The Post-Birthday World. Lionel Shriver

His upbringing was anything but intellectual. Neither of his parents had more than a high school education, and growing up in Las Vegas was hardly propitious preparation for earning a doctorate in international relations from an Ivy League school. A childhood of crass casinos had left him with a terror of being sucked back—into a world of lengthy debates over the quality of the eggs Benedict at the Bellagio. So all right, he was scathing, and sometimes had to be encouraged to give other people a break, to emphasize their finer qualities and to forgive their flaws. But it behooved her to see Lawrence’s tendency to pillory as itself such a flaw, and worthy of her own forgiveness.

      She purchased Italian black kale, smoked boar sausage, and a malicious fistful of chilies from flirtatious vendors who didn’t know her name but had come to recognize her face. All too aware that going through the placid paces of marketing was slapping a superficial gloss of normalcy over an alarmingly unstable foundation, Irina also bought an armful of rhubarb to keep herself gainfully occupied when she got home.

      Restored to the flat, she set about industriously constructing two rhubarb-cream pies, one for the freezer and one for Lawrence’s homecoming. She increased the recipe’s measure of nutmeg by a factor of five. A reserved woman of moderate inclinations to all appearances, Irina expressed an insidious attraction to extremes through decorative matters like seasoning, and few diners at her table suspected that her flair in the kitchen owed largely to a better-than-average mastery of the multiplication table. Fortunately, the fiddly lattice tops concentrated a mind that kept fragmenting like the fine strips of crust. Her hands weren’t precisely shaking, but they moved in spasmodic jerks, as if under strobe. (That cognac—surely there hadn’t been a third?) Lawrence wasn’t coming home a moment too soon. She strained against it on occasion, but maybe she needed his stern regimentation and sense of order. Without Lawrence, Irina would obviously turn overnight into a chain-smoking, cake-hoovering, brandy-addled hag.

      The pies came out beautifully, the egg and sugar bubbling through the lattice into brittle browned hats, the acidic sting of rhubarb spiking the air throughout the flat, but pastry only saw her through to about five What’s more, while the pies were in the oven, she did something she very rarely got up to in the last few years, since Lawrence anyway, and once the pies were cooling, she did it again.

      Six o’clock. Irina wasn’t prone to dithering over her appearance; most of her clothes were offbeat secondhand items from Oxfam outlets, for during their tenure here London had officially topped the charts as the most expensive city in the world. Ordinarily allowing fifteen minutes to dress was ample. Two hours was ridiculous.

      Yet this evening, allowing a mere two hours was cutting it close.

      The bed grew heaped with discarded blouses. Flailing in and out of frocks, she recalled a charming project from a few years ago titled I’ve Nothing to Wear!, about a little girl who hurricanes through her entire wardrobe one morning, flinging outfit after outfit from her chest of drawers. Lines from the book returned: “I do not like the button holes, I do not like the collar! If I wear the polka dot, I’ll bawl and shriek and holler!” The narrative arc had been predictable (big surprise, the little girl finally chooses to wear the first thing she’d put on), but the clothing flying through the air had a Futurist energy, and the illustrative opportunities had been rich.

      Yet contrary to feminine convention, Irina was striking pose after critical pose in the full-length bedroom mirror with an eye to looking as dowdy as possible. While early in this melee she had toyed with the notion of the pale blue sleeveless that last year had threatened to keep Ramsey in their living room all the way to breakfast, she’d immediately chucked the idea. Was she insane? Instead she rummaged through the wardrobe’s nether regions for the longest skirts, the crummiest fits, and the least becoming colours she could find. Alas, Irina didn’t own a lot of ugly clothes, a lack she’d never before had occasion to rue.

      This exercise in perversity was a waste. Ramsey was sure to select a ritzy restaurant where her few flashier garments would not look out of place. Lawrence always wore the most slovenly gear he could get away with, and on the few occasions she dared to don something chic he grew flustered: “It’s only a Blue Sky cocktail party. No need to make a big deal out of it.”

      Calling time in this sartorial musical chairs, the intercom buzzer blared. Like a kindergartner lunging at the nearest empty seat, she was stuck with the outfit she had on: a straight-cut navy skirt that did reach nearly to the knee, though with that ubiquitous latex sizing its cling to her hips was woefully snug. At least the short-sleeved white top didn’t expose bare shoulders; better still, multiple launderings had worn a small hole in the neckline, lending the outfit a satisfying shabbiness. In fact, the ensemble was gloriously dull. Blue and white had the sexless connotations of sailor suits or high school football colours, and she fisted her dark hair into a hasty ponytail without using a comb. However, slipping into the only shoes that would go, she was exasperated to note that the high-heeled white sandals—broken down, ten years old if a day—tightened her calves and emphasized her slender ankles. Nuts, she concluded. I should have worn slacks.

      Determined that she would not have him up for a drink, she grabbed the receiver and shouted, “Be right down!” and clattered out the door.

      Out front, Ramsey stood propped against his opalescent-green Jaguar XKE, smoking a cigarette. Irina wouldn’t, of course, encourage anyone to smoke, but the habit suited him. On the phone his silences gaped, but in person he could fill the gaps with reflective exhalations. Leaning but perfectly straight, Ramsey himself resembled a snooker cue set against the car; his limbs reiterated the same attenuated taper. Saying nothing—what was wrong with the man?—he took her in as she strode from the step, inhaling the image along with a last drag. Flicking the half-smoked fag to the gutter, he sidled beside her without a word, ushering her to the passenger seat. His hand hovered near the small of her back but never quite touched her waist, as a parent keeps an arm at the ready with an unsteady toddler who wants to cross the room without help.

      Nestled into the bucket seat not even having said hello either, Irina was visited by a sensation that she’d first experienced in high school, after her mother—grudgingly—had acceded to braces, and the hateful hardware had come off. It had taken a long time for it to sink in that boys suddenly seemed to find her a draw, and in truth this elevation of status from over twenty-five years ago had still not sunken in. Still, there had been certain evenings like this one, when she would be ushered into a young man’s car. The feeling was not of being attractive precisely, but rather of not having to entertain. It was breathtaking: to be ensconced in another person’s company, yet to be relieved of the relentless minute-by-minute obligation to redeem one’s existence—for there is some sense in which socially we are all on the Late Show, grinning, throwing off nervous witticisms, and crossing our legs, as a big hook behind the curtains lurks in the wings. Hands clasped calmly in her lap as the Jaguar surged from the kerb, staring serenely ahead as it lurched to a stop at the light, Irina realized that right at this moment the fact of her presence alone was its own redemption. Though she’d agonized over how to carry a conversation with Ramsey Acton, he was already exuding the purr of the supremely contented, giving every indication that he would remain just as contented for the rest of the night should she continue to say nothing.

      “Sushi?” he asked by the third intersection.

      “Yes.” It was marvellous: she needn’t defer graciously to whatever plans he had made, or effuse about how Japanese was just the thing. Yes would suffice.

      As the Jaguar thrummed over Blackfriars Bridge, Irina unwound her window. The air was the temperature of bathwater whose heat was beginning to fade, but still warm enough for a lingering soak. The midsummer evening was light. Lambent vermilion flared in the windows of tall buildings and made the whole city look on fire. Stained glass flamed in St. Paul’s, as if the Nazis had successfully bombed the cathedral after all. Sheets of incendiary sunlight flashed across the Thames, like an oil slick to which some rascal had touched a match. Meanwhile, the Jaguar communicated every little bit of gravel to the bucket seat like a pea to a princess.

      “These days, everyone wants to drive so high up,” she said at last. “Those SUVs. When I was growing up, all the cool people tucked down as close to the