Читать книгу Montpelier Parade - Karl Geary - Страница 14

8

The seats at the back of the bus were all taken, so you sat a few rows from the front. The driver had seen the bottle, had given a warning look but said nothing. It was bright upstairs and there was a clatter of laughter at every seat.

Two girls got on at the stop after you and then sat side by side one row ahead. They were about your age, but they’d dressed to hide it. You looked out the window and pretended not to be listening, stealing looks across the sides of their faces, to the makeup lines applied in a hurry, in the dark maybe, without their parents seeing. They laughed, showing their teeth and passing a naggin of vodka back and forth.

When the bus heaved into its final stop at Eden Quay, you waited to hear the door make that forced-air sound downstairs before you stood. Outside, there was only a scrap of neon along O’Connell Street, a rush of people, a thousand crushed cigarettes underfoot, and shouts and cries that rose up and receded across the oily Liffey.

In the Adelphi’s lobby, a handful of people stood around in small clusters, waiting. You were holding a ripped orange stub between your fingers, the only one there alone, the only one not old. Nobody stopped their conversation when you arrived, but the volume dropped, and eyes rolled over you in a lazy way. They whispered then, like secrets were being told.

“Screen Two has been cleaned and is now ready for seating,” says an old woman in a ruffled tuxedo shirt and black waistcoat, fully buttoned. She wedged open one side of a double door with her foot and held a torch over the stubs. The modest line moved slowly forward.

You took off your coat, used it as a cover for your bottle, and offered up your ticket for inspection. The darkened theater smelled of detergent over stale smoke. You walked quickly to the right of the screen and passed under a little sign that said mens.

There was the hum of an unseen generator. A tap dripped, and the light flickered over pink tiles. You shivered and forgot to notice yourself as you passed the mirror and went into a single cubicle.

You undid your pants and sat. The seat cold, the relief of pissing. Your elbows tucked into your knees, your fingers pressed across your tightly shut eyes. Inside of you a howl of feeling started just under the surface: an alone feeling you couldn’t keep from yourself. You inhaled violently, as though you’d been underwater for days, and your whole body shook. You punched the partition wall, and a wave of pain passed through your arm. You pulled your pants up, swinging open the little door, angry to find that your face in the mirror was still light, still young. Your red mouth, your round, soft lines of a soft face. You made a fist and punched at your face, just once, but it made your head ache.

You sat at the far aisle, toward the back, and the old velvet seat fell forward with a loud clunk. You looked for the images hidden in the beam of light overhead. Just light, until it landed on the big screen showing the last of the ads. You took a couple of slugs from the bottle and then carefully held it on the ground between your feet. Cigarette unwrapped from its toilet paper and examined for cracks, you sparked a match off the back of a seat. It took, first strike, as if it had been waiting for you all along. You were back, caught up again with the smoke and the heady rush.

Betty’s round body appeared, naked, beautiful, a lover between her open legs. The great cries of pleasure coming off the screen sent one couple scurrying off in search of a refund. You sat with your head tilted to the dark, every inch of her known to you, frame by frame. You missed some of the words, but just bits here and there, it didn’t matter. You understood he loved her, right up to the end, even when he covered her face with a pillow and held it there until she died.

The credits rolled, but you didn’t move. You were drenched with feeling. You didn’t move, not when the houselights were pushed to full beam; even the aggression of the cleaner didn’t rouse you. It was not until the empty bottle dropped from your fingers and rolled to a stop that you stood.

The lobby was bright, unfamiliar. You saw the old woman in the ruffled shirt who had taken your stub. When you held her hand in yours, it felt unbearably soft.

“Thank you,” you say.

“All right, get home safe now, love. Jimmy?” she called out. A fat man in a shiny dark suit had an arm around you. He had a drift of dandruff across his shoulder, but you didn’t say anything.

“Good man,” he says. “Good man, this way,” and his arm felt nice as he led you outside. You were planted along the dark quays, with the river on one side and, on the other, bodies escaping Saturday night on the last bus.

You decided to walk. It was dangerous, you knew that, but you wanted the chance of seeing the girls who walked along the canal. The streets looked the same, and you lost your way more than once, until you finally met the slow-moving water. Cars crept by and sometimes stopped and waited for the girls’ heels to crackle to life. They would lean across the glass and talk low and get in and get out and wrinkle like wrapping paper on Saint Stephen’s Day.

“You looking for company, love? Then what are you looking at?” one of them says. “Jaysus, your ma know you’re out?” She laughed, and her lips rolled back tight across her teeth, her skin painted and rough as calf’s leather. A car slowed but wouldn’t stop. She was annoyed then. “Here, young fella, fuck off and leave me work,” she says, watching the car disappear like a wish.

“I’m sorry,” you say. She looked at you, and with no hurry she pulled the string of her handbag across her shoulder and walked, joining some other girls who stood smoking by a bench. She lit a cigarette off the burning tip of another.

You sat on a bench farther along the canal, listless, dull. Ex­-

hausted, you thought of the long walk home. Your head spun and your eyelids began to droop. If you didn’t open them, you knew you’d be sick. And then your head lurched to one side and you were.

The footpath rolled out in front of you. Your own feet on it, one took the lead, then the other, endless. Sometimes a car passed, sometimes leaves scraped together in the wind, but you didn’t look up. When you thought of her, she was sleeping, in her warm bed, surrounded by clean sheets and soft pillows, in a perfect room, in a perfect house on Montpelier Parade.

It was like a dream, that’s how you’d remember the four or five miles you walked to deliver yourself to her doorstep. You banged on her door with your fist and called to her, “Missus.” It was loud. It felt good. “Missus.” You roared until your voice went hoarse with the relief. A light went on upstairs, and there was movement beyond the heavy door.

“Who the bloody hell is that?” she says. “I’ll call the guards.”

“It’s me,” you say. “Me, you got the wine for.”

Silence, and then a key moved in the latch and the door opened. She stood there, light thrown around her; you could feel it on your own face, and you could feel your eyes squint.

“You’re joking, you have to be joking. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“No,” you say. “I’m sorry.”

“Christ, I knew I shouldn’t have bought it. I knew,” she says. It was mostly for herself. She leaned her forehead to the edge of the door.

“What do you want? What? Because I’m about to call your father,” she says.

“I want—I was at the pictures, and it started me thinking.”

She looked at you, confused. She was wearing the same robe, pulled in a tight knot across her waist.

“Why are you here?” she says, her voice pouring in and extinguishing you. On the long walk you’d had it, an idea, a thousand gorgeous things to tell her, but now, as you looked shyly down, every one left you, and even the lit cigarette you thought you held was gone.

“I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have.” Your foot was already feeling for the first step as you began to back away.

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

“I’m so sorry, I wanted to . . . Thanks, thanks for the wine, it was the good wine. I noticed that.” She came forward, and her face fell into shadow, and you were standing at the base of the steps and could no longer see how she looked at you.

“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry,” you say again before you panicked and ran.

“Wait.” She called after you once, then stood there a moment, pulling her robe around her. You saw from your hiding place beyond the wall as she stepped back inside the house, turning once before she closed the door.