Free The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver Page B

affliction. She was trying to watch television with her partner, to have a convivial slice of pie and a quiet
nightcap—though Irina’s vodka seemed to have evaporated, and she
couldn’t remember drinking it—and here were these people in her home
who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, and who induced her to
keep squeezing and kneading against one another the muscles of her inner
thighs.
“You might not be keen on the subject matter,” said Lawrence. “But
that still looks worth seeing.”
Irina tore her eyes from her shameless guests. “What’s worth seeing?” “ Boogie Nights !”
Gamely, she ventured, “Well, I wasn’t big on Flashdance, but I didn’t
mind Saturday Night Fever. ”
Lawrence looked incredulous. “How could you have listened to a
fifteen-minute discussion of that movie and still think it bears any relation to Saturday Night Fever ?”
Irina cringed. “Oh. What’s it about, then.”
“The porn industry!”
“I was a little distracted.”
“A little ?”
“I told you I was tired.”
“Being short of sleep might take the edge off, but it doesn’t send most
people’s IQ plummeting to below fifty.”
“Just because my mind wandered doesn’t make me an idiot. I don’t
like it when you do that. You do it all the time, too. You’re always telling
me I’m stupid.”
“On the contrary. I’m constantly trying to get you to have faith in
your own opinions and to be more forceful about them in public. I’m constantly telling you that you are smart, and very perceptive about the world, even if you don’t have a PhD in international relations. Sound familiar?”
Irina hung her head. It did sound familiar. Lawrence could be tempted to use the M-word on Irina, but he used it indiscriminately on everyone sooner or later, so there was no purpose to taking it personally. And he had, he was right, many times urged her to be more outspoken about her views around his colleagues’ dinner tables.
“Yes, you’re usually very supportive,” she conceded.
“Why do you keep trying to pick a fight?” From Lawrence, this was brave.
“I don’t know,” she said, and with genuine puzzlement. She truly did not understand why, when she had such a powerful motivation not to rock the boat, she would keep being so provocative, or, on an evening when she was desperate not to attract close examination, she would behave in an erratic, irritable fashion sure to bring maximum scrutiny to bear. Did she want him to know? Maybe she was forcing him to play a parlor game, like Botticelli: I’m a famous person, and my name begins with big scarlet A.
Are you dead?
(As of tonight? To my marrow.)
Are you female?
(All too female, it turns out.)
Where were you last night, at five in the fucking morning?
(Only yes-or-nos. That question is cheating.)
You’re one to talk about cheating!
Or maybe Lawrence was supposed to play hangman on the back of his conference program, and, since he would never in a million years guess that she’d have chosen F-A-I-T-H-L-E-S-S H-U-S-S-Y, proceed to noose himself, letter by letter?
They finished watching Late Review. As if having given up on her ability to absorb the most primitive factual aspects of the novel and West End play the panel went on to assess, Lawrence didn’t solicit her opinion for the rest of the show. He turned off the television, and as the tube went black Irina thought, Come back! Commonly vexed by its incessant prattle, tonight she could have watched TV for hours. Instead of getting ready for bed, Lawrence plunged back to the sofa; horribly, that clap of his palms on his knees meant he wanted to talk. Irina tried to fill the yawning silence with encouraging little smiles, though just what she was encouraging remained obscure. Apropos of nothing she said, “I’m glad you’re home,” an assertion that, while it unquestionably did constitute Lie #3, she did not throw out as duplicitous cover. Rather, she wanted it to be so, and half-hoped that if she said