Three Wise Men. Martina Devlin

across the bed, one arm outstretched, hair plastered into tufts, enveloped in the sleep of the unjust. He always naps in the aftermath of their lovemaking; sometimes his eyelids droop with indecent haste immediately after he’s quivered, gasped and rolled over on to his side, sweat-coated body slithering from her grasp. Kate doesn’t object to his withdrawal, although she misses the reassurance of contact, because it offers a chance to study him.

      She never tires of admiring her lover, although he doesn’t look his best unconscious. His face needs its eyes open, brown eyes gleaming roguishly or swimming with invitation or pleading like a small boy’s. As if aware of her scrutiny, he turns his face towards the pillows and burrows in.

      She transfers her gaze to the bedroom of her flat, blinds drawn against the afternoon sun, a trail of jackets, shirts and socks leading from door to bed. Pearse is in Limerick on business today and won’t be back until the last train – she must clear up their lovemaking debris before then. Kate’s attention is caught by Jack’s striped boxer shorts dangling from the lower bedpost; she fantasises about washing them and storing them in a drawer with her own underwear but regretfully abandons the idea. She can’t send him home knickerless to Eimear.

      ‘Baby girl.’

      One brown eye is glinting. Jack’s awake. He shields the other eye against a dust mote-peppered ray of sunshine that’s sneaked through the curtains, the gesture lending him a raffish air. She ruffles his hair, quoting: ‘One-eyed Jack the pirate chief/was a terrible fearsome ocean thief/he wore a hook and a dirty look …’

      Jack interrupts before she can finish the verse, learned for the town feis at eight and all but forgotten until now.

      ‘Hey, I’m the poet around here, remember.’

      He wags his finger, then pulls her close for a kiss. He’s less than keen on ditties – poetry should be treated reverently, not dashed off in a fit of merriment.

      ‘Got to run, baby girl.’

      Jack is already hunting for his boxers, while Kate is still in post-kissing swoon.

      When he first called her baby girl, she cringed – wouldn’t you think a poet could come up with something more original. Dean Swift invented a new name, Vanessa, for his lady-love. But baby girl’s grown on her now.

      Jack is talking as he steps into his trousers.

      ‘Have to shoot back to Trinity for a meeting and I promised Eimear I’d be home early, she needs a hand with something or other.’

      ‘A dinner party?’

      ‘That’s it, a dinner party. Did she mention it to you?’

      ‘She invited me – Pearse too, obviously – but I declined.’

      ‘Why don’t you come, baby girl?’ Jack breaks off from buttoning his shirt. His voice dips huskily: ‘We could play footsie under the table, I could give you a quick grope on the pretext of leaning over to refill your glass, we could volunteer for washing-up duty and go a-courting in the kitchen.’

      ‘No Jack, it’s bad enough we’re doing this to Eimear in hotels, borrowed apartments and offices the length and breadth of Ireland without taking it right into her home,’ protests Kate.

      ‘You’ve developed a conscience all of a sudden.’ He tucks his shirt into his trousers with impatient movements.

      ‘Not all of a sudden. I’ve always had a conscience about what we’re doing. You help me ignore it most of the time.’

      ‘Come here and let me help you forget again,’ he coaxes, arms wide open, and before she know it she’s flat on her back with Jack on top and Eimear shoved to the dimmest recess of her mind.

      Eimear. Kate considers her friend as she stares at the ravages that lovemaking has wreaked on her face. Obviously there’s the glow in her eyes that magazines always talk about when they write those ‘Sex – The Fun Alternative to Exercise’ articles but her skin is raw from Jack’s lunchtime stubble and a spot is threatening to erupt on her nose.

      ‘Of course, Eimear never gets pimples, her face is a no-go area,’ she mutters, debating whether to squeeze or simply use concealer on the intruder.

      Her mind drifts back to the Eimear she first met. Some little girls are rosebuds, impossibly gorgeous from the tip of their long curling lashes to the top of their perfect patent pumps, forever looking like they’ve just been primped by the Mammy for a photograph. Eimear belonged to that variety.

      Kate’s mother would tell her, ‘Beautiful children don’t end up beautiful adults.’

      Mothers don’t have a clue, she couldn’t have been more wrong in Eimear’s case; she became more alluring, not less, the older they all grew.

      Kate squeezes toothpaste on a brush and bares her gums for inspection. She and Gloria are attractive on a good day – that’s a word they have to describe girls with teeth that are white but crooked or hair that’s a pretty colour although it just hangs there. She slaps some concealer on her nose – this is ridiculous, she’s still getting freckles and spots at thirty-two.

      Kate bangs the bathroom door after her; wouldn’t you think it could be one or the other at the very least. She thought she was finished with both by the time all three of them exited their teens on a flourish, vowing never to drink Snakebites again. At least not on the nights they’d be going on for a curry.

      But you don’t become more grown-up in your twenties, all that happens is you’re better at masking the pimples. And in your thirties, well, then it’s major repair time – more than spots require masking; the lines and furrows are only the tip of the iceberg, you’ve secrets to hide as well. Kate takes the stairs down from her flat three at a time, in too much of a rush to wait for the lift to the ground floor.

      She cuts through St Stephen’s Green, an oasis in the heart of the city centre, hands tunnelling into her pockets as she lectures herself.

      ‘I’m saying “you” but I mean me – you see how adept I’ve become at fooling myself. Me, I, is mise, moi, mio. I’m the one with secrets to hide. I have the trappings of adulthood: a partner-slash-lover, a mortgage, car loan, espresso machine, interest-free credit repayments on a dishwasher, wine in the rack that I leave there untasted for oh, weeks at a time. I’m kidding plenty of people with this mature adult pose but I’m not taken in myself.’

      Inside, she’s sixteen again, gangly, spotty and ignored by boys, the one member of their troika with no dates and no prospect of any. Glo had her Mick and Eimear had anyone she liked but all Kate had was the two of them and they edged her out as soon as Mr Maybe came pounding up the path.

      Kate dodges the tourists thronged around buskers on Grafton Street and quickens her pace towards her Dame Street office – her secretary Bridie will be nursing her fury at Kate for vanishing on a two-and-a-half-hour lunch-break. But Eimear continues to preoccupy her. Eimear was always special, a Charlie’s Angel. They were all three of them lanky for their age but tall on her was willowy, she was a gazelle.

      ‘My love is like a gazelle, see how he comes …’ Kate quotes.

      Gloria chose that as a reading at her wedding and Kate and Eimear were doubled over trying to bank down the guffaws. Glo never was one for catching on to double entendres. That’s what you get for taking your inspiration from the Old Testament with all its begetting, they did nothing but rut. Mick may be a dear but he’s no gazelle.

      Kate never understood why Eimear didn’t become a model instead of a librarian. Tall on her is frail; tall on Kate is a heifer. Kate’s father says she has solid child-bearing hips – to his generation that’s a compliment but she’d swap them gladly for a share in Eimear’s Waterford glass fragility.

      Kate climbs the stairs to the reception at Reynolds, MacMahon and Reynolds, irritation welling up alongside a mental vision of Eimear’s swanlike appearance – even her neck is long and curved. Not that Eimear sets any store by it; she seems indifferent to her looks, she was always unimpressed