James started rooting through the plastic Centra bag for paper napkins. He wiped his face. “This is the first time he’s ever gone to a guy’s house. In Ireland, anyway.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” James looked dazed, like the weight of the responsibility was too much. Then he shook it off, literally shaking his head from side to side. “Which is probably a lie.”
I replayed the conversation I had seen them have in O’Connor’s in my mind. I was baffled. After all the posturing I had done, Dorothy Parker and the rest. All of that trying, and the man was willing to break years of heterosexuality after a casual chat with James.
“Are you telling me,” I said slowly, “that Dr. Byrne was willing to put his marriage on the line for some random bookshop chat about DVD players and Fermoy?”
“Lust at first sight, I guess.” It was a very un-James statement.
“He told you that, didn’t he?”
“Let’s watch TV,” he said, and we put on Ab Fab until we both fell back to sleep.
11
THE MAN at the Toy Show had nothing else to say about Dr. Byrne, he only wanted to know if I knew, and I went home as soon as the broadcast was over.
I arrive home and say hello to my husband, who has rather gamely been sleeping in the spare room while my ocean madness plays itself out. He insists, however, that I wake him up to say goodnight if I’ve been out late.
“You seem a bit funny,” he says, stroking my body dozily. I am tucked under his arm, a very big little spoon. “Spooked.”
“Knackered, more like.”
After Shandon Street, I didn’t live with a man again for another eight years. But it all came back. James trained me well. You don’t start big conversations at one in the morning. Men don’t get energised by chat the way women do. I wait until he falls asleep, and then I get up again to eat things and to think.
I met James Carey in April of 2010, and the moment he told me his name I said: Sorry, I already have one of those. Because I did. The affair with Dr. Byrne was in full swing by then, and yet I saw very little of it. It was still the James and Rachel Show. I was in the library all day, studying for finals, and Dr. Byrne had only his office hours to attend to. He dropped by our house in the afternoon, usually between two and four, usually twice a week. When I got home I always knew that he had been: sheets in a pile at the bottom of the stairs, and a relic of his bougie, late-thirties life left behind as a tribute to our poverty. A bottle of good wine, custard tarts, some fancy meat and cheese selections from the English Market. It was like he knew he couldn’t pay James to fuck him but he wanted to contribute anyway. To be polite.
My classes with Dr. Byrne were over, with never an acknowledgement between us about him having once used my towel after a shower, the smell of his Old Spice on it the next time I used it.
James Devlin was still my number-one person. James Carey didn’t have a hope of a first name, so it was Carey from the start.
I met him outside The Bróg after kick-out time, when people usually hung around, smoking and eating chips on the pavement. He was smaller than me, so I ruled him out for romance straight away. I don’t mind shorter guys, but they seem to mind me. They always piss about with me, do the whole “one of the boys” routine, and say things like: Wouldn’t want Rachel on the wrong side of me in a fight!
Carey was Northern Irish, and if there’s one thing you can say about those men it’s that they know when to shut the fuck up.
I came up to him, looking to bum a cigarette. I never bought cigarettes, but I always wanted them. He said he’d roll me one, if I had the patience to wait. So I did. He kept the filter between the gap in his front teeth, his hair all red and blond.
“What’s your name?”
“James.”
“Oh, no, sorry,” I replied, “I already have one of those.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“My best friend.” I pointed to where he was, chatting to some girls we knew from Topshop. “My housemate.”
“Where do you live? With your housemate?”
“Shandon Street.”
“By the big fish?”
“By the big fish.”
“If you already have a James, what are you going to call me?”
“Do you have a last name?”
“I do, but I can’t be telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll be going around, writing all over your pencil case. Your first name, my last name. Your last name, my last name hyphenate. What’s your first name, anyway?”
I laughed. “Rachel.”
“Rachel Carey,” he said. “See, that sounds too good, now, and you’re going to drive your mother demented, writing it all over the place.”
He licked the rolling paper and sealed my cigarette, giving it to me. I waited for the light, and he gave it to me without being asked. I took a long drag.
“You can go now, if I’m annoying you. Now is an opportune time to leave. Sure, you have your cigarette.”
I exhaled a long plume of smoke over his right shoulder. “What if I don’t want to leave?”
“If you don’t want to leave?” he asked, puzzled. “I don’t know, I suppose we could go for a walk, talk some more shite.”
“Yeah, I could talk some more shite,” I answered.
He extended his arm out, like someone from the past. “I’ve not been in Cork long,” he said. “I’ve not seen the big fish yet. In person, I mean.”
James caught my eye. “Are you off, Murray?” he called.
“Yep!” I said. “See you at home!”
“Rachel Murray,” Carey said. And then, sadly: “Murray-Carey will never work.”
Thirty minutes later I was pressed up against the stone wall of the old Butter Exchange while Carey went down on me from the inside of my coat. He had pulled down my tights so they pooled around my ankles, restricting my movement so much that I needed to keep my palms on his skull for balance.
I hobbled on my heels, the cold whipping at my face, the pleasure excruciating. My hands travelled down the nape of his neck, feeling out each notch of his spine. I must have looked ridiculous—knees buckling, bent over the man like I was trying to make a lower case n shape.
It was, as you know, not the first time a man had gone down on me. But this was not lying on my bed while a boy fidgeted about, my breasts getting cold as my mind became full of errands. For years straight women talked about men never eating them out, and now that they do it all the time, none of us want to admit that most of them are bad at it. They sucker on to your clitoris like a fish at the side of a tank, or they randomly poke about with their tongue. With Carey I felt like a shrine. He was going at this not like a person with a plan, but a person with a calling.
“My house,” I breathed, when he finally came up for air. “My house is like…three minutes away.”
“Why aren’t we there, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said, nuzzling my lips into his neck. “I don’t know.”
My attraction to him came on like food poisoning. We were walking up Shandon Street, arm in arm, chatting about Derry （“Carey from Derry!”） and what he was doing here （working at Apple） and how he was finding it （fine）。 I showed him the Shandon Bells, and he asked me if they woke me up in the morning. I said sometimes.