She was early to Nick’s, which she never liked to be. He was among the camp of people cool enough to invite you for nine when he actually meant ten—who had some secret, magical knowledge of the exact right time to arrive at a party and when to leave. Not Lissa. She was half an hour early for everything, no matter how she tried.
He had told her five, and it was eleven minutes to four. Eight, by the time she’d attempted the mathematical equation in her head, battled her anxiety, and weighed up whether it was worse to call on him before he was ready to receive her, or loiter nervously on his doorstep for two hours staring at her reflection on the brass knob.
She pressed the bell.
Several moments passed, then his voice was low through the speaker. “Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
He buzzed her in.
She went to his floor, where he was already waiting with the door open, messing with his hair in a way that felt oddly self-conscious, as though caught off guard.
“Are you early?”
“I am—sorry. The thing at the hotel ended sooner than I thought, and I didn’t want to just sit in some cafe.”
“No, no. It’s fine, come in. I was just snoozing, basically.”
It looked that way. His apartment had that smell—the stuffy, human smell she’d come to know from the rare moments she’d entered Alexander’s lair. Nick had the TV on, some quiz programme playing for background noise, and a rumpled mass of material on his bed, where he’d clearly passed out on the contents of his open suitcase.
“You’ve not unpacked, I see.”
“I kind of did. I’m just—” he yawned. His arms and stomach were brown from Ibiza. “I dunno if I’m jet lagged or what, but I’ve crashed since getting home.”
“Yes, you must be. That single hour is a killer.”
“Yeah. C’mere. I missed you.” When he hugged her, he squeezed so tight her feet left the floor.
“You missed me after two weeks?”
“Yeah, course I did. I still wish you’d come.”
“Right. Can you picture that? Me in Ibiza with—I don’t know—a glow-band around my neck and some nuclear green shot dribbling down my chin?”
“One hundred percent. Come with me next time.”
“Next time?” Lissa sank onto the sofa, pulling a stack of papers from underneath her. “Two weeks didn’t satiate you?”
“It was—I mean… I don’t remember every moment, but it was… yeah. Mad, basically.” He was nodding a faraway look in his eyes—back in some den of iniquity screaming Shots! Shots! And posing for a photo next to someone’s arse tattoo.
She’d opted not to go when he’d floated the idea, claiming busyness, but she knew the debauched shores of Ibiza was not the place for a person like her. She’d hold him back somehow, looming in the corner of a club with her generally judgemental air, then suggesting they take a guided tour of the old town while he was still vomiting the remains of the previous evening off the side of the balcony.
But maybe she was just scared of what might or might not happen once they’d left the confines of their routine. A choice between moral vertigo and crushing rejection that she was not prepared for.
“Maybe when we graduate, we could do an Ibiza holiday together. 2008. Our last free summer. What do you think? You think I could handle it?”
“Ha. Yeah,” Nick said. Busy, suddenly, in a search through the miniature bottles in his toiletry bag. “We’ll see. Maybe.”
“Like, I’m just getting used to the club thing, but maybe in two years I’ll be a veteran. Do you reckon?”
He pinched his nostrils. “You act like it’s a quantifiable skill. I don’t know if it’s something you can study for.”
“So you’re saying I won’t ace the exams.”
Again, he dodged her eye. “Mm. I’m going to take a shower, is that cool?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Okay, you can… do whatever. TV is yours.”
He shut the bathroom door, and she heard the hum of the shower, the splash of water over the tiles. Sighing, she reached for the pile of papers—the remnants of his holiday, tossed onto the cushions. Boarding pass, bus tickets, hotel booking. Inside the sleeve of his passport was a postcard with a colourful illustration of a white sand beach. She turned it over in her hands.
4th September 2006.
Lissa,
He’d written it for her. She sat up straighter.
It’s a cliche to write ‘I wish you were here,’ but I do, actually, wish you were. You’d hate it, but at least we’d be laughing about it in between moments of pure horror. Thinking of you on your birthday. I’m glad you’re not wasting your 21st here, but sad you’re not wasting it with me. I’ll buy you dinner when I’m home.
Did I write ‘when’? I meant ‘if’. No guarantee I’ll survive.
Love,
N.
Beneath was someone else’s juvenile scrawl. Dowdall, no doubt, or one of his other barely literate friends who went exclusively by their last names and had seized control of the pen.
Love you Lisa. XXxXxx Your a sexy bitch I fancy you from Nick.
Then there was another message. Smaller, bubblier font with little circles over each i occupied a portion of the postcard.
Nick, you’re amazing! Had the greatest week ever with you. Text me! Message me on MSN.
Don’t forget me! XxXxXx
Sharon.
Ah, of course there was a Sharon, for where there was a Nick, there was a Sharon. Yes, Sharon, Lissa narrated. I’ll give you this postcard, and you can put your details there. I won’t send it to my friend. She won’t mind.
And Lissa didn’t mind, not really, because he’d followed through on his postcard promise and was actually buying her dinner that night. They were ordering Chinese. Nick never actually would call Sharon, because he never got around to things like that—distance made relationships inconvenient.
The bottom of the pile was his notebook—the one he carried with him sometimes, often pulling it out to scrawl observations into it. Smell of turf smoke–earthy?? Was one. Asics tracksuit pants in the canal. Ice cubes look like molars. Dog shit isn’t white anymore? The fractured ramblings of a madman.
He never minded her snooping. She’d asked him once or twice what he was writing when he had the book out on the bus or at brunch, and when he’d showed her, she’d regretted having an interest. It was rarely something that made any sense to her, like, say, a juicy account of his most private feelings. She wasn’t actually sure he had private feelings at all, just blatant and very public ones. “You’re hot,” she’d actually heard him say once to someone in lieu of an introduction. “Do you mind if I kiss you?” and the girl said yes to him. He was like an alien.
So she pulled a folded paper free from the pages—one of his printed pieces—and flipped it open.
An essay.
Mick’s taxi smells like cigarettes and pine-scented air freshener–the kind that hangs from the mirror and never exactly works. He’s been driving the city for over forty years, and knows the veins of this city like the ones on the back of his own hand.
“I’ll tell you about Dublin,” he says to me. “Used to be you knew everyone. All the local characters. You heard about Johnny Forty Coats?”
I have, but anecdotally. For I was raised in a different Dublin—a city post Johnny Forty Coats and Bang Bang, the man who shot finger guns at passengers of Dublin Bus. I’ve come up amongst the flash and excess of the Celtic Tiger, exposed to more wealth than my ancestors could imagine. It’s different for Mick. He remembers life before the boom.
“Now it’s all tourists, tech lads who think they own the place. Look, like your man over there.”
He is pointing to a young lad with a backpack, speaking on the phone as he crosses from North Earl Street to the Spire. I don’t know what it is about him that’s caught Mick’s attention, but I am aware he looks a bit like I do. For a moment, there I am. Conscious of myself—a gentrifier in the back seat of the car.
Mick’s observational, not bitter. There’s truth in—
The bathroom door opened, and Nick emerged wearing a towel. Lissa reflexively folded the paper and tried to slot it back into the notebook.
He barely cared. “Oh, you’re reading that thing.”
“Yeah,” she hesitated. “I really like it.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s it for?”
“Oh, some college thing.” He crossed the room to pick through his clothing, and Lissa knew to keep her back to him while he changed. “I didn’t finish it.”
“You didn’t hand it in.”
“Nah.”
“Well, you should have. It’s interesting.”
“Mick was cool, yeah. Bit of a wildcard. Eventually, he started going on about conspiracy theories, though, kind of derailed the interview.”
“That’s why it’s unfinished?”
“No, I just didn’t get around to it. I was doing other things.”
Lissa fought a wave of frustration. What was more important than his college work? Especially when he was so clearly good at it, when it was so easy for him, but she held herself back from scolding him because she knew already that Nick did what Nick did, regardless of her opinion.
“Well, I’d like to read whatever you write in future. You should email me your college work.”
“Serious? Thought you weren’t into that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing? Literature?”
“No. Articles. Interviews. Got the impression you’d rather self-immolate than read a magazine piece.”
She risked looking at him, mercifully clothed already, pulling his socks on. “Yeah, an article about Katie Price and her husband, sure, but I’d read your work. Whatever genre it is. If all magazines had writing like this, I’d clear the shelves.”
There was a razor-thin line to tread when speaking to Nick about his work—balancing between patronising encouragement and total dismissal. You had to hit exactly the right tone, or he disengaged.
She bit her lip and watched him disengage. Took his paper from her and tossed it onto the coffee table. “C’mon, Lissa. Boring.” He flopped onto the sofa beside her. “Do you want to watch this programme? You like quiz shows, yeah? You should be on one. Smarty pants.”
She didn’t, so he switched to Judge Judy, and they watched quietly, Nick’s shoulder pressed up against hers, his damp hair leaving an imprint on the cushion behind him.
“What’s with the clothes?” he said, pinching the steel grey cotton of her slacks.
“It’s just what I wore. I wanted to look professional.”
“Oh, the hotel,” looking at her, she couldn’t look back. His face was too close to hers. “How did it go?”
“Fine. There’s not much to it.”
“Running an actual hotel, like?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. The work is obvious. Dad just made a heap of phone calls and strolled around feeling smug about himself.”
“Nice. That’s the life.”
She huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Not mine. I really don’t think I’m cut out for the job.”
“Hm. You just don’t want it.”
“Mm.”
“Did you see Phil?”
“I did.”
“And? What’d he say? That he hot-tubbing with fourteen Russian models with double-Ds?”
“No. Barely said anything, actually. Thank God.”
“Good. So you didn’t get a whiff of his gingivitis.”
“You should write about him in your next essay. He’s the kind of character you’d do justice, do you think?”
Nick’s expression shifted. Stood up suddenly and went into the kitchen. “Do you want a glass of wine? I’ve got some Pinot open in the fridge.”
She watched him. “Yeah, okay.”
“And then we can order dinner. Hang on, I’ll find the menu.”
“Okay. I’ll just order the prawn—”
“Yep, I’ll get the menu.”
“I know what I want.”
“Hang on.” His face was hidden from her behind the kitchen island as he rummaged through the bottom drawer.
“Nick, are you alright?”
“Yeah, of course. All good.”
“You sure? You seem a bit…”
“Yeah, tired,” he said, before changing his answer to: “Wired, maybe. I dunno, yeah. I’ve barely slept since before Ibiza. Maybe I’m a bit manic.”
“...are you on drugs?”
“Yeah, Liss, I took a yoke on the flight. Of course not. I’m just looking for the menu, wait a sec.”
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