anything fragile in case it gave him ideas. Deep down I still hold this against him: twenty-eight is old enough to have outgrown that particular brand of stupid crap, and if Dec had managed to do that, he and Sean would have come home with me and and and.
After that things go fuzzy again. The next thing I remember with any clarity is saying good-bye to the guys outside the pub, closing time, loose noisy clumps of people arguing over where to go next, heads bending to cigarette lighters, girls teetering on their heels, yellow-lit taxi signs cruising past—“Listen,” Dec was telling me, with hyperfocused drunken sincerity, “no, listen. Joking aside. I’m delighted that it all worked out for you. I am. You’re a good person. Toby, I’m serious, I’m over the moon that it—” He would have gone on like that indefinitely, only Sean flagged down a taxi and steered Dec into it with a hand between his shoulder blades, and then gave me a nod and a wave and strolled off towards Portobello and Audrey.
I could have taken a taxi, but it was a nice night, still and cool, with a soft easy edge that promised more spring in the morning. I was drunk but not to the point of unsteadiness; home was less than a half-hour walk away. And I was starving; I wanted a takeaway, something spicy and pungent and enormous. I buttoned my overcoat and started walking.
A flame-juggler at the top of Grafton Street whipping up his straggly crowd to a rhythmic clap, drunk guys roaring unintelligible encouragement or distraction. A homeless guy curled in a doorway, wrapped in a blue sleeping bag, out cold through the whole thing. While I walked I rang Melissa; she wouldn’t go to bed until we’d had our good-night phone call and I didn’t want to keep her up any later, and anyway I couldn’t wait till I got home. “I miss you,” I said, when she answered. “You’re lovely.”
She laughed. “So are you. Where are you?”
The sound of her voice made me press the phone closer to my ear. “Stephen’s Green. I was in Hogan’s with the lads. Now I’m walking home and thinking about how lovely you are.”
“So come over.”
“I can’t. I’m drunk.”
“I don’t care.”
“No. I’ll stink of booze and I’ll snore in your ear, and you’ll dump me and go off with some smooth-talking billionaire who has a pod machine to purify his blood when he comes home from the pub.”
“I don’t know any smooth-talking billionaires. I promise.”
“Oh, you do. They’re always there. They just don’t swoop until they see their chance. Like mosquitoes.”
She laughed again. The sound of it warmed me all over. I had hardly expected her to sulk or pout or hang up on me for neglecting her, but the ready sweetness of her was another reminder that Dec was right, I was a lucky bastard. I remembered listening with slightly self-congratulatory awe to his stories of elaborate drama with exes, people locking themselves or each other into or out of various unlikely places while everyone sobbed and/or yelled and/or pleaded—none of that stuff would even occur to Melissa. “Can I come over tomorrow? As soon as I’m human again?”
“Course! If it’s nice again, we can have lunch out in the garden and fall asleep in the sun and snore together.”
“You don’t snore. You make happy little purry noises.”
“Ew. Attractive.”
“It is. It’s lovely. You’re lovely. Did I mention you’re lovely?”
“You are drunk, silly.”
“I told you.” The real reason I didn’t want to go over to Melissa’s—actually I did want to, very badly, but the reason I wasn’t going to—was, of course, that I was drunk enough that I might find myself telling her about the Gouger episode. I wasn’t worried that she would dump me, or anything extreme like that, but it would have bothered her, and I cared a lot about not bothering Melissa.
I wanted as much of her as I could get before I hung up, though. “Who bought the steampunk armchair?”
“Oh, Toby, I wish you could have seen them! This couple in their forties, all in yacht-club gear, she had one of those stripy Breton tops, you’d never expect—I thought maybe a blanket, if the colors weren’t too wild for them, but they went straight for the armchair. I think it must have reminded them of something; they kept looking at each other and laughing, and after about five minutes they decided they didn’t care whether it went with anything