Page 40 of Chaos Theory

THIRTY-EIGHT

I follow a crisp-clad waiter through Gino’s Restaurant to our table.

Josh should be here soon. This place looks nice – rustic chic.

I start composing an ad in my head. Authentic Italian with a contemporary twist. Romantic but modern.

Josh chose this place. I wonder if he picked just anywhere or put in the research.

We’re both attending the AI conference in Athlone tomorrow – me, on account of my own interest and a handy discount for those who completed all the MIT course modules; Josh, because Ron Tron was recently added to the line-up.

So we’ve arranged to stay in the conference hotel tonight and to go for dinner somewhere local to catch up.

I’ve only spoken to Josh briefly since his return to Ireland on Tuesday, and he hasn’t seen Kobi yet.

All he knows is that Kobi is back at work at Go Ireland after a short trip to County Clare.

I thought it’d be better to tell him the details in person.

Since the trip to Clare, the past few days have been mercifully uneventful.

In the car back to Dublin on Saturday, Shane was fairly quiet.

We stopped off at the Clare Arms Hotel to reimburse them for the wheelchair we’d borrowed and broken; then we spent half an hour in the car gently debating whether we could put the cost through as an expense claim when we got back.

I think we were both relieved that, in the end, we didn’t have to deal with the issue of the honeymoon suite in Lisdoonvarna, a town famous for its annual matchmaking festival.

I haven’t seen Shane much since, apart from our presentation on Monday morning, which we winged our way through.

I was busy all week setting Kobi up with his new job, recording oral histories for callers with a connection to Ireland.

As well as stories of life in old Ireland, Kobi’s going to record the tales of Irish emigrants who settled in other countries, hear how their new lives took shape.

As I look around the restaurant, I’m glad of the low lighting, the soft fabrics that hush the other diners’ chatter.

I’m not sure how Josh will react to the events of my road trip to County Clare.

And I haven’t yet told him the details of the Science Museum incident.

Luckily, JP seems to have smoothed things over and no legal action is pending.

I’m suddenly nervous. I order a bottle of wine from a passing waiter, who returns promptly with it and a basket of salted bread. The last Italian meal I had was at the Farmers’ house. I smile at the memory.

Josh appears through the gloom, bringing my focus back to the present. He looks tanned and relaxed. I’d forgotten how classically handsome he is. With the clearest blue eyes. I stand to greet him and we do a kind of awkward half hug, but enough for me to inhale a clean, manly scent.

I decide I want to tell him all about the Clare trip quickly – rip off the Band-Aid. He’ll find out as soon as he sees Kobi’s TIL files anyway.

As soon as he’s settled at the table and I’ve enquired after his general health and well-being, and told him I definitely want to hear more about the Singapore conference later, I say, ‘So, can I tell you about my trip to Clare?’

‘Of course.’ He smiles at me. I meet his eyes and exhale .

I tell him everything up to the cliff visit, choosing a light tone to paint a picture of three merry friends on an amusing adventure. He listens without interruption but with a serious face, nodding along and taking regular sips of wine.

‘So,’ I say, tearing off a piece of salted bread and slowing down the story. ‘Then we get to the Friday. There’s good news and there’s bad news. Or, maybe, good news and bad news and more bad news. Actually, I’m not even sure if you’ll find the good news very good.’

‘Maeve.’ He refills my glass, which I didn’t notice was empty. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘Okay.’ I take a deep breath. ‘First of all, I’ll just reassure you that Kobi is fine. He’s still highly functional.’

‘I notice you said highly, not fully,’ he says, but I can’t quite read his expression.

‘Well, Josh – you, my friend, are highly observant. See, highly is good.’ I tear off more bread, shred it into smaller pieces. ‘Is it even legal to put this much salt in bread?’

He shoots me a look.

‘Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. The thing is – there was an incident.

An accident. Or an almost-accident, you might say.

We were in a car park. The little girl ran off and before we realised it, a car started reversing, straight towards her.

Kobi flew across the car park and basically threw himself in front of the car.

I’m afraid the car hit Kobi with some force. ’

‘And the little girl?’

I’m relieved that his first thought is for Lizzie.

‘She was fine – one hundred per cent fine. Kobi sustained some injuries though.’

‘You mean…’ He puts down his wine glass, raises his voice a little.

Oh no, here we go .

‘What you’re telling me is…’ He speaks slowly.

I brace myself for impact.

‘Kobi saved someone? ’

‘Oh. Yes.’

‘He saved someone?’

‘Yes.’

‘A little girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘A little girl he hardly knew?’

‘Er, yes. They got along well, but I suppose, technically, they didn’t know each other for very long.’

‘Well, well, well.’ Josh sits back and refills his own glass. ‘Well, well, well.’ He looks around for a waiter. ‘Hey, can we get some champagne over here?’

I’m flummoxed. He’s taking this much better than I expected. ‘Josh, are we…celebrating? Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story? I had to make some mods to Kobi’s body.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ He’s positively beaming at me. ‘You said yourself he’s still highly functional. I’m sure whatever you had to do to him physically can be fixed. But, Maeve – this is big. Why didn’t you tell me this on the phone?’

‘I guess…I thought you might be unhappy about the damage to Kobi’s exterior?’

He leans forward over the table. He takes my hand in his.

‘Unhappy? Maeve, don’t you see? Kobi just made a huge leap here. Huge . He acted autonomously. He made a split-second decision. He sacrificed himself, in the moment, for a human.’

‘He was just doing what any of us would have done,’ I say.

‘Exactly!’ He slaps the table. It makes a dull thud through the thick cloth. ‘Exactly! Let’s drink to that.’

10pm

I nudge Josh and giggle at the wallpaper in the hotel lobby, which is unexpectedly hilarious. We’ve stumbled the short distance back to our hotel, after we finished the second bottle of red, and the bottle of champagne, of course. I think there was food somewhere in between .

Josh can’t find his room key, another unexpectedly hilarious turn of events.

‘I’m going to the front desk. What was it you called it? Something cute. Oh yeah – “reception”. Wait for me here?’ He puts his hands on my upper arms as if fixing me in place.

As soon as he walks away, I sink down into a plush armchair, close my eyes just for a second.

The evening is going great. I can’t recall ever seeing Josh so happy, so buzzed.

He was delighted about the events of Clare, making me tell and retell the story of Kobi’s ‘heroism’, as he kept calling it.

Finally, this was the proof he needed that Kobi could be trusted around people.

Of course, he said, he always knew Kobi was safe in theory , but now we had concrete evidence of it.

I try not to dwell on the nagging worry that Josh, in spite of all his reassurances, was clearly not one hundred per cent certain of Kobi’s safety until this very evening. But can anyone really be one hundred per cent certain of anything?

I showed him photos of Kobi’s new modifications, but he just laughed and said it wasn’t a big deal. He could easily restore Kobi’s legs. I tried to argue that maybe Kobi didn’t need legs after all, but Josh didn’t want to get into it. He just kept praising me for my ‘breakthrough’ with Kobi.

He was so elated at dinner that I decided not to mention the video footage in the online newspaper after all.

Maybe it’s not always best to rip the Band-Aid off all at once.

Maybe sometimes it’s better to soak in the bathtub for a very long time, until the plaster gently surrenders itself and slips beneath the suds unnoticed…

‘Maeve!’ Josh’s voice brings me back to consciousness.

‘How long was I asleep?’ I slur. I sit up in the armchair, check my face for drool.

He rolls up his sleeve with apparently great effort, taps at invisible buttons on his watch for an age.

‘About two minutes,’ he says eventually.

We both start laughing .

‘Come on.’ He reaches out his hand.

I achieve verticality with what I hope is some dignity. I think about Kobi and his mobility challenges. I think about how Kobi has led to me being here, right now, at this very moment. Being here, with Josh.

‘Oh, bad news,’ he says with a hiccup. ‘They just told me the elevator is out of service. We’ll have to take the stairs.’

‘But my room is on the third floor,’ I say.

‘Mine is on the fourth.’

He opens the door leading to the staircase so I can go ahead of him.

The staircase is old-fashioned and narrow and we have to go single file.

He follows close behind me. It reminds me of going up in the round tower at the Viking Museum.

We near the top of the second flight. I stumble slightly, grip the banister.

He puts his right hand on my hip to steady me, his left hand on mine.

I feel the heat and spin around to face him. We’re eye to eye, Josh one step below me. Nobody speaks. I lick the corner of my lip tentatively. I feel as if I’m falling into his eyes.

I kiss him, or maybe he kisses me – it’s unclear but unimportant right now. It’s a good kiss, followed by another and another. Soon his arms are around me and I melt into him. I put my hands under his jacket, exploring the muscles in his back.

‘Will you come to my room?’ he says.

‘No,’ I murmur. ‘Mine is closer.’

We kiss-fumble our way along the corridor to room 301, torn between getting there fast and devouring each other right here in the corridor.

‘You’re amazing,’ he tells me between kisses. A memory of Shane’s face flashes in my mind, but Shane is very far away now, probably in the arms of the objectively beautiful Sandra Smith at this very minute.

I swipe the door with my key card three times before it opens. We fall into the room and pull at each other’s clothes, haphazardly attacking buttons and zips in no particular order.

We reach the bed. I stumble over hotel slippers and fall backwards, landing across the end of the bed. I bring Josh down with me. He lands on top of me, which is right where I want him. We both laugh, catch our breath for a second.

Suddenly, he pulls away from me, rushes to the bathroom. I hear him splash water on his face. When he returns, he silently scans me from head to toe. I try not to remember Kobi scanning me in a similar way in the Clare Arms Hotel.

I let my mind go blank, cede control to my body. I admire Josh’s precision-engineering skills as he now devotes equal attention to all my sensitive areas, in rotation, for equal amounts of time, probably.

Maybe, finally, this is the right place, at the right time , is the last rational thought I have before I surrender to shuddering pleasure.