Cupid's Arrow
Stewart was sweating when he got to Liverpool Street.
He really didn’t want to sweat.
He didn’t want to be all clammy when he met his date.
But he didn’t want to be late either.
Stewart strolled purposefully down the concourse until he was under the sign for the Cornish pasty shop.
Meg. Meg. Meg. Meg. His date tonight was Meg.
It was kind of cute that she wanted to meet there. Somewhere a bit twee. It was a bit ‘Brief Encounter’ being at a train station.
And Stewart seemed to remember her profile mentioned she was from Cornwall originally, or she had family there or she always holidayed down there as a kid or something?
No panic, he would check in a minute.
Even though he was running late he still had time. He always made sure he had time. He always aimed to be early to these things so he could take a moment, compose himself and be ready, waiting and eager for when his date arrived.
He looked at the large window next to him and peered at his reflection, making sure everything was as perfect as possible. He checked his hair was swept over neatly and rubbed his hand over his face to make sure there wasn’t any debris caught in his beard scruff. He checked his nose and his teeth. He looked down and checked his clothes were clean and lint-free, and his flies were done up.
Then he checked the flower in his lapel.
It was a huge white blousy daisy with a thick, meaty yellow centre. Meg’s idea. This kind of daisy was her favourite apparently, and made her smile whenever she saw them.
Stewart thought it was a bit cheesy, a bit folksy, but then he considered it would be an easy icebreaker and showed he was A Considerate Man. So he agreed wholeheartedly and dutifully bought one from the florist outside his office, before jumping on the Circle Line.
But it was good. It was all good. He was ready. He was clean and pristine. He could relax now.
Stewart took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks.
He shifted his weight and scanned the bustling herds of post-work commuters and pre-night out revellers mingling in front of him.
Dangling high from the station ceiling, the big clock ticked along, the numbers flicking over to 17:57.
“OK, Meg - where are you?” Stewart muttered to himself under his breath.
They were meeting at 6pm, so if she was on time - or a little late - he would have a moment or two to remind himself about her.
Stewart slid his phone out of his pocket, opened the Cupid’s Arrow app and clicked on Meg’s profile.
She had listed her likes as ‘films’, ‘travel’ and ‘books’.
Vague - basic even - but plenty to work with there, Stewart thought. He could wheel out some conversation starters on any of those, so he would be fine.
Idly he scrolled down the rest of her profile.
Ah yes, there it was - she had family down in the West Country. That was the link. Something else to log for later use for sure.
Scrolling further down, Meg was looking for ‘friendship’, ‘fun times’ and ‘maybe more 😉’.
Stewart smiled to himself.
Over the last five years he had met nearly 30 women through Cupid’s Arrow - and close to 100 through all the different apps he had on his phone - and he knew that ‘maybe more 😉’ could almost always be tweaked to ‘definitely more 😘’ if he turned on the charm and ran through his system correctly.
He scrolled back up Meg’s profile with his thumb and studied her picture.
She was nice looking, probably in her early twenties here - although her profile said she was 27.
“Naughty Meg”, Stewart thought to himself, “you’re stretching the app policy for ‘recent photo’ a little there.”
He peered a little closer at the profile picture.
He thought she was cute, albeit in a girl-next-door kind of way. Probably a solid six or six and half on his own personal scale, but she had potential for sure. She had pretty eyes, but the rest of her features were a little bland and generic. Her hair was good though, if a little unexciting.
He flicked across through the other photos on her profile. She had a good figure. She looked happy, but not too happy.
So yeah, she would be just great.
He would turn on the charm, flash his endearingly wonky little smile and then work his magic to make her feel great about herself.
Just enough to open up to him.
Just enough to get his emotional hooks in.
And then, he would make his move. He would make his move and get what he wanted and then disappear back into the digital ether and onto the next match on one of his other profiles.
Did this make him a bad man? It was a question Stewart had often asked himself, especially on nights where he couldn’t sleep.
He figured that if he wasn’t doing it, someone else would and hey, if anything he was performing a service for all these women too. He was giving them gifts.
He was making them feel good about themselves.
He was showing them a good time and helping them grab life’s opportunities.
Most importantly, he thought, he was preparing them so they could handle some of the real monsters out there, who weren’t as charming or as considerate or as attentive as he was.
For their short time together at least.
Anyway, Stewart figured it wasn’t entirely his responsibility. He wasn’t the arbiter on these women’s emotional decisions. He was there for ‘fun, maybe more 😉’, like most of their profiles had proffered.
Of course, you couldn’t meet as many women as he had without the odd bump in the road, so to speak.
There were the ones who had found him afterwards, despite his best efforts of deflection and discretion.
A couple of them - Phoebe and Sarah - had turned up at his work, separately, which had been awkward. Luckily he had been able to hide away from them in his office and he had used the opportunity to sow the seeds of their obsession with the security guys on the door.
Really it was his fault because he had been too nice and he didn’t mean to lead them on but they had just got too attached, too intense, too quickly, and he had had to break it off as a kindness, more than anything.
“Bunny boilers,” the old fella who sat at the security desk had grumbled, “Watch yourself, lad. Be more careful.”
Careful. Pfft. He didn’t need to be more careful. He had just had a couple of grains of bad luck and that was it. Nothing more than that, not when you considered how many women he had had on the hook.
He stepped quickly from foot to foot to keep warm, the damp February cold was starting to snake its fingers into his boots and through his coat.
Yeah, he had been pretty lucky all in all, he thought to himself. And he would be lying if he said he hadn’t got anything out of it, of course.
He had Gina who had hooked him up with some new PlayStation games because she was in the industry.
And then there was Karen, who had scored him those full-hospitality tickets to the football through her PR firm. He had met Thierry Henry. It was a good day.
Oh and Marguerite.
Marguerite was a real sweetheart. She had unexpectedly been a longer term relationship. Something he hadn’t planned.
Stewart had broken his ankle badly while skiing and had ended up housebound for a couple of months. Marguerite had been only too happy to play the role of nurse and help get him back up on his feet again. She took some time off work, helped book him in with various appointments and they had spent the nights talking about everything and nothing.
They even got to the stage where they gave pet names to each other, and Marguerite felt comfortable enough to let him call her by her childhood nickname. She said she didn’t let just anyone do that.
And, with nothing else to do, Stewart had made the best of a bad situation and continued to reel her in.
There had been a real connection, well certainly in her case. But, once he was up and about again, Stewart had gone off on a work trip and not told Marguerite.
When he got back a month or so later, his neighbour had said about the ‘wild woman, banging on the door and crying on the step at all hours’.
Stewart considered it could have been any one of a dozen women he had recently met through his apps, but only Marguerite definitely knew where he lived.
And, yeah, he did feel bad about it every once in a while.
She was lovely in her own way, and it was a real shame to cut all contact with her, but Stewart knew you have got to always keep things clinical. You have to stick to the system and walk away when the time is right and it is ‘mission accomplished’.
The crowds around him ebbed and flowed.
Individuals and small groups dashing for their departing trains, rushing through the swarms of people getting off and heading into town for a night out.
17:59.
Still no sign of Meg.
No sign of another daisy in the concrete.
“Come on, don’t be late,” he thought to himself, “If you’re late you won’t know that I was early and we might start off on the wrong foot.”
Ugh, why had he started thinking about Marguerite?
Christ, he needed to move on quick because otherwise he ran the risk of being a real downer for tonight’s date and being positive is what it was all about.
Still, Marguerite was probably the closest one he’d got to sticking it out with, so it was no surprise.
And it did genuinely break his heart when he recognised her face on the cover of the free morning newspaper last year.
But how was he to know she would do something like that? And it wasn’t his responsibility, not his fault. She could have done something like that at any time.
Her family - brother, Stewart seemed to recall - had said it was just so out of character for her. Something the authorities should investigate properly. But then what did he know? What do any of us know about what goes on in other folk’s heads really?
We’re all ticking time bombs waiting to go off, he had thought to himself at the time, and he still believed that. He had to.
And anyway, if he and Marguerite had ended up together something could have just happened later on and then another life would’ve been ruined.
No, he couldn’t afford to think like that. People like him just had to move on.
Fire and forget.
He looked down, brushed at his jacket and rearranged the buttonhole again.
“Huh, y’know that’s funny…” he started to say to himself.
A thundercrack ripped through the station, echoing around the cavernous space to a moment of calm, before the space erupted into the sound of shrieks and droning sirens and stampeding feet.
Amidst the chaos, Stewart put his hand to his chest.
The daisy was gone, replaced with a gush of thick, dark blood.
A couple of petals helicoptered in the air in front of him.
He staggered backwards, into the window behind him and smearing his sticky red hands across the surface.
Up on the mezzanine floor, above and across from the pasty shop, the final part of a sniper rifle was being folded back into its anonymous black case.
And the clock flicked over to 18:00.
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