2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie

by Brian Gallagher

  While I am polluting my insides with the stuff, I notice these raggedy bloodstains on the armrest of the couch where I’ve just been sitting. I quickly examine my hands. Cuts everywhere. Serves her right.

  I walk towards the only brittle object in the room which has survived my onslaught, bar the orange porcelain ducks and the orange Cointreau: the fish tank, which I have studiously ignored until now.

  It’s a stunning community aquarium, more beautiful even than our own. It contains a magnificent aquascape. On a gravel of coral chips and coral sand rises up a structure of pale tufa-rock boulders with crevices and caves, arches and terraces. There are a few light-green living rocks: that one there, for instance, is an Atlantic anemone, populated by an utterly mouth-watering invertebrate melange of tubeworms, fanworms and soft corals.

  And the fish? They’re just so cute. I bend down to look. The first one is having a little stroll. Possibly he’s on a reconnaissance mission. I think I’ll say hello.

  Hello little Hyphessobrycon erythrostigma! How could they call you that? Your nickname is so much nicer: bleeding-heart tetra, what with the stabbed bloodshot look in your pretty eyes.

  Oops! There is your cousin rounding the corner. Also, there’s a lemon-peel angelfish or should I say, a Pterophyllum scalare, poking its nose into the glass in a fairly doomed attempt to make contact with me. That lemon-yellow colour again – it’s a real obsession with her. Behind it flutters a yellow tang (the Latin escapes me) possibly on a food crusade. The tangs are great lettuce eaters, though they won’t find too much lettuce in there right now.

  Moving on to the right side of the tank, there’s a game of rounders going on between this humbug damselfish, which resembles a zebra with fins and prefers bloodworms and shrimp for dinner, and several guppies.

  That’s when I spot the solitary tiger barb, an aggressive, revolting-looking fish with green and black scales, and a huge fanlike fin bearing red and black tiger markings. This woman is not great on aquatic politics. She ought to know that you should never mix the tiger barb with the guppy. Give them a day or two and they will be minus a fin or two.

  On that point, lemon-peel angelfish eat newborn guppies for breakfast. What d’you bet I’ll soon see a piranha cruising the joint waiting to pick up some floating breakfast?

  Still. This is, truly, a marvellous aquatic tapestry.

  My ice-pick seems to crash all by itself – effortlessly – into the glass, sending torrents of cold water over my legs and feet, and as I watch its life draining out before me I am totally unmoved to see a squad of fish sucking desperately against the drenched woodblock floor, fins flapping uselessly against their pale bellies. A guppy is trapped at the bottom of the tank, poor waterless, thankless thing.

  God, I’m drunk! Drunk like a fish.

  Leaving them there flippering on the floor, I exit the room, thinking: I have waved goodbye to what was once a self-image of decency and temperance. I am a destroyer. An anarchist. A hooligan. An Antichrist. A savage. An ogre. A Goth. A hag.

  A terrorist, actually.

  And it’s giving me this warm, happy glow inside.

  Upstairs, I enter a tidy lavender-smelling bedroom. There is a double bed, cosy and plump with pillows, with a man’s shoes underneath the bed-end. The jilted husband?

  On top of the built-in dressing-table is a magnolia plant, and a photograph of a woman and a man. It’s her. She has the same long, wavy, golden hair. In the photo she’s shy and feminine-looking, if slightly girly. She’s got these large, sparkling eyes and a nice smile. She’s got freckles and I know some people would call her cute. The man, certainly in his mid-thirties, is strong and wolf-like.

  I ascend a narrow metal ladder to the attic. I penetrate the darkness above and flick on a nearby switch. It is a tiny cramped space, smelling strongly of timber, paint and white spirit. Just beneath the V-shaped rafters is an easel on its stand carrying an unfinished painting: a formless wash of colours splashed together like a patchwork quilt. There are paintbrushes lying on a fold-up table alongside paint tubes and palettes, and sticking out of jamjars. On the floor, perched against the brick partition wall, are a few dozen canvases and a few framed paintings.

  I am heartened by the first painting: entitled Foetus. Its naivety beggars belief. This is funny. I have to call Sylvana.

  When she answers, I tell her I’m in Nicole’s home.

  “Oh,” she says after a long pause, “I was just wondering.”

  “I’m in the attic, right?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m staring at this painting…”

  “She’s an artist?”

  “Could you please refrain from abusing language. Slobbering on canvas, Sylvana, does not constitute art. Now, this glorified muck, which I am presently holding in my hands, is supposed to represent a foetus, okay?”

  “She’s probably pregnant.”

  “It is pinky red and has two tiny white blotches, which are supposed to be the hands, and a large round white blotch with a dark thing in the middle – that’s supposed to be the head. Are you with me so far?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Now this…blob – which is meant to be a foetus although it looks more like a shrimp – is surrounded by all this red stuff…”

  “I like the symbolism,” she remarks.

  She’s trying to tease me.

  I snatch up another canvas. On the back are scrawled the words Wind and Water. Wind and piss more like it.

  “Julie,” she says in a more serious voice, “I think you should leave now.”

  A third canvas is more intriguing. It consists simply of eight small figures spaced randomly all over it. Each figure resembles a face: each is composed of patterns of parallel strokes like the ones I saw on that mirror thing hanging outside the front door.

  I describe it to my friend.

  “She clearly has talent,” Sylvana observes.

  Cursing, I switch off my mobile and fling Foetus at the water tank, causing a dull booming sound. I now glare at each painting in turn, ranged along the wall, verbally tagging each one with a juicy linguistic crudity.

  What if Sylvana has a point? What if the tart does have talent? What about those portrait sketches of Ronan? They worry me because they suggest (but no more than that) that she has something vaguely resembling a brain, and Ronan admires and respects women with brains.

  I could destroy all this ‘art’ shite with one swipe. I could do it. I could take each painting in turn, apply a spoonful of white spirit and cause a small fire sensation.

  But I don’t.

  Why not?

  Because I have just heard the sound of a vehicle in the driveway.

  I know I should be concerned, but I can’t seem to find the energy. So I redescend the ladder at a fairly leisurely pace – probably the Cointreau.

  I walk to the front bedroom and look out. Oh yes, I’m thinking, how interesting. There’s a man out there in the front driveway, climbing out of a Land Rover. He reminds me a lot of the man in that photograph. Fancy that!

  Calmly I descend the stairs.

  You can hear his footsteps on the gravel.

  I run out to the fitted kitchen and unlock the kitchen door into the garden, my eyes glancing off a magazine on the table. I stop and look again a second time. On the cover is this huge pink face of a grinning baby. It is entitled Your Baby and You: help and advice through pregnancy, birth and early parenthood.

  She has a baby?

  Sound of the front door opening.

  Might as well steal the magazine too.

  I grab it, shove open the back door, race down the garden and take a running jump for the top of the back garden wall but I more or less flatten my nose against the plaster so I try a running jump again. This time I scramble over and hit the ground head first. I’m in an alleyway. I pick myself up and run in any direction.

  Wandering around the locality for at least a half-hour, drip-drunk, I eventually locate my MG. I realize I’ve been carr
ying the ice-pick the whole time, in full view. That’s what you get when you pump alcohol into your bloodstream: stupid.

  I lock myself inside the car, ignite, accelerate and zoom away like I have a whole squadron of police cars after me.

  And maybe I do.

  9

  By the time I’ve driven back to our apartment complex at top speed, my bloodstained fingers are beginning to sting against the steering wheel. Evidence – that highly irritating disincentive to crime.

  Catching a sudden glimpse of Ronan walking out of our condo, I pull the reins and screech into the nearest parking bay – one up from our own. He turns, but before he sees me I’m gone. He must be on his way into town to meet me in La Boheme’s for six, dutiful husband that he is.

  I pull into an empty parking space and switch off the engine. There he is, his head bobbing like a buoy over the hedge top as he approaches his vehicle. He stops. He is standing with his back to me in the far corner of the car park underneath a cherry tree whose leaves are the colour of violent purple.

  He appears to be observing something. His Porsche, at a guess. I scroll down my window and wait, and watch and listen with a nice little fizzle of anticipation.

  He is now circling a large object in a broad arc – very cautiously – like hunters circling a freshly slain lion. He is examining a large object, which I cannot imagine ever moving again. Now he’s glancing around him with darting, suspicious movements, but there is no one in sight and although I’m sitting crouched in the only black MGF 1.8i in these suburbs, the poor man still doesn’t see me.

  He goes to the edge of the car park, beyond which lies a football pitch. On it a soccer match is being waged by teenagers wearing a colourful assortment of jerseys.

  Now you can hear something that is sheer joyful music to the ears. It is a Vivaldi quartet awakening the buds of an Italian springtime. It is a Mozart aria cutting through the glassy air of Salzburg. It is a Debussy sonata filling your head with mystifying sadness as you tread the silent back alleys of Paris.

  It is the sound of Ronan roaring.

  I open the car door to improve the reception. He is screaming at those poor lads. The subject? His recently deceased Porsche. My heart goes out to him at this difficult time, for his soul is suffused with agony. What a horrible deed. What an appalling offence against his property.

  My pining husband is still hurling accusations at those youngsters. They in turn are answering back, as is their constitutional right. You can hear their high-pitched voices pierce the air in stupefied rebuttal. The poor things. They who have taken time out to enjoy an innocent game of footie and thus in their own way to recreate the meaning of life. I regret having put them in this position, but there you are.

  Ronan marches back to his car, utterly defeated-looking. He should lighten up and join the boys for a game of football; he’d know all about defeat then. A chimpanzee would make it to the first eleven sooner than Ronan.

  Now he is leaning with both arms against the roof of his car, lamenting, head bowed, shoulders hunched, grief-struck as if someone has just died on him.

  There’s a term in ancient Greek, frequently on Ronan’s lips whenever he rambles on about dramatic structure in Sophocles.

  This is the term: tragedy.

  How very appropriate.

  Point of information: how will he get into town to meet me in La Boheme’s? Will he take a taxi instead?

  I’ll ask him. Out comes my mobile. I input.

  Out comes his own mobile, which he raises to his head. “Oh, it’s you,” he says.

  “Jesus, don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Am I calling at a bad time?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m going straight home: I don’t feel like dining out tonight.”

  Creepy silence.

  “What do you mean you’re going straight home?”

  “I mean: I’m going in the opposite direction to away.”

  “Stop being a bloody idiot, Julie.”

  “I apologize.”

  Ronan is normally so composed, so soft-spoken. He prides himself on never raising his voice, on sublimating any annoyance through the cool channel of his so-called intellect.

  “We made an arrangement,” he says.

  “It’s an argument, I grant you that.”

  I pay him the courtesy of explaining that on account of the acidification of my digestive tract I just don’t feel up to eating dinner in a restaurant tonight, and it suits me better to go home directly and await his return.

  I hear this great sigh-heave. “Julie, I’ve already arrived in town.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “What?”

  “So you’re in town?”

  “We had a date. I booked a table overlooking the canal.”

  “How romantic.”

  “They’re doing Duck Provencale tonight.”

  Has he any idea how ridiculous that sounds?

  “That’s romantic too, although not for the duck.”

  “It’s your favourite dish, Julie.”

  How well he understands my weakness for quack-free Provencale-sauce-dunked duck.

  “I’m sorry, Ronan. I have to go home.”

  Pause.

  “Jesus,” he says then, “you’re about as dependable as a…”

  I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking something disparaging about my hormonal system: I’m unreliable, unpredictable, liable to spontaneous bursts of scattiness, mercuriality, irresponsibility, insanity…cantankerosity? It’s the usual put-down.

  “…as a hysteric on…Prozac,” he concludes lamely.

  “Ouch.”

  “I can’t respect people who fatuously cancel arrangements.”

  I crave to tell him that I can’t respect people who flaunt their marriage vows, but I refrain.

  There’s an ominous silence on the line.

  “What’s the matter with you today, Ronan? Is it the piles?”

  Further portentous pause.

  “If you must know, my car had a slight accident.”

  “An accident.”

  “Just now.”

  “Where?”

  “In our car park.”

  “I thought you were in town?”

  “I am.”

  “I see. What happened?”

  “Oh, it got a bit smashed up. Vandals. Just some thugs who couldn’t handle the idea that some people work for a living and drive nice cars.”

  I’m a vandal now. And a thug.

  “What did they do?”

  “Oh,” he says, minimizing, “tossed a few bricks at it, that’s all.”

  Pause.

  “Is that all?”

  “It’s enough.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “They were on their tea break.”

  “But the police work in shifts.”

  “No, Julie, I didn’t call the police. Nor do I intend to.”

  I find this somewhat reassuring.

  He starts complaining now: “This would never have happened but for the colour. I mean, green or blue or black would have been fine. But yellow? As it is, I feel like I’m Elton John driving this thing.”

  Ronan is insinuating that his car was victimized because of its hilarious yellow visibility. And since I am the one who chose the yellow colour through a surreptitious last-minute change, I am somehow to blame for its being trashed.

  It’s a scandalous accusation. “So you’re saying that I’m responsible for having your car smashed.”

  He tells me to stop being paranoid.

  “Paranoid? Did I hear somebody use that word?”

  “Relax, Julie.”

  Everything stops for five seconds. ‘Relax’ is another word nobody uses in my presence.

  “Okay, Julie. I’m sorry. Of course you’re not responsible for what happened to my car. Now will you meet me in town?”

  I’m not? Did I just hallucinate bashing in his
car? Did I? God, I think I need therapy to remind me that I’m going sane.

  “You actually think I’m paranoid, don’t you?”

  He softens his tone immediately and insists that we have a nice romantic meal together at La Boheme’s. I interrogate him as to whether this means I am paranoid or I am not paranoid.

  There’s just this tremulous silence.

  I inform him then that I wouldn’t dream of inflicting a paranoid squid on him for dinner, that I’ve far too much respect for him to do such a thing.

  “Julie,” he groans. “Let’s just meet in La Boheme’s, okay?”

  “One point, Ronan.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you actually drive your trashed Porsche into town?”

  He clears his throat. “Yes, Julie.”

  “It must have been painfully embarrassing.”

  “Look, forget the car. Just meet me in town. Half-six. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I lie.

  He hangs up.

  I see him disappearing behind a tall bush. I feel like a guardian angel peering over his shoulder.

  Next thing I hear a car engine bursting into action, followed by an almighty revving and screeching of brakes, and suddenly this bright apparition flashes through the hedge to my left. There’s more brake-screeching and tyre-wailing as the car stops abruptly at the main road, then the noise vanishes.

  He should have more sense than to be embarrassing himself in public, driving a wreck like that.

  But where is herself?

  Is she still in the apartment? Cleaning up after the picnic?

  I get out of my car, baby book and ice-pick under my arm.

  Psyching myself up to scalp her.

  I’m glad I did that to his car, though.

  Really, doing that stuff to his Porsche has turned out to be seriously good for my health.

  In ancient Greek, I think that’s called catharsis.

  10

  I still get that lemon scent, though it’s more muted now.

  “Where are you, you bitch?”

  I slam shut the door of the apartment and flick on the hall light for some extra illumination, throw my reading material down on the banana couch and stand perfectly still, clasping my fingers around the hard, thin shaft of my weapon.