“Oh my God,” she gasped. “Don’t you dare call him that if you do meet him!”
“If? If? It’s a matter of when, not if, I hope.”
“Rafe doesn’t come in to college much these days. I think he prefers to study at home. Or smoke weed there.”
He frowned at her. “You’ve killed him, haven’t you, Reilly? You’ve chopped him up and buried him under the patio. That beautiful langer, the color of a Longford sunset, gone forever.”
“Oh my God, stop it,” she said, swatting at him, but the truth was that she did not want James to stop. This was what she had wanted for so many months: for James to be here with her, gossiping about boys, reducing her to helpless laughter with his jokes and his mutterings and his outrageous innuendos, the way that only he could come up with them; the way that she remembered him from the summer. She felt so lucky, having him here beside her; she felt luckier than anyone else sitting around this lawn, anyone else walking around this campus, anyone living in this whole city: they only had the stupid city, and she had James.
“Now he’s more like it,” James said, sitting up suddenly, and it was Catherine’s turn to look about wildly.
“Who?”
“Him,” James said, pointing straight across the lawn, his arm held high; Catherine gasped and batted at him to put it back down.
“Jesus! A bit of discretion!”
“Ah, sure who gives a fuck? Sure he’s not looking at me.”
Yeah, but plenty of other people are, Catherine thought, but she was too concerned with trying to work out who he was talking about to nag him further. There were no guys she even recognized around, except Emmet Doyle, opening a Coke can beside the bin, and the sight of him gave her a rush of guilt about the way she had dragged James to his ridiculous party, so she cast about for someone else, but there was nobody else, and by leaning into James’s line of vision, she landed once again on Emmet.
“You’re not talking about The Doyle?” she said, incredulously.
“Oh, yeah,” James snorted. “I forgot about that ridiculous nickname. Yeah, I was impressed by him at the party the other night as well. He’s very nice. Very nice indeed.”
“Oh, come on,” Catherine spluttered. “He’s The Doyle.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a messer,” Catherine said. “He’s a TN hack.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah, but he really is. He practically lives in the publications office. And the rest of the time he’s just swaggering around campus, doling wisecracks and insults out to everybody.”
“Sounds like your friend Conor.”
“No, he’s worse,” Catherine said. “He saw some of my poems up in the publications office and he’s been slagging me about them ever since. Quoting them at me. He’s a fucker.”
“Well, I don’t care about his taste in poems. I just think he’s a right little bit of stuff.”
“Ah, James.”
“I do. Those lovely ruddy cheeks of his.”
“James!”
“You have a filthy mind, Reilly. What did you say his real name was again? Or are we only allowed to use his nom de plume?”
“Emmet,” she said sulkily.
“Ah, after Robert Emmet the patriot, presumably. Well, I’ll write your epitaph for you, Sonny. Come over here to me and I’ll write you a lovely one.”
“I don’t think he’s a patriot, exactly. He went to Gonzaga.”
“Come up, you fearful Jesuit!” James said then, in a roar, which horrified Catherine — she covered her face with her hands, the sight of which only served, of course, to encourage James, and by the time he had finished with his commentary, Catherine was almost falling off the bench with a mixture of laughter and mortification, and James was holding on to her, helplessly laughing himself, and in the next moment he was hugging her, his arms tightly around her, his breath hot on her neck. His body was still quaking with the laughter, and against her shoulder he was making a noise like crying, and for a horrified moment she thought that he actually might be crying, but as he gave a long, low sigh she knew that he was all right, that he was just recovering, just steeped in the enjoyment of how funny he himself had been.
“Oh, Catherine,” he said, without pulling away from her. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
She snorted. “Glad you’re home.”
He went very still. “Why? What did I say?”
“You said you were glad I was home.”
“Arrah, you, me, who gives a fuck which one it is,” he said, and he hugged her more tightly, and though she felt terrible about it, she wished that he would let go of her now: she knew that he liked to be physically affectionate, that it was just his way, but this was such a long hug, and in such an exposed, public place; she felt herself cringing at the grip of him around her now, and to try to bring it to an end, to try to wrap it up in some way, she patted him on the back with her right hand, gently but firmly: once, twice, three times. And in her arms, James burst out laughing, and with his own hand, he did exactly the same thing, except that he did not pat her back but really clapped it, almost belted it, as though they were two hurlers embracing on the pitch after one of their teams had beaten the other.
“Very funny,” she muttered into his shoulder. “Nothing gets past you, does it, Flynn?”
“Not a thing, Reilly,” he said happily, and he planted a round of quick, light kisses all down her neck.
They spent the whole day together, having coffee after coffee, one endless conversation, Catherine introducing James to as many of her friends as she set eyes on, and arguing with him over the attractiveness, or lack thereof, of various boys. There was no sign of Rafe, to Catherine’s relief, but in the evening Aidan sauntered up to them on the ramp, fresh from a Romance lecture, his Chaucer under one arm, mad to talk about the Wife of Bath. But once Catherine introduced him to James, it was James’s time in Berlin he wanted to talk about; he had heard from Catherine, he said, shooting her an unreadable glance, so much about James and what he was doing over there, about the great time he was having; it must have been such a rush, living there, was it? He himself had been there, but years ago, before the wall had come down, and he had heard such good things about the city now, about how hedonistic it was, how alive. In typical Aidan form, he did not pause for long enough to have this question actually answered by James; he continued on. James was watching him in amusement, Catherine saw, but also with something else, something more guarded.
“What did you think of him?” she said, after Aidan had taken his leave of them a few minutes later.
But James just shrugged. “I’m ready to go home,” he said. “Will we head?”
“Oh,” Catherine said, uneasily. “I have to write my article.”
“What article?” James said almost crossly.
“The McCabe interview. I told you. Tonight’s production night and I have to get it in.”
“Oh well,” he said, leaning back against the railings. “Will I wait for you?”
“No, go ahead,” Catherine said, frowning as though she could not countenance causing him such an inconvenience. “I’ll run up and get this done, and I’ll be home in an hour or so. I won’t be long.”
“Promise?” said James, in a tone of mock pleading.
“Promise,” Catherine said, and they embraced as tightly as two people who would not see each other again for weeks, or months, or years. Then she was crossing Front Square at a fast clip, thinking how lovely it was, the evening air. The moon was out, and the cobblestones were a shimmering lake of gray. For a moment, she thought she heard her name being called, but that was someone else; that was someone calling someone else’s name.