infinite, patient fascination. As the universe shrank ever further to two patches of face, Farrell’s mouth opened into a cavernous place, large enough to walk around in, get lost in, take the underground. Her passage echoed down his throat. Farrell had swallowed the world, and all that ever was could be found there—the Taj Mahal, the Eiger, the Ganges, Cape Canaveral, the Smithsonian Institution, and Estrin’s favorite U.S. Out of Nicaragua coffee cup back on Springfield Road.
She actually forgot about the sex, since she was not waiting to get on with something else. Sometimes she forced herself to pull away from him so she could enjoy going back, each time to visit new tourist attractions—the Pyramids, St. Stephen’s Green, the Roman Catacombs. They were luxurious kisses and, while soft, not that disturbing invertebrate bleah, where the tongue dissolves into a pool of gelatinous mouth-flesh, like lapping at soup with no bowl, kisses without rim. No, even as their tongues wrapped, Henry Moore, one form into the other, these were kisses with structure and purpose, like good sculpture always turning, one plane leading endlessly into another, until you are back where you started, with no sense of having been there before.
Farrell held her neck and pressed her deeper. The farther they tunneled down each other’s throat, the more it seemed unfair to be kept so far apart. Even if the evening was one-off, he was a slime, this was a pickup, Estrin was ready to offer money or favors or flattery, anything at all if he would only keep her in his bed the whole night.
“No, don’t.” Estrin stopped his wrangling with her silk. “I can’t stand being undressed. And you’d never have a chance with these leather pants, they would take you hours.”
This next business was also simple, without the zip by button hassle Estrin had grown so weary of, but with the neater, practiced efficiency with which people can take off their own clothes. She did not want to think about clothes.
Without them he was just as long, but even more narrow. So meager and unmuscled, his body looked easy to draw, though you would need a ruler. As a result, though hard to read at dinner, here he printed legible right angles, undivisive, direct. His skin, surprisingly tender for a man his age, pimpled with a dot-matrix of chenille. His legs dangled off the mattress, the wan, desperate sticks with knobbled knees that crowd Save the Children posters. Even his penis, though long, was unusually slim, and less bullying than most, a limb more of grace than aggression, smooth and abstract like the rest: Giacometti.
Be that as it may, Estrin looked in his eyes as she hadn’t for a few minutes and remembered his name; remembered other people saying it, the way they said it—with an inching away. She recognized his face as the same from yesterday: stony, blasé, You’re all witless gobshites. As he slid into her easy as you please, like popping in an open back door, she recalled that only a few minutes before she’d have knelt on the floor for one more kiss—from a stranger, whose powers of affection she knew little but whose powers of disdain had already shown themselves to be monumental. In fact, Estrin had risen in the ranks of menials all over the world because she was reliable, but once in a while even Estrin slipped, and flat on her back now, she had that feeling of having been trusted and suddenly remembering she did not lock up.
It felt better than she remembered, but she hadn’t remembered because she didn’t want to. Estrin twisted underneath. She avoided seeing his face now because she already cared what it was thinking, and this could be a nothing, a fuck, she didn’t know him— Get out! She managed not to say this out loud, and kissed him as if stuffing a towel in her mouth. Farrell was whipping more quickly and screeing like seabirds, but Estrin only whimpered. She’d put her life together and made do. She had a job now and a house and coffee filters and always bought milk for the morning the night before. She belonged to a gym and her running time was good; the phone rang when she came home. The Guzzi was tuned and she loved spending her free days by herself blasting across the island—to Bushmills— Estrin was in fine form, often excited by this new city, even Provo poppycock, Ulster slang—stocious, legless, half-tore, as many words for drunk as the Eskimos had for snow— For once in a country that spoke English, with more mountains and comically crummy food—bangers and chips, pizza and chips, chips and chips— It had all been enough without this—
His fingers on her shoulders bit flesh. Below him, Estrin put up feeble resistance: she would not come. A traveler may be excited, but never satisfied. Besides, can’t you understand that pleasure is grotesque? What can possibly happen next but that someone will take it away?
Farrell immediately reached over to shake down his overcoat and didn’t explain. He located an inhaler, which he sucked on, sitting up. This was not romantic.
He slept on the far side of the bed in a ball. A small person with the rest of it, Estrin lay bereft on the wide white sheet. She tossed, always hot or cold, pulling up the blankets, throwing them off. She felt deserted, and irrationally offended that he could sleep.
Yet by morning she, too, was deep in, and it was Farrell who roused her into his arms with a remark about feeling neglected.
Farrell eyed her from the safety of his Unionist tabloid. He had barricaded himself at the breakfast table with ten different papers, even for Farrell generous. He never knew what to say to women mornings. He watched her smarm her mug over her forehead, against her temple, down her cheek. She had a warmth with objects, he’d noticed in 44, the way she tapered over her fork, smeared the flat of the knife, traced the flute of her plate—she seemed to savor the setting more than the food.
As he walked her back to Bedford Street, they discussed the Guilford Four. Approaching her bike, Farrell felt Estrin drag at his hand.
“Well, it’s been fun,” said Estrin defiantly.
“Yes” was all he said. He waited for her to remove the padlock, zip up, strap on her helmet, and actually turn the key. As she revved the motor, he slipped his hands in his pockets. She fed the engine more petrol than it needed; its revolutions grew louder and more shrill. He could feel her clutching through disappointment to disbelief to rage like gears, and he waited for the very last stage—ordinary pain—at which Estrin unexpectedly switched off the cycle and stared down at the tank. She looked up, her face not wobbly but impassive and open.
“This is it?”
“Not unless you prefer, my swallow. Myself, I’d like very much to see you again.”
“Then why don’t you take my fucking phone number?”
“Now, that’s a thought. You Americans are so well organized.”
The exchange done, she started the bike energetically; he squeezed her shoulder and leaned down to shout, “And it was more than fun!”
She tore out from under his hand, grazed his toe with her back wheel, and ripped past the BBC.
Now, why go to that confounded funeral, Roisin, when I’ve the afternoon free?”
“You know very well why. Didn’t you just go to McMichael’s? Even Seawright’s, and that was appalling.”
“What was appalling, love, was blowing up his car. The yob was a bigot, but last time I read up, that wasn’t a capital crime.”
“It should be,” she muttered.
“Sure
