Bright Burning Things(57)

Now, dressed in a fifties vintage-style dress – a testament to my previous incarnation as a London leading lady – I am standing in the queue of this overlit, straining, faux-Italian franchise in suburban Dublin, when I see him coming. My hope, situated somewhere in my chest cavity, a beating, pulsing thing, pitches forward, as if it were plummeting down the track of a Giant Dipper. He looks overdone, smells of a clean chemical concoction that climbs into my nostrils; the waistline of his jeans is too high. Sanitised and shining. He moves towards me, smiling possessively, and kisses me on the lips.

‘David Smythe,’ he says to the receptionist, a young, pretty, unformed girl, who flushes from her chest to the roots of her hair.

‘Follow me,’ the girl says, smoothing her skirt over her spindly hips and rump as she leads us to a booth by the wall, to what should be a cosy alcove except that the light dangling overhead is as white and glaring as in an interrogation room. I slide in across the leatherette surface, sticky and hot against my thighs in their 40-denier tights. In spite of my judgement of the blushing girl who has skipped away, a timid fawn, my own blood is rushing too fast to the surface.

‘You look gorgeous,’ he says, which makes my skin angrier, that probing light irritating.

A waiter arrives and pours iced water into my glass. I gulp greedily, wanting to remove the ice cube and rub it on my inflamed skin. I sit on my hands.

‘You seem a bit jumpy,’ he says. ‘Did today go well?’

How to bat the question away without causing offence? I attempt a smile. ‘Good, great, no time at all now, you know. You? How was your day?’

‘I had a great day, actually. A day where I could be of service. Called in to do an intervention on a young lad, his family sick with worry, twisted and reactive with worry. Amazing how the presence of a neutral, skilled facilitator can defuse a charged situation.’

He positively bloats with self-importance as he relays the facts of his successful ‘rescue’ operation. The air buzzes around my head with judgements, and some of them must land. His hands start shredding a napkin. My own are hot and itchy. I shift my weight so that they can’t escape my body’s heft.

The waiter reappears. ‘Ready to order?’

‘I’ll have a vegetarian pizza and a mixed salad,’ I say, as there are no other options.

‘Just give me a minute,’ David says as he reads with intent, his finger running beneath the text. ‘I’ll have a steak au poivre, rare.’ His voice booming in the confined space.

‘Anything to drink?’

‘We’re fine with waters, thank you,’ he says.

‘Actually, I’ll have a Coke.’

‘Right so.’ The waiter leaves.

‘Are you really eating beef? Hardly humanely reared cows in here, I imagine.’

He looks down at his fingers, which continue to fidget and shred. ‘I’ll eat what I like.’ I let that hang. He sounds so childish.

‘David, have you ever been married?’

‘I’m not sure what relevance that has to anything,’ he says.

‘We’re not in a therapy session here. Simple question.’

‘Yes, Sonya. Briefly. You?’

‘You know I haven’t.’

And I think how unbalanced this all is; how much this man knows about me, and how little I know about him. He seemed very uncomfortable at the mention of his marriage.

‘Are you still working as a solicitor?’

‘What is this? The bloody Inquisition?’ he says, smiling, trying to flirt a little.

The food arrives. It’s as bland and tasteless as this place. I look at his steak with some disgust. David can’t seem to manage to swallow more than three mouthfuls, my comments about the cow’s dubious lineage still ringing. I shake my head, looking to create a clearing. I’m ruining a perfectly good evening. ‘You’re always looking to destroy something good’ – one of Howard’s refrains. He was right, and he was wrong: there was no conscious decision on my part, it just happened, the voices happened, the images spilled, the creatures awoke. I’m well on my way to furrowing that same groove now; I know I’m making that face.

David studies me. ‘I wonder why you feel the need to be so prickly, Sonya.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, sounding anything but. ‘I guess we’re just not compatible.’

He laughs.

I’m shocked out of my dramatic interior musings. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘You are: Just. Not. Compatible. Why? Because I called you prickly? Is that the best you can do?’

This isn’t a tactic I’ve encountered before, and I feel as if I’ve been manhandled and thrown to the floor, all bets on me, now an unexpected loser. Why is he bothering? Why doesn’t he just piss off and leave me alone, like the rest of them?

‘Well, I’m just not into this, just not into you. How’s that?’ I say, obeying a director who’s pushing for a Liz Taylor moment from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

‘You’re so see-through. Not going to get rid of me that easily.’

Go, stay, go, stay, go, stay, go, stay, go, go, go, much easier if you just go… ‘Classic Groucho Marx shit, Sonya.’ I can hear Howard’s voice.

‘Think you may have underestimated my staying power,’ David adds quietly, smiling.