2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (23 page)

Harry the psycho. When Ronan walks in first thing tomorrow morning, the poor boy will be shitting a colosseum.

Before I leave I grab the hammer and put a hole through the window adjoining the back door, then unlock it.

I leave the surgery the way I came in, double-locking it behind me.

I’m on the top of the bus going back to Sylvana’s place, now, and we’re purring along the blustery coastline. The only trace of the recent rainstorm lies on the glistening wet pavements. It is bright once again after the downpour, and I’ve decided to put on my cool tinted and totally seductive Calvin Kleins.

Every window is down, but still it’s too hot. Warm air mixed with salty sea smells is billowing through the bus messing up my dream hairstyle, but what woman can have it all?

As I watch the glorious, dangerous blue of the sea stretching clear to the taut wire of the horizon, I am overcome by a pervading sense of peace. I think back on this last hour. It has been eventful.

And deeply pleasurable.

Once more I have hope in life.

In fact, I am quite unable to stop smiling. I’m getting one or two looks from these scruffy louts who are making me feel like an illegal alien from outer space. You feel such a prat on a bus when you’re smiling and the rest of the world is glum.

Seriously, though, I am filled with such an unutterably profound sense of satisfaction after my evening’s entertainment that I want this feeling to go on for ever.

I
’m roasting in a tiny pool of sunlight, seated outside Renaldo’s café only five minutes’ walk from home.

Overhead is a wash of bright-leafed lime trees, sweeping gently in the welcome cool breeze and speckling the pavement with dapples of yellow confetti from the dazzling sun above. Through the leaves the sky is a fluttering blue-green. Opposite is the ferry terminal whose shiny white facade is lined by palm trees in huge boxes – imported. The pier stretches out into the sparkling sun and sea, yellow as a banana in the bright glare. At the end of the pier is the lighthouse one mile out. It seems like it’s just resting on the hazy blue water.

It’s one of those days where you want to say: if only Ronan were here to share it with me.

Instead, I get to share it with Nicole.

How did this happen, you ask?

She rang me this lunchtime. I was in a café at the time, adjacent to the Law Library, overdosing on espresso and caramel slices, experiencing repeated surges of pleasure as I visualized Ronan walk into his surgery this very morning, only to discover his recently combusted
Chi
hanging from the wall to cool.

He must be furious, I was thinking.

These fond thoughts were going through my head when my cellular phone suddenly pealed like a spiked javelin into the middle of the small café, and naturally every luncher in the place turns round and glares at me like we’re living in some sort of mobile-free zone.

I picked up. It was Nicole.

I asked her how she was, in an utterly uninterested voice. Unfortunately, she told me. She was all: “Hi, Julianne. I feel so great. What a wonderful world. I’m so happy! I’m overcoming my neuroses and insecurities, and it’s all down to the most amazing man you’d ever meet and oh I’m so lucky, oh, I know you don’t like me going on about it, but I’ve just got to share my happiness with someone – will you meet me today, Julianne? Please!”

I was sorely tempted to make one from a list of nasty sarcastic comments, including the expression ‘you rat-turd’ or a near equivalent. But was there any point? Things were working out in my favour anyway, so why waste energy getting upset?

“I’ve nothing to lose,” I replied.

“Great!”

We arranged to meet at five at a location of my choice.

So here I am, sitting at a coffee table just a few hundred yards down the road from where we live. Sipping a nerve-racking roast from Chile, so dark and strong it’s sure to be loaded with cancer, which is precisely why I love it so.

You know, the South Americans are so good on coffee they must be the most wide-awake folk on earth. I dread to think what the males are like, though: Latin men are hyper enough as it is without mind-blowing caffeine to turn them hog-wild.

I order a slice of ricotta cake. Sheer confectionate orgasm. And thus do I squat, rocking gently to and fro on the two teetering hind hooves of my white plastic chair, listening to the ebb and flow of the sea wash one minute away, gently fingering the fading seconds of my eternal summer, before Nicole arrives and tells me something happy to put me in a bad mood.

She arrives half an hour late, just when I was on the point of ordering a second slice of ricotta. She’s carrying this large box thing. Reminds me a bit of Ronan with the new fish tank. She’s wearing this foolish pineapple smile that I want to tear off her face like a bumper sticker.

She gives me an unexpected little hug and tumbles her ramshackle apologies and excuses down on top of me for being late. She puts down her large rectangular object. It’s got these plastic bars. I now see what it contains: it’s a small, furry, black animal with tiny, piercing, evil eyes.

“Nicole,” says I, pointing. “What is that…
thing
doing here?”

She sits down. “Julianne…I’ve got a little…favour to ask you.”

“No way.”

“But I haven’t even asked you yet.”

“Nicole, you bring your cat here, in a box, and you tell me you have a favour to ask of me and you think I can’t guess what it is?”

“Okay,” she says, disappointed. “I won’t ask.”

Plastering over her hurt, she bravely orders two cappuccinos from a nearby waitress. It doesn’t occur to her that I might prefer, say, a moccha. Sour grapes.

She bends down and starts fiddling with the clasps of the box. “Poor Max,” she gushes, lifting him out of his cell like a soggy black sweater. “Come and join us.”

Actually, I’d rather Max did not come and join us for a cappuccino. Cats and cappuccinos don’t mix (not even extra-milky cappuccino). Besides, this particular cat makes me nervous. The runt knows things about me.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” says Nicole, gently but firmly nestling the miniature panther on her lap like a baby.

“No, he’s ugly and vicious, and I don’t want him near me.”

She looks at me, confused for a second, then she laughs it off. She thinks I’m just being ‘Julianne’.

“You’re not ugly, Max, are you, pet?”

“Oh yes he is. And vicious and smelly and horrid.”

“That’s not true. You’re a wonderful cat, aren’t you?”

Max purrs; he has no problem whatever with this hard sell.

“You’re a darling,” she googles, kissing the mutt.

“Don’t forget relativity, Nicole. If he were bigger than you you wouldn’t be cradling him like a baby. You’d be nursing a huge bite in your jugular.”

“Miaow,” agrees Max.

“See? He’s a natural-born killer. You should rename him Saddam.”

“Poor thing,” she sympathizes.

“Anyway, Nicole, what on earth are you doing wandering down the street with a cat box?”

She just keeps stroking her fur pot with the evil eye. “I’ve done as you suggested,” she says quietly.

“What?”

“I’ve left Harry.”

I lower my chair on to the floor. “But I didn’t tell you to leave Harry.”

“You told me I should be more independent-minded and autonomous. I’ve thought a lot about that.”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean for you to leave him.”

“Julianne, he beat me up!”

“Yes…” I falter. “But is that a good reason to leave anybody?”

“Anyway, I’ve moved out now. While Harry was at work I packed four suitcases and as many canvases from the attic as I could fit into my Fiat Cinquecento.”

“You’re moving into your Fiat Cinquecento.”

“I don’t know where I’m going yet,” she says weepily.

“What about your job?” I ask, determined to avoid the topic of my hospitality.

“I’m not going back to the travel agency; I can’t afford to bump into Harry again. He’s dangerous. If he finds me he’ll kill me.”

“I bet all this was Ronan’s idea.”

She denies it. “Ronan said he’d support me in my decision.”

“With money?”

She shakes her head guiltily. “He’s already been too generous. He gave me a credit card and made me an authorised user.”

“Is that a fact? And how much have you spent on it so far?”

“A few thousand pounds only.”

“Only?”

I’m gasping away like a fried rasher. I slump back in my chair, remembering the watch she bought in the jeweller’s. I wonder how Ronan would feel if he realized he indirectly subsidized a watch for Harry, to the tune of one grand.

“It’s a lot,” she says ruefully. “I admit it.”

“I’d love to see his reaction when he finds out.”

Our cappuccinos arrive.

Nicole sits back in silence until the waiter slips the bill under the ashtray and leaves. When he’s gone, she sits forward again. “Anyway, I’ll be able to pay him back,” she says urgently. “If Paris works out.”

“You mean if
Chi
works out.”

“Exactly.”

I laugh out loud.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Dream on,” I mumble, sipping my cappuccino.

She sips her own coffee. “I didn’t tell you that Ronan met the
Irish Times
art critic.”

“Oh?” says I, yawning.

“Yes. They met this morning in Cafe Rio’s.”

Panic.

“But I thought he was in his surgery this morning?”

“He’s taken the day off to prepare for Paris. He won’t be going back to work until Thursday.”

The burning effigy of
Chi
is shrieking in my inner ear like a siren, screaming to be noticed. Now Ronan won’t get to see it until Thursday morning.

I take ten slow, deep breaths to calm me down. Change of plan. “You know, Nicole, what with all this talk about
Chi
, you have me curious.”

“Do I?”

“You must show it to me some time.”

“I’d like that.”

“I mean, it seems to have created a bit of a storm.”

“I’d love to think so,” she smiles modestly.

“So I wouldn’t mind seeing it.”

She nods. “I’m sure I could show it to you some time.”

“Like what about now?”

She looks at me. “Now?”

I sip my cooling coffee. “Why not?”

“But it’s in Ronan’s surgery.”

“So?”

“I…”

“Would it be a problem?”

“Well, he did give me a key…”

“So let’s go now.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

Three minutes later the three of us (including the cat) are squeezed into Nicole’s stuffed-up-to-the-gills yellow Fiat Cinque-cento. There’s only just enough room in the front seat. I have the Max box on my knees. Though I’m trying to ignore him, I sense the cat’s eyes crawling up my neck through the bars just five inches away. He doesn’t trust me. He’s quite right not to.

Nicole is all happy again, now that I’ve decided to engage
Chi
with this sudden overwhelming burst of interest. “
Chi
is my personal favourite,” she says. “It means a lot to me: it’s my only really symbolic painting. I think Ronan was secretly impressed – although he never says so openly. That’s why it’d be nice to have your opinion about it.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind me bringing you to his surgery?”

“Why should I mind?”

“I don’t know, it’s just that I know you don’t really approve…”

I say nothing.

She looks over at me and smiles wistfully. “I know things haven’t been easy between you and your husband,” she says.

“Whatever.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“No problem,” she says, narrowly missing the kerb.

“Nicole, could you try to drive without jerking?”

“Sorry. Anyway, if there’s anything I can do to help…I have some experience with men. I’ve been in a lot of relationships.” She suddenly smiles weakly. “Which probably means I’m the worst person in the world to be giving advice.”

“No comment.”

“But one thing that helps, I find, is to discover something you truly like doing, away from him. If you have that, it means you have something which is all your own and nobody else can interfere. And you don’t even have to tell him what you’re doing. Also, men really seem to like it when you at least pretend to be independent…”

“Nicole, could we perhaps change the subject?”

“I know I go on a bit.” She sighs, bashing into the car behind us as she reverses into a space near Ronan’s surgery.

It’s after six, so the receptionist who knows me will certainly have gone home. We shut Max up in the car on his own, his sneaky eyes shining like black pebbles in the sunlight.

The two of us head off to the surgery, side by side.

W
e’re standing in the office annexed to Ronan’s surgery, staring at
Chi
hanging crooked on the wall.

Nicole is shaking uncontrollably.

Her knuckles are clenched into her white face, she’s ogling
Chi
in wet-eyed disbelief, like she’s just discovered the fresh tomb of a loved one encased in the wall. She’s trying to tell me what must have happened, but she’s choking her words, they’re coming out in gasps.

I’m getting scared. “Nicole…are you okay?”

I never said I was good in an emergency.

She’s beginning to suck in these huge gulps of air. I’m telling her to come inside and sit down in the kitchen, that I’ll make her a cup of coffee.

Like, stupidly, I’m supposed to know there’s a kitchenette.

But she’s impervious. In fact, she’s hyperventilating. She falls back against the desk, grasps it with one hand, holds her other hand against her chest, gasps for breath, crying, make-up streaking down her face.

I have my arm round her now, I’m telling her to calm down, that it’ll be okay. Nicole is shaking her head, she’s saying no, no, something to the effect that it will not be okay, that this is going to ruin her, that Ronan will be devastated.

I lean over and grab several of Ronan’s posies for her and she takes them and holds on to them for dear life. She’s trying to get the words out, but it’s like they’re blocked, like there’s an expanding balloon of air inside her chest squeezing out the words in short, whispered, unintelligible gasps.