The Post-Birthday World

The Post-Birthday World Read Free Page B

Book: The Post-Birthday World Read Free
Author: Lionel Shriver
Tags: #genre
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he’d never manage in Moscow, but we use it at home, you know, as our private language. . . . Endearments,” she continued into the void. “Or little jokes.”
“. . . That’s dead sweet.” He had still not identified himself. It was now too awkward to ask who this was.
“Of course, Lawrence and I met because I was his Russian tutor in New York,” Irina winged it, stalling. “He was doing his doctoral dissertation at Columbia on nonproliferation. In those days, that meant you needed to have some Russian under your belt. These days, it’s more like Korean. . . . But Lawrence has no gift for languages whatsoever. He was the worst student I ever had.” Blah-blah-blah. Who was this? Though she had a theory.
A soft chuckle. “That’s dead sweet as well. . . . I dunno why.” “So,” Irina charged on, determined to identify the caller. “How are you?”
“. . . That’d depend, wouldn’t it? On whether you was free tomorrow night.”
“Why wouldn’t I be free?” she hazarded. “It’s your birthday.”
Another chuckle. “You wasn’t sure it were me, was you? ’Til just then.”
“Well, why should I be? I don’t think—this is strange—but I don’t think, after all these years, that I’ve ever spoken to you on the phone.”
“. . . No,” he said with wonderment. “I reckon that’s so.”
“I always made our social arrangements through Jude, didn’t I? Or after you two split, through Lawrence.”
Nothing. The rhythm to Ramsey’s phone speech was syncopated, so that when Irina began to soldier on, they were both talking at once. They both stopped. Then she said, “What did you say?” at the same time he said, “Sorry?” Honestly, if a mere phone call was this excruciating, how would they ever manage dinner?
“I’m not used to your voice on the phone,” she said. “It sounds as if you’re ringing from the North Pole. And using one of those kiddy contraptions, made of Dixie cups and kite string. You’re sometimes awfully quiet.”
“. . . Your voice is wonderful,” he said. “So low. Especially when you talk Russian. Why don’t you say something.” Summat. “In Russian. Whatever you fancy. It don’t matter what it means.”
Obviously she could rattle off any old sentence; she’d grown up bilingual. But the quality of the request unnerved her, recalling those porn lines that charged a pound per minute—what Lawrence called wank-phone. she said, binding her breasts with her free arm. Fortunately, nobody learned Russian anymore.
“Kogda mi vami razgovarivayem, mne kazhetsya shto ya golaya,”
“What’d that mean?”
“You said it didn’t matter.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I asked you what you had in mind for tomorrow night.”
“Mm. I sense you’re having a laugh.”
But what about tomorrow night? Should she invite him over, since he liked her cooking? The prospect of being in the flat alone with Ramsey Acton made her hysterical.
“Would you like it,” she proposed miserably, “if I made you dinner?”
He said, “That’s bleeding decent of you, pet.” The curious little endearment, which she’d only encountered once before when collaborating with an author from way up in Newcastle, was somehow warmer for being odd. “But I fancy taking you out.”
Irina was so relieved that she flopped into her armchair. In doing so, she pulled the cord, and the phone clattered to the floor.
“What’s that racket?”
“I dropped the phone.”
He laughed, more fully this time, round, and the sound, for the first time in this halting call, relaxed her. “Does that mean yes or no?”
“It means I’m clumsy.”
“I never seen you clumsy.”
“Then you’ve never seen me much.”
“I never seen you enough.”
This time the silence was Irina’s.
“Been a whole year,” he continued.
“I’m afraid Lawrence wouldn’t be able to join us.” Ramsey knew that, but she’d felt the need to insist Lawrence’s name into the conversation.
“Rather put it off, so Lawrence could come as

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