of the number two pencil rested against Delaney’s full, pouty bottom lip. She didn’t flinch away from my darkened attention. I told myself to look at her eyes, just her eyes. Not her lips, not her mouth, not the quick breath expelled like a curse, like a dare, like an invitation.
“Of course,” Delaney finally replied. “What else would I be doing?”
I swore I saw the corners of her lips curl up like the pronged tail of the devil sitting on one side of my shoulders, heavy and eager. I swore I saw her press the tip of the eraser harder against her bottom lip so I could see how her pillowy lips responded to an intrusion. I swore I saw her hips shift, her sweat-slick legs slide against the leather which the hot, suffocating breeze from the tall, open windows only made hotter.
Delaney met my gaze coolly, calmly, innocently. I couldn’t be sure anymore whether I saw that, any of that. All I could swear anymore with any kind of certainty was that I wanted to see that, all of that.
“Well, stop it,” I said. “Just stop it. I’m trying to teach you about the people you’ll meet at the Le Ball and I can’t think with all your noise. So just stop it, okay?”
Delaney raised her palms innocently and then tucked away her pencil behind her ear. She folded her hands tightly and put them together in her lap, which I thought was the end of it. I’d read things the way I wanted to read them, I read things wrong. But just as I was turning around to face the rich and famous of Dublin, Delaney’s white-knuckled hands pressed into her lap just a little bit harder.
This small, nearly imperceptible movement lifted the top of Delaney’s notebook like the top half of a clam shell. Was it a mistake? Was she even aware she was doing it? Did clam shells even open on their own, without provocation? Or wasn’t it that they were pried open, with force, with intention, with greed and desire and lust for what was hidden inside?
“It’s so goddamn hot in here,” I complained as I stared at the dead-eyed, Botox-filled face of Madame Murray flapping against her tape in the hot wind that seemed to drift straight from the Sahara.
“Is it?”
Delaney’s voice behind me was like a tap on my shoulder, urging me to turn around. I resisted as I blindly reached for the mint julep Benson brought earlier with the pictures and tape and news that the air conditioning was unfortunately broken, a repairman on the way. That felt like hours ago, days ago, weeks ago in this heat, in the chafing heat between Delaney’s legs and leather, in this damned heat where pink erasers melted against pink lips.
The ice in my cocktail glass had all melted. The glass was slick and wet in my palm. I nevertheless pressed it against my sweaty forehead. I was still paying for my actions the night before at The Jar, in more ways than one.
I tried to cling to that moment at the end of the night when we were pressed tightly against one another, to remember it clearly, but it kept slipping away like white-hot sands between my fingers. Maybe it was the tequila that made the memory so elusive. Maybe it was because I didn’t recognise the man who stood on beer-stickied floors and went out on a limb for a woman he was starting to care for.
I remembered a hand drawing Delaney’s hips close. Words whispered like shared secrets. Most of all her eyes. Yet I couldn’t quite remember me.
There was still a chance to forget the night before, to chalk it all up to the cheap tequila, to reassure myself that that wasn’t me, that it couldn’t have been me. I didn’t care. And I certainly didn’t care for Delaney.
“Madame Murray,” I said, my voice tight, frustrated, tensed. “Eighty-nine years old. Though don’t let her dentures fool you. The old bag still has a bite.”
I could feel sweat rolling down my spine, making my white collared shirt cling to my back. I downed the rest of the mint julep, though the mint did little to refresh. The heat sucked my mouth dry before the sweetness of the whiskey had even left my tongue.
“Her family owns more sheep than even her herd of inbred grandchildren could fuck their way through,” I continued as heat seemed to roll in waves from the windows, drying