by Marian Keyes
To my surprise I didn’t feel fat and hideous, the way I often did in bed with a man. I held the balance of power because I knew Luke was dying for me.
I could feel his erection behind me, not quite touching my bum.
He nipped my neck again and moved his hand lower, down over the curve of my stomach (a quick suck in!), then lower still. I found myself catching my breath again, for quite different reasons.
He moved his hand over my stomach, barely touching me, circling to my hip bone, to my thigh, a quick brush over my pubic hair (I bit back a gasp and it escaped sounding like the high-pitched noise a dog makes when it gets its tail caught in a door), back to my stomach, over to my hipbone, on the inside of my hipbone, sliding down, moving in ever-decreasing circles.
But not ever-decreasing enough for my liking.
My head was telling me to slap his hand away and tell him to piss off but my groin was whimpering like a small child.
Oh keep going, I thought frantically, as he moved his fingers lower. Oh no! He’d returned to my stomach again. Then my thigh, this time slightly higher than where he’d been the last time, but not yet high enough.
I could feel the place between my legs fizz and melt, it was almost radioactive down there.
And still I lay unmoving.
The blood had left my head and moved en masse, like migrating refugees to my pelvic region, pouring in and filling and swelling. My head was dizzy and light, my crotch swollen and supersensitive.
While I lay, crouched on my side, wondering what to do, everything suddenly changed! Without any warning Luke put his arms under me and flipped me over. One minute I was in a rigor mortis foetal curl, the next I was flat on my back, Luke crouched above me.
‘What are you doing?’ I croaked. I was annoyed. Disturbed. I had to admit he was looking pretty good, the early morning stubble suited him and his eyes were dark and blue in the daylight.
I looked down and caught a glimpse of his erect member. Quickly, I looked away, appalled and excited.
‘I want someone to play with,’ he said simply. He smiled, had ever a smile been so melting? And I felt the last small remnants of my resolve totter and keel over. ‘I’m going to play with you.’
From the moment I’d woken up I’d kept my legs firmly clamped. But now he placed both his hands between my thighs and gently pushed them apart. And desire rippled through me. Ripped through me.
A sound escaped from my throat before I’d known I was going to make it.
‘Unless you don’t want to play?’ he said innocently. He bent down and bit one of my nipples, gentle but sharp, and again I whimpered with want.
I felt swollen and raw with desire for him. I could feel my clitoris throbbing, burning, as if it was both melting and on fire. Now I know what it’s like to have an erection, I thought dazedly.
He looked at me, and said ‘Well?’ Then he bit my other nipple.
If I’d tried to stand up and walk I knew I wouldn’t be able to. Everything about me felt heavier than usual. I was dreamy, dopey, drunk with desire.
‘Well?’ he said again. ‘Do you want to play?’
And I looked at him – blue eyes, white teeth, sexy thighs, big purple knob.
‘Yes,’ I admitted weakly. ‘I want to play.’
16
After it was over I stumbled out into the hall in search of the bathroom. I was badly disoriented when the first person I came face to face with was Brigit.
‘But…’ I mumbled. ‘But we’re not at home, are we?’
‘No,’ she said briskly. ‘We’re in the Real Men’s apartment.’
‘But what are you doi…’ Suddenly I understood.
‘Which one?’ I asked gleefully.
‘Joey.’ She was tightlipped and grim.
‘What happened?’ I demanded. I could have danced with joy. I wasn’t the only one.
‘Plenty,’ she muttered.
‘Did you shag him or just get off with him?’
‘I shagged him.
‘Twice,’ she added.
She looked wretched. ‘I shouldn’t have. I could kill myself. How could I? After the way he beat me.’
‘He beat you?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.
‘In Butlin’s, you thick, not last night.’
As I was leaving, Luke asked for my phone number. In silence I tore a page from my diary, neatly wrote my phone number on it, then, as he watched in astonishment, crumpled it up into a ball and threw it into the bin. ‘There,’ I said, with a dazzling smile, ‘that’s saved you the trouble.’
He was in bed, sitting with his back against the wall. Nice chest, I thought vaguely. For a fucking eejit.
He looked shocked.
‘Bye now,’ I said, with another blinding smile and swivelled on the backs of my mules. Agony cut into my heels and calves.
‘Wait,’ he called.
What now? I wondered. I supposed he wanted a fare-well kiss. He could want all he liked, it wouldn’t do him any good.
‘What?’ I asked, barely able to keep the impatience out of my voice.
‘You forgot your earrings.’
Brigit and I hobbled home, scuzzy and slit-eyed, still in our party dresses. Although it was only eight in the morning, it was already hazy and hot. We stopped at Benny, the Early Morning Jew’s stand, where we always got our coffee and bagels on the way to work and underwent intensive interrogation regarding our dishevelled states.
‘Well, lookee here, lookee here, whadda you two goils bin doin’? Huh? Huh?’ he demanded. He came out from behind the stand to inspect us. Half the street was looking and traffic was almost at a standstill as Benny gesticulated at the passers-by.
‘I yask myself,’ he thumped himself in the chest, ‘what’s goin’ on heah.’ General flailing of his arms to indicate Brigit and me, our uncombed hair and make-up that had run amok.
‘And what do I see?’ Gestures at his eyes.
‘I see a mess, dats whad I see.’ More flailing of the arms.
‘I taut youse two was nice goils,’ he complained.
‘Get a grip on your head, Benny,’ I said. ‘You did not.’ Great sex or no great sex, I had no intention of seeing Luke again. I could never live it down. I had a postmortem with Brigit. Not one of the nice ones where we shivered with delicious recall as we discussed a sexual encounter in minute detail and sometimes used the aid of diagrams to describe the man’s penis.
It was more of a damage-limitation type of chat.
‘Do you think anyone saw him kissing me?’ I asked Brigit.
‘Plenty of people saw you,’ she said in astonishment. ‘Me, for one.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Anyone who might, you know… matter.’
Luke rang me. Of course he did. The ones I wanted to ring me never did. He must have fished the crumpled piece of paper out of the bin after I left.
Brigit answered the phone.
‘Who’s speaking please?’ She asked it in such a strange voice that I looked up. She was waving frantically at me.
‘It’s for you,’ she said in a strangled voice.
She put her hand over the mouthpiece, made an agonized face, bent at the groin and turned her knees inwards the way men do when they get a cricket ball in the goolies.
‘Who is it?’ I asked. But I already knew.
‘Luke,’ she mouthed.
My head swivelled round the room, looking for an escape.
‘Say I’m not here,’ I begged in a whisper. ‘Say I’ve moved back to Dublin.’
‘I can’t,’ she whispered back. ‘I’d laugh. I’m sorry’
‘You whore,’ I hissed, as I took the phone from her. ‘I’ll remember this.’
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Rachel, babe,’ he said. Funnily enough his voice was nicer than I’d remembered. Deep and with the suggestion of a laugh in it. ‘It’s Luke. Remember me?’
I was pierced by the ‘Remember me?’ How many times had I said that to men I knew weren’t interested in me, but t
hat I’d persisted in ringing anyway?
‘I remember you, Luke,’ I said.
Which was more than some of the men had said to me.
‘So how’ve you been?’ he asked. ‘Was work OK for you on Wednesday? I was in rag order all day myself.’
I laughed politely, and toyed with the idea of hanging up and pretending that the phone had suddenly broken.
He told me about his week and I was sure he could sense my wild impatience barely concealed under my forced courtesy. I responded in the same wary, over-polite way that men who weren’t interested in me had done. A lot of ‘Is that right?’s and ‘Really?’s. It was fascinating to see it from the other side.
Eventually he got to the point. He’d like to see me again. Take me out for dinner, if I liked.
For the entire phone call, Brigit stood a few feet from me and energetically played an air guitar. She stood with her legs apart and wildly shook her hair up and down.
As I clumsily, awkwardly, declined Luke’s invitation, she thrust her groin at me repeatedly and waggled her tongue. I turned my back but she followed me.
‘Er, no, I don’t think so,’ I mumbled to Luke. ‘You see, I, ah, don’t want a boyfriend.’ A large lie. It was just him I didn’t want as a boyfriend.
Brigit was on her knees, playing frantically and facing the ceiling with an expression of ‘I’m having an orgasm’ that those guitarists are always going around with.
Luckily Luke didn’t try to persuade me that we could meet as friends. Boys that were Mistakes often tried that. They pretended they didn’t mind that I’d told them to stick it and insisted, they’d be happy just to be friends. I usually felt guilty enough to meet them. And the next thing I knew, I was slaughtered drunk and in bed with them.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I felt ashamed, emotionally itchy, because he was very nice.
‘Not at all,’ he said easily. ‘Sure, I’ll see you round anyway. We’ll have a chat.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Bye,’ and slammed down the phone.
‘You bitch!’ I shouted at Brigit, who by then was trying to slide along the kitchen tiles on her knees. ‘You wait until Joey rings you.’
‘Joey won’t ring,’ she said smugly. ‘He didn’t ask for my number.’
I sat down and rooted through my bag, looking for my Valium. I tipped three into my hand, then thought better of it and added another two. What an ordeal! I hated him for having rung, for putting me through that. Why was my life such a series of unpleasant events? Was there some sort of curse on me?
17
In the middle of a lovely dream, I was woken by a strange woman sticking a flashlight into my face.
‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘it’s time to get up.’
It was pitch-dark and freezing and I had no idea who she was. I decided I must be hallucinating, so I turned my back and closed my eyes again.
‘Come on, Rachel,’ she whispered loudly. ‘Don’t wake Chaquie.’
The mention of Chaquie brought reality crashing in on me. I wasn’t in bed in New York. I was in the Cloisters where a roving madwoman was trying to rouse me in the middle of the night. She must have been one of the more deranged inmates, who’d escaped from her locked room in the attic.
‘Hello,’ I said to her. ‘Go back to your own bed.’ Friendly but firm. Now, hopefully, I could resume my sleep.
‘I’m the night nurse,’ she said.
‘And I’m Coco the Clown,’ I said. I could out-derange her any day she liked.
‘Come on, you’re on breakfasts.’
‘Why isn’t Chaquie on breakfasts?’ I had heard somewhere that it was best to reason with lunatics.
‘Because she’s not on Don’s team.’
Suddenly the words ‘Don’s team’ rang a strange and unfriendly bell.
‘Am I… am I… on Don’s team?’ I asked haltingly. It had dawned horribly that perhaps I was. Didn’t I agree to something yesterday evening…?
‘Yes.’
A sensation of great loss descended upon me. I might have to get up after all.
‘Well, I’ve just resigned,’ I offered, hopefully.
She laughed in what might in other circumstances be described as a kindly way. ‘You can’t just resign,’ she cajoled. ‘Who’s going to do the breakfast if you don’t? You can’t let everyone down.’
I was too tired to argue. In fact, I was too tired to understand what was going on and get annoyed about it. I grasped one point and one point only. If I didn’t get up, people might not like me. But I was going to find this Don, whoever he was, and tender my resignation forthwith.
I was so tired and cold that I thought I might die of shock if I had a shower. And I was afraid to turn on the light and wake Chaquie in case she started talking at me again. So, in the darkness, I put on the same clothes that I had thrown on the floor the night before.
I wearily went to the bathroom to clean my teeth but there was already someone in it. While I shivered on the landing, waiting for the bathroom to be empty, the flashlight lunatic reappeared.
‘You’re up, good girl,’ she said, when she saw me. ‘Sorry I had to introduce myself like that. I’m Monica, one of the night nurses.’
I moved my toothbrush to my other hand so that I could shake hands with her. She seemed nice and kind. Motherly. Although not like my mother.
The bathdoor finally opened and, in a cloud of Blue Stratos, Oliver the Stalin lookalike waltzed out. He was just wearing his trousers and a facecloth slung jauntily over his plump shoulder. He looked nine months pregnant. His huge, bare, grey-haired stomach seemed to have a life of its own. He winked at me and said ‘Clean and Polish, wha’? It’s all yours.’
After I had half-heartedly thrown some water at myself, I dragged myself down the stairs. I was all set to find this Don and explain firmly to him that it was my sad duty to have to tender my resignation…
The moment I got into the perishingly cold kitchen, a plump, middle-aged, little man rushed up to me. He was wearing a tank-top and again I had that feeling that I had taken some hallucinogens a short time before.
He panted, out of breath, and said ‘Good girl yourself, I’ve got the black and white puddings on, will you do the sausages…?’
‘Are you Don?’ I asked in surprise.
‘Who else would I be?’ He sounded annoyed.
I was confused. Don was an inmate, I had seen him several times the previous day, in the thick of the brown jumpers. How come he was one of the team leaders? Haltingly, I said as much.
And he explained what I had already suspected. In the tradition of the Betty Ford Clinic, the inmates of the Cloisters did the majority of the housework themselves.
‘It’s to teach us responsibility and teamwork,’ he said, hopping from foot to foot. ‘And I’m this team leader because I’ve been here nearly six weeks.’
‘How many teams are there?’ I asked.
‘Four,’ said Don. ‘Breakfasts, that’s us, Lunches, Dinners and Hoovering.’
I started to explain that I couldn’t be on this team. Or on any team for that matter. I was allergic to housework, and, anyway, there wasn’t anything wrong with me, I knew all there was to know about responsibility and teamwork. But Don interrupted.
‘We’d better get cracking,’ he said. ‘They’ll be down any minute, bellyaching and demanding to be fed. I’ll just go and get the eggs.’
‘But…’
‘And keep an eye on Eamonn, would you?’ He said anxiously. ‘He’d eat the raw rashers if he could get his hands on them.’ With that he rushed away.
‘It’s not fair on the team leaders putting an OE on the breakfasts…’ he called back over his shoulder.
‘What’s an OE?’ I shouted after him.
‘Overeater,’ said a muffled voice. I turned and found Eamonn was also in the kitchen. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed him until then. Christ knows, he occupied about half of it.
The reason his voice was muffled was because he had the best part of a
loaf of bread in his mouth.
‘I suppose you’ll report me for this?’ he said, with a hangdog expression, as he stuffed slice after slice into his mouth.
‘Report you?’ I exclaimed. ‘Why would I report you?’
‘Why not?’ He looked and sounded hurt. ‘You’re supposed to care about me, you’re supposed to help me overcome my addictions, like I’m supposed to help you.’
‘But you’re a grown man,’ I said in confusion. ‘If you want to eat a family-sized sliced-pan…’ I paused and touched it. ‘… a frozen, family-sized sliced-pan in under a minute, that’s up to you.’
‘Right then,’ he said belligerently. ‘I will.’
I had said the wrong thing. And I was only trying to be nice.
‘Wum!’ He glared at me as he crammed his mouth full with more slices of bread, ‘Um eat unuther wum now!’ Muffled but adamant, he started on a second loaf. At least it was only the second that I was aware of. God alone knew how many he’d eaten before I arrived.
There was the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor and Don arrived back. He had Stalin in tow and both of them had their arms full of cartons of eggs.
Ah lads, lads.’ Don didn’t look too happy, as he took in the breadless scene.
He turned to me with an outraged expression. ‘What’s going on here? Ah now, lookit, Rachel, he’s after eating nearly all the bread, there won’t be any left for the TOAST!’ His voice had risen in pitch throughout the sentence, with the grand finale ‘TOAST’ uttered in a soprano that could have shattered glass.
I felt sick. I felt miserable. I was jetlagged, for God’s sake! And this was supposed to be a bloody holiday. I hadn’t had to get up this early when I was going to work! And I was sorry about Eamonn eating all the bread, I hadn’t realized that that was all there was, I might have tried to stop him otherwise. Everyone would hate me…
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, close to tears.
