Little Black Everything

by Alex Coleman

  “Thanks, Orla. But no thanks.”

  “Fine,” Orla said somewhat angrily. “Suit yourself. Give me a ring any time if you want to talk about it. Your school problems, I mean.”

  Holly thanks her, mumbled some promises about getting back into society soon and then got off the phone as quickly as possible.

  She would be discussed over pizza the following night, there was no doubt about that. What would they say, she wondered? Her career-crisis story had probably held water for a couple of days but it was obviously past its sell-by date now. She could just about stomach the idea of them talking about her being miserably single. Her real fear was that one of them would hit on the idea that she had wanted James for herself. All she could do, she supposed, was hope that they wouldn’t.

  After another half hour of staring at the TV without even registering what she was watching, she began to contemplate going next door. She had almost gone several times in recent days but had always stopped herself. Why should she go to see them? They knew she’d been about to ask James out. If they cared, wouldn’t they already have come knocking to get the latest? She started down that mental path again now, but the frenzy of righteous indignation ended when she reminded herself with a sigh that there was no point in grumbling; Mark and Lizzie simply didn’t do visits. They’d been in her house precisely once, not long after she’d moved in, and only came then because she’d literally begged them to judge some paint samples she’d daubed on the kitchen wall.

  Mark and Lizzie greeted her in sombre tones. They had of course guessed that it had all gone wrong and had assumed that she would talk to them when she was good and ready. Over the course of two large glasses of wine – they didn’t offer any opinions on it, which spoke of their solemnity, she felt – Holly gave them the headlines. They listened attentively and made appropriately sympathetic noises. When she told them about the Cat of Many Colours, she thought she saw Mark stifling a giggle, but was gratified to see that Lizzie, at least, maintained a look of concern.

  “The worst part,” she said, “is that I don’t know where I stand with the stupid positivity experiment. The night I started trying it was the night he took up with Aisling. He wasn’t paying the remotest bit of attention to me all along. Not that I was any good at it anyway. I tried, I really did, but it wasn’t easy. So what am I going to do now? Should I try it again on some other poor bastard? Maybe try . . . harder?”

  And then she began to ramble. She knew that she was doing it, looping and backtracking, repeating the same points over and over again, but she didn’t seem able to stop herself. It was a consequence, she supposed, of having been essentially dumb for a fortnight. Her meandering rant had been going on for some time when Lizzie butted in. There was something about the manner of her interruption – the raised finger, the deep inhalation – that made Holly instantly nervous. She braced herself.

  “I want to ask you something,” Lizzy said, after a dramatic pause. “Are you really sure that you fancied James in the first place?”

  “What? What’s that sup–”

  “The reason I’m asking is that all your current complaints are exactly the same ones you had when Kevin dumped you. Is it your own fault that you’re single, would being a bit more happy-clappy make any difference, cat lady this, doomed to be alone that, yada yada. There’s nothing in there about James himself.”

  Mark nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. You’ve never gone all soppy over his manly jaw or thick, wavy hair or piercing blue eyes or whatever. The only time you ever complimented him, actually, was to say that he was, what was it, ‘intriguing’ because he was so different from you.”

  Lizzie clapped her hands together and turned to face him. “Yes. That’s it. She was never really attracted to this James in the normal sense. She just picked on him because he was so unlike her, so chirpy and cheerful, stupid name and all. He was a challenge, that was the point. She isn’t sorry that she hasn’t acquired him as a boyfriend; she’s sorry that she still hasn’t found out if the problem is her personality.”

  She clapped again. This time she seemed to be applauding herself.

  Holly fell back into her chair, cradling her empty glass as if it was a favourite cuddly toy. She felt as if some tiny tornado was laying waste to her mind, up-ending and uprooting as it went. As the seconds ticked by, the sensation grew so strong as to be mildly nauseating.

  When Mark rose from his seat to pour more wine for everyone, Holly avoided his eye. She sipped from her glass for a moment and then finally mumbled a response.

  “Bullshit,” she said. “Of course I fancied him. Fancy him. I know I’m not exactly on top of my game these days but I’m not crazy.”

  Mark and Lizzie failed to reply at first. Then Mark said, “There is some good news. Now that you know the thing with you and James was a figment of your imagination, you don’t have to avoid him and Aisling any more.”

  Holly gaped at him. “That’s your idea of good news? I – I have to go.”

  She was up and moving before they could even ask her to reconsider.

  Back in her own house, she found Claude and the Cat of Many Colours lying at either end of the sofa, apparently waiting for her. She wasn’t in the least surprised. It seemed like a perfectly logical next step in her downward spiral. She sat down between them and gave them each an absent-minded tickle. Claude leaned into his straight away. The Cat of Many Colours was more hesitant at first but soon got the idea. She was making herself at home now. Settling in.

  Over the course of the next couple of hours, Holly moved only to pet the cats. Around about the time when her hand began to go numb – she looked down at one point and realised that she was stroking a cushion – an idea occurred to her. Although she found it interesting at first, she soon pushed it away on the grounds that it was utter insanity. But it wouldn’t stay pushed away. The harder she pushed, in fact, the more forcefully it returned; she felt as if she was slamming a tennis ball against the side of a house. After a while, she surrendered and started to give the idea serious thought. Somewhere along the way, it started to sound less insane. Risky, certainly. But not insane. By the time she got up to go to bed, it didn’t even feel all that risky any more. The word for it, she decided, was . . . bold. Yes. She would be bold. Tomorrow was as good a day as any. All she needed was a hammer.

  Chapter 20

  It was just after twelve thirty on Saturday afternoon when Holly pulled in at her destination. She yanked the handbrake and took a moment to compose herself.

  Despite the previous night’s excesses, she was feeling remarkably clear-headed. It was the sort of clarity, she imagined, that assassins felt as they settled in on the rooftop and adjusted their sights. She was wearing a pair of khaki-coloured trousers and a pale blue shirt. Both items had been dragged from the very back of her wardrobe where they had languished unattended since the day of their purchase. She had a sneaking suspicion that she’d bought them both at the same time during one of the anything-but-black mini sprees that Aisling occasionally harrassed her into. Holly had never ever read very much into her fashion choices; she just liked black, that was all – dark grey at a push. It was unfortunate because it opened the door to a lot of lame jokes, but it wasn’t significant. Anyone who thought otherwise had a child’s grasp of psychology. And yet, she had given the matter a lot of thought this morning. She’d often heard actors saying how they didn’t feel that they were really getting to grips with a new character until they tried on the beard or the crown or the spacesuit. A similar notion had run through her head while she was getting ready. She was under no illusions that dressing differently would influence the outcome – but she hoped that it would help her give a better performance. The only real down-side (apart from the fact that she felt distinctly odd) was that she was half-freezing. She would have worn a jacket or cardigan, but she found that she didn’t own any that weren’t black. After she stepped out of the car and closed the door behind her, she paused and gave herself another chan
ce to change her mind. She didn’t take it.

  Inside, she found that the place was pretty much as she remembered it. There were a lot more plants than there had been before and the walls were a different colour, but the basic layout was the same. She approached the counter and waited for the attendant to get off the phone. “Sorry about that,” he said when the call finally ended. “What can I do for you?”

  “Hi,” she said. “It’s nothing too serious. I just need a new wing mirror. I went out to the car this morning and someone had smashed one off.”

  He shook his head. “Scumbags. They’re everywhere, I swear to God. Drunk, no doubt, or worse.”

  Holly shrugged. “High jinks. We were all young and stupid once.”

  “Young and stupid, maybe – violent scumbags, no. Anyway: make and model?”

  “Oh-six Yaris.”

  “Driver’s side, pass–”

  “Driver’s side. It wasn’t electric, if that makes any difference. Which I suppose it would.”

  He made a note on his clipboard. “Wouldn’t be all that easy to get a mirror off. They must have hit it some whack. Wonder what they used.”

  “God knows,” Holly said, studiously avoiding his eye. He was quite right. It hadn’t been easy to get the mirror off. By the time she finally managed it, she’d lost track of how many times she’d either glanced the hammer off it or missed altogether. Four o’clock in the morning. She’d set her alarm specially.

  “This is going to take a day or two, you know. We’ll have to get one in.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guessed as much.”

  “So, do you want to leave it with us now or come back on Monday? You might as well come back, to be honest. It’s just going to be sitting here until the part arrives. Mind you, if anybody asks, I didn’t say that. If anybody asks, I told you that you can’t go driving around with no driver’s side mirror.”

  “Got it,” Holly smiled. “Eh . . . listen. I don’t suppose Dan’s around, is he?”

  “Dan? Yeah. He’s up in his office. Will I give him a shout for you?”

  This really was the end of the line. Her very last chance to back out. “Yeah,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind. I’m an old pal of his.”

  “Oh, right. I’ll tell him you’re here. What’s the name?”

  “Holly. Holly Christmas.”

  He gave her the look. Are you joking or what? “Really?”

  “I know,” she said. “If you have any jokes, feel free to let me have ‘em. I’ve heard a good few at this stage, but you never know, you might have something original up your sleeve.”

  “I’ll have a think about it while you’re filling this in,” he said and handed her his clipboard. “Jesus . . . Holly Christmas. You must be driven mad.”

  “I really don’t mind,” she said as she scribbled. “I mean, you can’t have a name like mine and not expect to get a few cracks thrown your way.”

  “I suppose not. It gets earlier every year, doesn’t it, Christmas? Sure lookit, we have a few cards already.”

  He pointed behind him. There were indeed three Christmas cards on the shelf. All three had snowmen on them. This, Holly realised, was a serious test. It was the middle of October. The leaves were still falling. She gathered her strength together and said, “Oh well. It’s nice to get the atmosphere going early.”

  “If you say so. Right, I’ll get himself. Back in a minute.”

  He disappeared through a door behind him. Holly waited for a sense of panic to rise up inside her. None did. She was being bold. And it was going well. It was good to have got some practice in on someone else first. A warm-up, as such. No more than thirty seconds after he’d left, the attendant returned. He held the door open behind him and out stepped Dan.

  She beamed at him and extended her hand. He took it and gently squeezed.

  “Holly,” he said.

  “Hi, Dan. It’s been a while.”

  He nodded and smiled. “It sure has. So – car trouble?”

  There was no sense of awkwardness in his voice; there was barely even any surprise. It was just as Holly had expected. The guy had always been essentially unembarrassable. The last time they’d spoken, he’d broken her heart. Yet, here he was, straight into the car talk.

  “Yeah. I was just telling your colleague there, someone took my wing mirror off last night.”

  Dan nodded again. She could practically see the question forming on his lips. And there were no other garages you could have gone to? She sincerely hoped he wouldn’t give it voice. Despite giving the matter a great deal of thought, she had failed to come up with a plausible answer.

  “Will we take a look?” he said.

  There was nothing to look at, of course. But Holly understood that he didn’t want to talk to her in front of anyone else, just in case it all went weird. “Sure,” she said and led the way outside. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” she trilled as the door closed behind them.

  “Uh, yeah, not bad.”

  “So. Your dad finally let you out from behind the front desk?”

  “He retired, actually. I’m running the place now, if you can believe it.”

  This was news indeed. The business was Dan’s father’s. He had built it up from nothing and had always maintained that his son would take the reins from his cold, dead hands. It had been a major bone of contention, Holly recalled.

  “Wow,” she said. “Congratulations. He isn’t ill or anything, is he?”

  “No, nothing like that. He just woke up one day and decided he wanted out. Did a lot of talking about seeing the world, but he’s hardly left the house, as far as I can see. About a year ago, this was.”

  “Well, good for you.”

  “Yeah. Cheers. I’m enjoying myself.” They had reached the car now. Dan ran his fingers over the jagged wound where the mirror had been attached. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear the screams from here,” he said.

  Holly played dumb even though she knew fine well what he meant. “What screams?”

  “You. I’m sure you had a fit when you saw it.”

  “Nah, not really. I mean, I wasn’t exactly pleased but sure what can you do? No point in getting upset about these things.”

  He turned to face her and tilted his head to one side. “Wow. Have you taken up meditation or something?”

  Would it be overdoing things to fake ignorance again? She decided not. “Sorry? Meditation?”

  “Or found religion? The Holly Christmas I knew would have gone absolutely apeshit at the sight of this.”

  “Oh. I see. No, no meditation. No religion either. I suppose I was a bit of a ranter and raver back then, wasn’t I?”

  “Well . . . ”

  “I don’t mind if you agree, Dan. People are always reminding me of the way I used to be in the bad old days.”

  “They’re the ‘bad old days’ now?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He rolled his head about on his shoulder, neither nodding nor shaking. “Still teaching?”

  “Yeah, still at it.”

  “As much fun as ever?”

  “It’s great, yeah. Can’t complain.”

  “Oh . . . I was joking.”

  “What? When?”

  “When I said, ‘As much fun as ever.’ You used to give out shite about it all the time.”

  “Did I? I suppose I probably did. But I used to give out about a lot of things, people tell me.”

  “Holly, are you sure you haven’t had a bang on the head or something?”

  She fake-laughed, badly. “Ha! Ha! People are always tell–”

  “There you go again. What’s all this about ‘people’ telling you stuff? You sound like you’ve lost your memory.”

  Oops – she had gone too far. It was time to apply the brakes. “Ha! Ha! My memory’s fine, thanks. So, are you still living in Ranelagh?”

  He took a moment to respond. “Yeah. Same old place. Better furniture now, that’s about all.”

  “Aw, don’t tell me you go
t rid of the orange sofa?”

  “I did, yeah. Sorry. It served me well but I had to put it out of its misery. Poor old thing was falling apart. What about you? Still in Portobello?”

  “Yup. And I still have the same old furniture too. No fancy promotions for me.”

  “And how’s Aisling and, uh . . . ”

  “Orla. They’re fine.”

  “Tell them I was asking for them, will you? Especially Aisling.”

  When they were a couple, Holly had let it slip – quite deliberately – that Aisling had a crush on him. It had been a running joke between them. One day, he was going to run off with her, and so on. It hadn’t seemed quite as funny after they’d broken up and it didn’t seem particularly funny now.

  Holly swallowed the indignation that was creeping up in her and went with the first banality that occurred to her. “I will. They’ll be delighted to hear that you’re doing so well. How are Tommy and Olly and Nutter and the boys?”

  “Same as ever. You know yourself.”

  “Yeah. Tell them I said hello.”

  “Even Nutter?” Dan asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Seriously. I’m getting worried now. You hated Nutter.”

  This was true. Nutter was so-called by Dan’s crowd because he was “a character” who was “liable to do anything”. As soon as she’d laid eyes on him, Holly had pegged him as a cretinous boor who made up for his lack of genuine wit by shouting a lot and falling off things while drunk. He was the only one of Dan’s friends who had ever slagged her off about her name. She had greatly enjoyed taking lumps out of him when he did.

  “We didn’t get on at first, maybe,” she said.

  “You didn’t get on at all, ever,” Dan corrected. “But I’ll pass on your greeting.”

  They looked at each for a moment and then both looked away. Holly’s mouth went dry. It was all going wrong. The plan had been to engage him in polite conversation, over the course of which he would slowly come to realise that she was a different person now. After they’d spent a while singing a few of the old songs, she would suggest that they go out for a drink some time, just to catch up properly. But she’d overdone it. Instead of letting him come to his own conclusions, she had dragged him there by the scruff of his neck. Now the conversation was running out of steam and all she’d managed to do, apparently, was mildly freak him out. She shifted her weight onto one hip and searched desperately for something useful to add. Then Dan said, “So, what about your, uh . . . personal life? Anything wild happening there?”