Black Coffee

 I used to work in a bar, I'd see the same faces as the days went by. Flies to the counter. They all had stories and were eager to share. One was a successful businessman who had lost more than half of everything he owned when his wife divorced him. He had to pay for her lawyer during the court battle and wound up paying for a good one. His knuckles would turn white grasping his whiskey soda and some days I thought the glass would surely break. Another was a sixty year old who had been in and out of the red brick for most of his adult life. He believed that aliens had abducted and probed him in his youth and was prone to episodes. The psychiatrists assumed it had been some kind of abuse that his young brain had tried to protect itself from. The several rounds of electro-convulsive therapy did little but slur words. After his father died he talked less of aliens and the doctors, like the rest of us, tried to put the connection out of our minds. Then there was the lady who'd drink Chardonnay steadily, a bag of colours and sketch pads for her son. He went through the art supplies fast, she'd talk of the future he had ahead. Gallery openings or maybe a job in graphic design, as long as he was happy. That seemed normal enough until my manager told me the boy had been a vegetable going on twenty years. Most days I would finish my shift and feel as if a great animal was looming overhead, waiting to descend. I had to leave the bar after three months. People talk a lot of energies and auras, echoes of emotions felt. I'm not sure if any of that is true but I am sure that had I stayed in that pub I would have become one of its regulars.

The café Isabella asked me to meet her at is modelled after a library. The green and red of classic spines are painted against the wall. The room is pleasant, spacious. It does not have any of the melancholy residue of the bar I once worked at. I order a coffee and sit next to the window wondering what I might leave behind. Outside a mild rain falls alongside oranged leaves. A white and red bus pulls to a stop, passengers get off, passengers get on. I hold my right hand over my red eye and watch the bus pull away, the lashes brush my palm. It hurts my eyelid. Soon there will be no leaves on the skinny, roadside trees but the buses will come, the buses will go and someone will sit here and someone will watch them.

-Hey.

-Hello, I say keeping my hand over my eye as I turned to her.

-Bad again?

I remove my hand, she makes an E with her lips. The waiter put my coffee down and asked for Isabella's order. Grapefruit and pineapple tea.

-I was drinking a lot at the start, she said, I didn't know.

-You couldn't have, no point worrying.

We had used protection intermittently. She wasn't on the pill, or the implant. I can't remember the name of it. It looked like a hair tie and sent some hormones out. She would keep it inside until her period and then change it. It stopped her getting spots, it was not uncomfortable. It hadn't worked.

-But I am worrying. I'm very worried.

-What do you want to do?

She became sour for a moment.

-I don't want to do anything alone.

I shook my head.

-I didn't mean it like that. Do you still feel the same?

We had talked about this happening when we were together, if she got pregnant we would have the child. People often say it's the woman's choice and ultimately they are right but to imply that the man should not be heard is as sexist as anything else. A foetus is the potential for a human life, to me this seemed important. I liked the idea of something mystical, but I could not convince myself. Potential was real though, I could believe in potential. Sometimes I would argue internally about whether I valued a non-living life over my own. I suppose I did, willing for my life to take unexpected, possibly miserable, bends for the potential life.

-I don't know how I feel, now that it's happening.

She turned to me as if to apologize.

-Do you love me? I asked.

She took a sip of her tea.

-Not the way you love me.

I nodded and drank some coffee. I would leave something malignant in this café but I would not let Isabella know.

-You would let me see him wouldn't you?

-Of course.

She put her fingers around mine. I felt that great animal looming once again.

-You'd be a good father.

I slid my hand away and squeezed my forehead.

-This is fucked, I said.

-Worse things happen to people.

-In the Middle East they'd pelt rocks at you, I said and she laughed and then we were quite again.

-I just need some time to think it over.

I nodded and stirred the black water.

-Yeah, I said, maybe it'd be bad for him to have parents that weren't together.

-It mightn't be a him.

-I'd feel weird calling him 'it'.

-Like that horror movie, she said.

-Like that horror movie, I repeated.

-But we could be friends?

-We could be, I said, but that's hard for me right now. You understand?

-I do but you'll move on.

-I am, I said surprised at how definite it sounded, but there's teething still.

She nodded, finished her tea and stood up.

-I'm glad we could talk, I can call you again? I'll need things and I can't afford-

-I'm not working either, I cut her off, but as soon as I can get work I'll help you as best I can. I promise.

-I still don't know what I want.

-That's okay, I don't know either.

-Thank you James, she kissed my cheek and left. When I got to the counter she had forgotten to pay for her tea. I barely had the change. Outside there was young, hooded girl sitting beside an ATM with a small puppy in her arms. In front of her a crumpled coffee cup with less than two euros inside.

-Can you help me?

The puppy looked up, his tongue falling from one side of his jaw. He was black and brown and white. I smiled at the dog, he seemed to smile back, unaware of how broke myself and his master were.

-I really wish I could help you, and I looked at her as honestly as I could.

She smiled and said 'that's okay.'

 -I really do, I said again and started walking away.

Excerpt from an almost finished short

Parts of the grass have been dug up by whatever tires the door belonged to. Some drunk kid, entitled as fuck I’d say, drink, drive and donuts. Either way the van city government are charging him for the repair work. We start at picking the tread marks, Andore asks if we’d be better off using the Stripper. Lucas doesn’t respond. Politely he asks again. No reply. I smile at the new guy and throw eyes to the skies.

                “The community asked us to do this slow, charge by the hour” Lucas says “teach the little piglet a lesson.”

                He stands by the car door and lights a fag. He doesn’t lift a pick. Sweat beads and rolls over my brows, stinging my eyes. I drop the pick and walk to the truck to get some water, I screw the top off and down some.

                “Who said you could have a break?!” Lucas shouts.

                “Thought you wanted to do it slow.” I yell back.

                Birdman stops picking and looks at me, biting his bottom lip to stop the laughter. Andore looks to Lucas, Remy keeps at the job. Lucas walks over to me carrying his bulk with clenched fists to the side. He stops a foot from me and stares, he grabs the water bottle from me and unscrews the top slowly. He begins drinking, water streaming down his heavy jowls. He keeps his eyes on me, head slanted until every drop is gone. He screws the top back on, hands me the bottle and glares.

                “Back to work” he says.

                I go back to work.           

                My arms start burning, heat rising off my biceps. Everything starts to hurt. Whenever I try to stop for a breath Lucas eyes me. Cumbersome isn’t the word at all. Lucky to get through ten inches in ten minutes. I start to see shapes in the ruffled dirt, people wrapped around one another, faces. Sweat dripping into tiny puddles beneath me, my breath heavy. I start to think about my childhood, ice cream lining my knuckles, da giving me maths grinds. He used to put me on his back in the pool before I could swim, holding on in the deep end. Floating. A cool breeze shushes somewhere behind my eyes. I feel the pick axe in my hand, my fingers calloused on the wood. An extension. I breathe in the leaves, the trees, the mark of the treads. Something is about to happen, I’m about to lift off the ground or be sucked into it and then Lucas shouts fifteen minutes and it’s break and I snap out. All the way out. Lucas walks to his truck, he never eats with us.

                “You doing okay Irish?” Birdman asks.

                “What’s the deal with Lucas?”

                “He’s got a mood thing, don’t take it personally. He feels worse about that then you do.”

                “You should have seen him before he kicked the drink.” Andore says.

                “He was a fucking demon.”

                Someone asks Remy what he did back in Montreal and to be fair the chap gives us the best answer ever. A Pedobaiter.

                “What the fuck is that?” I ask.

                “I would set up fake facebooks” his French Canadian accent is weak now “be a fifteen year old boy or whatever. Get them to say some weird shit and then tell them to put a grand in my account or I’d send all the shit they said to me to their families.”

                No one says a thing.

                “Snagged a cop by mistake, had to get out of Montreal.”

                The door on the truck opens, fifteen minutes isn’t a lot. He walks towards us. His torn dungarees caught in a mild breeze. We walk towards the pick axes, horizontal beside the treads. Lucas hands me a water bottle as I walk and nods. There is something terribly desperate in the way he looks at me, like a dog that shit the bed. Thanks I say and drink. He walks away before I can hand him the bottle.

                It’s mine now.  

Curracloe

Little one for the summer...

Curracloe

The cars looking for parking and granddad saying out past the sand bank are basking sharks. That he used swim with them out in Dungarvan and he gives a wink. Young lads green coming off the waltzers and through the P.A. there’s a seat left on the Future Dance. The roar of holiday money thrown to chippers and arcades, pin balls smashing records. And in the marram grass the big fella is climbing up on the missus, half clothed the big red neck on him. Little men with ice cream snots dripping off the top lip shouting and bawling as a skinny chap in atomic green togs, water to his ankles, wonders the point of it at all. And granddad says they’ve no teeth on them but by Jaysus they’d swally ya whole. And now the big fella, covered in lumpy sweat apologizing to the missus, just gimme a few minutes says he and I’ll be ready again, the sand plastered up his inner thigh tearing the hole off him. Mothers with sun screen palms and everyone trying to make memories, forcing too hard, some. But we lie down and bask in it all, melanomas and our skins not able. And there he is now a little bit further out, shaking with the cold and the waves turning black. The chap in atomic togs swimming with sharks.

VAN CITY 2

These are barely edited, jaysus they're as raw...enjoy it anyway


VAN-CITY 2

May as well be times square for a Wexford boy. Streets gridded across each other and buildings so tall you go ant like. But god love them these poor lads don’t know how to name places at all. Future Shop one of them was called and Chronic Tacos was another. There’s a dose of punky looking one’s begging for money with a cardboard sign that reads: Too honest to steal, to ugly to whore. The tranny goes by sitting in the back seat of the squad car and I throw a quarter, or a dime or, a nickel down. No idea. The tiredness of the world is heavy and I duck into Bulldog Coffee ordering an Americano. The coffee’s two dollars but I get charged twenty cents more. I’m about to start something but then I remember the tax. I sit down by the window and open a book about enlightenment. I’m trying to understand it but it’s tough going like. Full of these stories that don’t make sense and how you’re already enlightened and if you strive to be enlightened you won’t be enlightened. If you meet the Buddha on the way kill him. But I keep at it and if I’m truthful I don’t understand a word. That’s the point the book says.

                When I get back to the hostel Beano’s after leaving a message in with the dudey-man that sold him the mushies. It doesn’t say much:

                Couldn’t hack it man, went home. Good luck.

                So that’s that, half way around the world by myself with three full packs of lexapro and two grand.

                You’ve never seen Guinness poured as quick and those country boys aren’t lying it doesn’t fucking travel. Nearly eight quid for the pint before tax and yer one has the gob open for tips all afternoon. And don’t even start about the pub, a ‘sports bar’ with some eejit on the telly spinning the handle bars of his BMX. Beano’s probably waiting on a plane now, heart sunk on his ma’s dinners. Might even be right what?

                It’s six when I get back to the hostel, eyes jet lagging, wankered on four pints. Leonard’s gone and it’s just me in the room. Nicer jails out there I’d say. Four green bunks, four lockers and a wooden floor. Walls are just stacked bricks like the dorms back at DCU. I drop two sleeping tablets, an antidepressant and wait to fall asleep. My heart starts hurting like it sometimes does, those sour pints of Guinness turning bad in me. Sadness looming, the heart tighter, sure what have you to be moaning about? Half way around the world and a small fortune. I’m reminded of my own weakness born of nothing in particular. I fall asleep gasping and fart some stout.

VAN CITY

gonna turn this one into a short story but right now it's kinds working as flash fiction.

VAN CITY

The air hostess brought me four party cans, one after another before I dropped two sleeping tablets. Twenty minutes later Beano taps me on the shoulder saying to come to the tail of the plane and look at all the ice. He asks me why I’m stumbling and I give him two sleepers. The nine hour flight to Canada breezes by, us with our heads dog-like at the windows and half closed eyes. Beano starts talking to some contractor who tells us he can set us up with a tree planting company if we ever go to Alberta. He’s slurring his words though, the sleepers coming on strong and him going on about how he’s republican out and out. I interject, try and keep the old boy onside should we ever decide on Alberta. I don’t remember the rest of the journey. Beano and me head to the luggage bay after the landing and he goes:

                “Jaysus boy you were slurring your words some bad back there.”

                The lad on the desk at the hostel asks if we want some dried mushrooms. Mexican he says and scratches his stubble, dandruff in his hair. Just the room I say and Beano says fuck it, takes two stalks worth heads on them like UFOs. There’s no elevator to the rooms, I manage lugging a two year visa worth up the stairs, arms cramped up and raw. Each room has a flag painted on the door, I’m staying in Argentina with a Swede called Leonard. He’s a fifty odd chap, smell of money off him too flicking through pages on a tablet. Hello I say, realising how long it’s been since I used that particular word to greet anyone. Yup, Story, Craic, newly useless. He smiles and puts his head back to the screen, half eaten apple there like a medal. I take another sleeper out of my bag wash it back with a sup of water and my antidepressant. I fire everything into my locker and lie on my bunk the springs moaning with pressure.

                In the morning there’s still no sign of Beano. I head down to the restaurant for a free breakfast, rashers me hole, bacon like a bag of tayto. Fucking bagels and something called wonderbread. The apples are savage though to be fair. The waiter comes over to me and starts going on about bagels with jelly and cream cheese. “Cheers” and he stands there eyeing me like the conversations not done. Okay then he says and fucks off. It’s playoff season and the Canucks are doing well, a pride parade is due next week and its ten years since they caught Robert Pickton. They nabbed him before he had a chance to do his fiftieth prostitute, bits of the rest of them out with the pigs. I walk out onto Granville St, and there’s two hoores boxing the chops off each other by a greyhound bus. I watch from a safe distance, they both look crack hungry, one of them muscled and toned. Square jaw tense as she’s throwing another dig and then I see it, all because her skirts riding up her leg. The little mickey head-banging between her thighs. The cops pull in and break it up, stick the made up fella in the back seat the other one crying out loose teeth.

                Van-fucking-couver sahn.