Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  ‘The mere thought…’

  ‘As if…’

  ‘He’s cracked.’

  ‘Him and his harebrained schemes!’

  ‘And we’re as bad – I took him seriously for a while,’ Katherine admitted.

  ‘I could see that,’ Tara said. ‘I didn’t, of course.’

  Then they howled once more at Fintan’s endearingly off-the-wall carry-on.

  43

  Lorcan was in bed with an exemplification of heroin chic: a pale-haired twenty-three-year-old ‘resting’ actress called Adrienne, who was the far side of anorexic. She was a great believer in mind over matter – the only way she could deal with her omnipresent hunger. It was also how she’d run Lorcan to ground. She’d kept bumping into him at auditions and, despite knowing he had a girlfriend, had pursued him relentlessly. Telling herself over and over to keep visualizing herself with him – the way she visualized eating three imaginary square meals a day, with imaginary snacks at eleven and four o’clock – and it would eventually become a reality. All she had to do was want him badly enough and he would be hers.

  And it had worked! Which came as a pleasant surprise because she’d been using the same technique to try and get an acting job and had been so spectacularly unsuccessful that she’d ended up having to moonlight as a beautician to keep the wolf from the door.

  In post-coital repose, their long limbs tangled, they lay on her second-hand futon. Not a buttock between the pair of them.

  Adrienne thrummed with well-being. Now that she’d bagged Lorcan she couldn’t believe she ever doubted that she would. And she had no intention of standing for any nonsense from him. Start as you mean to continue.

  She propped herself up on her bony elbow, the starved muscles in her arm trembling slightly as she leant her too-big-for-her-body head on her hand. ‘I hope this isn’t a one-night stand,’ she warned teasingly, looking down on him, stretched out in all his naked magnificence.

  Lorcan laced his fingers together behind his head, displaying silky tufts of golden underarm hair. ‘A one-night stand?’ he echoed, in high-pitched surprise. ‘Are you kidding?’

  Smugness bathed Adrienne in a warm glow. She’d been fairly certain she was on top of things with this man, but you never really knew…

  ‘I wouldn’t even dream of a one-night stand,’ Lorcan went on. ‘I don’t believe in them.’

  Her confidence burgeoned and swelled, and she had a surge of contempt for all the women who let men ride roughshod over them. You wouldn’t catch that happening to her. No, sir.

  ‘I mean,’ Lorcan said, with a glinty smile, ‘an entire night? Are you mad? Who wants that kind of commitment?’

  Even before Adrienne’s disproportionately large head had the chance to start reeling with confusion, Lorcan sprang gracefully from the futon.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She was panic-stricken.

  ‘Getting dressed.’

  ‘But why?’ Adrienne tried to sit up, unable to believe her surprise defeat.

  ‘I can hardly go home like this.’ He chortled, indicating his big, naked body.

  As he scouted on the floor for his abandoned underpants, Adrienne stammered, ‘But it’s one in the morning. You can’t leave.’

  She was too young and beautiful to be skilled at hiding disappointment. Not enough practice. Never mind, all in the fullness of time.

  ‘But I have to go,’ Lorcan protested, with affected innocence.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ he bellowed, as if he’d never heard such a stupid question in all his life, ‘because my girlfriend will be wondering where I am!’

  ‘But you don’t live with her.’

  ‘I said I’d call to see her.’

  Adrienne had retained a small pocket of hope that he might be joking, but as he pulled on his jeans and boots with head-spinning alacrity, she realized he was deadly serious and she’d been had. In more ways than one. Somewhere inside she began to weep. ‘I feel sorry for you,’ she threw at his back as, already fully dressed, he stood at her mirror.

  ‘Why?’ He sounded genuinely worried. ‘Is it because of my hair?’

  She goggled, sidetracked from the you-must-be-very-unhappy-if-you-have-to-be-so-cruel speech she’d been about to make.

  ‘No,’ she managed, ‘not because of your hair. I pity you because you must be really badly messed up to behave –’ She stopped. The curiosity was too much. ‘What about your hair?’

  ‘Well,’ Lorcan chuckled indulgently and circled his hand in a halo around his head, ‘look at the state of it. It’s a mess!’

  After the sexual shenanigans it was undeniably all over the place. A little curl stuck up on either side of the front of his head and in her humiliated, stunned state, they seemed to Adrienne like horns. Gleefully, Lorcan spotted a little jar of styling wax on her dressing table. Not what he’d usually apply, and certainly not a reputable brand – as far as he remembered it had only got two out of five stars in a survey he’d studied in Hairdressing Now! – but needs must. ‘How do you find this?’ He held the shiny magenta pot out to Adrienne. ‘I hear it gives good hold but can leave the hair slightly sticky.’

  ‘How can you talk about hair? I want to talk about our relationship!’

  Lorcan’s face creased with amusement. ‘Our what?’

  She didn’t answer. That had been a mistake.

  ‘You’ll never be happy,’ Adrienne declared thickly, parroting what some of Lorcan’s other leavings had said.

  Lorcan shrugged, briskly rubbing a penny-sized piece of pink wax between the palms of his hands, as instructed.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she demanded.

  Why indeed? He began lovingly to stroke the wax through his hair. There, my beauties, my pretties.

  ‘Speak to me,’ she shouted in frustration. ‘What do you want from life? What are you looking for? I mean, what do you WANT?’

  Lorcan looked at her reflection in the mirror for a long, thoughtful moment. ‘World peace.’

  In fact, as Lorcan let himself out of Adrienne’s flat he felt oddly bleak.

  In the three weeks since the Real Butter fiasco he hadn’t got any work. Nor had he been given the opportunity to leap from his understudy role and set the world ablaze as Hamlet. His numerous prayers that Frasier Tippett would break his neck or catch meningitis had come to nothing. What kind of God was there? Lorcan often raged. What kind of sick world was he running? Was there no justice?

  To fill in the gaps in his self-confidence, he continually reminded himself that he was irresistible to women, playing power games with them when no one else would play with him. But as he lounged up the road away from Adrienne’s he didn’t feel triumphant or restored. Instead he felt mild disgust. For Adrienne? Well, who else? But he realized his contempt for her had something to do with Amy.

  Lorcan burrowed through unfamiliar feelings, trying to figure it out. Finally he came to rest: Adrienne should have shown more respect for Amy, he decided. It hadn’t been very considerate of Amy’s feelings when Adrienne had put her hand on his thigh and said meaningfully, ‘I do a hundred pelvic-floor exercises a day.’

  Yes, Lorcan tut-tutted sanctimoniously, it was no way for her to treat Amy.

  44

  On Saturday night Liv and Milo became officially boyfriend and girlfriend. They launched their relationship by announcing coyly that they were going to a late-night film, to which Timothy responded joyously. ‘Grand! Let’s go to a horse opera. Is there a Clint Eastwood one on?’

  An awkward silence fell, then Liv blushed and muttered, ‘You see, it’s just Milo and I who are going.’

  JaneAnn was thrilled. ‘Every oul’ stocking meets an oul’ shoe,’ she opined. ‘I knew he’d find someone in the heel of the hunt. Milo’s a fine man, but there’s no one in Knockavoy for him to make a match with. Isn’t it true that travel broadens the mind? He deserves a good woman. Especially after he was so badly,’ she paused and bit back tears, ‘disappointed by Eleanor Devine
. I warned him,’ she went on. ‘I said to him not to trust any of that crowd out of Quinard. I know them seed, breed and generation. They wouldn’t be above stealing a cow on you and blaming the poor tinkers. But we’ve to make our own mistakes, I suppose.’ She smiled dreamily. ‘Liv will love it in Knockavoy.’

  Tara and Katherine exchanged astonished looks. JaneAnn already had Liv and Milo married off.

  ‘It’s the best ever that she’s a good Catholic,’ JaneAnn said. Although Liv was also a good Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Christian Scientist, Jew and atheist when it suited her. But no one disillusioned JaneAnn.

  ‘You don’t think she’ll find it hard in Knockavoy, so far from home?’ Tara felt obliged to say.

  ‘But she’s so far from home anyway,’ JaneAnn pointed out, with undeniable logic.

  ‘Well, what about her job?’

  ‘Milo has enough and more to take care of her. She won’t go short of anything with him.’

  ‘Maybe Milo will move to London,’ Katherine suggested carefully.

  JaneAnn exploded into peals of laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed. ‘Have sense, child,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Have a bit of sense. And him with a fine farm of land. Live in London, how are you!’

  ‘Why is he doing this to me, O Wise One?’ Tara asked Liv. ‘O Swedish Anna Raeburn, tell me why he wants to ruin my life? He’s supposed to be my friend.’

  It was Sunday afternoon and Tara, Katherine and Liv had escaped the hospital for a while and gone to a nearby pub.

  The problem was that Fintan had done it again – reiterated his unorthodox requests. Then, to make matters worse, he’d told Sandro and his family about what he wanted.

  JaneAnn had looked in shock from Tara to Katherine. ‘Girls,’ she stuttered, ‘you’ll have to do what he asks. How could you have that on your conscience?’

  Tara and Katherine flicked around, searching for an ally, but all they saw was Milo, Timothy, Sandro, Liv and, of course, JaneAnn, looking at them as if they were murderers.

  ‘Fintan’s become aware of his own mortality,’ Liv explained to Tara, quoting directly from Good Grief, her book of the moment. ‘Because time might be in short supply, it suddenly seems very precious. Not just his own but everyone’s.’

  All three had a short burst of empathy, then it passed.

  ‘The thing is,’ Tara said hopefully, ‘he hasn’t a leg to stand on because he’s not going to die. He’s on very powerful treatment and Hodgkin’s disease has a high rate of recovery.’

  Liv couldn’t let that pass. ‘The lump on his neck hasn’t become any smaller, and the spot tests don’t show any response to the drugs. You’re in denial, you can’t cope with how bad things are.’

  ‘All this might pass in a couple of days,’ Katherine cheered. ‘He’s had a hard time of it. No wonder he’s a bit mental.’

  Liv’s face darkened. ‘He’s not mental. I think he’s right. You should leave Thomas,’ she nodded at Tara, ‘and you,’ she headbutted in Katherine’s direction and shouted, ‘what you need is a good SEEING-TO!’

  Most of the pub turned to look. Before the apoplectic Tara and horrorstruck Katherine got a chance to tell her to shag off and mind her own business, Liv stomped from the pub.

  ‘What on earth’s up with her?’ Tara exclaimed.

  ‘How the hell would I know?’ Katherine replied hotly.

  They sat in resentful silence, Tara smoking, Katherine fiddling with Tara’s car keys.

  ‘Do you fucking mind?’ Tara exploded, slapping Katherine’s hand away with force. ‘You’re driving me mad.’

  Katherine set her face in a mutinous expression, but left the keys alone.

  ‘We should go back to the hospital,’ Tara eventually said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good, I don’t want to go, either. I’m terrified that they’ll all start on at us again.’

  ‘They can stick it.’ Katherine snorted.

  ‘How about if you leave Thomas,’ Tara suggested, ‘and I sleep with Joe Roth?’

  They laughed nervously, shakily reunited.

  ‘You don’t think…’ Tara paused. She had to say this delicately. ‘You don’t think Fintan’s asked us to do these things because he’s bitter that he’s very sick and we’re not? You don’t think it’s a kind of revenge? That our lives have to be destroyed like his?’

  That was going too far for Katherine. ‘I’d say this is simply a passing notion of his,’ she said, sharply. ‘He’s just having a shocking time, and gone a bit off the wall.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Tara threatened, ‘because if he doesn’t knock it off I’m not coming to visit him any more.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say!’ exclaimed Katherine, who had entertained the very same idea herself.

  ‘It’s easy for you.’ Tara was defensive. ‘You get the best part of the bargain. You’ll go to bed with a gorgeous bloke and in return I walk out on the man I love.’

  ‘It’s not like you think,’ Katherine said irritably. ‘I’m paralysed even thinking about it.’

  ‘Yeah, right!’

  ‘I am! You know I couldn’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t what? Give the glad eye to some lovely man who fancies you anyway? Try contemplating leaving a two-year relationship and being on your own at thirty-goddamn-one. That’s paralysing. Anyway, exactly why won’t you approach this Joe?’

  Before Katherine got a chance to refuse to answer, Tara exhaled with unexpected fury. Suddenly she knew exactly what needed to be said. ‘I’ll be frank, Katherine,’ she heard herself saying, and fixed Katherine with a burning look. ‘I didn’t want to say it, but it needs to be said. Fintan is right about you. You’d want to get involved. With life, as well as with a man.’ She couldn’t stop herself now. Too much pent-up emotion slopped over as she took a big, risky, angry breath, ‘The way you live is ridiculous, with your knickers and your control and your clean flat and your no boyfriends. Fintan’s not off the wall at all, he’s spot on with you! He loves you and wants you to be happy!’

  As Katherine’s face turned thunderous, Tara gathered speed and volume. ‘Whatever happened that time in Limerick, you can’t use that as an excuse for ever, not that I know what it was. I’m your best friend and I haven’t a clue.’

  Katherine finally found her voice. ‘Me?’ she hooted, in outrage. ‘Spot on with me? You cow. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I will now. Fintan has your best interests at heart. And you know you should leave Thomas, that’s why you’re so angry with Fintan –’

  ‘That is not why I’m angry with him –’

  ‘And you say the way I live is ridiculous! What about you?’ Katherine demanded, her cheekbones liver-coloured. ‘You’d rather be with someone as awful as Thomas than be without a man. I mean, that’s so pathetic. And look at how fat you’ve got.’

  Tara flinched, and so, fathoms deep, did Katherine, but she rushed on, unstoppable as a runaway train. ‘You overeat because he makes you miserable. And then you have the nerve to say Fintan’s trying to destroy your life when anyone can see he’s trying to help you, because he loves you.’

  ‘How could he love me?’ Torrents of rage from the past difficult weeks rushed to the surface. ‘When he’s asking me to leave the man I love.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything nicer than walking out on Thomas.’ Katherine radiated hot, sour bile. ‘I’m telling you I’d pay to see the expression on his clob, I really would.’

  ‘Why are you so mean about him?’ Tara shrieked, through clenched teeth.

  ‘Does he still have his little brown change purse?’ Katherine asked in contempt.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Well, that’ll do for a start.’

  ‘I’m going.’ Tara snatched up her car keys. ‘I’m not staying here to be called names and have my boyfriend insulted.’

  ‘What names did I call you?’

  ‘You called me a cow.’ Then Tara’s voice wobbled. ‘And you called me fat.’

  ‘Y
ou started it,’ Katherine shouted after her. ‘Going on about my knickers.’

  But Tara was gone, swept from the pub on a tide of hatred for Katherine, while Katherine remained, shaking. What was happening? They should be pulling together at this awful time. Why were they all turning against each other? When they’d always been the best of friends?

  45

  Joe Roth thought he was hallucinating. On Thursday morning he’d come into work as usual and Katherine ‘Sexual Harassment’ Casey had smiled at him. Smiled. At him. And it didn’t seem to be motivated by malice either. Not as a prelude to telling him she’d lost his expenses claim or that she’d had orders from on high to calculate his redundancy package. No, she just flashed her little pearly teeth, twinkled her normally solemn grey eyes, let the look linger a fraction too long, and said – pleasantly! – ‘Good morning, Joe.’

  What was going on? It was about ten days since she’d wept in front of him and told him she’d had bad news, but immediately afterwards she’d resumed her customary, distant, offhand manner. This morning’s friendliness was a bolt from the blue.

  And, as she undulated to her desk, he noticed something different about the way she was dressed. Shorter? Tighter? Whatever it was, he liked it. If he didn’t know different – and he knew very different – he’d think she was flirting with him.

  As Katherine reached her desk, she was shaking. What if this didn’t work? What if the only thing he’d really liked about her was her inaccessibility? She’d be completely wasting her time by becoming sweet and approachable.

  She hated having to do this but she’d no choice because she always had to do everything. She bristled with self-righteousness. No one else could be depended upon. She always had to pay the bills, lend people money, remember birthdays, drive when everyone else was drinking their heads off. Now she had to save Fintan’s life. No point expecting that irresponsible, selfish coward Tara Butler to lift a finger to help.

  At the thought of Tara, Katherine buzzed with high-voltage guilt: she’d broken the worst taboo and told Tara she was fat. Although she was only stating a fact, she bolstered herself. All that she’d said was true. God, she thought, I’m turning into Thomas. Speaking as I find. It was four days since Katherine and Tara had had their terrible row and, though they’d both mended their fences with Liv, they hadn’t made it up with each other. But they were coldly civil for the sake of the O’Gradys.