Beautiful World, Where Are You(24)

times. He didn’t even seem to read the new posts before pulling down to refresh again.

Alice was at that point sitting in a windowless room with a bowl of fruit in front of her, saying: Thank you, thank you, that’s very kind of you, I’m so pleased you enjoyed it.

About a hundred people attended Alice’s event. Onstage she read for five minutes, then engaged in conversation with an interviewer, and then took audience questions. An interpreter sat beside her, translating the questions in Alice’s ear and then translating Alice’s answers for the audience. The interpreter was fast and efficient, moving a pen rapidly across a pad of paper while Alice was speaking, then delivering the translation aloud without pausing, and then striking through everything she had written and beginning again as soon as Alice resumed. Felix sat in the audience listening. When Alice said something funny, he laughed, along with the others in the audience who could understand English. The rest of the audience would laugh later, when the interpreter was speaking, or else they wouldn’t, perhaps because the joke didn’t translate or because they didn’t find it funny. Alice answered questions about feminism, sexuality, the work of James Joyce, the role of the Catholic Church in Irish cultural life.

Did Felix find her answers interesting, or was he bored? Was he thinking about her, or about something else, someone else? And onstage, speaking about her books, was Alice thinking about him? Did he exist for her in that moment, and if so, in what way?

After the event, she sat behind a desk signing books for an hour. He was told he could sit with her but he said he would prefer not to. He walked outside, making a loop around the perimeter of the building, smoking a cigarette. When Alice found him afterwards, she was accompanied by Brigida, a woman from her publishing house, who invited them both to dinner. Brigida kept saying the dinner would be ‘very simple’.

Alice’s eyes were glassy and her rate of speech was more rapid than usual. Felix was by contrast rather quieter than he had been, almost sullen. They all got in a car with Ricardo, who also worked at the publishing house, and drove together to a restaurant in the city. In the front of the car, Ricardo and Brigida carried on a conversation in Italian.

In the back, Alice said to Felix: Are you bored out of your mind? After a pause he replied: Why would I be? Alice’s face was bright and energetic. I would be, she said. I never go to literary readings unless I have to. Felix examined his fingernails and let out a low breath. You were very good at answering the questions, he said. Did they give them to you beforehand, or were you making it up on the spot? She said she had not seen the questions in advance. Superficial fluency, she added. I wasn’t saying anything really substantial. But I’m pleased I impressed you. He looked at her and said in a slightly conspiratorial tone: Have you taken something? With a surprised, innocent expression on her face, Alice replied: No. How do you mean?

You just seem kind of hyperactive, he said.

Oh. I’m sorry. I think after speaking in public sometimes I get like that. It’s adrenaline or something. I’ll try to be calmer.

No, don’t worry about it. I was just going to ask if I could have some.

She laughed. He lolled his head back on the seat, smiling.

I hear they all take cocaine, she said. In the industry. No one ever offers me any, though.

He turned his head, interested. Oh yeah? he said. In Italy, or all over?

All over, so I’ve heard.

That’s interesting. I wouldn’t mind a little bump, if it’s going.

Would you like me to ask? she said.

He yawned, glanced at Brigida and Ricardo in the front seats, wiped some sleep from his eye with his fingers. I’d say you’d rather drop dead, he said.

But I’ll do it if you’d like me to, she replied.

He closed his eyes. Because you’re in love with me, he said.

Hm, said Alice.

He continued to sit there unmoving against the headrest, as if asleep. Alice opened her email app and wrote a new message to Eileen: If I ever suggest I’m going to bring a total stranger to Rome again please feel free to tell me it’s a terrible idea. She sent the email and put her phone away in her bag. Brigida, she said out loud, last time we saw one another, you were moving apartments. Brigida turned around in the passenger seat.

Yes, she said. I live much closer now to the office. She described her new apartment in comparison with her old one, while Alice nodded and said things like: And the last one had two bedrooms? But I remember there was no lift . . . Felix turned his head to look out the window. The streets of Rome revealed themselves one by one and vanished, pulled backward into the darkness.





10


Further to my email about the total stranger: Felix is our age, 29. If you want to know whether I’ve slept with him, I haven’t, but I don’t think that piece of information can shed much light on the situation for you. We did go on one unsuccessful date, which I told you about at the time, but since then nothing. I suppose what you’re really asking is not whether particular sexual acts have taken place between us, but whether my relationship with him has a sexual aspect overall. I think it does. But then, I think that about every relationship. I wish there was a good theory of sexuality out there for me to read. All the existing theories seem to be mostly about gender – but what about sex itself? I mean, what even is it? To me it’s normal to meet people and think of them in a sexual way without actually having sex with them – or, more to the point, without even imagining having sex with them, without even thinking about imagining it. This suggests that sexuality has some ‘other’ content, which is not about the act of sex. And maybe even a majority of our sexual experiences are mostly this ‘other’. So what is the other? I mean, what do I feel for Felix – who by the way has never even physically touched me – that makes me think of our relationship as a sexual one?