Exciting Times(45)

Eunice Fong said: ‘Miss, are you sick?’

I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to say yes.

Dublin had its own take on the perfect aspect. I didn’t know what to call it, but when you were ‘after’ doing something, it meant you’d just done it but didn’t expect the hearer to know. ‘I’ve just fallen in love’: we thought it might happen and it has. ‘I’m after falling in love’: look, I didn’t think there was a heart in this piece-of-shit chest compartment either, but here we are. ‘Only after’ was ‘just after’ plus exasperation: mud on a carpet you’re only after hoovering, losing someone you’re only after finding.

Julian and his friends were ‘after’ things meaning they sought them. They were after bonuses, after clients, always eating the dust of what they wanted. ‘After’ never meant looking back on what they’d done. My sympathies were limited, given who they were, but I thought it might explain why they weren’t happy people.

Ollie from Melbourne had left Hong Kong without notice to avoid paying income tax. TEFL teachers often did that. His replacement, Derek, was from Limerick. At a staff meeting to welcome him, Joan helpfully informed us that we were both Irish. Madison shared that she was from Dublin, Erath County, TX.

‘ “TX”?’ said Derek.

Joan said: ‘She’s American.’

‘It’s weird how all the Irish leave Ireland,’ Madison said. ‘There’s so much green. And you guys have the cutest accents. I’ve got this picture – hold up, let me find it – just chilling with Molly Malone. She wheeled her wheelbarrow . . . And here’s me hitting up the Guinness Storehouse. “A big bag of the cans with lads.” I’m such an alcoholic. Maybe I’m secretly Irish. And don’t you have a gay president now? I can’t believe I even left and I was there three days. What the heck have the Irish got against Ireland?’

I said: ‘You know we can’t get abortions?’

I did not always feel I was Madison’s favourite Irish person.

*

I loved Edith so much it seemed only sensible to worry about losing her. You could hardly stake that much in someone and not think every now and then of what you’d do without them. I analysed the contingencies and concluded: nothing. On the couch or in my bed, I measured various scenarios in which Edith left me and decided my ensuing strategy would be: none. Up and down the escalator, pacing my clammy classroom: if she ended it, I would end too. Sometimes this seemed fine and normal, and sometimes it made me grip whatever I was holding until my fingers hurt. When that happened I messaged Julian. Edith did not exist in the space I shared with him, which let me compose myself again. I wrote: everyone has too many feelings. it’s embarrassing. He agreed. Inside my quarantined dynamic with him, I was safe. He’d made me unhappy, but I’d be in a far deeper gradation of misery if Edith ever abandoned me. She gave me concomitant highs. Sometimes felt I was hiding from those, too, when I talked to Julian.





35

Li Hongzhang, a Chinese general of the late Qing dynasty, claimed not to understand why Europeans worshipped Christ. He didn’t see how anyone could get behind a saviour whose own life had been such a bust he’d ended up crucified, a painful death and a degrading punishment besides.

Miles told me the story. Later I related it to Julian on the phone.

‘He had a point, old Hongzhang,’ Julian said. ‘I doubt you’d catch Warren Buffett nailed to a cross.’

‘Is there anything you’d die for?’ I said.

‘I don’t see what good that would do. Unless you’re of the persuasion that lining all the bankers up against the wall would automatically make the world a better place, which you may well be.’

‘So what should Jesus have done?’ I said. ‘Since getting crucified is beta carry-on.’

‘Ideally, he’d have founded a start-up.’

During the call I made herbal tea. The mug was initially too hot to hold. It was a long call. I knew because slowly I could touch more of my skin against the ceramic. I thought: this is an efficient way of tracking my personal correspondence.

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘I’m not fucking you when you’re back.’

‘You really have been working on yourself,’ he said.

If Edith were there, I would have struggled to explain why we were laughing. I’d say: it’s amusing when I tell Julian I might stop having sex with him, because then I’d have to live somewhere else and he knows I can’t – and it’s hysterical when he implies that me fucking him is a form of self-harm, because he’s right. There would in any case be more pressing issues if I ever had to explain me and Julian to Edith.

The following night, he messaged about Kat.

Saw her at a party. Mostly fine. We talked about May’s EU citizenship guarantee. She has this friend Izzy, and she (Izzy) said something about me ‘showing my face’ here. Don’t know if Kat agrees. Talk soon. J.

I read it in the queue at the Caine Road Starbucks. Experimentally, I typed:

i feel like you take me for granted, and particularly take that i’ll still be here when you get back for granted, which is not unamusing when a) i’m still not entirely sure you’re not the guy in american psycho, b) my girlfriend is i. a literal goddess and ii. almost certainly not that guy, and c) i admittedly can’t quite stop talking to you but i’m pretty sure it’s just i’m so fucked up that i need a break from having feelings.