You remembered Sharon only then, when you saw the top of her bleached head as she stumbled through the brambles toward you. Her head was lowered, as if she were looking for something she’d dropped earlier. You called into the darkness, “I’m here.” So as not to frighten her.
“Fuck you doing here? Thought you were scared of the dark,” she says, catching her breath.
“I’m scared of nothing, me.”
“Shut up to fuck or I’ll give you something to be scared about. You got any smokes?”
“One, but I’m keeping it for later.”
Your mother didn’t like Sharon. She lived up the road from you, and her father had two rusting cars sitting on cinder blocks outside the house. The county council had been called up, an anonymous complaint that the cars were unsightly. Her dad was a drunk and wouldn’t move them.
She found the biggest rock to sit on, the comfy rock, and took out her own cigarettes. In the spark of her match she must have seen the bottle sticking from your coat pocket. She looked off into the night. You felt shy then, taking the bottle out and sipping at it.
“Where did you get that?” she says.
“This woman bought it for me.”
Sharon pulled on her smoke, and even in the dark you could see the billow of her exhale.
“She sounds like a fanny,” says Sharon.
“You’re a fanny,” you say.
“Least I’m not drinking that shite.”
“You don’t want some?”
“Do I fuck.”
She took her cigarette between her fingers and rolled it in a perfect circle. Sharon was little more than a year older than you, and since she’d left school, she could be found up here most afternoons and some evenings, smoking.
“I saw Mr. Cosgrove get killed.”
“You did not,” she says, excited.
“I did, right outside McCann’s. He was drunk; he walked into the road.”
“I heard his head was nearly knocked off, that he was mangled.”
“Ah, no, he wasn’t, but it was bleeding. From his head. The rest of him looked all right.”
“He couldn’t have been all right if he was dead.”
“I know, but that’s what was weird.”
“Was he not mangled and all?”
“No.” But then you thought of his face, that terrible look, and his body on the cold ground, and everybody staring.
“I’d love to have seen that.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I fucking would. I never get to see anything.”
You had played together when you were children, before she’d grown and wore heavy makeup, before she had boyfriends who had cars and wives and gold rings on their pinkie fingers.
“What are you saving your smoke for?” she says then.
“I’m going to the pictures,” you say, and heard yourself draining the excitement from your voice. You were lit up by the night, and Sharon couldn’t join you there, so you felt across the wide distance for her, still back in the plain evening, and hated that sympathy you had for her.
“Do you want to come?” you say, only because you were drunk.
“Why don’t you go with the fanny that bought you that?” she says.
“I’m going on me own.”
“Course you are, Johnny-no-fucking-mates. That’s you.”
“Do you want to come?”
“That read-underneath again?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I fuck, rather drink me own piss.”
“It’s a good film.”
“You’re some awful ponce,” she says, and flicked her lit cigarette toward you.
“You missed.”
“Only ’cause I wanted to.”
You thought of Sharon that way, your bodies flung roughly together. She hugged her jacket around her. Her feet kicked in, and she leaned forward, rocking herself there. You’d come close a few times, but you’d left off, not wanting to be one of those boys who made her cry. You looked up to see if you could find a single star or trace the outline of the moon.
“You’d better go,” she says.
“I’m all right for a bit.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
You wanted to go then. It was getting late, but you couldn’t face leaving her there alone, and felt trapped.
“What are you going to do?” you say.
“Go home, I suppose.”
You asked her for a cigarette, she gave you one, and you sat together, swaddled in darkness, smoking.
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