The drum was missing.
That much Catherine noticed right away as she pulled the sheet and comforter from her body, as she sleepily untangled her feet and swung them to the floor. For weeks now, upon awakening, her eyes automatically went to that space on the wall, between the wardrobe and the window, where Sean hung his bodhrán and beside it his tipper in its pouch. That was gone too. Or at least it wasn't hanging on the wall, for when she gathered her watch from her bedside table she found it there, sitting on top of its pouch. But why would he leave it behind, unless...? She felt a sudden flush of embarrassment. Which was silly of course. Why should she be embarrassed? She was a grown-up, in full possession of her faculties, and what she did in her own private... Still, she wondered what he would think.
She picked up the tipper, holding it by the smooth knobs at either end. She had held it this way in her hands every morning for the past week. But now that it seemed to have been placed there at her bedside, on purpose, she held it more tentatively, more gingerly. She brought the tipper up to her face, sniffed at it. She had been careful so far to wash it afterwards. But now she thought she detected a faintly incriminating odor. She insisted to herself that it must be her imagination. Yet she set the tipper down abruptly on its pouch.
She had thought very little about it, really had no reaction, when Sean said he was going to take up the bodhrán, take lessons, and maybe even play at a local session. Good for you boyfriend, she told him. I hope it works out. Besides, she had enough on her plate to worry about. She was stressed. And the fact he'd found himself yet another past-time to amuse himself with only made her feel a little envious. This kind of thing was easy for him. He was a more or less stress-free techie. He parachuted into a business, mystified everyone with his network magic, tinkered everything into a new rhythm, and was gone and on to the next gig without a second thought.
For her it was different. Sales was not like that, she told him. It was a way of life. The competition was serious. It was for full time professionals not amateurs, even the good-for-you kind of sales she was in, educational supplies, books and software. To Sean this was all a foreign language. He just didn't get it. But he did understand when she told him that it was getting to be too much for her, that she needed to take a bit of leave, a few weeks at least, just to decompress.
With the time off and the time to reflect she realized it wasn't just the quotas, the long hours, the competition that stressed her. It was the whole process of sales. Deep down it didn't seem like productive or legitimate work. She didn't make anything, or provide any essential service. It wasn't like being a doctor, scientist or even an engineer. All she did was facilitate the exchange of goods. Sure, she had chosen the most wholesome category of goods she knew. There was nothing unwholesome in the kind of software and textbooks she sold. Still, sales was sales. It wasn't straightforward. When she got into a room with prospects, when she made her presentation, the game was on. Subtle and not-so-subtle coercion, manipulation, self-serving shadings and shapings of the truth -- in short, she had a bad conscience.
Sean only laughed at these kinds of qualms and misgivings. You're a peddler, a drummer, Sean told her, an old and honorable profession. Go with it, and be happy. Sure, drummers have a bad reputation in some people's eye. They see them as too aggressive, even pushy, but in the right place this aggression isn't pushy, it's just the pulse of life, which everyone has -- if they're alive. It's just another set of protocols. I work with them every day. You learn the protocols and you play. It's your rules of engagement. People expect you to play by those rules. They expect you to work your magic. They resist your sly persuasions, but they'd be disappointed if you didn't try them. If you were too straightforward they wouldn't take you seriously. Besides, you have to leave the impression that they've knocked you down a bit, that they've earned a bargain. And you can't do that by giving them the bottom line from the start. And she had to admit that it was true that no matter how much people claim they don't want to be gamed or sold, they expect, even demand that you play. At the start of her career she tried total transparency and unvarnished truth. But it was like making a movie with no sound track, missing the essential melodies and rhythms. No sale.
She didn't pay a lot of attention at first to Sean's own sort of drumming. He practiced almost constantly when he wasn't at work. But he was considerate, playing upstairs in the bedroom with the door closed, or on the main floor of the townhouse when she was in the bedroom. Or he tucked a towel inside the drum to mute the sound. So his drumming almost always sounded rather distant, in the background.
His drumming became a kind of quiet accompaniment to the daily routine when he was at home, fading almost to a white noise. Yet she began to miss it when it stopped, found herself actively listening for it to begin again: the single strokes, the doubles, the triples, the now familiar Celtic rhythms. Sean's drumming began to seep by stages into her consciousness, at first only inducing a kind of feeling of comfort and relaxation, but later morphing into a more definite feeling of well being and pleasure. Lying in her bed on a weekend morning, hearing the sound of Sean's drumming rising up the stairs, gently penetrating through the closed door, set her hands wandering in arousal over her newly responsive body.
She was a little puzzled by this change in her. Was it Sean's drumming, or simply the consequences of being off work, having time on her hands, reading those novels? She wasn't sure, but she wasn't going to complain. Nor was Sean. Her more ready arousal flowed into their lovemaking, which became more intense, more frequent, more inventive.
Sean's first session at Dagda's Pub settled the question. Being his first, and being only a recent convert to the practice, he hardly had a starring role. He drummed to the side, next to more experienced drummers, trying his best to keep up and keep in time. He did well enough. It was a good start, everyone agreed. But for Catherine it was so much more.
Seeing Sean up on stage as a musician, seeing him embrace that round goatskin drum in his arm, roll the tipper across its surface in rhythms that had already become a part of her -- sent a jolt through her most intimate places. She felt an intense craving to do Sean, right there, on the stage. Afterwards, she could scarcely restrain herself. She endured the long minutes of packing up the stage, putting the instruments away, exchanging greetings. On the long ride home she kept these intense feelings to herself. But halfway up the stairs to the bedroom, following behind Sean, she suddenly grasped his hips, turned him around, unzipped his pants, and pulled out his cock. She engulfed his cock in her thrilling mouth, brought it alive, wet and electric from root to head. She sucked with a lust and enthusiasm that couldn't be taught, or even explained, outstripping all technique.
He was rock hard in seconds. In seconds, he came. Instantly, he brought her around, set her on the step above, hiked up her skirt, pulled down her panties. He fell as if famished onto her pussy, sucking and licking from bottom to top, striving she knew to give back as much or more of what she had just given him. He pushed two fingers inside, pressing upward, settled his mouth on her clit, sucked it between his lips, licked it rapidly, ecstatically. She too came in seconds. They sat a little dazed afterwards on the steps, wondering what had just happened. Later they went upstairs and made love in a more attentive and leisurely fashion.
They both thought it all a little crazy. They laughed at the idea that Catherine had become some kind of Celtic groupie. But again, neither was interested in over-analyzing this gift, or in turning it down.
Every Friday that summer was session night at Dagda's Pub, and every night afterwards the real session began, each night more urgently, so that they didn't even make it to the stairs but coupled on the floor, just after closing the door, or with the door still open. By the end of the first month, Sean hadn't even left the curb in front of the pub, hadn't even started the motor of the car, before she had undone his pants and pulled his cock into her wet mouth.
Just as Sean's drumming at home had insinuated into her consciousness, become a part of her life, now the sessions at Dagda's Pub organized her calendar, became the axis around which her week turned.
So now there seemed a lot of time to fill in between. Weekday mornings and afternoons began to drag, weigh on her a little. She made a point of getting out in the afternoon, using up some of her time shopping, browsing at the library or at the bookstore, or having coffee with friends.
It was good after all to reconnect with two of her co-workers, solid and square-jawed Beatrice, the office manager, and perpetually sad-eyed Margaret, another rep. Margaret managed always to meet her quota despite her melancholy smile, a source of wonderment to Catherine. Hearing them talk about all the familiar minutia of the game, made her again feel the pulse of her working life. Only now she felt that pulse somewhat differently. Before it felt like something imposed, stressfully, by quotas and expectations, from the outside. Now she could imagine feeling it more naturally from the inside, self-generated, fluent and unobstructed. Or at least she felt that possibility. For the first time since she began her leave of absence, she could see herself going back to work, even wanting to go back. She wondered if Beatrice and Margaret ever thought about work in this way, or whether they would understand. But she didn't know how to ask.
Still, she was not quite ready to go back to work, not just yet, for now things were entering a new stage. The bodhrán, hanging as always on the wall next to the wardrobe, ever more constantly drew her attention. It became the first thing she glanced at when she entered the room, and when she woke in the morning. She began to take it down every day, even before she was dressed -- to dust it off, she told herself -- while gliding her hand smoothly over the goatskin.
One morning, along with the drum, she took down the pouch with the tipper inside. She slid the tipper out and with it came a small foil packet of bodhrán conditioning cream. It was called Essential Cream. According to the packet, it made the goatskin supple, well tensioned and allowed for the quick release of that tension. Bodhrán cream. Not for personal use, it said.
Not for personal use. It was as if... She smiled to herself. It was unopened. The treatment was obviously overdue. Following the instructions on the packet, she turned the bodhrán over, tore the packet open and squeezed the cream out onto the inside surface of the skin. Removing her underpants -- it was all that she had yet managed to put on -- she used them to rub the cream into the drum, again as instructed. She was thorough, covering every inch inside.
