Certain elements of my relationship with Nick had changed since he told Melissa we were together. I sent him sentimental texts during daytime hours and he called me when he was drunk to tell me nice things about my personality. The sex itself was similar, but afterwards was different. Instead of feeling tranquil, I felt oddly defenceless, like an animal playing dead. It was as though Nick could reach through the soft cloud of my skin and take whatever was inside me, like my lungs or other internal organs, and I wouldn’t try to stop him. When I described this to him he said he felt the same, but he was sleepy and he might not really have been listening.
Piles of dead leaves had formed all over campus, and I spent my time attending lectures and trying to find books in the Ussher Library. On dry days, Bobbi and I walked along underused paths kicking leaves and talking about things like the idea of landscape painting. Bobbi thought the fetishisation of ‘untouched nature’ was intrinsically patriarchal and nationalistic. I like houses better than fields, I observed. They’re more poetic, because they have people in them. Then we sat in the Buttery watching rain come down the windows. Something had changed between us, but I didn’t know what it was. We still intuited each other’s moods easily, we shared the same conspiratorial looks, and our conversations still felt lengthy and intelligent. The time she ran me that bath had changed something, had placed Bobbi in a new relation to me even as we both remained ourselves.
One afternoon toward the end of the month, when my supply of money was down to about six euro, I got an email from a man called Lewis, who was the editor of a literary journal in Dublin. The email said that Valerie had sent the story on with a view to having it published, and that if I was willing to give my permission, he would very much like to print it in an upcoming issue. He said he was ‘very excited’ by the prospect and that he had some thoughts on possible revisions if I was interested.
I opened the file I had sent to Valerie and read it all in one go, without stopping to think about what I was doing. The figure in the story was recognisably Bobbi, her parents recognisable as her parents, myself identifiably myself. No one who knew us could fail to see Bobbi in the story. It wasn’t an unflattering portrait, exactly. It emphasised the domineering aspects of Bobbi’s personality and of my own, because the story was about personal domination. But, I thought, things always have to be selected and emphasised, that’s writing. Bobbi would understand that more than anyone.
Lewis also mentioned I would be paid for the story, and included a scale of fees for first-time contributors. If published at its current length, my story would be worth over eight hundred euro. I sent Lewis a reply thanking him for his interest and telling him I would be delighted to work with him on whatever revisions he thought appropriate.
That evening Nick picked me up from the apartment to take me out to Monkstown. Melissa was staying with her family in Kildare for a few days. In the car I explained about the story, and about the conversation I’d had with Bobbi in the bath and what she’d said about not being special. Slow down, Nick said. You’ve sold this story for how much did you say? I didn’t even know you wrote prose. I laughed, I liked when he acted proud of me. I told him it was my first one and he called me intimidating. We talked about Bobbi appearing in the story, and he said he appeared in Melissa’s work all the time.
But only passingly, I said. Like ‘my husband was there.’ Bobbi is the main character in this one.
Yeah, I forgot you’ve read Melissa’s book. You’re right, she doesn’t dwell on me that much. Anyway I’m sure Bobbi won’t mind.
I’m contemplating never telling her. It’s not like she reads the magazine.
Well, I think that’s a bad idea, he said. It would involve a lot of other people also not telling her. That guy Philip who you hang around with, people like that. My wife. But you’re the boss, obviously.
I made a ‘hm’ noise, because I thought he was right but I didn’t want to think so. I liked when he called me the boss. He tapped his hands on the steering wheel cheerfully. What is it with me and writers? he said.
You just like women who can wreck you intellectually, I said. I bet you had crushes on your teachers at school.
I was actually notorious for that kind of thing. I slept with one of my college lecturers, have I told you about that?
I asked him to, and he told me. The woman was not just a teaching assistant, she was a real professor. I asked what age she was and Nick smiled coyly and said: like forty-five? Maybe fifty. Anyway she could have lost her job, it was insane.
I see it from her perspective, I said. Didn’t I kiss you at your wife’s birthday party?
He said he struggled to understand why he made people feel that way, that it had happened rarely in his life but always with a violent intensity and no real sense of agency on his part. A friend of his elder brother had developed a similar thing for him when he was fifteen. And this girl was nearly twenty, Nick said. Obsessed with me. That’s how I lost my virginity.
Were you obsessed with her? I said.
No, I was just frightened of saying no to her. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
I told him that sounded bleak and it made me sad. Quickly he said: oh, I wasn’t going for sympathy points. I did say yes to her, it wasn’t … Well, it probably was illegal, but I consented to it.
Because you were too frightened to say no, I said. Would you call it consent if it happened to me?
Well, no. But it wasn’t like I felt physically threatened. I mean, it was weird behaviour from her, but we were both teenagers. I don’t think she was an evil person.
We were still in town, sitting in traffic on the north quays. It was early evening, but dark already. I looked out the window at passers-by and at the veil of rain that moved around under the streetlights. I told him I thought he was such an appealing love object partly because he was so curiously passive. I knew I would have to be the one to kiss you, I said. And that you would never kiss me, which made me feel vulnerable. But I also felt this terrible power, like, you’re going to let me kiss you, what else will you let me do? It was sort of intoxicating. I couldn’t decide if I had complete control over you or no control at all.
And now what do you feel? he said.
More like complete control. Is that bad?
He said he didn’t mind. He thought it was healthy for us to try and correct the power disparity, though he added that he didn’t think we would ever be able to do it completely. I told him that Melissa thought he was ‘pathologically submissive’ and he said it would be a mistake to assume that meant he was powerless in relationships with women. He told me he thought helplessness was often a way of exercising power. I told him he sounded like Bobbi and he laughed. The highest compliment a man can ever get from you, Frances, he said.