The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver Page A

Maybe arriving at this state of being stymied was an achievement. Maybe to live successfully alongside anyone was to come to understand not how much he was like you but how much he was not-you—and hence to allow, as we do so rarely with one another, that the person sprawled across from you on the sofa is actually there.
“What are you looking at?”
“You.”
“Seen me before.”
“Sometimes I forget what you look like.”
“Been gone ten days, not ten years.” Lawrence glanced at his watch. It wasn’t eleven.
“You haven’t asked me how it went last night, with Ramsey.”
“Oh, right. I forgot.” She sensed Lawrence had not forgotten.
“We had a much nicer time than I expected.”
“Talk about snooker? At least I’ve primed you enough that you should have been able to keep your head above water.”
“No, we hardly talked about snooker at all.”
“What a waste! Who else do you know who’s a professional snooker player? You could have at least gotten the dope—the literal dope—on Ronnie O’Sullivan.”
“Ramsey’s not only a snooker player. He’s a person.” Deftly, she chose person over man. “He seems more at ease one-on-one.”
Lawrence shrugged. “Who isn’t?”
“Lots of people.” She could see that Lawrence was jealous. But she wanted to laugh. Lawrence was jealous over Ramsey. Lawrence had title to Ramsey, and her evening with his snooker buddy was meant to have been awkward. Irina had been sent on a mission to maintain Lawrence’s own friendship with Ramsey by proxy, but was supposed to learn her lesson along the way: that she and Ramsey were chalk and cheese, and that she was incapable of engaging in the jubilant snooker banter that only Anorak Man could furnish. Ramsey was meant to have learned his lesson as well: that while Irina might be nice to look at, shapely legs know nothing of Stephen Hendry’s renown for mastery of side pockets, and at the end of the day her partner was much more fun. Alas, these lessons had not proceeded as their architect had planned.
Of course, the evening had been plenty awkward, leaving her unnerved, even shaken, but also intrigued. What was that, what had happened? Whence this improvident urge to fasten her mouth on the wrong man? After Ramsey had given her a lift home—the ride having proceeded in petrified silence—she’d battened herself into the flat, flipping the top bolt, drawing the chain, and leaning with her back against the door, palms pressed flat, as if something were trying to get in. Breathing a bit too heavily still, she had assured herself that the high voltage in that basement snooker hall must already be dissipating to static electricity. Brushing her teeth before bed, she’d envisaged the relief of waking prudently by herself in her as-good-as-marital bed this morning—having done nothing disreputable, nothing that she had to hide from Lawrence or might be tempted to divulge in a confessional rush, after which he would never quite trust her again. Surely once she was straight, sobered up, and well rested, her scandalous impulse while leaning over that fancy match-grade snooker table would shrink to drunken, stoned idiocy, to mere naughtiness, to a delusional infatuation that—there is a God—she’d had the eleventh-hour sense to squelch. In the plain light of day, she would take the strange evening under advisement, as testimony that she should stay away from drugs, that she should drink moderately, that she missed Lawrence and needed to get laid. Over coffee, she had told herself, rinsing her mouth, you’ll shake your head in dry amusement and go ha-ha-ha.
Yet sipping her cappuccino this morning, she’d regarded her near miss with awe and respect. It hadn’t shrunk. To the contrary, what had appeared beforehand as a merely diverting flirtation on Ramsey’s part, one that could prove embarrassing or inconvenient for Irina, had only grown larger as she approached it. Last night had been like groping about in a fog and