The Post-Birthday World

  “Thank you. That makes me feel better,” she said, resting her head on his chest. “Funny thing is, after your birthday? When we couldn’t? For the first time I fantasized about fucking. All the time. Every day. I started to feel a little crazy.”

  “So what do you think about now, when we’re fucking for true?” asked Ramsey sleepily. It was early afternoon; he played his third-round match that night, and should have been at the practice table by now.

  “I don’t think about anything,” she marveled. “With you, I don’t go elsewhere. If I fantasized when I’m fucking you, I’d fantasize that I’m fucking you. See, for the first time, fucking seems outrageous. You’re going to put that in there? And there’s something—primitive. So it doesn’t seem like something you’re supposed to do, but like something you have to do. As if I’m in heat. It’s like rutting.”

  He chuckled, sliding a dry, tapered finger along her hip. “You’re an animal, know that? A bloody animal. You act so Girl Guide and that. You bake all them pies. Nobody’d ever guess it to look at you. Except me. I could see it, even if you couldn’t, pet. Keeping a beastie like you in the cupboard is a crime. Like them wankers who chain tigers in the back garden, and they get mangy and thin and depressed.”

  “Should report it to PETA.”

  “Peter?”

  “Never mind.”

  IT WASN’T ONLY SEX proper, either; it was everything. Sleeping, they had yet to hit on a position that wasn’t so sumptuously comfortable that she wanted to cry. Kissing was like going for a swim, a tireless, gliding breaststroke in a sheltered pool. His skin was always cool, with the texture of kid, an apt word since his person seemed cryogenically frozen in adolescence.

  Long, narrow, hairless save for a soft sprout of light brown furze in the underarms and groin, his body was neat and unmarked, as if Ramsey had been saved for her, sealed from tarnish in cellophane like polished silver. Snooker fostering an indoors life, his skin was an even cream from head to toe, with no shadow sock-line at his ankles, nor stripe under his watch. He had one of those rare figures that looked completely normal naked—sound, right, whole—whereas men often look incongruous in the nude, embarrassing or not quite themselves. Stripped, he strode their hotel room like a creature in its natural environment, and no more called out for cladding than a stag in the woods. That burnt-sugar scent was bewitching, and sometimes she would nestle down for a distilled whiff at the base of his neck like sniffing a hot oven ajar.

  Objectively, Ramsey Acton was not the most handsome man in the universe. His hair was turning; his face may have transformed readily from age to age, but one of its modes was careworn. True, he was one of those irritating people who could eat and drink as much as he liked and never gain an ounce, and who retained a taut, articulated musculature absent a single sit-up. Nevertheless, he didn’t display the bulkier masculinity vaunted in magazines. That was the point. He was not unbearably handsome to every woman; he was unbearably handsome to Irina. The slight curve of his buttocks, one of which would fit perfectly in the clasp of each hand, his attenuated toes and high arches and slender hips were all designed to satisfy Irina McGovern’s personal, quixotic aesthetic. Ramsey Acton was a custom job.

  Yet one aspect of this made-to-order sticky-trap was rather horrible. Fucking Ramsey and kissing Ramsey and sleeping with Ramsey, watching Ramsey stride naked from the bed to the minibar and letting Ramsey carry her around the room over his head, just as he had lifted her that first night, their close brush with throwing all this away like carelessly leaving a suitcase of money behind on a railway platform—well. It was all she wanted to do. She didn’t want to eat, and she didn’t want to illustrate children’s books. She didn’t want to meet her friends in Indian restaurants. She didn’t want to watch Panorama expose how Her Majesty’s Government had tried to cover up the truth about mad cow. For that matter, Irina posited to herself, puzzled, a little frightened even, it was entirely possible she would never want to do anything else but slide in and out of bed with Ramsey Acton for the rest of her life. Since she had always considered herself a woman with broad interests, concern for world affairs, deep affections for a range of friends, and a driving ambition to pursue her own career, the discovery that apparently all she’d really wanted all along was to get laid by a particular snooker player was a little bit grim.

  “DO ME A FAVOR,” said Irina in the limo that night. “Don’t go in the stage entrance.” Frowning, Ramsey complied, though entering the conference center through the main doors cost him signing some twenty programs on the way in. “Put your arm around me.” A gratuitous directive; aside from hasty trips to the loo, they’d been in physical contact of some sort since that first embrace in the Royal Bath, from simply holding hands to such a complex interlocking of convex and concave parts that together they formed once of those coffee-table puzzle cubes that exasperate dinner guests. So in a double clasp, a neat jazz syncopation of three steps of Irina’s to Ramsey’s two, they sauntered past the ticket counter, where Irina met the eyes of that snooty booking agent. He nodded, finally with a properly shit-eating deference rather than the kind that was secretly insulting. “Thank you,” she whispered, flicking a slippery scarf of burgundy rayon back over the shoulder of the smart, slinky black frock Ramsey had also bought her that afternoon. “That made my night.”

  “At last a bird what’s easy to please,” said Ramsey, and showed her to her seat in a special section for family, managers, and guests. The view of the table was peerless. “Wish me luck.” He kissed her long and deeply in open view. Others in the section cut sly, curious looks at the dark-haired woman in the first row.

  Irina was apprehensive. They had taken too long shopping for her new wardrobe, leaving no time for Ramsey to warm up at the practice table. Although if he lost tonight she’d have Ramsey all to herself thereafter, she couldn’t bear responsibility for a defeat.

  Ramsey’s opponent was John Parrott, a good-natured player from Liverpool who at thirty-three, chubby and moon-faced, with an aura of the two-car garage, seemed prematurely middle-aged. Thick black eyebrows forever shooting to his hairline in astonishment or plowing nose-ward in despair, his elastic expressions so broadcast every nuance of the game that he was effectively a commentator for the deaf. (The MC introduced Parrott by his ostensible nickname “The Entertainer,” though snooker was rife with fabricated sobriquets; flaks forced down the throats of fans improbable handles like “The Golden Boy” for Stephen Hendry or “The Darling of Dublin” for nice-guy Ken Doherty, which even an anorak wouldn’t employ with a gun to his head.) Ramsey said Parrott was a capital fellow, with a dry sense of humor and an appealing streak of self-deprecation.

  Indeed, together Ramsey and Parrott epitomized their sport’s legendary decorum. Beyond a handful of raggedy debut shots, Ramsey’s lack of preparation didn’t seem to have done him much harm. In fact, she was pleased to note about his play a new ebullience. Hoping to prove a positive influence, Irina was relieved when at the interval he led by a frame.

  During the break, a man in the row behind touched her arm. In his forties, he had a florid face creased from the overkill smile that he promptly unleashed, though his eyes didn’t smile with it. Slightly longer hair than suited his age betrayed a vanity, and his tie was so loud it hurt her eyes. “Anybody ever warn you, love,” he said, breath tinged with beer, “that our lad Ramsey is already married?”

  Irina’s mouth parted, and despite herself her color may have dropped a shade.

  Clapping her shoulder, the man laughed boisterously. “Only riding you, doll! Didn’t your face look a picture now! I meant to snooker, missy. Snooker’s his first wife, and make no mistake about it, snooker will be his last.” He stuck out his hand. “Jack Lance. Match-Makers. I’m something between Ramsey’s dogsbody and his mum.”

  Irina shook the hand, whose fingers sprang dark hairs. Underslept, she was slow to sort out that this was Ramsey’s manager. Instinctive dislike battled the urge to make a good impression. “Pleased to m
eet you. Irina McGovern.”

  “American!” he accused.

  “A congenital birth defect,” she said. “It’s not polite to make fun.”

  “So it ain’t!” Jack laughed too hard, as if in amazement that a Yank had managed a bit of banter. “Just visiting, then. Seeing the sights? Westminster Cathedral? Big Ben? Pick up some candy floss on the pier?”

  “No, I live in London. From which you may assume that I visit Big Ben about as often as New Yorkers take the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Like, never.”

  Mercifully, Jack cut to the chase. “I didn’t see your man at the practice table these last three days. Now, I can see how an attractive lady like yourself might make for a formidable distraction. But we wouldn’t want our mutual friend to neglect his responsibilities, would we?”

  She nodded toward the table. “He’s winning, isn’t he? What more do you want?”

  “A piece of 350,000 quid.” The smile dropped.

  “I had no idea the purse was that big.”

  “You going to follow this sport with the pros, sweetie,” he advised, “those are the first stats you master. Fastest break, lifetime centuries—Web site filler for fans.”

  “I’ll work on it.” Clipping her voice, she turned to face forward again.

  “You work on Ramsey first,” said Jack to her back.

  “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,” said the attractive brunette to Irina’s right, in the spirit of coming to her rescue. “You’re Ramsey’s friend, right?”

  “Yes. Irina McGovern.”

  “I’m afraid we’re backing different horses! I’m Karen Parrott. But John thinks so highly of Ramsey. Says it’s gobsmacking that he’s never won the World.”

  “Yes, I wish it didn’t matter to Ramsey so much.”

  “Oh, it’s all they care about,” said Karen. “The Crucible, the Crucible. Almost has a religious ring, you reckon?”

  “Yes, the Crucible sounds like a church, doesn’t it?”

  Karen glanced behind her; Jack Lance had left the section. “Sorry about Jack,” she said quietly. “He’s not a bad sort. But the managers either see the women as the enemy, or get matey on you and try to enlist you on the team. Either way, they’re mighty proprietary.”

  “True, he didn’t seem too happy about Ramsey’s having found a companion. I guess he thinks he’s made an investment, and that earns him a controlling interest. As you said, the players are like racehorses.”

  “Actually, it’s more like a manager’s got part-ownership of a trained seal.”

  Spotting Jack again, Irina asked brightly, “Do you come to all John’s matches?”

  “Crikey, not on your life! But this week I figured the kids would enjoy a trip to the seaside before it gets too nippy. Sorry to be a nosey Parker, but have you been Ramsey’s—friend very long?”

  “No, not long. Funny, I used to find snooker a little dull. But now I’m starting to get it. It’s like a cross between ballet and chess.”

  “Throw in the Battle of Waterloo, and you’ve got something.”

  “It seemed like such a low-key sport at first—soothing. But sometimes it’s incredibly exciting.”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” said Karen noncommittally.

  “So how often do you go see John play a tournament?”

  “Oh, some years I’ll go to Sheffield for the World. And maybe if he’s in a final of a ranking event. Three times a year? Something like that.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well, it’s not quite like when you’ve seen one game you’ve seen them all, but… You’ll see.”

  “So wives and girlfriends don’t usually come along on the tour?”

  “Sometimes,” Karen said cautiously. “For a little while. Actually—a real little while. It’s hard. There’s no room for you. Boys, you know. Drink. And snooker. Buckets of snooker. It’s all they talk about. Maybe you’ll—feel differently,” she added with gracious optimism. “But, uh, most of the girls burn out.”

  As the lights dropped for the second session, a small indentation dimpled between Irina’s eyes. She hadn’t thought things through. Vaguely, she’d envisioned accompanying Ramsey on his travels to a cornucopia of other lavish hotels; with equal vagueness, she’d pictured a comfortable domestic routine on Victoria Park Road, more or less a facsimile of her life with Lawrence, with better sex. Moreover, she had her own commitments that she was already neglecting. Oh, well. How much time could he spend on the road per year anyway?

  THE DEBRIEFING IN THE Royal Bath bar after Ramsey’s narrow victory over John Parrott was jovial enough. His colleagues were all curious about how Irina knew Ramsey; “We’ve both been divorced from the same woman” made a convenient shorthand. The while, Ramsey ensured that she always had a fresh drink (everyone was getting hammered), and that some part of his body was always touching hers (the barest contact sent her whole body humming like a toaster), although his grip on Denise in the opposite hand was discernably tighter. When John Parrott told the terrible tale of having the cue with which he had won the 1991 World Championship stolen from his car at Heathrow, Ramsey rejoined, “Serves you right, you tosser! I’d sooner lock a live dog in the boot than leave the cue behind in a car park.” “Aye!” cried John Higgins, “sooner leave the wife in the boot!” and Karen chided with a biff, “Don’t give him ideas!” Much merriment was derived from one of Ramsey’s attacking pots that evening, after which the cluster had miraculously settled to leave a clear path for the pink to the corner pocket, “like the parting of the Red Sea!” Granted, after the third retelling Irina was unable to muster more than a polite smile. If it was one of those I-guess-you-had-to-be-theres, she had been there, and it didn’t help.

  So the banter was lively, but whenever being amusing escalated from option to obligation Irina grew dull-witted. Dazed by the superficial spangle of wordplay and silly stories, she began to crave substance, if not gravity. Talking to these people was like eating cotton candy, until she didn’t want more sugar but a steak. Midway through a fascinating twenty-minute debate over whether a draft in Purbeck Hall had made the top cushions too springy, Irina reflected that Ramsey’s profession had little or no moral content. Oh, there were occasional issues of honor (calling the ref’s attention to your own foul) or humility (that apologetic tip of the head when you fluke a pot). But in the main, snooker was about excellence for its own sake. The game’s beauty, its limitation as well, was that it didn’t matter. It didn’t save Tutsis in Rwanda, or a farmer’s beloved cattle from mad cow. Some nights Irina was sure to find relief in a world outside the news; on others she feared that she was bound to find the pageant frivolous and empty.

  During a lull, she even resorted to Princess Di. While she’d been sad at first, a bit abstractly, as she would have been over the untimely demise of any young woman she didn’t know, after weeks of mawkish public mourning Irina had reluctantly come to share Lawrence’s view that the nationwide hair-tearing, breast-beating, and rending of garments was an exercise in mass hysteria, and that rather than represent a salutary emotional catharsis it demonstrated that the British had lost a grip—that there were, effectively, no real English people left. Yet as soon as the hallowed subject was raised in the bar, the company in unison composed their faces in stricken solemnity, leaving Irina to reconsider uttering the adjectives maudlin and bathetic.

  A mention that her mother was born in the Soviet Union went nowhere; presumably, then, Russians didn’t play much snooker. For any conversational tendril that curled beyond the purview of the snooker circuit died on the vine. While these characters had played across the globe from Hong Kong to Dubai, a typical international anecdote involved Alex Higgins playing drunk and shirtless in Bombay. Parrott regaled the bar with a tale about Zimbabwe, where the local butcher had stapled the cloth to the table; “You could see the staples jutting out!” collapsed the company into gales of laughter. By this point, Irina knew better than to press Parrott for his take on Robert Mugabe’s plan to confiscate white farmland
. Like Anne Tyler characters, these accidental tourists traveled in a hermetic capsule all done up in green baize.

  So maybe it wasn’t so surprising. But once she slid onto the brocade spread in the suite, one conspicuous omission came home: no one, not once, had ever asked what she did for a living herself.

  IT WAS OFFICIAL: LATER that week, the fact that Ramsey Acton had hooked up with “a sultry Russian beauty” was published in Snooker Scene. The trashy little snippet got everything about “Irina McGavin” all wrong, but she cherished her copy as a keepsake.

  Ramsey rolled on to conquer all the way through the semis. If his game had previously been missing some intangible final ingredient, Irina’s arrival in Ramsey’s life must have added that last half-teaspoon of cayenne that makes a dish sing. How often Irina herself had battled with a sauce as Ramsey had wrangled for thirty years with his snooker game, only at the last minute lighting upon the smidgen from her overflowing spice rack that suddenly bound a dissonant jumble of penultimate flavors into a triumphant melange. At forty-seven, Ramsey Acton appeared to have discovered love and mastery in a fell swoop.

  When the winner of the other semi was a freak success, a weedy, green young player named Dominic Dale ranked #54, Ramsey regarded the final as a mere formality. Having once himself been a young, unproven player subject to blithe condescension from old hands, he should have known better. But one of the things you lose in the wisdom of age is the wisdom of youth. Education is not a steady process of accrual, but a touch-and-go contest between learning and forgetting, like frantically trying to fill a sink faster than it can empty through an open drain—which is why Dominic Dale and his ilk would eternally capitalize on the underestimation of their “betters.”

  After the final they dined at Oscar’s, their planned celebration now downgraded to a quiet tête-à-tête for the licking of wounds. By now, she and Ramsey had established a ritual twin order of scallops with saffron cream, wild bass with morels, and a side of spinach.