2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie

by Brian Gallagher

  “Almost from the day Ronan walked into the travel agency, my life changed,” she recounts. “I painted Chi just a fortnight after we met. It’s as if I discovered my true vocation only after meeting him. Chi was like a celebration of the two of us. It was really special to me, can you understand that, Julianne?”

  “Yes.” I sigh. “I understand.”

  “And now it’s gone for ever,” she says, in a fresh wash of tears.

  I take a deep, deep painful drag of my cigarette. “Couldn’t you paint another Chi? ”

  Pause.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Of course you could!”

  “It would never be the same. All the emotions I had at the time, the love I had for Ronan, all that was in the painting. You can’t repeat that.”

  “I’m sorry, Nicole, I really am.”

  And strangely, I mean it.

  “It’s not your fault.” She sniffs.

  I try to smile at her, then I stand up, go over to the kettle and press the knob. “I wish you didn’t have to stay here, Nicole.”

  “So do I.”

  “I’d put you up in my place…”

  “No. Honestly.”

  “…it’s just that my husband might not…approve.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m not sure you do.”

  “Really, Julianne, I’ll be fine.”

  She gets up suddenly, saying that she can’t bear leaving Max outside in the car just because of an old house rule.

  When she returns with the cat box a short while later she places it on the floor. “You must be hungry, pet,” she says to him. “I have some cat biccies in my bag. Isn’t that good!”

  She starts unscrewing the lid.

  She bends down and whispers loving words to Max, just as a mother would to her child. “Give me the cat box, Nicole,” I blurt out.

  She looks up from her crouching position. “How do you mean?”

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “But…”

  “You don’t really think they’ll allow this cat to sleep in here?”

  “But Julianne…”

  “Give it to me.”

  “He can always sleep in my car,” she suggests weakly.

  “Look, Nicole, everything I said about cats was a lie. I love cats. I really do: they’re gentle, fun-loving, sensitive, nurturing creatures. They make people happy. And Max? I especially love Max. Give me the box.”

  Now she is laughing in huge, grateful, helpless gulps. I stand up and transfer the box to beside the door. She doesn’t resist. She asks me about three hundred times if I am sure. Three hundred times I repeat to her that yes, I am sure. Her mouth is trembling. She says no one has ever been as kind as this to her before.

  We’re leaning on the window ledge together, staring out to sea. It’s just wide enough for two. In front of us are two cups of coffee brewed from sachets. Nicole is sipping hers industriously, while it’s still hot. I suppose we fall into a bit of a daze, staring out at the green island which rises rockily up to the Martello Tower and descends again at a more gradual incline into the sea to the left, which has turned from a greyish blue to a greenish yellow. The sky, for its part, has lost its clouds. The left side of the stone tower is tinged with yellow-pinky paint light, foreshadowing the coming sunset.

  After a while she perks up a little. “Did you know that a cat brings good fung shway?” she says.

  “What?”

  “Having a cat is good fung shway. Don’t you know what that is?”

  “It rings a bell.”

  She stares at me like I’ve never heard of the Spice Girls. She cannot believe that fung shway merely rings a bell. She spells it. Ah, she means Feng Shui. I tell her yes, I’ve heard of it. I make the point that spelling should always attempt to mirror speech and after a brief pause, during which she affects her lovable but very brain-dead expression, she goes on to explain that this fung shway, as she calls it, has to do with chi – the hidden flow of energy pertaining to everything in the universe, which she says we need to ‘go with and not against’.

  She also says that was the whole point of Chi, the painting. “I know some people think all this is naive,” she says sadly. “But I don’t think so. For instance when I first took up Feng Shui I bought two mandarin ducks. If you keep them on a table in the south-west corner of your house, they are supposed to bring romance back into your life. Just four months later I met Ronan.”

  She shrugs as if she’s just stated an obvious universal truth. I simply nod and sip away at my coffee and stare out at the island.

  Now she gives a few examples of chi, reminding me of the Bagua mirror, the Fu dogs, the harmonious arrangement of her living-room and garden. She explains how chi affects the most intimate details of our lives. She speaks of the energy that flows from the moon and regulates menstrual cycles, about the energy that flows from the planets when they form certain configurations, causing whales to beach themselves and insects to behave erratically and birds to migrate.

  This woman is utterly unbalanced. A moment ago she was an emotional wreck. Now she’s all enthusiastic again. In the space of two minutes. Talk about giddy.

  “This chi can come from living things, too,” she goes on. “We absorb the energy of animals around us. For instance, if you have a tortoise in your house, you could be in danger of becoming sluggish and lethargic yourself.”

  “No objection to becoming a tortoise at the moment.”

  “And if you have fish, they pass on a very vibrant energy.”

  “I think I’ll give fish a miss.”

  “Cats represent really positive Feng Shut. Really boundless energy. They…”

  “So let me get this right.” I frown. “By handing me your cat, you’re doing me a favour?”

  “I’m only saying.”

  She slaps me playfully on the arm and laughs heartily, this woman of a thousand moods, this girl with a weathervane flitting about in her soul.

  Over towards Dublin Bay you can see dozens of sailing boats riding the breeze like a molten rainbow. You can smell the iodine seaweed from here, hear the gentle lick of the water on the brown-clad rocks at the end of the long garden of the guest house.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” says Nicole.

  I nod.

  I feel jaded. Dead beat.

  I feel like a tortoise.

  I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the sea air dancing gently through the corridors of my face. It makes a nice change from the good old dustbin air of the city. It blows like the low melody of a pipe, which I inhale deeply.

  Neither of us feels the need to speak.

  I open my eyes to a pale-blue, misty sky and a blue-green water channel ripped and torn by currents. Nicole has left the windowsill and has started to unpack her bags. In the background is the sound of Max scratching away in his cat box. Nicole has started chatting away to me again about her life, her lover and her Feng Shui – and I’m listening to her every word and I’m thinking, what the hell am I doing here?

  Two days ago I fantasized about bludgeoning Nicole. Then we meet and she tells me the story of her life. And what do I do? I agree to look after her cat.

  33

  I’m back home, if you’ll pardon the expression, awaiting Ronan’s return. Plan: to manipulate him into stopping by his surgery this evening.

  Mother is out at bridge. She rang me at the Law Library this morning while I was in court seeking an adjournment for a personal-injuries case. I’d forgotten to switch off my mobile: it screamed through the courtroom, which was so stuffed up with barristers I couldn’t move to the exit. Basically she rang me to tell me it was time for another man in her life and there were a few nice married men in her bridge class. I had no option but to punch her out, even before I had a chance to say hello.

  That woman.

  Alone I am, therefore, once again, with surely the most spiteful quadruped known to man. He is crouched at the far end of the short kitchen table, i
gnoring me, chomping away on Nicole’s ‘cat biccies’ and quaffing milk from the plate. My diet lies at the other end of the scale altogether: pineapple wedges. I’m sucking them from an idle fork at the opposite side of the table. Every so often the miniature raptor emerges from his milk for a breather, his eyes sauntering insolently around the room, having for some reason decided that I am a total irrelevance.

  Before this tragic twist with Ronan, the only living creature that ever succeeded in making me feel totally ignored was the cat. At this time, Max is making me feel like a tube of yellow-pack toothpaste.

  Thank you for your time, Max.

  Down again goes the head for some more milk.

  And up again.

  I am once again ignored.

  Sylvana pops in unannounced. Entering the kitchen, she steels Max a power gaze of hatred. He jumps from table to floor and retreats to the skirting boards, cowering.

  Sylvana, of course, is not the sort of person you can ignore.

  “Whose is that?” she inquires in her normal imperious tone.

  I don’t feel particularly comfortable telling her whose is the cat, so I start preparing a snack on the draining board. It’s Sylvana’s favourite again: cheese and peanuts glued with mayonnaise on to Ryvita crackers.

  She repeats her question.

  “Oh, it’s just a neighbour’s cat.”

  “Why are you blushing, Julie?”

  “How much mayonnaise do you like on your Ryvita?”

  “Why are you – ”

  “It’s Nicole’s cat, okay?”

  There’s this creepy silence behind me.

  I start humming, sprinkling sesame seeds over the snacks.

  “What the hell are you doing with Nicole’s cat?”

  “She gave it to me.”

  “Pardon?”

  “She rang me. She was desperate to meet me because she’d just finished with Harry. She had nowhere else to go except to a dingy B & B, where cats are against the rules.”

  “I see. You took pity on her.”

  “I did not.”

  “You pitied her, so you took her cat.”

  “I wanted to take care of Max, so I offered.”

  “You the great lover of wildlife.”

  “Correct.”

  There’s a deep sigh behind me.

  “Sylvana, I like cats, okay?”

  She inquires whether that’s why I’ve imposed a ban on my sister-in-law visiting, the one who brings her cat with her wherever she goes.

  “This cat is different.”

  “Aha.”

  “Max is special.”

  “What if Ronan recognizes him?”

  “He’s cat blind.”

  In a very quiet voice, Sylvana wonders why I am dragging myself through the dogshit. She wants to know what my agenda is, meeting Nicole like this and taking her cat.

  I turn round to my friend. “I’ll be fine. You’re going on as if Nicole is some sort of monster. She’s not so bad.”

  She erupts when I say this. So I turn back round to my snacks and for want of something better to do I sprinkle on a few more sesame seeds. “She’s no threat any more,” I explain. “When Ronan discovers what happened to Chi in his surgery he’ll just dump her.”

  “What happened to Chi? ”

  “I burnt it. It’s unrecognizable.”

  By the time I’ve finished recounting the details to her she’s calmed down a little. “Nicole is convinced that chi brought them both together and now that I’ve burnt Chi – the painting – she thinks it has to pull them apart.”

  Sylvana makes a disreputable sound behind me. “She’s one of those.”

  “One of what?”

  “She’s a Feng Shui junkie.” (She pronounces it fung shway. )

  I shrug, feeling a strange resistance creep up inside me. “I suppose you could call her that.”

  “This chasing after alternative forms of comfort. Why can’t people just grow up?”

  “I’ve nothing against people seeking happiness.”

  “Through chi?” she scoffs.

  “Whatever.”

  “She’s pathetic. Why can’t you see it?”

  “She’s just herself.”

  “You do realize, Julie, that you are actually defending the woman who is presently bonking your husband.”

  “Presently, she’s sitting in a B & B in Dalkey like a sweet-smelling dump site. Alone.”

  “As far as you know.”

  She’s trying to get me to admit something again. I don’t even want to know, so I just bring the plate over to the table and tell her to enjoy her favourite snacks. I then inform her that I’m having a bath and I just walk out.

  I’m soaking away in the Jacuzzi, up to my neck in scented froth, bubbling and burbling away. I brought in my gigantic mid-Eighties ghetto-blaster, which has become something of a design classic with its chrome surfaces and bulky knobs and twin cassette deck and wide trunk handle to elevate it to the top of your shoulder and jaunt down Grafton Street in your shades and your tigerskin boots, and your chopstick-short black miniskirt.

  Just to get my mind off things, I’m listening to Fatboy Slim telling us about doing something revolting in heaven, which I won’t go into right now.

  Sylvana bursts through the door.

  She plies her way through the steam haze, wielding my cellphone and a wry face. “It’s her.”

  “Mother?”

  “That Nicole one.”

  I eye the phone like it’s a dead rat. I stick out my dripping, soapy hand and take it from her. She leaves.

  “Yes?”

  “Julianne!”

  “What.”

  “I just called to say hi!”

  “Hi.”

  “Is it a bad time?”

  “Not at all. It’s just that I’m in a hot bath, covered with lemon shower gel and there’s shampoo foam stuffed in my ears, nose and throat.”

  Pause.

  She laughs like a soprano into the phone, then apologizes profusely for ringing at this inappropriate time, begging my forgiveness and wondering if she should call back later instead.

  There’s something so naive, almost, in her response that I calm down a bit and tell her to wait just a second. I put down the phone on a ledge and spray my head with water from the nozzle, and try to wash the shampoo out of my eyes and my aural canal.

  Then I grab the phone again and lie back down in the bath until the warm water massages its fingers over my shoulders. “Did Ronan call?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Just now, from his car.”

  “Are you seeing him tonight?”

  “No, he said he has to put in time with his wife tonight.”

  “He makes marriage sound like purgatory.”

  “She’s a terrible drain on him. He’s so unrelaxed at the moment.”

  “Did you tell him about Chi? ”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “So Paris is still on?”

  She doesn’t reply.

  “Is it?”

  “We’re going tomorrow morning,” she says quietly, as if she’s just told me something gruesome.

  “Don’t go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t get on that plane with him, Nicole.”

  “But…”

  “Are you superstitious?”

  “I suppose I am but…”

  “I dreamt something would happen, Nicole. Something bad.”

  Silence.

  “What?”

  “There was a plane crash.”

  “Really?”

  “I dreamt I was in this big, empty house with nothing in it but a TV. I was looking for Max everywhere because it was feeding time and naturally the last place I checked was the TV room. Eventually I found him sitting in front of the telly watching a news bulletin. There were pictures of a wrecked aeroplane fuselage. The interesting part was this.”

  “What?”

  “Max was whining.�
�

  “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. The way cats do when they lose a loved one. I’m telling you…”

  “How is Max, anyway?”

  “Nicole, I forbid you to go to Paris.”

  “But…”

  “You do realize that we are surrounded by spiritual forces.”

  “I agree with that.”

  “I mean, you believe in Feng Shui, don’t you?” Believe it or not, I pronounce it fung shway.

  “Of course I do.”

  “And you accept that planes are bad Feng Shui? ”

  “How do you mean?”

  Yes. How do I mean? I scour my memory of the Feng Shui book I recently skimmed. Plenty about cats and fish and colours and plants. Nothing about planes, though.

  “Look, Nicole. I’m psychic: I get these vibes. Visions. I’ve a really bad feeling about this flight. Don’t play dice with death.”

  “God, you really have me worried now.”

  “It’s in the family,” I bullshit on. “My mother was a medium.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “So I know what I’m talking about.”

  “But…” she stalls, “what if…what if the plane doesn’t crash and Ronan manages to clinch a deal for my other paintings – then I know I’ll be thinking, you silly thing, you should have gone after all.”

  “I’ll tell your family,” I add, perfectly maliciously. “I’ll call your father’s home and tell them you’re going out with a married man. I’ll tell Harry where Ronan works…I’ll tell his wife…I’ll…”

  Now I have her laughing hysterically.

  She probably thinks I’ve been out on a binge.

  “That’s what I love about you.” She chuckles. “You’re so funny. I wish I knew more people like you.”

  I do not reply.

  “Julianne? Are you there…?”

  I still do not reply.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re saying…”

  “Don’t go to Paris, Nicole; 747s have had a bad run recently.”

  “I know that you probably think I’m stupid and foolish…”

  “Did I say that?”

  “…but I’ll just have to put my life in the hands of…God…”

  “God. You speak of God? ”

  “Fate. I have to go to Paris, Julianne. I’ve no choice.”