The Rialto

She hesitated before lining her lips. The last time she had overdone it and ended up resembling a guilty child at a chocolate fountain. She made her lips thin and dispatched an exploratory pencil stroke before deciding against it.

What if it looks ridiculous? What if he thinks you're ridiculous?

Fuck off, Sister...

Yet it was better not to risk it. Gloss would be plenty. The pink one, frosted with crystals like grains of sugar. It fattened them up, like sugar would. She didn't need reminding...

'You look nice.'

'Jesus, you took the heart out of me.'

'I knocked.' Mike held up his hands. 'You were away with the fairies.'

He sat down on the bed with a sigh, careful not to sit on the clothes she had laid out.

'Are you meeting Briege there?'

'I'm picking her up...What time is George coming?'

'He didn't say. Said he'd ring when he's on the way.'

'How do I..?'

She turned around to show him her face.

'I already said you look nice. I'm not saying it again.'

'Hand me that bag love. No, the make-up bag...'

His hands were shaking but that was nothing new. Yet his frequency was weird...

Does he know? No, sure how would he? Don't be so paranoid...

'I looked up that play,' he said. 'She sounds like a right wagon.'

'Oh? Does she remind you of someone?'

'Don't flatter yourself...Anyway, I think I'll wait for the film.'

'Be the best thing. Be easier to swallow.'

'Have I done something on you, love?'

'Oh Jesus love, don't start. I'm sorry, okay? It's the time of the month.'

'I didn't want to say anything...'

You have to be right, don't you? Every fucking month...

'I'm an easy read, so.'

'Some of the time. I like trying to figure you out.'

'You're usually wrong...'

She returned to the mirror, mock-gracious in defeat.

He hasn't a breeze. He never had.

She brushed her hair, watching his reflection pull a thread from the cuff of her blouse before attempting to conceal the damage.

'Will you get us a glass of water, love?' she said.

'For a tablet, is it?'

'Yeah.'

Her temples were pounding...

*

Max was dressed down. Jeans with a blazer. She didn't care for the look but it suited him. It took the priest look off him.

He got into the back seat, surprised at the vacancy.

'I tried ringing you,' she said. 'The network...'

'Is Mike okay?'

'What? Oh no, he's fine. But he gets these dizzy spells now and again...'

He nodded. 'There is a risk of stroke.'

'He's bulling. He was really looking forward to tonight...where are you going?'

'I thought...'

'But, I mean, you and I can still...unless, of course...'

She tailed off, unnerved by the static of desperation in her voice, but he was smiling.

'Of course...'

'He might still be up later. You might come back for a drink...Do you want to sit up the front...?'

*

They took the old road. She hadn't driven it in years.

'This used to be the only road to Limerick,' she said. 'Before the by-pass.'

'You're feeling nostalgic.'

'It used to be such a thrill driving in. The big city...Jesus, I sound like such a farmer...'

'My brother has the farm. I work there each summer.'

'We noticed your hands. Connie thought you were a sculptor.'

'She's funny. Pat too. They're a funny couple.'

'Funny doesn't cover it...'

She turned the heating down once they were on the far side of Birdhill, preferring the smell of him in the cold. Occasionally, she glanced down at his knees, not quite sure as to his degree of collusion.

Is he buying the charade because he wants to? No. I think he actually believes me. Connie said there was no sides to him...

The condensation at the edges of the windscreen was a scalloped frame about the darkness beyond their headlights.

'Up ahead here is a black spot. See how little time you have before you see the turn-off...?'

She slowed down, dipping her lights as they approached the T-junction. The crenellations of wall facing them were painted yellow and black.

'People have driven straight into it.'

'You're a good driver.'

'Thank you, Max. But come on...'

'I mean it. No one has ever told you...'

'No. They haven't.'

The darkness gave way as they approached Annacotty and the outskirts of the city.

'The university is in there,' she said.

'You studied there?'

'No, UCG. Galway. You should go there. The city, I mean.'

'Is it where you met Mike?'

'No. We used to play tennis. Do you play? No...? The local club. We brought him in as a ringer. The Inter-Firms. And there were a lot of parties back then, you know...a lot of parties...'

'I can imagine.'

'I don't want to think about how long ago.'

'You always say things like this.'

'Like what?'

'As if your life is over.'

'We were different people back then. We knew nothing.'

'As if you remember a late acquaintance...'

He lit two cigarettes and handed her one. She smoked with the side of her mouth to spare her gloss.

'Regret only poisons,' he said. 'I know this already. There's much that I...It doesn't matter.'

'And you always do that!'

'What?'

'Just say what you were going to say. It's okay. I'm in no kind of position to judge anyone.'

'It's...indelicate. To talk about oneself to such a degree.'

'It's what friends do...'

He went quiet, staring out at the suburbs receding in his wing-mirror. She wiped her hands on her coat as they waited on a green light.

You've offended him, you gobshite. Could you be any more of a blunt instrument?

Yet when he turned to look at her, he was smiling. Just about, but it was enough...

*

The theatre bar was almost empty. A scattering of Arts undergraduates and English teachers -- amateur dramatics, faithless writers, dogs conditioned to salivate by the sounding brass of weekend culture supplements.

'What would you like?' said Max.

'Can I have a Jameson? Just water...'

She found an alcove near a radiator and took out her compact. Flaky mascara, crumbling foundation. The down of her cheeks like an emergent lawn...

'Reasonable for two drinks...' Max placed a whiskey glass and a slim-jim of water in front of her.

'They're subsidized. God, it's a bad turn-out, isn't it?'

'Perhaps we're early.' He looked around. 'Was this place a cinema at some point?'

'Yes. It was called The Rialto. They closed down in the eighties. Derelict for years and then someone got a grant off the Lottery and did it up.'

'A fine building.'

'It was my favourite. We came here a lot.'

'I like the theatre. The sense of immediac...'

'Intimacy.' She interrupted him, finishing his sentence. 'Sorry.'

'Your word is better.'

'Well, it's the same thing really...'

'Have you read much Ibsen?'

'At college? Jesus, it's so long ago...I remember Scandinavian front rooms? Something about a sex swimming in a pool of blood?'

'I think that's Strindberg.'

'I always mix them up...'

She couldn't believe she'd said the word out loud. Yet it hadn't phased him. Nothing seemed to...

The bell sounded and the whole bar stirred at once. He dropped a beer-mat he'd fringed with rips. Fingers quick as a surgeon's.

*

They had the whole balcony to themselves.

Hedda reminded her of her mother. That malignant blackness of vanity thwarted and turned in on itself. Happiness was never an option. Only disappointment made people like them feel alive. And there was no shortage of that...

The whiskey had burned her clean. She felt purified in the darkness, zoning in and out, her gaze wandering from the stage to take in the ranks below before rising and culminating in a sideways glance at him. One knee over the other, a hand sandwiched between them, his lips moving at intervals...Her need to know the particulars of his drama was as prurient as a gossip's yet as solicitous as a confessor's. He could be candid with her, just as she could be with him. She could cauterize his wounds...

They smoked upon a rooftop terrace at the interval.

'What do you suppose happens at Judge Brack's parties?' he said.

'She'd do well to stay wide of him,' she said. 'God alone knows what that man is into.'

Her hands shook as she lit a cigarette from the butt of its predecessor.

'You're cold,' he said.

'Forgot my coat...'

He took off his blazer and placed it upon her shoulders.

'Now you're shivering,' she said.

'It's nothing...' He looked out over the balustrade. 'Such a view.'

'Everywhere looks magical at night. Even Limerick.'

'Thank you.'

'For what?'

'For this evening. For this...'

The sweep of his hand took in the illuminated cityscape.

'Get thee hence, Satan.'

'Well, I'm honoured, but you flatter me.'

She laughed and threw her cigarette over the side.

*

They took the by-pass home. Neither of them said much. She put on Lyric FM and turned it down low. His fingers kept time upon a restless thigh...

The bilingual sign at the town limits was baleful in the harshness of streetlight. Home...She felt disoriented, as if a glamour had been lifted. But the night was coming to an end. There was no escaping the fact...

She texted Mike to see if he was still up. They were outside Max's apartment before she got a reply.

took a xanax and crashed -- play ne good?

Yes. Might go for a drink.

'How is he feeling?' said Max.

'He's fine. He went to bed...'

Her phone beeped...

Will u pick up yogurts?

'Are you okay?' he said.

'It's the stupid things...'

'What things?'

'Sorry, don't mind me...'

'You accused me of this. Now you're doing it.'

'It's what I do, Max. It's what we all do. Sure we're grand...We get on with it. He nearly died. We have no right to complain...Sometimes I wish he had died. God forgive me...He'd be better off... I'm evil. I'm an evil fucking bitch. I don't care who knows it anymore. I don't care...'

He said nothing. He just sat there in the punch-drunk silence. She turned her face away, gouging her left hand with the nails of her right. She would neither cry nor vomit nor apologize although she felt like doing all three simultaneously. But she needed to hear him speak. She willed it violently until he obliged her.

'I hate him,' he said. 'I hate what he's done to you. I hate that you loved him once. That you probably still love him. That it was him and not me. Gina, look at me...'

'No.'

'Gina...'

He touched her cheek from behind.

'Don't...'

He went still again. His breathing kept pace with hers.

'If it had been you,' she said, 'then it'd be you I hated now.'

'It wasn't just the cancer...'

'Our life together was cancer. Maybe, if we'd been able to have...No...No, I should have listened...I should never have married him.'

'But you did.'

'And then one day, years later, you realize that you've been fooling yourself all along, that you've never really been in love. And that you're going to die soon, alone, as this fake...thing, going through the motions like you've always done. Never having known what it felt like...You know what I mean, don't you?'

She turned to face him and found him hidden in shadow. He was only a voice...

'You know me,' he said.

'I knew it the first time we met.'

'Yes...'

'Your despair...' She closed her eyes. 'You hurt each other, didn't you?'

'I didn't know I could be so...I thought I was a good man. Marriage taught me otherwise.'

'I don't want you to be good...'

Her voice was faint. She opened her eyes just in time to see his face lunge out of the darkness...

*

The third step of the stairs creaked like the timbers of a ship. She swore under her breath as it ripped through the stillness of the house. Usually she remembered to pass over it, going straight from two to four.

Don't be up, please don't be up...

She peered through the banisters when she was near the top, checking for light beyond the bedroom door. Nothing...It didn't mean he wasn't awake, though. Sometimes he just lay there, staring up at the bedroom ceiling with night-blind eyes...

She had just reached the box-room door when she heard him call her name.

Fuck it...

She dropped her boots and turned on the landing light before opening the bedroom door a fraction.

'Did I wake you? I'm sorry,' she said.

'Ah, I fell asleep and then I woke up and then I couldn't get back to sleep. Are you going in the box-room?'

'I thought you were asleep. I didn't want to disturb you.'

'What time is it?'

'After two...I went back to Briege's.'

'Did she make a move on you?'

'Stop it, Mike...'

'Sorry.'

'I'm wrecked, love...'

'Sure I'm awake now. You might as well sleep in here...'

She had no choice. She entered the bedroom, trying to disguise her jockey's gait. He turned on the his bedside lamp and sat up.

'Where'd ye go for pints?' he said.

'Oh, Tanners. Where else?'

She kissed him on the forehead; marked the twitching of his nostrils.

He doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything...

'You mustn't have drank much...'

'I couldn't, I was driving.'

'Oh, right...Briege was locked so, was she?'

'She had a few...'

He propped himself up on one elbow, watching her reflection as she took off her make-up.

'What are you staring at?' she said.

'I love watching you doing that. You're like an artist.'

'An artist? Xanax still doing its thing, is it?'

'I mean it...It hasn't been easy on you, has it love? I'm sorry.'

'For what?'

'For everything. For all of it.'

'It's not your fault you got sick.'

'I know, but...I don't tell you enough.'

'Tell me what?'

'How blessed I am to have you...'

She put a hand over her mouth and ran to the bathroom, vomited-up whiskey and come spritzing through her fingers...

'Gina love, Jesus, are you all right?'

He stood behind her, stroking her back as she retched above the sink.

'Gina love, Jesus, what brought that on?'

His hands were tentative about her shoulders. She looked up at his eyes in the mirror.

I don't regret it. Her chin was bright with slime. I don't regret any of it...