...continued from Girlie Grey, part one.

“Can I help you?”

“Thanks but I don’t really like tea.”

It is Fitzroy, 2003 and the sales assistant at Tea Intersection shrugs.

“Have you considered the possibility that you might be in the wrong place?” she suggests.

“All the time,” I say. It was supposed to be flippant, but she checks the panic button.

The Evil Sulphura has brought me here. I married a career supervillain who apparently really didn’t know about my caffeine problem when she announced on our engagement that she was also a coffee connoisseur. Sometimes even a criminal mastermind gets lucky. Now she is across the street at Macchiatotalitarian fondling plungers, and this is the only other shop in this part of Brunswick Street that doesn’t sell pornography.

“There is one I like,” I venture.

“Yes?”

I never drank tea before the 1998 Event. After two years of caffeine abstinence I discovered green tea, which has almost no caffeine, and after a handful of mildly exhilarating experiences in the safety of my own kitchen started to experiment with black tea, which I quickly determined was awful. In fact, experimentation proved that I loathed black tea universally.

With one exception.

“It’s a bit embarrassing,” I say, “but I can’t have coffee, and the only tea I like is Lady Grey.”

She bites her lip. I’m not the macho type, but it’s hard to avoid the feeling I’m being set up.

“Lady Grey?”

“Yes sir,” says the maitre d’. “It’s a blend of black tea varieties flavoured with orange and lemon.”

Picasso is a fine restaurant, one of the finest in Las Vegas, and an excellent place to be a groomsman, but suddenly the entire wedding party is watching me expectantly and I don’t know why. I definitely didn’t order tea, but I was just loudly ranting about it. How loudly?

“Lady Grey,” I breathe.

“Yes,” says the maitre d’, his face a picture of condolence. “Sadly, sir, we have no Lady Grey tea.”

Sulph appears at my side. “What’s up?”

“She says they don’t have Lady Grey tea.”

“No, wait,” says the Tea Intersection sales assistant. “We have that kind of tea, we just don’t call it that.”

I catch my breath. It’s always grated on me that, of all the Russian Caravans and Irish Breakfasts and even Earl Greys, the one I became addicted to is called Lady Grey. Why, I proclaimed loudly at every occasion before and since, couldn’t Lady Grey be called Monster Truck Killer Death Football Tea? It’s just tea after all, there’s nothing especially ladylike about it and anyway it’s not grey, it’s bloody orange!

Now here was someone telling me they called it something else. I followed her in a three-cup adrenalin rush to a shelf populated by silver tins with prim pink labels.

In Las Vegas, the groom and best man appear behind the maitre d’, who leans over me.

“Here we are, sir,” says the assistant. My mouth falls open.

A tiny mischievous smile flickers across his face.

“We like this name much better.” Sulph has to stuff a packet of coffee into her mouth. I read the label twice. A grim calm settles over me.

“But we do have some…”

The world, I decide, will hear about this.

“…Girlie Grey!”

The maitre d’ erupts into hysterics, followed closely by the rest of the party and random other diners. He shakes hands with the groom, who had evidently heard me complain once too often.

“Dude!” he says.

“Dude!” says the best man.

I carefully straighten my cravat and tip my chin up towards the art.

“…oh dude…” muses the groom. Tiny tears are forming in the corners of his eyes.

The world, I decide, will hear about this. I turn to the maitre d’.

“I’d like a very large coffee, please.”

This true story was written with the assistance of four cups of Lady Grey, a quarter-caff espresso and an Orange Pekoe speedball.