Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  She disappeared.

  Seán leaned over and puked into the gutter again, just missing her abandoned shoe.

  He was woken by the growl of an engine and a blast of searing sunlight. A car, approaching. Groaning, he tried to push his torso up off the ground. Pain shot through him. He gritted his teeth and tried to call.

  ‘Stop, please, help…’

  His arm waved feebly.

  The car stopped. A cab. Seán sank back and watched two feet shod in dirty grey runners walk towards him. Denim legs bent. A stubbled face with red-rimmed eyes peered at him. ‘Jesus, pal. You been in the wars.’

  Seán caught the smell of a mouth that had been awake all night.

  ‘I’ve broken my – can you – I’ve got…’ Weakly, he patted his coat pocket.

  ‘Okay, no probs.’

  Two hands wrapped themselves around his torso, lifted him, and he screamed.

  ‘It’s alright, pal. I’m not far.’

  The world bounced past, red with pain. A car door opened. The hands slid him inside.

  ‘There you go.’

  The front door opened, slammed. The key turned in the ignition.

  ‘Vincent’s Hospital alright? It’s the nearest.’

  Seán nodded, his face pressed against the cool glass of the window.

  As they pulled away, something on the ground caught Seán’s eye. Standing upright in the gutter, Poppet’s shoe. In the daylight it was red. He couldn’t see the cracked heel. The cab swerved around a corner, and the shoe vanished.

  A sprain, they said in the hospital, after making him wait for five hours. A few days’ rest and you’ll be right as rain.

  When he got home, clinging to his crutch, Lola was sitting in the chrome and marble kitchen he had built for her, sipping coffee and leafing through the Weekend magazine.

  He leant against the door and watched her. Shame crept red fingers up his throat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t mean…’

  Lola sighed.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. He hobbled towards her and dropped onto his good knee, ignoring his screaming ankle.

  ‘Stop,’ she said.

  His head paused, an inch from her lap. He could smell her scent: coffee and Chanel.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I never—’

  She sighed again, silencing him. Her hand lifted.

  He closed his eyes, longing for contact. In the blackness he saw steam rise from her coffee cup, draw circles in the air, reflect silver on the dark Jackie O glasses that she always wore to cover the cracked and bleeding traces of their bond from the unseeing, meddlesome eyes of strangers.

  Found Wanting

  I dreamt of him again last night. Johnny O. Slick and lean as a piece of liquorice, black hair scooped up either side of his head like the plastic coiffure of a replica Elvis. I know that image is old now, outworn, maybe even dead, replaced by— What? A paunch, receding hairline, two kids, a four-by-four, a semi-d in Clondalkin (if he’s lucky), some job I can’t even conceive? But still.

  I am wondering if I’ll tell Carmel.

  I first saw him, like the song goes, on Grafton Street in November. A cold mist up. The air just hanging there, waiting for the Christmas shoppers to break through it with their manic, unthinking urgency. He was at the Stephen’s Green end of the street, dressed in a long black leather coat, doing nothing. I, on my way to meet Mark, thinking I was late, as I always was back then, touched his arm – ‘Excuse me’ – to ask the time. He turned, sweeping open a window in my reality, and I fell through.

  Do I believe in love? I hate that question. I believe there are all kinds of love, but none, not even motherlove – and I know that one, intimately – means you get something for nothing. The messiest kind, with all it entails, jealousy and insecurity and so forth, is nothing but hurt; falling in it just an all-too common chemical high, Nature’s sugar pill for genetic coding’s cruel triggering of the replicate-slash-nurture button.

  Yet.

  See me, as he saw me, on that winter corner. Shaking like a schoolgirl, ice down my front, forehead to crotch, insides sloshing petrol, yearning for a match.

  A long blonde rushed up, swung him away from me before he could reply, grabbing his arm with easy familiarity, covered him with kisses.

  A long blonde rushed him away from me, extracting kisses before he could protest; loosening his arm with easy familiarity, swung off.

  Mine.

  I’ll remember that, vivid, under my skin.

  Sometimes it’s hard to name what you feel. The rest of the day lay on me heavy and formless, lead cottonwool sucking moisture from my lungs. But that night I dreamt of him. I woke, craving, and there it was, as Francis Bacon used to say. Something had slipped sideways, setting me on a course. Sounds simple, but oh, its working was a worm in my code.

  Dublin is a small town, was even smaller then. Inside its Viking walls, everyone is connected. I had many friends at that time – physical friends, not virtual ones, the type whose fears and evasions you smell in the moment, whose shame you sense prickling on your own skin, whose spoken utterings you pity for their unedited gaucheness, whose breasts you hug yourself into at times of need. I had lots of them, dear ones, in that late twentysomething way when you think you’ll be friends for life because oh, they’re so special, and because you’re all immortal anyway, when you think that’s what you need, friends and more friends, when you think that’s all that matters. I was careful, I remember. Not too direct. I didn’t approach everyone. I cherry-picked the nodes on the network, found different tangents in, feeding them lies and excuses while I drilled them for information. Though drilled, like lies, attributes too much consciousness to what I was doing. I would start off asking one thing: you know that movie Mark said he saw when I was away… But on the Mark, he would spark up in my mind, the guy from Grafton Street, and the question would become something else: you know that blonde…

  I was tracking him, I realised. I can’t deny the rush that gave me, the clean line it seemed to carve through everything that was going on.

  Bit by bit, I felt him clarify. His name, his job. The O, apparently, was some sort of joke. He was English.

  The music business bothered me, I admit. I should have known, what had I expected – the coat, that swagger – oh, fuck, oh dear. I’d slept with enough musos in my day to know it wasn’t always what it said on the tin. All great from the mosh-pit, then you get them into the sack and it’s selfish this or spaced-out that, or doling it out on brute speed-dial, as if force and vigour alone is proof of something, anything, everything.

  Thinking (I bet): Groupie. Thinking (I bet): Take it, Slut.

  Did that, I asked myself, have to be a problem?

  I started getting impatient. I didn’t want to hear any more details about his life. They felt banal, irritating, a distraction. Enough talk. I needed to make our paths cross. I thought it would be easy; the scene was tight in those days, like it probably still is. Selecting three from my circle – a college pal, a mate from work and Carmel, practical Carmel, who’d been my friend since we were tots – I began to frequent his haunts. I didn’t let on what I was after. In the safety of numbers, I earwigged on his mates, mapped his movements.

  Oh, that crooked smelly finger. Eat the apple, my dear.

  On my way home from work I began taking detours, wandering coyly off the path. Like Red Riding Hood, I fancied, swinging a leash. I’d stop into aulfella pubs and sandwich bars or the new music centre where I’d sip a warming pint for a couple of hours, flicking through Q and Wired, pretending to be someone from A&R.

  A certain desperation took hold of me. I realised I was thinking his name on repeat, as if trying to groove it into my cortex: Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. I began imagining him in the bed beside me, the far side from Mark. He became the blanket I’d sucked on as a kid, but soilier. In the theatre of my mind, we started acting out the big roles. I held him, kissed him, felt him naked on me, in me, around me, all
that. And yes, though it’s nobody’s business, I began fooling around with myself to him too.

  I cringe to recall this. I am mortified. It is pathetic, this thing. They say it’s our animal selves. Give me a break. Animals, at least, have dignity.

  The rush turned acid, ate at my stomach lining. I started to look like shit. The thought struck me that I was grieving. I struck it back, the useless thought, and found myself opening up to friends. Lorraine first, the pal from college, who’d done computer science before switching to marketing because that’s where all the fun was. Ooh, she said, a wee crush? So that’s why… How exciting. He sounds. Mmm. I know exactly how you feel, did I tell you about—

  Then Carmel.

  Christ, she said.

  What was I doing? she said. I had a good thing going. I was happy in my relationship. Wasn’t I? She looked a bit upset, the line that showed she cared ridging her forehead. Some people would give their eye teeth, she said. Mark was great, a great guy, what we had was great. We’d been together ages. Why spoil it? She paused, and I knew she was going to invoke Princess Di, who was everywhere then, with her head-tilting heartfelt confessions on BBC2, and Camilla, the ghostly wrecker sliming uninvited between herself and Chuck in the royal four-poster.

  Go on, I thought. Say it.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she said, ‘you don’t even know him.’

  I felt my face gurn like a five year old’s, my fists clench.

  I know, I could have said. That’s the fucking point, Carmel.

  That week, Mark had gone away to Brighton, to another Internet conference. Back then, people still spoke of the Internet in capital letters, and dotcoms were only twinkles in their begetters’ imaginations. Along with Di’s Panoramal confessions, digital superhighways were all the rage. To the rest of the world, Mark was hot. And to me?

  Ah, please.

  This, too, I find difficult. Even now, I can’t pinpoint when it started, the erosion between us. I know it wasn’t overnight. Becoming unimportant to someone, growing out of love – or whatever people call love to justify their commitment to each other – is slow and painless. Like being numbed to death. Everything’s fine, it’s always fine. Then one morning you discover you’ve been waking up on separate sides of the fence and the fence is so fucking high you wonder how you both scaled it in the first place.

  I could go deeper. I probably should.

  I could talk about childhood, his or mine, or our respective parents and their respectively fucked-up relationships, or our history as a couple, the arguments about my dad’s money, the rushing into it straight after college, or even the man on the beach who let me feel his penis when I was three. I could rest longer on that word, let. I could talk about the things I should or shouldn’t have done in my teenage years, the things I should or shouldn’t have told Mark. But come on. It’s simple. Mark was great, I was being a shit. Let’s leave it there.

  In the end, know this: it was Carmel’s doing.

  She called me up on the Tuesday, suggested we go out. We hadn’t been on the tear on a week night in ages, just the two of us. I agreed and we scrambled into town in her little Fiat, honking wannabe wide boys out of the way.

  It had been two months since Grafton Street. I was tense, wound-up. Carmel didn’t seem to notice. Crossing Rathmines Bridge, I thought – desperate, yes – of suggesting one of Johnny’s hangouts, see if I could steer us there without her copping. Then I caught her looking at me, just a flash, worried like she knew, and the whole thing seemed futile suddenly, silly. We ended up not being able to get parking in the usual spots, so we settled for a cheap tiles-and-piss pub on the quays. Well, said Carmel brightly. Pints on you. I looked around the squalid cell-like walls and although I knew she hadn’t chosen this place on purpose – how could she? – my sense of futility deepened. Was this how it was going to end: in a grim sentencing chamber, with my best friend playing executioner?

  I could already hear her words: Grow up, wise up, give up.

  Can I blame her? I’d obviously become extremely boring by then. That usually goes with this territory.

  I could feel what she was going to say. Perhaps, somewhere, I knew I’d asked for it, but I didn’t want to make it easy for her. So I started bitching. Work first: my boss, the new girl. Carmel didn’t seem to mind, welcomed it, in fact. Two drinks down, Smithwicks and pub crisps, we’d got quite relaxed, and because that felt better, after all the tension, I started bitching about Lorraine too. How flighty she was, how immature, what a gabber. And a bit thick. I mean, who would move from programming to marketing for fun? The problem with Lorraine, I said, and even Mark knew this, though he was too nice to say it, them being so tight in the old days, such good friends before I’d got to know her, was you could tell her something and think it was in complete confidence, but then she’d splurt it out to someone, anyone, and not even realise. She was thick, wasn’t she? No offence, Carm, but she really should be the blonde. Or was I just being mean? Carmel laughed. Both, she said. I shouldn’t say this, she said, but I’ve forgotten how much I love it when you’re being mean. Look, she said, leaning in, worried again, and that caring line creased her forehead, and my skin itched, and I knew it was coming. Except then she stopped, her eyes focused beyond my shoulder.

  Take note: she was the one who stopped, and let me see.

  Johnny had come in, with a group of three. All boys, no blonde.

  Wow, said Carmel weakly, and started to laugh.

  Wow, I thought.

  Isn’t it always the way, with reprieve? The one time you don’t expect and – wow.

  They sat down, two tables away. I sneaked a glance. He was tall, but not as tall as I’d remembered, his face less symmetrical, a crease in his forehead over one eyebrow, a little scar under his right cheekbone. I was suddenly, foolishly, paralysed. See me as Carmel saw me: red as a beet, howlingly aware of hair, clothes, earrings. What age? Take a guess. Fourteen?

  Carmel just happened to know one of his friends from her college days, or he knew her, and they struck up a conversation across the tabletops of emptying pint glasses. I concentrated on my Smithwicks. Someone half-shouted in my direction. An English accent. Johnny. He was looking over. His eyes were almost black. Was he interested? I smiled back, tried to make it casual.

  We talked for over two hours. I can’t remember much of it. He was from southern England, he told me. Kent. His accent was nice, deep brown like his eyes. It had me at a disadvantage. I wasn’t sure if I liked that. I hadn’t expected that, to be so unsure. He moved closer, saying he couldn’t hear, and the edges of his consonants stroked the back of my neck. I thought of pulling away, but then I looked over at Carmel, still flirting with the friend, and stayed. We sat on the mottled greasy leather seating, thighs that distance apart where any closer they’d be touching, and went on with our illusory conversation. Bland synchronicities masquerading as fate: a shared love of the smell of roasting coffee, the taste of Camembert, the sounds of The Pixies. And throughout the silly chat and sudden stops and awkward, lengthening silences, we played the usual games. Pressing closer to share confidences, touching an elbow to make a point, accidentally – oops, sorry! – moving our pint glasses together so we’d have to brush each other’s hands when we went to take a sip. Apologies: I say we. I have no idea what he was thinking. I mean, of course, I.

  And Mark, Mark nowhere at the back of my mind.

  At one point Johnny said ‘Grafton Street’. He’d glanced away, at Carmel – who was laughing with both his mates now, a bit too bright, like she did sometimes, when she was stressed – and he’d spoken low. My thigh retreated. His face shut down. I went to the loo. I should go home, I thought. When I returned I saw he’d bought me another drink. His gaze stuck to me as I slid into the seat. And oh my god, I felt made by it. Never so real.

  I recently watched a programme about people who have phobias about dogs and feathers and things. That’s how I felt that night – heart, pulse, breath about to burst; an agoraphobic m
arooned in Kansas.

  We found more ways of touching. The weight of his eyes on me made me ill.

  We left the pub with the others. A party was supposed to be happening nearby. I pretended to follow. I could see Carmel down the street, turning. He pulled me back, gripping my waist. ‘Stay here with me or I’ll break your face.’ I’m not sure which is more pathetic: him saying that or me with my half-assed outrage already melting, stillborn.

  We fucked down an alleyway, like a bad noir. It was cold and the base of my spine ached from friction with the wall. The next day I found a bruise there the size of my fist, which I explained to Mark as an accident during aerobics. It wasn’t good at first, no foreplay, too messy, too hurried. He kept slipping out and didn’t find it funny. After all the build-up my nerves had turned giddy and I giggled, hard. But even with the awkwardness and panic, the cold and the pain and the stupid schoolgirl titters, there was something: a moment that surprised me, where I felt myself emerge to meet him in a way I hadn’t met anyone before. I will not say if I thought of Mark.

  He asked if he could see me again. I told him I was married.

  ‘Shame,’ he said, shrugging away from me as he buttoned his jeans. He started walking down the alleyway, his silhouette spiky against the oily lights of the traffic.

  ‘No – wait,’ I said. ‘Johnny?’ It was odd speaking his name. Too soon, too intimate; like calling a child, or a vassal.

  He paused. I imagined him relishing the moment. The taste of power, the smoke of his cigarette. I hated myself. I pulled my tights up, skirt down. Closed my eyes.

  His breath was warm on my neck. He slid his hand around, pressed it against my belly.

  ‘Yes?’ he said in that English way, polite and strange, inside my ear.

  I lurched away. ‘Nothing.’

  His mouth made a little shape that was almost a smile. He swaggered off and the street lights bounced off his hair and coat, outlining him in glitter.

  Oh, silly me. I had let the ghost into our bed and now I couldn’t push him out. When I got home, I saw Johnny in every reflection, his eyes smearing me. We hadn’t swapped telephone numbers. Back then, nobody had mobiles. I fell asleep, found myself trying to force his number into existence through a dream. Nothing manifested but my own date of birth in glowing neon and a cartoony Stephen Hawking, zipping over the Wicklow mountains in his motorised wheelchair, wearing a strange, long white beard and predicting the end of the world.