by Marian Keyes
As I stood by the door, I thought I must surely be imagining it when I saw a big, heavy, booted foot appear around the landing. Followed by nine more of them.
Five giants marched towards me, be-denimed and hairy; bedecked and bestrewn with six-packs – the Real Men had arrived.
Who had invited them? How had they known? I was ruined.
Paralysed by panic, there was a split-second when I could have slammed the door shut and denied all knowledge of any party but Joey had already made eye-contact.
‘Get up the yard, yeh girl, yeh!’ he greeted me.
What the hell, I thought. I felt invincible. Strong, dazzling, confident. Able to meet any challenges head-on. I could survive this heavy-metal lowering of the tone.
In they trooped, acting as if they had every right to be there. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Brigit’s appalled face look from Joey to Carlos, then back to Joey again. She seemed to be trying not to scream.
As I politely greeted the boys, Helenka stared at me with her Wicked Stepmother look. I flushed but kept my head high. I was not afraid.
Luke was the last one in. ‘Howya.’ He grinned. ‘How are you?’
Jesus, I thought, my loins instantly afire, he’s looking well.
‘Hello,’ I purred, holding his gaze for what seemed like a day and a half.
Had he done something to himself? I wondered in a daze. Because, surely he was never that good-looking before? A head transplant, maybe? Perhaps he got the loan of Gabriel Byrne’s face for the evening?
I found I had stood up straight and had thrust my chest at him, saucy-temptress-fashion. My nipples had gone hard just from looking at him.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t want to go out with you,’ I said brazenly.
I would never have broached the subject if I hadn’t had a couple of lines. But I had and I felt compassionate and bountiful.
‘It’s OK.’ He looked amused.
‘No, it’s not,’ I insisted
‘It is.’ He looked even more amused.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked, with gentle anxiety.
He was silent for a moment then he laughed.
‘What?’ My invincibility was rocked slightly.
‘Rachel,’ he said, ‘I thought you were very nice. I would have liked to see you again. You didn’t want to. End of story.’
‘Is that all you thought of me?’ I asked sulkily.
He shrugged and looked puzzled. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Well, didn’t you fancy me?’
‘Of course I fancied you.’ He smiled. ‘Who wouldn’t?’ That was more what I wanted to hear.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought you were beautiful. And very nice. But I respect your decision. Now I’ll leave you to it and I’ll go and mingle.’
‘Thought?’ I grabbed the back of his jacket and pouted.
He turned to me in surprise.
‘Thought?’ I said again. ‘You thought I was beautiful. Past tense?’
He shrugged, as if in confusion.
‘Rachel, you didn’t want to go out with me. Why are you asking me this?’
Silently I stepped close to him and, while he gazed at me in surprise, I hooked my index finger into the waistband of his jeans. And, holding his startled look, in one fluid motion I pulled him towards me.
I nearly laughed out loud with pleasure. I felt so empowered by my unusually raunchy behaviour – I was a woman in touch with her sensuality, who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it. His chest was against mine, his thighs were against mine, I could feel his breath on my upturned face. As I waited for him to kiss me, I was already planning how to get everyone out of my bedroom. There was no key for the door, but I’d put a chair under the handle. And wasn’t it uncanny that I’d had my legs waxed just the day before?
The spark between Luke and me was undeniable. Not for the first time I regretted that he was so uncool. But maybe if he had his hair cut and bought new clothes and…
Anytime you like with the kiss, Luke.
Anytime at all.
But he didn’t kiss me.
I waited impatiently. It wasn’t going according to plan, what was wrong with him?
‘Jesus.’ He shook his head and, with a small push, moved away from me. Where was he going? He was mad about me and I was very attractive, very sexy. So what was going on?
‘The arrogance of you,’ he said with a little laugh.
I didn’t understand him. I was being an assertive woman. I was a sister doing it for herself. Just like the magazines were always telling me to. I couldn’t understand why it had backfired so unexpectedly.
‘Tell me, Rachel,’ he asked confidentially, ‘what were you sniffing earlier?’
What had that got to do with anything? I wondered.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, get back to me when your ego has returned to earth.’
And he walked away!
My confidence was shaken. As if the lights had dimmed briefly, the party ceased to be a glittering social occasion. And was just a scrum of piss-heads and liggers crammed into an unfeasibly tiny New York apartment with three balloons sellotaped to the front door.
And then I squared my shoulders. It was just about time for another line. There was a great selection of attractive men standing in my front room. There was even a chance that some of them weren’t gay.
Luke Costello could feck off for himself!
28
I got lucky that night. I got off with a bloke called Daryl who was someone important at a publishing house. He said he knew Jay Mclnerney and had been to his ranch in Texas.
‘Oh,’ I breathed, impressed.’He has two ranches?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Daryl.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I knew he had a ranch in Connecticut, but I didn’t know he had one in Texas too.’ Daryl looked a bit taken aback.
I realized I was talking too much.
When we couldn’t get into my bedroom for a shag we left the party and went to Daryl’s apartment. Unfortunately things took a turn for the very weird soon after we got there.
We finished the rest of my coke. But right about the stage we should have been clambering into bed together, out-invincibling each other, he curled up into a ball and started to rock backwards and forwards, saying over and over again in a baby voice ‘Mama. Ma. Ma. Mam. Mah. Mama.’
At first I thought he was joking, so I joined in and did a bit of mamaing myself. Until I realized that this was no joke and that I was nothing but a fucking eejit.
I straightened myself up, cleared my throat and tried to talk sense to him, but he was beyond hearing or seeing me.
By then, the sun had come up. I stood in the beautiful, airy, white-walled loft on West Ninth Street, staring at a grown man rolling around like a toddler on his varnished, cherry-wood floor. And I felt alone with such intensity, it was as though I was hollow. I watched the dust motes dancing in the early-morning light and felt as if I had a hotline to the centre of the universe and that too was hollow, empty and alone. I contained the emptiness of all of creation in the area that was once my stomach. Who would think that one human being could contain so much nothingness? I was an emotional Tardis, containing impossibly vast deserts of abandoned emptiness, weeks’ worth of walking through a sandy isolated vacuum.
Emptiness around me. Emptiness within me.
I looked down at Daryl. He had gone to sleep with his thumb in his mouth.
I thought about lying down beside him, but somehow I didn’t think he’d be too pleased to find me there when he woke up.
I hovered uncertainly, not knowing what to do. So I tore a page out of my notebook and wrote my number on it and then put ‘Ring me!’ and signed it ‘Rachel’. I worried about whether I should put ‘Love, Rachel’or just ‘Rachel’. I thought ‘Rachel’was safer, but less friendly. Then at the bottom I wrote, ‘The girl from the party’, just in case he didn’t remember me. I toyed with drawing a picture of myself but managed to get a
grip. Then I wondered if the exclamation mark in ‘Ring me!’ was too pushy. Perhaps I should have written’Give me a call…?’ instead.
I knew I was being silly. But when he didn’t ring me, as he undoubtedly wouldn’t, I would torment myself with what I had or hadn’t done. (Maybe the note was too cold – perhaps he wouldn’t think I really wanted him to ring. He could be sitting at home this very minute, dying to ring me, but he thinks I don’t want him to. Or maybe it was too aggressive – he might have realized how desperate I am. I should have played hard to get by writing ‘Don’t ring me’, etc, etc.) I put the note under his hand, then went to look in his fridge. I liked to see the fridges of stylish people. There was nothing except a slice of pizza and a round of Brie. I put the cheese in my bag and went home.
I tried to force myself to walk back through the sunlit morning to Avenue A because I believed exercise was a great way to normal out.
But I couldn’t do it. The streets were menacing and threatening. Science-fiction land. I felt the few people that were out at that time – six o’clock on a Sunday morning–were turning and staring after me. I sensed every eye in New York on me, hating me, wishing me ill.
I found myself walking faster and faster, almost running.
When I saw a cab approaching, I nearly fell to my knees in gratitude. In I clambered, my palms slick with sweat, just about able to tell the driver my address.
And then I wanted to get out. I didn’t trust him. He kept looking at me through his rear-view mirror.
With horror, the realization hit me that nobody knew where I was. Or who I was with. Everyone knew New York cab-drivers were total psychopaths. This cabbie could take me to a deserted warehouse and kill me and not a single person would know.
No one had seen me leave the party with Darren, Daryl, whatever his name was.
Except Luke Costello, I realized, with relief laced with something unpleasant – he’d seen me and made some smart remark. What was it?
With a belly-flop sensation, I suddenly remembered the my-finger-in-waistband-of-Luke’s-jeans episode and I wanted to vomit with shame. Please God, I begged, make it not have happened. I’ll give next week’s wages to the poor if you’ll only erase it.
What had I been thinking of? I wondered in horror. Him, of all people? And the worst part of it was that he’d turned me down, he’d rejected me!
I returned to the present with a jolt as I felt the taxi-driver’s eyes on me. I was so scared I decided to jump out at the next lights.
But then – mercifully – I realized that I was probably only imagining the sense of menace in the car. I nearly always got paranoid after a good session and I went weak with relief when I remembered that. There was nothing to be frightened of.
Then the man spoke to me and, even though logically I knew there was nothing to worry about, the fear flared up again.
‘Been out partying?’ he asked, meeting my eyes in the rear-view.
‘I stayed in my friend’s apartment,’ I said, my mouth dry. ‘A girlfriend’s,’ I emphasized. And my room-mate is expecting me around now.
‘I called to tell her I was on my way,’ I added.
He said nothing but he nodded. If the back of someone’s head can look menacing, then his did.
‘If I’m not home in ten minutes, she’s going to ring the police,’ I told him. That made me feel better.
Briefly.
Surely he was going the wrong way?
I followed our route with my heart in my mouth.
Yes, he was. He was. We were going uptown and we should have been going downtown.
Once again I wanted to jump out. But every traffic light was green. And we were going too fast for me to signal to anyone but, in any case, the streets were empty.
Irresistibly drawn back to the mirror, I found he was still staring at me.
I was fucking done for, I realized with calm acceptance.
A few seconds later terror burst into flames within me.
Unable to bear any more, I rooted around in my bag for the Valium. Making sure he didn’t know what I was doing, I surreptitiously snapped back the lid and took out a couple. While I pretended to rub my face I got them into my mouth. And waited for the fear to leave me.
‘What number do you want?’ I heard my murderer say. When I looked out I realized I was nearly home. I was giddy with relief; he wasn’t going to murder me, after all!
‘Just here,’ I said.
‘We hadta go the long way round ‘coz they’re digging the street on Fifth,’ he said. ‘So take a coupla dollars off the meter.’
I thrust the full price at him, plus tip. (I wasn’t that strung out.) And I gratefully exited.
‘Hey, I know you,’ he exclaimed.
Oh oh. Whenever someone said that I was afraid. They usually remembered me because I’d made a show of myself. I never remembered them for exactly the same reason.
‘You woik in the Old Shillayleagh Hotel, right?’
‘Right.’ I nodded nervously.
‘Yeah, I knoo I knoo ya when ya got in, and I kept looking atcha, but I couldn’t remember from where. I see ya when I come in to the hotel to pick up a fare.’ He was all smiles. ‘You Irish? You sure look it with your black hair and your freckles. A proper colleen.’
‘Yes.’ I tried to force my rigid face to look pleasant.
‘Me thoo. My great-great-grand-daddy was from Cork. From Bantry Bay. You know it?’
‘Yes.’
‘McCarthy’s the name. Harvey McCarthy.’
‘Actually,’ I said in surprise. ‘McCarthy is a Cork name.’
‘So how you doin’?’ He was all set for a chat.
‘Fine,’ I mumbled. ‘But my room-mate, you know, I’d better…’
‘Yeah, sure, but take good care now, you heah!’
The apartment was like a scene from a rockumentary. Cans and bottles and overflowing ashtrays everywhere. A couple of people I didn’t know were asleep on the sofa. Another body was thrown on the floor. None of them stirred as I let myself in.
When I opened the fridge to put the cheese in, an avalanche of beer cans fell out around the kitchen floor making a ferocious racket. One of the sleeping bodies jerked and mumbled something that sounded like ‘Parsnips on the internet’, then all was quiet once more.
The Valium hadn’t made any impact on my paranoia so I spilled a few more into my hand and washed them down with a can of beer. I sat on the kitchen floor and waited to feel normal.
Eventually I thought I could face going to bed. When the emptiness took hold I hated going to bed alone. I opened another can of beer and went into my room. Where to my surprise there were two, no wait, three. No, one minute, four people already in my bed. I didn’t know any of them.
They were all men, but none of them looked attractive enough for me to bother climbing in with. Then I realized that they were the ‘Yo’girlfren’, what’s up?’ crew. Little bastards, I thought. The bloody cheek of them.
I tried pushing and poking to wake them up and get them out. But nothing doing.
So I crept into Brigit’s room. It smelt of alcohol and smoke. Sunlight was sneaking under the blinds and the room was already warm.
‘Hello,’ I whispered, sliding into bed beside her, ‘I stole you some cheese.’
‘Where did you go to with the coke?’ she murmured. ‘And you shouldn’t have left me to deal with this on my own.’
‘But I met a man,’ I explained quietly.
‘It’s not on, Rachel,’ she said, her eyes still closed. ‘Half that gram was mine. It wasn’t yours to take.’
My fear ripped wide open again. Brigit was cross with me. My free-floating paranoia had something concrete to hang on. I wished fiercely that I hadn’t left. Especially considering how fruitless the whole mission had been.
Mama.
Mama indeed.
Fucking headcase, I thought dismissively.
I hope he rings.
Brigit turned over and went on sleeping. But I co
uld feel her anger. I didn’t want to be in her bed anymore, but I had no place else to go.
29
I was nearly sick with fear that the questionnaire might be read out in that morning’s group. Please God, I prayed. I’ll do anything you want, just let this cup pass from my lips.
The only thing was that the inmates seemed to be on my side, most of them anyway. When I went down to make the breakfasts, Don shouted ‘What do we WANT?’ And Stalin replied ‘Luke Costello’s bollix for earrings.’
Then Don shouted, his eyes bursting from his skull, ‘When do we want IT?’ And Stalin replied, ‘Now!’
And there were energetic variations of the theme all through breakfast. Among the things wanted were Luke Costello’s kneecaps for ashtrays, Luke Costello’s arse for a doormat, Luke Costello’s willy for a bracelet and, of course, Luke Costello’s bollix in an eggcup, for target practice, for golf-balls, to juggle with, to play marbles with and for gobstoppers.
I was deeply touched by their support. Of course, not everyone joined in. Mike didn’t, he just wore an unreadable expression on his granite-ugly face. Most of the older people who’d been there for more than a month looked on with mouths pursed in disapproval. Frederick, who had attained the grand age of six weeks, tutted and tisked and said ‘You shouldn’t be blaming anyone else, you should be looking to see what your part in all of this is.’ Then everyone who was on my side – Fergus, Chaquie, Vincent, John Joe, Eddie, Stalin, Peter, Davy the gambler, Eamonn and Barry the child all shouted ‘Ah, shut up.’ Even Neil did, although I was happy to do without his support.
I carefully watched Chris, desperate for a sign that he was still my friend, and I felt hurt when he didn’t say he wanted Luke’s balls for anything. But to my relief he didn’t seem to be allying himself with the self-righteous oldtimers either. And just as we were on our way to group – me feeling like I was going to face a firing squad – he grabbed me.
‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Can I have a quick word?’
‘Sure,’ I said, desperate to please him, wondering if he still liked me even though he knew I was a liar.
