—yes, I'd like to share a bottle of champagne with you, I would like it—I've never had it before—is it nice? And why did you come in here? I hope you'll forgive my conduct, but I'm just curious. She was a girl who was soft and clean. And she said am I being presumptuous and forward. I don't intend to be—I'm just a little groggy, I bought myself three whiskies. I've been promising myself to just someday walk into a bar by myself and sit up and drink with other people, but it took New Year's Eve to make me do it—no one is being themselves on New Year's are they? Or don't you care? I told her she was very likeable. And saw her eyes light. Is that why you're buying a bottle of champagne, because I'm likeable? I hope you are. I feel rather good—giggly and silly and you're quiet and reserved, aren't you? And I'm just sitting here talking to you, an utter stranger and just going on and on—well I'll tell you about me. I'm at college and I don't really like it because I don't have any time to enjoy it because I have to work and I don't get dated, never been to a nightclub—I'm curious, naturally, but it's contrary to everything I believe, I mean the frivolous, sophisticated life of society people. I don't hold that sort of thing important—and I'll tell you the truth—that really I came in here because I didn't have a date on this night of nights and I told myself that anyway I would buy myself a drink and if anyone talked to me I would talk to them but I talked to you first because you looked as if I could talk to you and you would be nice and you're alone too, aren't you? And I'm not a brave girl so much as a frustrated one. I've just walked into a bar, and I was frightened to death that the barman would tell me that women without escorts couldn't come in. Now that I'm here it all seemed so very simple and easy and I'm glad I did. And I'm beginning to see that that is the way to do a lot of things in life—just to go ahead and do them. I saw you coming in and I just thought to myself that you looked rather nice and then you were next to me and I just felt like talking to you—so I did—and now where are we? She told me she had only one request to make—that she didn't want me to know her name because she might regret everything, and not to spend so much money on her, a stranger, that they would probably never see each other again, anyway. She was warm. I pressed my nose through her straight black hair and my lips behind her ear, whispering I liked her and please stay with me. She put her face in front of mine and said distinctly, if that means you want to go to bed with me or if you want me to come to bed with you, I'll be blunt, I will. Whole hearted Blunt And I'm not trying to be whorish. But I suppose I am. Am I? Or what What do you expect of a girl like me? And I don't suppose after that remark you would believe I don't have any idea of how to go to bed with a man. But where and how and when? There's a whole lot to it, isn't there?
Sebastian stood up, taking his glass to this bar in Dalkey, waiting behind the figures.
"A double Gold Label."
Returning to his seat Sitting slowly and putting out his legs, crossing his knees, shaking his foot and placing his glass within the circle movement of his arm. The public house was filling with the seven o'clock after work after dinner faces.
I brought her to a room in a large, prominent hotel in Baltimore and we passed by the mobbed streets and a girl dancing on top of a taxi, sailors and soldiers clutching at her ankles. Pulling at her clothes until they were ripping them from her body. Hands taking her apart. In the room she said she was a little frightened. We had more champagne. On one twin bed I sat down, excited. I talked to her. Twister that I was. Heart of hoax. Bluffing my way into her hands. Carrying her down beside me. Heard her in my ear. I'm frightened. I'm scared. Don't force me to do anything. will you? But I think you're kind. And I'm just a little blase and not caring, but I worry very much what's going to happen to me, really. But after a while you get to hate everyone and everybody and you get very bitter inside because you haven't money and clothes and wealthy boyfriends asking you out to smart places and even though you know that really all of it is false, it somehow manages to seep in and you find yourself resenting the fact that all you have is a good brain and you're smarter than they are but would like to wear false breasts because your own are flat but you feel it's such a horrid lie and yet they do it and get away with it and then in the end you're faced with the blunt truth that they will get married and you won't and that they are going to hate their marriages but then they will have tea parties and cocktails and bridge while their husbands are sleeping with other men. She was a girl gone away. And I put my finger in her sad, tight, little hole, feeling lost and crying and wandering in rain and trees, a world too big, and lost and her dark head was so dark and her eyes shut.