Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

The waiter brought them their coffees. Shelly thanked him and took a sip of the hot, sweet, creamy liquid. Sean was momentarily quiet so she said, ‘I’m going to have to read up on the whole thing because I’m not one hundred per cent sure how they reproduce. If the little segments that come out in my urine are baby worms then maybe I’ll have to try and swallow one of those.’ She paused and then added, ‘They aren’t very big but they’ve got hooks on them. When I pee they hang on to the lip of my body with their hooks and I have to unhook them myself. It’s quite simple when you know how.’

Sean’s expression was full of an incredulous horror. She smiled. ‘It’s all right, Sean, it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t bother me.’

Sean’s mind was now turning over very rapidly. He was thinking of the sex they had indulged in an hour or so before. He couldn’t stop himself; he said, ‘I couldn’t have caught one earlier, could I?’

She frowned. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

Then she smiled. ‘I think you would’ve seen it if it had hooked on to the end of your prick.’ She started to laugh. ‘Imagine if the entire worm had hooked itself on, all eleven or twelve inches of it. You’d have become rather confused when you went to the bathroom!’

She spluttered with laughter as she sipped her coffee.

Sean was stony-faced. He said, ‘You don’t give a shit about me any more, do you? About my feelings in all of this?’

She stopped laughing and shrugged. ‘You’ve never given a shit about me in the past, Sean. In fact I think that I can honesüy say that I have had more help and support from my tapeworm over the past five months than you have given me in the last four years.’ As she said this she tapped her stomach with her left hand and then took a swig of her Irish coffee.

Sean didn’t know whether he wanted to live with her any more, whether he loved her, but he was damn sure that he wasn’t going to be compared to her tapeworm and come out of this comparison at a disadvantage. He said, ‘That thing is eating you up inside. It’s a parasite.’

She nodded. ‘Yes it is, and the two of you have a whole lot in common. Unfortunately, you didn’t improve my self-image like this tapeworm has. It needs me. You never needed me. It’s helped me. You never helped me.’

She finished her coffee and he stubbed out his cigarette. She started to put her jacket on. ‘I’ve got a new direction in my life now, Sean. I’ve learned that I can survive without you, that I can be attractive and desirable and funny and interesting without needing to have you around to tell me what I am or what I can be.’

He shook his head. ‘You’ve got a real problem, Shelly.’

She stood up. ‘No, you have, Sean. I’m leaving now and you can pay the bill.’

As she left the restaurant she winked at the waiter.

TINA WAS DOING ROME on a budget. Her companion was horrible. He was called Ralph. She met him accidentally, and he stuck to her like a burr, like a leech, until he grew bored of her. Then he let go, just as suddenly.

He had, she discovered, over seven different ways of describing the rectum. His favourite was ring which he used and used until it was quite worn out. Ironically—she just knew this was funny—Ralph was actually an arsehole himself. But she was too polite to say anything. He even looked like an arsehole. Not literally, but he wore dark glasses, a furry trilby—right there, on the back of his head, monstrously precarious—and thick-soled loafers. She presumed that he thought his look was, in some way, Italian. She knew better. Even the Italians knew better.

Ralph was staying at a pensione south of Termini. It wasn’t particularly salubrious around there. Tina didn’t like it. She, by contrast, was staying in Old Rome, in the heart of Rome, close to the fruit market, the best piazza, the better cafés.

Tina had met Ralph while she was queueing for the Vatican Museum. It had been a ridiculously long queue, but she presumed that the wait would be worth it. Ralph had joined the queue behind her, had introduced himself, had asked whether she’d mind saving his place for him while he popped off for a minute, then disappeared. An hour later, when she’d nearly reached the front, he reappeared again. She’d completely forgotten about him by then. She almost didn’t recognize him. His glasses were pushed up on to his head. His eyes—bold, empty—stared at her: a mucky brown. Two round hazelnuts. He said he didn’t have quite enough money for the entrance fee—‘What? You’re kidding! That much?’—so she paid for him on the understanding that he’d pay her back later.

He never did. Ralph was from Reading. He worked for British Telecom. He had a smattering of Italian. He could order coffee, ice-cream, several flavours of pizza, without even consulting his guidebook.

Tina felt sorry for him. He wore a Lacoste polo shirt, but it wasn’t actually Lacoste because the alligator was facing the wrong way. She knew about these things. She was training to be a buyer at Fenwicks, New Bond Street, London. Ah, yes.

Ralph tried to persuade Tina to have a piece of brightly coloured cotton twine plaited into her hair on the Spanish Steps. Several men, unkempt, like hippies, were offering this service for a small sum.

‘I’d rather not,’ she said, noticing their dirty hands, their tie-dyed shirts. ‘I think I might just climb up to the top of the steps and look at the view.’

Ralph followed her. He was like a naughty spaniel; bored, precocious, snapping at her heels.

The view was fine. When they’d had enough of it, Ralph said, ‘I wanna take you somewhere special. It’s called the Piazza Barberini. It’s not far from here, just down the hill. When she was in Rome, Sophia Loren used to live nearby.’

He took hold of her arm. Tina allowed herself to be led. She followed him obligingly because it was a pretty street, a steep, deep incision into the hillside. Grand houses frowned out on either side of them.

She was too obliging. What kind of girl, after all, takes any trip on her own? A bold girl? A silly girl? Oh, she wanted to be both, for once. Even Ralph, even he was a step in the right direction. A step, and she was on a trip, a voyage. Rome, she knew, held something special just for her: a fresco, a figurine, a shady walkway, an orange tree. If she kept on looking, she would find it.

In the Piazza Barberini she paused for a moment to stare at a fountain.

I’ve got fountains,’ Ralph said, contemptuously, ‘spouting out of my brush.’

Close by was a second, smaller fountain which was covered in big carved bees. ‘That,’ Tina said, pausing for a moment, ‘is very sweet.’

‘Yeah.’ Ralph walked on.

‘And if it was in London,’ she said, ‘it would be covered in bird dirt. They don’t seem to have pigeons here, or if they do, they don’t mess nearly as much.’

‘In Rome,’ Ralph said, conversationally, ‘you’re only considered gay if you’re passive during sex. If you screw other men, but aren’t screwed, then you’re not gay.’

Tina scowled. ‘That’s disgusting.’

Ralph grinned. ‘In Italy the men are men and the women are glad of it.’

Tina rolled her eyes. She decided that Ralph had been in Rome for too long. He’d been here a week already. She’d arrived a mere thirty-six hours ago. She was glad that she was staying for only five days. After seven days Ralph was bored. He seemed incapable of seeing the prettiness around him. He was growing cynical. He didn’t appreciate how good the weather was.

Ralph led Tina towards a church—In Rome, she thought, what else?—and up some steps. At the top, slightly out of breath, he turned and proclaimed, quite seriously: ‘Here lies dust, ashes, nothing.’