Hardly Knew Her Read online

  So, yes, the above—the triteness of his speech, its grating quality, his resemblance to a Guinness-besotted Teletubby—was what she told herself afterward, the forming scab over the hurt and humiliation of being dumped two weeks into a three-week tour of the Emerald Isle. (Guess who called it that.) After her first, instinctive outburst—“You asshole!”—she settled down and listened generously, without recriminations. It had not been love between them. He was rich and she was pretty, and she had assumed it would play out as most of her relationships did. Twelve to twenty months, two or three trips, several significant pieces of jewelry. He was pulling the plug prematurely, that was all, and Ireland barely counted as a vacation in her opinion. It had rained almost every day and the shopping was shit.

  Still, she nodded and interjected at the proper moments, signaling the pretty waitress for another, then another, but always for him. She nursed her half pint well into the evening. At closing time, she slipped the waitress twenty euros, straight from his wallet, and the young woman obligingly helped to carry Barry through the streets to the Great Southern. His eyes gleamed a bit as she and the waitress heaved him on the bed, not that he was anywhere near in shape for the award he was imagining. (And how did his mind work, she wondered in passing, how did a man who had just dumped a woman two weeks into a three-week trip persuade himself that the dumpee would then decide to honor him with a going-away threesome? True, she had been a bit wild when they first met. That was how a girl got a man like Barry, with a few decadent acts that suggested endless possibilities. But once you had landed the man, you kept putting such things off, suggested that the blow job in the cab would follow the trip to Tiffany, not vice versa, and pretty soon he was reduced to begging for the most ordinary favors.)

  No, they tucked Barry in properly and she tipped the waitress again, sending her into the night. Once the girl was gone, she searched his luggage and selected several T-shirts of which he was inordinately fond. These she ripped into strips, which she then used to bind his wrists and ankles to the four-poster bed. She debated with herself whether she needed to gag him—he might awaken and start to struggle—and decided it was essential. She disconnected the phone, turned the television on so it would provide a nice steady hum in the background, then helped herself to his passport, Visa card, and all the cash he had. Then, as Barry slept the rather noisy sleep of the dead-drunk, she raided the minibar—wine, water, cashews. She was neither hungry nor thirsty, but the so-called honor bar was the one thing that Barry was cheap about. “It’s the principle,” he said, but his indignation had a secondhand feel to it, something passed down by a parent. Or, perhaps, a girlfriend. Moira, she suspected. She opened a chocolate bar but rejected it. The chocolate wasn’t quite right here.

  They were e-ticketed to Dublin, but that was a simple matter. She used the room connection to go online, and never mind the cost, rearranging both their travel plans. Barry was now booked home via Shannon, while she continued on to Dublin, where she had switched hotels, choosing the Merrion because it sounded expensive and she wanted Barry to pay. And pay and pay and pay. Call it severance. She wouldn’t have taken up with Barry if she hadn’t thought he was good for at least two years.

  It had been Barry’s plan to send her home, to continue to Dublin without her, where he would succumb to a mounting frenzy of Moira-mourning. That’s what he had explained in the pub last night. And he still could, of course. But she thought there might be a kernel of shame somewhere inside the man, and once he dealt with the missing passport and the screwed-up airline reservations, he might have the good sense to continue home on the business-class ticket he had offered her. (“Yes, I brought you to Ireland only to break up with you, but I am sending you home business class.”) He was not unfair, not through and through. His primary objective was to be rid of her, as painlessly and guiltlessly as possible, and she had now made that possible. He wouldn’t call the police or press charges, or even think to put a stop on the credit card, which she was using only for the hotel and the flight back.

  Really, she was very fair. Honorable, even.

  “MR. GARDNER WILL BE JOINING ME LATER,” she told the clerk at the Merrion, pushing the card toward him, and it was accepted without question.

  “And did you want breakfast included, Mrs. Gardner?”

  “Yes.” She wanted everything included—breakfast and dinner and laundry and facials, if such a thing were available. She wanted to spend as much of Barry’s money as possible. She congratulated herself for her cleverness, using the American Express card, which had no limit. She could spend as much as she liked at the hotel, now that the number was on file.

  It was time, as it turned out, that was harder to spend. For all Barry’s faults—a list that was now quite long in her mind—he was a serious and sincere traveler, the kind who made the most of wherever he landed. He was a tourist in the best sense of the word, a man determined to wring the most experience from travel. While in Galway, they had rented a car and tried to follow Yeats’s trail, figuratively and literally, driving south to see his castle and the swans at Coole, driving north to Mayo and his final resting place, in the shadow of Ben Bulben. She had surprised Barry with her bits of knowledge about the poet, bits usually gleaned seconds earlier from the guidebook, which she skimmed covertly while pretending to look for places to eat lunch. Skimming was a great skill, much underrated, especially for a girl who was not expected to be anything but decorative.

  Of course, it had turned out that Yeats’s trail was also Moira’s. She had been a literature major in college and she had a penchant for the Irish and a talent, apparently, for making clever literary allusions at the most unlikely moments. On Barry and Moira’s infamous trip, which had included not just Ireland but London and Edinburgh, Moira had treated Barry to a great, racketing bit of sex after seeing an experimental production of Macbeth at the Festival, one set in a Texas middle school. And while the production came off with mixed results, it somehow inspired a most memorable night with Moira, or so Barry had confided, over all those pints in Galway. She had brought him to a great shuddering climax, left him spent and gasping for breath, then said without missing a beat: “Now go kill Duncan.” (When the story failed to elicit whatever tribute Barry thought its due—laughter, amazement at Moira’s ability to make Shakespearean allusions after sex—he had added: “I guess you had to be there.” “No thank you,” she had said.)

  She did not envy Moira’s education. Education was highly overrated. A college dropout, she had supported herself very well throughout her twenties, moving from man to man, taking on the kinds of jobs that helped her to meet them—galleries, catering services, film production offices. Now she was thirty—well, possibly thirty-one, she had been lying about her age for so long, first up, then down, that she got a little confused. She was thirty or thirty-one, maybe even thirty-two, and while going to Dublin had seemed like an inspired bit of revenge against Barry, it was not the place to find her next position, strong euro be damned. Paris, London, Zurich, Rome, even Berlin—those were the kinds of places where a beautiful woman could meet the kind of man who would take her on for a while. Who was she going to meet in Dublin? Bono? But he was married and always prattling about poverty, a bad sign.

  So, alone in Dublin, she wasn’t sure what to do, and when she contemplated what Barry might have done, she realized it was what Moira might have done, and she wanted no part of that. Still, somehow—the post office done, Kilcommon done, the museums done—she found herself in a most unimpressive townhouse, studying a chart that claimed to explain how parts of Ulysses related to the various organs of the human body.

  “Silly, isn’t it?” asked a voice behind her, startling her, not only because she had thought herself alone in the room, but also because the voice expressed her own thoughts so succinctly. It was an Irish voice, but it was a sincere voice, too, the beautiful vowels without all the bullshit blarney, which had begun to tire her. She could barely stand to hail a cab anymore because the drivers exhaus
ted her so, with their outsize personalities and long stories and persistent questions. She couldn’t bear to be alone, but she couldn’t bear all the conversation, all the yap-yap-yap-yap-yap that seemed to go with being Irish.

  “It’s a bit much,” she agreed.

  “I don’t think any writer, even Joyce, thinks things out so thoroughly before the fact. If you ask me, we just project all this symbolism and meaning onto books to make ourselves feel smarter.”

  “I feel smarter,” she said, “just talking to you.” It was the kind of line in which she specialized, the kind of line that had catapulted her from one safe haven to the next, like Tarzan swinging on a vine.

  “Rory Malone,” he added, offering his hand, offering the next vine. His hair was raven black, his eyes pale blue, his lashes thick and dark. Oh, it had been so long since she had been with anyone good looking. Perhaps Ireland was a magical place after all.

  “Bliss,” she said, steeling herself for the inane things that her given name inspired. Even Barry, not exactly quick on the mark, had a joke at the ready when she provided her name. But Rory Malone simply shook her hand, saying nothing. A quiet man, she thought to herself. Thank God.

  “HOW LONG ARE YOU HERE FOR?”

  They had just had sex for the first time, a most satisfactory first time, which is to say it was prolonged, with Rory extremely attentive to her needs. It had been a long time since a man had seemed so keen on her pleasure. Oh, other men had tried, especially in the beginning, when she was a prize to be won, but their best-intentioned efforts usually fell a little short of the mark and she had grown so used to faking it that the real thing almost caught her off guard.

  “How long are you staying here?” he persisted. “In Dublin, I mean.”

  “It’s…open-ended.” She could leave in a day, she could leave in a week. It all depended on when Barry would cut off her credit. How much guilt did he feel? How much guilt should he feel? She was beginning to see that she might have gone a little over the edge where Barry was concerned. He had brought her to Ireland and discovered he didn’t love her. Was that so bad? If it weren’t for Barry, she never would have met Rory, and she was glad she had met Rory.

  “Open-ended?” he said. “What do you do, that you have such flexibility?”

  “I don’t really have to worry about work,” she said.

  “I don’t worry about it, either,” he said, rolling to the side and fishing a cigarette from the pocket of his jeans.

  That was a good sign—a man who didn’t have to worry about work, a man who was free to roam the city during the day. “Let’s not trade histories,” she said. “It’s tiresome.”

  “Good enough. So what do we talk about?”

  “Let’s not talk so much, either.”

  He put out his cigarette and they started again. It was even better the second time, better still the third. She was sore by morning, good sore, that lovely burning feeling on the inside. It would probably lead to a not-so-lovely burning feeling in a week or two and she ordered some cranberry juice at breakfast that morning, hoping it could stave off the mild infection that a bout of sex brought with it.

  “So Mr. Gardner has finally joined you,” the waiter said, used to seeing her alone at breakfast.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’ll have a soft-boiled egg,” Rory said. “And some salmon. And some of the pancakes?”

  “Slow down,” she said, laughing. “You don’t have to try everything at one sitting.”

  “I have to keep my strength up,” he said, “if I’m going to keep my lady happy.”

  She blushed and, in blushing, realized she could not remember the last time she had felt this way.

  “SHOW ME THE REAL DUBLIN,” she said to Rory later that afternoon, feeling bold. They had just had sex for the sixth time, and if anything, he seemed to be even more intent on her needs.

  “This is real,” he said. “The hotel is real. I’m real. How much more Dublin do you need?”

  “I’m worried there’s something I’m missing.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re not.”

  “Something authentic, I mean. Something the tourists never see.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Like a pub?”

  “That’s a start.”

  So he took her to a pub, but she couldn’t see how it was different from any other pub she had visited on her own. And Rory didn’t seem to know anyone, although he tried to smoke and professed great surprise at the new antismoking laws. “I smoke here all the time,” he bellowed in more or less mock outrage, and she laughed, but no one else did. From the pub, they went to a rather sullen restaurant, and when the check arrived, he was a bit slow to pick it up.

  “I don’t have a credit card on me,” he said at last—sheepishly, winningly—and she let Barry pay.

  Back in bed, things were still fine. So they stayed there more and more, although the weather was perversely beautiful, so beautiful that the various hotel staffers who visited the room kept commenting on it.

  “You’ve been cheated,” said the room service waiter. “Ask for your money back. It’s supposed to rain every day, not pour down sunlight like this. It’s unnatural, that’s what it is.”

  “And is there no place you’d like to go, then?” the chambermaid asked when they refused her services for the third day running, maintaining they didn’t need a change of sheets or towels.

  Then the calls began, gentle but firm, running up the chain of command until they were all but ordered out of the room, so the staff could have a chance to freshen it. They went, blinking in the bright light, sniffing suspiciously at the air, so fresh and light after the recirculated air of their room, which was now a bit thick with smoke. After a few blocks, they went into a department store, where he fingered the sleeves of soccer jerseys. Football, she corrected herself. Football jerseys.

  “Where do you live?” she asked Rory, but only because it seemed that someone should be saying something.

  “I have a room.”

  “A bed-sit?” She had heard the phrase somewhere, perhaps in a British novel, and was proud of being able to use it. Although, come to think of it, Ireland and Great Britain were not the same, so the slang might not apply.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She must have used it wrong.

  “I like this one.” He indicated a red-and-white top. She had the distinct impression that he expected her to buy it for him. Did he think she was rich? That was understandable, given the hotel room, her easy way with room service, not to mention the minibar over the past few days. All on Barry, but Rory didn’t know that.

  Still, it seemed a bit cheesy to hint like this, although she had played a similar game with Barry in various stores and her only regret was that she hadn’t taken him for more, especially when it came to jewelry. Trips and meals were ephemeral and only true high-fashion clothing—the classics, authentic couture—increased in value. She was thirty-one. (Or thirty, possibly thirty-two.) She had only a few years left in which to reap the benefits of her youth and her looks. Of course, she might marry well, but she was beginning to sense she might not. She did not inspire matrimony, not that she had been trying. Then again, it was when you didn’t care that men wanted to marry you. What would happen as thirty-five closed in? Would she regret not accepting the proposals made, usually when she was in a world-class sulk? Marriage to a man like Barry had once seemed a life sentence. But what would she do instead? She really hadn’t thought this out as much as she should.

  “Let’s go back to the room,” she said abruptly. “They must have cleaned it by now.”

  They hadn’t, not quite, so they sat in the bar, drinking and waiting. It was early to drink, she realized, but only by American standards. In Rory’s company, she had been drinking at every meal except breakfast and she wasn’t sure she had been completely sober for days.

  Back in the room, Rory headed for the television set, clicking around with the remote control, then throwing it down in disgust
. “I can’t get any scores,” he said.

  “But they have a crawl—”

  “Not the ones I want, I mean.” He looked around the room, restless and bored, and seemed to settle on her only when he had rejected everything else—the minibar, the copy of that morning’s Irish Times, a glossy magazine. Even then, his concentration seemed to fade midway through and he patted her flank. She pretended not to understand, so he patted her again, less gently, and she rolled over. Rory was silent during sex, almost grimly so, but once her back was to him, he began to grunt and mutter in a wholly new way and when he finished, he breathed a name into the nape of her neck.

  Trouble was, it wasn’t hers. She wasn’t sure whose it was, but she recognized the distinct lack of her syllables—no “Bluh” to begin, no gentle hiss at the end.

  “What?” she asked. It was one thing to be a stand-in for Barry, when he was footing the bills, to play the ghost of Moira. But she would be damned before she would allow a freeloader such as Rory the same privilege.

  “What?” he echoed, clearly having no idea what she meant.

  “Whose name are you saying?”

  “Why, Millie. Like in the novel Ulysses. I was pretending you were Millie and I was Bloom.”

  “It’s Molly, you idiot. Even I know that.”

  “Molly. That’s what I said. A bit of playacting. No harm in that.”

  “Bullshit. I’m not even convinced that it was a woman’s name you were saying.”

  “Fuck you. I don’t do guys.”

  His accent had changed—flattened, broadened. He now sounded as American as she did.

  “Where are you from?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Do you live in Dublin?”

  “Of course I do. You met me here, didn’t you?”

  “Where do you live? What do you do?”

  “Why, here. And this.” He tried to shove a hand beneath her, but she felt sore and unsettled, and she pushed him away.