I stared at the piece of paper in my hand and didn’t know what to say. This was entirely outside of my realm of experience.
“Call me on Saturday afternoon,” she said. “And we’ll make plans for Saturday night.”
“All right,” I said, uncertain what I was getting myself into but confident that I had no choice in the matter.
“There’s a picture that I want to see,” she told me. “It’s playing in the Metropole. A Man for All Seasons.”
“I’ve seen that one,” I said, not adding that I’d had to leave just as Richard Rich was betraying his mentor for Wales because I needed to wash the smell of ejaculate off my hands.
“Well I haven’t,” she said. “And I want to.”
“There’s lots of other pictures on,” I said. “I’ll have a look in the paper later and see what’s what.”
“I want to see A Man for All Seasons,” she insisted, leaning forward and glaring at me.
“Right so,” I said, standing up before she could pick up a knife and do to me what the IRA had done to Julian. “I’ll call you on Saturday so.”
“At four o’clock. Not a minute earlier.”
“Four o’clock,” I said, turning around and making my way out of the café, the perspiration already starting to cause my shirt to stick to my back. Walking back to work in the sunshine, I considered the situation. Without ever having intended to, and without even wanting such a thing, it seemed that I had a girlfriend. And my girlfriend was Mary-Margaret Muffet. Apparently I was her standard. On one hand the idea terrified me, for I had no knowledge of how to behave with a girl and even less interest in finding out, but on the other this was a great development in my life, for it meant that there was a chance I could be just like everyone else and no one would be suspicious of me. And thank God, I wouldn’t have to join a seminary, which I’d been vaguely considering as an answer to all my problems for about a year now.
Back in the office, I ignored an endless conversation that my colleagues were having about Jacqueline Kennedy and sat down to write a long letter to Julian, telling him that I’d fallen in love with a beautiful girl I’d met in Bewley’s Café. I described her in the most complimentary way I could and implied that we’d been having relations every which way for the last few months. I did everything I could to sound as sexually promiscuous as him and signed off by saying that the only problem with having a girlfriend was not being able to take advantage of all the other girls that were out there. I couldn’t do that, I told him. I love her too much. Still, I added, just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t take a look at the menu. I sent the letter care of the Western Union office in Salzburg, where he and that Suzi harpy had gone skiing, and hoped that his curiosity might bring him back to Dublin soon so we could go on double dates together and then maybe the girls would strike up a friendship and tell us to go out for drinks on our own so they could talk about knitting and recipes and so on and it would just be Julian and me left alone together, like it was supposed to be.
Within a few weeks, Mary-Margaret and I were an established couple and every Sunday she gave me a list of the things we would be doing during the week ahead. I had Tuesdays and Thursdays off but had to be with her every other evening, most of which were spent sitting together on the sofa in her front room while her daddy watched television and ate chocolate-covered Brazil nuts, all the time proclaiming that he was sick of chocolate-covered Brazil nuts.
After about a month, it occurred to me that nothing sexual had occurred between us yet and decided that it might be worth a try. After all, I had never enjoyed any intimacy with a girl and there was always the possibility that if I tried it, I might actually enjoy it. And so, after her daddy went up to bed one night, I leaned over and without any warning pressed my lips against hers.
“Excuse me,” she said, rearing back on the sofa with an appalled expression on her face. “What do you think you’re doing, Cyril Avery?”
“I was trying to kiss you,” I said.
She shook her head slowly and looked at me as if I’d just admitted that I was Jack the Ripper or a member of the Labor party. “I thought you had a little bit more respect for me than that,” she said. “I had no idea that all this time I was going out with a sex pervert.”
“I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” I said.
“Well, how else would you describe yourself? Here I am trying to watch Perry Mason, little knowing that all the time you were planning on raping me.”
“I wasn’t planning anything of the sort,” I protested. “It was just a kiss, that’s all. Shouldn’t we be kissing if we’re doing a line together? There’s nothing wrong with that, Mary-Margaret, is there?”
“Well, maybe,” she said, considering it. “But you could at least have the decency to ask in future. There’s nothing less romantic than spontaneity.”
“All right,” I said. “Well, can I kiss you then?”
She thought about it and finally nodded her head. “You can,” she said. “But make sure to keep your eyes closed and your mouth too. And I don’t want your hands anywhere near me. I can’t stand to be touched.”
I did as instructed, pressing my lips against hers again and mumbling her name as if I was lost in the passion of a great love affair. She remained rigid on the sofa and I could tell that she was still watching the television, where Perry Mason was getting tough with a man in the witness box. After about thirty seconds of this uncontrollable eroticism, I pulled away.
“You’re a great kisser,” I told her.
“I hope you’re not suggesting that I have a past,” she said.
“No, I only meant that you have very nice lips.”
She narrowed her eyes, uncertain whether that too might be the sort of thing a sex pervert would say. “Well, that’ll be enough for one night,” she said. “We don’t want to get carried away, do we?”
“Fair enough.” I glanced down at the crotch of my pants. There had been no movement whatsoever. If anything, there had been what could only be called A Great Shriveling.
“And don’t think that one thing will lead to another, Cyril Avery,” she warned me. “I know there are girls out there who will do anything to hold on to a man but that’s not my standard. That’s not my standard at all.”
“No problem,” I said, meaning every word of it.
Everywhere, People Stare