Stir-Fry (8 page)

She kept it, neatly labeled with the date and lecture theatre. Maria liked to label the detritus of the past. It scared her that in ten years’ time she might be a mother of four in a suburban semi, unable to remember anything.

“It’s going to boil over, I swear. Look at those bubbles.”

Ruth shot her arm under Maria’s to get at the switch. “All you had to do was turn it down.”

“But you said I wasn’t to stop stirring till the lumps disappeared,” Maria insisted. She dropped the wooden spoon for a second to scratch her forehead, and a drop of scalding milk splashed her wrist.

Hearing her yelp, Ruth took over. “Gimme, I’ll finish the white sauce. You could be greasing the dish.”

Maria yawned as she rolled down the sleeves of her cardigan. “Sorry to be useless. I don’t know how you can stand the stress of juggling pans.”

“Practice.”

She couldn’t see Ruth’s expression; steam clouded the features. “Are you pissed off with me?”

“Not at all.” The warm eyes turned on Maria. “Now don’t do your forlorn puppy act, I haven’t time to find you a biscuit.”

Maria busied herself with the ceramic dish, buttering its curves. When she had finished, she wandered over to the steamy window and peered down at the pavement. “Mucky day. Can’t make up its mind whether it’s raining or not. I think I spy our wee Jaelo Submarine hoving round the corner.”

Ruth came over, wiping her hands on her jeans. “That’ll be her. She looks so harmless from four flights up, doesn’t she? Like a carrot top floating in the gutter.”

“You can be such a bitch when you try,” said Maria appreciatively.

“Mostly I don’t try. It’s only fair to leave her something to be better at,” Ruth explained through a fingerful of white sauce. “You want to start breaking the pasta into pieces?”

A muffled ring from below. “She must have forgotten her key again,” said Maria. “Tell you what, I’ll run down, if you finish the lasagne.”

They tramped up the stairs arguing at full voice. “Would you believe it,” Maria announced as she slashed through the bead curtain, “this constipated cow had her key all the time.”

Jael blew a sardonic kiss at the cook and started to tug at the dripping zipper of her leather jacket. “Well I thought it was
probably at the bottom of my bag, but I was too wet to be bothered rummaging for it. Especially as I knew there’d be a pair of seventeen-year-old legs just longing for some exercise.” She sidestepped a kick from one of the legs and got behind the sofa. “Besides, look what I have here.” She brandished a sodden copy of the
College Echo
like a matador’s red cloth.

“Did they print it?” demanded Ruth, looking up from the cheese grater.

“You bet your bottom they did. Listen to this for quality journalism, youngster. Top Profs Feel a Little Fresher.’”

“Ah, god love us, they couldn’t have called it that.” Ruth ran to grab the newspaper with sticky fingers. After a quick scan of the third page, she aimed a slap at Jael’s ear. “I knew you were lying, fiend.”

“Let’s see.” Maria pushed between their shoulders.

“They used the headline I suggested: S
TAFF IN
S
EXUAL
H
ARASSMENT
S
CANDAL
.”

Jael sank onto the sofa and put her boots up on the fireguard. “If you ask me, it’s libelous, even with the proper title. You make accusations of gross indecency against ‘a senior lecturer in the Department of Paleography,’” she went on, tugging open the top buttons of her purple silk shirt, “and there are only two of them.”

“It’s all based on objective research,” said Ruth, scrutinizing each paragraph.

Jael sniffed the air. “Is there a burning sauce in the house?” Ruth scuttled to the stove. “I love deflating her when she’s on an ego trip,” Jael whispered to Maria, clearing her a narrow place on the sofa.

“You mean when she’s a brilliant success.”

“Same difference,” said Jael lazily. “Ah, I suppose she’s better off keeping busy, it distracts her from her loveless life. We spinsters have to use up our energies somehow.”

Maria was licking the faint buttery taste off her little finger.
The fire was dying into grey ash, but she was too deeply tucked into the sofa to move. “Speaking of our loveless lives,” she said, “don’t we eat a shocking amount?”

Jael’s face was dreamy as she patted the rounded belly of her jeans. “Well personally, I’m eating for two.”

“You are
not
.” Maria’s voice was not quite sure.

“I mean me and my ego.”

Toying with the fringe on the tartan blanket, Maria waited till the shake was gone from her voice. “No, but seriously, about food. I know I pay into the kitty, but you two are always buying extras. I amn’t offering to cough up any more, because I can’t afford to, but I feel a bit mean chomping my way through your sesame rolls and peaches.”

Jael erupted into laughter. She rested her heavy elbow on Maria’s shoulder and put on her huskiest Hollywood voice. “You can chomp your way through my peaches anytime, sweetheart.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Maria,” said Ruth, her voice muffled as she bent down to the oven. “I’m living off savings from my years as a civil serpent, and Lady Muck here gets monthly checks from her loving family.”

“Loving, is it?” snorted Jael. “All they love is their stud farm and their station wagon. They pay me to stay away.”

“That’s shameful,” said Maria.

“Isn’t it just! Thrust out into the cold at seventeen by my nearest and dearest.”

Maria couldn’t hide her smirk. “No, what I meant was, it’s shameful for a grown woman of twenty-nine to be still collecting pocket money.”

There was a short pause—had she managed to hit a nerve? She began plaiting the tartan fringe, three strings at a time.

Jael bounced back. “Every time I feel a pang of guilt, I remember that as a communist it’s my duty to squeeze my capitalist parents dry.”

“You’re a communist in your hole,” called Ruth, clanging cutlery in the sink.

“Especially there,” said Jael, giving Maria a lecherous wink.

Maria combed the blanket edge loose again and went over to dry the saucepans. “Yes, but what about me?” she asked Ruth as she took a dripping bowl from her hand. “It’s not my food.”

“You, my dear, are helping us to squander our ill-gotten gains,” called Jael, her chin on the sofa back. “We’d be buying the odd chocolate cake whether you were here or not, so don’t bother your pretty little head about it.”

Maria wiped between the tines of a fork. “But why did you advertise for a flatmate, then, if you could afford the flat yourselves?”

“Wasn’t my idea.” Jael snapped open the
College Echo
.

Ruth scrubbed at the edge of a plate with steel wire. “It’s hard to remember. It seems years ago.”

“You were lonely,” Jael prompted from behind the paper.

“Didn’t realise you’d noticed.” Ruth turned back to Maria, and her voice livened. “But it’s just as well you’re here, or we’d be at each other’s throats. One Sunday last summer we came to physical blows over who got to read the newspaper first.”

“Mmm,” said Jael, “and I remember who won.”

Maria looked from one to the other, as she folded up the damp cloth. “So I’m to consider myself some sort of cushion?”

“More like a kept woman,” suggested Jael.

“Now try O’Connell Street.”

“Shrawd Ee Cunl.”

“It’s a
ch
.” She pointed at the sign, three stories up. “Try again: Sráid Uí Chonaill.”

Galway twisted his mouth with effort. “Shroyige Ee Hunil. Oh, boy, I give up. Why can’t they spell it like it sounds?”

“It’s like a wartime code,” said Maria, watching for a gap in the cars. “The invaders aren’t supposed to be able to read the street names,” she called over her shoulder as she dashed across the street.

Galway followed her more cautiously. “I guess I won’t be fluent in Gaelic by Christmas, then? My grandma will be mad.”

“I wouldn’t waste your energy on a dying language,” Maria advised him. They crossed the bridge, skirting the beggar and her baby wrapped in a striped blanket. “I only know it because it was drilled into me for thirteen years; I’ll have purged my mind of it soon enough.”

He paused to peer over a scrolled parapet to the dank Liffey rolling forty feet below. “You shouldn’t deride your heritage,” he told her when she joined him. “Smell that.”

She bent obediently for a sniff.

“Full of bones and battle-axes, that smell is. Pure history.”

“Dead fish, and Guinness leaking from the export ships, more like.” Maria straightened up. “I’ve had enough bloody history for one morning. I was tired when I woke up, and those cathedral steps nearly finished me off. If I’d known you were going to be such an enthusiast, I’d never have brought you.”

He caught her up at the traffic island. “I’ve just noticed that all the shops are shut. Has there been a bomb alert or something?”

“Sunday, remember? The Lord will smite thee if thou buyest a packet of biscuits.” She led him round College Green. “Which reminds me, I’ve missed mass. Still, my mother used to say it’s all right if you visit a cathedral instead, so I suppose they have their uses.”

“But wasn’t the Viking settlement awesome? And that
trash heap, with bits of eggshell from prehistoric dinners?”

“Please, I’ve had no breakfast.” As they rounded the blackened facade she said, “We should probably go and gaze at the Book of Kells, but I’d rather a coffee and a cherry bun.”

“I have to tell you, I’m totally broke.”

“Galway, may I buy you a small beverage out of my grant money? Come on, let me feel rich. New Men are meant to be into role reversal.”

He looked young in the morning light. “Our tour guide couldn’t have been described as a New Man. Did you catch his little jest about the hygiene habits of Viking women?”

“What got to me was the way he kept calling ‘Step this way—but mind the step, ladies!’”

Maria found a tiny café, the only door open on the street. “Hey, I didn’t tell you,” she said over the menu, “I’ve got a job at last. Office cleaning, at night.”

“Go for it,” said Galway. “I was a chambermaid in Boston the summer before last. It gives you lots of dream time.”

“I’m glad you approve. Everyone else says why don’t I do waitressing instead.”

“I’d rather sell sweat than smiles,” he told her.

“Me too.” Maria was always convinced by epigrams. “It’s not the sweat I mind, though, it’s the stink of window-cleaning fluid.”

“Soon get used to it. Who are you working with?”

“A woman called Maggie. She has a lavender overall and flat grey curls and never speaks.”

“You’ll get some peace and quiet, then.”

“Oh, stop it. You could get a Ph.D. in looking on the bright side.”

The grey steps of the administration building were littered with several dozen bodies and three banners. “Rubbers for
Revolution,” she read, and one long sagging one that included the letters “HIV” and something that looked like “Cabbage” but couldn’t be. Maria dawdled at the edge of the gravel till she spotted Galway’s arm waving in a leisurely fashion. She waved back but walked on; it was too bright a day to sit on concrete in the shade. Of course the college should install a condom machine, but somehow she couldn’t work up the energy to demonstrate for a product she had never even seen out of its packet. As she strolled toward the main gate, she heard rising from the crowd a slow clap and several chants, including an irreverent “Johnny, I hardly knew you.”

Maria got off the bus a stop early, to soak up the yellow sunlight. She considered her new boots with satisfaction: slightly imperfect matte-brown Doc Martens, £15.99 from the stall that shifty-looking guy ran in the arcade she discovered last Saturday. Now she could pass for a real student. Their broad toes scuffled through gutterfuls of sharp leaves.

The door at the top of the stairs was swaying open, so she strolled in and glanced through the bead curtain.

It wasn’t her fault; she was in no sense spying. She couldn’t help but see the shape they made. Her eyes tried to untangle its elements. Ruth, cross-legged on the table, her back curved like a comma, and Jael, leaning into it, kissing her. There was no wild passion; that might have shaken her less. Just the slow bartering of lips on the rickety table where Ruth chopped garlic every night.

Maria clamped her eyes shut, as if they had not already soaked in the scene as blotting paper swallowed ink. When she raised the lids, the women had not moved. The kiss, their joint body, the table, all seemed to belong to a parallel world. She had the impression that no noise from behind this shifting skin of beads could reach them.

She doubled back to the door, making her brash boots land as softly as slippers. A count of ten, she gave them, as she leaned against the door frame. How long could a kiss last? Five more seconds. It occurred to her that they had no reason to stop. Nineteen hippopotamus, twenty hippopotamus … Perhaps they would go on all afternoon. The windows would darken around them, their faces would become silhouettes, the dinner would stay on the chopping board, and all this time Maria would be standing in the front doorway.

“I’m home, folks,” she yelled, loud and cheery as Doris Day. They behaved perfectly too, strolling out of the kitchen with armfuls of library books as if they had been rehearsing this little scene all their lives. Which, now she came to think of it, they probably had.

Five hours later was the earliest she could go to bed without having them worry that she was ill. She kept yawning heartily and explaining how her new job really took it out of her, what with the industrial vacuum cleaners and all.

At last she was under the covers, soft candlewick bunched in her fist. She concentrated on blacking out the tableau that was still flickering on the screen of her mind. What bothered her was that there was no distance. The topic had come up before, of course. Girls joked about it all the time in convent school; there’d even been rumours about the gym teacher. At parties they swapped Freudian theories, and Nuala had once claimed to have seen a French film with two women in bed in it. But it was never real. Now suddenly here were two friends of hers kissing on the table she ate at every night. Rapt faces and library books and garlic, how bizarre.