Mr Salary

by Sally Rooney

Frank seemed to be addressing these remarks to the peripheral venous catheter taped to the skin of his left arm. He picked at it with a morbid aimlessness as he spoke. I heard my own voice grow wavery like a bad choral performance.

  Why would I be left on my own? I said.

  He’ll go off and get married.

  It was clear that Frank didn’t know who I was. Realising this, I relaxed somewhat and wiped at my eyes over the edge of the paper mask. I was crying a little. We may as well have been two strangers talking about whether it would snow or not.

  Maybe I’ll marry him, I said.

  At this Frank laughed, a performance without any apparent context, but which gratified me anyway. I loved to be rewarded with laughter.

  Not a hope. He’ll find some young one.

  Younger than me?

  Well, you’re getting on, aren’t you?

  Then I laughed. Frank gave his IV line an avuncular smile.

  But you’re a decent girl, he said. Whatever they might say.

  With this enigmatic truce our conversation ended. I tried to talk to him further, but he appeared too tired to engage, or too bored.

  I stayed for an hour, though the visiting period lasted two. When I said I was leaving, Frank appeared not to notice. I left the room, closed the door carefully, and finally removed my paper mask and plastic apron. I held down the lever on the dispenser of disinfectant fluid until my hands were wet. It was cold, it stung. I rubbed them dry and then left the hospital. It was raining outside but I didn’t call Nathan. I walked just like I said I would, with my fur hat pulled down over my ears and my hands in my pockets.

  As I approached Tara Street, I could see a little crowd had formed around the bridge and at the sides of the road. Their faces looked pink in the darkness and some of them were holding umbrellas, while above them Liberty Hall beamed down like a satellite. It was raining a weird, humid mist and a rescue boat was coming down the river with its lights on.

  At first the crowd appeared vaguely wholesome, and I wondered if there was some kind of festive show happening, but then I saw what everybody was looking at: there was something floating in the river. I could see the slick cloth edge of it. It was the size of a human being. Nothing was wholesome or festive at all any more. The boat approached with its orange siren light revolving silently. I didn’t know whether to leave. I thought I probably didn’t want to see a dead human body lifted out of the Liffey by a rescue boat. But I stayed put. I was standing next to a young Asian couple, a good-looking woman in an elegant black coat and a man who was speaking on the phone. They seemed to me like nice people, people who had been drawn into the drama of it all not for tawdry reasons but out of compassion. I felt better about being there when I noticed them.

  The man on the rescue boat placed a pole with a hook down into the water, feeling for the edge of the object. Then he began to pull. We fell silent; even the man on the phone fell silent. Wordlessly the cloth pulled away, up with the hook, empty. For a moment there was confusion: was the body being stripped of its clothing? And then it became clear. The cloth was the object. It was a sleeping bag floating on the surface of the river. The man went back to talking on the phone, and the woman in the coat started signalling something to him, something like: remember to ask what time. Everything was normal that quickly.

  The rescue boat moved away and I stood with my elbows on the bridge, my blood-formation system working as usual, my cells maturing and dying at a normal rate. Nothing inside my body was trying to kill me. Death was, of course, the most ordinary thing that could happen, at some level I knew that. Still, I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was. I was a cold customer. It was too cold to think of things all the way through.

  By the time I got back to the apartment the rain had soaked through my coat. In the hallway mirror my hat looked like a dirty water vole that might wake up at any second. I removed it along with my coat. Sukie? Nathan said from inside. I smoothed down my hair into an acceptable shape. How did it go? he said. I walked inside. He was sitting on the couch, holding the TV remote in his right hand. You’re drowned, he said. Why didn’t you call me?

  I said nothing.

  Was it bad? Nathan said.

  I nodded. My face was cold, burning with cold, red like a traffic light. I went into my room and peeled off my wet clothes to hang them up. They were heavy, and held the shape of my body in their creases. I brushed my hair flat and put on my embroidered dressing gown so that I felt clean and composed. This is what human beings do with their lives, I thought. I took one hard disciplinary breath and then went back out to the living room.

  Nathan was watching TV, but he hit the mute button when I came out. I got onto the couch beside him and closed my eyes while he reached over to touch my hair. We used to watch films together like that, and he would touch my hair in that exact way, distractedly. I found his distraction comforting. In a way I wanted to live inside it, as if it was a place of its own, where he would never notice I had entered. I thought of saying: I don’t want to go back to Boston. I want to live here with you. But instead I said: Put the sound back on if you’re watching it, I don’t mind.

  He hit the button again and the sound came back, tense string music and a female voice gasping. A murder, I thought. But when I opened my eyes it was a sex scene. She was on her hands and knees and the male character was behind her.

  I like it like that, I said. From behind, I mean. That way I can pretend it’s you.

  Nathan coughed, he lifted his hand away from my hair. But after a second he said: Generally I just close my eyes. The sex scene was over now. They were in a courtroom instead. I felt my mouth watering.

  Can we fuck? I said. But seriously.

  Yeah, I knew you were going to say that.

  It would make me feel a lot better.

  Jesus Christ, said Nathan.

  Then we lapsed into silence. The conversation waited for our return. I had calmed down, I could see that. Nathan touched my ankle and I developed a casual interest in the plot of the television drama.

  It’s not a good idea, Nathan said.

  Why not? You’re in love with me, aren’t you?

  Infamously.

  It’s one small favour, I said.

  No. Paying for your flight home was a small favour. We’re not going to argue about this. It’s not a good idea.

  In bed that night I asked him: When will we know if this was a bad idea or not? Should we already know? Because now it feels good.

  No, now is too early, he said. I think when you get back to Boston we’ll have more perspective.

  I’m not going back to Boston, I didn’t say. These cells may look fairly normal, but they are not.

  About Faber Stories

  Faber Stories, a landmark series of gem-like volumes, presents masters of the short-story form at work in a range of genres and styles. From precious rediscoveries to gender-playful fictions, fabular futurism to uncanny imaginings, there are stories by a new generation of Faber authors alongside Faber classics. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

  Robert Aickman: The Inner Room

  Brian Aldiss: Three Types of Solitude

  Djuna Barnes: The Lydia Steptoe Stories

  Samuel Beckett: Dante and the Lobster

  Alan Bennett: The Shielding of Mrs Forbes

  Petina Gappah: An Elegy for Easterly

  Sarah Hall: Mrs Fox

  Kazuo Ishiguro: Come Rain or Come Shine

  P. D. James: The Victim

  Thom Jones: Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine

  Claire Keegan: The Forester’s Daughter

  David Means: A River in Egypt

  John McGahern: The Country Funeral

  Lorrie Moore: Terrific Mother

  Edna O’Brien: Paradise

  Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man Is Hard to Find


  Julia O’Faolain: Daughters of Passion

  Sylvia Plath: Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom

  Sally Rooney: Mr Salary

  Akhil Sharma: Cosmopolitan

  About the Author

  Sally Rooney was born in 1991 and lives in Dublin. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The White Review, The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Kevin Barry’s Stonecutter and The Winter Page anthology. Her first novel, Conversations with Friends, was the most popular debut in the 2017 end-of-year round-ups. Her second novel, Normal People, was released to wide critical acclaim in 2018. Rooney was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award for ‘Mr Salary’ and was the winner of the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award.

  Copyright

  First published in this single edition in 2019

  by Faber & Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  First published by Granta in Granta 135: New Irish Writing in 2016

  This ebook edition first published in 2019

  All rights reserved

  © Sally Rooney, 2016

  Series design by Faber

  Cover illustration © Faber

  The right of Sally Rooney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–35464–1