But she was not that version of herself. The bile rose in her; the anger sparked again to her fingertips. “Oh, would you ever stop fucking whining,” she said, and she lifted the glass of water she had just filled, and she tossed its contents into the sink. “Would you ever?”
James stared at her. “Sorry, Catherine?” he said, sounding incredulous, which just made Catherine angrier; she shook her head with an incredulity of her own.
“Why do you have to be so negative about everything?” she said. “Moaning about your bedclothes, as though it’s part of this big fucking conspiracy the whole world has against you.”
“My bedclothes,” James said, slowly and carefully, as he stood up from the table. “Oh, Catherine. This is not about my bedclothes.”
Her heart was racing; they were too drunk for this, she knew. But neither could she stop herself.
“This is not about my bedclothes, Catherine,” James said again, coming towards her. “This is about what happened in the pub tonight, isn’t it? You were having your nice cozy date with Little Emmet—”
“Little Emmet?” Catherine cut in. “The guy must be six foot tall!”
James smirked. “Is he now? Is he now? Well. Lucky you.”
“Oh my God, you’re being ridiculous. Are you actually—”
“Am I actually what, Catherine? Am I actually what?”
“I don’t give a fuck about Emmet Doyle!” she shouted, and she flung out her arms as though to illustrate how true this was. “You can have Emmet Doyle if you want him. You certainly fucking behaved like that tonight in the Stag’s. Oh, tell me more about yourself, Emmet,” she imitated him, tilting her head, widening her eyes. “Tell me more about your theory of satire. For Christ’s sake. Have him! Go on!”
He stared at her. He was somehow even paler than he had already been. He had been standing close to her, but now he stepped back — now he stepped back so that he was leaning against the kitchen counter, not, Catherine knew, because he needed the support of it, but because it was the only thing that was stopping him from backing away from her any farther. His mouth was a thin line. The cigarette was hanging out of his right hand, and its column of ash was growing longer and longer.
“James,” Catherine said quietly. “I didn’t mean it like that. I know you—”
“You know what?” James almost spat at her. His eyes were huge.
She shook her head rapidly. “I didn’t mean it.”
“You know nothing, Catherine,” he said, not to her, but to the ash from his cigarette as it fell to the floor. “You know nothing about me. What do you know about me? What have I told you?”
Again, she shook her head. “I know plenty,” she said. “I know we haven’t talked about Berlin yet; but I read your letters — I know it was hard for you. I’ve wanted to talk to you about it; but we can’t do it now. We can’t do it tonight. Let’s go to bed. Can we? Let’s go to bed, and—”
He coughed out an angry laugh. “So you’re telling me now when to go to bed as well as when to get up?”
“James,” she said, the word barely sounding like his name at all; in her shock, it had slipped out before she had even finished saying it.
“What?” he snapped, glaring. “What do you want from me? You want me to be funny for you? You want me to be great fucking fun?”
“James!”
“I’m fucking exhausted, Catherine. I’m completely worn out. I’m only three days home, and I can already remember why I left here, and it’s not as though I can go back to that other hole either — so tell me, what the fuck is it, exactly, that I’m supposed to do?”
“Just be here,” she said, uselessly.
“Be here,” he nodded, as though seriously considering this. “And listen to everyone’s plans for me, is it? And look at all the gorgeous fucking fellas that everyone wants to giggle over with me. And look with you all at these fellas, and know that while you can disappear off to the pub with them, for me, there is not a chance, not a single fucking chance…”
His voice cracked. Catherine, almost crying herself now, tried to go towards him, but he held up his hands to tell her to stay where she was.
“I watch everyone, Catherine. I watch them live their lives, and I watch them meet the people they can love, and I watch them go on their dates, and take over sitting rooms to have sex with them, and I — what am I supposed to do?”
“James, you’re only just home! There’ll be—”
“There’ll be what? There’ll be what, Catherine? There’ll be Zoe’s friend from England coming for a visit sometime, maybe this year, maybe next? There’ll be some poor fucker as pathetic as I am from the Society—oh, thank you so much, Catherine, by the way, for pointing me towards the Society—because sure if I can use the college darkroom, I can use the college queer society, and sure then everything will be just perfect, won’t it, just as long as I can remember not to let anybody outside the Society see. Isn’t that it? Isn’t that how it goes?”
“What about that guy in Hodges Figgis today?” she blurted, not quite believing she was bringing him up. “He seemed…”
James looked at her, seeming astonished. “He seemed what?”
Catherine shrugged helplessly. “He scratched his eyebrow — I thought maybe…”
“Are you trying to mock me, Catherine?” he said, his face screwed up horribly. “Is that meant to be funny?”
“No! I didn’t know — I thought that maybe you and that guy were giving each other the eye or something. You disappeared.”
“I disappeared to stare at him, Catherine,” he said coldly. “To stalk him. That’s what I do; that’s what I’ve been doing for five years now, and what I made into a fucking art form in Berlin, and what I’ll be spending my time doing here, too, by the looks of it. I stare at them, and they’re either completely oblivious to me or they’re completely disgusted.” He shook his head. “He scratched his eyebrow. Jesus!”
“James,” she said, finally humiliated into tears; she sobbed like a child, holding her fists up to her mouth. “Please. It’s not like that. It’ll be OK here, I promise you. It’ll get better, I promise.”
But he bent his head, and put his own fists to his forehead, and he pounded. And Catherine felt so desperate for him, so frightened for him, that she knew she could not go towards him. She knew she could not put her arms around him. She did not try to comfort him; she knew he did not want to be comforted. She knew he did not want for her to attempt to cover over his aloneness. He pounded his own skull, and he clutched at his own hair, and when he was finished, his breath long and ragged, she told him that it was time for them to sleep.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be taking up room in your bed.”
She had not meant that he would come into her bed; she had meant that he would sleep on her floor, but she could hardly point this out, she felt now, and anyway, it did not matter. It was sleep. It was James. He was not going to jump her; he was not going to wake her up in the night, pushing his impatient dick into her thigh. He was going to rest, and she was going to help him, and in the morning everything was going to be better — of this Catherine was more determined than she had ever been of anything before.