The Post-Birthday World

“That looks worth seeing,” said Lawrence. “Though you might not be keen on the subject matter.”

“Why, do you think I’m a prude?”

“No, but porn isn’t up your alley.”

“Boogie Nights doesn’t look like pornography. It isn’t mention versus use.”

A logical fallacy, mention versus use entailed doing the very thing that you were pretending to eschew—for example, asserting, “I could say that’s none of your business,” when what you’re really saying is, “That’s none of your business!” As it applied to a panoply of ostensibly above-board and purely academic British “documentaries” on whoring and blue movies, mention versus use provided respectable cover for the standard sensationalist come-on of T&A—using tut-tut to disguise tee-hee.

“It’s opening next week. Let’s go … So!” she said gaily, switching off the TV. “Tell me about the conference.”

Lawrence shrugged. “A junket, basically. Except for the fact that I got to see Sarajevo, a total waste of time—”

“Yes, you say that about every conference. But what did you talk about?”

He looked agreeably surprised. “A lot of this ‘nation-building’ stuff has to do with the police. Whether you include the assholes, or ex-assholes—if there’s such a thing—and take the risk of giving them power and guns, or shut them out and take the risk of their still having power and guns and making trouble on the side. And, you know, whether you can impose democracy from without, or if it only sticks if it’s organic, so that no matter what kind of constitution you ram down their throats, as soon as your back is turned everybody reverts to type. In Bosnia, of course, there’s this big question of now NATO is in, how to get us out. Once you build up institutions all founded on the power of an international force, it’s sort of like setting a table and then seeing if you can rip the tablecloth out from underneath without breaking any dishes.”

Irina often drifted off when Lawrence talked about international relations—one of the things that Lawrence might say “all couples did,” since it was tempting to succumb to the hazardous impression that, whatever your partner was nattering about, you knew it already. This time she’d paid attention, and had been rewarded. Oh, she didn’t much care about Bosnia, a morass she had never understood. But he was so good at cutting to the chase; in his work, Lawrence’s very speciality was the main thing.

“That’s a nice image,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said shyly. She should compliment him more often. Nothing meant more to him than her smallest kind word, and it cost her nothing.

“Was Bethany there?”

He put a look on his face as if he had to search the crowd in his mind, though he’d said on the phone that attendance was scant. “Mmm—yeah.”

“What was she wearing?”

“How’m I supposed to remember that?”

“Because my guess is, not very much.”

“I suppose she was tarted up, as you would say, as usual.”

“Someday I’m going to get you to admit that you find her attractive.”

“Nah,” he dismissed. “Never happen. A little trashy. Not my taste.” Another fellow at the institute, Bethany Anders was a nicely put together little floozy with a brain. Tiny and almost always kitted out from head to toe in black, she wore leather microskirts and boots, patterned stockings, and voluptuous cowl collars; she’d a penchant for sleeveless blouses that displayed her shapely shoulders even in the dead of winter. Lawrence was right that her face looked a bit cheap; she wore stacks of makeup, and had big, pouty lips. Yet while this variety of feline prowled the alleyways of most big cities, they were not a dime a dozen in the think-tank biz, whose few female denizens inclined towards frump and paisley shirtwaisters. So in the halls of Churchill House, Bethany stood out. Rather than act cool and distant, whenever Bethany crossed paths with Irina she was overfriendly—more grating than acting chilly by a yard.

It was thanks to Bethany, whose name Irina routinely pronounced in goading italics, that Lawrence was taking over a portfolio at the institute that nobody else wanted. Formerly a bastion of Cold War strategizing, after the fall of the Iron Curtain Blue Sky was overloaded with experts in Russian affairs. (With the fall of the Soviet Union, Irina, too, had experienced a sudden drop in status. Abruptly among the diaspora of one more harmless, economically flailing dung heap, she missed feeling dangerous.) Wanting to distinguish himself, Lawrence had been hitting the books on Indonesia, the Basque Country, Nepal, Colombia, the Western Sahara, the Kurdish region of Turkey, and Algeria. Having written extensively on Northern Ireland (whose pasty politicians must have clamoured to be interviewed by a fox in stilettos), Bethany was teaching him the ropes, since to everyone else at Churchill House during an era of grand Clintonian optimism her pet subject was dreary, morally obvious, and tired beyond belief. If Lawrence wanted to research dumpy old terrorism, he was welcome to it.

Irina had misgivings about Lawrence taking on yesterday’s news, and some portion of her resistance concerned Bethany’s tutelage. But at least “Dr. Slag,” as Irina had dubbed her (or, in American, Dr. Slut), stimulated an elective jealousy that bordered on entertainment. The steadfast Lawrence Trainer was no more likely to stray than to walk out the door in polka-dot pyjamas, and Irina was safe as houses.

“I think she fancies you,” Irina teased.

“Bullshit. She’d flirt with a doorstop.”

Lawrence was intellectually brassy but sexually humble—hence his chronic poor posture. Irina could never get it through his head that she wanted him to be attractive to other women, that she found the prospect exciting. If he, too, felt a little stirring once in a while, that was only red-blooded, for surely she was not the only one who—

“Let’s go to bed,” she proposed, and picked up the pie dishes.

Lawrence grabbed the glasses, a last sip of wine left in hers as an emblem of renewed forbearance. “But I haven’t seen your new work!”

“Oh, that’s right—and I’ve been looking forward to showing you.” For Irina, the greatest satisfaction of finishing a drawing was to unveil it to Lawrence, and once they dropped off the dishes she led him into her studio.

“You remember the project, right?” she said. “Seeing Red? A little boy lives in a world in which everything is blue. And then he meets a traveller from another land in which everything and everyone is red, and it freaks him out. Naturally by the end they’re both thrilled to bits, and have learned to make purple. It’s another predictable story line, but an illustrator’s paradise. This afternoon, I got to red.”

“God, these blue ones are unbelievable. Reminds me of Picasso.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said bashfully. “Though it was challenging to get all those different shades in coloured pencil. There’s a vogue right now in using the same materials that kids do, felt-tip markers, crayon—as if they could’ve drawn this, too.”

“I don’t think so.” Lawrence cheerfully admitted to having no artistic talent, and his wonder was genuine.

“Voilà.” She turned to the last drawing. “Red.”

“Wow!”

Something had happened that afternoon. Perhaps owing to the pent-up feeling that issued from drawing for weeks in blue, the arrival of the crimson traveller had released something. Surrounded by indigo with a fine halo of luminous pink, the tall, spare figure was shocking. Almost scary.

“You’re so great,” said Lawrence with feeling. “I wish you could work with writers who were on a par.”

“Well, I’ve been saddled with worse text. I’d even like the idea, if I thought it really had to do with colour. I used to pine as a kid to see a different one—a really new colour, and not another rehash of the primaries. Unfortunately, I get a creepy feeling that this story was bankrolled because of its multicultural undertones.”

“Like, let’s all fuck each other and make purple babies?”

“Something like that.”

“This last one.” Lawrence studied the fruit of an unusually feverish afternoon; she’d felt possessed. “It’s got a completely different feeling than the blues. Even a different line quality, and the style is more …” Lawrence was no art critic. “Bonkers. Is that a problem? That it doesn’t fit in?”

“Maybe. But I ought to redraw the first ones, rather than throw this one out.”

“You’re a pro, know that?” He ruffled her hair. “I could never do what you do.”

“Well, I’d be hopeless at nation building, so we’re even.”

Her mother would be pleased: their set sequence of retirement was choreographed with the precision of dance. Yet the last step of their waltz toward slumber Irina was considering shaking up a bit. Add a little cha-cha.

Chewing on the matter, she tidied the bedroom. She’d been so exhausted when she came home last night that she’d flung her clothes on the chair. They lay in a crumple, and Irina felt a tinge of aversion for them. With a sniff she found that the navy skirt reeked of Gauloise smoke, and tossed it in the laundry basket. As for the shirt, that little rip at the neckline wasn’t mendable, and she dropped it in the rubbish. She was relieved to get the garments out of her sight, much as her shower that morning had been elongated by an eagerness to wash something more than grime down the drain.

They both undressed. Granted, glimpsing each other’s nude bodies no longer inspired raw lust, but a reciprocal ease with nakedness had a voluptuousness of its own. Which is why it felt especially queer when Lawrence climbed into bed and Irina’s heart raced. Why did the proposal she was working herself up to seem so radical?

“Read?” Lawrence suggested.

“N-no,” she said beside him. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” He reached towards the lamp.

“Don’t—don’t turn out the light yet.”