Belinda McKeon - Tender

“It’s too much,” Zoe said, her face screwed up in distaste. “I don’t give a shit about how powerful the effect of it might be. I still think it’s wrong.”

“It’s such a long time ago,” Catherine said.

“What difference does that make?”

“Don’t you think that detaches it from any real emotion?”

“She’s still a dead person,” Zoe said. “She’s not any less dead now than she was forty, or whatever, years ago.”

“I don’t know,” Catherine said. “I think the whole point is to be unsettled. It’s not actually a photograph of a dead woman.”

Zoe squinted at her. “You what, Citsers?”

“It’s a piece made out of a photograph of a dead woman. Or, of a death scene, actually. Of the mechanics of someone dying, I mean. The actual person isn’t even the point. I mean, the photograph would be as important to the police, or whoever, even if the woman wasn’t lying there. Or even if there were twenty dead women lying there.”

“Well, Warhol wouldn’t have wanted it if there hadn’t been any dead woman,” Zoe said.

“Come on,” Catherine said, deciding to change the subject. “You need to see the pillows.”

“Pillows?” said Zoe, who claimed to have had only two hours of sleep the night before. “There are pillows?”

“Silver pillows,” Catherine said, and she led the way.

The silver pillows were actually foil balloons: fat, elongated tubes of helium, making a gentle, sleepy trail through the air. A gallery assistant sat on a chair in one corner, reading; she did not even glance up as the girls came into the space.

“So lovely,” Zoe said, lifting a hand towards the drift of silver. “Look, we’re in every one of them.”

The foil of each pillow was, by now, shabby and tarnished, presumably from the months of being bashed around; all of the reviews of the Warhol show had talked about this piece, about the fact that viewers were allowed to touch it. As the pillows clipped one another, kissed one another, they made a noise like so many slowed-down, ticking clocks; there were maybe twenty of them, some of them very clearly diminished, unable to lift themselves and steer themselves as confidently as the others did. Others of them were already fully deflated, reduced to rags of silver on the floor, and Catherine wondered whether their sad scattering was intended as part of the piece.

“Catch,” Zoe said then, slapping at one of the pillows; the silver fled her, and, calling out in delight, she hit at another, and then at another, leaping at them and laughing at them, calling to Catherine to do the same. She hesitated a moment, but then set to, and then all around them, the silver was glinting and swooping and falling, and she and Zoe were reaching and spinning and swiping, and they were like children, bumping into one another, bumping into the white walls, breathless with laughter, red-faced with it, and the noise was like a thunderstorm; no, the noise was like a shower of hail; no, the noise was like a waterfall on a mountainside, crashing another kind of silver onto stone, and then there was someone in the doorway, someone in the doorway that led to the soup cans and the Jackies and the Marilyns, and at first Catherine was embarrassed, because here she and Zoe were, eighteen and nineteen years of age, throwing themselves around an art gallery, attacking the works of art, and surely this person in the doorway would think oddly of them, would think less than warmly and approvingly of them, and for a moment Catherine almost stopped, but in the next moment, she felt instead delighted, delighted in a defiant kind of way, because why not do this; why not feel such glee and abandon in just this way? And then came the next moment, which was the moment when she saw who the person in the doorway was, and if her breath seemed to have gone as she danced under the helium pillows, as she wove and jumped and shouted in the silver stream, then it had not gone at all, there had been plenty of it, because it was gone now, and it was really gone, and she had gone still and the silver was plunging around her, and Zoe was still leaping, and James was there, a young, thin boy in the doorway, no, a boy who looked somehow at once both young and old, his red hair grown high and grown messy, into huge, tumbling curls, his skin pale, his freckles faded, his smile nervous, and hesitant, and moving, now, his lips were moving, as he said her name.

What the fuck? What the fuck?!”

“Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. Surprise.”

“You were meant — tomorrow! You were meant — it was tomorrow, wasn’t it? You said tomorrow! You said Sunday!”

“I know. I know. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Oh my God, James. Oh my God .”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not sorry. No, you’re not sorry. You fucker. You fucker .”

“No, I’m not sorry. Yes, I am a fucker.”

“How did you get here? How did you—”

“I got a lift. I told you. In another lorry. I just left on Wednesday instead of on Thursday.”

“No, how did you get here? How did you know I was here?”

“Oh. Amy was in Baggot Street when I got there. She told me where you were gone. Off on your cultural expedition, like a good little girl. I got the bus. Which took nearly as long as the lorry from Berlin, I might mention.”

“You fucker! I can’t believe you did this! I can’t believe you’re here!”

“I can’t believe I found you engaged in a Dionysian orgy in a room full of priceless Andy Warhols, but there you go.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Seriously, James, this is unbelievable. How can you be here? ”

“How can you not be in handcuffs?”

“Stop it, James, seriously. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. You’re actually here .”

“I’m here.”

“You’re actually here .”

“I’m home.”

“You’re here .”

* * *

By the time they got home from Emmet Doyle’s party that night it was after three o’clock, and they both staggered in the door for different reasons: James because he was exhausted, Catherine because she was plastered. The house was in darkness; Amy and Lorraine were either still out themselves or long in bed.

Everything was all right now; booze and dancing and the company of everyone had made everything, every single thing, all right. James had not really wanted to go to Emmet’s party, of course; he had protested to Catherine that he would know nobody, that he was not in the mood yet for such full-on socializing, that he just wanted to go back to Baggot Street with her, and spend the evening catching up properly, talking about everything. But Catherine and the others had persuaded him; the others had wanted Catherine to come anyway, and Catherine, after a couple of drinks, had decided that she wanted to go. James had resisted for a while, but she had talked him round, had persuaded him that it would be fun, that it would be a good introduction to everyone else she wanted him to meet, that it would be full of good-looking guys. Zoe had agreed, egging James on, nudging him, leaning in conspiratorially as though she had known him as long, as deeply, as Catherine had, as though they knew what he needed, knew what was good for him, and Catherine — Catherine had felt a pang of irritation, seeing this, and a pang of jealousy, seeing how readily, how laughingly, James had responded to her pleas, but mostly, she had been relieved, that they would all be going out tonight, and going out with everybody, instead of going home to face up to the seriousness of what had been in James’s letters. And of course she felt terrible about this, of course she felt like a horrible person, but it was just that she could not face up to it yet, not just yet, now that he was here, now that he was beside her, leaning into her, clutching her hand, so often, underneath the table of the pub they had all gone to in Thomas Street after IMMA. She could face it tomorrow, she told herself, but not tonight. Tonight she needed to have fun; tonight they needed to have fun, the two of them, as a celebration, a launching upon Dublin of the force that, together, they were going to be. They drank in Thomas Street and then in the Buttery bar until it was time to make their way to Emmet’s rooms, by which time Catherine was tripping and rambling, and James was — she did not, exactly, remember how James was — and she and Zoe were manic and Conor had somehow met up with them again, and Conor had said something to James — she could not remember what it was, but she knew that she had wanted to kill Conor for saying it at the time. Maybe she had tried to kill Conor, or anyway tried to give out to him — she could not remember; had she said something to him, shouted something at him, on their way across Front Square?