The Post-Birthday World

Irina stirred a shard in the coriander chutney. “You’ll think I’m nuts.”

“You’re projecting again. You think you’re nuts.”

“It’s not that crazy. On the face of it, there’s no reason that a children’s book illustrator would have a whole lot in common with a think-tank research fellow, either.”

“What, is this guy some working-class gardener or something?”

“He wishes he were working class. But he has plenty of money.”

“Look, I’m not going to play Twenty Questions here.”

Irina shook her head. “If we ever go public, Jude is sure to think we were running around behind her back while they were still married. We weren’t.”

“Ramsey Acton?” said Betsy with incredulity. “I’ll give you this: he is good-looking.”

“I hadn’t even noticed he was handsome before; or only abstractly.”

“This entire country has noticed your boyfriend’s good-looking, as of the 1970s.”

Their food arrived, and Irina helped herself to a tiny spoonful of each dish, which puddled in disagreeable pools of red oil on her plate.

“You know, you’ve lost weight.” The observation carried a hint of resentment. Betsy, as they say, was big-boned—though she was pretty, and Irina had never figured out how to tell her that. “It’s okay for now—you look hot as the blazes, frankly—but don’t overdo it. Lose any more and you’ll get waiflike.”

“I’m not on a diet. I just can’t eat.”

“You’re on the luv diet. Worth ten pounds. But don’t worry—you’ll put it back on at the closing end.”

“Who says there’s going to be an end?”

“Irina, get real. You’re not going to run off with Ramsey Acton. Jude made that mistake; learn from it. Get him out of your system. For that matter—if you’re telling me the truth—maybe you should get it over with and fuck the bastard. Stop building it up into such a big deal and find out one more time that fucking is fucking. On this score, most men are fungible. Then patch things up with Lawrence. As for whether you tell him about it and have a big cry, or shove it under the carpet like a grown-up, that’s your call. But Ramsey is not a long-term prospect.”

“Why not?”

“For starters? Take what you said, about money. Sure, Ramsey’s made a lot of it. But according to Jude, it’s all very easy-come. There’s a corollary. She couldn’t believe how little there was to filch when they divorced.”

“She got a house in Spain!”

“Out of millions? I don’t know how much you know about snooker, but these boys make do-re-mi hand over fist when they’re on a roll. Why isn’t there more of it left? I’m not only talking about finance, but temperament. You go all the way to Roman Road so you can bring in your own bottle of red. You’re frugal. Ramsey? Is not frugal.”

“It could do me good, to learn to splurge a little. It has done me good.”

“Did you ever talk to Jude about what it was like to live with a snooker player?”

“Some,” said Irina defensively. “She moaned a lot. But she was prone to. As Ramsey says, she’s chronically dissatisfied. They were a bad match.”

“And you’re a good one? Go on the road with them, and you’re stuck in hotel rooms, playing with the tea machine. But they don’t want you to go on the road, not really. They like to play hard away from the table, too. And stay home, you’re a widow for the season, sitting there wondering how much he’s drinking, what’s up his nose, and who’s sidling next to him at the bar.”

“That’s a cliché.”

“They always come from somewhere.”

“Ramsey’s different.”

“Famous last words.”

Irina sulked over her spinach, and threw back another defiant gulp of wine. When the waiter silently opened the second bottle, she sensed his disapproval.

Betsy wasn’t finished. “If you’re seriously contemplating a future with this character, can we talk turkey? Ramsey’s, what, fifty?”

“He’s only forty-seven.”

“Big diff. Forty-seven, in snooker, is like ninety-five for everybody else.”

“Ramsey says that, when he started out, plenty of snooker players were only reaching their prime in their forties.”

“Times have changed. The superstars are all in their twenties. Ramsey’s slipping. You can count on the fact that he’ll keep slipping, too. Maybe it’s eyesight, or steadiness of hand, or just starting to get burnt out despite himself, but he’ll never get back to where he was. He’s never quite won the World Championship, and he hasn’t a snowball’s of winning it now. The point is, you’re getting the guy at the tail-end. It’s not the fun part. Sometime soon he’ll be forced to retire, unless he’s willing to publicly embarrass himself. Snooker’s his whole life, as far as I can tell. Retirement’s not going to be pretty. When I picture it, cognac and long afternoon naps feature prominently.”

“They almost always take up golf.”

“Oh, great.” Betsy heaped another spoonful of the neglected lamb onto her plate, eyeing Irina askance when she poured another glass of wine. “Listen, you must be having a rough time. But before you do anything hasty, try to be practical. Jude says he’s neurotic.”

“She’s one to talk.”

“I just want you to walk in with your eyes open. She says he’s a hypochondriac. That he’s superstitious and touchy, especially about anything to do with his snooker game. Expect snooker, snooker, snooker. You’d better like it.”

“I do like it,” said Irina. “Increasingly.”

“‘Increasingly’ means you didn’t give a shit about it before. But I get the feeling it’s not a fascination with snooker that’s driving this thing.”

“All right. No.” Irina had never tried to put it into words, and had a dismal presentiment that any attempt to do so would prove humiliating. Nevertheless, she’d give it a go. “Every time he touches me, I think I could die. I could die right at that moment and I’d leave this earth in a state of grace. And everything fits. No matter how we sit next to each other, it’s always comfortable. The smell of his skin makes me high. Really, breathing at the base of his neck is like sniffing glue. Slightly sweet and musky at the same time. Like one of those complex reduction sauces you get in upscale restaurants, which somehow manages to be both intense and delicate, and you can never quite figure out what’s in it. And kissing him—I should be embarrassed to say this, but sometimes it makes me cry.”

“My dear,” said Betsy, clearly unmoved; boy, was that speech a waste of time. “It’s called ‘sex.’ “

“That’s a belittling word. What I’m talking about isn’t little. It’s every thing.”

“It isn’t everything, though it seems that way when you’re drunk on it. Eventually the smoke clears, and there you are, with this guy downstairs hitting little red balls into pockets the whole day through, and you wonder how you got here.”

“You think it doesn’t last.”

“Of course it doesn’t last!” Betsy scoffed. “Didn’t you go through something like this with Lawrence?”

“Sort of. Maybe. Not as extreme. I don’t know. It’s hard to remember.”

“It’s no longer convenient to remember. Didn’t you two go at it hot and heavy for a few months? Or you wouldn’t have moved in together.”

“Yes, I guess. But this seems different.”

“It seems ‘different’ because right now you’re up to your neck in it. And meanwhile, there are traffic bollards in your head to keep you from getting at what it was like in the olden days with Lawrence. My money says it wasn’t different at all.”