Angels Read online

  ‘Having a good time?’ Lara beamed.

  ‘Yes…’ I trailed off, as Nadia snaked her hand under Lara’s arm and began caressing her breast.

  ‘Hey!’ Lara laughed. ‘Cut that out.’

  Nadia withdrew her hand but only to lick her finger and recommence stroking. Lara’s erect nipple appeared through the damp cotton and I felt acutely uncomfortable. If a man did that at a party everyone would loudly condemn him as a lech and a gobshite, but because Nadia was a lesbian I had to behave as if I was totally down with it.

  All night, I was aware of Kirsty talking to Troy. Even when I couldn’t see them, I could sense their closeness and it didn’t make me happy. So the high point of my evening was that they didn’t leave together. She effed off around midnight and I was hard put not to stand in the middle of the road, roaring after her car, ‘You can’t be in that good a shape, now can you?’

  Troy stayed quite a bit longer and when he finally left I half-expected a special goodbye. But he kissed Emily and said, ‘Baby girl, we’ll talk,’ then he kissed me in exactly the same friendly way and said, ‘Night, Irish.’

  Bit by bit, the crowds drained away until it was nearly just Emily and me left. While we were arranging all the bottles to be recycled, sweeping the splinters off the coffee table, wrapping broken glasses in newspaper, I blurted – the drink talking, ‘I’ve a confession to make. I have a… crush.’ Yes, that was the right word. ‘Troy. I find him attractive.’

  ‘Take a number and get in line.’

  ‘Oh. It’s like that?’

  She pointed her finger, winked and said in an Elvis-type voice, ‘Don’t fall in love with me baby, ‘cos I’ll only break your heart.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he said that!’

  ‘Not as such.’ She seemed amused. ‘It’s just the way he acts. You’d swear everyone’s mad about him… Although,’ said with less certainty, ‘maybe they are.’

  ‘But he has a big nose,’ I protested.

  ‘Don’t seem to bother the ladies none.’

  ‘What ladies?’

  ‘With Troy there are always ladies.’

  ‘Are you talking about Kirsty?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘But do you know for a fact that there’s something going on with them?’

  ‘Intuitively, I know for a fact.’

  Then I got it. ‘Has anything ever happened with you and Troy?’

  ‘Me and Troy?’ She began to laugh. It started as a quite normal chuckle, then progressed to where she was leaning on the kitchen counter. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her face contorted with hysterics. ‘It’s just… the idea of me. Me and Troy!’

  She was off again. I picked up a bin liner and started flinging cans into it.

  Later, in bed, I thought about Troy. I’d been surprised, indeed almost put out, when he’d touched my leg. But now I thought about it differently. I savoured the memory, replaying it again and again. The heat of his hand running up my bare skin, the leap of desire at the moment his finger had reached the top of my thigh and turned inwards. Again. His finger reaching the top of my thigh and turning inwards, his finger reaching the top of my thigh and turning inwards…

  A dreamy weakness began to steal through me. I’ll take my chances, I thought. I’ve played it safe for too long. I will fall in love with him and he’s welcome to break my heart.

  In that halfway state between waking and sleeping, my defences slipped for a moment and in rushed thoughts of Garv and Truffle Woman and their public displays of affection.

  Immediately I thought of Troy.

  ‘Ha!’ I said to myself, with sleepy defiance.

  19

  It must have been all that talk of falling in love, because that night I had The Dream. I’d had it on and off since I’d been eighteen: maybe once a year, perhaps not even that often, and it was nearly always the same. I’d spot Shay Delaney in a crowded street and I’d start running and pushing, trying to catch up with him. Above the January-sales throng I’d see the back of his head, moving further and faster away from me, and I’d try to go quicker, but more and more people would get in the way, tangling themselves in my legs, tripping me up, blocking my path, until he was gone.

  I used to wake up swollen with longing, dreamy with remembered love, irritable and snappy with Garv. For the entire day following the dream, these feelings would wrap themselves around me like a hangover, and it was only once they’d worn off that I worried about them. I hardly thought about Shay from one end of the year to the next, but did these dreams mean that I still loved him? That I didn’t love Garv?

  Consolation came via an unexpected route: a science programme I watched one bored Sunday evening, maybe eight or nine years ago. It was about the earth’s relationship with the sun. The commentary said that even in the depths of winter, when our side of the earth is facing away from the sun, its draw is so powerful that we’re still pulled to it. Once in a while the cold side of the earth gets its way, which is why we sometimes get days of bizarre warmth and sunniness in the middle of February.

  Maybe I’d misheard it, because when I thought about it properly it didn’t really make much sense, but it still operated as a consolation: a weight lifted from me and I understood that of course I loved Garv, but that there were times when I’d still be drawn back to Shay. It didn’t mean anything.

  But this night the dream was different, because when it started it was Shay I was running after, but at some stage he became Garv. I ran as hard after Garv as I ever had done after Shay. It was so important to catch up with him, I was tender, sore with love for him – that giddy, lifting wonder of when we’d first fallen in love. I remembered, I felt it with such clarity. But he slipped through the crowds and my legs wouldn’t go fast enough, then he was gone. And I awoke with tears on my lashes, carrying years’ worth of loss.

  In the sunny kitchen, Emily was already up and hyper with it. ‘I’ve been awake since six,’ she announced. ‘Waiting for that phone to ring!’

  Oh, right, news of her pitch. The dream was still with me, so I was finding it hard to be present in the here and now. I was like a badly tuned radio which was picking up two frequencies. One in the foreground, another more ghostly one fading in and out in the background.

  ‘But it’s only nine now,’ seemed to be the right thing to say. ‘They’re hardly likely to be at work.’

  ‘Lazy, LAZY bastards! Anyway, Mort has David’s home number – he could have called him last night or early this morning, if he was very keen. Every second that passes without news is another nail in the coffin.’

  ‘You’re being overdramatic. Is there any coffee?’

  Two mugs of muscular coffee managed to shake away some of the wraiths that were wrapped around my mood, and life came into clearer focus.

  ‘This place doesn’t look bad, considering we had thirty people here last night, drinking their heads off. You’d hardly know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Emily. ‘Apart from the souvenir on our couch.’

  Oh cripes! A cigarette burn? Or had someone puked? Had anyone been that drunk? Could have been a bulimic, mind you.

  ‘Worse,’ Emily said. ‘It’s Ethan. I don’t know how we missed him last night. I’ve already tried waking him up and he growled at me like a dog. Little prick.’

  Sure enough, Ethan was curled up on the couch, clutching his penknife between his paw-like hands, five o’clock shadow bristling on his skull. In slumber his goateed, bemetalled face was sweet.

  ‘That boy needs to get home to shave his head. Give him a kick,’ Emily urged.

  ‘Couldn’t we just shake him?’

  ‘More fun to kick him.’

  ‘OK.’ I tried a tentative jab on his shin, but he shifted and muttered something about nailing my motherfucking head to the table.

  I looked enquiringly at Emily. ‘Best leave him for a while,’ we agreed over-enthusiastically. ‘A young man needs his sleep. More coffee.’ We headed back to the kitchen.

  On top of the fridge was an o
pen bottle of white wine that we’d missed in last night’s clear-up. I noticed that a cork was still wound around the corkscrew. That could be used to seal the bottle for later.

  ‘Pass me the sesame,’ I said to Emily.

  A long stare from Emily, and a bottle of sesame oil arrived in front of me. I looked at it, realized what I’d done, and saw that she was already subjecting me to an are-you-quite-sane examination.

  ‘What d’you want sesame oil for? To stir-fry your raisin bran?’

  ‘Ah no, I meant can you pass me the corkscrew.’

  ‘That’s not what you said. You said “sesame”. Unless I’m going mad, and I’m really not in the mood for that.’

  I contemplated lying – it’d be easy enough to convince her she was halfway around the bend – but saw how unkind that would be. ‘It’s just a word. That Garv and I used to say,’ I explained, awkwardly. ‘When we opened a bottle of wine, we’d say “Open Sesame”. So the corkscrew got called “sesame”. I’m sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘Is that why you keep putting my toothpaste on my toothbrush for me every night? It’s something you and Garv did?’

  ‘Wh-at?’ I stuttered.

  ‘Every night since you’ve got here,’ she said patiently, ‘after you’ve gone to bed, I’ve gone to the bathroom and my toothbrush is waiting, with toothpaste on it. If you’re not doing it, then who is?’

  I had to admit it. ‘It is me. I hadn’t realized I was doing it. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘And it’s something you and Garv did?’

  ‘Yeah. Whichever one of us went to did first would get the toothbrush ready for the other person.’

  ‘That’s the sweetest thing I ever heard,’ Emily glowed, then quickly quenched it when she saw my face.

  The grief I’d felt when I’d woken up was back. I was carrying the full weight of a lost language and all the rituals that would mean nothing to anyone else, but were part of whatever had bound Garv and me together. And there were loads of them: when he made my dinner and put it on the table, I had to rush into the room and declare, ‘I came as soon as I heard!’ And if I forgot, he’d withhold the nosh and prompt me, ‘Say it. Go on –I came as soon as I heard!’

  Trying to explain why that was funny or comforting would be like trying to describe colour to a blind person. Not that I’d ever have to, because now it was all gone. An entire way of life.

  Clearly, I was pumping out waves of regret, because Emily urged, ‘It’s OK to say it.’ ‘Say what?’

  ‘That you miss him. Even I miss him.’ ‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘I miss him.’

  But I missed more than him. I missed me. I missed the way it used to be, when I didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than me. Now there were all these people around, and I was tired of having to act. Even with Emily I wasn’t as fully me as I once was with Garv. And it showed up in the smallest of things, like the telly being on too loud. With Garv I’d just roar at him and he’d turn it down, but with Emily I had to keep my mouth shut and burn holes in the lining of my stomach instead.

  ‘I had a dream,’ I announced. I sounded like Martin Luther King.

  ‘Tell me,’ Emily said, then thought to add, ‘Marty.’

  ‘Well, you know the plot already’

  ‘Is this the Shay Delaney dream?’

  ‘Yes, and it started with me running after Shay, but he turned into Garv.’ I described the frantic running, the desperate need to catch up with him, the terror as he slipped further and further away, the bereft grief when I understood that he was gone. ‘So, go on,’ I ended. ‘Make me feel better.’

  Emily’s very good at that sort of thing.

  ‘We process things in our dreams that we’re not able to in our waking hours,’ she said. ‘You were married for nine years, of course you feel shite. The end of any relationship is a wrench. I mean, even after I’ve been going with someone for three months, I feel suicidal when it’s over. Unless I ditch them. Then I’m over the moon.’

  I was beginning to feel a good deal more normal, then Emily ruined it all by asking, ‘Is there any chance, though, that maybe you and Garv could try again?’

  The room seemed to darken.

  ‘I know he’s had an affair,’ Emily said.

  ‘Having,’ I corrected. ‘He’s having an affair.’

  ‘It could be over, for all you know.’

  ‘I don’t care. The damage is done. I’d never be able to trust him again.’

  ‘But it could be worked out – other people have done it.’

  ‘I don’t want to. Since February… I can’t describe it, Emily. It was like… like being locked in a car boot with him.’

  ‘Jesus!’ she said, startled at my imagery. I was quite startled myself, to be honest. I’m not normally good at that sort of thing.

  ‘A car boot that was shrinking,’ I added, just to outdo myself.

  Emily gasped, her hands to her throat. ‘I can’t breathe!’

  ‘That’s exactly how I felt,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, I’m just having a bad day… Another one,’ I added.

  ‘Let it go, man,’ a dopey voice interrupted. It was Ethan, leaning against the door frame, clearly enthralled. ‘If it don’t come back, it was never yours. If it comes back, it’s yours to keep.’

  ‘Out!’ Emily ordered, her arm straight, her finger pointing. ‘We’ve enough armchair philosophers around here.’

  As he loped to the door, Emily checked the time again. ‘David has got to be at his desk by now!’

  And he was – but he couldn’t really tell her anything. As was his way, he made positive noises. ‘They really loved you!’ But she wanted hard news. A yes or no. Are they in or are they out? And he couldn’t tell her.

  ‘He’s scared,’ she surmised, hanging up the phone.

  ‘Why would he be scared?’ I forced joviality.

  ‘’Cos this town runs on fear. If Hothouse pass, it’ll reflect badly on him and his lousy judgement in backing a loser. Makes him a loser by association.’

  Food for thought. I’d always thought of agents as kind of impartial catalysts. Middlemen who brought people together but who remained unaffected by the process. I’d been wrong.

  ‘And Mort Russell is probably scared that if he buys it, the head of the studio mightn’t like it,’ she continued gloomily. ‘And scared that if he doesn’t buy it, someone else might and make a hit of it. Meanwhile, I’m fucking terrified that no one will buy it. How do you feel, Maggie?’

  I checked my anxiety levels. Same as they always were. ‘Scared stiff.’

  ‘Welcome to Hollywood.’

  A ring on the doorbell had us making enquiring faces at each other. Emily nearly broke her neck skidding across the floor, spurred on by visions of Mort Russell standing on her doorstep holding a your-worries-are-over cheque.

  But it wasn’t Mort Russell, it was Luis, one of the Goatee Boys. Up until now, they’d only existed for me as a blur of interchangeable facial hair, but at last night’s party they’d come into separate focus. There were indeed only three of them. Ethan: big, meaty and shaven-headed. Curtis: blondy, balding, plumpish, with the least impressive goatee of the lot. It was wispy and flyaway, as though he’d been crawling under a bed and had got a load of fluff stuck to his chin. I found something slightly odd about him, but that might just have been because Ethan had told me that in high school Curtis had been voted pupil ‘Most likely to go postal in a public place with an automatic weapon.’

  And, standing in front of me, Luis. Neat, pretty – and polite! He’d come to thank us for the party and to invite us over for dinner some time. He claimed to be an excellent cook – a result, apparently, of his Columbian heritage. ‘Call by whenever,’ he invited.

  ‘Sure.’ Emily brusquely closed the door.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ I asked.

  She rolled her eyes at me. ‘Oh, come on!’

  Muttering something about being thirty-three and not fifteen, she grabbed the phone and spent several unbroken hours
on it, hopping from call waiting to call waiting, discussing the pitch, having the same conversation again and again, speculating and, in effect, saying nothing.

  I could have gone to the beach or reverse-shopping – I’d decided to return the embroidered denim skirt, because when I tried it on at home it made my knees look funny – but instead I listlessly watched a telly evangelist, weighed down by the return of my earlier, regret-filled mood. I thought about Garv. He’d had a lot of good points. But then again, plenty of bad points. They ping-ponged around so much in my head that in the end I grabbed one of Emily’s yellow pads and wrote them all down.

  List of Good things about Garv

  1. Understanding exchange rates and the plots of thrillers.

  2. Having a lovely, tiny bottom. (It was really gorgeous, especially in combats.)

  3. Thinking I am the most beautiful woman on the planet. (Though he probably doesn’t any more.)

  4. Seeing the good in everyone. (Except for my family.)

  5. Doing his own ironing.

  6. Bringing me to jazz concerts and such like, to further my cultural education.

  List of Bad things about Garv

  1. Bringing me to jazz concerte and such like, to further my cultural education.

  2. Loving football and being proud of me because he thinks I understand the offside rule. (I don’t.)

  3. The electric blanket business, obviously.

  4. And the way he was about my hair.

  5. Not talking to me about Thinge. (I know all men refuse to talk about Thinge and shrug, ‘Ah sure, we’re grand’ when a nine-year marriage le falling apart, but it still distressed me.)

  6. Sleeping with other women.

  But my childish list of facts made no impact on my gloom. I still felt spooked – heavy with sorrow and a hope-flattening sense that I was a failure. That I was a mess and my life was a mess. And my future was a mess. And my past was definitely a mess.

  Realizing that the day was shaping up to be a write-off, I took a towel out to the backyard for a spot of sunbathing, and within seconds I was mercifully asleep.