The Post-Birthday World

by Lionel Shriver

  “What is that?” asked Irina, laughing.

  “With loads of balls and a snooker cue—” The tune was as goofy as the lyrics, but Ramsey’s voice was clear, and he had good pitch.

  “That is—appalling!” cried Irina, wiping her eyes.

  “‘Snooker Loopy,’” Ramsey explained, while his friends began yet another ghastly verse. “By Chas and Dave and the Matchroom Mob. Rose to #6 in the charts in ’86, if you can credit that. Conceived as a promo for the championships. Sort of what the pair of you was saying about terrorism. It’s horrible, it shouldn’t have paid off, but it did.”

  “Where does the name snooker come from anyway?” asked Irina. She’d given up on reeling Lawrence into the conversation, when the line proved repeatedly to have not a live fish on the end but an old boot.

  “It were slang for, what, cretin in the military,” said Ramsey. “Some bloke at the Ooty Club slags off another player for being a right snooker when he misses an easy color. Chamberlain intervenes all diplomatic, like, There, there, boys, sure ain’t we all snookers in this game, we are. He says, so why don’t we call the whole kit snooker. It stuck.”

  “The original colloquialism snooker,” said Lawrence, “meant neophyte.”

  “Neophyte.” Ramsey turned the word in his mouth like a fishbone. “Sounds like some new compound. ‘Oi, you blokes still use super chrystalate, but my own balls is made of neophyte!’”

  Irina laughed. Lawrence didn’t.

  “YOU COULD HAVE ASKED me where the name snooker came from,” said Lawrence, marching up the stairs of the Novotel.

  “I was only making conversation,” said Irina.

  “You sure made a lot of it.”

  “Somebody had to,” she said, catching her heel on the carpet.

  “You’re drunk,” said Lawrence harshly, never wont to employ colorful terms for inebriation—blootered, legless, half-tore. The unadorned drunk was never in danger of sounding adorable. “And I don’t need you to interpret for me about politics.” He jammed their pass-card into the slot. “I think I’m pretty clear. That’s my job, you know. My Russian may suck, but I don’t need a translator in English.”

  “I was only trying to help. You sometimes forget whom you’re talking to.”

  “Thanks for holding my professionalism in such high regard.”

  “I didn’t say anything about how I regard your professionalism, high or low. It’s just that you toss off unionists this and unionists that, when someone like Ramsey may not know a unionist from a hole in the ground.”

  “Well, that’s pathetic,” said Lawrence, letting the door slam behind them. “It’s his country. And you’ve got to admit, his views on the subject display the instincts of a total pussy.”

  “He doesn’t have any views. He’s a snooker player.”

  “We’re never allowed to forget that.” Plopping on the bed, Lawrence reflexively turned on the TV. “His rendition of ‘Snooker Loopy’ was incredibly embarrassing.”

  “No one else was left in the restaurant,” she observed wearily.

  “As I predicted,” said Lawrence. “Bursting into song, getting sloppy drunk, overstaying your welcome, acting as if you own the place—pretty low-rent.”

  “That’s how British celebrities are expected to act. We were tame, as these things go.”

  Irina’s defense of their host was as pale as it was impolitic, and she wandered to the window, fiddling aimlessly with the polyester tassel on the tie-back. This hotel was nowhere near the beach, and looked out on a McDonald’s car park whose bins were overflowing. Some glum consolation, bolts of satin brocade wouldn’t have improved the fabric of the evening itself. You could feel lonely anywhere, verge on tears anywhere, even in a luxury hotel like the Royal Bath. If Lawrence hadn’t been apprised at the station that the last train to London was at 10:43 p.m., she’d have urged that they just go home.

  “All this commercial buildup,” said Irina. “But we’re in Dorset. It’s hard to remember that this is Thomas Hardy country. Moors and brooding and tragedy.”

  “I don’t know,” said Lawrence. “Many more matches like tonight’s, and Ramsey the Obscure might start to have a ring.”

  The buzz that was beginning to ebb had little to do with wine. Irina felt vaguely guilty, but as she reviewed her behavior couldn’t locate an offense. She’d been attentive to their host, an obligation. She’d looked comely in public, but not trashy, which only reflected well on her partner. She’d been lively company, laughing at Ramsey’s jokes, and it was only fitting to express enjoyment when so much money was being expended toward this end. There had been no hanky-panky, no footsie or fingers straying into the wrong laps. She’d been a good girl. She had nothing to be ashamed of.

  Be that as it may, she knew perfectly well that you could follow proper etiquette to the letter and still violate a host of unwritten laws in that sneaky fashion that no one could nail you for. In some respects this was the worst rudeness, the kind that you could get away with because it wasn’t in the book. Lawrence would never be able to cite her transgressions outright without sounding touchy or paranoid. He couldn’t reasonably object to a flash in her eyes, or to a fullness to her laughter disproportionate to the small witticisms that gave rise to it. He didn’t quite have the courage of his own perceptions to charge that while she looked rapt enough when he was talking and hadn’t ever interrupted, his conversation had obviously bored her. As for the sassy black outfit, he would like to take his whistle at Waterloo Station back, or at least to ask the kind of question that Lawrence Trainer seemed constitutionally incapable of posing: Did you really put on that short skirt for me?

  “How was that cake thing?” Lawrence grunted, scowling at the late-night replay of Ramsey’s match on the BBC.

  “It was good,” she said to the window. Ramsey had ordered a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce and pastry cream for the table. Like both bottles of wine, Lawrence had spurned the enticement. Which left Ramsey and Irina to fork tiny, sumptuous tastes from the same plate. There was nothing wrong with sharing a piece of cake. There wasn’t. There wasn’t, was there? “You should have tried it.”

  “I’d had enough,” he said emphatically. “… You don’t usually eat dessert.”

  “I didn’t order it.”

  “Nope,” he said gruffly. “I guess you didn’t. And it takes a different sort of discipline to resist temptation that’s plunked in front of you when you didn’t ask for it.”

  Having skirted even that close to the main thing, Lawrence withdrew to the TV. “On replay, the second session is even worse. Ramsey was crucifying O’Sullivan before the interval. Then, wham. He tanked. Sometimes I don’t understand these people.”

  “You do understand,” she reflected. “That is, they are people. They’re not machines. But they’re trying to be. That’s why the very best in the game, on a sustained level, are the likes of Stephen Hendry. People who are uncomplicated and a little blank. There’s an absence about them that’s mechanical. Really good snooker, perfect snooker, and maybe this applies to any sport, is all about defeating your own humanity. I was touched, in a way, when Ramsey imploded. When they’re too good, I find it almost unpleasant. It isn’t natural. It isn’t warm-blooded.”

  Lawrence looked at her with curiosity. Applying this much consideration to a matter that had previously engaged her so little seemed to constitute one more infinitesimal, ineffable treachery.

  The room lacked the panoply of props that one’s own home affords—newspapers to flap, lampshades that need dusting, pepper grinders low on corns. Resorting to the only bit of business she could think of, Irina went for the comb in her purse at Lawrence’s feet.

  “Your breath stinks,” said Lawrence.

  She wasn’t near enough for him to tell. “I had one cigarette. Just one. Honestly, Lawrence”—she untwisted her hair tie—“it’s like some moral thing now. As if we’ve gone backwards to the flapper days, when women who smoked were seen as loose. All this huffy
disapproval seems to have nothing to do with lung cancer anymore.”

  “No tobacco is safe. And it makes kissing you like cleaning out the fire grate.”

  Since when do you kiss me anyway? She held her tongue, teasing out snarls in the mirror. Lawrence had been right, her hair was mussed, but he’d failed to mention that the escaping strands had sprayed into an impromptu disarray that was rather fetching.

  “Speaking of bad breath,” said Lawrence, “where did you put our toothbrushes?”

  “Bozhe moi!” she exclaimed. “I forgot.”

  “I asked you to get some things together! No wonder I kept thinking something was missing. I can’t believe you didn’t pack a bag!”

  “Well, we hardly needed anything—”

  “All the more reason to remember what little we did!”

  “I was in a hurry.”

  “I gave you plenty of time to get ready.”

  “I went back to work.” The fib left her mouth with a dissonant twang, like a piano string snapping. She hadn’t gone back to work. She’d spent two hours deciding what to wear.

  “I could have used a fresh shirt.” Lawrence sniffed his sleeve and made a face. “Ramsey must have gone through the better part of a pack, so this one smells like an ash can. And now you’ve got to take the train back tomorrow wearing that.”

  “So?”

  “You’ll have that I-was-unexpectedly-out-all-night look. As if you met someone and were up having wild sex.”

  “Little chance of that,” she muttered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She almost said, Never mind, but pushed herself to say instead, “That you don’t seem in a very good mood.”

  “I can’t stand not brushing my teeth.”

  “I’ll go downstairs and see if they sell a toiletry kit.”

  “Too late,” he said furiously. “Nobody’s at the desk. I can’t believe you didn’t pack a bag!”

  Lawrence got up off the bed. She could see in his feint first in one direction, then the other, that what was upsetting him perhaps more than the prospect of furry teeth in the morning was the disruption of ritual. At last he moved decisively toward the bath, and Irina stepped in his path.

  “Let me go,” he said impatiently. “I have to take a leak.” He seemed grateful to have seized upon a need.

  Barring his way, Irina felt her humor teeter-totter, tipping first toward irritation: here she had done as he wished, gone to a snooker match, and put in an effort to make the expedition a success, and then he was a grouse most of the night for no good reason other than his worry about some strangers getting home from their restaurant jobs before midnight. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and she didn’t deserve this gruff, tough, angry treatment over two miserable toothbrushes and a spare shirt.

  But under that justifiable vexation lurked a less defensible annoyance: that Lawrence, if not short, was not very tall. That Lawrence, if fit, was not finely streamlined; no number of sit-ups would sharpen an essential bluntness to his figure because that’s the way his body was made. That Lawrence, if successful in his own realm, did not have an exotic occupation that would magically keep restaurant kitchens open all hours and land him in chic hotels. That Lawrence, if virtuous, did not exude an intoxicating perfume of dark-toasted tobacco, expensive red wine, and something else that Irina couldn’t put her finger on and probably shouldn’t. That Lawrence, if articulate, had a dumpy old American accent just like hers.

  On the opposite side of the fulcrum lay mental kindness. In a way, it was Lawrence’s very failings that she loved—or it was the overlooking of his failings that her love was good for. She would never forget the first time she noticed that his hair was beginning to thin, and the piercing tenderness that the discovery fostered. Perversely, she loved him more for having less hair, if only because he needed a little more love to make up for whatever tiny increment of objective handsomeness that he had lost. Thus this evening it was the very fact of his not being tall—of his having been, yes, a little boring at dinner, as well as wary and therefore less likable, not to mention harsh, judgmental, and impatient, with a small mustard stain on the collar of his trench coat, probably from that ham sandwich at lunch—the very fact of his not making the help jump for being such a celebrity, and not speaking in a disarming South London accent, and not sporting exquisitely tapered fingers but really rather stumpy, short ones like breakfast sausages—that tipped her to the sweeter disposition. She slipped her arms around his waist. Lawrence’s returning clasp was ferocious.

  10

  FANTASIES WERE ONE THING. But throughout months of frustration and with so much at stake, Irina had accepted beforehand that finally fucking Ramsey Acton would probably prove anticlimactic. She’d been braced for awkwardness, even a tragicomic wilting at the gates. Reared overhead at the Royal Bath, Ramsey himself had said drolly before taking the plunge, “This is what’s known in snooker, pet, as a ‘pressure pot.’” Moreover, at the risk of tautology, sex was only sex—it got only so good, lasted only so long, mattered only so much. You still fretted afterward that you were out of milk, or hastened to turn on the news.

  Truth be told, fucking had always been a touch disappointing—like so many experiences in life generally of which much is made, from island holidays (with biting black flies) to $300 French dinners (rarely surpassing a cracking bowl of pasta). Losing her virginity in particular had failed to live up to its billing. A lanky guitarist in a garage band, with entrancing long blond hair, Chris had been her high school boyfriend throughout her junior year; he was solicitous, patient, and, if not a novice himself, no rake. But when the big afternoon arrived, his mother safely shopping in Jersey, Chris had trouble getting in, and the condom was gross—its lubrication slimy, its latex the color of molted snake skin. Once he’d inched inside with all the romanticism of a carpenter working a dowel into a snug hole with a slather of axle grease, her deflowering was over in short order, and left her sore. The experience of entry had been neither here nor there; it was bigger, but still a penis didn’t feel that different from a finger or a tampon. She’d anticipated a sensation more momentous, unimaginable. Not only did the real McCoy lie well within the realm of the known, but her imagination had done a more bang-up job. Having agreeably entertained herself in private, Irina had assumed that she would orgasm as a matter of course. No one had warned her that women had to learn how to come all over again—that for women coming through fucking was often work, sometimes so much work that the results didn’t merit the effort. But since fucking for men roughly approximated what they did with the bathroom door closed, Chris only suffered the typical teenage difficulty of coming a little soon. Irina felt cheated. The exercise dispatched, she hadn’t reclined in dreamy satisfaction, but had retreated up onto the pillows with sullen, barely disguised petulance. She’d been awaiting this for years, and now look: like so much else, sex was a sell.

  Fair enough, she’d warmed to the pastime, systematically researching which positions accomplished at least a tiny amount of friction in the right place, abetting these calisthenics with sordid little stories in her head. The one upside of all this yeomanlike fucking was that she no longer brought unrealistic expectations to the erotic table. At best, sex with Ramsey would be nice. She hadn’t presumed that she would come. After all, even tried-and-true sex with Lawrence had never lost a trace of effortfulness, of having to expend quantities of energy and concentration for a marginal reward.

  So had Irina placed a premium on validating her worldview—if she cared more about being right than being happy, and there are plenty of such people—she’d have been disgruntled. Lo and behold, sex with Ramsey failed to live down to her expectations. Dazed and dizzy in those thick linen sheets of the Royal Bath, as if recovering from a head-on collision, she had the distinct impression that she’d never really fucked before, leaving her to wonder what it was all those years that she’d been doing instead.

  “Come to think of it,” Irina speculated in the croo
k of Ramsey’s arm on perhaps the third day in Bournemouth (it was hard to keep track of time, which had grown fat, sluggish, and lazy like an overfed cat), “before your birthday, I’d never fantasized about fucking. It’s always seemed, as an idea anyway, too permissible. Even when I was fucking, I was sneakily thinking about something else. Something more forbidden.”

  “Like what?” asked Ramsey.

  Strange, but no one had ever asked her that before. With trepidation, she ventured, “Oral sex, sometimes.”

  “You mean, sucking cock,” he corrected.

  She laughed. “Yes, sucking cock. Though with a twist. I like the idea of being forced. I don’t think women are supposed to admit things like that, but yes, forced—to drink it. In theory anyway. In my head. I don’t know if I’d like it in real life.”

  “Oi, I had rape fancies for years,” he volunteered cheerfully. “Had one about you last week. I ravished you. Up against a wall. Put up a right good fight at first, but in the end you was begging for more dick.”

  Emboldened, she went further. “For a while I found the idea of two men together exciting. Lately, with Lawrence… I shouldn’t tell you this, it’s too embarrassing.”

  “There’s nothing you shouldn’t tell me. Never forget that.”

  “All right. I’ve thought about women.”

  “Eating pussy? What’s wrong with that? I think about eating pussy myself.”

  “You’re a man. You’re supposed to think about that.”

  “Ain’t no supposed to in this business.”

  “I don’t want you to think I’m a dyke. I just—ran out of other ideas.”

  “Only so many toys in the chest. I thought about blowing a bloke before.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Not many blokes would admit as much, but I wager the notion’s not uncommon. Don’t mean you want to do it with some real-life smelly tosser, neither.”