The Flower Arrangement (16 page)

She can't ask if he was ever in love with Hilary. If he might still be. That would make her sound weak, and weakness, she believes, brings out the worst in men. So instead she decides that it's time to take action.

“If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?”

“Why would I want to change anything about you?” He runs a thumb along her wrist, following the line of blue vein beneath the skin.

“Because you're human! Come on. There must be something!”

It doesn't matter what he says. All that matters is that he asks the question back so she can say “that beard” or “this house.”

“You know what? There is one thing I would change about you.” Ronan looks so serious that she feels scared, then she sees the softness in his gray eyes. “I'd change your childhood. Your father taking off. Your mother going crazy like that. I'd change it so you had a happier beginning.”

*   *   *

“How can I get Ronan to give me flowers?” Mia asks Katy.

“Ask him. Say, ‘Ronan, I'm a woman, I desire flowers, buy some for me.'”

Mia gives her sister a withering look.

“Did you ask Phil to bring you those?” There is a vase of bright orange Asiatic lilies on Katy's table. A bud vase with a single white rose on the mantelpiece. A spray of pink orchids in a water glass on the windowsill.

Katy laughs. “Phil's sister owns a flower shop on Camden Street. He's in and out of there every other day.”

Maybe that's what she should do, Mia decides. Bring Ronan to a florist's. Make him think buying flowers is his idea, like getting rid of the beard. The beard is gone. It was easy in the end. She told him that kissing him was giving her a rash, and the next time she met him he had shaved it off. He looks kind of strange without it, a bit exposed. Not quite himself, but definitely better. It will just take getting used to.

*   *   *

Hilary's work is being exhibited as part of a group show in a gallery on Merrion Row. If, Mia thinks, you could call a dozen suitcases full of random objects surrounded by piles of junk “work.”

Ronan drags her to the opening night. She stands beside him, reading Hilary's artist's statement over his shoulder.

Title:
I Am a Sad Case.

The idiosyncratic selection of luggage items coupled with their random organization forms a galaxy of densities implying an idiomatic syntax of organic fluctuation.

Materials: Found objects.

Mostly found, Mia thinks, by Ronan when he and Mia were in hurry to get somewhere.

Hilary is looking nervous. She's wearing lace-up Dr. Martens with a green satin prom dress. There are dark green patches of sweat under the arms, Mia notes. Ronan has told Mia that it's a given that Hilary's installation won't sell, but that it needs a good reception from certain key critics to secure her funding.

She shoots Mia a jittery look now and plucks at Ronan's sleeve. “Shit,” she whispers, nodding at a knot of journalists who have just arrived. “The wolves are gathering.”

Ronan pulls her in for a hug, then ducks his head down so he can butt her forehead with his.

“You rock!” he says.

“Yeah, but what if I fucking don't?” she whispers.

He sways her from side to side. “You're rocking now.”

They look at one another as if they are the only two people in the room. The sip of wine in Mia's mouth turns to vinegar.

*   *   *

Mia is chopping organic peppers and zucchini, which she is about to make into something inedible, when she sees Ronan pick up the card she left on her kitchen windowsill. It's an invitation to the office client Christmas dinner, a black-tie event in a gentlemen's club on St. Stephen's Green. “Plus one?” He grins. “That's me, right, the positive digit?”

Ronan doesn't have black tie; Ronan doesn't own a tie.

“I wasn't going to ask you.” Mia tries to sound casual. “It's just work, no big deal, and most people won't be bringing partners anyway.”

Ronan flicks the gilt edge of the creamy card with his thumbnail. “Okay.” Mia tries not to hear the unexpected catch of disappointment in his voice.

*   *   *

No big deal.
Her own voice comes back to mock her as she scours the Dundrum shopping center for the perfect cocktail dress. Tries on every pair of shoes she owns, then every pair of Katy's. Lies in a reclining chair in a beauty salon while a Lithuanian girl with icy fingertips glues extensions onto her eyelashes, one by one.

She is the only person at the dinner who hasn't brought a partner, but she is doing Ronan a favor, she tells herself, as she stands clutching her champagne flute, listening to the dreary talk about golf handicaps and the latest European financial reforms. Ronan has nothing in common with the people she works with. They are like—she feels a wave of mortification as the words come into her mind—chalk and cheese.

She wants to grab her coat and get a cab to Ronan's house, but instead she takes her seat in the oak-paneled dining room and pulls a cracker with the chief operating officer of an IT recruitment firm, and then lets him unfold a white tissue paper crown and place it clumsily on her head.

She dances with her boss. She brushes off a clumsy pass from Dermot. She comforts Orlagh, a partner in her fifties, who is crying her heart out in the ladies'. It is nearly midnight by the time she escapes. There is a long queue at the taxi stand. Carriages are lined up at the railings of St. Stephen's Green, the drivers with blankets in their laps, the horses' breath coming in smoky little clouds. Mia is tempted to take one, but she is just too sensible. She joins the queue at the taxi rank and waits her turn.

When she gets to Ronan's, music is blaring from the living room. Through it she hears voices and laughter. Ronan is wearing antlers
made from two Christmas tree branches. Hilary seems to be wearing only a pair of odd socks and the brown cashmere jumper that Mia gave Ronan for his birthday. They are decorating an eight-foot tree. There's a half-empty bottle of tequila on the table, surrounded by abandoned lemon halves.

“No! Don't come in yet!” Ronan jumps up and propels her back out into the drafty hallway. He is very drunk.

“What's going on?” Mia sounds like the jealous girlfriend, or worse, the nagging wife.

He puts his hands over her eyes and they stand there, Ronan swaying, Mia seething, until Hilary yells, “Ready!”

Ronan steers Mia back into the living room just in time to see Hilary squatting on the floor, flashing her knickers, to light the last of dozens of tiny candles that are attached to the tree. The ends of the branches are sparkling with what look like real icicles. It is beautiful, Mia thinks, through the scald of jealousy she feels.

“We made the icicles in the freezer using Hilary's condoms,” Ronan explains.

“At least I got some use out of them!” Hilary nudges him and they both giggle.

“Is it safe?” Mia snaps, wanting to cut through their camaraderie. “With all those flames?”

“Sssh!” Ronan says. “Don't ruin it!”

They stand together watching the tree until the last little flame dies away, then Hilary starts pulling the spent candles out of the holders and pushing new ones in.

“I thought you disapproved of Christmas trees?” Mia says to Ronan. She asked him to go shopping for one the previous week and he refused, saying they were bad for the environment.

“It's not a Christmas tree!” Ronan and Hilary say together.

“It's a pagan tree!” Hilary adds pompously.

“We liberated it,” Ronan adds, “from a skip on the South Circular Road.”

“Then we bought every birthday candle in Tesco!”

“And most of the lemons.” Ronan reaches for the tequila bottle. “Time for another slammer. You want one?” He squints at Mia.

She shakes her head. “I think I'll just go up to bed.” She waits for him to say he'll come too.

“Okay.” He tips salt onto the back of his hand. “See you later.”

*   *   *

When she wakes up, it is 7 a.m. and Ronan's half of the futon is empty. She dresses quickly and tiptoes downstairs, shivering. The house is in darkness. There are pools of water under the Christmas tree where the icicles have melted. The tequila bottle is lying on its side, empty. She creeps from room to room but there's no sign of Ronan and no sign of Hilary. She stands outside Hilary's room for a long time, biting her lip, asking herself whether this is something she wants to see or something she has to see. Then she wraps her fingers around the cold brass doorknob and in one swift movement opens the door.

The room is empty. The ironwork bed is made up with a carefully folded gray crocheted throw. There is a desk with ordered piles of papers. A corkboard with dozens of postcards pinned neatly to it in lines. An IKEA rail half full of clothes organized by color. Hilary's installation—the suitcases and junk that were carefully arranged in the gallery—is heaped in one corner.

One of the cases is open and a pile of loose drawings has spilled out. The drawings that are missing from Ronan's sketchbooks! Mia glances over her shoulder, then tiptoes across and kneels down to look at them. Thirty or forty pen and pencil sketches. She rifles through them, her heart pounding, looking for the naked portraits she is sure must be here. But the sketches she finds are just like the ones of Ronan's other housemates. Hilary asleep with her head resting on her arms. With a toothbrush tucked into her cheek. Doing a yoga shoulder stand.

“What are you doing?” Mia looks up to see Hilary at the door, still
wearing Ronan's cashmere sweater, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug.

Mia drops the pages and stands up quickly. “I was just looking for Ronan.”

“In my room?” Hilary says scornfully. “He's gone for a cycle to burn off the hangover. He left you a note.”

“Oh.” Mia bends down and shuffles the sketches together, trying to construct some sort of exit that might possibly contain a shred of dignity.

“Why don't you take them?” Hilary says calmly as she puts her coffee down on the desk and walks over. “They're Ronan's. I only borrowed them for my exhibition.” She flicks the suitcase lid open with a movement of her bare foot. Her toenails are painted blue. “It's all in there, Mia. All our personal baggage. Every postcard he ever wrote me. Every picture we ever took.”

“I'm sorry—” Mia begins.

“For what, exactly?” Hilary interrupts her. “For going through my things? For ignoring me? For yawning whenever I'm talking to Ro? For sticking your tongue down his throat so he can't answer when I ask him a question? We're best friends. For the record, that's all we are. We have ten years of history”—Hilary gives the suitcase a vicious kick—“but I don't fit into your perfect little picture. I bet you can't wait to get rid of me, like you got rid of his beard.”

Mia starts for the door but Hilary cuts her off.

“What else is on your list of improvements, Mia? What exactly will Ronan have to do before he's good enough for you to bring him to your office party?”

Mia is shaking with anger but she can't get past Hilary, not without pushing her out of the way. “How dare you!”

“No!” Hilary shakes her head sadly. “How dare
you
! Ro is the nicest guy you will ever meet and you're trying to change him. And he'll let you because he's crazy about you. But if you keep changing him, he won't be the person you fell in love with.” She walks to the door and
holds it open. “You think I'm the big threat to you and Ro. But I'm not. You are.”

*   *   *

“Hilary has to move out,” Ronan tells Mia on a Sunday afternoon in January, when they are walking on the pier in Dún Laoghaire.

Mia turns away to look at the crumpled gray sheet of the sea so he won't see the look of relief on her face. “Really?”

She hasn't seen Hilary since the scene in her room, and she hasn't told Ronan what happened.

“I feel so bad for her.” Ronan digs his hands farther into the pockets of his duffle coat. “Her show tanked. The bursary that was supposed to take her through to the summer has fallen through. She's paid rent up until the middle of February, but after that she's out on the street.”

“Not literally out on the street,” Mia says. “Surely?”

Ronan sighs. “She might be better off, to be honest. She'll have to move back in with her parents.”

“I'm sure she'll be fine.” Mia links his arm, noticing how worn his sleeve is, wishing he'd wear the North Face down jacket she bought him for Christmas. “Hilary strikes me as pretty tough.”

“It's all an act.” Ronan shakes his head. “The last time she lived with her folks, she got depressed, ended up trying to kill herself.”

A splinter of pity catches at Mia's heart. Her inner auditor takes out a pair of tweezers and prepares to extract it. Hilary is not her problem, not anymore.

*   *   *

“I'm surprised you haven't considered art,” Mia says to James Delaney. He is her least favorite client by some margin. The cocky twenty-five-year-old CEO of an app design company that has made two million euros' profit in the first two years of trading. “It's very tax efficient.”

James, who is leaning back in his chair pouring a can of Red Bull down his throat, sits forward. “How efficient?”

“Let's see.” Mia leaves a long pause to whet his appetite. “You can claim a wear-and-tear allowance at twelve and a half percent, so you'll recover your purchase price in about five years, by which time the art you've bought could have tripled in value.”

His handsome face is neutral but his eyes have narrowed slightly, which she knows is his tell.

“I don't want cows and clouds in a gilt frame,” he says.

“What about an installation?” Mia says, as if this has just occurred to her. “Something edgy, playful and provocative.”