Belinda McKeon - Tender

And, we, too, had a relationship—

Tight wires between us,

Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring

Sliding shut on some quick thing,

The constriction killing me also.

* * *

And, “Catherine,” James said one night afterwards — said her name seriously, said it soberly, so that at first her heart leapt hopefully, at first her eyes thought they would meet, in his, something they wanted, something new—

But no.

“Catherine,” he said, and he looked at her, and seriously, soberly, he shook his head. “What are we doing? What are we messing at, at all?”

And Catherine: “No, no. Don’t ever say that. Don’t ever ask that. We can do whatever we want to do, James. We can do whatever we like. It’s us, James. We’re us .”

And his silence.

But his silence, by then, was as good as his loving word.

* * *

Because there was nobody like them. There was nobody else who had what they had.

Aidan, interrupting their morning coffee in Café en Seine far too often for Catherine’s liking, now. Just showing up, just by some kind of happy coincidence, to sit down at the table beside them. Often bringing others; often bringing his little friend, Liam.

It was just not good enough.

Catherine picked for herself and James a different, further-off café.

* * *

And what did they talk about?

Everything.

Because they were still them. Still Catherine and James.

Because he was still the one she wanted to talk to, listen to, more than anyone else in the world.

And was she still that person for him?

He said she was.

“Oh, Catherine,” he would say, holding her, the way he did; the way he always had. “Oh, Catherine. We’re an awful pair of eejits, do you know that?”

His arms tight around her. His breath so close to her face. His skin and her skin: nothing made more sense to her than this.

* * *

Summer just around the corner now. And there was a thought. So many of the others going away — Zoe on a child-minding job somewhere in Italy; Conor and Emmet to America on the J1; Amy to work in a beer garden in Germany; Aidan, hopefully, on a five-year mission to Mars…

Such peace and quiet, they would have, the two of them. So much time to be together, alone. She thought about baking. She thought about dinners, having them ready at the end of their respective working days.

She applied for a summer job. It was temping work, advertised on the English department notice board; no specifics but a request for good typing skills, and lateral thinking, and an ability to work with permutations and combinations—

“Porn, obviously, Citóg,” said Conor, when she told him about it.

“Ha.”

“Doyle says his next column was inspired by you, by the way. What have you been doing to that poor lad?”

Catherine stared at him. “His next what?”

“Well, I think he meant Muck . I don’t think he meant ‘column’ as a euphemism. But then again…”

* * *

What happens in the heart simply happens.

She gave James that line.

On a stall in the gift shop of the National Gallery, she found a postcard, a photo of Hughes taken by Cartier-Bresson in 1971. Hughes’s coat was unbuttoned, his tie askew; his head was slightly tilted, his gaze serious and clear. He was standing in front of a bookcase, the books piled on top of each other; closed in, like specimens, behind glass.

She bought it, and she wrote the line on the back of it, and she gave it to James.

Because it had become their line, in her mind, now.

It had become them.

* * *

“Hello,” said James, smirking, when she gave him the postcard, looking at the photograph, and then he turned it over.

His face changed.

“Oh, Catherine,” was all he said.

* * *

Nordie Liam— Liam —telling her that he was having people round for drinks before the ball on Friday, and could she come? Could she, and James too, come?

Hair like an ancient settlement — an Irish one. Apples of color high on his cheeks. His eyes a dark brown; she had not noticed that before, and she had always liked brown eyes. His accent, so quiet and so careful. “Cath-er-ine”: the three rolled syllables he gave her.

But no.

But no, no. No party. Aidan would be there, after all; Aidan in a tux. Aidan in a bow tie. Plenty of people in bow ties. So, no. They would not be going to Liam’s. They would not be going to any party before the ball.

The summer job was horoscopes, it turned out. A woman setting up a new website, a subscription service that would email users their daily, custom-made horoscope, which meant that by the site launch in September, there needed to be five thousand freshly written horoscopes banked and ready to go. They would not be entirely fabricated, the woman explained at Catherine’s interview, flicking her bleach-blond hair back over her shoulder; the writers would use a code book to generate “atmospheric and thematic guidelines,” based on the given combination of symbol and star sign and shape and shade churned out, for every individual horoscope, by the database her team had designed.

“Right,” Catherine said doubtfully. “I—”

“I’m offering a pound per horoscope,” the woman cut in.

* * *

Love will come in the form of someone wearing the color blue. Be attentive to its appearances.

An acquaintance, possibly a Pisces, needs to be watched carefully. Share with them nothing precious.

Do not despair if a plan is not proceeding. Venus says that persistence will reap rewards.

“Yes, exactly that sort of thing,” the woman said, and hired her.

* * *

(James, laughing so hard when she told him that he started, actually, to get on her nerves. That she snapped at him to stop.)

* * *

(He did not stop.)

* * *

“Ouch!” he said, after she had pinched him.

* * *

Shock on his face. Disbelief on it.

And could she be more terrible than this, this person who felt only proud, in this moment, of having been able to get right at him in this way?

* * *

And more: the next time he talked of a boy he wanted to be with, Catherine did not look at the ceiling.

The next time, Catherine did not just lie there, and lie still.

Cillian, Lorraine’s Cillian, he talked of, and Catherine snatched the cigarette from his hand. She held it a moment, his eyes looking at her in confusion; then she pointed it, the glint-gray head of it only a fraction away from his white, naked skin. He jerked back from her, astonished, but she followed; she stared.

“Catherine,” he said, his voice just a breath.

She held his gaze for another second, and then she bent and stubbed the cigarette out on his bedroom floor. Into the carpet, its dirty threads; let the little smother of it leave a brand mark, round and black and hard.

“Catherine,” he said, clambering across her, incredulous. “My landlady! Are you—”

“Your landlady would probably approve,” she said, and she turned to the wall.

* * *

And, Catherine, he said, the next night, and she knew what was coming, she knew it was another attempt to call a halt, but she pushed the words away with her hands. She pushed the words away with her mouth.

And his eyes stayed closed, as they always did.

But she could manage without his eyes.

MUCK by Emmet Doyle 8 May 1998 Campus Benders Take Over:

What Have We Done To Deserve This?

Five years after decriminalization, the full reality of “equality” is beginning to show its face on campus — and college citizens are speaking out about their suffering.