Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble

But I feel bad for even thinking Andrew might be feeling peevish about me getting to sit in the front seat. Most likely he’s just embarrassed about not having his own car to pick me up in. Yes, that’s probably it. Poor thing. He probably thinks I’m holding him to American standards of capitalist materialism! I’ll have to find some way to assure him that I find his poverty extremely sexy, seeing as how all the sacrifices he’s making, he’s making for the children.

Not Andrew Jr., Henry, Stella, and Beatrice, of course. I mean the children of the world, the ones he’ll be teaching someday.

Wow. Just thinking about all the little lives Andrew’s going to improve with his sacrifices in the teaching profession is making me kind of horny.

Mr. Marshall climbs into the driver’s seat and smiles at me. “Ready?” he asks cheerfully.

“Ready,” I say, and I’m filled with a spurt of excitement despite my jet lag. England! I’m in England at last! I’m about to be driven along the English countryside, into London! Maybe I’ll even see some sheep!

Before we’re able to pull out, however, an SUV drives up behind us, and a back window powers down. Marnie, my little friend from the plane, leans out the window to yell, “Good-bye, Jennifer Garner!”

I roll down my own window and wave. “Bye, Marnie!”

Then the SUV pulls away, Marnie beaming happily in the back.

“Who in heaven,” Mr. Marshall asks as he backs out, “is this Jennifer Garner?”

“Just some American film star,” Andrew says before I can say anything.

Just some American film star? Just some American film star who happens to look exactly like your girlfriend! I want to shriek. Enough so that little girls on airplanes want her autograph!

But I manage to keep my mouth shut for once, because I don’t want Andrew to feel inadequate, knowing he’s dating a Jennifer Garner look-alike. That could be really intimidating, you know, for a guy. Even an American one.

Idon’t see any sheep. It turns out Heathrow airport isn’t exactly that far out in the country. As if I can’t tell I’m not in Michigan anymore from the way the houses look (many of them are attached, like in that movie The Snapper…which, come to think of it, was actually set in Ireland, but oh well), I definitely know it from billboards that flash by us. I can’t tell, in many cases, what the product is that they’re trying to sell-one of them shows a woman in her underwear with the word Vodafone beneath her, which could be an ad for a phone-sex service.

But it could just as easily be an ad for panties.

But when I ask, neither Andrew nor his father is able to tell me which it is, since the word panties causes them to dissolve into peals of laughter.

I don’t mind that they find me so (unintentionally) hilarious, though, since it means Andrew’s mind has been taken off being in the backseat.

When we finally turn onto the street I recognize as Andrew’s from the care packages I’ve been sending him all summer-boxes filled with his favorite American candy, Necco wafers, and Marlboro Lights, his preferred brand of cigarettes (though I don’t smoke myself, and assume Andrew will quit well before the first baby is born)-I’m feeling much better about things than I had been back in the parking garage. That’s because the sun has finally put in an appearance, peeking shyly out from behind the clouds, and because Andrew’s street looks so nice and Europeany, with its clean sidewalks, flowering trees, and old-fashioned town houses. It’s like something out of that movie Notting Hill.

I have to admit, it’s something of a relief: I had been wavering between picturing Andrew’s “flat” as being as high tech as Hugh Grant’s in About a Boy, or a garret, like in A Little Princess (which looked very cute once that old guy fixed it up for her), only in a seedier part of town, overlooking a wharf. I’d just been assuming I wouldn’t be able to go walking around his neighborhood by myself after dark for fear of being set upon by heroin addicts. Or Gypsies.

I’m glad to see it’s actually somewhere between the two extremes.

We are, as Mr. Marshall assures me, just a mile away from Hampstead Heath, the park where a lot of famous stuff happened, none of which I actually remember at this current time, and where people go today to have picnics and fly kites.

I’m happily surprised to see that Andrew lives in such a nice, upscale neighborhood. I didn’t think teachers made enough to rent apartments in town houses. No doubt his flat is at the top of one-just like Mickey Rooney’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s! Maybe I’ll get to meet Andrew’s wacky but bighearted neighbors. Maybe I can have them-and Andrew’s parents, to thank Mr. Marshall for the ride from the airport-over for a small supper to show my American hospitality. I can make Mom’s spaghetti due (pronounced doo-ay). It tastes complicated, but nothing could be simpler to make. It’s just pasta, garlic, olive oil, hot pepper flakes, and Parmesan cheese. I’m sure even England would have all the ingredients.

“Well, here we are,” Mr. Marshall says, pulling into a parking space in front of one of the brown-brick town houses and turning off the ignition. “Home sweet home.”

I’m a little surprised that Mr. Marshall is getting out with us. I would have thought he’d have dropped us off and gone on to his own house somewhere-well, wherever Andrew’s family lives, a family that consists, from what I remember him saying in his e-mails, of a teacher father, a social worker mother, two younger brothers, and a collie.

But maybe Mr. Marshall wants to help us with my bags, seeing as how Andrew probably lives on the top floor of the charming town house we’re parked in front of.

Except that when we get to the top of the long flight of steps that leads up to the front door, it’s Mr. Marshall who takes out a key and unlocks it.

And is greeted by the inquisitive gold and white muzzle of a beautiful collie.

“Hello,” Mr. Marshall calls into what I can clearly see is not the foyer of an apartment house, but the entrance to a single-family home. “We’re here!”

I am lugging my carry-on bag while Andrew pulls my wheelie bag up the stairs, not even bothering to lift it, but dragging it up one step at a time-thonk, thonk, thonk. But I swear I nearly drop the bag-hair dryer be damned-when I see that dog.

“Andrew,” I whisper, whirling around, since he’s coming up the steps behind me. “Do you live…at home? With your parents?”

Because, unless he’s dog-sitting, that’s the only explanation I can think of for what I’m seeing. And even that isn’t a very good one.

“Of course,” Andrew says, looking annoyed. “What did you think?”

Only it comes out sounding like, What did you fink?

“I thought you lived in an apartment,” I say. I am really not trying to sound accusatory. I’m not. I’m just…surprised. “A flat, I mean. You told me, in school last May, that you were getting a flat for the summer when you got back to England.”

“Oh, right,” Andrew says. Since we’ve paused on the steps, he seems to think (fink) this is a good time for a cigarette break and pulls out a pack and lights up.

Well, it was a long trip from the airport. And his father did tell him he couldn’t smoke in the car.

“Yeah, the flat didn’t work out. My mate-you remember, I wrote you about him? He was going to loan me his place, since he got a gig on a pearl farm in Australia. But then he met a bird and decided not to go after all, so I moved in with the parentals. Why? Is that a problem?”

Is that a problem? IS THAT A PROBLEM? All of my fantasies about Andrew bringing me breakfast in bed-his king-size bed, with the thousand-count sheets-crumble into bits and float away. I won’t be making spaghetti due for the neighbors and Andrew’s parents. Well, maybe his parents, but it won’t be the same if they just come down the stairs for it, as opposed to from their own place…

Then I have a thought that causes my blood to run cold.

“But, Andrew,” I say, “I mean, how are you-how are you and I going to-if your parents are around?”

“Ah, don’t worry about that,” Andrew says, blowing smoke out of one side of his mouth in a manner I have to admit to finding thrillingly sexy. No one back home smokes…not even Grandma, since that time she lit the living-room carpet on fire. “This is London, you know, not Bible Belt America. We’re cool about that kind of thing here. And my parents are the coolest.”

“Right,” I say. “Sorry. I was just, you know. Sort of surprised. But it really doesn’t matter. As long as we can be together. Your parents really won’t mind? About us sharing a bedroom, I mean?”