Normal People

Connell looked at him silently. A beam of white light was shining down from the bulb above the door and illuminating Eric’s face with a ghostly pallor.

What do you mean? said Connell.

With herself and yourself.

Connell hardly recognised his own voice when he said: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Eric grinned and his teeth glittered wetly in the light.

Do you think we don’t know you were riding her? he said. Sure everyone knows.

Connell paused and took another drag on his cigarette. This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn’t. He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless. He and Marianne could have walked down the school corridors hand in hand, and with what consequence? Nothing really. No one cared.

Fair enough, said Connell.

How long was that going on for?

I don’t know. A while.

And what’s the story there? said Eric. You were just doing it for the laugh, or what?

You know me.

He stubbed out his cigarette and went back inside to collect his jacket. After that he left without saying goodbye to anyone, including Rachel, who broke up with him shortly afterwards. That was it, people moved away, he moved away. Their life in Carricklea, which they had imbued with such drama and significance, just ended like that with no conclusion, and it would never be picked back up again, never in the same way.

*

Yeah, well, he says to Marianne. I wasn’t that compatible with Rachel, I don’t think.

Marianne smiles now, a coy little smile. Hm, she says.

What?

I probably could have told you that.

Yeah, you should have, he says. You weren’t really replying to my texts at the time.

Well, I felt somewhat abandoned.

I felt a bit abandoned myself, didn’t I? says Connell. You disappeared. And I never had anything to do with Rachel until ages after that, by the way. Not that it matters now or anything, but I didn’t.

Marianne sighs and moves her head from side to side, ambivalently.

That wasn’t really why I left school, she says.

Right. I suppose you were better off out of it.

It was more of a last-straw thing.

Yeah, he says. I wondered if that was what it was.

She smiles again, a lopsided smile like she’s flirting. Really? she says. Maybe you’re telepathic.

I did used to think I could read your mind at times, Connell says.

In bed, you mean.

He takes a sip from his glass now. The beer is cold but the glass is room temperature. Before this evening he didn’t know how Marianne would act if he ever met her in college, but now it seems inevitable, of course it would be like this. Of course she would talk drolly about their sex life, like it’s a cute joke between them and not awkward. And in a way he likes it, he likes knowing how to act around her.

Yeah, Connell says. And afterwards. But maybe that’s normal.

It’s not.

They both smile, a half-repressed smile of amusement. Connell puts the empty bottle on the countertop and looks at Marianne. She smooths down her dress.

You look really well, he says.

I know. It’s classic me, I came to college and got pretty.

He starts laughing. He doesn’t even want to laugh but something about the weird dynamic between them is making him do it. ‘Classic me’ is a very Marianne thing to say, a little self-mocking, and at the same time gesturing to some mutual understanding between them, an understanding that she is special. Her dress is cut low at the front, showing her pale collarbones like two white hyphens.

You were always pretty, he says. I should know, I’m a shallow guy. You’re very pretty, you’re beautiful.

She’s not laughing now. She makes a kind of funny expression with her face and pushes her hair back off her forehead.

Oh well, she says. I haven’t heard that one in a while.

Does Gareth not tell you you’re beautiful? Or he’s too busy with like, amateur drama or something.

Debating. And you’re being very cruel.

Debating? says Connell. Jesus, don’t tell me he’s involved in this Nazi thing, is he?

Marianne’s lips become a thin line. Connell doesn’t read the campus papers much, but he has still managed to hear about the debating society inviting a neo-Nazi to give a speech. It’s all over social media. There was even an article in The Irish Times. Connell hasn’t commented on any of the Facebook threads, but he has liked several comments calling for the invite to be rescinded, which is probably the most strident political action he has ever taken in his life.

Well, we don’t see eye to eye on everything, she says.

Connell laughs, happy for some reason to find her being so uncharacteristically weak and unscrupulous.

I thought I was bad going out with Rachel Moran, he says. Your boyfriend’s a Holocaust denier.

Oh, he’s just into free speech.

Yeah, that’s good. Thank god for white moderates. As I believe Dr King once wrote.