She did not envy Moira’s education. Education was overrated. A college dropout, she had supported herself very well throughout her twenties, moving from man to man, taking on the kind of jobs that helped her meet the right kind of guys-galleries, catering services, film production offices. Now she was thirty-well, possibly thirty-one, she had been lying about her age for so long, first up, then down, that she got a little confused. She was thirty or thirty-one, possibly thirty-two, and while going to Dublin had seemed like an inspired bit of revenge against Barry, it was not the place to find her next patron, strong euro be damned. Paris, London, Zurich, Rome, even Berlin-those were the kind of places where a certain kind of woman could meet the kind of man who would take her on for a while. Who was she going to meet in Dublin? Bono? But he was married and always prattling about poverty.
So, alone in Dublin, she wasn’t sure what to do, and when she contemplated what Barry might have done, she realized it was what Moira might have done, and she wanted no part of that. Still, somehow-the post office done, Kilmainham done, the museums done-she found herself in a most unimpressive town house, studying a chart that claimed to explain how parts of Ulysses related to the various organs of the human body.
“Silly, isn’t it?” asked a voice behind her, startling her, not only because she had thought herself alone in the room, but also because the voice expressed her own thoughts so succinctly. It was an Irish voice, but it was a sincere voice, too, the beautiful vowels without all the bullshit blarney, which was growing tiresome. She could barely stand to hail a cab anymore because the drivers exhausted her so, with their outsized personalities and long stories and persistent questions. She couldn’t bear to be alone, but she couldn’t bear all the conversation, all the yap-yap-yap-yap-yap that seemed to go with being Irish.
“It’s a bit much,” she agreed.
“I don’t think any writer, even Joyce, thinks things out so thoroughly before the fact. If you ask me, we just project all this symbolism and meaning onto books to make ourselves feel smarter.”
“I feel smarter,” she said with an automatic smile, “just talking to you.” It was the kind of line in which she specialized, the kind of line that had catapulted her from one safe haven to the next, Tarzan swinging on a vine from tree to tree.
“Rory Malone,” he added, offering his hand, offering the next vine. His hair was raven-black, his eyes pale-blue, his lashes thick and dark. Oh, it had been so long since she had been with anyone good-looking. It was something she had learned to sacrifice long ago. Perhaps Ireland was a magical place after all.
“Bliss,” she said, steeling herself for the inane things that her given name inspired. “Bliss Dewitt.” Even Barry, not exactly quick on the mark, had a joke at the ready when she provided her name. But Rory Malone simply shook her hand, saying nothing. A quiet man, she thought to herself, but not The Quiet Man. Thank God.
“How long are you here for?”
They had just had sex for the first time, a most satisfactory first time, which is to say it was prolonged, with Rory extremely attentive to her needs. It had been a long time since a man had seemed so keen on her pleasure. Oh, other men had tried, especially in the beginning, when she was a prize to be won, but their best-intentioned efforts usually fell a little short of the mark and she had grown so used to faking it that the real thing almost caught her off guard. Nice.
“How long are you staying here?” he persisted. “In Dublin, I mean.”
“It’s… open-ended.” She could leave in a day, she could leave in a week. It all depended on when Barry cut off her credit. His credit, really. How much guilt did he feel? How much guilt should he feel? She was beginning to see that she might have gone a little over the edge where Barry was concerned. He had brought her to Ireland and discovered he didn’t love her. Was that so bad? If it weren’t for Barry, she never would have met Rory, and she was glad she had met Rory.
“Open-ended?” he said. “What do you do that you have such flexibility?”
“I don’t really have to worry about work,” she said.
“I don’t worry about it, either,” he said, rolling to the side and fishing a cigarette from the pocket of his jeans.
That was a good sign-a man who didn’t have to worry about work, a man who was free to roam the city during the day. “Let’s not trade histories,” she said. “It’s tiresome.”
“Good enough. So what do we talk about?”
“Let’s not talk so much either.”
He put out his cigarette and started again. It was even better the second time, better still the third. She was sore by morning, good sore, that lovely burning feeling on the inside. It would probably lead to a not-so-lovely burning feeling in a week or two and she ordered some cranberry juice at breakfast that morning, hoping it could stave off the mild infection that a sex binge brought with it. Honeymooners-cystitis, as her doctor called it.
“So Mr. Gardner has finally joined you,” the waiter said, used to seeing her alone at breakfast.
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ll have a soft-boiled egg,” Rory said. “And some salmon. And some of the pancakes?”
“Slow down,” Bliss said, laughing. “You don’t have to try everything at one sitting.”
“I have to keep my strength up,” he said, “if I’m going to keep my lady happy.”
She blushed and, in blushing, realized she could not remember the last time she had felt this way. It was possible that she had never felt this way.
“Show me the real Dublin,” she said to Rory later that afternoon, feeling bold. They had just had sex for the sixth time and, if anything, he seemed to be even more intent on her needs.
“This is real,” he said. “The hotel is real. I’m real. How much more Dublin do you need?”
“I’m worried there’s something I’m missing.”
“Don’t worry. You’re not.”
“Something authentic, I mean. Something the tourists never see.”
He rubbed his chin. “Like a pub?”
“That’s a start.”
So he took her to a pub, but she couldn’t see how it was different from any other pub she had visited on her own. And Rory didn’t seem to know anyone, although he tried to smoke and professed great surprise at the new anti-smoking laws. “I smoke here all the time,” he bellowed in more or less mock outrage, and she laughed, but no one else did. From the pub, they went to a rather depressing restaurant-sullen wait-staff, uninspired food-and when the check arrived, he was a bit slow to pick it up.
“I don’t have a credit card on me,” he said at last- sheepishly, winningly-and she let Barry pay. Luckily, they took American Express.
Back in bed, things were still fine. So they stayed there more and more, although the weather was perversely beautiful, so beautiful that the various hotel staffers who visited the room kept commenting on it.
“You’ve been cheated,” said the room-service waiter. “Ask for your money back. It’s supposed to rain every day, not pour down sunlight like this. It’s unnatural, that’s what it is.”
“And is there no place you’d like to go, then?” the chambermaid asked when they refused her services for the third day running, maintaining they didn’t need a change of sheets or towels.
Then the calls began, gentle but firm, running up the chain of command until they were all but ordered out of the room by the hotel’s manager so the staff could have a chance to clean. They went, blinking in the bright light, sniffing suspiciously at the air, so fresh and complex after the recirculated air of their room, which was now a bit thick with smoke. After a few blocks, they went into a department store, where Rory fingered the sleeves of soccer jerseys. Football, she corrected herself. Football jerseys. She was in love with an Irishman. She needed to learn the jargon.