“And if Fiona felt that your political views were so far apart . . .” she said, frowning very thoughtfully as she let her voice drift away.
George covered his face with his hands. I took that as an opportunity to reenact my hulking bird of prey impression. Cristina turned red with her effort to keep from laughing.
“Shh!” she hissed at me. “George,” she said to cover it, “you can’t blame yourself. Did it just happen tonight?”
“We were supposed to spend the weekend in Dublin,” he said miserably. “She said she couldn’t go because of work. But then tonight when I called her she was going to the pub with her mates. So I confronted her and told her I wasn’t the kind of guy who put up with being jerked around.”
“Please tell me you didn’t actually say that,” I interjected. This time Cristina didn’t pretend—she just kicked me. Hard. “Okay, ouch, I’ll shut up.”
“And that’s when she told me that she couldn’t see me anymore, no matter our attraction to each other. She said she needs a man who can fulfill her mentally and sexually.” George sniffled, as Cristina and I digested the image of him as sexual animal. That was the kind of digestion that led directly to antacids. “But I think she’s already found someone else,” he confessed.
I perked up. Emotional wallowing was beyond me, but drama I could handle. “Why do you think that?” I asked.
“I can tell,” he said. If he said anything about sensing it in her touch I was prepared to vomit, but he just shrugged. “I can just tell.”
“Then she’s a heinous bitch,” I said dismissively. “Not to mention a liar. You should find out. I guarantee that if you find out she’s been carrying on with someone else, it will allow you to hate her, and that always speeds up the grieving process.”
“I agree,” Cristina said. Her eyes glittered. “Hate is always better than pain.” I eyed her askance and then turned back to the subject at hand.
“How would I find out?” George seemed baffled. “She’ll never tell me. And her friends don’t really like me.”
“That shocks me,” I said. “But it’s easy to find out.”
“Oh yes,” Cristina agreed, grinning. “A covert operation.”
“A simple reconnaissance mission,” I said with a smile and an expansive gesture. “To see if the Vul—if Fiona is entertaining any overnight guests.”
George simply stared.
Nine
The great thing about the university was that all its houses had huge windows, past which you could saunter and into which you could always look. The faculty houses, for example, offered two separate views inside, one into the kitchen and one into the living room. I had learned that a simple five-minute diversion from my usual walk home from campus allowed me to skulk right past Sean’s windows with him nary the wiser.
He was never there, but stalking wasn’t about immediate gratification. Immediate gratification was for wimps. I could wait.
This experience was why I felt qualified to be skulking through the night, Cristina and George on my tail.
“I should have changed into something black,” Cristina whined. “I will stick out in these clothes.”
“Not really,” I hissed. “Of course, the fact that the three of us are crouched in the shrubbery might raise a few eyebrows.”
I glanced down to where George was bringing up the rear, his clashing patterns resplendent in the shadows.
“To say nothing of your Hawaii Five-O look, George,” I muttered. Cristina slugged me in the arm.
“Fiona lives in that house,” George said. He pointed, and his lip quivered. “That’s her window.”
We were in a section of campus into which I rarely ventured: St. Stephen’s Court. It was the older version of student housing, which was troubling as it meant my little concrete bunker was considered new and improved.
“Stay here,” I whispered, and took off in a lope across the grass. I came up against the wall and glanced around, my heart thudding. I wondered in passing why I thought I had transformed into La Femme Nikita.
Oh, right—wine.
I was pretty drunk, I admitted to myself, but why let that get in the way of a simple reconnaissance mission? I was highly trained. I’d attended a small liberal arts college.
There was a tree outside the house on the slight slope right near Fiona’s slightly ajar window, and I wasted no time trying to shimmy up the few feet necessary to get a view inside. I’ve never been able to perform a single pull-up in my entire life, much less shimmy up anything, as many repressed junior high school gym classes would attest if I allowed myself to remember them. It was amazing what alcohol could do. It was as if I’d suddenly been blessed with the arms of an action hero.
I was leaning over, hoping to get a good listen if not a peek, when I heard an ominous rustling from across the way.
“FIONA!” boomed a Spanish-accented voice I knew all too well.
First I froze, then I spazzed. And then I let go.
I landed on my feet, then lost my balance in the slick grass and the mud and wiped out, tumbling down the little knoll and coming to a stop next to the house.
Cristina was now standing in the shrubbery, cupping her hands around her mouth to form a bullhorn.
“We know what you are!” she shouted. “We know what you did! You will pay!”
I was paralyzed with shock, and maybe had also severed my spinal cord. I saw lights flicker on above me and nearly swallowed my tongue. Covered in mud and probably being paralyzed was nothing. Being caught lolling about in the dirt beneath Fiona’s window while my housemate bellowed insults was such a horrifying prospect that I, who would probably not run even if pursued by the entire selection of bad guys from the whole Scream trilogy, took off like a bat out of hell.
I hauled ass past Cristina, who had moved on to Spanish insults, which were much more lyrical and sounded twice as vicious, and I hauled ass past the quivering section of shrubbery I took to be George, cowering.
I ran as I had never run before, and didn’t stop until I was safely in my room. Where I realized that everything hurt, I was covered in mud, my actions had just been those of the clinically insane, and I ought to be ashamed of myself. Which made me laugh.
I was still laughing when Cristina and George appeared, both out of breath.
“This was maybe not such a good plan,” Cristina said, standing in the doorway. She frowned at me. “Why are you covered in dirt?”
“Because I fell out of a tree when some Spanish lunatic started shouting verbal abuse from the bushes,” I retorted.
“Yes,” Cristina said, nodding solemnly. “I don’t know why that happened. I think I am drunk.”
We caught eyes and set ourselves off laughing again. When I calmed down a little, I looked at George, who was actually grinning.
“Sorry,” I said. “I should have warned you not to listen to any of the nonsense we come up with. It’s all destined to end in disaster.”
“It’s okay,” George said. He sounded dazed. “I mean, I just didn’t know that girls did stuff like this.”
“I don’t know why you have to bring your entire house with you wherever you go,” Toby groused.
“Just shut up,” I suggested mildly. “I had no idea you were such a baby.”
Toby muttered something I was just as happy not to have heard, and slunk back to the table with a handful of drinks. We were becoming quite a little group—Jason, Toby, and me, with the new additions of Cristina, Melanie on the rare occasions she wasn’t staying in to study, and—unbelievably—George.
I paid the bartender and splayed out my hands so I could transport three pints and my wallet, which was a useful skill indeed and possibly the only one I’d so far garnered from my master’s course. After a hair-raising navigation through the crowded pub, I plunked the drinks on the table and tossed myself down. I smiled at the group.
Cristina and Jason were engaged in a spirited debate about an Almodóvar film. My taste in film ran more to the Bruce Willi
s side of the spectrum, so I didn’t bother to pay attention to any in-depth discussion about the meaning of camera angles. I was only in it for the cheap thrills, half-naked heroes, and explosions. Toby had taken himself off to feed money into the jukebox. And George was assuming his usual position: glassy-eyed and near coma.
As far as Cristina and I could tell, George had gotten drunk the night of our doomed reconnaissance mission and stayed that way. That night was at least two weeks gone by now, and George showed no signs of sobering up. I was coming to feel almost affectionate toward him. In his intoxicated state, he wasn’t unlike a pet. A dopey Labrador, maybe. Addled and confused, but essentially good-natured. Or in George’s case, so drunk that it amounted to the same thing. He was slumped over his drink and far beyond conversation, so I wandered over to the jukebox and tried to look at Toby’s selections. He blocked me with his elbow, and then his shoulder when I tried to fake him out.
“You won’t know any of the songs I’m choosing,” he told me, laughing. “None of them made the American Top 40.”
“You’re such a snob,” I retorted. “Which is amazing, given the fact that I know you get weepy over boy-band ballads.”
“That’s a bit of vicious slander, Brennan,” Toby said, trying to sound hard, but he was grinning at me. “And don’t think I’m not prepared to defend my good name.”
I sighed. “Just please spare us another round of Radiohead. I beg you. If I have to listen to Thom Yorke whine about being a creep one more time I might have to slit my wrists on my pint glass and then throw myself out the window.”
Toby gave me a level stare. “That would be a very foolish thing to do,” he said. “As the window is at street level, you’d be essentially unharmed and forced to pay for repairs.”
I scowled at him. “When did you become practical?”
He gave me his cheeky little grin. “I think you’ll find I’m the very soul of practicality.”
I made a face at him, which only made his grin widen. So I punched him. He laughed, and dodged a second hit by catching my wrist and holding it in the air between us.
“I have another arm,” I pointed out.
“Go ahead,” he invited me in a fake, and terrible, American accent. “Make my day.”
I never got to respond to that, because that was when Suzanne appeared at the pub’s entrance, in our direct line of vision.
“Shit,” Toby muttered. “She’s been after me for ages.”
“You should try talking to her,” I told him. I pulled my wrist out of his grip. “Then you wouldn’t have to avoid her.”
“I did try,” he protested. “I went round her house but she ran off. Said she would let me know when she could ‘bear the disappointment.’”
“Well, she’s headed this way,” I said. He groaned, but summoned up that default polite expression the English were so good at.
We both chorused a polite “hello.” Suzanne stopped in front of us and shot me a flat look.
“If you’ll excuse us, Alex,” she said stiffly. “Toby and I need to talk.”
“Of course,” I said immediately, and sidled over to our table. Toby hadn’t moved from the jukebox, and Jason and Cristina had stopped their debate to ogle the coming scene. I slipped into my seat.
“About what?” Toby asked, a touch belligerently.
“About what happened!” Suzanne was making no attempt to keep her voice down. In any case, we were all about three feet away.
“That’s the thing, Suzanne,” Toby said impatiently. “Nothing really did happen. It was ages ago, anyway.”
“I don’t know how you can say that.” Her voice was low and rough. I was pretty sure she was about to cry, but she was angled away from us. Cristina rolled her eyes and stole one of my cigarettes.
“Because it’s true,” Toby snapped. “I wanted to talk to you weeks ago, but you refused. I don’t appreciate you coming here and having a go at me in the middle of a pub.”
“In front of your friends, you mean,” Suzanne snarled. She twisted her head around and saw us all watching. “Better make sure you suck up to them, right, Toby? Particularly to you-know-who!”
“I think you’ve said enough,” Toby said in a quiet, angry voice that made him sound much older than he was. “I won’t have this conversation here.”
He brushed her aside and made for the back of the pub and, presumably, the bathroom. We all sat in uncomfortable silence, except for George, who had started to hum tunelessly to himself. Suzanne balled her hands into fists and stormed over to the table.
“Are you happy now?” she demanded. “Did you all enjoy watching that?”
“Suzanne,” Jason said, laughter creeping into his voice as if he wanted to encourage her to laugh too, “we’re right here. Of course we watched.”
I said nothing. Discretion seemed the wisest course, and I kept my face blank. But her glare found me anyway, and her face twisted with anger.
“Everyone knows how he feels about you,” she hissed directly to me. “You just use it to your advantage.”
“Hey—” I began.
“Enough,” Cristina interrupted, in a tone brooking no argument. “Suzanne, no more of this. You are upset. You should go.”
Suzanne breathed in a few ragged breaths and then hissed a succinct, “Fine.” She whirled around and barreled out of the pub. No one said a word until we saw her shape fly by on the street outside.
“Bloody hell,” Jason burst out.
Toby reappeared, looking disgruntled. “Thank God that’s finished,” he muttered, sending a dark look out the window.
“You know what?” I interrupted in sudden irritation. “I’m tired of everything being my fault. What did I do?”
“You exist,” Cristina said, waving a dismissive hand. “She is fixated. Who cares? She’s a lunatic.”
“Why did that happen?” Jason wanted to know, poking Toby in the arm. “I had no idea you and Suzanne—”
“There was never any me and Suzanne,” Toby protested. He shrugged. “It all got blown out of proportion.”
“American birds,” Jason pronounced. He grinned at me. “Mad as you like, every one of them.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Drink your pint,” I ordered.
The doorbell started ringing at seven the next morning. The third time it went off, I stared blearily at the ceiling and realized no one else was going to answer it. Groaning in frustration, I crawled out of bed. I staggered down the stairs in my pajama bottoms and a scruffy T-shirt, my hair no doubt standing on end. I planned to rip into the blurry figure I could see through the glass, and yanked open the door to get started.
“Suzanne.” I stared at her. “It’s fucking seven o’clock in the fucking morning.”
“I need to talk to you,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep at all last night—”
“So my sleep should be likewise disrupted?” I was incredulous.
“Don’t be all sarcastic with me!” she shrieked, throwing her hands up. “I can’t take it! I’m not like you!” She burst into tears, standing there in the doorway.
This is how I knew that I would never be a good person: I wanted to kick her right back out and slam the door. I had to strictly forbid my eyes from rolling into the back of my head. I wanted to rewind and get back in bed and pretend no one was home. I think I would have given anything, at that moment, not to have to deal with Suzanne and her tears.
“Okay,” I said. My stomach already hurt in anticipation of the coming discussion. I rubbed at my eyes. “Okay, Suzanne, stop crying.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I don’t think I ever will.”
“Well, you have to,” I said briskly. “Or we can’t talk.”
I stepped aside and sort of tugged her into the house. I thought that maybe I was getting frostbite on my bare feet, I was half asleep, and Suzanne was still snuffling. The tears were real, I saw, but that hardly made me more sympathetic. What was wrong with me? I wondered. Shouldn’t I have more compassion for my f
ellow man? That’s what therapists are for, I could hear Michael retort. If they’re not going to pay you, why pretend it’s your job to give a shit? I almost smiled, but figured Suzanne would take it amiss.
“Go up to my room,” I ordered her. “I need to make myself some coffee if I’m going to be at all coherent.” I realized she had yet to apologize for yanking me from my bed. I set my jaw. “Coffee or tea for you?”
“Tea,” Suzanne whispered. “Herbal if you have it.” She might as well have been Dumas’s Camille, about to collapse on her chaise. Just so long as there were no arias, I thought I could just about cope.
“Just go up,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
She started up the stairs and I went into the kitchen and held my head in my hands. What a disaster. Then I remembered it was Friday, a day upon which I had no classes, and I all but gnashed my teeth. I was tired, damn it. I lived a mostly nocturnal life here. What was more, Suzanne knew that. She could easily peer out her kitchen window and see my bedroom light on until three or four in the morning. What the hell was she thinking, turning up at seven?
I slammed my coffeemaker around and slapped on the kettle, and tried to take calming breaths. I wasn’t sure what I would do if faced with another round of Toby’s feelings for me according to Suzanne. I didn’t know what his feelings were, and I didn’t want to know.
I fixed Suzanne’s tea with an herbal tea bag stolen from Melanie and trudged up the stairs. I shoved open my door with my hip. Suzanne was sitting in my chair, her knees drawn up under her chin and her face toward the window. Quite affecting, really, except for the twin pigtails she was wearing, which, with all that red hair, rather unfortunately brought to mind Pippi Longstocking. I muffled a sigh and thrust her tea at her.
“Chamomile,” I said gruffly.
I settled back into my bed and under my covers and took a long pull of my coffee. I could feel the espresso begin to work through my brain, and resisted the urge to moan aloud in pleasure.
“So,” I prompted her. “Seven in the morning. What’s going on?”