2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie

by Brian Gallagher

  He hopped on to the floor, twirled round a few times, then settled down on his bum and started to re-lick himself, happy to be on terra firma once more, sporting this familiar look of cat contentment, which I find so easy to despise.

  When Mother was not looking I closed in on Max, grabbed him like a rug by the back of the neck, hauled him from the floor, carried him out to the veranda, shut him in the cat box in case he fell off the veranda, and closed the french windows again. And clapped the dust off my hands, satisfied.

  I dashed into the bedroom, packed a large suitcase in five minutes flat, stole a Valium from Mother’s private collection in our bathroom, popped it into my mouth and felt calmer at once, slid out of the apartment, dived down to the car park and commandeered Ronan’s Porsche, and it was with a sense of driving purpose that I screeched through suburbia in a yellow blaze track of smoke to my estate agent, a roaring spitfire across the city.

  Six hours later I handed my estate agent one month’s deposit and two months’ rent – three grand in total. I got the cash from the sale of the Porsche to a service-station crook I knew well from a recent Circuit Court prosecution. The rest I blew on a fantastic day out at the shops.

  “What you need is an image change,” Sylvana advised as we waited in the seating area of Toni & Guy. “I haven’t got an image to change,” I replied. “So what am I doing sitting here?’ ‘Rubbish,” she countered. “You’re a stunning sex bomb, Julie.”

  “I know: I explode whenever a man goes near me.” She advised me to have my hair cut short. That men these days loved women with short hair. I protested that at this low ebb in my life I’d rather not make my hair the pretext for male fantasies. “And keep it black. Black is seductive and mysterious and…dangerous.”

  “Of course, I’ll be like a sex bomb, then.”

  “Primed to go off at the rate of ten creeps a minute.” So I just sat there with my eyes closed and let the guy cut my hair short and darken it by a few degrees (like you can darken black). When I opened my eyes again I discovered with horror that I was shorn like a sheep. I ran out of there crying.

  Sylvana found the whole thing most amusing. She led me into one of her own Whole-Self outlets and re-emerged with a bag full of soaps and shampoos and conditioners and aromatherapy oils. All for me.

  While I was at it, the fancy grabbed me to purchase eight thick candles – recommended by the Feng-Shui booklet I’d swiped from Nicole’s place. Sylvana asked me if I was planning for a blackout in my new place so I just told her yes. To shut her up.

  Finally, we took a standard deviation to purchase lipstick, mascara and foundation. To her credit, Sylvana succeeded in drumming up some enthusiasm in me.

  I was equipped, at last, with my new identity.

  On the way back to my new place, we hopped out at a local supermarket and bought provisions, most crucially milk, coffee, bread, butter, jam, bottled water and enough bananas to turn us into overnight baboons. In the drinks section we got a bottle of brandy, naturally, and Sylvana insisted on buying champagne. The most expensive in stock.

  We were back just in time for the potted-plants delivery man: Sylvana’s idea for my new roof garden. The bloke managed to put a dent in the landing wall with a rectangular earthenware pot. Not a squeak of apology out of him. It’s hard to credit it – the man just shuffled in and out of my new apartment, leaving his personality on the wall. Every time I look at that dent, there’ll be a blundering male in the flat with me.

  One good thing, though: the same blunderbus banged his head as he was ducking through the low roof exit – presumably because his vision was impaired by the begonia he was carrying. He grunted – and then, believe it or not, he apologized. Either to himself or the begonia, I can’t be sure, but at least he apologized.

  After he left, with his foul breath and his BO issues and his baggage-smashing installation techniques, we both unloaded the car and filled up the kitchen presses and made up my new bed with fresh-scented sheets that Sylvana had thoughtfully purchased for me, along with duvet, pillows and pillowcases.

  I was set up in my new ‘home’.

  We stripped, togged out, grabbed our Ambre Solaire and our champagne, our magazines, our shades, our radio and our new chaises, and a fruit bowl sprayed with cherries and Belgian chocolates. And we headed up here to bake.

  It’s half-seven, now, and there’s no sign of us moving yet. The heat is still raw, blistering down on our skin like acid. I’m baking away like a scone in the oven. My head is leant back against oblivion, my eyes closed beneath my Calvin Kleins and that hazy, lazy, dazy sensation is just about holding back the teetering frontiers of forlornness.

  I look over at Sylvana.

  That icon of humorous disdain and playful contempt, the woman without whom I might now be dead, is enclosed behind a pair of shades the size of conjoined badminton rackets, letting it all hang out like a bulging basket of autumn fruits barely covered by a skimpy napkin.

  I needed Sylvana to tell me I was young and pretty. I needed her to tell me I was intelligent and smart. I needed her to tell me I was sexy, and warm and generous. I needed her to tell me I was strong and independent and self-reliant and self-confident. I needed her to tell me I was talented, lovable, good to be with. I needed her to tell me I had a great, happy future ahead of me. I even needed her to tell me that my dream of having a daughter will one day come true.

  And you know what?

  She told me all those things today.

  She even told me I was beautiful.

  “Sylvana?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never mind.”

  Pause.

  “Sylvana?”

  “What?”

  “What am I going to say to my mother?”

  Shading her eyes with the side of her hand, she concentrates on me for a few moments: “Say nothing for the moment, Julie,” she says kindly. “Just tell her you’re staying with me because you and Ronan are sorting out a few problems. You need your own sanctuary for now. And when the time is right – when you’re happier in your own mind about things – you can break it gently to her.”

  What the hell am I doing here?

  I tell Sylvana that I’m scared. She says she knows, and she assures me that no matter what happens she’ll be there for me if and when I need her. She’s so earnest and sincere and free of any trace of sarcasm or irony when she says this that for the first time I really think I might make it through this nightmare.

  39

  It’s strange, the quiet.

  It’s after ten a.m. I am exhausted. Apart from the gentle breathing of wind from the park, the world seems as still and silent as death.

  Sylvana has left. I didn’t really want her to go, but I refuse to be a burden on anyone so I insisted. I’m standing on the roof garden, surrounded by my potted plants, clutching the white railing and peering out at the trees round the lake. They seem to be whispering restlessly to one another while the diminishing light of day strains the colour from things and reduces them to a dusty greyish-green.

  Alone.

  It’s cool now. I shiver.

  I tread down the dark spiral staircase to the living quarters below. Without turning on the light, I enter my bedroom, my movements scratching against the bare walls. I sit on the bed, staring through the window into the dusk above the trees in the park.

  I like the dusk. I like it when the receding daylight fills a room with itself, spreading its pervasive natural rhythms into the space. That’s why I have the electric light off. A room is more lonesome under a solitary lit bulb.

  I can still hear the sounds of birds through a slit in the window, chirping themselves to sleep, unaware that I too seek a piece of the stuff of life they seek, that every living thing must seek.

  I lie against the pillow. Its clean edges wrap around my hair. Crisp, clean duvet, pillowcases, sheets never before used. The flat newness of linen that has not yet seen washing detergent.

  The only sound I can hear is of me bre
athing.

  What now?

  They’re in Paris now.

  Dining in a restaurant, probably. I can see them together under a low-hung, dim-lit light. Nicole with cleavage and an armful of clinking bangles, dangly earrings dancing from her ears, her beautiful hair combed down to the table, fluttering and giggling and laughing with Ronan.

  And he, well-dressed, talking easily about aesthetics from Kant to Heidegger, unthreatened by the quality of Nicole’s intellect, able to do or say anything because he knows Nicole will not judge him, oppose him, cease to make herself available to him.

  In about an hour from now – because Ronan does not favour late nights – they will taxi back to their hotel. No. Two hours: Paris is an hour ahead. And there they will share a guilt-free bed in the anonymity of a foreign city. Make love and then fall asleep, Nicole on Ronan’s chest.

  Then I’ll be free to fall asleep.

  I let my shoes fall off my feet on to the floor and I push my legs under the duvet. I am colder than I realized. I pull the duvet over me and lie on my back, frost fingers biting against warmed palms. Then I twist off my wedding ring and put it on my bedside table. I consider whether or not to get up and flush it down the toilet, but I’m too exhausted.

  Love!

  Do I still go on believing in it?

  I used to think it was like a secret garden, hidden amid the sharp corners of an urban landscape, concealed until the appointed hour when you and your lover met. A beautiful place where happiness and laughter and trust and friendship and respect and comfort could all be found, and much more besides. And you sought out this garden of your birthright because you believed in it, because someone had been there and had brought back news of its wonders, because you believed that in this garden you would discover not just one thing you needed but everything you needed, because you believed that when you found it and sank into its enfolding arms, the abraded pieces of your life would soften and melt into a soft light, a halo illumining everything in its path, and you would become like the vanishing cracks of a crossword puzzle, melting into bliss. Is this such a naive dream?

  Wednesday, 22 June, afternoon

  40

  I’m in the Law Library staring over my desk into a giant square space where wooden bookshelves containing ancient law reports line the high walls, where brown desks overflow with documents, where barristers in suits or in the court-ready mantle of wig and gown shout into cellphones, study at their desks, flit in and out or congregate in small groups, and all around is the murmur of voices well-spoken or keen to be well-spoken, broken by the occasional curt blast of names over the PA.

  I’m trying my best to concentrate on a statement of claim concerning a dubious action against Dublin Corporation where the plaintiff (a local drunk according to my solicitor) alleges he fell into a badly flagged hole near Sandymount Green. If the award is made, it could keep him in booze for the rest of his life. Just think.

  I don’t feel like this, but if I don’t keep up with the work I’m afraid my solicitors will stop sending me their briefs.

  I’m depressed.

  For reasons which you can, at this stage, imagine. But I’m depressed for another reason: because I have committed a particularly dumb mid-summer blunder. I went home just now and I discovered Max on the balcony.

  Dead.

  Nearby are a number of younger barristers who strut around like they are soon to be top-earning senior counsel – but in actual fact most of them are working for less than a dishwasher’s wages. They get round this acute difficulty through various potential-enhancement mechanisms: posture, accent, mannerism, hairstyle, garment, head-tilt, or speech content touching on private wealth, vocation, relative in the business, insinuation. Another effective solution is simply not to hang around and be seen in a state of well-dressed unemployment, waiting for cash to arrive in the form of briefs, which may or may not hit their postboxes depending on whether or not solicitors choose to regard them as non-existent entities.

  I’ve got a thudding headache, and my heart feels like it’s got a knife stuck in it and I can’t pull it out. I should be in bed, but I’ve too much to do. I also have a drink-driving case to prepare for next week, a statement of defence to dictate into my Sony for my secretary on the panel, mail to open…

  I hate people today.

  What do you bet someone will come right up to me and say hello? There’s so many sociable people in the place I swear it’ll drive me to early retirement.

  On a sudden crazy impulse I grab my mobile and input. Seconds later I hear Ronan’s voice and this screeching noise in the background. “Where are you?” I demand.

  “I’m outside Dublin airport, about to get into a taxi. I can barely hear you, Julie, with that aeroplane.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Sorry?”

  Of course he’s not alone.

  “Scumbag,” I shout.

  “Sorry, Julie, could you speak up?”

  “So you’ve decided to come home? What makes you think I’ve worked out my frustrations?”

  Slight pause.

  “Oh yes, the note.”

  The screeching background noise dies down.

  “How are you anyway?” he asks, fatigued-sounding.

  “Terrific,” I reply. “I’ve just rented an apartment.”

  “I didn’t know you were getting into real estate.”

  “I’m not getting into it: I’m using some of it.”

  A car door slams in the background. Must be the taxi door. Now two further slamming noises. Must be the cabbie’s car door. And Nicole’s car door.

  “You’re using, are you?”

  “I’m presently residing in a new apartment.”

  “Presently.”

  “I’ve moved out,” I snap.

  Through the mobile you can hear what sounds like a bus rumbling to a halt.

  “That’s interesting,” he says finally.

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s wonderful for you, Julie, what do you want me to say? Congratulations!”

  I grit my teeth until my neck hurts.

  I look up. On the bench, three desks up from me is a female barrister tuning into my conversation: she’s leaning right over in my direction, her head in her palm, pretending to read some papers.

  “Is that all you can say?” I whisper.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  I punch off, stand up and walk straight out of the Law Library, through the corridors and atrium of the Four Courts and out to the River Liffey across the road where I fill my lungs with its vaguely dietary reek. I sit down on the low wall and stare into the giant green moving snake.

  My phone rings. It’s Sylvana. Inquiring as to my health.

  “I feel terrific, thank you. Truly marvellous.”

  “Good.”

  “Except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The cat.”

  “What cat?”

  “Max.”

  “Prudence, you mean.”

  “Max.”

  “What about Max, Julie?”

  “He died.”

  She fails to reply.

  “I knew you’d react like this.”

  “Did I react? Tell me some more.”

  So I tell all.

  I returned home this lunchtime in order to free Max from his cage. On the way home I bought him several tins of the best cat-food brand I could find, with a choice of flavours from salmon to beef to tuna to rabbit to turkey. He had gone without food and water for close on thirty hours and I felt that the least he deserved was a banquet.

  I twisted open the knob on the french windows, guilt-rotten. I stepped out on to the veranda and approached the cat box, apprehensive on account of there being no sound from within.

  I opened the lid.

  I understood immediately what had happened: Max had fried in sunlight all day yesterday and all this morning. In brief, he’d died of heat exhaustion.

  I was devastated
.

  Although there was anguish, too: I now had a body to get rid of.

  “She deserved it,” Sylvana declares, after a brief hiatus.

  “Who? Nicole?”

  “The cat.”

  “It’s a he.”

  “Okay, he deserved it.”

  “He did nothing wrong, Sylvana. He was just a cat.”

  “He was Nicole’s cat,” she argues.

  “So what you’re really saying is that Nicole deserved it?”

  “Okay, Julie.” She sighs. “Have it your way.”

  “I will. Nicole deserved it, but the cat himself did nothing wrong to deserve death in the cat box on my veranda.”

  Redrawing of breath. “What do you want me to say? That you are a malicious, bloodthirsty animal slayer?”

  I consider this interesting and peculiarly valid point. “Yes, Sylvana. I’d like it if you said that.”

  “Anyway, where is it now?”

  “He has a name.”

  “Prudence.”

  “Max.”

  “Max. Where is Max?”

  “Still on my balcony, in the cat box.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “With him, Sylvana, with him.”

  “No Julie: it. It is dead, remember? What are you going to do with it? ”

  “I thought you might have some ideas, Sylvana.”

  “You want want me to dispose of the body?”

  “Are you offering?”

  “When’s your next garbage collection?”

  I don’t believe I’m hearing this. “You really do think Max is garbage, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “What am I going to tell Nicole?”

  “Don’t beat about the bush. Tell her you suffocated the cat. Tell her you crucified it. On purpose.”

  “You actually believe that, don’t you?”

  “Julie, will you calm down, it’s only a cat.”

  I raise my eyes from the green water of the Liffey and focus on the Ha’penny Bridge way downriver, curve-spanning the channel like a delicate ice-cream wafer.