by Marian Keyes
‘Much colder.’
‘Colder than Cav…?’ began John Joe.
‘Colder than anywhere in Ireland,’ I interrupted, slightly irritated.
‘God, it sounds like an awful place, altogether,’ said Mike. ‘Why did you ever go there?’
I gave him a sad-girl smile and said ‘Why indeed?’
‘And this cocaine stuff is just like coffee?’ asked Peter.
‘No different. In fact I think they’re from the same plant.’
‘And how long were you going with this Luke character?’ someone else asked.
‘About six months.’
‘And he owes you money?’
‘Loads.’
‘That’s shocking.’
‘And he’s made me feel so humiliated,’ I sniffed, with a twinge of genuine grief.
‘No one can make us feel anything,’ interrupted Clarence. ‘Our feelings are our own responsibility.’
A silence fell and all the others swivelled round and stared at him in shock.
‘WHAT?’ Eddie demanded, his red face so scrunched up in annoyance and disbelief, he looked constipated.
‘Our feelings are ou…’ Clarence repeated, parrot-fashion.
‘You fucking eejit,’ roared Vincent. ‘You’re talking shite. Are you trying to get a job here?’
‘I’m only saying!’ protested Clarence. ‘That’s what they said to me when my brothers humbled me. No one can make us feel any way unless we let them.’
‘We’re trying to cheer up RACHEL,’ Don hooted. ‘The child is UPSET!’
‘I’m trying to cheer her up too,’ Clarence insisted. ‘If she can detach from this Luke fella…’
‘AH, SHUT UP,’ chorused several voices.
‘When you’ve been here five weeks, you’ll know what I mean,’ Clarence said loftily.
26
When I went to bed that night I was confused.
Luke’s not that bad, a little voice pointed out. You lied about him to get everyone on your side.
He is that bad, another voice insisted. Just look at what he’s done to you. He’s humiliated you, he’s got you into loads of trouble, he’s turned against you. He rejected you before you left New York and he reiterated it with that bloody questionnaire thing. So, yes, he is that bad. Maybe not in the exact way that you told everyone downstairs tonight. But he is that bad. Satisfied, I turned over to go to sleep.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I supposed, looking back, he’d always been madly uptight about me taking drugs.
I had never forgotten the way he had behaved at my party. The cheek of him considering he hadn’t even been invited!
Brigit and I had held the party about two weeks after the Rickshaw Rooms débâcle.
Throwing a party had actually been my idea. I was so fed up with not being invited to the cool East Village and SoHo parties that I decided to throw a party myself and invite every good-looking, well-connected, groovily employed person I could pretend to know. That way, when they had a party, they’d have to invite me.
Brigit and I selected carefully and strategically.
‘What about Nadia…?’
‘No-bum Nadia? What about her?’
‘She works at Donna Karan. Does the word discount mean anything to you?’
‘Can’t we just invite fat, ugly girls…?’
‘No. There aren’t any. Now, what about Fineas?’
‘But he’s only a barman.’
‘Yes, but think long-term here. If he’s our pal he’ll give us a drink when we’re broke. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, is all the time.’
‘OK, Fineas is in. Carvela?’
‘No way! Andrew the ad-man was mine until she came on the scene with her pierced tongue.’
‘But she knows Madonna.’
‘Giving a person a french manicure once doesn’t amount to knowing them. She’s not coming, OK? We need straight men, we’re very short of those.’
‘Whenever weren’t we?’
‘Helenka and Jessica?’
‘Of course. If they’ll come. Snotty bitches.’
We didn’t invite the Real Men. It didn’t even occur to us.
On the night of the party, we sellotaped three balloons to our front door, covered our living-room lamp with red crêpe paper and opened six bags of crisps. Although we already had three compact discs, we borrowed two more in honour of the occasion. Then we sat back and waited for the glittering event to unfold.
I had thought all a good party needed was truckloads of drink and drugs. Although we hadn’t actually bought any drugs for our guests, we had ensured plenty would be available by franchising out the provision to Wayne, our friendly neighbourhood dealer. And we had a heroic amount of drink packed into the kitchenette. But still our apartment didn’t look anything like a party.
I was baffled. As I sat in my empty, echoey living-room that Saturday night, I wondered what I’d done wrong.
‘It’ll be great when it’s full of people,’ Brigit promised me, then bit her knuckle and gave a muffled, anguished wail.
‘We’re ruined, aren’t we, Bridge?’ I asked, as the extent of my folly revealed itself to me. How had I ever thought I was worthy to hold a party and invite people who worked at Calvin Klein? ‘We’ll never eat lunch in this town again.’
The invitations had told everyone to come at about ten o’clock. But at midnight the flat was still like a graveyard. Brigit and I were suicidal.
‘Everyone hates us,’ I said, swigging wine straight from the bottle.
‘Whose stupid fucking idea was this?’ Brigit demanded tearfully. ‘I would have thought at least Gina and them would have come, they swore they would. People are so false in New York.’
We sat for a while longer, trashing everyone we knew, even those we hadn’t invited. We drank heavily.
In the absence of anyone else, Brigit and I turned on each other.
‘Did you invite Dara?’ she demanded.
‘No,’ I said defensively. ‘I thought you were going to. Did you invite Candide?’
‘No,’ she snarled. ‘I thought you were going to.
‘And where’s that fucking Cuban Heel?’ she added viciously.
At the time Brigit, with her great fondness for the Hispanic lads, was having on-off-on-again dealings with a Cuban. When he was nice to her she called him Our Man in Havana. When he was horrible, which was most of the time, she called him The Cuban Heel. His name was Carlos and I called him The Gyrater. He thought he was an amazing dancer and performed with the least provocation. It was enough to make you lose your lunch, the way he carried on, doing all manner of exaggerated swerve action with his tiny hips. On the days that I didn’t call him The Gyrater, I called him The Stomach-Turner, still in keeping with the rotation theme.
‘And where’s Wayne?’ I demanded. ‘There’ll be no point in anyone else getting here if he doesn’t.’
It was Wayne’s absence that was making me more jumpy than anything else.
‘Turn on some music’
‘No, because we won’t be able to hear the door.’
‘Put on some music! We don’t want people to think they’re at a wake.’
‘A wake might be more fun! Remind me again whose idea this was.’
The bell rang shrilly, interrupting our bitter sniping.
Thank God, I thought passionately. But it was only the Cuban Heel and a few of his equally tiny friends. They looked doubtfully at the balloons, the crisps and the empty, silent, rosy-lit room.
While Carlos put on some music and Brigit gave out shite to him, Carlos’s little friends undressed me with their limpid brown eyes.
I couldn’t see the appeal, I really couldn’t.
Brigit said that Carlos was amazing in the scratcher and that he had a ginormous willy. She would have loved it if I had got off with one of his friends but I would rather have rented out my vagina to a swallow to build a nest in it.
Music burst out, incongruously loud in the empty room
, drowning out Carlos’s, ‘Sorry enamorada’s, and ‘It wasn’t my fault, querida’s.
‘Here,’ I thrust a cereal bowl at Miguel, ‘have a crisp and stop looking at me like that.’
The music Carlos had put on was that South American, terminally up-beat, twenty-man trumpet band type. It was violently cheerful, conjuring up sun and sand and Rio and girls from Ipanema and brown boys with shining eyes. Men with frilly-sleeved shirts, big straw hats and bootlaceties, shaking maracas. The kind of music that’s described as ‘infectious’. It certainly made me feel sick. I hated it.
The bell rang again and this time it really was a guest.
The doorbell rang again and another ten people trooped in, bottles under their arms.
I got cornered by Miguel. To my surprise I couldn’t duck past him. What he lacked in size he made up for in nimbleness. His eyes were about level with my nipples and there they remained for most of our conversation.
‘Rachel,’ he sang to me, with a flashing, olive-skinned smile, ‘there are two stars missing from the sky, they are in your eyes.’
‘Miguel…’ I began.
‘Tomas,’ he beamed.
‘… OK, Tomas, whatever,’ I said. ‘There are two teeth missing from your mouth, they are in my fist. At least they will be if you don’t leave me alone.’
‘Rachel, Rachel.’ Doleful eyes. ‘Don’t you want a little Latin in you?’
‘If the little Latin in question is you, then no, I don’t.’
‘But why not? Your friend Breeegeeet likes Carlos.’
‘Brigit isn’t well in the head. And apart from anything else, you’re too small, I’d flatten you.’
‘Oh no,’ he breathed. ‘We Cubans are skilled in the love-making arts, you and I will explore many things and there is no danger that you will flat…’
‘Please.’ I held up a hand. ‘Stop.’
‘But you’re a Goddess, in my country you would be worshipped.’
‘And you’re a gouger, in my country you’d work in a chipper.’
He got a bit haughty at that, but unfortunately I still hadn’t annoyed him enough to make him go away.
Then I had a bright idea. ‘One minute, you’re Cuban, right? Have you any coke on you?’
That, luckily, was the wrong thing to say. It turned out that Tomas’s uncle Paco had recently come a ferocious cropper when the US Coastguard had discovered him in charge of a yacht crammed full of marching powder. Paco was currently languishing in a Miami prison and Tomas was outraged by my routine enquiry.
‘I didn’t say you were a criminal,’ I protested. ‘I just thought I’d ask, seeing as Wayne hasn’t got here yet.’
Tomas went on a bit more about family honour and similar shite before he gave me another melting gaze and said ‘Let us not quarrel.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I reassured him. ‘I don’t mind if we do.’
He reached up and took my hand. ‘Rachel,’ he stared meaningfully into my eyes, ‘dance with me.’
‘Tomas,’ I said, ‘don’t make me hurt you.’
Then, mercifully, Wayne arrived.
I nearly got trampled in the stampede for him but I exercised my right as hostess to get first go of him. I loved having cocaine at a party. It was so much better than anything else for enhancing my confidence and giving me the courage to talk to men. I loved the feeling of invincibility it fired me with.
Because, in a way, at some deep level, I knew I was attractive. But it was only after I’d done a line or two that that knowledge came to the surface. Drink would suffice. But cocaine was so much nicer.
And it wasn’t just me, but everyone else was so much nicer when I was coked-up. Better-looking, funnier, more interesting, sexier.
Brigit and I bought a gram between us. The pleasure from the hit began long before I actually snorted anything. Just effecting the transaction with Wayne was enough to get my adrenalin rushing. The dollars that I paid him were crisper and greener than usual. I parted with them joyously. I loved the feel of the little packet in the palm of my hand. I bounced it up and down, feeling the magic, dense weight of it.
The least fun bit about doing coke was the queueing to get into the ladies’ in the bar or club or wherever to take it. So the great thing about having a party in my flat was that there was no wait involved. Straight to my bedroom with Brigit to clear a little space on my dressing table.
Brigit wanted to discuss the Cuban Crisis.
‘I can’t bear it,’ she said. ‘He treats me like shite.’
‘Why don’t you break it off with him?’ I suggested. ‘He’s got no respect.’
Also I felt it reflected badly on me to have a flatmate who had dealings with someone as uncool as Carlos.
‘I’m his slave,’ Brigit sighed. ‘I can’t resist him. And do you know something, I don’t even like him.’
‘Neither do I,’ I said.
A mistake. Never agree with your friends when they’re going through a bad patch with their fella. Because the minute they’ve made it up, she turns nasty on you and says ‘What’s all this about you not liking Padraig/Elliot/Miguel?’ Then she tells him and they both hate you and rewrite history, saying that you tried to split them up.
And they give you the silent treatment whenever you’re in the same room. They don’t offer you a slice of their pizza anymore, even though they’ve loads, far too much for just two and you’re starving and haven’t had any dinner. And they make you feel paranoid and you worry that they’re going to move in together and not tell you until the last minute and you’ll end up having to pay both lots of rent until you find someone new.
‘Ah, sure, he’s grand,’ I said hastily. Then forgot all about it because we’d chopped out two gorgeous, plump, white lines.
I went first, and while Brigit was doing hers, I felt the tingling start in my face and melt the numbness that came from the initial hit. I turned to my mirror and smiled at myself. God, I was looking well tonight. Radiant. Look at how clear my skin was. See how shiny my hair was. Look at how warm my smile was. How impish, how sexy. And my two little eye teeth that stuck out and that I usually hated, I suddenly realized how much they suited me. They actually added to my charm. I smiled lazily at Brigit.
‘You look beautiful,’ I said.
‘So do you,’ she said.
Then we said in unison, ‘Not bad for a pair of heifers.’
And off we went and moved amongst our guests.
27
In no time at all the place was packed. There was a queue a mile long for the bathroom, of people who had shopped at the Wayne Market and who were still too inhibited to snort coke in public. Such decorum never lasted longer than the first line.
The music had gone to hell entirely during my brief absence. I tried to change it, but Carlos had hidden all the other discs. Brigit was no help as I frantically raced around trying to find where he’d put them. She was too busy trying to keep up with Carlos’s gyrating hips. I feared for our few ornaments. After an unusually violent swerve, I began to worry about our light fittings.
Then all four of the Cubans were dancing, nimble little feet, treble-jointed hips, giving every woman in the place the glad eye. I had to turn away.
More and more people kept arriving. I knew nobody except Brigit and the Cubans. The buzzer went again and another army of people waltzed in. The only good thing about them was that they were male.
‘Yo, girlfren’, what’s up? ‘Theywere about fourteen, with lots of hats and trainers and baggy clothes and skateboards and surfing terminology. Until then I had thought I was pretty cool. But my euphoria dipped briefly, bringing a feeling of middle-agedness. They were punctuating their sentences with funny hand gestures – all the fingers hidden except the little one and the thumb. They said ‘Bitchin” a lot. Their accents came straight from Harlem. Nothing wrong there. Except they had come straight from New Jersey. In a stretch limo. Suburban gougers trying to be cool. And they were at my party. Not good.
‘Hello Rach
el,’ said a voice. I nearly fell to the floor in an ‘I’m not worthy” pose. It was Helenka. I was deeply in awe of Helenka. I described her as a friend, but that was just wishful thinking.
Although we were both Irish she had made a much more significant success of her life in New York than I had. She was beautiful and had fantastic clothes and knew Bono and Sinead O’Connor and did PR for the Irish Trade Board and had been on the Kennedys’ yacht and never spoke well of anyone. I was honoured she’d come to my party, it had put the stamp of success on it.
The fact that she was wearing a floor-length chiffon coat that was in that month’s Vogue could only enhance the general feel-good factor.
‘So this is your little apartment?’ she asked.
‘Mine and Brigit’s.’ I smiled graciously.
‘Two of you live here?’ She sounded astonished.
I didn’t mind. I felt fantastic and nothing could upset me.
‘What’s this I hear about you getting off with one of those heavy-metaller boys?’ Helenka asked.
‘Me? Get off with one of them?’ I barked with forced laughter.
‘Yes, Jessica said she saw you at the Rickshaw Rooms practically having sex with him.’
Jessica was Helenka’s right-hand woman. She wasn’t as beautiful or as well-dressed or as gainfully employed or as well-connected as Helenka. The one area in which she held her own was the character-assassination one.
I cringed as I wondered what she’d said.
‘Did, er, she?’ was all I could come up with.
‘I’ve always kind of thought one of those boys was sexy in a mad, animal kind of way,’ Helenka said thoughtfully. ‘You know?’ She turned her emerald stare on me. She’s just wearing green contact lenses, I told myself, as I tried to stop myself quivering in awe of her beauty.
‘Luke,’ she said. ‘That’s the one. He’s got a great bod on him.’
‘Actually,’ I said, tripping over myself with pride, ‘Luke was the one I got off with.’
‘Or maybe it was Shake,’ she said absently. ‘Either way I’d never actually do anything about it.’
She gave me a scathing look and moved away. It looked as if I hadn’t made much progress on my project of being Helenka’s best friend.
