‘Are you coming in the morning or afternoon?’ I asked.
‘Afternoon.’
That was slightly better because if they were coming in the morning there was a chance they might stay all day.
‘And, Rachel love,’ Mum sounded like she was going to cry, ‘we’re not going to be mean. We’re only trying to help.’
‘Good,’ I said grimly.
‘All rice?’ Barry Grant asked, gimlet-eyed, when I hung up.
I nodded. The situation was under control and I was all rice.
Anyway, I reminded myself. Four more days. What harm can it do?
48
Brigit and I were both lying on her bed, barely able to move from the August heat. Enervated by the dazzling, white light of a New York summer, which reflected off the concrete sidewalks and the concrete buildings, throwing back a hundredfold more heat and bleachedness. It had gone beyond bright and was now almost something evil.
‘… so the night he first claps eyes on you, you’ve never been so skinny, you’re all ribs and cheekbones,’ Brigit was saying.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But how? Surgery?’
‘Noooo,’ she twisted her mouth thoughtfully. ‘That wouldn’t work because the scars would show in the little Dolce and Gabbana chiffon frock that you’re wearing when you spill your glass of champagne on him.’
‘Cor,’ I breathed. ‘Dolce and Gabbana, that’s very decent of you, thanks! And champagne. Nice one!’
‘Let’s see,’ she said, and got a faraway look in her eyes. I watched in reverential silence as she sought to pad out my fantasy.
‘OK, I know!’ she announced. ‘You’ve one of those worms that live in your intestine and eat all your food so that you don’t get any of it and you lose tons of weight.’
‘Inspired,’ I declared.
Then a thought struck me. ‘But how did the worm get into my intestines?’
‘It was in some meat that wasn’t cooked properly…’
‘But I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Look it doesn’t matter,’ she exploded. ‘I keep telling you. This is make-believe.’
‘Sorry.’
I was suitably humble for a moment and then I said ‘And how did I afford the Dolce and Gabbana dress? Have I got a new job?’
‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘You stole it.
‘And you got caught nicking it,’ she added. ‘You’re out on bail and due up in court the following Monday. And as soon as the dream man finds out you’re a potential jailbird he does a runner on you.’
Brigit appeared to be tired of playing the game.
‘Anyway, you don’t need me to do this for you anymore,’ she said. ‘You have a fella.’
‘Don’t,’ I squirmed.
‘But you do,’ she said. ‘What’s Luke? He’s a fella, there’s no denying it.’
‘Stop.’
‘What’s up with you?’ she said in exasperation. ‘I think he’s lovely.’
‘Why don’t you go out with him then?’
‘Rachel,’ she said in a loud voice. ‘Stop it. I said I liked him, I didn’t say I fancied him. You’d really want to do something about that jealousy of yours.’
‘I’m not jealous,’ I objected hotly. I hated being called jealous.
‘Well, you’re something,’ she said.
I didn’t reply because she’d started me thinking about Luke. Even though I couldn’t make up my mind what I felt about him, I always became mildly hypnotized at the mere mention of him. My brain kind of glazed over.
He was officiallyish, my boyfriend. Since the dinner in The Good and Dear, I’d spent every weekend with him. But now that I was back in control with him, my previous ambivalence reared its head and I wasn’t so sure I still wanted him.
Every Sunday I promised myself that the following Saturday I would do something different. Something glamorous that involved trendy people whose star couldn’t have been more in the ascendant if it tried. Not Luke Costello. But every six days later I was powerless to resist when Luke said ‘What do you want to do tonight, babe?’
‘Right, now your turn,’ I said, coming to. I was keen to change the subject. ‘You’ve just had a really bad dose of the flu, no wait, food poisoning, because you ate some gone-off ice cream and you puked for a week.’
‘Ice cream doesn’t go off,’ she interrupted.
‘Doesn’t it? I’m sure it does. Not that it ever gets the chance around me. Anyway, who cares, you got food poisoning and you’re like a skeleton. So thin that people come up to you and say, “I think you’ve lost too much, Brigit, you’d really want to put some back on, you’re like someone from a concentration camp.” ’
‘Lovely.’ Brigit drummed her heels on the bed with pleasure.
‘Yes, people are muttering about you and you can hear them saying, “She looks absolutely wretched.” So we go to a party and you haven’t seen Carlos for ages, but he’s there…’
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘Not Carlos.’
‘Why not?’ I hooted in surprise.
‘Because I’m over him.’
‘Are you?’ I was even more surprised. ‘But I didn’t know you’d met someone else.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘But then how can you be over him?’
‘I don’t know, I just am.’
‘You’re scaring me, Brigit.’ I looked at her as if I’d never seen her before. ‘You know what Claire always says, “The only way to get over one man is to get under another.” And you haven’t been riding anyone else, I’d have noticed.’
‘Doesn’t matter, I’m still over him.
‘Aren’t you glad for me?’ Brigit asked. ‘Aren’t you glad I’m no longer in rag order?’
‘Well, yes, of course I am. I’m just surprised, that’s all.’
But I wasn’t glad. I was unsettled and uncomfortable. And confused.
First her promotion, now this.
Brigit and I had always been so alike. Apart from our attitudes to our careers – in other words, Brigit had an attitude – our reactions to life were nearly always identical. In fact, the only other thing we didn’t share was the same taste in men, which was probably why our friendship had lasted as long as it had. Nothing like a clash of interests along the lines of ‘Here! I saw him first’ to put the mockers on a friendship that had endured since junior school.
But now she’d gone all weird on me. I couldn’t understand how she’d just turned around and ceased to care about Carlos. Because I’d never, under my own steam, got over a man. It was always a team effort. I needed a new man to come along and put his back into making me miserable before I could get over the grief caused by the previous one.
My reaction to rejection was to go out and seek immediate reassurance. Usually by sleeping with someone else. Or at least to give it my best shot; naturally I wasn’t always successful.
I had always envied those women who said things like ‘After Alex left me, I just shut down, I couldn’t feel anything for another man for nearly a year.’
I would have loved to have had no feelings. Because men were mad about you if you felt nothing for them.
And now Brigit seemed to be turning into the very image of those spooky self-contained women.
How dare she be over Carlos without having met someone else?
‘Go to the fridge,’ she pushed me with her foot. ‘Go to the fridge and find me something cold.’
‘I didn’t know Helenka lived in our fridge,’ I japed and we both laughed limply and weakly.
‘I can’t, Brigit,’ I apologized. ‘I’ve no energy, I’d collapse.’
‘You lazy, useless hoor,’ she complained. ‘You’d have energy aplenty if Luke seventies-throwback Costello arrived around here with his lad in his hand looking for some lurve action.’
I wished she hadn’t said that, though, because a shock of desire for him passed through me, leaving me dissatisfied and fidgety. It was hours before I was due to see him and suddenly everything until then se
emed pointless and boring.
‘D’you want anything?’ Brigit asked, hauling herself to her feet.
‘Bring us a beer, why don’t you,’ I suggested.
‘There’s none left,’ she called a few moments later, from the kitchen. From the tone of her voice I sensed great narkiness emanating from her.
Not again, I thought dispiritedly. She’d been so moody lately. What the hell was up with her?
A good ride, that’s what she needed. It was what we all needed. I might even start a petition and carry a placard saying, ‘Ride Brigit Lenehan now!’ and ‘Ride the New York one.’ And maybe I’d organize a march from the Cute Hoor to Tadhg’s Boghole, me at its head, shouting into a megaphone ‘WHAT DO WE WANT?’
And everyone else would have to shout back ‘A RIDE FOR BRIGIT LENEHAN.’
And then I’d yell ‘WHEN DO WE WANT IT?’
And everyone would reply ‘NOW!’
‘Yeah,’ Brigit repeated nastily. ‘No beer left. Who would have thought it?’
‘I said I was sorry,’ I called out to her.
Then I steeled myself and added ‘How many more times do I have to say it.’
I was a lot braver than I would have been if Brigit had still been in the room. I was hopeless at face-to-face confrontations.
I had always found it easier to have arguments with people when they weren’t actually there. In fact, I’d had some of my best rows with people who were in other countries at the time.
‘I mean, for God’s sake, Rachel,’ she called back. ‘We needed everything. Bread, diet coke, and that’s diet coca cola, dear, not the coke you usually use to lose weight…’
I curled inwards with fear at the nastiness of her tone.
‘… jack’s roll, coffee, cheese. And what do you come back with? With bread? No. With cheese? No. With any of the things on the list? No. Instead she arrives back…’
I knew things had got pretty bad when she started to talk about me in the third person.
‘… and what has she bought, what has she got with her except twenty-four cans of lager and a bag of Doritos. Which is all very well if it’s her own money she’s spending. If it’s her own money she’s spending she can buy as much beer as she likes.’
Her voice was getting nearer, so I shrank back against the bed.
‘And then for her to drink them all in a matter of hours.’ She had appeared in the doorway and I wished I was in a North Korean logging camp, where they work the prisoners twenty-three hours a day. It had to be preferable to how Brigit was making me feel.
‘Sorry,’ I said, because it was all I could say.
She ignored me. When I couldn’t bear the tension any longer I braved the silence by saying again, ‘I’m sorry, Brigit.’
She looked at me. We locked eyes for ages.
I couldn’t read her face, but I willed and willed her to forgive me. I tried to send thought messages from my head to hers.
Forgive Rachel, I vibed. Be her friend.
It must have worked because Brigit’s face softened. Seizing my advantage, I said ‘Sorry’ again. I figured it couldn’t do any harm and it might actually do some good.
‘I know you are,’ she eventually admitted.
I breathed out with relief.
‘Although, really, come on,’ she said, her voice a lot more normal. ‘Twenty-four cans of beer.’ She started to laugh and I felt elated with deliverance.
‘Right,’ I said, hauling myself off the bed, fighting through the thick air. ‘I must get ready for Luke.’
‘Where are you meeting him?’
‘I’m calling round to Testosterone Central, and then we’re going out. Coming?’
‘Depends. Is this a date?’
‘No, just going for a couple of drinks with him and forty-nine of his closest friends. Please come.’
‘Well, all right, but I’m not going to sleep with Joey just to oblige you.’
‘Aw, please, Brigit,’ I begged. ‘I’m sure he fancies you. It would be lovely, it would be so romantic.’ I paused. ‘It would be so handy.’
‘You selfish bitch,’ she exclaimed.
‘I’m not,’ I protested. ‘I’m only saying that… well, you know, you and I live together and Luke and Joey live together and…’
‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘No way. We’re adults, you and I…’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘And as adults we don’t have to do everything together. That means that we can go out with men who aren’t friends with each other.’
‘Fine,’ I said sulkily.
We sat in silence for a few tense minutes.
‘Well OK,’ she sighed resignedly. ‘I’ll think about it.’
49
I was mad keen for Brigit to get off with Joey, because I was still slightly mortified to be going out with one of the Real Men. If I could have roped in a friend of mine to go out with another of them, I’d have felt a lot more comfortable.
I didn’t like being the only one.
Of course I knew I was shallow and a horrible person and all that, but I couldn’t help it.
Brigit and I had our showers, which was kind of pointless because five minutes later we were sweating like pigs again. We put on the minimum of clothes, then swam through the heavy humid air to Luke’s.
I felt nervous and shy as I rang his bell. He always made me feel that way. A strange compulsive mix of lust and reluctance. Revulsion, nearly. A tiny little flicker of it playing around in the lining of my stomach.
We exited the lift slowly, too hot to go any faster. The door of the apartment was open and Luke was lying on the floor, wearing just a pair of denim cut-offs. His tanned chest and legs were bare and the fan whirred over him, blowing his long hair into his eyes. When I came face-to-face with him, his eyes darkened, then he smiled at me. Meaningfully, with a promise in his look and a bulge in his shorts. I felt a violent rush of desire and nausea.
‘How’s it going, seventies throw-back?’ Brigit greeted Luke.
‘Seventies sling-back,’ Luke replied.
‘Seventies bad-back,’ Brigit riposted.
‘Seventies out-back,’ Luke managed.
‘Seventies clutch-bag,’ Brigit chanced.
‘No,’ Luke was firm. ‘That’s cheating.’
Luke and Brigit got on very well. Which sometimes pleased me.
And which sometimes didn’t.
It’s a narrow line. Well, but not too well.
Then I did what I did every time I went to Luke’s apartment. I pretended to slip in a testosterone slick.
Luke obliged me by laughing. Then Brigit and I both wobbled around for a bit, windmilling our arms, shouting things like ‘Mind out, there’s another pool of it over there!’
‘Jesus,’ said Brigit, looking around the cluttered, macho apartment. ‘This place gets worse. There’s so many male hormones in the air that my balls will drop if I stay here too long. Any chance of a glass of iced coffee?’
‘Oh God, I don’t know,’ Luke said, rubbing his stubble in a perplexed gesture that I found so sexy I wished Brigit would go away for a while and leave me and Luke to do some horizontal surfing. ‘We don’t do much home catering.
‘I could run out to the corner and get a take-away for you,’ he offered. ‘Or how about a beer,’ he offered eagerly. ‘We’ve got lots of beer.’
‘Why doesn’t this surprise me?’ Brigit asked drily. ‘OK, a beer it is.
‘Am I seeing things?’ Brigit had picked up a leather jerkin that had ‘Whitesnake’ on the back of it. She shook her head almost sadly and said ‘What year is it, Luke? Just tell me what year it is.’
This was only a matter of time. She did it every time she saw Luke.
‘1972, of course,’ Luke said.
‘It’s not, you know,’ Brigit said briskly. ‘It’s 1997, actually.’
Luke looked horrified. ‘What manner of rawmaysh are you talking, woman?’
‘Pass me the paper, Rachel,’ she ordered. ‘Looki
t here, you poor sad throw-back, see where it says the date…’
Luke did his usual reeling and clutching of his forehead and I decided I was tired of being left out.
‘Where’s the lads?’ I enquired.
‘Out,’ Luke said. ‘Back any minute.’
Just then there was a commotion at the door, noises of stumbling and shouting; instructions and exhortations and complaints. And an ashen-faced Gaz was half-led, half-dragged into the apartment by Joey and Shake.
‘Not far more now, man,’ Joey was saying to Gaz.
Each of them, in turn, tripped over a pair of biker boots that were thrown in the middle of the floor.
Each of them in turn muttered ‘Jayzis’.
I wondered how they could wear so much denim in this heat. In fact, I wondered how they could wear so much hair in this heat.
‘We’re home, man,’ Shake said.
‘Thank fuck for that,’ Gaz mumbled, then put the back of his hand to his forehead, just like a Victorian spinster who’d been flashed at and was about to swoon. His eyes fluttered closed and his knees buckled under him.
‘He’s going, he’s going,’ Shake declared, all drama, as Gaz crumpled and hit the deck.
Gaz had fainted! What a laugh.
Luke, Brigit and I raced over for a closer look and to find out what it was all about.
‘Give the man some air, man,’ Joey ordered.
‘Come on, man.’ He hunkered down beside Gaz. ‘Keep breathing, man, come on, man, deep breaths.’
Gaz obliged by wheezing like an asthmatic.
‘Loosen his stays,’ I murmured.
‘What’s up?’ Luke demanded.
I had thought it was just the heat that had Gaz in such a state but, when Joey said huffily ‘Let the man have a bit of privacy,’ it was obvious that something far more interesting had happened.
Joey was always a little bit uptight when Brigit was around. He acted as if Brigit was mad about him, actually hounding him, and trying to trap him into going out with her. The cheeky article. Just because she’d slept with him. But this particular time, it was clear that Joey’s reticence had nothing to do with Brigit.
My blood quickened with anticipation. What had happened? Maybe Gaz had been knocked down. New York cyclists were vicious.