by Marian Keyes
Chapter 52
I eventually had to tell the others in the office that Gus and I were no more. It was horrible. Jed and Meredia were distraught—they looked like children who had just found out that there was no Santa Claus.
“Doesn’t Gus like us anymore?” asked Meredia in a small voice, her head bent, plucking at her marquee of a skirt.
“Of course he does,” I assured her warmly.
“Is it our fault?” asked Jed, looking as woebegone as a four-year-old. “Have we done something wrong?”
“Of course it’s not your fault,” I said heartily. “Gus and I can’t be together anymore, but…”
I almost sat down and put my arms around the two of them and gently explained, “Sometimes grown-up people stop loving each other and it’s very sad, but it doesn’t mean that Gus doesn’t love both of you very much, still…”
Instead I exclaimed tearfully, “Oh for God’s sake. You’re not the children of a divorcing couple, so stop acting it! This is my tragedy,” I reminded them, in more reasoned tones.
“Maybe we can still see him.” Jed turned to Meredia. “Lucy doesn’t have to be there.”
“Thanks, you mean pigs,” I said. “Next you’ll be asking me to talk to him about visitation rights.”
Megan was abrupt and unsympathetic. “You’re better off without that loser,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
She was right of course. But it was hard to feel grateful. I was punch-drunk, reeling from the sudden loss.
The unexpectedness of his departure had thrown me into a state of shock, especially because there had been no warning that his interest in me was waning—right up to the last few minutes he had certainly acted happy.
And well he might, I thought with a tinge of self-righteousness—I had put enough effort into making it all wonderful for him. Naturally, because I had the double handicap of being a woman, and having low self-esteem, I sought to blame myself. Why had he left? What had I done? What hadn’t I done? If only I had known, I thought helplessly. Then I could have tried harder. Although, quite frankly, that was debatable.
The worst thing about Gus exiting from my life—the thing I always found hardest about rejection—was the amount of time I suddenly had on my hands. An entire fourth dimension had been handed to me, a bottomless pit of never-ending evenings, and I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.
I didn’t remember it ever being so bad before. But I supposed I thought that every time my heart was broken.
To try to offload some of my surplus hours and minutes, I went out all the time, trying to party away my misery, to burn it off. I had to—I was too agitated not to. Just to do nothing was impossible.
But it didn’t work, the awfulness never left me. Even as I sat in pubs with lots of happy, laughing people, I still felt the frantic, panicky fear racing around in my veins.
There was almost no escape from it. I could only sleep for a few hours a night. The falling asleep part wasn’t hard, but I awoke really early in the morning, at four or five, and stayed awake. I couldn’t stand to be alone. But there was no one that I wanted to be with. And no matter where I was, I wanted to be somewhere else. No matter who I was with, no matter what I was doing, no matter where I was, it was wrong, I didn’t want it. Every night, I sat with crowds of people and I felt totally alone.
A couple of weeks passed, and perhaps I had gotten slightly better, but the change was too small for me to see.
“You’ll get over him,” everyone said sympathetically.
But I didn’t want to get over him. I still thought he was the funniest, smartest, sexiest man I had ever met, or would ever meet. He was my ideal. And if I got over him—if I didn’t want him anymore—I would have lost part of myself. I didn’t want to let the wound heal. Anyway, despite what everyone said, I knew that I’d never get over him. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t imagine not feeling it.
Besides, Mrs. Nolan and her bloody prediction were still on my mind. I found it hard to accept all the signs that were screaming that Gus wasn’t the man for me, because it was nicer to believe that it was written in the stars that we’d be together.
“That Gus—what a bastard, eh?” Megan cheerfully remarked, one day at work.
“I suppose,” I agreed politely.
“You’re not going to tell me that you don’t hate him?” Megan sounded outraged.
“I don’t hate him,” I said. “Maybe I should, but I don’t.”
“But why not?” she demanded.
“Because that’s the way Gus is,” I tried to explain. “If you love him, you’ve got to accept that you love the unreliable part of him also.”
I waited for Megan to scoff and mock and call me a wimp and a girl. And she did.
“Don’t be such an idiot, Lucy.” She laughed. “It was your fault, you shouldn’t have stood for any nonsense from him. With animals like Gus, you have to show them who’s boss, you’ve got to break them.
“I always do,” she added.
It was all right for Megan, she’d been brought up on a farm, an Australian farm, at that. She knew all about tethering and breaking spirits.
“I didn’t want to break him,” I said. “If he’d been well behaved, he wouldn’t have been Gus.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Lucy,” said Megan.
“I haven’t got it any way,” I reminded her.
“Come on, cheer up. You don’t really care, do you?” she asked brightly.
“I do,” I said humbly, because such lack of self-respect is not something to be proud of.
“No, you don’t,” she scoffed.
“I do.”
“Do you really?” She looked at me anxiously.
“Yes.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Because…because,” I floundered. “Because he’s so special. I’ve never met anyone like him. And I’ll never meet anyone like him…sniff…ever again.”
My voice wobbled dangerously when I said, “ever again,” but I managed not to fling myself on my desk and sob bitterly.
“So if he arrived on your doorstep, begging you to take him back, you’d forgive him?” asked Megan, continuing to press me.
I didn’t like the sound of that. I had a vague picture in my head of a terribly unfortunate woman, whose man beat her up and stole her money and had affairs with her friends.
“Megan,” I said, anxiously, “I’m not one of those women who get treated badly by their man, but still take them back time after time after time.”
“That’s funny,” said Megan. “Because you certainly act just like one.”
“Only for Gus,” I explained. “Only for Gus. I wouldn’t do it for every man I ever met. Gus is worth breaking rules for,” I added.
“So it seems,” she said.
I felt a strange desire to hit her.
“But so what?” she boomed, determinedly upbeat. “You’ll get over him. In two weeks time you won’t even remember his name; you won’t even know what all the fuss was about!”
Chapter 53
I could hear the screaming from three floors below, the dreadful sounds of an animal in pain or a woman giving birth or a child being scalded.
Something terrible had happened and as I ran up the stairs, I realized that the wails were coming from our apartment.
“Oh, Lucy,” gasped Charlotte, as I fell in the front door. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
She was lucky. I was only home because there was no one to go for a drink with after work, except Barney and Slayer, the two Neanderthals from the mailroom.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in horror.
“It’s Karen,” she said.
“Where is she? Is she hurt? What is it?”
Karen burst out of her bedroom, her clothes askew, her face red and blotchy with tears and threw a glass at the wall which shattered around the hall.
“The bastard, the bastard, the bastard!” she shrieked.
Something was very wro
ng with Karen, but at least there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her physically, although her hair could have done with a comb. There was a strong smell of alcohol coming from her.
Then she noticed me.
“And it’s all your fault, you stupid bitch, Sullivan,” she shouted.
“What’s my fault? I haven’t done anything,” I protested, feeling guilty and frightened.
“Yes, it is. You introduced me to him. If I’d never met him, I’d never have fallen in love with him. Not that I am in love with him, I hate his guts!” she roared, running back into her room and flinging herself face-downward on her bed.
Charlotte and I followed.
“Is this something to do with Daniel?” I muttered to Charlotte.
“Don’t say his name!” screeched Karen. “I never want to hear his name spoken in this apartment ever again.”
“You know the way you’ve been the Spinster of this Parish?” muttered Charlotte to me.
I nodded.
“Well, you’re not the only one now,” she said.
So there had been a breakdown in the Daniel-Karen alliance.
“What’s happened?” I asked Karen, gently.
“I broke up with him,” she gulped, reaching for a bottle of brandy on her nightstand and swigging from it. Over half of it was already gone.
“Why did you break up?” I asked, intrigued. I had thought she really liked him.
“Just never forget it, Sullivan. I broke up with him, not the other way round.”
“Fine,” I said nervously. “But why?”
“Because…because…” Tears began rolling down her face again.
“Because…I asked him if he loved me and he said, he said…he…he…he…”
Charlotte and I waited politely for her to get to the point.
“…he…DIDN’T,” she finally managed and started that awful wailing again.
“He doesn’t love me,” she said, staring at me with unfocused, miserable eyes. “Can you believe it? He said he doesn’t love me.”
“If it’s any help, Karen, I know what it’s like. Gus broke up with me only two weeks ago, remember?”
“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” she said thickly, through her tears. “Gus and you weren’t serious, Daniel and I were.”
“I took Gus very seriously,” I said stiffly.
“Then you were a fool,” said Karen. “Anyone can see that he’s crazy and unreliable and flighty. But Daniel has a, a…a GOOD JOB!”
She became incoherent with sobbing again and I couldn’t really make out what she was saying. Something about Daniel owning his own apartment and having an expensive…yard, was it? No, no, sorry, an expensive car.
“Things like this don’t happen to me,” she sobbed. “It wasn’t part of the plan.”
“They happen to everyone,” I said gently.
“No, they don’t. They don’t happen to me.”
“Karen, really, they happen to everyone,” I insisted. “Look at me and Gus…”
“Don’t compare me to you,” she screamed. “I’m nothing like you. Men break up with you, and you,” she said nodding at Charlotte. “But they don’t break up with me. I don’t permit it to happen.”
That shut Charlotte and me up.
“Oh God.” Karen commenced a fresh bout of weeping. “How can I go to Scotland now? I’ve told everyone about Daniel and how rich he is. And we were going to drive up and now I’ll have to pay my own fare and I was going to buy that jacket in Morgans and now I won’t be able to. The bastard!”
She reached for the brandy bottle again.
It was a very old, rare brandy, the type that rich businessmen give to each other at Christmas, the type that you’re not really supposed to drink. It’s meant to be a decoration piece, more an ostentatious display of wealth than something you mix with ginger ale.
“Where did you get this?” I asked Karen.
“Took it from that bastard’s apartment when I was leaving,” she said viciously. “Only sorry that I didn’t take more.”
Then came more tears.
“And it’s such a lovely apartment,” she howled. “And I was going to decorate it, I was going to make him buy this wrought iron bed that I saw in Elle Dècor. He’s such a bastard.”
Yes, yes, yes, quite.
“We must sober her up,” I said.
“We could make her eat something,” suggested Charlotte. “I’m hungry.”
But as always, there was nothing in the apartment except some old low fat yogurt.
So we went to the Cash’n’Curry. Because until that day, we’d only ever gone there on Sundays, our appearance caused consternation and confusion among the staff.
“Here, I could have sworn that today was Monday,” said Pavel, in Bangladeshi, to Karim when the three of us walked in.
“Christ, me too,” agreed Karim. “But it must only be Sunday. That’s great, we close an hour earlier tonight. Right, you get their wine and I’ll tell the chef they’re here and he can get the chicken tikka masalas going.”
“Can we have a bottle of house white, please?” I asked Mahmood, but Pavel was already behind the bar opening it for us. We always had exactly the same thing at the restaurant—they no longer even brought us menus. It was always one vegetable biryani, two chicken tikka masalas, pilau rice and white wine. Only the number of bottles of wine varied, but it was always at least two.
While we waited for the food we managed to piece together exactly what had happened with Karen and Daniel.
It seemed that Karen had been certain that Daniel had fallen in love with her and decided she was ready for a declaration to that effect. That would have given them enough time to buy an engagement ring before they went to Scotland, where they would break the happy news to Karen’s parents. But Daniel was annoyingly reticent with his declaration, so Karen decided that she had better take events into her own hands, what with the date of their departure for Scotland drawing nearer. So, fully certain that the answer would be in the affirmative, she asked Daniel if he loved her. And Daniel put the cat among the pigeons, good and proper, by telling her that he was very fond of her.
And Karen said, very good, but did he love her?
And Daniel said that she was a joy to be with and a very beautiful woman.
I know all that, Karen had said scornfully, but do you love me?
Who’s to say what love is? asked Daniel, no doubt getting increasingly desperate.
Answer me, yes or no, demanded Karen, DO-YOU-LOVE-ME?
I’m afraid that my answer would have to be no, said Daniel.
Cue shattered dreams, violent argument, theft of bottle of expensive brandy, calling of a taxi, hope by Karen that Daniel would burn in hell, departure of Karen from Daniel’s apartment and arrival at ours.
“He’s a bastard,” sobbed Karen.
Mahmood, Karim, Pavel and the one who said his name was Michael all nodded in sympathy. They had been hanging on Karen’s every word. Pavel looked close to tears.
Karen gulped back a glass of wine, spilling some of it down her chin and immediately filled up her glass again.
“‘Nother bottle,” she called, waving the empty one at the cluster of waiters.
Charlotte and I exchanged a glance that said “She’s had quite enough to drink already,” but neither of us dared say it to her.
Karim brought us more wine and, as he placed the bottle on the table he murmured, “This one’s on us, with our commiserations.”
Charlotte and I ended up getting drunk also, because we were trying to save Karen from getting any drunker by drinking as much of the wine as we possibly could. Not that it worked, because Karen yelled for another bottle as soon as the second was finished and the whole process began all over again.
Although by then I was starting to enjoy myself.
Karen got drunker and drunker. She lit the wrong and of her cigarette twice, rested the cuffs of her jacket in her dinner, knocked a glass of water into my vegetable biryani and sl
urred “Looked disgustin’, anyway.”
And then, to my absolute horror, her eyes glazed over and she slowly keeled forward until she was face downward in her plate of chicken tikka masala and pilau rice.
“Quick, quick, Charlotte,” I said in panic. “Lift her up, get her face out of her dinner, she’ll drown!”
Charlotte yanked Karen’s head up by the hair and Karen turned a drunken, confused face to Charlotte.
“Whatta fucker you doin’?” she demanded. She had some red masala sauce on her forehead and grains of rice in her hair.
“Karen, you passed out,” I gasped. “You just collapsed into your meal. We’d better get you home.”
“Fuck off,” she slurred. “No, I didn’t. I just dropped my cigarette and I had to pick it up off the floor.”
“Oh,” I said, both relieved and embarrassed.
“Stupid fuck,” muttered Karen aggressively. “Are you trying to say I can’t hold my drink?”
“C’mere you,” she beckoned Mahmood. “D’you think I’m attractive? Eh, well?”
“Most attractive,” he agreed warmly, thinking for a second that his luck was in.
“‘Course I am,” said Karen. “‘Course I am.”
“You’re not,” she added as an afterthought.
He looked hurt so I gave him a bigger than usual tip when we left. I had to pay because Charlotte had forgotten her purse in the excitement and although Karen tried to write a check, she was too drunk to even hold the pen.
We carried Karen home, undressed her and put her to bed.
“Drink some water, Karen, good girl, so you won’t feel so bad when you wake up in the morning,” said Charlotte, shoving a glass under Karen’s nose. Charlotte was far from sober herself.
“I nevr, nevr want to wake up again,” said Karen.
She made some funny, little whiney noises and I realized after a while that she was singing. Sort of.
“You’re so vain…bet y’think thissongs aboucha. Doancha, doancha…” she whined.
“Come on, Karen, please,” begged Charlotte, advancing again with the glass of water.
“Doan interrupme whem singin’. Singin’ ‘bout Daniel. Join in! You’re so vain…betcha…think…thissongs…Come on,” she said aggressively, “Sing with me.”
