His firm bridge on the nap. The puny pool tables have an eerie blue cloth in comparison, and it seems classy to pot balls that have no numbers.
6 Remembering how Max had said, The body is the only motor that doesnt make noise. And these furnaces of heat inside us (he points to his rib cage) if we didnt give off heat, it would seem magical for a body to be warm. All the senses are quite mysterious inventions. Max once lost his sense of smell for a few weeks after a roofing truss fell on his head.
Max: Name me the things you love about Lydia.
Her face. She has a face like a beautiful shoehorn.
Max: I wouldnt tell her that.
She laughs from her solar plexus.
Yes.
Lydia is always right and I am always wrong.
That’s something to love.
It allows us to step away from argument.
What else.
She has tremendous legs, legs that will serve her well when she’s ninety.
Gabe, I got to tell you.
No. I know You think I’m being unkind. Okay. I made cabbage rolls and soup and she picked out the cinnamon and the cardamom. She nailed seven distinct ingredients. And she makes these little movements of her hands to remind me to flick off all the lights.
Max: That’s good. When mannerisms annoy, you know youre in trouble.
She’s animated, Max. I’ve been seeing her for almost two years now.
Max: She says she’s been seeing you just over a year.
Well, that’s true. I was going out with Lydia for six months before she started going out with me.
Max: That’s pretty funny. But aint it the way.
7 First iceberg of the year, drifting across the mouth of the harbour. Lydia had said, Let’s play cards this Easter. Okay, I said. Nickel ante and five dollars to the table. Lydia: And the most you can raise is the Lord.
This morning I had Una up to blow eggs through pinholes. I blew my cheeks purple on the first one. Una, brandishing a brush, ready to dive on the egg, says, You sure it’s empty?
Yes.
Maybe we should crack it open first and check.
8 Got home this morning and the sky was turning blue. Out with Max and Maisie. Where’s Lydia, they say, and I explain she’s rehearsing lines with Wilf. We end up at the after-hours boozecan, avoiding fights with a guy who wants to shove something up someone else’s ass.
We tackle Max in the street until he has to tell halted taxis that it’s okay, just horsing around. Wilf passes us and nods.
Fiction writers, he says. Theyre a tough crowd.
Where’s Lydia?
Left her with Craig Regular, he says.
We pick up Alex at the foot of Solomon’s Lane. She is fresh from the Ship, wearing a long yellow trenchcoat. She has a bunch of carnations and daisies she stole from a vase, and she’s slipping them into my jacket pocket. It’s a free-booze night, some ceremony, some stand on principle, and everyone who is anyone is out crawling the mild, wet streets, a bit like Dublin folded into a Paris. Europe of the twenties, when everyone is walking home with a person they shouldnt be walking with, people going home with the wrong people for one night only. Alex leans into me and we kiss against the coarse clapboard of a house (I scrape my knuckles).
Max and Maisie say, Break it up. Maisie in particular is rough with me.