an anatomy illustration: like one of Charles Estienne’s or Giulio Casserio’s naked women, this figure looked vaguely Grecian, and she was holding up the folds of her abdominal wall with both hands as if it were a frilly petticoat.
I knew without having been told that it was my task to comment on what she displayed within her abdominal cavity, but hard as I strained my eyes, I could not seem to focus on any details. People were passing in and out of the room, and I grew ever more frantic because one of them would stop by my table and demand an answer. Finally someone did stop, and I, playing for time, began to describe the scene in the drawing. But the examiner reached for the card and began to pull it out of my hand. I tried to hold on to it, but he laughed. As he laughed, I looked up, and it was Ciaran Dyce. With an overwhelming sense of defeat, I let go of the card and woke up.
I cannot do this.
I have not lost myself in him, or in this. But if we do it again, I will crack. He will crack me open to the core.
Chapter 27
“SO TELL ME ALREADY,” Irene says, not wanting to know.
“What?”
“Well, so you fucked him. Now what?”
My heart begins to race, and it’s not with pleasure at the memory. We’re sitting in my former life, at Antonio’s on Amsterdam Avenue, and are each having a panini and salad.
“I did not…fuck him.”
She inflates her cheeks and exhales like an impatient balloon.
“Right, you had the most romantic night of your life with him. Now what?”
I don’t want to fight with Irene. I want to slap her, yes, but then we would fight, and I am too dejected to fight.
“I wanted him, that’s all. The truth is, I want him, and the truth is—”
But I’m not sure I will lay myself open to more jibes than absolutely necessary. Irene waits for me to go on, but I shake my head again.
“The truth is it was the best sex of your life. Cue violins!” There is no escaping the jibes.
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“What, then? Talk tachlis. Why are you bent on ruining your career? I thought I’d—”
“Don’t, Reenie!” I interrupt her, almost with my hands over my ears. “Look, there won’t be any more sex, okay? I left him.”
“How do you mean—left him?”
“Left while he was sleeping. Left for the airport first thing and bought a ridiculously overpriced ticket that someone else hadn’t picked up.”
“Wait—you did what?” Irene is genuinely shocked, and my throat is getting so tight it hurts.
“I panicked. When I went to his room, it was almost completely dark, but later the moon came round to that side of the building, and—”
“You had sex in the dark?”
“I made him switch off the light. I couldn’t have—I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it, with the light on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know. But I can’t even begin to tell you how beautiful he is to me.”
“Hence the light. All the better to see him by.”
“No, because—” I’m staring at my hands shredding the napkin in my lap, and suddenly tears are dripping down like from a leaky faucet.
“Anna, for heavens’ sake!”
I swallow and swallow again, gulp down the tears, although I feel that there are many more, a torrent of salt water.
“All I could manage was sex,” I manage to say, feebly but mercifully without sobbing, “and he…I think he wanted to make love to me!”
The first time I almost called him was in the departure lounge at South Bend Airport. Since then, I have been on the brink of calling him a dozen times. But what would I say?
You are a wonderful lover, and you’re so beautiful it stops my heart. But don’t touch me again.
I knew all this before I went to his hotel room.
“You’ll never be able to stay away from him,” Irene predicts after she has ordered two shots of limoncello and made me down mine in one.
“Oh, you can rely on Giles to stay away from me. I h-have—I have h-hurt him, and now he’ll hate me!” My chin wobbles, and she pushes her own glass of limoncello toward me. “It’s like a disease!” I rally against my tears. “Foolish infatuation! You remember what Elinor says, in Sense and Sensibility? That it is foolish—no, I think she says ‘bewitching’—that it is a bewitching idea to think that all our happiness