Belinda McKeon - Tender

“Did I say something to Conor about you?” she asked James now, from the armchair into which she had slumped as soon as they came in the door of Baggot Street. James was fixing a bed for himself on the couch cushions, wrestling with the gray, saggy duvet that Amy or Lorraine had left out for him. The room was in half-darkness; Catherine had turned on the main light, but James had complained instantly about its brightness, shielding his eyes, and had fumbled with the switch of the lamp beside the television until it had come on. He had stripped, by now, down to his polo shirt and his boxers — she had not even noticed him taking his jeans off, which meant that she must, for a minute or so, have dropped off — and he had his back to her, so that she could take a good look at the thinness of his legs, the way his back was threaded with the jut of his spine.

“You’re so skinny, ” she said now, which felt suddenly much more important than the question of whether Conor had said or had not said anything to him, and anyway it did not matter, apparently, which of them was the more important, because James did not seem to be listening to her; he did not seem to plan on turning around and giving her any kind of answer.

“James,” she said, and she threw her hand towards him, which did not work, because her hand, of course, was attached to her arm and to the rest of her body, so she reached down to where her foot was and she took off her shoe; “James!” she said again, more insistently and more loudly, and she pulled the shoe back into the air behind her head and she pushed it forward and she let it go.

She missed. But James, his face almost unrecognizable with tiredness, turned around anyway.

“I was calling you,” Catherine said, and her head was very floppy, for some reason; her head kept falling back and falling forward, and the cushion of the armchair behind her could not hold it, which was surely what the cushion of the armchair was supposed to do. “I was calling you. I wanted you.”

“Go to sleep, Catherine,” James said, his mouth a funny, cross straight line, and he came over to where she sat, and he pulled her out of her chair by both elbows, and walked her towards the door.

She pouted. “I don’t want to sleep. I want to talk about the party. Wasn’t it brilliant? Wasn’t everyone so cool?”

He opened the door. “Go to sleep, Catherine. I don’t have the energy. Go to sleep.”

“I’m so glad you came to the party,” she said, but he was closing the sitting-room door.

* * *

Sunday was a write-off, but on Monday morning Catherine’s head felt clear again, and although it took much persuasion to budge James from his bed on the couch, by eleven o’clock they were both on campus, sitting on a bench by the lawn outside the arts block, drinking coffee and surveying the talent.

“There’s Shane,” Catherine said, grabbing James’s arm. “Remember I wrote to you about him?”

“Shane Russian Shane?” James said, looking around in every direction. “Where?”

“Over there,” Catherine said, “but for fuck’s sake don’t be so obvious!”

But it was too late: James was staring at him. Shane was not someone she knew personally, but he was someone she had described at great length in her letters to James; he was a fourth year, and studying Russian, and both she and Zoe agreed that he was one of the best-looking guys in college. You should see him, James, she had written, back in October or November, you’d love him. He’s unbelievably sexy.

“Him?” James was saying doubtfully now. “With the gray hair?”

“I told you about the gray hair! The gray hair is what makes him so sexy!”

“What is he, forty?”

“No!”

“He looks forty. Are you sure that’s not Aidan?”

“James!” she said, thumping him on the arm.

“When am I going to meet the famous Aidan, by the way?”

“Never you mind meeting Aidan. Concentrate on Shane.”

“I don’t see it, Catherine,” James said, shaking his head more firmly. “I don’t see it at all.”

“But he’s gorgeous.”

“He’s all right. I wouldn’t say much more than that.”

“Wait until he stands up. He’s tall. You might change your mind.”

“Ah, Catherine. Now you’re just forcing things.”

“I’m not, ” she said mock-petulantly, pretending to be offended, but the truth was that she was slightly offended, actually. Shane was a ride. For James to so bluntly deny this now, to so bluntly refuse Catherine’s invitation to admire him, to lightheartedly stalk him and trade pithy, funny comments about him: she felt almost robbed. She looked around the lawn, hoping to see another of the guys she had so looked forward to showing him, but there was only the usual late-morning spread of unremarkables, smoking their cigarettes and drinking their coffees and reading their yellowed paperbacks in preparation for their afternoon classes. Which, come to think of it, was something Catherine should be doing herself right at this minute; she had a Romance tutorial at three, and a TN article — an interview with Pat McCabe — due that evening. But it seemed wrong, somehow, not to spend this time with James. He was just home. He was finally home. He was here —here, and now. She could not waste that. She could not behave in a normal manner, as though it was just a normal Monday, with James far away in Berlin, and everything needing to be saved up for a letter to him.

“I can’t believe you don’t think Russian Shane is gorgeous,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to showing him to you for months.”

“Oh, well. Sorry.”

“I don’t feel like showing you any of the others now.”

“Ah, Catherine,” he said, taking her arm. “I’m dying to see them all. Sure I feel like I’m after walking onto a film set or something. I’m going to meet Dusky Dick next, I assume?”

“Oh my God,” she gasped. “Don’t you dare call him that if you do meet him!”

“If? If? It’s a matter of when, not if, I hope.”

“Rafe doesn’t come in to college much these days. I think he prefers to study at home. Or smoke weed there.”

He frowned at her. “You’ve killed him, haven’t you, Reilly? You’ve chopped him up and buried him under the patio. That beautiful langer, the color of a Longford sunset, gone forever.”

“Oh my God, stop it,” she said, swatting at him, but the truth was that she did not want James to stop. This was what she had wanted for so many months: for James to be here with her, gossiping about boys, reducing her to helpless laughter with his jokes and his mutterings and his outrageous innuendos, the way that only he could come up with them; the way that she remembered him from the summer. She felt so lucky, having him here beside her; she felt luckier than anyone else sitting around this lawn, anyone else walking around this campus, anyone living in this whole city: they only had the stupid city, and she had James.

“Now he ’s more like it,” James said, sitting up suddenly, and it was Catherine’s turn to look about wildly.

“Who?”

“Him,” James said, pointing straight across the lawn, his arm held high; Catherine gasped and batted at him to put it back down.

“Jesus! A bit of discretion!”

“Ah, sure who gives a fuck? Sure he’s not looking at me.”

Yeah, but plenty of other people are, Catherine thought, but she was too concerned with trying to work out who he was talking about to nag him further. There were no guys she even recognized around, except Emmet Doyle, opening a Coke can beside the bin, and the sight of him gave her a rush of guilt about the way she had dragged James to his ridiculous party, so she cast about for someone else, but there was nobody else, and by leaning into James’s line of vision, she landed once again on Emmet.