Читать книгу Future Popes of Ireland - Darragh Martin - Страница 25

‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

Peg added a giggle as punctuation; Gina, she figured, was a giggler. Nate pretended to take the matter into serious consideration, his head rattling from side to side.

‘The worst thing I’ve ever done?’ Nate repeated.

His name was not Nate though, no more than he was actually forty-nine. Peg did not mind. He knew what he was doing, something Peg loved about older men: he didn’t require reassurance or cheerleading, could swipe a credit card or roll his tongue across a buttock with the certainty that nothing would ever be found insufficient. If he wanted to be called Nate, so be it. This was how she liked things: names as temporary as hotel bed-sheets.

‘Yeah,’ Peg said, draping herself across the length of the bed.

It was a question she liked to ask in hotel rooms, where white walls were blank enough to absorb all sorts of misdeeds.

Nate knelt over Peg, knees knuckling into her sides, large hands firm on her chest.

‘Worst thing I’ve ever done?’

His hands moved towards Peg’s throat.

‘Yeah.’

He started to squeeze.

‘Haven’t done it yet, babe.’

*

After, Nate turned to Peg and smiled:

‘How ’bout you, babe? What’s the worst thing you’ve done?’

Killed a man, Gina should have said, perhaps a giggle afterwards.

Wait till you see, Gina should have said, flipping him over roughly: your turn now.

Wouldn’t you like to know, Gina should have said, turning onto her side.

Peg said nothing, tensed on the bed, the question ricocheting back to her, demanding to be answered.

She’d leave it be. Plenty of other things to entertain in hotels. Gina, Peg was sure, was a fan of miniature things. Little bottles of vodka, clear and fiery and amazing. Adorable bottles of shampoo with ridiculous ingredients. Rosemary and mint, a scent to banish all trace of the past. Ironic, when rosemary signified remembrance, Peg thought, though Gina kept her mouth shut. Each bottle to be replaced within the hour once they’d left, all part of the deal in hotels, which were brilliant at acting as if nothing had ever happened there before, every day a new start, anonymity the aim and amnesia the game; brilliant, really, that a whole industry could be built on the importance of forgetting.

Bored, Nate switched on the TV.

Gina was not married to Nate so she would not, Peg decided, object to the turning on of the television; Gina was not a nagger.

‘Wow!’

Peg rolled over and looked at the images of Pope John Paul II.

Nate sat up, suddenly alert. The kind of kink he was into, he could certainly be Catholic.

‘Holy shit, he’s already performed a miracle – that was fast!’

Peg watched Rome reel by, starting when she noticed the date on the screen.

‘Fuck!’

Nate turned around.

Peg could have asked Nate about the logistics of forgetting wedding anniversaries – he had a well-worn groove on his finger – but Gina was more of a giggler than a talker.

Nate put his arm around her.

‘You okay, darl?’

‘I’m fine,’ Peg said, certain that Gina was not a Catholic.

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