The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

  “With Leo and me, nothing you do once every six months qualifies as ‘routine.’”

  “But do you really think it matters, that you don’t do it very often?”

  “Yeah,” said Betsy gruffly. “It probably does.”

  “I’m not so sure. In fact, lately the rest of the world doesn’t make sense to me. On TV, in adverts, in the movies, everybody’s shoving their hands in one another’s trousers. It seems so boring. Is this a terrible thing to say? Sex bores me.”

  “Whoa! Sure we’re talking about real sex here?”

  “Real sex over many years, yes. Most of the time frankly it’s too much trouble. I’d rather go to sleep. But that’s the way it must always get. You’re all hot and bothered to begin with, and then the fire dies down, and what’s going to make or break you isn’t the spice in your bedroom, but whether you both like chicken vindaloo. In fact, I came across a study in the paper the other day that measured these chemicals that course through your blood when you fall in love? Apparently no one can maintain them for longer than about a year and a half.”

  Betsy squinted. “And I thought I was cynical.”

  “I’m not cynical, I’m pragmatic. I know you’ve been frustrated, physically, with Leo. But you have two wonderful boys, and you can carry a conversation. What more do you need?”

  “I always thought you and Lawrence had more going for you than this.” Betsy’s tone was defeated.

  “We have plenty going for us! And the sex thing is fine. There’s only, well, one small disappointment…” Irina balanced a whole green chili on a small bite of chicken. “He doesn’t kiss me. Hasn’t for years.”

  Betsy stopped eating. “That’s the one thing you’ve said that’s alarming.”

  “It shouldn’t be that important.” Ah. The chili was like shooting up, and Irina’s eyes watered.

  “Meaning it is.”

  “No, meaning it shouldn’t be, and maybe it plain isn’t.”

  “Anything stopping you from kissing him?”

  “No. I try sometimes. But it feels strange now. Radical.”

  “Kissing is radical. That’s why it’s important.”

  Irina smiled victoriously. “You said a few minutes ago that kissing colleagues at book parties was something you ‘laugh off.’ A few minutes ago, I should have kissed this other man on a whim if only to improve my circulation. Now a kiss is radical?”

  “I never claimed to be consistent. But you’re not, either. According to you, by not kissing this mysterious character you narrowly missed the end of the world, but when it comes to Lawrence, kissing is ‘unimportant.’ Can’t have it both ways, cookie. And while we’re at it, can we get back to the fun bit? Who was this guy you wanted to kiss?”

  “You’ll think I’m nuts.”

  “I already think you’re nuts—for giving yourself such a hard time over something you didn’t even do.”

  “You absolutely have to promise me that you won’t tell Jude.”

  “Hold it…. Ramsey Acton?” Despite her incredulity, Betsy appended, “I don’t know about nuts. He’s damned good-looking.”

  “I’ve no idea what came over me. I’d never looked at him that way before.”

  “I’ve never looked at him any other way. To me, snooker is a big snore. But there’s nothing soporific about that mouth. Sure you made the right decision?”

  “I’ve never been so relieved as I was the next morning. I like a clean life. I hate subterfuge. I have nothing to hide from Lawrence, and I plan to keep it that way.”

  “Nothing whatsoever? That’s hard to credit. And if it’s true, it’s depressing.”

  “Okay, I didn’t tell him about that urge I had. It was just one of those funny what-might-have-been moments.”

  Betsy chewed on her lamb like an idea. “Have you and Lawrence thought about having a kid?”

  “We have mixed feelings. The time’s never seemed right.”

  “The time’s never right. You just do it.”

  “So you think I need to mix things up somehow? I’m afraid I’ve given you a picture of us that’s flat and lifeless. It’s not; I’m just burnt out on sex. After all, fucking is fucking, and on that score most men are interchangeable. It’s in other areas that they differ—whether they know something about the Western Sahara, or can rescue you from a fire.”

  “Do you remember what it was like with Lawrence, at the beginning?”

  “Sure. It was great. We were so excited to be in the same bed that sleep seemed unbearably wasteful. But we’ve had that, and after a while you get something else. Something deeper and fuller, but without the edge. It’s musical: the beginning is all treble, and the latter part of your relationship is bass.”

  “It can still be base—in the most sordid sense. Or do you think that’s impossible? That no one ‘keeps it.’ That it doesn’t last.”

  “I think it’s pretty impossible. That’s what everyone says, don’t they?”

  “You listen to everyone?”

  Irina chuckled. “I’d never have pegged you as such a romantic.”

  “I’m not. In fact, I keep having the creepy feeling when I’m listening to you that in another conversation that’s what I’d be saying. It sounds more disheartening in someone else’s voice. It sounds fucking dark.”

  Irina gnawed a last edge of chapati. “But I love Lawrence. It happens to be a big round warm love instead of the sharp I-can’t-get-your-fly-down-fast-enough kind. I don’t see what’s so dark about that.”

  “Have you thought about getting married? The occasion might do you two good.”

  “We could. Though I don’t know what difference it would make.”

  “I’ve never known you to be so dismal.”

  “I’m not dismal! I’m perfectly happy!”

  “Your perfect happiness bears a strange resemblance to other people’s despair. This—moment of yours, with Ramsey. Think he noticed? He can be pretty dense.”

  “I had a powerful sense he felt the same way. Though later he’ll convince himself it was all in his head. And we haven’t spoken since. For that matter, I’m afraid to.”

  “Ergo, you’re afraid of yourself.”

  “There’s something about him… I felt something stir that night that had been hibernating for a long time.”

  “That’s the healthiest thing you’ve said all night.”

  “I have to stay away from him.”

  “Maybe. But whatever’s hibernating in there could stand to wake up.”

  Grateful that Irina had made the trip, Betsy picked up the bill, and the two women parted outside.

  “You’ve got to talk to Lawrence,” Betsy advised.

  “Whatever about? Algeria?”

  “No man would be thrilled to learn that his woman considers sex dull and she’d rather cop some Zs. If nothing else, you should get the son of a bitch to kiss you.”

  “Do you know how humiliating it is, to have to ask a man to kiss you? When he obliges, it’s as if he’s being a good camper.”

  “I know Lawrence, and he likes to play it safe. He’s got a lot of intellectual bravado, but emotionally he lives in a fortress. You shouldn’t let him get away with it. Make him lower the drawbridge once in a while.”

  WHEN SHE FINALLY GOT home, Lawrence cried from the living room, “It’s late!”

  She’d waited for an hour at the South Ealing station before the system deigned to announce that there would be no more Piccadilly trains this evening. “I missed the tube. Took forever to find a taxi.”

  “You, spring for a cab?” His tone wasn’t chiding, but grateful. It was nearly two a.m., an improbably long evening for a girls’ night out, and his mind must have been churning with assaults, rapes, and train accidents. “Why didn’t you call and let me know you’d be so late? I was worried.”

  “Sorry, I really should have. But finding a working pay phone would have delayed me even longer. Maybe it’s time we break down and buy mobiles.”

  “Cells cost a fortune here
. And I can’t stand people shouting to their invisible friends down the street. You can’t tell the difference between CEOs and the homeless anymore. But didn’t you find a phone to call a minicab?”

  “I didn’t want to confess,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t have any minicab numbers on me, so I grabbed a black taxi off the street. I refuse to tell you what it cost.”

  “Fuck it,” said Lawrence. “I make good money. I’m just glad you’re all right.”

  Irina plunked down beside him on the couch, and Lawrence shot her a quizzical glance. Lawrence always extended on the sofa; Irina always assumed her armchair. She kissed him, with closed lips, but on the mouth. “I think you’re wonderful.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “Only that I don’t tell you that often enough.” When she braved an arm around his shoulders, his body tightened, and he looked crowded. After waiting a discreet beat or two, Lawrence disengaged himself politely and got ready for bed.

  IRINA’S KILLJOY PRAGMATISM THAT Friday night had perturbed not only Betsy, but Irina herself. The fact that she considered her relationship with Lawrence a miracle did not comport with this appearance of reduced expectations. Irina had never bought into the notion that you “worked on” a relationship like a job, but there was something to be said for paying attention to each other.

  Unfortunately for Irina’s turned leaf, Lawrence was not himself still recuperating from a recent scare with a mouth. Though he acceded in principle to her fervent declarations that they should spend more time together, his affable cooperation never seemed to extend to a particular afternoon. She asked him three times if he wanted to go see Boogie Nights, but he had an article to finish. She invited him to come along on her trip to Borough Market, but he “hated shopping” and would rather catch up at the office. By the time she inquired if this Sunday he would join her on one of her long ambles through Hyde and Regent’s Parks, she used the negative construction, “You wouldn’t like to X, would you?” and her tone was forlorn. No, as a matter of fact he wouldn’t.

  Her physical advances were no more successful. When she sidled up to him in bed mornings, he wriggled and mumbled that he was hot. Her returns to his couch continued to feel like territorial incursions, and eventually Irina would retreat to her armchair. When she held his hand on the street, he’d have to scratch his nose. Her one request for sex face-to-face had been so unavailing that she was reluctant to try again, as she was also reluctant to demand, once more, to be kissed. You shouldn’t have to ask, and it seemed too torturous for words to ask that she not have to ask.

  Alas, she was treating the symptoms and not the disease. There was a reason he was discomfited by her sprawling across his chest, plopping on his personal sofa, clasping his hand, meeting his eyes during sex, and—most of all, strangely enough—opening her mouth to his. While one could conjure a variety of abstruse psychological labels for the underlying condition, the most succinct of them was Lawrence. Any ailment that went by so dense and complicated a name would not easily admit of a cure.

  So Irina resolved to treat one symptom that had become a disease in itself: television. Lawrence turned on the news when he came home, kept all manner of rubbish nattering in the background through dinner, and then plunked in front of the box until they turned in. Holding hands was one thing; this time she was in for a fight.

  When she announced that she’d like to experiment with keeping the TV off evenings, Lawrence was consternated. What, he asked, did she propose they do instead? Listen to music… read…, she proposed tentatively. Lawrence observed that he spent all day either reading or writing text, thank you very much, and he needed a break. Moreover, Lawrence didn’t play an instrument, keep a woodshop, or build ships in bottles. What did she suggest, that he take up knitting? It was one of those funny existential moments when there simply seemed dismayingly few things to do in the world, period. Irina was at a loss.

  “We could… talk,” she submitted.

  “We do talk. But talk is more words,” he objected. “In the days before electricity, you got up with the sun, muddied around in the fields all day, and by the time you’d grubbed up something to eat, it was dark—that is, totally dark. There was nothing to do but sleep. Now even people like me who put in damned long hours have more leisure time on their hands—more light—than they know what to do with. That’s what television is for. It takes up the slack.”

  “Television is words,” she said meekly.

  “Television takes no effort, and that’s the point. I come home, I’m exhausted.”

  “It just seems tawdry. That noise all the time. We’re not really together.”

  Lawrence relented—or pretended to, though in retrospect the experiment was rigged. For three nights running he put himself at her disposal, a nice way of saying that he dumped his full 160 pounds in her lap. The only diversion Irina could come up with was Scrabble, which Lawrence tactfully refrained from observing was still more words, and which, after he placed the Q on a triple-letter score two games in a row, he seemed destined to win by a humiliating margin. Defeated in every respect, on the third night Irina turned on the TV herself.

  Thus it was all the more extraordinary when two nights later Lawrence turned it off. “Listen,” he introduced, settling into a confrontational position on the couch. “I know you’re not that interested in snooker. For that matter, you’ve never seemed all that interested in Ramsey, either.”

  “Snooker’s all right,” she shrugged, curious.

  “See, the Grand Prix is coming up next week in Bournemouth, and I thought I might catch a round or two.”

  “If you’re asking permission to watch television, I’ve given up.”

  “No, I meant go to the tournament.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Not exactly. Ramsey would be there. Thought we might arrange a boys’ night out—like you and Betsy.”

  “Why don’t you want to go with me?”

  “It’s not personal! I could just use a little guy time.”

  “What’s with this powerful interest in buddying up to Ramsey? You don’t have much in common. He dropped out of school at sixteen.”

  “Ramsey’s not stupid.”

  “Maybe not, but you couldn’t call him an intellectual. I doubt he knows much about British politics, much less about the Tamil Tigers in Indonesia.”

  “I can talk about the Tamil Tigers at Blue Sky until the cows come home.”

  “With Bethany, I assume,” she said too quietly to be heard, and when Lawrence asked her to repeat herself she said never mind.

  “With Ramsey,” said Lawrence, “I talk about snooker.”

  “Is that what he wants? He didn’t talk about snooker with me.”

  “Look, I’d only be gone overnight, and you’ve been ragging on me to do something besides watch TV. Now I come up with something, and I get it in the neck.”

  Irina mumbled to her hands, gone icy again, “I’ve been looking for things for us to do together, and you’re always busy. You hardly ever take a trip for fun. Now when you will do, you want to go alone. Why are you trying to get away from me?”

  Softening, Lawrence knelt by her chair. “Hey. It doesn’t make sense for you and me to go to a snooker tournament. You’d get bored. Besides, Ramsey’d be there. If you’d like to do something together—wouldn’t you rather it were just us two?”

  “Just us two doesn’t seem to do it for you lately,” she said glumly.

  “Oh, balls. It just seems an awful lot of trouble to go all the way to Bournemouth for a game that’s not up your alley. But we could still watch the tournament together. The first rounds are broadcast late, at eleven-thirty. Maybe get a bite out first. Make it a date?”

  Irina perked up a little. “Okay. Would you like that?”

  “Of course! And then if Ramsey makes the second round, maybe I will go to Bournemouth for a night. He sounded optimistic.”

  “You talked to him?” asked Irina sharply.

  “Sure
I did. Free tickets!”

  “So how is he?” With luck, the wistfulness in her voice was not pronounced.

  “He admitted he was lonely. Which considering the social life on offer for top-sixteen snooker players is strange in itself. But then he went on this long riff about how fortunate I was, having nabbed such a ‘class bird.’ It was kind of weird.”

  “Why weird?”

  “Men don’t usually say that stuff to each other.”

  “Well,” said Irina. “Maybe they should.”

  FOR THEIR “BITE OUT,” Irina had hopes of making a grand night of it at Club Gascon, but Lawrence preferred to cheap it at Tas just up the street, from which they could more easily make it home in time for Ramsey’s first round. She made it up to herself by dressing to the nines.

  “You’re going to wear that?” asked Lawrence. “Tas is pretty down-market!”

  “Why do you get embarrassed whenever I look good?” She hadn’t intended the question as rhetorical, but Lawrence thought introspection was for losers and she got no response.

  A pleasant establishment with blond wooden tables, Tas had lighting too bright and service too prompt; it was one of those restaurants that you could stroll into and then find yourself back out on the pavement forty-five minutes later wondering what happened. “Not very romantic,” said Irina wanly once they were seated near the kitchen.

  “You’re not into schmaltz anyway. The food’s decent, and I’m hungry.”

  “So,” she said with an intensity at odds with their rotgut red, “how are you?”

  Lawrence didn’t look up. “Okay,” he said absently. “The fact that Sinn Fein’s been asked into talks without so much as saying they’re sorry is bad news politically. But I’m sure to squeeze some op-eds out of my indignation, so it’s good for me.”

  Irina had asked how he was, not how his work was going, but for Lawrence these inquiries were synonymous. “I guess for you it’s good when the whole world blows up.”

  “That’s right!” he said cheerfully. “World’s always going to hell anyway. Someone might as well cash in.”