He placed his hand on her stomach, softly pressing the flat tips of his fingers into the skin, one after the other, as if he were playing her. "It's all right," he said. "I've just had one of those."
"Oh." It hadn't occurred to her that he might have been off with someone else.
"Other women do find me attractive, ye know."
"I know." She nodded over and over. "I know."
"Tell me you haven't been out with other guys."
She shrugged nonchalantly, said, "Oh, yeah, yeah," and gave herself away. She hadn't been out with anyone, hadn't fancied anyone or thought of anyone but him.
When she looked up he was smiling and pleased. "I like that," he said.
"Fuck off."
But he was still smiling. "If ye haven't been out on the ran-dan with loads of hunky men, what have ye been doing? Have ye been going to art galleries?"
She smiled back at him. "Naw, God, I haven't done that in a while."
"But you love looking at art."
"I know, I should -"
"Ye should make time."
"I should," she said.
"My wee cousin takes me to exhibitions all the time and I kept expecting to see you there. She's training to be a curator."
"How do ye train to be a curator?"
"Master's course in Belfast. She gets in everywhere free. You should do that."
"I've got a job," she said, and smiled ruefully, imagining herself in a big suit, with a CV and prospects.
"What's your job?"
"I sell drugs to schoolchildren."
Vik looked at her, half believing, until she reached across the bed and picked up her cigarettes, shaking them at him. "Down at Paddy's," she said, and he smiled.
They sat up, Vik shuffling around on the bed so they were sitting next to each other, bare hip to bare hip, looking out of the three-inch space between the red velvet curtains. "If you could look at any painting in the world," he said, "what would it be and where is it?"
"Good one." Maureen nodded, savoring the challenge. "The Demoiselles d'Avignon, in New York, or Matisse's Arab Coffeehouse in the Hermitage."
"Why the Coffeehouse one?"
"I dunno, because it's so still. If you could see anyone play, who, where and when?"
"Obviously Elvis in Vegas, early seventies."
"Not the Las or the Birthday Party?"
"Nah, I like hearing about their gigs but I wouldn't want to have been there."
She put the ashtray on the bed and reached over to light his cigarette.
"That's my lighter," he said, holding her hand and looking at it.
"Yeah, you left it here that last time."
"You kept it."
"Yeah." She felt embarrassed. "It's a good lighter."
"No, it's not, it's crap. The flint chimney's too wide. I thought I'd lost it."
She dropped it into his hand, ashamed of how much store she'd set on it. "Well," she said briskly, "you've got it back now."
He smiled, lowering his head to look her in the face. "Maureen, did you do something romantic?"
She pulled her chin away. "What?" she said, sounding huffy. "Found your lighter?"
Vik took a draw on his cigarette, gazing out of the window. "You like me," he muttered at the curtains. "You like me, ya sneaky wee bird."
They sat smoking and smiling at the window, listening to children calling to one another in the street, the summer birds shouting and cars speeding past up the steep hill. She looked at his shoulder, a perfect sphere with dimples where the tendons attached the muscle to the bone. Two long dark hairs stuck out to the side like symbolic epaulets. He had been sunbathing with his shirt off, and the skin on his chest was darker than usual, glistening. Vik looked at her. "Are you going out tonight?"
"No," she said, and immediately regretted it. Vik was in a band and had a large group of friends, none of whom she had anything to say to, none of whom had anything to say to her. She hated being a sidekick and sitting with the other girlfriends.
"Well," said Vik, as Maureen calculated the relative excusing values of sudden sickness and a family trauma, "how d'you fancy a picnic?"
"What kind of picnic?" she said stiffly.
"You and me up the hills. Nice food, bit of a smoke?"
"Just us?" she said hopefully.
"Yeah."
"Your band aren't playing Hampden tonight, then?"
He stubbed out his fag in the ashtray. "Not tonight, no."
The Campsie Brae is a steep ridge overlooking the city from the south side. It was as close to the country as Maureen had been for a long time. They skinned up and smoked on the way over, keeping the windows up on Vik's Mini so that the car functioned as a giant bong. By the time they arrived they were giggly. Cars, large and small, old and new, were stopped along the dark country road, seeming abandoned until the headlights hit steamed-up rear windscreens and picked out shadows inside. Vik drove out onto the brae, moving away from an epileptic Honda Accord and over to the far side of the ridge. Below them lay the city, a carpet of yellow and red lights under a black sky. In the foreground were the high towers and small windows of Castlemilk housing scheme. As Vik stopped the car and pulled on the hand brake, the headlights picked out the nose of a shopping trolley thrown beyond the ridge. He tutted. "This isn't the country, this is the city with nae hooses."
Maureen grinned and handed Vik his bag of chips and gravy. "This is as close to the real country as I like to get," she said.
"Why?"
"It's scary out there. There's no lights and the shops are rubbish."
They laughed loud and long because they were spliffed, they'd just had sex three times, and they were together.
She sat up in the bed, watching him settle into sleep. It was too hot even for a sheet and his elbows were tucked into his sides, his hands modestly hiding his nipples, his cock lolling to the side when he shifted his legs. She said a soft good night to the child in the cupboard, feeling safe because Vik was here. As she looked at him she remembered all the transient boyfriends who had bridged the lonely gap between hard nights and harsh mornings. Still asleep, Vik's hand fumbled anxiously to find hers and hold it. Tenderness on the hinterland of intimacy.
Chapter 15
As Maureen woke up her first thought was of Ella, lying in the bed in the Albert with the sheet over her mouth and her red, vacant eyes. She sat up slowly, trying not to wake Vik. Yellow splinters of morning sun prickled around the heavy curtain and the air felt warm and sticky. She slid out of bed and went to the loo. Si'd be there again today, staring at Ella, frightening her, bullying his seventy-year-old mother. Maureen wanted to go and visit again, just to show him that Ella had a pal, someone who'd cross the town to see if she was okay. Back in the kitchen she made two cups of coffee and realized that she didn't know what Vik took in his. She made an approximation of all the coffee variations: a bit of powdered milk and one big sugar, leaving it unstirred so that he could drink the first half of the cup if he didn't take it.
Vik was still asleep, snoring gently, his face loose, his big hands clasped together on his stomach. She put the cups down on the side table and climbed back onto the bed, stroking his bristled cheek with her fingertips. "Wake up, Vik," she whispered softly. "Your mum's here and she's absolutely furious."
Vik was awake and sitting bolt upright within three seconds.
The day seemed especially bright as Vik drove her across town to the Albert. The white light breezed lazily, deflecting into the shadows, melting the sharp edges of the buildings. Maureen felt normal, sitting in the nice car with her handsome boyfriend and her formal clothes on again. She imagined being seen from the outside by some mystery viewer. She'd look happy, at peace, loved and cosseted, like a real person with a life and a future.