The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

  ON RETURN TO THE flat, Irina made little effort to disguise the fact that she’d been crying. Since it was past midnight in a town with cosmopolitan pretensions but provincial transport, the tube was shut. Flaunting the coldness of his newfound absolutism, Ramsey hadn’t rung her a cab, but had abandoned her on his stoop to make her way home however she saw fit. The handshake at the door was the limit, instigating such a torrent of sobs on her flight from his house that when she finally flagged down a taxi on Grove Road the cabbie had to ask her to repeat the address three times.

  Ramsey was not the only one inclined to make a show of his indifference. Failing to comment on her puffy red eyes, Lawrence said stiffly in the living room, “It’s late.”

  “I missed the tube. Took forever to find a taxi.”

  “You, spring for a cab? Since when do you not look at your watch every five minutes to make sure you can catch the last train?”

  “Time got away from me. It’s a Friday night, and the minicabs were all booked up, so I had to wait.” As long as she was lying, she might as well go all the way, and disguise the fact that she had hailed one of those exorbitant black taxis off the street.

  “Why didn’t you call to let me know you’d be so late? I might be worried.” He didn’t sound worried. He sounded as if he’d have gladly paid a hoodlum to biff her over the head on the way home.

  “Finding a working pay phone would have delayed me even longer.” Her delivery was fatigued, and her heart wasn’t in this.

  “If you rang a minicab,” said Lawrence, “you’d already found a working pay phone. And that’s assuming that Betsy didn’t have her cell.” His pronunciation of Betsy cast doubt on whether Irina had seen the woman at all. Apparently one of the sacrifices of lying, however selectively, was the ability to tell the truth.

  “Okay, I just didn’t think of it when I had the chance. I’m inconsiderate.” She added lamely, “Still, maybe it’s time we broke down and bought mobiles.”

  “Yeah, that would be great. I could call you, or you could call me, and I’d have no idea where you were, and you wouldn’t have to tell me.”

  Irina let the crack slide, as if stoically allowing a spewed gob of spittle to drizzle down her cheek. “If you must know the real reason I’m so late, we had a fight. Betsy and I. It took some sorting out.” The amount of effort required to concoct this transliterated excuse was stupendous, and she wondered why she bothered. It was nearly two a.m. and for an ordinary girls’ night out an improbably long evening.

  “What about?”

  Irina searched her conversation with Betsy for some scrap to throw him like a bone, but could find little to salvage. “I won’t bore you, it was stupid. But you should know that Betsy’s a big fan of yours. She thinks you’re wonderful.”

  “Glad somebody does.” Lawrence got ready for bed.

  DURING THE TEN-DAY COUNTDOWN to the Grand Prix in Bournemouth, Irina might have been scratching wobbly Xs into the stone walls of her gulag, marking the inexorable march of time toward her own execution.

  Indeed, fantasies of death daily flickered through her mind. She wasn’t so far gone as to contemplate sticking her head in the oven, but whenever she crossed Borough High Street the image descended of the lorry that was barreling in her direction running the light. She rued the fact that the IRA had, as Lawrence had foretold, reinstated its ceasefire, making a spontaneous explosion in their local tube station just as she exited the elevator that much more far-fetched. Walking beneath the scaffolding of the numerous luxury housing developments springing up in the neighborhood, she didn’t exactly wish that breezeblock overhead would tipple off the slats, but she could still see it careen two stories to her skull. These morbid flights were silly, but like the visions of Ramsey at the door, the couples grappling on the carpet, the figments of fatal accidents were uninvited.

  Also uninvited were the persistent daydreams of Lawrence going leadenly through her address book to inform Irina’s friends of her untimely passing. Tentatively, Betsy would ask, “Has anyone told Ramsey?” Lawrence wouldn’t understand why Ramsey of all people should be high on the list, especially when it had been pulling teeth to get poor Irina to go out to dinner with the guy on his birthday. Plain-speaking or not, Betsy would still be discreet, though she might volunteer to give Ramsey the black news herself. At the funeral, Lawrence would be flummoxed why Ramsey, of all the mourners, seemed the most distraught. Finally, something would click—that birthday; Irina’s exasperating remoteness when he came home from Sarajevo; her mystifying short temper since, and unexplained absences during the day… Lawrence would be angry at first, but with no Irina to fight over anymore fury would rapidly fold into grief. Maybe at length, having loved the same woman would bond the two men, and cement their friendship. (Nonsense, but beguiling nonsense nonetheless.) You see, it wasn’t that she wished she were dead, exactly. Rather, the only circumstance in which she could bear to have Lawrence informed that she was in love with another man was one in which she did not—nay, could not—witness the consequences.

  Lawrence may have made dutiful visits to Las Vegas every three or four years, but his parents thought think tanks incomprehensible and pretentious, and he thought golf instruction aimless and vapid; the disconnect was total. His brother was a methamphetamine junkie always hitting his father up for money; his unambitious sister worked for Wal-Mart in Phoenix. Irina was not part of Lawrence’s family; she was his family. Given the books-and-politics jaw that filled out his rare socializing, she was also his one true friend. The resultant responsibility had never weighed heavily in the past. Now it was crushing.

  Still, not a day went by that she didn’t stare down the telephone when Lawrence was at work, or finger a 20p piece when passing a phone box. The sensation was akin to that of a smoker who is trying to quit, when he eyes the one packet he has hidden for emergencies in that little magnifying-glass drawer on top of the OED, thinking, Well, just one, just one fag wouldn’t make any difference in the long run—would it? Ramsey may have issued rash ultimatums over too much brandy, but were her quavering voice ever to emerge from his receiver he would surely loose a deep, soughing sigh of relief, and within minutes she’d be rushing toward his arms in Hackney.

  Oh, probably. Ramsey’s resolve would be as easy to break down as the fibers of a chuck steak soaked in a full bottle of Barolo. But a temporary fix wasn’t the answer. She had a decision to make. As Betsy had observed, retying her sneakers would make the exercise no less onerous.

  To the naked eye, Irina’s bereft afternoon ambles during this period—which had an insidious tendency to veer, once across the river, toward the East End—gave every appearance of maudlin self-pity. To the contrary.

  She felt sorry for Betsy, now saddled with a secret that she didn’t want, bound to make her feel a traitor in any future gathering at which Lawrence was present.

  She felt sorry for Ramsey, who had merely taken a friend out for sushi in all innocence, and who couldn’t have anticipated that with two tokes on a doobie his shy, demure dinner companion would transmogrify into a voracious sexual predator; who gave heartbreaking credence to “the code” between men about keeping your hands off your mate’s bird, and despised anyone who broke it, not least of all himself; who was obliged at this very moment to focus all his energies on that £60,000 prize in Bournemouth, when his head was raging with anxiety that the sole object of his desire was even now rededicating herself to a safe, comfortable relationship with his rival; who meanwhile was helpless. The passivity of his romantic position would echo all too familiarly the last frame of six championship finals, during which he could only take limp sips of Highland Spring as the trophy he coveted most in all the world slipped through his fingers.

  Most of all, of course, she felt sorry for Lawrence. When he didn’t think she was looking, she had more than once caught an expression on his face like that of a small boy who had been abandoned by his mother at Disney World. It was infused with longing, bewilderment, and desolation. He
was being punished, and he had no idea for what. Everything about him that his partner used to adore now drove her insane. She wouldn’t speak two words of Russian to him anymore, and hadn’t employed the tender solicitation “Lawrence Lawrensovich!” for months. Whenever he told her about his work, like that coup of getting his proposal accepted by Foreign Policy, she acted bored, and no longer even pretended to listen. When he brought home a photocopy of the published article, she left it languishing unread on the dining table until he sheepishly slipped it back into his briefcase. Even his walking into a room seemed enough to make her irritable and claustrophobic. Whenever he proposed that they go see Boogie Nights at the weekend, maybe take one of those long Sunday-afternoon rambles of hers together for once, or go to Borough Market for vegetables as a team, she shrugged the invitations off, or discouraged him with faux consideration that he must have too much work. While not long ago she had prepared delectable meals in order to please him, now she concocted, if anything, more elaborate fare, but he could tell that she was merely driven to escape his company for the kitchen. He could do nothing right, and lately there seemed little purpose in trying. Presumably she would explain when she was good and ready. Since every indicator pointed to the fact that the explanation was dire, he had a vested interest in delaying that juncture for as long as possible.

  Among the principals in this drama—she’d no illusions about its being anything but ordinary, although all the earth-shaking experiences of life, birth, death, love, and betrayal, were technically “ordinary”—there was only one party for whom she had no sympathy whatsoever. Were her own affections constant, Ramsey would easily concentrate on the upcoming Grand Prix. Betsy would have shouldered only the manageable burden of Irina’s sour thoughts about Jude Hartford. And Lawrence would be happy as a clam.

  TWO NIGHTS BEFORE THE tournament was to get under way in Bournemouth, Lawrence made a radical bid for quiet and switched off the TV.

  “Listen, I know you’re not that interested in snooker.” Knees canted, arms thrown wide on either side of the sofa, his posture was confrontational. “But I thought maybe you were interested in Ramsey.”

  A wave of white cold washed Irina’s face, leaving a prickling sensation along her hairline; she might have dived into an Arctic ocean full of pins. She wasn’t ready for this. She’d wanted to have prepared something, a list of reasons or a speech. Even carefully composed disclosure would have been bad enough. Discovery was worse by a mile.

  “Snooker’s all right,” she said faintly.

  “I mean, his story is interesting, isn’t it? First he’s a prodigy, then he fades from view because prodigies grow up, and, according to legend, he fell seriously into the gutter. But he pulls himself together, and this time more from application than pure natural talent, he nearly makes it to the top. But not quite. Becomes the sport’s ultimate also-ran. Six championship finals, never wins a one. So you’ve got this guy who’s getting older, past his prime, never quite got his hands on the ultimate prize, and is beginning to slide. But it’s all he knows, snooker. What does a guy like that do? When he’s got nothing to look forward to but falling apart? Where’s he going to find a fresh reason for living?”

  The sweat rising from her breasts was rank. Lawrence may have historically avoided the main thing, but this sadistic cat-and-mouse wasn’t like him.

  “In something else, I guess,” said Irina.

  “Like, another sport? Go for a whole new game.”

  “As I understand it”—Irina amazed herself by still being able to talk—“retired snooker players often take up golf.”

  “But golf’s got none of the elegance. None of the strategy, the scheming—thinking half a dozen moves ahead, plotting the big picture. Chess would make more sense, if he had the brains for it. Which he doesn’t.”

  “Ramsey’s not stupid.”

  “He dropped out of school at sixteen. Oh, he can go on for hours about the merits of a percentage versus an attacking game. But don’t talk to him about New Labour having co-opted the Tories’ agenda. I tried once; it was painful. And this is his country.”

  “There are different kinds of intelligence,” said Irina blandly. She wished he would get on with it, and stop trying to be clever.

  “I can see why snooker players gravitate to golf,” Lawrence carried on, still taken with his coy conceit. “It’s not direct combat. You take on an opponent by besting him side-by-side, by taking turns. When you’re on the green, or at the table, your rival’s hands are tied. It’s polite—not gladiatorial, like soccer, or even tennis. Really, sports like snooker and golf are for pussies.”

  “Real men fight it out hand-to-hand?”

  “Yeah. They do. But you couldn’t call Ramsey a macho man.”

  “Are you saying that he’s a coward?”

  “Sportsmen seek out games that suit their natures. He’s weak, so he’s avoided a test of physical strength. And he’s averse to head-on conflict—with another man anyway. In snooker, your opponent is an abstraction. The lay of the balls could as well be generated by computer. Ultimately, all snooker players are playing against themselves, their personal best. Now Ramsey is playing against himself and losing.”

  “In some contests,” she submitted, “Ramsey keeps up his end pretty well.”

  “So, all this drama—it captures your imagination?”

  “Yes, Ramsey captures my imagination,” she said heavily, looking at her hands.

  “Good. Because the Grand Prix is next week. Ramsey’s in the lineup, and Bournemouth’s only a train ride. Get a B&B, make an outing of it?”

  “You mean,” she asked, raising her gaze incredulously, “you want to go?”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic.” At a stroke, his squared-off posture wilted, and he dropped his arms to his lap. “It’s just,” he continued morosely, “we haven’t done anything in a while. Together. I’ve been to tournaments, but you haven’t. And when you know one of the players, you have an angle, a—reason to care…”

  Discreetly, Irina patted her forehead dry with her sleeve.

  “A snooker tournament is very British,” Lawrence added. “You know, it could be culturally enervating.” His correction, “I mean—edifying,” was embarrassed. Lawrence had resigned himself to being lousy at Russian. English was another matter.

  “I’d be glad to watch the tournament with you,” she said carefully, trying to breathe deeply, to slow her heartbeat. “But don’t you always say that you can actually follow the frames better on TV?”

  “Well, you miss the atmosphere. And I bet Ramsey would take us out.”

  All right, he didn’t know. Yet on some instinctive level Lawrence was savvy enough to use Ramsey as bait. The vision of that threesome trying to soldier through an entire dinner—well, Irina hoped the horror didn’t show on her face.

  Lawrence added, “Also, Ramsey says he’s optimistic, about the Grand Prix.”

  “You talked to him?” asked Irina sharply.

  “Sure I did. Free tickets.”

  “So how is he?” With luck, her wistfulness was not pronounced.

  “Damned if I know. The poor bastard may not be socially adept, but that call was the limit. For all the banter I got out of the guy, I might have been Inland Revenue. Maybe he’s not comfortable on the phone.”

  “No, I bet he wasn’t comfortable.” Subtext-laden dialogue was great fun in plays, but in real life it was hideous.

  “So what do you say?”

  “If you’d like to do something together—wouldn’t you rather it were just us two?”

  “Just us two doesn’t seem to do it for you lately. I thought maybe a third party… a little excitement…”

  “I don’t need that kind of excitement,” she said in all sincerity.

  “Never mind, then,” he said glumly. “It was only an idea.”

  “Well, as you say—I’m not as big a snooker fan as you are,” she said gently. “It seems a lot of trouble, going all the way to Bournemouth. But we coul
d still watch the tournament together. The first rounds are broadcast late, aren’t they? After eleven-thirty? Maybe get a bite out first. Make it a date?”

  Lawrence perked up. “Okay. Would you like that?”

  His expression of struggling hopefulness was soul-destroying. These days Irina’s small kindnesses, to which Lawrence was now prone to attach exaggerated importance, seemed downright malicious, encouraging as they did an optimism that she might more decently quash. Hence Irina was mean when she was nice to him, and mean when she was mean. Since it didn’t matter, presumably she was free to treat him however she liked. So this was “power.” It was overrated.

  “Yes, I would like that,” she said softly.

  Yet she thought, Oh, how I would like to like that. For a moment, Irina could feel the haunting presence of that other life in which the prospect of dinner out with Lawrence and a nestle in front of a snooker match presented itself as simply glorious.

  WHEN IRINA HAD SUGGESTED “a bite out,” she had in mind the likes of Tas, a cheap Turkish restaurant a ten-minute walk up Borough High Street. But Lawrence wanted to make a grand night of it, and made a reservation at Club Gascon, whose prices had previously restricted their sampling of its Basque haute cuisine to special occasions.

  Irina didn’t select her most fetching of outfits (she reserved her really smashing garb for outings to the East End), but made herself presentable. Which is more than she could say for Lawrence. “You’re going to wear that? Club Gascon is pretty posh!”

  He was clad in the same uniform of baggy jeans and plaid flannel he’d worn when they met. She should have been accustomed to his chronic slovenliness, but now she was spoiled. Ramsey had impeccable dress sense.

  Lawrence shrugged. “If I’m going to pay all that money, I want to feel relaxed.”

  Irina rolled her eyes. “You make me look like a tosser! Here I am in a skirt and heels, and I walk in with a man dressed like a dog’s dinner!”

  “Oh, shit-can the Brit-speak, would you?” he grumbled, shambling back to the bedroom. “For one night?”