DIARY OF AN OXYGEN THIEF By Anonymous (The Oxygen Thief Diaries) (11 page)

             
This scared me a little because it meant she was only interested in me because of my position as Senior Art Director. I hated the word “senior,” made me sound old. To her, I must have seemed old as fuck. I consoled myself that I didn't look much more than thirty-two. She played along with that. What pretty-just-turned-twenty-seven-year-old wouldn't? She was having an exhibition, she said one night. I was so glad she was involving me in her life enough to tell me this detail that I offered to help. I tried to impress her with my talents as a media manipulator but she wasn't impressed.

             
Disappointed more like.

             
I wanted to cheapen the whole thing by putting a St Patrick's Day spin on it.

Now I can see how that must have made her more comfortable about what she was going to do. Isn't it funny how, after deciding we don't like someone, we can find reasons to support our decision and equally, the other way around. That's what I think was happening. As I went further in, I had already decided I liked, nay loved, her and progressively began gathering and threading together a daisy chain of little observations and nuances that tied her tenderly to me.

             
Concurrently, she was compiling her own list.

             
Of grievances.

             
I remember silences after I'd say something. A silence in which you let the now silent speaker stew. Like a spotlight on what's been said. Like repeating something in a cold, dispassionate voice. And in those rests she took from me, she refueled her fervor to complete what she must have already begun.

             
Here's what I know about her.

             
Twenty-seven years old. Aisling McCarthy. Photographic assistant. Worked as a producer in a big clunky ad agency in Dublin in the early 1990s. Her boyfriend at the time got her the job. Left Dublin after winning a Green Card in the lottery. Told me that she had to leave Dublin in a hurry. Worked in New Orleans for about a year. Had worked in Dublin’s Clarence Hotel (owned by U2) as a hostess. I try not to define hostess unless I'm feeling particularly unkind. 

             
She loves Kilkenny, my hometown, and her uncle, Mr Tom Bannister, an associate of mine who was highly recommended by my father, now dead.

             
Her mother is from Kilkenny. Fairly patriotic towards Ireland, but not in an unattractive Fenian sort of way. When I knew her, she worked as Peter Freeman’s assistant, big-shot photographer very big-shot photographer, probably one of the best in New York and, therefore, the world. She was sharing an apartment in New York's Nolita with an architect friend called Shawn, and a "precious stones" buyer for Macy's called Maurette. Her home in Ireland is in Killiney. Very fucking posh, believe me. Her brother works for The Strategist Magazine in London. Her sister is married to some hotel guy in Florida. And she looks very, very young.

             
She's been mistaken for sixteen.

             
Spent time with nuns as a kid, at least that is what she told me. There was a

nun with whom she was quite close. Oh, yeah? Her grandaunt, I think. Also, her grandmother died during the time I knew her. Her work includes double-exposures. That's where one image appears to be laid over another. Two-faced? She's been in France and worked as an au pair.

             
All this data retained after one short evening and no more than four phone calls. She could never accuse me of not listening. If anything I listened too much. I was trying to soak her up into me. I could have written a book about her.

             
Whoops.

             
She went on holidays once with her brother to Mexico. She said she was disgusted by the way the Mexicans looked at her. Blonde and blue-eyed, in those leather-faced raven-haired surroundings. A lot of computer learning was required in her new job. She encouraged me to set up my own agency in Dublin. She liked to drink pints of Guinness. She got help with her work from Peter Freeman. He even came in on the weekends a few times to help her. I was jealous when I heard this.

             
A few months back, her mother visited her in New York for a week. I only found out this last bit because I spoke in passing to Tom Bannister while dealing with some financial transactions.

             
That's about it. Apart, of course, from the rest of what I'm going to tell you. I will say this. I'm surprising myself here because I'm normally more cautious. If there was a way that I could torture and kill her without going to prison, I would. Or I feel like I could. Don't worry, I don't daydream about how or what I'd do. I just feel capable of doing her harm. I won't, though. These pages are the nearest I will ever get to evening up the effects of that evening in March. But let's not jump ahead here, shall we? I've been thin with rage for almost six months. To cause that kind of lividness in someone takes a certain amount of talent and, I'd like to think, intelligence. Love, hate, what's the difference?

             
One night on the phone, she told me she had a publishing deal. That's interesting, I said. What kind and how did she manage to wrangle that? I was always interested in avenues that could lead out of advertising. She said she had some friend studying publishing in Harvard. I tried not to gulp. These were rich motherfuckers we were dealing with here. I forgot, of course, that I was making serious bucks by then. I've never felt rich. Just silly. Especially in that house. The book would consist of photo-essays, she said. Portraits. She already had some done. But she had a couple of years to complete them.

             
I was immediately jealous. I'd love to be doing something pure. Something that didn't need to sell something.

             
“Maybe you'll be in it.” she said.

             
This was left open. I didn't know if I should be flattered but I was.We arranged to meet in Dublin while we were both home in Ireland over Christmas. I called from St Lacroix and booked a nice room in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. St Lacroix was fucking freezing as I jumped gratefully into a cab on Hennepin Avenue, exhaled loudly and told the cab driver in an American accent to take me to the airport. It was a forty-five minute drive, and no I did not want to converse.The flight was long too. Eight and a half hours. Actually it was more because of Northsouth Airlines.

             
The worst airline in the world.

             
Delays are standard. I only ever brought carry-on luggage because otherwise they’d end up being delivered two days later to wherever you were. People were always shouting at their staff and their staff obviously accustomed to being shouted at wore professional masks of indifference. They were the only airline out of Minnesota so there wasn't a lot we could do…except shout.

             
I expected to be very tired before I met my loved one in Dublin. I built in a few hours to allow me some sleep in the Shelbourne before waking to find a message under

my door.

             
There on Shelbourne Hotel stationery was one of those Please Call, WYWO things with ticked boxes. AISLING in beautiful handwriting headed the ensemble of Victorian typography that seemed so exotic to me now after a year and a half in the history-free environment from which I had just been delivered.

             
I had an hour or so to kill before calling her at 7pm as requested, by the ticked box. I needed some condoms and began to panic because I couldn't remember if Ireland was still medieval in that department. There was a time, not too long ago when you couldn't buy them. They had to be prescribed.

             
I went for a walk. I turned right out of the Shelbourne's beautiful front door and headed towards Grafton Street. I had to hold back the tears. I don't think I can capture what it felt like to walk amongst all those beautiful young faces. It was as if someone was going to shout, “Not him. No. Everyone else is allowed walk through here and to laugh and be easy-going and dress well but not him. He shouldn't even be here.”

             
It was so lovely. I don't even know if it was Grafton Street. It was pedestrian only, the day before Christmas Eve. I'll never forget the moment. I even found a Boots chemist, which made me feel like I was in London. Dublin had changed so much and so had I.

             
I was sadder.

             
But after buying a twelve-pack of condoms (hey, some of them might break) I cheered up somewhat. I walked back to the hotel, feeling like someone who'd just got out of prison. I called her home number from my room and got her dad. Jesus, I wasn't expecting that. So I just said I'd call back later or something, he didn't sound too happy. At seven o'clock, she called and said we should meet at the corner of Grafton Street at that big glass shopping centre thing. I knew it, and trying to remain calm, I agreed to see her there in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes? I strolled there and waited for her across the road. She was a little late. But very beautiful. I had to keep checking to convince myself that she really was as lovely as she seemed. She, I thought, was doing the same thing with me, but I realize now that she must have been checking how moon-faced I looked. How easily taken I was.

             
We had something to eat in Temple Bar and it was there in the restaurant that the first photo was taken. I didn't really even notice it, but I saw something in her eyes after she clicked the little disposable camera button. She said it probably wouldn't even come out in the dimly lit restaurant. I had asked her if she carried a camera around. She said she did, but that I'd laugh if I saw it. I said I wouldn't. She said I would. So I said, okay I would. She took out a disposable camera (the kind you see at newsagents) and tilting it off the tabletop so that it pointed upwards under my chin, she clicked the shutter. I remember I was looking at her when she took it. Looking directly into her big, blue, innocent eyes…click. I immediately felt robbed.

             
She'd got my moon face.

             
My idiotic stare had been sucked off my face, replaced by an expression of distrust. Only for a moment. My first instinct had been right. I knew that a shot taken like that impromptu, no waiting, taken by a professional, wasn't meant to be flattering.

             
She had water with the meal and later we ended up in a snug in the Temple Bar where she drank Bacardis and Coke for the rest of the evening, as I downed about five bottles of Bally-fucking-gown water. She must have been out of her mind by the time we returned to the hotel. I was pleased about how I handled that. I said,

             
“It's a pity you can't come back to the hotel.”

             
“Why, are there rules? Can't you have people back?” she asked.

             
“No, I just assumed you wouldn't be able to come back. What with your

              parents and…”

             
“Oh no. I'd like to come back.”

             
Ding ding. Full steam ahead. Mind those icebergs. We strolled back, her clasping my stumpy hand in her long fingers. The evening was beautiful, and the trees along Stephen's Green were yellowed by the streetlights against the navy sky. We didn't say much. She'd been kissing me. Non-stop. There was one time when her big eyes dilated and then shrunk to little pinheads. That freaked me out a little. I didn't know if she was on something or not. In the room, we got down to business in what I now see as a fairly matter of fact manner. We used MTV as lighting.

             
It was great. I loved it. She was very beautiful. Very. I suppose I wouldn't even be writing this if she hadn't been. It wasn’t every day a guy had the chance for unrushed sex with the Virgin Mary, when she was sixteen. She had a great angular back. I had hair on mine. I couldn't stop giggling. Actually, there were even moments when I laughed out loud. She got a bit annoyed by this. I couldn't stop, though. It felt so good. When I feel good like that, I laugh.

             
She thought I was laughing at her. Also, I was nervous. It had been (yes, we know) five years. We rolled around and basically kept ourselves busy till dawn. I can remember her on top of me at one point. Her long honey-coloured hair falling forward as she pumped me. The hair formed the darkness that looked like the interior of the hood of The Grim Reaper. Like something out of one of those horror movies where from the darkness you see the faint glint of two little red beads.

             
I couldn't help thinking about how she said she'd been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and how she'd been impressed by the dancers and the atmosphere of the whole festival. I imagined some fucked-up voodoo types smothered in chicken's blood. Only this was Dublin. We were a long way from Louisiana now and the dawn was knocking gently on the window. I began to prepare myself for our parting. We ordered breakfast and I took a shower after her.

             
When I came out of the bathroom, she was leaning out the window taking photos with her little disposable camera. No doubt we'd be seeing them again soon.