The Blow-Up by James Barry

Author:James Barry [Barry, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

We became accomplished liars. Jason and I.

I already had my PhD in lying. A degree in criminal law. A colleague of mine had once suggested changing lawyers to liars. The judge would introduce the respective sides in a court case as the liar for the state and liar for the defense. This way jurors would be under no illusions. The verdict would hinge on who could lie best.

What did Jason and I lie about?

Her.

When Janice asked me what I’d done last night on the morning we stumbled bleary-eyed out of a room at the Dove-Tail Inn, I said nothing. It had been a pretty chill night, I told her. Jason and I had stayed in.

I hadn’t prepared this cover story in advance. I hadn’t prepared myself for someone asking me about it. It had come spontaneously—the lie. I wasn’t going to speak about what we’d done in that room, so I wasn’t going to speak about the person we’d done it with.

Later that night, I brought it up with Jason.

We hadn’t said one word about it on the drive home. Or during the time we’d showered, dressed, made two cups of coffee, and wished each other a good day. The reticence to meet each other’s eyes in the hotel room that morning had continued, as if we’d both signed NDAs we were now obliged to respect.

When Jason walked in that night after work, I ripped the NDA in half.

“I think we should talk about not talking about it.”

All right. Confusing. Jason did that thing with his eyes—like when he was perusing indecipherable instructions for assembling a barbecue grill or outdoor table, a purchase he’d assumed would come all put together only to find he’d been brutally let down.

“You mean you and me?” he asked.

“I mean us and anyone else.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I mean I wouldn’t tell Mathew or Larry or your best friend’s caddy either.”

“Sure. I mean, I wasn’t intending to.”

Jason had once told me that the greatest pleasure about sex was telling someone about it. For men, he meant. Or at least, men of a certain age—he’d been ostensibly referring to his late teens and early twenties.

“Okay. Just don’t.”

“Are you … ?”

“Am I what?”

“Okay?”

“Not sure. I’m still processing.” I was. It was a little like waking up from a strange dream and then spending all day trying to figure out what it meant. Like a dream, it wasn’t entirely coherent or completely whole. The chronology was all over the place—pieces I found hard to lay end to end. Just like the three of us had physically ended up—end to end to end. How did we get from there to there?

“It was … I mean … it was kind of hot,” Jason said, a little timidly, as if he wasn’t sure I’d be on board with that.

I wasn’t ready to say if I was or wasn’t. Yes, it had been hot. Searing hot. So was the Catholic guilt racing like antibodies to fortify this shocking breach in my moral defenses. I felt unmoored.

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