short fiction

– First published in Swerve 2, July 2023

“Here.” Cian nods at me. “Throw the BVM into your handbag, will you?”

I catch the miniature statue and in she goes. She used to come out with us all the time – the Blessed Virgin and a digital camera – posing for photo opportunities beside a row of shot glasses or a handsome pint, or, occasionally, a small bag of pills. To be fair, she doesn’t get as many outings as she used to. We were in college when she started going on the lash, and now we are somewhere else. Jobs acquired. Playing at being adults.

It’s the in-between times. We are beyond shithole student houses but before mortgages. Post-Nokia 3210 but before iPhones. After the great friend bubbles have formed but before the long drifting apart of life.

We think we have problems.

“Do you think it’s ok…” I start again. Stuck on a fucking loop.

“Stop, will you?” he says. “It’s grand. Good Friday belongs to everyone. Hasn’t it always?”

“Yeah, but it’s her house.” And I haven’t seen her since, I think. I pick up the bag of cans all the same, uneasy but ready to leave. “Do I look alright?”

Cian inhales deeply on the end of his cigarette and puts it out in the ashtray on the coffee table. He gives me a squinty eye. “You look like shit.”

We both laugh.

He’s sitting there, watching me. He checks his watch. “It’s a bit early yet.”

I sit back on the couch. The skin around my thumbnail is sore and bleeding. I hadn’t noticed I was picking at it. I put the thumb in my mouth. Sour iron.

Cian glances at his phone and cracks open a can. “Billie’s on her way here now altogether.”

“Grand so,” I say. Safety in numbers. I pull out a can too. Crack. Fizz. Sup.

“Will I…?”

“Do,” he says.

I pull some papers and tobacco out of my handbag, and a little jar that once held oregano but now stores other herbs, and I start rolling a joint. We’ll have that, I think, the three of us, before heading over. Grand.

The buzzer goes as I put the final twist on my creation, and I hear Billie’s laugh before Cian is even at the door to let her in.

“Well, if it isn’t Mrs Billie Big Balls!” he exclaims, “back from the big smoke!”

Billie is the only one of us who has arguably got a real job, even if it is in Dublin. It’s a real pay cheque anyway, though she keeps spending her new riches on stupid things like a second-hand violin she can’t play, and a punching bag that doesn’t stay upright.

“The door was open below,” she tells him, depositing her own bag of cans on the living room floor. “Were ye making curry?”

“Nah, that’s just what the apartments smell like,” Cian explains with a shrug.

Billie hugs me. She laughs again, “you knew I was coming, so?” She picks up the joint and I hand her the lighter.

“Spark it up, sure.”

We are transported back to a time when this was the norm. “Do you remember,” Billie says, passing me the joint, “the day Gerri burst in the door because she thought she saw smoke above the house?”

“God, she was some nutter of a landlady,” Cian shakes his head.

Billie laughs, “and you just sitting there in your jocks, smoking a fucking fat one at 10am.”

“I nearly shat myself,” Cian says, taking the joint, “she just barged in! ‘Gerri O’Connor here!’ I couldn’t even talk.”

“And you!” still laughing, pointing at me, “telling the bewildered woman it wasn’t smoke at all, that maybe she’d seen a cloud!”

“Sure, it couldn’t have been smoke, there wasn’t even a window in that vile room to let it out!”

We’re in hysterics, and for a moment I forget that we have to leave.

“How are we getting up there anyway?” Billie asks. “Taxi?”

“Taxi?!” Cian is mock-outraged. “The extravagance! It’s Mrs Billie Big Bucks we should be calling you.”

I shake my head. “Hannah said she’ll collect us.”

“Like old times! So long as she’s not threatening to drive off the roof of the multistorey tonight.”

We’re all laughing again.

“Nah, she’s leaving the car over.”

Cian’s phone buzzes. “Speak of the devil.”

We pile into the car, bags in the boot.

“Hannah, how many times have you been to the Drive Thru this week?” Billie asks, kicking papers out of the way.

“Shut up, will ya?” Hannah says, like she saw us all yesterday, and not months ago. “What did ye bring?”

As she drives, we each recount our travels of the day before – to Tesco, or the offy, or that fancy place on North Main St – and the various alcohols we have stocked up on. Holy Thursday. The day of our great pilgrimage. This year we each made the journey solo. We worry we are under-prepared. We’re probably over-prepared. The bags are heavy. The pubs are closed. The cans are the same, but we can afford brand-name vodka now.

“I’ve a bottle of Jäger,” Billie whispers loud enough for us all to hear.

“Oh shit!” Hannah shouts from the driver’s seat. “Shots!”

Laughter once more.

We pull up outside and the laughter dies. My stomach drops.

It has been four months and sixteen days since we last broke up. For real this time. The final time.

The first was in tears in the Crawford. I thought children should be brought to art galleries. She didn’t.

The second was in Berlin, after a week of cocktails and carpet burns.

Third time’s the charm.

“Will we be ok?” she whispered one night as I slept.

I answered.

No.

The door opens.

Elle.

A glass sloshing pink in her hand, she throws her arms wide, flinging them around Billie, who swings her and the remaining liquid round in circles. I see her dizzy eyes land on Cian, Hannah… Me.

“Hey,” she says, barely missing a beat. “Welcome.”

It’s a neutral occasion, and our friends are shared. We do the obligatory dance of the hug and the how-are-you and the smile. The ‘you know yourself.’

We make our way inside. The house is full of people and pulsing with music.

I pull out the BVM and nudge Cian, ready to hand her over. He looks at her, and then at the full-size Mary standing in the kitchen, bejewelled in fairy lights, offering the huge bowl of pink punch with open arms. He frowns.

Elle’s housemates are sitting at the table arguing good-humouredly. Two joints are on the go. Billie hugs them all in turn and sits down.

Hannah is somehow already on a second glass of the punch and roaring laughing with one of the Dubs that Elle has imported for the occasion.

I feel like a lizard and look for a rock to crawl under.

Cian hands me a can.

“It’ll be grand,” he says, looking at me sternly.

He’s right, I know. It will be like it always is. Good Friday.

More of our friends appear, from other rooms and outside. I talk to one of the girls for a while about the vat of yakka she has brought. A sugary lemon film of it coats the hall tiles after a fall. No one cleans it up and later it will make cartoon sticking noises as feet traipse across it from the kitchen to the sitting room and back.

Cian disappears and reappears with the air of a wizard. He gathers us to him. Elle, Hannah, Billie and I. He unveils a tiny bag of pills. “Kevin,” he says by way of explanation. We nod knowingly and each swallow one.

Everything is normal for a while, and then suddenly it is wonderful. I’m hit by a wave of love for everyone at the party. Community. Hope. Friendship.

The night fragments, like shards of coloured glass in a stained window. Vignettes. Drunken moments in time. A glow of ecstasy.

This is our religion. Our yearly worship.

Who knows what shite we are talking, but everything is easy now.

We disperse, we regroup, we scatter, we merge.

I am dancing and dancing and dancing.

A curly-headed cherub accidentally headbutts me on the kitchen dancefloor. We laugh and hug. She introduces herself as Elle’s girlfriend. Unexpected relief. She’s lovely. We speak for a long time about Barbara Streisand.

Cian is face deep in some short lad’s beard.

I laugh.

Billie is arguing with one of the housemates. “Ah fuck off.” I hear her laugh.

I wander.

I get into a singsong on the stairs. There’s a guitar. The Smashing Pumpkins. A second guitar. David Bowie. The Murtaghs out-doing one another.

Hannah is in the living room talking about The Hours again. A bad sign? She’s doing her best Meryl Streep for the Dubs. “I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course, there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.”

They clap, of course. I roll my eyes at her across the room, and she grins back at me. In her element. Her pupils are massive.

I find Billie having commandeered the singsong on the stairs. A blast of Here I Am Lord, for the day that’s in it. The Murtaghs are outdone.

I’m having chats with Elle. We are crying. We are laughing. Billie joins us. She pulls me away to look for Hannah.

I see Elle and the cherub reunite half-way up the stairs. I wonder if they are gone.

Cian is still in the kitchen, but the bearded lad has vanished. Instead of man-mauling, he is chain smoking and nodding in violent agreement with whatever one of the Kevins is saying.

            I’m back in the living room. Hannah is on about Muriel’s Wedding now. She shouts at me: “since I met you my life is as good as an ABBA song!” She’s gone slightly off script, but I smile and sit down.

I realise I must have dozed off when I next look around because the living room is almost empty, aside from the bearded lad who is snoring on a beanbag, and two Dubs lost in a circular conversation, heads pressed together.

“I love you.”

“No, I love you.”

“No, I love you.”

God, I think, making a face at the BVM in my lap.

I get up and make my way back to the kitchen. I put Mary down beside her giant counterpart and the now drained punch bowl. There are cigarette butts in with the swollen fruit.

Most people are gone but the music is still vibrating through the building. The housemates are ever present, stoned and solving the world’s problems and conspiracies. I’m about to sit down when I see the back door is open.

The air coming in is so fresh. I stick my head out for a breath of it.

The music pours out the open door and follows me like magic as I step outside. The grass is crystalline white with frost, glowing under a horizon just beginning to blush. Four fairies are dancing in the fading starlight. I watch them for a minute, spellbound.

Cian. Hannah. Billie. Elle.

They are in a circle which widens as they see me. They pull me and the flowing music close. We are laughing and dancing and the music changes and we are dancing and singing with Joanna Newsom.

“This is unlike the story it was written to be!”

Dancing. Singing. Holding hands.

“Peach, Plum, Pear. Peach! Plum! PEAR!”

How could I have thought anything would change?

I close my eyes and sing louder.

The sun cracks and fizzes at the edge of the world.

So, this is the beginning of happiness.