Belinda McKeon - Tender

“I’m not trying to protect him! How could I protect him?”

“Well, that’s kind of my point.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Catherine said, and she began to gather up her lunch things.

“I know you’re his friend,” Zoe said quickly. “His closest friend, I know that. But you have to let him fight his own battles. You know?”

“Oh, yeah,” Catherine said bitterly. “Because that’s really worked out so well. For so long. Leaving people like James to fight their own battles.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Zoe said, pointing at her. “Don’t paint me as some—”

“Saying nothing, instead of standing up and taking a stand?” Catherine said, hearing immediately how ridiculous the sentence sounded. “Instead of doing something to make things easier?” she said.

Zoe stared. “What are you talking about, Cits? Nobody is trying to make things difficult for James. If anyone is making things difficult for James, it’s himself. And you, I might as well tell you, are not at all helping by hanging around him like an overprotective mother. Or like his girlfriend. Or like his fucking wife, actually. You do realize that people are assuming that you two are a couple?”

“I don’t give a fuck what people assume,” Catherine said. “What the hell am I supposed to do about the things that people assume? What can I do about it?”

“You could stop holding hands with James in public, for one thing.”

“We don’t hold hands,” Catherine said. “We link arms.”

“You look like you’re holding hands,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “It’s the closeness. The physical proximity. It has the same effect.”

“Oh my God. Are you serious? Are you seriously talking to me like this? Fuck off, ” she said, and she jerked her hand to the side, and this was how she spilled Zoe’s coffee, which went all over the table. “Oh, shit, ” she said, moving to get things out of the way of the spreading brown liquid.

“Here, here,” Zoe said, already soaking up the spilled coffee with a wad of napkins she had produced from somewhere. “It’s all right,” she said, and she glanced up at Catherine. “Is your book OK?”

Catherine just nodded; she had knocked Birthday Letters down onto her lap as soon as she could, but she was pretty sure some of the coffee would have got at it.

Zoe sighed. She reached across and took Catherine’s hand, patted it briefly.

“Emmet touched my hand in the library,” Catherine said.

“Oooh,” said Zoe, and she raised her eyebrows. Then her face changed; something seemed to occur to her. “Does Emmet know about James?” she said.

Catherine said nothing for a moment, weighing up her options, or trying to. Then she nodded, a short, sharp nod.

“Well, thank goodness for that at least.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, at least you’re not pretending to him .”

“I am not pretending to anyone!” Catherine exploded. “I told you! What am I meant to do about what people assume? James is my friend. And I’m worried about him. I’m being as good a friend as I can to him so that he doesn’t feel—”

“So that he doesn’t feel gay?” Zoe cut in.

Catherine stared at her. “I can’t believe you said that.”

“Well, I did say it, Catherine. And I’m not sorry I said it. I mean, if you don’t care about yourself, and what people think about your availability…”

“Availability! What is this, a fucking matchmaking festival?”

Zoe shrugged. “At this stage of life, yes. That’s what it’s meant to be.”

“Maybe for you,” Catherine said contemptuously.

“Maybe for James, too, if you’d let him.”

“You don’t know anything about him. You met him a month ago, for fuck’s sake!”

“I know that, and if I’d met him three hours ago, it would still be crystal clear to me how much you’re potentially fucking things up for him. What do you think this is doing to James, Catherine? Parading around with a girl on his arm virtually every time he’s out in public? What kinds of opportunities must this, this illusion of yours be wrecking for him?”

Catherine scoffed. “There are no opportunities,” she said.

Zoe regarded her for a long moment. “And why do you think that is?”

“Because he’s not ready,” Catherine said, slamming her hand down on the table. “Because he doesn’t feel ready for someone. When he’s ready for someone, someone will come along. Until then, I’m his friend, and it’s my job to look after him.”

“To look after him?” Zoe said disbelievingly.

“To look out for him, then,” Catherine said. “I don’t care about the semantics. Put it however the fuck you want to put it.”

“Jesus Christ, Catherine,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “On second thoughts, you should stay well clear of Emmet. He doesn’t deserve this bullshit. He doesn’t deserve to find himself involved with someone like you.”

“Going to go after him yourself?” Catherine sneered. “Another notch?”

“I don’t know what’s happening to you, Catherine,” Zoe said, and she got up and walked away.

Ed Dunne’s opening was on the Thursday before Easter, as it turned out, so few people were still around to come to it with Catherine and James; Amy and Lorraine had already gone home for the weekend, as had Aidan and Liam, and Zoe and Lisa, who both had part-time waitressing jobs, were working that night. James himself had found it difficult to get the night off from O’Brien’s; with every pub in the country about to close for twenty-four hours, the place would be teeming with drinkers, but he had managed to get someone to cover for him. Catherine, meanwhile, was meant to be in Longford already, helping to prepare for her grandfather’s eightieth birthday party, which was taking place that weekend; she had managed to fob her mother off by pretending that her essay was due much earlier than was actually the case.

In Stormont, the peace talks were rapidly approaching their final deadline, which was, as a piece in the Irish Times had put it that week, “the best possible publicity” for Dunne’s show. His work had always reflected obliquely on the Troubles, even though he had been gone from Northern Ireland since the 1970s, living first in London and now in New York; over a period of many years, he had kept up with the news from there by making weekly phone calls to friends in Belfast. When news of a particular event struck him, he would go out and make a piece by photographing whatever happened to be in front of him. He had a home upstate as well as in Manhattan, so just as many of the images had a rural setting — a setting that looked almost Irish — as an urban one, and each one bore the date on which it had been taken. The new show would bring together works in this series from the past decade.

She and James had a drink in the Stag’s before going to the gallery. James was disappointed that none of the others had been able to join them.

“It would have been a bit of craic with a few of us,” he said sadly.

“It’ll still be craic,” said Catherine.

“Oh, of course, of course it will. I just meant, the more the merrier. You know?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “You ready? It’s almost seven.”

When they reached the gallery, James walked upstairs to the exhibition space ahead of Catherine, stopping short as soon as he got to the landing.

“Balls,” he said under his breath.

“What?”

“We’re nearly the first ones here,” he said, sounding mortified. “We should leave and come back again. What was I thinking? Nobody turns up at the time on the invite.”