The illustration went no better than before. Whatever had lit her up while she was sketching the arrival of the Crimson Traveller was with-drawing from reach. Yesterday’s inspired effort was the best of the set so far. But no matter how many times she tried, she was unable to recapture the style that Lawrence had described as unusually “bonkers.” If she couldn’t get the same frantic, energized quality into the companion illustrations, she would have to throw the “bonkers” one away. It didn’t match. It stood out. The first introduction of the colour red had seemed alarming, outrageous, electrifying. In each of today’s abortive efforts, red seemed ordinary. Blending side by side with the blues, it made purple all right, but purple seemed ordinary, too. Though now expanded by a factor of two, the palette still felt cramped, and she pined for a Yellow Traveller to release her into the spectrum. She made a note of the idea for the author, that for children to come to a fuller understanding of the nature of colour, a Yellow Traveller toward the end would make sense. Maybe she could imply slyly that the addition would be popular with the Chinese.
Lawrence rang early afternoon. He often called for no reason, and the more spurious his excuse, the more she was charmed. “Hey, I tried you around ten, and it was busy. Talk to anyone interesting?”
“Oh, you must have tried me at perfectly the wrong point. I picked up the phone to ring Betsy, and then thought better of distracting myself, and put it back.”
What a strange little fib. She might easily have been honest: she’d rung Ramsey to thank him for dinner, had obviously woken him, and, abashed, had simply hung up with what Lawrence would regard as her usual social maladroitness. Yet just now she resisted raising the topic of Ramsey in conversation. Ramsey had become—private. Whatever had passed between them on his birthday belonged to her, and she cherished owning something of which Lawrence was not a part.
“So how’s it going?”
“Lousy. I keep tearing everything up.”
“Give yourself a break! The one you did yesterday was tremendous. Maybe you should take the afternoon off for once. Go for a walk, go to the library. Head up to that place on Roman Road where you found all those cheap Indian spices. While you’re at it, you could go smoke dope with Ramsey and giggle over his video of the Steve Davis–Dennis Taylor match of 1985.”
She should have kept her mouth shut about that joint. “Very funny.”
“Well, I’m not kidding about the match. You should watch a replay someday. It’s the most famous in snooker. Did I ever tell you that story?”
Oh, probably, but if so, Irina hadn’t been listening. How did so many couples grow deaf to each other? Since he would clearly enjoy recounting the famous showdown—again—she encouraged him.
“It was the World Championship at the Crucible. Dennis Taylor—this geeky-looking guy from Northern Ireland, with big dopey-looking horn-rims, right? Well, he’d been on the circuit for thirteen years before he won a single tournament. So Taylor was considered a laughable long-shot against Steve Davis. Who was, you know, God’s gift to snooker by ’85. Reigning champion, and regarded as unbeatable. The final was bound to be a whitewash.
“That’s the way it started, too: Taylor went down seven–zip in the first session. But he rallied in the second, almost evening the score at nine–seven, and in the third session he also finished just two frames down, at thirteen–eleven. Still, all the commentators are saying, isn’t it great that the poor schmuck won’t go down without a fight. Like it’s cute or something.
“But in the final session, Taylor pulls even, at seventeen apiece. First to eighteen, right? So eventually the championship goes down not only to the last frame, but to the last ball. The black, of course. There’s this unbelievable sequence where Taylor misses a double, then Davis fucks up, too, then Taylor takes on a long pot and barely misses, thinks all’s lost and mopes back to his chair as if his pet just died. But it’s a thin cut, and Davis botches his opportunity, too, leaving a pretty easy black. When Taylor potted it for the title, the Crucible went bananas.”
“So it’s a David and Goliath story. Little engine that could.”
“Yeah. And the broadcast of that last session set BBC records. Watched by eighteen million people. Biggest audience any British sportscast had ever garnered. Ramsey says those were the days. Snooker players were like rock stars in the 80s. They lived the life of Riley, and got away with murder, too. Lotta bad boys. Ramsey says the new crop of players is too boring, and that’s why the audience has shrunk.”
Ramsey says. Though he had generously lent the man out for one evening, Lawrence wanted Ramsey back. Like Dennis Taylor, she was disinclined to relinquish a valuable trophy without a fight. “On the contrary. Ramsey says that the new crop of players has gotten too good, and that’s why the audience has shrunk.”
“Same idea,” said Lawrence. “Ramsey says that too good is too boring.”
They both understood they meant good at snooker rather than good as in virtuous. Still, once they finished the call, the line stayed with her.
The concept behind the holiday of Thanksgiving in the States is all very laudable. Nevertheless, it doesn’t work. It is nigh impossible to sincerely count your blessings on the last Thursday of November because you’re supposed to. The occasion is reliably squandered on fretting that the turkey breast is drying out while those last morsels on the inner thighs are still running red.
Yet thankfulness can descend unscheduled. When Lawrence cried “Irina Galina!” at the door that evening, and Irina rejoined from her studio, “Lawrence Lawrensovich!” she was grateful. When he told her about his day over peanut-butter crackers—his contacts had passed on a rumour that the IRA ceasefire would soon be reinstated—she may never have quite understood the fracas in Ulster, nor have kept up with whether its paramilitaries were or were not bombing the bejesus out of Britain these days, nor have comprehended why they would do such a thing in the first place, but still she was grateful—that Lawrence had work that fascinated him, whether or not it fascinated her. That he cared enough to fill her in about what he did during the day and respected her opinion. That were she to ask him, he would patiently explain the ins and outs of Northern Ireland in whatever detail she wished. That he would not take offence if just tonight she gave the exegesis a miss. When they settled in front of the Channel 4 news, she was grateful that she wasn’t a dairy farmer, watching his herd go up in smoke. While she was confessedly growing fatigued with the mad-cow-disease story, by and large British newscasts were superior to their American counterparts—more serious, more in-depth—and she was grateful for that, too.
Preparing their traditional predinner popcorn, Irina was thankful for another routine of perfectly balanced variation within sameness. She had worked out the exact oil-to-kernel ratio that would maximize loft and minimize grease; after experimentation across a range of popcorn brands, she always bought Dunn’s River, the least likely to prove dried out. One shelf of her spice rack was devoted to so many ethnic toppings—Cajun, Creole, Fajita mix—that she could serve a differently seasoned bowlful every day of the month. Tonight she chose black pepper, parmesan, and garlic powder, a favorite combination, and as they decimated the batch she was glad of a snack that you could gorge on that would not fill you up.
Picking up the remnants of cheese at the bottom of the bowl with a moistened forefinger, Irina considered that they were both in perfect health, and sometimes physical well-being could convert from the blank space between ailments to witting pleasure. Entering middle age, they remained a handsome couple; she’d survived a rash bout of chocolate-cappuccino cake, and she still wasn’t fat. No one close to her had recently died. Lawrence, grumbling over when this protracted segment on BSE would ever be over, was conspicuously alive. Dinner—the chicken had been marinating in a deadly Indonesian jerk sauce all afternoon—would be smashing.
Nothing was wrong.