A Certain Chemistry (19 page)

I swung myself onto the sofa with great enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm that it toppled over backwards and, clasped together, George and I rolled off across the floor. We were racing ahead before we’d even come to a stop, however. Everywhere skin slid against skin, there were lips and tongues and fingertips, hair being stroked and grasped, breath rushing hot onto us, hands running desperate over us, everywhere, as far as our bodies could feel, farther than our minds could think, we were the entire universe, together, electric to the touch, everywhere. More than anything else, it was
real
. It had such immediacy, and every sensation was so intense, that it was real in a way that made the normal experience of reality seem blurred and pale and muted and laughable. If I had to write this moment for characters in a book, I know what I’d do. If I were doing my job and inventing it as fiction, rather than describing it as fact, I’d conjure up a storm of thoughts—the conflicts, questions, and self-doubts. Because that’s what you do when you’re a writer, that’s the artifice—always highlighting the inner world. Even in the most primal situations—
especially
in the most primal situations—you have your characters examine and interrogate themselves. And the more complex, multilayered, and subtle you make the thoughts of a person at the moment when he’s engaged in some raw, feral activity, the better a writer people say you are. It’s a lie that readers and writers happily conspire in together. So, if I were writing this moment, I’d say that “Tom noticed how George was a million tiny differences. Everything she did—the way she moved and the way she touched him—the way she smelled, the way she tasted—everything defined her not simply as George, but as not-Sara. It was impossible for him to experience anything without experiencing it in comparison. Each new surprise of George was simultaneously a joy of otherness and a guilty reminder, a thrill and a sting.”

In fact, as—naked on the floor of a hotel room—I was being spectacularly unfaithful to Sara, this is what was going through my mind: “Yaaaahhhhhhhhhh!” That’s it. There was nothing in my head but a dull roar. We rolled about together without ever exchanging a single coherent sentence and while fucking like wild dogs.

It was fan
tastic
.

“I thought you didn’t smoke?” George said as I reached over and plucked one of the cigarettes from her packet. We were huddled together on the sofa, under a duvet that George had hurriedly gone and pulled off the bed. (It wasn’t really cold in the room, but it’s just nicer to huddle together
under
something. And anyway, there’s something slightly awkward about staying completely nude after sex. Like you’ve finished doing everything now but, rather inelegantly, appear to have some nakedness left over. It’s the kind of feeling you get looking at the food remaining on a table after a party’s ended.)

“Yeah . . . well.” I shrugged, pulling the lighter in George’s hand across from her cigarette to mine.

I gave up taking sugar in my tea many years ago. Question people who’ve done this, and they’ll all say the same thing: at first the tea tastes
awful,
it’s an effort of will just to force it down, but imperceptibly over the months, you become used to it and it starts to seem perfectly fine. Then, one day, you accidentally take a gulp of someone else’s tea—someone who still takes sugar—and, “Yeugch!” It’s nothing but warm, wet sickliness; you can’t imagine how you ever liked such an unpleasant drink.

Giving up smoking is the polar opposite of giving up sugar in your tea. For a start, you can avoid the initial dreadfulness of sugar-free tea very simply: don’t drink tea. To give up smoking is to experience every second, every part of every second, as a misery of smokinglessness—there’s no avoiding it. More important is that fact of sugary tea becoming repellent to you after a few months. Once you’re a smoker, months can pass, years can pass, but you never lose the knowledge that it’d be great to have a cigarette right about now. You long for all bets to be off, if only for a moment—for something to give you a perfectly legitimate justification to smoke just one more cigarette. There are times when you fantasize about being involved in an especially traumatic car crash, just so you’d be well within your rights to have a cigarette for your nerves.

I was busy rationalizing this cigarette I was smoking (this postsex cigarette: most celestial of all the cigarettes) as a perfectly legitimate palliative given the frightening hugeness of the situation. It was really the joyous return of a prodigal son, the secretly welcomed triumph of pleasure over common sense.

I glanced at my watch: 12:34
A.M
.

George caught me checking.

“Sara?” she asked quietly. She needed only that one word. In fact, I’d have preferred her to have phrased any number of questions in any number of probing and uncomfortable ways, had they only been free of Sara’s actual name. But she’d used it alone, so I couldn’t avoid it. I suppose it was, really, all the questions that could be asked combined.

“Yeah,” I replied, hurrying my cigarette back to my mouth.

“Will she wonder where you are?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Maybe. I could be at an aftershow party, though, I suppose. It’s not
that
late, really.” I hadn’t given Sara the impression I’d be away for a long time. I imagined her asking me, when I got back, why I hadn’t phoned to say I’d be staying awhile. Not angrily, just a bit miffed because it was such an easy thing to do and I hadn’t done it and it was a little, you know, “thoughtless.” Naturally, the idea of calling her now gleefully mocked me with a knowing smirk. It wasn’t
that
late, but it was still after midnight and it knew I’d be reminded that the last time I’d woken Sara with a call the first thing she’d asked was whether I’d slept with someone. My nerve wasn’t up to playing the double bluff right now. And, anyway . . . Christ—you know what I mean. Putting on a slightly fed-up voice (“It’s a horror, Sara—insufferable media types—I simply couldn’t get out of it, though . . .”) and explaining how I was stuck at some tiresome party (“Look, I’ve got to go. I have to talk to some awful producer—bye . . .”) while I was actually sitting here naked next to George? How nauseatingly grubby would
that
be? There’s a code of decency even in lying.

“I love Sara, you know,” I said.

It was a pathetic thing to say. A pathetic, ridiculous cliché—exactly the same sad, stupid thing that everyone says at this point. Saying it made me ashamed of both my hapless idiocy and my risible banality. How could I utter such a hoary old standard, when the situation itself with George and me was so unique and special?

“I know,” replied George. Supportively showing that she could keep up with me if I really wanted to stick to the script.

I tapped the ash off my cigarette with quite astonishingly excessive thoroughness. “What about you and Darren Boyle?”

“Me and
Darren
?” She laughed a little and put on a talking-to-the-press voice. “Darren and I are just good friends.”

“No, really—is it serious?”

“No,
really
—we’re just friends. Friends and conspirators.”

“What does
that
mean?”

“Oh . . . just that we deliberately let the press jump to the wrong conclusion. It was a bit of prebook publicity, and it didn’t hurt me as a general thing. If you even use the
word
’feminism,’ there’s a section of the media who immediately look for signs that you’re a joyless, bitter lesbian.”

“Surely they must know you’re not?” I said. (On a hunch, pulling myself up before adding, “Amy told me that everyone says you’re a Fuck Monster.”)

“What they know and what they wish were true are two separate things—and it’s the second one that tugs at their hearts the most. They’re infinitely happier with the idea that everyone is hiding something. Which makes it really annoying when they’re right—like with Darren, of course.”

“What’s he hiding?”

“Oh, come
on,
Tom. Darren was over there trying to make some kind of dent in America—perhaps even get himself involved in a TV show. The American media won’t touch you if you’re a gay man. There’d be riots in Iowa. And if you have an English accent, then they already assume you’re gay until proven otherwise.”

“So you were basically there to compensate for Darren Boyle’s pronunciation?”

“Yes, well . . . Darren has other things I needed to weigh against too, obviously.”

“Like actually being gay?”

“He’s not
gay,
no—not strictly speaking.”

“Not ‘strictly speaking’?”

“He’s just . . . you know. He’s just been experimenting with homosexuality.”

“Experimenting? He thinks . . .
what
? It may provide the world with a new source of propulsion?”

“Have you got a problem with this?” She laughed at me. “I really didn’t have you down as homophobic.”

“Well, normally I’d say that it’s no issue for me at all whether someone is gay or straight, but on this occasion, I have to admit I’m absolutely
delighted
to find out he’s gay.”

“Because you thought I was having a fling with him.”

“Do people say ‘having a fling’ anymore?”

“You read we were having a fling, and you were jealous?”

“Not
jealous,
no.”

“Ha.” She gave me her huge Nye grin. “You were jealous. And here I was, not even sure that you fancied me.”

“Yes, tough call. I can see how anyone might have assumed that I had some terrible, incessant-erection condition—the hospital wards are full of people like that.”

“It’s a flattering suggestion, of course, but I don’t spend my entire time examining men’s crotches for signs of arousal. Oh, I remember you
telling
me about it on that one occasion, obviously. But men get erections all the time. They can get an erection if you bend over in front of them, but you can’t really take that as meaning much—not when you know that they can quite easily get an erection if they accidentally brush up against a low wall too. I thought your blurting out that you had one was your technique.”

“Yeah—the ladies love that line.”

“No, no, not that—your
professional
technique.”

“You thought that my telling you, apropos of nothing whatso-fucking-ever, that I had a stiffy was my professional technique? I am, unequivocally, agog.”

“It seemed to be the only explanation that made any sense at all. You were trying to get me to talk, frankly, for the book . . . and isn’t it a standard tactic to make potentially embarrassing confessions about yourself in order to encourage the person you’re interviewing to open up?”

“Gosh, you’re right. Without even knowing it, I’m a bleeding
genius
.”

George wriggled under the duvet and turned to face me more head on. She adopted a mock-interrogating tone. “So, when
did
you start to fancy me, then, Tom Cartwright?”

“Well—sorry—I wasn’t a big fan of yours or anything. Which I suppose is a good thing, right? Less creepy.”

“Yeah,
definitely,
” said George, playing offended. “There’s simply
nothing
worse than being screwed by someone who thinks you’re good at your job.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong—I didn’t think you were crap.”

“If
this
is your technique, Tom, then I’d advise actually going with the ‘I have a stiffy’ routine.”

“Okay. I’ll start again. At first, before I’d met you, I couldn’t picture you in any way except as a massive bagful of money.”

“I’m
so
glad you started again.”

“Then, the first time we met, I was completely preoccupied with trying to avoid blowing the deal. That and not dying of explosive, grueling exhaustion. I’m not really sure when I . . . You see—how stupid is it for someone like me to get a thing for Georgina Nye? I was trying my very best to avoid admitting to myself that my interest in you went beyond the standard desire to shag any number of actresses, singers, or weathergirls. Right up until tonight, in the cab, I was trying to look the other way rather than admit I was . . . but I suppose, now I can be objective, it
started
that second time I met you. When we were up on Carlton Hill and you took your hat off, and you turned into Georgina Nye, right before my eyes.”

George didn’t say anything for a moment.

“It was important that I was Georgina Nye?” She didn’t look at me as she said this, instead reaching over to the table to get another cigarette.

“Oh—
no
.” I laughed.

“You brought it up twice just then.”

I smiled and leaned forward, running my hand across her cheek and brushing her hair aside.

“Hello?” I said. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to here? There cannot be a single person in the English-speaking world who rates celebrity as any less important than I do. I just meant that you went from a tiny, fast-moving thing—more lucrative commission than woman and hidden under that hat and dark glasses—to . . .
you
. I abruptly
got
the whole Georgina Nye Experience. I suddenly saw why you were a big deal. But it was the
why
that impressed me, not being the big deal.”

“That’s . . .” She didn’t seem to be able to find the word for what it was, but she pulled up my hand and kissed it. “I’m probably a bit wary. With everyone. My therapist says I need to give myself permission to receive more often.”

It sort of shows you’re sensitive if you have a therapist, doesn’t it? Thoughtful and complex. Selfish, mindless thugs don’t see therapists, do they? Well . . . not unless it’s a requirement of their sentence, obviously.

“So—when did
you
start to fancy
me
?” I grinned, and George grinned back. It was like being sixteen again. Like being sixteen and sneaking off at a party with a girl—sitting in semidarkness, smoking naughty cigarettes, and talking about sex. Low voices and prickly-heat excitement. Though, admittedly, George and I had just been all over the room in an unrestrained, feral journey through every obscene, filthy, and glorious sexual act we could think of, which—when you’re a sixteen-year-old boy—is more where you’ll hope the conversation will lead than its prelude. And yet, somehow, the feeling of intimacy, and of flirtatiously playing with fire, was the same.