm quality moans. They had consumed sixty percent of their supply of protection. He thought again of the sampler: Jesus is always with you in this house. He was certainly here with you at the reception desk, in a large, glowering portrait that hung directly above the extensive Rules of this Establishment.41

“You’ll be departing now, is that it?” Mrs. MacTavish said, making it exceedingly clear that it was not a question.42

Stan shrugged, smiled apologetically, put his money down on the counter and signed the receipt. She watched, glaring, still as stone, silent. “Very nice hotel,” he mumbled as he pulled himself free of her fierce gaze and walked out to the carpark, while thinking, Thank God I’ll never see that old bat again.43

The ferry left from Kylerhea, an hour’s drive along the island’s shore. It was hot and sunny today, and the previous night’s rain was rising back up from the bogs in great misty curtains. San Francisco was the only place he knew of where the fog came from the air, not from the ground. Was it the only place on earth? Probably not. It made no difference. It was all he could do to remember to drive on the left and work the shift lever with his right hand. He wasn’t a fucking climatologist.44

When he got to the ferry there was a message waiting for him. She’d been delayed, she’d come over the bridge later. He didn’t see her back at the hotel in Fort William, and when he flew out of Glasgow the next morning, she wasn’t at the airport. British Air had just concluded one of their periodic strikes, and the crew treated him indifferently all the way home, when they weren’t outright hostile. He watched a movie about infidelity, and felt guilty. But it was over, it had taken place a continent and an ocean away, it was no threat to her. She would never find out, there was no way she could. It hadn’t been his decision, anyway; it had just happened. A fluke. Let it go. He put the earphones on again and watched the film, chuckling and grimacing at the poor fools’ sorry plight.45

He had to stay over in L.A. for the weekend, looking at dailies at the editing house. The director came by and looked over the editor’s shoulder for a while, but no one else from the film company was there. 46

He thought of calling Shara, as long as he was in L.A., then realized he didn’t have her number, and didn’t want to ask anyone for it. He didn’t want to call her at the film company, even though there would be nothing suspicious about doing so. He didn’t want to leave a trail. But he soon relented. He called, and they told him she was still in Scotland. 47

He called home a couple of times and left a message. He tried his wife’s cell, too, but she never remembered to turn her cell on unless she was actually making a call. He flew up from Burbank on Southwest, and took a cab from the airport.48

It was always good to get back, no matter where he’d traveled. Skye had been spectacular, Glasgow an urban treat, but San Francisco was home, a cool, cozy neverland where life was easy and reality was kept safely at bay.49

The UPS International envelope was propped up on the little marble table in the entry hall. He put his carry-on bag down and picked up the envelope. Inside was a single, small-format piece of note paper, printed with the scripted logo of the Portree Arms Inn. 50

“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Harper,” it read. “We hope you enjoyed your recent stay with us. Unfortunately, you seem to have left a bit of your belongings with us, and we knew that you would want us to return it promptly. Yours most sincerely…”51

He didn’t need to read down to Mrs. MacTavish’s elegantly looped signature, didn’t need to look into the envelope to know that he’d find two Black Excelsiors there.52

She was already packed and gone.53