From out of the City by John Kelly

Author:John Kelly [Kelly, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2014-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

TWO DAYS LATER and I discover Schroeder at a sidewalk café on Wicklow Street. Solemn in the shade of an awning, he’s handling the cruets before him and savouring the fumes of anise which rise like inspiration from the marble. He’s just about to start scribbling on the inside cover of the Murakami when he spies Chantal, in a tight leather jacket, wheeling her bicycle diagonally across from the parking lot and coming straight for him. She’s wearing Wayfarer shades and the red-curtain sheen of her hair is heavy and wet as if she’s just out of the shower.

– Well, she says. If it isn’t the creepy guy.

Schroeder is thrown.

– You look like you’re just out of the shower, he says.

– There you go. I rest my case.

Chantal chains her bicycle to the trunk of a rusting lamp post and Schroeder notices the crimson shine of her fingernails. All moulded perfection beneath the smooth, zipped sheen of leather, she sits down beside him and orders an espresso.

– So what gives, creepy guy?

– Are you following me? Schroeder asks.

– You wish.

– What’s your name?

– Margaret.

– Seriously?

– You got a problem with Margaret?

– I’ve been calling you Chantal.

She seems to weigh the name in her mouth.

– I like it. Mind if I use it?

– All yours.

– You gonna buy me a coffee or what?

– Sorry about the other day.

The green eyes flash.

– I’m a big girl.

She unzips her jacket and Schroeder runs the movie of the lost hours to come. Mid-afternoon suntrap, bedroom curtains drawn. All-nighters on a dozen pillows and the purple dawn. Lush life. Sleep until lunchtime with that delicious, physical fatigue one can almost swallow and breathe. He tries to channel some blood flow back to his brain.

– Margaret what?

– Lynch.

– As in mob hangings?

– As in the wine.

– Good answer.

– You been in the Ninth Circle of Temple Bar lately?

– That was a definite once off.

– You did good. I was impressed.

– I liked your theory about the danger stimulating you.

– Did you indeed?

– I mean the writing.

– Oh, it does that too.

– Does what?

– It turns me on.

– What does?

– Danger. It turns me on.

– What do you mean?

– I mean sexually.

– Well, that’s a new one.

– No it’s not. And what turns you on, Anton Schroeder?

– When a woman calls me by my full name.

– And why do you think that is, Anton Schroeder?

– I don’t know. It seems proprietorial somehow. Inappropriately so.

– Interesting. And there was me, Anton Schroeder, thinking it was just the zip.

There is nothing I can do here. This woman, whoever she is, is much too skilled and he is utterly lost in her now. Yes, her Left Bank body is an increasing delight he wants to take home and unwrap, but there’s much more to it. In her novel company all the anxieties and humiliations of recent weeks seem to shed like dirty clothes. He takes a deep breath and allows himself to plunge into what looks like sheer possibility.

– Do you think we might go for a coffee sometime?

– We’re having one now.

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