I’m sorry, I said. I’m so sorry.
Is it the thing you had before? said Bobbi.
I nodded my head. Bobbi pulled her sleeve over her hand and wiped my face. Her sweater was dry and very soft. Thanks, I said. People started to disperse, the security guard went to look around the corner.
Do you need to go back to hospital? she said.
I think they’ll just tell me to wait for this scan.
Let’s go home then. Okay?
She linked her arm under mine and we walked out onto Nassau Street, where there was a taxi passing right outside. The driver pulled up and let us get in the back even though the cars behind were beeping. Bobbi gave our address and I let my head loll back and gazed out the window while they talked. The streetlights bathed people’s figures in angelic light. I saw shopfronts, and faces in bus windows. Then my eyes closed.
When we reached our street, Bobbi insisted on paying. Outside the building I gripped the iron railings and waited for her to unlock the door. Inside she asked me if I’d like a bath. I nodded, yes. I braced myself against the corridor wall. She went to run the bath and I slowly took off my coat. A terrific pain was beating inside my body. Bobbi reappeared in front of me and took my coat to hang it up.
Are you going to need help getting out of your clothes? she said.
I thought of the story I had sent to Valerie that morning, a story which I now remembered was explicitly about Bobbi, a story which characterised Bobbi as a mystery so total I couldn’t endure her, a force I couldn’t subjugate with my will, and the love of my life. I paled at this memory. Somehow I hadn’t been conscious of it, or had forced myself not to be conscious, and now I remembered.
Don’t get upset, she said. I’ve seen you undressed hundreds of times.
I tried to smile, although my breath moved in and out of my lips in a way that probably contorted the smile.
Don’t remind me, I said.
Oh, come on. It wasn’t all bad. We had some fun.
You sound like you’re flirting.
She laughed. In the story I had described a house party after the Leaving Cert, when I drank a shoulder of vodka and then spent the night throwing up. Whenever anyone tried to look after me I would push them away and say: I want Bobbi. Bobbi wasn’t even at the party.
I’ll undress you in a very unsexy way, she said. Don’t worry.
The bath was still running. We went inside the bathroom and I sat on the closed toilet seat while she rolled her sleeves up to test the temperature. She told me it was hot. I was wearing a white blouse that day, and I tried to undo the buttons but my hands were trembling. Bobbi shut the tap off and crouched down to finish unbuttoning for me. Her fingers were wet and left little dark prints around the buttonholes. She scooped my arms out of the sleeves easily, like she was peeling a potato.
And there’s going to be blood everywhere, I said.
Lucky it’s me here and not your boyfriend.
No, don’t. I’m fighting with him. It’s, uh. Things aren’t very good.
She stood up and went to the bath again. She seemed distracted suddenly. In the white bathroom light her hair and fingernails gleamed.
Does he know you’re sick? she said.
I shook my head. She said something about getting me a towel and then left the room. Gradually I stood up, finished undressing myself and managed to climb into the bath.
In the story I had included an anecdote in which I did not appear. Bobbi had gone to study in Berlin for six weeks when we were sixteen, staying with a family who had a daughter our age called Liese. One night, without saying anything, Bobbi and Liese went to bed together. They were quiet, not wanting Liese’s parents to hear, and they never talked about it afterwards. Bobbi did not dwell on the sensory aspects of the incident, on whether she had nursed a desire for Liese before it happened, whether she knew of Liese’s feelings, or even what it was like. If anyone else in school had told me the same thing, I wouldn’t have believed them, but because it was Bobbi I knew immediately that it was true. I wanted Bobbi, and, like Liese, I would have done anything to be with her. She told me this story by way of explaining to me that she wasn’t a virgin. She pronounced Liese’s name without any particular love or hatred, just a girl she had known, and for months afterwards, maybe forever afterwards, I was afraid that someday she would say my name that way too.
The water was soapy and a little too hot. It left a rim of pink on my leg where it touched me. I forced myself to get all the way down into the tub, where the water licked me obscenely. I tried to visualise the pain draining out of my body, draining out into the water and dissolving. Bobbi knocked on the door and came in holding a big pink towel, one of the new ones she had brought with her from her parents’ house. She started to hang it on the towel rack while I closed my eyes. I heard her leave the bathroom again, a tap running in the other room, her bedroom door opening and closing. I could hear her voice, she must have been on the phone.