The Rialto

She put her foot down, ate up white lines with further haste. Her stomach felt bloated, queasy. Plus she was sweating again, cancelling out the shower she'd had.

Is it your...?

Fuck him, anyway. He knows me too well...

She wasn't due until the following week, though. Hopefully they'd hold off until then...

But she was spotting by the time she arrived in Limerick. She bought pads in an all-night chemist and put one on in the bathroom of a hotel before going out to the lobby and ordering coffee. Her elongated reflection in the glass of the table was pleasing. For once, she acknowledged that she didn't look too bad, even if the slenderness was an optical illusion...

*

For a bit to eat...

She had a yen for roast beef. Connie had mentioned a pub near the station that did carveries you'd struggle to finish.

She headed south through flatland's rows of dissected Georgiana, keeping a firm hold of her handbag. Her other bags hobbled her progress, especially the one with the boots in it. A hundred and fifty quid...but they were reduced from two hundred. What was she to do, not buy them? Besides, they went with the dress she had found, a red woollen turtleneck, trimmed black at the margins and up the sides. Modest enough for work but it gave her a nice shape...

She drifted down narrower streets where internet cafés and Asian shops faced off with sullen and forbidding locals. Maybe a glass of wine with her food, if she ever found the place. Red wine with red meat. It made sense. Her mouth was keen with the taste of raw mince, a quirk of her pre-menstrual heat. It made her teeth water, sing like the blade of a butcher's saw...

MissTyque. At first she thought it was Russian script. Toys Videos Mags...The door was shut but there was a buzzer. The caged window softly lit, a desultory plastic rosary hanging from one of its squares.

She looked up and down the street before pressing the buzzer. The door clicked open and she went inside.

There were two customers present, both male, both of whom scarpered upon her entrance. The shopkeeper, a bald man seemingly buffed to his remarkable sheen in Chicken Kiev butter if the smell of the place was anything to go by, looked at her like she was a fetch sent forth from the cover of one of his videos. Clearly they weren't used to actual women in there. It was easy to see why.

Geile Luder-Fucked the Shit out of their Assholes. Pissmops. Fuck my Dirty Shithole. Cock Sockets. Meatholes. Mama ist die grosste Sau...

'Stayed dry, at least,' said the shopkeeper.

'Thank God...'

The sections were laid out by fetish. There was also a second-hand section which she approached gingerly. A sign on the wall proclaimed fifty percent off next purchase if accompanied by a trade-in. It was a good job. Did men really pay those kind of prices for this stuff? Fifty quid for one video? Of course they did, the fools. They would have paid any price.

The buzzer sounded and a man walked in, then walked back out when he saw her. She grabbed a video without looking and brought it to the counter. The shopkeeper seemed glad he was about to see the back of her. She was bad for business.

'Do you have a return?'

'No.'

'Fifty...Do you need a bag?'

'No thanks...'

She took Mike's note from her back pocket and handed it to him.

*

She put the video on after Mike had gone to bed, reckless on her second bottle of wine and the echoes of the gin she'd opted for at lunch. No Limit, it was called. German, of course. It would have been strange if it hadn't been...

It was a compilation of scenes from the early Nineties. She could tell by the clothes. One girl wore a suit like one she'd owned back then. The impulses on display, however, were timeless. They never went out of fashion.

She watched in bemusement, doubled over with menstrual cramps. The women were beautiful, if mindless, but she had never seen a more hideous-looking and less charming collection of men. For some reason, they all left their shirts on, knotted at the midriff. Sexual intercourse appeared to be the last thing on their minds...

They oversaw lesbian fist-fucking sessions, delivering monologues of utter redundancy; presented brutalized arseholes to the camera, like gruesome trophies; pissed upon faces with all but eyes and mouths hidden inside latex gimp masks; administered lit candles and champagne enemas (the discharges of the latter weirdly spectacular) to impossibly distended orifices. It was human sexuality re-imagined by Dark Tetrad-harbouring children, monstrous little boys who stuck compass needles through the thoraxes of live wasps for kicks. Lieb...The women said it repeatedly, as in how much they loved having forearms inside their rectums or how much they loved being used as a paraphiliac's urinal. It was the point at which irony devolved into pathos.

When she turned it off, she felt wistful rather than ill or appalled. Getting upset was just a waste of passion. And the offence was essentially trifling. All it would take to cancel it out would be a sincere and adult act of love...

She looked up at the ceiling, thinking, my husband; sifting through memories like old Polaroids. Weekends away in Achill and Kilkenny; a trip to Amsterdam on their tenth anniversary; those hungover weekend mornings in a child-free house...

Husband...The word alone used to be enough to make her wet. To know him as no other woman did was a pleasure far beyond mere physical sensation. When they fucked, they couldn't be anything but honest with each other. She'd never once had to fake it.

She swirled the lees of her wine, listening to his footsteps upstairs and the intermittence of his stream of piss. Like when they turned the household water pressure down...

She remembered mornings on which she had woken up before him and how she would sluice with mint Listerine before returning to bed where she would slip down under the covers to contemplate his morning hard-on for a while before getting to work. It was a moment of constancy in a mutable world, somehow reassuring...

She loved how he touched the back of her neck while she sucked him. Half-asleep still, his fingers tentative, as if unsure as to whether or not she was a dream. Her throat was deep enough to take him in to the root. Breathing through her nose, her tongue curved out around his balls...She'd taught herself how to do it. It was all about control.

When he came, it was tainted with menthol...

Good morning...

It came out thick, baffled by the muck coating her tongue.

Oh Jesus, love...Jesus, I'm busting to...

Don't get it on the seat.

Sure I've no control over it after.

Bring us back a glass of water...

The stupid things you missed...

Polaroids that became scarcer, the later ones, perversely, more faded than their predecessors.

Even before he got sick...

She wasn't blameless. Tiredness became a fetish to be propitiated with eight hours sleep a night and a lie-in at the weekend. He started to wear sweatpants to bed. His body language in sleep became defensive, his back to her and his knees drawn up like he was hiding something shameful. She didn't care. She knew by him that he wasn't hard and was untroubled by the relief she felt before falling back asleep...

Upstairs, the base of the bed creaked as he remounted. He had been restless recently, prone to nightmares. His oncologist had told her that it wasn't uncommon, sometimes for years afterwards. Post traumatic stress...

She felt her uterus fall asunder, a tsunami of blood. Time to change her pad...

She rinsed her glass and added her empty bottles to the collection by the back door before going to the downstairs bathroom, where she pulled down her jeans and knickers simultaneously to inspect the damage. Destroyed. When she'd first started menstruating, her mother had, without a word, handed her a packet of maxi-pads and a prayer card to St. Anthony. He wasn't worth a shit either.

She dumped the old pad and affixed the new, rubbing the bloat of her pubic mound to no avail.

There's a can of beer in the fridge since the summer. Have that and a Solpadeine. Give him time to fall back asleep. Maybe I'll sleep in the box room not to disturb him. He needs his sleep. He needs his sleep...

When she got back to the front room, she put the video on again.

*

She wore the dress and the boots to work on Monday.

'Mid-life crisis? I'm only messing, Jesus, those are gorgeous...'

Connie was arch with her the whole day, the bitch. She'd had her hair done. Perhaps she felt upstaged.

'You don't want to know how much,' said Gina. 'I couldn't find that pub you were on about either.'

'Did Mike go with you?'

'No, I went in on my own.'

'Oh did you now? We should do that again sometime...mitch off an afternoon and hit the shops. Go on the tear after.'

'We should...'

Max came in and went straight to his mail slot. There was a handwritten letter from Austria waiting for him. She'd clocked it earlier as she'd checked her own. A woman's hand. Fat, elegant characters...He slipped it into his inside pocket without a flicker.

He came over and sat down in front of them.

'Good morning. Good weekend? Your hair is nice...'

He was looking at Gina, even as he said it.

'Thank you.' Connie swelled up like a bullfrog's neck. 'Pat didn't even notice till I told him...'

*

She spent the morning in her office, taking callbacks regarding a careers fair she had pencilled in for the spring of the following year. It got to the point where she wanted to turn off her phone but Mike's illness had made her superstitious about doing so.

He rang her after twelve for a chat.

'How are you feeling?' he said.

'I'm so heavy this month. Like the insides are falling out of me.'

'Did you take your Ponstan?'

'Yes, doctor.'

'You're busy. I'll let you go...'

'No, love, I'm fine for another few minutes...'

The conversation became drawn out, increasingly idle. Neither of them had anything to say. She looked at her diary, contrasting her own handwriting to that on Max's letter. Whoever she was, she was left-handed. It took one to know one...

'If you're going out today, will you pay the ESB?' she said.

'I don't know if I am. I feel a bit unsteady today.'

He's never going back to work...

'I have to go, there's someone at the door,' she said.

'Okey doke...'

But she had already hung up.

'Come in.'

'Gina, excuse me, do you have a minute?'

'Max...Of course, of course, come in, come in.'

His chair groaned as he sat down in front of her desk.

'If you're busy...' he said.

'Trust me...' She gestured at the heaps on her desk, '...this is mainly cosmetic.'

He laughed, watching the bootleather of her calves as she sat back and crossed her legs. His hands were agitated, clasping and unclasping.

'I owe you an apology,' he said.

'What? For what? Go way or that.'

'For the other night. I didn't mean to offend you or Mike. Connie explained to me about his...I didn't know. I'm sorry. Sometimes when I drink...'

'Oh look, we've all been there. You weren't to know. I should have told you...'

'My father, you know...He had it in his intestines.'

'Oh God, I'm so sorry...'

'Many years ago.' He smiled, his eyes upon the desk. 'I was young when he...'

'It's an awful thing for a child to have to go through...Max, look, it's fine. Anyway, I was rude to you too.'

'When? I don't...'

'I asked if you were married. I thought you were put out.'

'Put out?'

'Sorry. It means annoyed...'

'It has another meaning?'

'Am...Oh, you mean the in the American sense? Yes, that means something else entirely...'

'Oh.'

He flushed. Her stomach growled with percolating acid. His discomfort was endearing yet her empathy wasn't without a touch of sadism. Sometimes it was nice to watch them squirm...

'Well, now you know,' she said.

'Indeed.' He recovered his composure as quickly as he had lost it. 'You must let me buy you lunch today. To make amends.'

'Oh. Well, I brought in a sandwich...actually, no. I mean, yeah. You're on.'

'Good...Good.'

They shook hands. His was dry, rough as a bricklayer's. She presented him with her right, enjoying the novelty.

*

They left the school early, both to avoid the rush and to give them a chance at an upstairs table in Tanner's, away from their co-workers who generally colonized a corner downstairs. She wanted privacy and got the sense that he did as well.

Her Guinness stew tasted of soap but she was so hungry that she ate it anyway. He had turkey and ham, which didn't look much better. She watched him eat, trying not to make it obvious. He liked his food. Halfway through the meal he was already talking about desserts.

The letter was from his daughter. He talked about her and his ex-wife as they ate.

'She's sitting her Matura next year. I hope to be there for her graduation. Her mother thinks it's a bad idea...She and I are divorced. Two years now.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Please. It was the best thing under the...You're the first person I've told over here, you know. Although I think Connie suspects.'

'Not much gets past her...'

He cut his meat with purpose, as if battling ghosts. She drank some water before her tongue dried out entirely. Damaged goods...damaging...The prospect gave him a veteran's depth, the sense of a man tempered by experience, both physically and emotionally. The polite thing would have been to change the subject but she was done with politeness...

'What's her name?' she said. 'Your ex's name?'

'Maria...She teaches music. Used to berate my tin ear.'

'Hardly grounds for separation.'

'The...soul, I suppose, was important to her. More so than the person it was in. And yet she calls herself an atheist...' He laughed and wiped his mouth. 'A bad joke. A lifetime of them...'

'Did you teach at the same school? Because I know that can be...'

'She taught at a Gymnasium. The Jesuits. You understand...? I was in a Technical School.'

'I hate that old snobbery.'

'It's one of the reasons I left. To get away from all that.'

'Ireland, though? I know, I bet you read Heinrich Boll when you were a teenager.'

'Also, there was Ryan's Daughter...How well you know me already, Gina.'

She didn't blush. She met his gaze and held it, seeing and raising the real pleasure of his smile.

'You can tell me to shut up any time you want,' she said.

'Why would I?'

'Connie says I can be a smart arse.'

'Perhaps she's really talking about herself...'

She laughed into a balled-up serviette.

'Perceptive...'

'I'm joking, of course. Connie is very nice...'

'She has her good points...'

Now both of them laughed. She felt the onset of dampness beneath her arms and between her thighs. His face reddened, bright with exuded grease. He made a triangle of his wrists upon the table and watched her from behind the apex. Stout-black pupils, harbingers of a more critical loss of control...

'Listen to the pair of bitches.' She threw her serviette into her plate. 'We're awful.'

'We're not so bad...'

They ordered coffee and orange cheesecake for afters. When he gave her his mandarin segment, she realized that, at some point, it had become serious. It was the stupid things. They were always the most eloquent.

*

'A play?' said Mike. 'What brought that on?'

'It's the theater in the old Rialto building? You liked it there that time we went.'

'When were we in the...?'

'Everyone is raving about this Hedda Gabler. I thought it would make a nice change.'

'What night is it on?'

'Friday...'

He seemed to deflate, just as she had expected him to. No matter how well he knew her, she knew him better.

'What am I going to do with the tickets?' she said.

'How much did they cost?'

'They weren't dear.'

'Connie might go with you. Sorry, love. When I feel more up to it...'

'You're grand.'

But you were well enough to go to Punchestown...

She was pleased with the outcome so she pushed her spite to one side.

*

She watched Max from the balcony above the lobby as he arrived the following morning.

What if he says no? All these lies are bound to unravel...

Isn't lying the kick though?

She feigned bumping into him at the door of her office and invited him in.

'Are you busy on Friday night?' she said. 'We have a spare theatre ticket...Mike would love to meet you properly.'

'Friday?'

He didn't seem too sure. She felt like she was back at some teenage hop, willing a friend's older brother to ask her to dance.

'If you've already made plans...'

'What's the play...?'

'Hedda Gabler?'

'I saw it at home once. I'd like to see it in English.'

'Good man...Mike will be delighted. We could pick you up around six?'

'Do you know where I live?'

She pretended not to.

*

She told Mike she was going with Briege. She was a safer bet than Connie. Mike and her didn't get on and hence it was unlikely that they would talk...

Of course he had to try and one-up her by making arrangements of his own.

'George is going to drop over on Friday night,' he said.

'Big of him.'

'Don't start.'

'I fucking will start. All the time you were sick, where was he? Didn't darken the door of the hospital.'

'He's in Brussels.'

'Not all the time he isn't. Connie and Pat met him and Polly at Gowran Park. Not even a phone call.'

'He's busy.'

'He couldn't be arsed. Nice friends...'

'Least I have friends...'

I used to as well...

She had to stop herself from saying it...

*

She covered the mirror in the ensuite with a towel when she showered. It was a superstition bequeathed to her by her mother and one which she had maintained since she was girl. She had never enquired after the rationale although she could imagine. The body was an affront to the preciousness of the soul's gaze. Vanity was the gatekeeper of death. Something life-affirming...

When she got out of the shower on Friday evening, the full-length mirror on the back of the door was uncovered, if bemisted. She wiped it clear from top to bottom and looked at herself, as if for the first time.

A foolish old woman...worse than an old fool, an old slut...look at the state of you...

She pictured her superego as an old-school Sister of Mercy, dessicated to nothingness beneath her habit until there was only a voice of pure poison left inside its starched and arid folds. Because girls could make such fools of themselves. Someone needed to put them straight...

She gave back as good as she got.

You've never had a man want you, have you, you old cunt? And yet you lecture the whole fucking world on the subject...

Mark my words.

Mark mine, Sister. Fuck you.

You think you know it all, don't you? Hasn't that always been your problem?

I know more than you...

She ran a hand down either flank and turned to the side. Lived-in was apt but the more she looked at her reflection, the more she came to see it as a virtue.

He wants a woman. He wants you.

The droplets on her flesh glowed like pearls in the dirty light...

*

Black underwear, freshly laundered. A gold anklet she had forgotten she owned. The sharpness of her facial bones coming into focus beneath the strokes of her make-up brush...

Her hands were sure even though it had been years since she had taken such care. The pleasure was as much in the rediscovered craft as in the outcome. She understood subtlety in make-up, how it appealed to the artist adrift in the breast of every man. They could be such squeamish creatures, so easily repulsed. All of them pettishly coveting an ideal. God forgive a flesh and blood woman for actually existing...