The Post-Birthday World. Lionel Shriver

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with writers who were on a par.”

      “Well, I’ve been saddled with worse text. I’d even like the idea, if I thought it really had to do with colour. I used to pine as a kid to see a different one—a really new colour, and not another rehash of the primaries. Unfortunately, I get a creepy feeling that this story was bankrolled because of its multicultural undertones.”

      “Like, let’s all fuck each other and make purple babies?”

      “Something like that.”

      “This last one.” Lawrence studied the fruit of an unusually feverish afternoon; she’d felt possessed. “It’s got a completely different feeling than the blues. Even a different line quality, and the style is more …” Lawrence was no art critic. “Bonkers. Is that a problem? That it doesn’t fit in?”

      “Maybe. But I ought to redraw the first ones, rather than throw this one out.”

      “You’re a pro, know that?” He ruffled her hair. “I could never do what you do.”

      “Well, I’d be hopeless at nation building, so we’re even.”

      Her mother would be pleased: their set sequence of retirement was choreographed with the precision of dance. Yet the last step of their waltz toward slumber Irina was considering shaking up a bit. Add a little cha-cha.

      Chewing on the matter, she tidied the bedroom. She’d been so exhausted when she came home last night that she’d flung her clothes on the chair. They lay in a crumple, and Irina felt a tinge of aversion for them. With a sniff she found that the navy skirt reeked of Gauloise smoke, and tossed it in the laundry basket. As for the shirt, that little rip at the neckline wasn’t mendable, and she dropped it in the rubbish. She was relieved to get the garments out of her sight, much as her shower that morning had been elongated by an eagerness to wash something more than grime down the drain.

      They both undressed. Granted, glimpsing each other’s nude bodies no longer inspired raw lust, but a reciprocal ease with nakedness had a voluptuousness of its own. Which is why it felt especially queer when Lawrence climbed into bed and Irina’s heart raced. Why did the proposal she was working herself up to seem so radical?

      “Read?” Lawrence suggested.

      “N-no,” she said beside him. “I don’t think so.”

      “Okay.” He reached towards the lamp.

      “Don’t—don’t turn out the light yet.”

      “Okay.” He wore the same perturbed expression that had met her earlier insistence that he “kiss her properly.”

      “I was thinking—you’ve been gone—I was just thinking, I don’t know, about doing it a bit differently.”

      “Doing—?”

      She already felt foolish, and wished she’d never said anything. “You know—sex.”

      “What’s wrong with the way we usually do it?”

      “Nothing! Not a thing. I love it.”

      “So why change anything? Doesn’t it feel good?”

      “It feels great! Oh, never mind. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

      “Well—what did you want to do?”

      “I was only wondering if maybe, say, we could try it—facing each other for once.” The whole point was to be able to look him in the eye, but now she was so embarrassed that she was looking anywhere but, and they weren’t even fucking yet.

      “What, you mean like, missionary?” he asked incredulously.

      “If you want to call it that. I guess.” Irina’s commonly throaty voice had gone squeaky.

      “But you said, ages ago, that missionary was lousy for women, that it didn’t work, and you thought that was one reason a lot of women went off fucking altogether. There’s no friction, you said, in the right place. Remember?”

      “It doesn’t, ah—no, it doesn’t work without a little help.”

      “It’s easier for me to give you—a little help—from, you know, behind.”

      “True. Oh, let’s just—it’s fine. Let’s just—the way we’ve been doing it is fine.”

      “But is there something bothering you? About the way we do it?”

      Obviously there was something bothering her, like the fact that she had not seen his face while they made love for at least eight years, but she couldn’t bring herself to say so aloud. She could see that she was upsetting him, the last thing she’d intended. She wanted to make him feel welcome and warm and loved, and not suddenly anxious that all this time she’d been dissatisfied with their sex life but had been keeping her mouth shut. This was all wrong-headed and backfiring like crazy.

      “Not a thing,” she said softly, kissing his forehead and turning on her right side to snuggle her back against his chest. “I’ve missed you, and you feel wonderful.”

      “… Is it all right if I turn out the light?”

      A slight collapsing sensation, in her chest. “Sure. That’s fine. Turn out the light.”

      In the soundest of relationships, it is not always possible to organize epiphanies in concert. Lawrence could hardly be blamed if he failed to experience a burning desire to assault Bethany Anders the exact same evening on which Irina had fixated on Ramsey Acton’s finely articulated mouth, that they might both turn tail in simultaneous panic and rush headlong into each other’s arms. This was probably not the best of nights to upset the sexual apple-cart, and any fine-tuning of their proven method could wait for another time. Besides, this felt good. It did. Looking at the wall. In the dark.

      One thing The Usual had to recommend it was that, with her face unobserved, her mind could more readily roam its most disgraceful corridors. She was not opposed, in the privacy of her head, to smut. Yet when Lawrence reached around to graze his fingers lightly between her legs, her mind remained static, and refused to generate any nasty little pictures. She couldn’t get anywhere. Indeed, she visualized herself in a small, enclosed room, standing still. There was a door. There was a door that she could open if she were willing to. But it was not a good idea. Proceeding through this one doorway was forbidden. Slammed in her own face, the door recalled the expression gaining such favour in the States that it was becoming a pestilence: Don’t go there. As time went on and Irina stood helplessly in the same desolate place—it was all dull clinical white, the walls, the linoleum, like some austere coital waiting room where no receptionist ever called her name—she began to realize that only by passing through that forbidden portal would she be able to come.

      Lawrence’s dedicated ministrations had grown so protracted that Irina was abashed. She felt fairly sure that he didn’t mind giving her a helping hand, but it was taking too long, and she hated the idea of the procedure becoming tedious, in which case he might even lose his erection. Irina’s fretting that her excitement was becoming a chore for him didn’t heighten it any. This wasn’t working. It was so weird. She’d never had any real trouble with Lawrence, but then she had never told herself, either, that she couldn’t think about something she wanted to think СКАЧАТЬ