‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re nervous?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And drunk?’
‘Very.’
‘And yipped?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay.’
Eits throws the condom across the room, takes another from her bag and lays it on the couch beside me.
‘Jesus, you’ve some stock.’
‘You never know,’ she shrugs. ‘Relax.’
And now her chin and her teeth are on my stomach. She must get a hair in her mouth because she sits up gagging and spits.
‘Sorry.’
‘No problem.’
She goes back. And I can feel her lips on me again. I think of the taste of her breath. I remember her looking after me in school.
‘It’s not worth it,’ she says.
I can hear them all out there in the kitchen. The hush when she enters. And the roars of laughter when the story is told.
I lie in the dark and try to read the titles of Puppy’s Ma’s CDs, try to ignore the thick smells of old cigarettes and dust rising from the couch. I listen to the others getting drunker, to things breaking. And then I listen to the murmur of someone talking sense into someone else. I listen to the last of the music, to the phone calls and the goodbyes. I hear Puppy race heavily up the stairs, hear Karen say:
‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
The door opens. I pretend to be asleep. Karen sits on the couch beside me and puts her hand in my hair.
‘I’m asleep.’
‘Good dreams?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Am I a laughing stock?’
‘Oh, fuck them. Don’t worry about it.’
I sit up. Karen doesn’t move. My arm brushes hers.
‘But I do worry about it.’
‘I know.’
‘Puppy doesn’t worry.’
‘No,’ she laughs. ‘He most definitely does not.’
She tosses her hair out of her face. Her eyes are massive and shining and she won’t lift them from me.
‘You don’t like me very much,’ she says, ‘do you?’
‘I like you.’
‘You think I’m changing him.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You think I’m stealing him.’
‘I did. I don’t.’
‘Are you skagging?’
‘A bit.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘I think I’ll live.’
She bends to kiss my forehead. And the way she smells is something I know I’ll always save just for me.
‘It’ll work out.’
‘Will it?’
I watch her walk backwards, the blades of street light from between the blinds carving her body into sections. I expect her to turn and leave but she doesn’t. She just stands there and watches me for a moment.
And then she comes back.
The Parcel
Some years ago, my girlfriend and I pooled our savings, borrowed a large sum of money and bought an apartment in a new development that had just gone up by the motorway. There were no shops, but lots of ground-floor units whose windows bore ‘coming soon’ notices alongside pictures of even-complected women holding baskets of smooth fruit. An organic supermarket, the smiling estate agent told us, was in the works. A coffee bar was imminent. A gym was on final approach. The apartment had a two-person bath, a zinc-topped kitchen island, power outlets for plasma TVs fixed halfway up the wall. We decorated it with money and restraint and then sat back and waited for the city to come to us.
By the end of our first year, it had become apparent that it never would. Fewer than half of the postboxes in the lobby had names attached and most of the balconies were conspicuously bare of furniture. One night that winter I rode the lift to the top floor and was confronted with an empty hallway, torn plastic sheeting in lieu of windows and a red EXIT sign flickering in the darkness. Spooked, I dived back into the lift before the doors had closed, and was gripped by a terrible loneliness as I watched the floor numbers blinking down.
Then, last spring, Sarah’s company restructured and moved her to London. We skyped each other every night, she jetted back to me on weekends, and I pretended that I was the type of person who could live like that. I didn’t tell Sarah that, in her absence, I was eating most of my meals from a single bowl which, when not in use, I kept upturned in the sink; that I was sleeping late, drinking alone, masturbating with unsettling frequency. When she’d phone on Friday evenings to say she’d landed, I’d run a quick hoover over the place, deodorize my tobacco stink, order Indian food. And when she’d get in I’d watch with nervous discomfort as she pottered from room to room.
One Saturday afternoon, I woke alone and was unable to work out why. I lay, blinking at the ceiling, and turned this anomaly over in my mind. Then it came back to me: Sarah was at a conference in Stockholm. I felt guilty at having forgotten to skype her the previous night, until I realized that she too had neglected to skype me. Then I felt wounded. Still in the sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms I’d slept in, I rode the lift down to the lobby to collect the post from the day before. I opened our postbox and was surprised to find a parcel waiting for me: an amorphous lump, wrapped in brown paper and bound with butcher’s twine. I inspected it, and was saddened to find that it had been addressed to Turlough Lannigan in 3E.
Back in the apartment, I turned the parcel over carefully in my hands. I traced the lines of its handwritten address with my fingers and fought the urge to open it. Then, touched by the notion of people, out there, taking the time to wrap things, write things and send things to each other, I went to my computer and found a florist’s website, where I selected and paid for a bouquet of tulips and entered the address of Sarah’s apartment. It was only when I was outside Turlough Lannigan’s door, the sound of my knock echoing in the empty hallway, that I remembered that Sarah would be in Stockholm for most of the week. My mind played a movie of tulip bulbs planted, nourished, germinating, tended to, growing, blooming, harvested, wrapped in cellophane, bound with ribbon, placed in a refrigerated truck and driven through the streets of a foreign city towards a locked door, while the person for whom they were intended got on with her life, hundreds of miles away.
I knocked again, and as I waited I thought of Sarah, missing her more than I could remember ever having done. The door opened and brought me face-to-face with a man and a woman.
‘Yeah?’ said the man, Turlough.
‘Seen a dog?’ said the woman, Mrs Turlough.
‘I have a package,’ I said. ‘They left it in the wrong box.’
Turlough took the parcel and looked me over, blinking.
‘Kevin,’ I said, extending a hand. ‘I live downstairs.’
‘Maria,’ said the woman.
‘Turlough,’ said Turlough. ‘Have you seen a fucking dog?’
‘A dog?’ I said.
‘She’s got out,’ said Maria.
‘No. But do you need a —’
‘No.’ Turlough straightened his glasses on the bridge of his nose to bring me into sharper focus. ‘I can find her. You’re grand.’
Maria cocked her head to one side and considered me from an angle. She had narrow, feline eyes, a dimple in the centre of her forehead. She leaned away from Turlough — arms crossed beneath her breasts, feet shoulder-width apart — as though she were trying to build strength into her posture. Turlough leaned towards her, attracted but forewarned. He had done something, I could tell, for which she might never forgive him.
Turlough had one sandalled foot in the hallway. Fronds of waxy hair spiralled from the toes. ‘Here,’ he said and handed the parcel to Maria. ‘I’ll go out.’
‘All right.’ Maria was still frowning at me.