I wanted to act strong, even if I wasn’t. Changing old behaviour patterns. Just like they told me to. Virtuous was the Rachel who turned to smile at Chris.
‘We could… I dunno… go to the pictures?’ he suggested.
Not what I wanted to hear.
The pictures?
The fucking pictures?
Was I reduced to this?
No, I wasn’t beaten yet. They could take away my Valium, my cocaine, my credit cards, but they could never take away my soul. Or my appetite.
‘We could go for something to eat,’ I said eagerly. Luke and I had had some of our happiest times in restaurants. ‘We’re still allowed to do that, aren’t we?’
‘Just about,’ he agreed. ‘So long as neither of us pukes straight afterwards or orders five desserts or any other aberrant behaviour.’
‘Where will we go?’ I asked. I was pleased. I imagined a dimly lit, romantic little bistro. Our faces close in the candle-light. Talking into the small hours, the plump patron smiling fondly at us, as all the other chairs in the place were stacked on tables and Chris and I talked eagerly on, not noticing.
‘Let’s just take a stroll and we’ll see where we end up,’ he suggested.
As we rambled, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. He’d like to fuck my brains out.
The silver-tongued devil.
Mmmm.
No! You’re not allowed to think that way.
That’s right, I’m not, I thought, sense returning to me. OK, so he was gorgeous-looking, but we were proceeding as friends. And that was all right, my down theres would close up at the suggestion of having sober sex with someone who wasn’t Luke.
A bleak wind swept through me when I realized I’d never again be in bed with Luke. For a split-second I forgot I hated him.
Briskly, I forced my attention back to the here-and-now and Chris.
We went to Temple Bar, Dublin’s Left Bank. Where I witnessed the completed groovification of my native city with my own two eyes. It certainly was kicking. And very attractive.
Could I live here? I wondered. It was certainly very different from the city I had left eight years before.
Different enough to live in? I felt a shiver of fear.
If I didn’t stay in Dublin, where would I go?
Back to New York?
Back to face Brigit and Luke and the rest of them?
I didn’t think so.
I turned to smile at Chris.
Save me.
We were outside a restaurant that I felt was eminently suitable. It had everything, the candles, the checked tablecloth, the plump patron. Positively obese, actually.
‘How about here?’ I suggested eagerly, waiting for my fantasy to become reality.
‘I don’t know,’ Chris said, flailing his hands vaguely. ‘It’s too…’
I wanted to go there. But instead I just smiled and said ‘Yeah, it is, a bit, isn’t it?’ And then I hated myself.
I should have said what I wanted. I’d just missed an opportunity to change old behaviour. And, I thought irritably, I was sick of Josephine’s disembodied voice making announcements in my head.
On we strolled, passing intimate, dimly lit bistro after intimate, dimly lit bistro, Chris dismissing each one with a vague ‘But isn’t it a bit…?’
My spirits drooped and my sentences became shorter and terser with each disappointment. Finally we arrived at a raucous yellow shed. The Gypsy Kings were playing at ear-bleeding decibels.
‘How about here?’ Chris suggested. Tight-lipped, I shrugged, my whole demeanour saying ‘Here? Are you out of your stupid, fucking mind?’
‘Come on, then,’ he said eagerly, opening the door for me.
Gobshite, I thought, in silent fury.
When we got in, the noise nearly knocked me to the floor. It was then that I realized that I was getting old and that a drug-free Rachel viewed the world very differently from the Rachel who had a gram of coke doing laps in her head.
A twelve-year-old girl wearing a poncho and a sombrero greeted us with bonhomie that was so enthusiastic as to be crazed, manic. Give that girl some Lithium.
‘For two,’ Chris said, rubbernecking like there was no tomorrow. As if he was looking for someone. While we were being led across the crowded, sawdust-strewn floor, I heard someone shout, ‘Rachel, Ray-chel.’
‘Rachel.’ The voice got nearer. I located the source, turned and there was Helen. Wearing a red frilly blouse, a very short skirt, and a sombrero hung from around her neck. She was carrying a tray.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded back.
‘I work here,’ she said simply.
And then it all became clear.
‘This is the abattoir?’ I asked.
‘Others call it Club Mexxx,’ Helen said flicking a glance at the manic one, who was beaming from Helen to me to Chris, as though she might explode.
‘Gimme them.’ She grabbed the menus from the grinner. ‘I’ll seat them in my section.
‘Now, don’t think you’ll be getting loads of free drinks,’ she called over her shoulder as she weaved her tiny bottom through tequila-guzzling revellers.
‘Sit here.’ She threw the menus down on a wobbly, wooden table that was the size of an album cover. Within seconds my hands were punctured with splinters.
‘I just have to go and get that crowd of stupid fuckers some drinks,’ she explained with a nod at the eighteen very drunk lads at the next table. ‘Then I’ll be back.’
Chris and I faced each other. He smiled. I didn’t.
‘Did you know that Helen worked here?’ I asked in a shaky voice.
‘Sorry?’ he shouted above the noise.
‘DID YOU KNOW THAT HELEN WORKED HERE?’ I roared, releasing some anger.
‘No.’ He opened his eyes wide. ‘I’d no idea.’
I didn’t believe him.
I hated him. He didn’t want to be with me at all. It was Helen he was after. No one ever wanted to be with me. I was just their stepping-stone to someone else. Someone who wasn’t me.
Helen returned about half-an-hour later.
‘Adios amoebas,’ she greeted us.
‘We have to say that,’ she added, with a contemptuous curl of her lip. ‘To make it authentic.
‘Right,’ said Helen briskly. ‘What do you want?’
The menu was the usual Tex-Mex stodge, with refried beans appearing everywhere.