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Honeymoon, said the girl, flatly, and pulled a sucking-a-lemon face. In old times they named it better. A deflowering, it was then, a vicious pulling-up of all that was good in the garden.
You would know? Rosin asked, about marriage? Oh yes, said the girl, but it’s a secret. And she smiled, smugly, leaning back, enwombed in the crème brûlée car.
…
You unravel the rope to the one you love. This is how the song, if not life, progresses. Under a sky about as clear as his conscience, Arlan was warming up. Warming up, he thought, bringing to the boil.
The city had a skin on it like curdled milk. That was the heat of the place. An uncanny heat, an allegorical heat, a heat that might make something happen. He watched Morag come, plaster-pated through the slit in the tent. She was mopping her brow with a wadded up drive-through serviette and clutching a paper cup. What’s that? He asked, but with little real interest.
Pare cider.
Oh. How is it?
Warm.
Morag smiled. The man was as stifled and stiff as tweed. He wore an open-necked polo shirt, the kind men have for golfing, in a shade that was once roughly Kerry green. He dug his hands in his pockets and slouched like a petulant child. It was the heat, she supposed, as if the sun had been scolding him, showing him the back of her hand. Thank you for coming, he said, you didn’t have to, just to humour me.
I don’t make a habit of humouring people. Least of all men.
That’s alright then, I suppose.
Yes, that’s alright then.
And she glowed. It wasn’t a sticky or unappealing human sweat, it was the glisten on the flanks of a thoroughbred racehorse. He wanted to touch her, pat her down the way he would his father’s chestnut mare, in the days when his family were still farmers, before the money was drank all to shit.
You’re familiar, he said, with the style of singing. Oh yes, she said, but that’s a secret.
…
The girl put her feet on the dashboard. Rosin tried to slap them back down, one handed, but she was turning a corner and couldn’t. The girl smiled at Rosin pertly. Take your feet down, please, said Rosin. Make me, said the girl, triumphantly.
They stopped at a diner. Rosin wanted gas, the girl wanted soda and curly fries. She chose a booth by the window. The sun had baked the vinyl seats in to discoloured corns, like on the bottom of feet. Yuck, said the girl, still, the food is okay. She shook some out on to a yellowish napkin, and poked it across the table to Rosin. Try some, she said, they’re good.
No thank you.
God, you’re a barrel, aren’t you?
The girl returned the limp looking fries to her plate and began tearing up the napkin. When the waitress came over to freshen Rosin’s coffee she asked could she have a slice of apple pie. I don’t have the money for that, said Rosin.
I’ll get it myself then.
You’ve got money?
You think I take my clothes off for charity?
She took a wad of dollar bills from her back pocket. Rosin imagined them sticking greasily to her skin, held in place by a garter or thong. The stern profiles of dead presidents suffocated against dimpled gooseflesh. She shuddered, visibly. My money’s just as good as yours, said the girl, it’s better even.
Better?
I worked for mine.
I work too.
No, I mean really work. What I do it’s like mining, it’s like being the navigators digging the railways.
Rosin raised a hand to object, but the girl was warming to her theme. This is dirty work, she said, dirty and dangerous. It’s manual labour, it’s hard labour. It costs you sweat, and blood, and tears. Look at my calf muscles, she said. And she swung her leg up on to the table, rolling her jeans away from her delicate ankles. Feel ‘em, she said. Rosin put out a hand and touched the taut white skin, like the arched back of some big strong fish. That’s heels, that is, said the girl, and going round and around that pole. Look at my hands, she said. And she held out her hands for Rosin to inspect the ridges of hard skin. That’s gripping that bar, that is. Yeah, I work for my money. Yeah, my money is better than yours.
I’m sorry, said Rosin. But the girl just snorted. Don’t be sorry, hen, Christ knows I’m not.
…
Flight, he had found, stupefied him, but in a strangely pleasant way.
The clouds seemed more solid up here, like something you could hold, like something you could bite in to. That the plane slid through them beggared belief. Like a knife through butter, he thought, better yet, like himself as a boy, breaking up cotton, his arms outstretched, running through ragwort-ridden fields. Poetry come easy up here, probably it was the thinness of the air.
Sometimes he wondered where the world went, if it might have sneaked off while he wasn’t looking. He imagined dropping back down through the cloud cover to discover the planet had gone, that the blue-green football shaped landmass had some serious explaining to do.
He couldn’t get too worked up about that. He never felt much affinity for planet Earth. He was tranqed up and tanked up anyway, and that helped a lot with your sense of acceptance.
At his own face, superimposed on the sky, smiling in that drunk omniscient way, the gypsy-looking boy with the fugitive face, thought of his wife and promptly passed out.
…
A song lets you see how you’re all connected, in a way that you wouldn’t have noticed before. A song has a levelling effect, like death. A country must have a song as much as it must have a flag, more so. A song is a method by which God closes a door and opens a window.
A song this. A song that. A song the shagging other.
Brendan Neely put his head in his hands. The girl sat on Arlan’s lap, drinking cider from a paper cup. She kept asking the most idiotic questions, about shelving units and cavity wall insulation. They seemed to talk at cross purposes, Arlan burbled and blathered about music, poking and porking around his plate, mopping at sauce and smacking his lips, and the girl giggled her way through a repertoire of home improvements. Yet, from the animated way they’re eyes danced and their lips moved it seemed they were in perfect sync, seemed like she was singing a practical counter-point to his sentimental song.
The sound of her laughter filled him with dread. It always started like this and it always ended in tears. Why couldn’t he go to a whore, like any normal human being? In the long run it ended up costing much less, just look at that business with the deliberately capitalised Ex Wife. Brendan Neely sighed. Just look at it.
…
It wasn’t that Rosin regretted picking up the girl, she wasn’t the regretting kind. It was more that she didn’t know quite what to do with her now that she’d got her. The girl did not want to help her, and she’d already made it painfully clear that Rosin could wield no power and hold no sway.
You must never mistake a victim for vulnerable, that is what Rosin had learnt in the last forty-eight hours. A victim is something fierce and free; they strike up and out and are not afraid. Because a victim has nowhere further to fall. The lapdance girl had reached her rock bottom, now she had a clear, unobstructed view of the sky. And in the very violence of her failure there was a ferocious sense of pride. Look at me, she said, I’m still here. You should’ve killed me when you had the chance. You don’t like to look at me ‘cause I make you ashamed, ashamed of the world, ashamed to be human, but I’m not ashamed, I’ve alive. And in that indecency she found the will to keep going. Without her antagonism she would grind to a halt and never pick herself up again.
That’s what Rosin had learnt in the last forty-eight hours, that this girl would make a dangerous enemy.
…
Arlan walked Morag around the lake. Don’t the boats look funny at night, she said, like something living, almost. Arlan watched the moonlight glance a blow from her cheek and thought she was wonderful. She was damp and flushed and just a little drunk. I’ll show you where I live she said, and took hold of his hand.
Up two flights of stairs to the tiny apartment. It isn’t much she said, but the view is something else. In the red light of morning it all looks like a termite mound, all that red dust ‘specially in summer. You know, she said, coyly, if you stay then you’ll see it.
I won’t, he said, I sleep late.
Morag frowned and made coffee. He leafed through her aspirational magazines. She looked up from the kitchen counter, embarrassed, like a school-boy caught with pornography. I know it’s crap, she said, but it’s dreams, you know? He smiled and nodded. It was pornography. Can I ask you a question? I asked.
Just did, didn’t you?
Another one, then?
Go ahead.
Can you say why you came out here?
I-
Oh, I know you know, in your mind you know, but can you say? Can you put it in to words? He stood by the window and stared at her intently. What he wanted, what he’d always wanted was a girl to give account of herself, and in so doing, explain away him.
Most of them didn’t take such questions seriously, but Morag put her coffee cup down on the television set and considered it. Well, she said finally, there’s leaving and there’s leaving. When one leaves, one wants it to be epic, one doesn’t want to just go, just like that, they want a bigger sense of having gone. And with America… well, one has the sense of having really gone. That’s the start, you see?
The start?
There are ghosts, for another. Do you believe in ghosts?
I-
Not the spook house kind, they look like ku-klux-klaners anyway, not balls or chains and all that when Harry met Sally orgasm faking. No, I think a ghost is something like a magnet. She picked up her coffee from the TV and walked to stand beside him. She stood on her tiptoes to look him directly in the eyes. Arlan, did you hear me? I said a ghost was like a magnet, it draws you on, it makes you do things, and the more of them the are, the stronger the pull, it’s a kind of force, you know?
Or maybe, he said, a ghost is just a groove we wear in to history, and after a while our course is set. Perhaps a ghost is a path of least resistance?
Perhaps, she said. And then, I love you. No, wait, sorry, that just sort of slipped out. I meant to say… What did I mean to say?
Don’t worry, he said, it’s just magnets, and as he kissed her Morag curled her toes at the tips.
…
This is your place, hu? Said the girl, sitting down and kicking her heels off. It kind of reminds me of them places old fogies retire too. Thanks, said Rosin, flatly.
I’m not doing you down, said the girl, I’m just saying. You’ve got to learn to tell an observation from an insult.
And in your case, what’s the difference?
An insult’s designed to wound, an observation’s designed to instruct.
Who taught you that?
I taught it myself. I’m not stupid.
And she sauntered outside on to the balcony. Below them the lonely leather-bound seniors were out for a moonlit stroll. Holy smoke, said the girl, it is one of those coffin-dodger places. Still, beats Arlan’s old kip. I liked him just fine, but you could’ve taught him how to pick up after hisself, man was a slob and a half.
You’re telling me how to look after my husband now?
Ex husband… Nearly.
That’s a bit rich, isn’t it?
Why? It’s what women do, with men. Improve them, I mean. Fuck knows what else you’re supposed to do with them.
They had a moment of disarmingly frank eye contact. Then Rosin turned away. I’ll make us some supper she said. The girl trailed back inside, turning on the TV. Not for me, she said, I ate on the road. think I’ll take a shower, you got a towel I can use?
Rosin found her a towel, and the girl stood caressing it for a while, staring in to space. Rosin took advantage of the silence to ask her why she had come, why she had got in the car, why had she asked so many questions, and why had she, Rosin, been compelled to answer them. But the girl suddenly seemed to have had the wind knocked out of her. She sank down on the arm of the couch looking very white and very tired.
You’re just as bad as he is, she said, as all the rest altogether. She wiped her eyes on the towel and said, you never asked me my name either.
…
Bernadette Dolan was done watching planes, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. What she really wanted was to go home, but her roommate was having a man over, Christ knows where she picked him up.
Morag was like that, because Morag was stunning. She wasn’t promiscuous, almost the opposite. Morag was a connoisseur of sexual encounters, a collector, who could go for months, even years maybe, without anyone at all, and then on the strength of a chance encounter would bring home with her a real rare find.
Bernadette did not know how she did it. Or why. She could have anybody. Beautiful boys queued around the block, but Morag wasn’t interested, and the latest was old enough to have been her father. It’s like antiquing, Morag had explained, if you want to find something worth having, you have to look in unlikely places.
But what was the criteria for worth having?
Bernadette yawned and went for more coffee. Her shift had finished years ago, it seemed, such a strange sense of timelessness in airports, or at least of muddled time. That’s how she saw it, though she couldn’t have put it in to words, that time here was ineffectually universalised, like those Esperanto people who wanted one world language, but it never came off. Everybody speaks English now anyway, or a version of it at least.
Bernadette was tired. She closed her eyes and listened to accents. That was one of the few things she and Morag had in common, the uncanny ability to isolate an Irish accent in a crowd. She made a game of it. Unlike Morag she never would have acted upon her overhearings. If anything she shied away from anyone or anything that reminded her of home. It wasn’t that home had been unhappy, that wasn’t it at all. It was that she felt guilty or embarrassed when she heard the stories of the other leave-takers. Her nomadism, her exile, had a petty dilettante quality to it in comparison. It made her ears go red.
I went because I felt like going, and stayed until not going back became a habit, she thought. End of. A lot of her internal monologues ran this way, as an argument with an unnamed accuser. Freud, would say, would have a field day.
The voice that she heard now came from alarmingly close and it wasn’t until she opened her eyes that she realised it was talking to her. Bernadette coloured, and quickly. Sometimes, listening in, you did have to fight temptation to answer back, sometimes it felt as if they were talking to you. But now, they actually were. This one was at least. Cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked up at him.
D’you have a light? He asked her. Bernadette floundered.
No. Yes. Well. You can’t.
Can’t what?
Can’t smoke.
Why not?
It’s not allowed. In here, it’s not allowed. You have to go outside.
Well, I’ll go outside then.
He stood there, waiting. When she didn’t know where to look and so stared down at her feet, he prompted her. So, can I borrow your lighter then? I’ll bring it back in five minutes.
Bernadette thought about it. His clothes were smart enough, though creased from the long haul, and he smelt okay. But there was something about him indescribably dirty, something she could not put her finger on. Perhaps it was only the jet lag. His eyes were red and rather hollow, around his muzzle was bluey-grey. There was something, she thought, Eastern European about him, although she couldn’t have identified what. It was just that he gave her that impression, of being sent from some miserable corner of the former Soviet block.
Actually, she said finally, I’ll come outside and have one with you.
…
In her East Coast apartment Rosin tried tempting the girl out of her bathroom with a toasted sandwich and a mug of hot coffee. She knelt outside the door with the plate, and felt ridiculous, felt like she was baiting a trap.
…
In her two-bed apartment Morag stretched and wondered where Bernadette was. It hadn’t occurred to her Bernadette would mind being home while she made love. Who in the world, after all, could object to such a natural thing?
…
In the clammy press of the night outside the airport, Bernadette Dolan offered to share a taxi with a jet-lagged stranger. But you don’t even know where I’m going, said the gypsy-looking boy. No, said Bernadette, I don’t suppose I do.
…
In a telephone box Brendan Neely shouted at his daughter. Well fuck you too, Fianna, you’re just like your fucking mother.
------
The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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practical insanity #5
