Freckles(58)
She examines the photo, I wait for her to laugh at my face, or say something but she doesn’t, she twiddles around with it. Posted! Right, she drops it into her bag. Shall we move on. We ask for the bill. When it arrives, she grabs it in that way that people who insist on paying do. Halves yeah, she says, taking it and calculating it on her phone. I had two dishes and a bottle of Cava, of which I had two glasses, her friend Georgie Porgie downed the rest. She had two espresso Martinis and so many dishes we had to place them on the next table. I reluctantly hand over my card feeling the heat of injustice. They both go to the toilet before we leave and I wait outside. I check Instagram. She’s tagged me in her photo.
Caption: Old friends. Good times. A peace sign and kissy lips. I look stilted and awkward beside her. Straight back and rigid, when she’s all loose and cool. I post it to my own Instagram. Rooster is one of the first to comment with a thumbs-up emoji. Suddenly I have eight new followers, girls from school I half-remember and some I’d forgotten about.
Freckles!! oh my God!! blast from the past! one says. I don’t know who it is, her ID is nutty_for_nutrition and her profile pic is an avocado. When I click into her account it’s magazine-type photos of food and I still can’t figure out who she is. Not until I scroll down and see the gym workout photos, the abs, the muscles, the weights. It’s Margaret, who used to stuff her face at night with mini Crunchies. Well well well.
Finally George and Daisy emerge, linking arms.
I just got a message from Margaret Mahon, I tell her. She’s changed. And we talk about Margaret until Georgie yawns in our faces and tells us that talking about old times is as interesting as listening to peoples’ dreams. We arrive at our next destination. I offer to buy the drinks and I’m glad when she says she only wants water. I don’t ask George because I think George and I know where we stand but he announces he wants a gin and tonic anyway, Jawbox gin specifically. As I go to order, I see Daisy casually swipe someone’s drink from the bar. It has a beermat over the top, which suggests they’re outside smoking. She does it so effortlessly. I watch her drinking fast, downing it and placing the empty glass on a table far from where she stole it. I find Daisy and George outside talking to a group of people whose names I instantly forget. George was specific about the slice of cucumber in his gin and he takes a sachet of red peppercorns from the inside of his jacket pocket and drops them into his drink. The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that I ordered the cheapest gin there was, not the Jawbox he requested.
He doesn’t bother making conversation with me. He talks loudly and obnoxiously, the life and soul of the party to the group, while I have a quieter conversation with a girl who’s expecting her first baby and can’t wait to go home. The fellas in here seem to be playing who has the most tanned skinniest shaved ankles in the room as I notice all the guys are wearing short trousers and no socks. I try to think of anyone on Valentia dressed like this in our local and I have to fight the smile from my face, Jamie with his bandy chicken legs, hairy delicate little ankles, and Cyclops with his skeleton calves that wouldn’t look good in a pair of skinny jeans. How we’d laugh about this – but we won’t, because we’re not friends any more. I’ve lost that five, I’m searching for a new five. Am I going to find it here. I down my drink and I’m glad when Daisy takes my arm and pulls me away. We’re off to a new place and this is how it goes for the next few hours.
If I was to sketch Daisy, I’d draw her perfectly still and then scribble over her. If she got one thing right on her Instagram feed it’s her bio: here, there, everywhere. It’s when she bundles me into the toilet cubicle with her and takes something from her cross-body bag that I realise I’m an idiot. Of course. Cocaine. I’m not anti-drugs, I’ve had my moments with Cyclops, but never cocaine. There’s something a bit tosspot about it for me. A bit too Dublin arsehole. Ironically, aside from the dinner bill, it’s the first thing in the whole night she’s been happy to share with me. Well two things; a cubicle and cocaine. I watch the back of her perfect head as she sniffs the powder up her nose. I kind of deflate. I thought Daisy was different, I thought Daisy was someone I could aspire to be. This messy act of hers is too easy. Is too mundane. Is too nothing. I could find this girl just about anywhere.
I think of drawing her again. If I was to draw her, I would draw her perfectly, then I would take an eraser and run it over her. Rub her out in places, but not completely. She’s here but not here. Stable in places, lost in others. She offers the powder to me but I shake my head. She doesn’t push. No big deal but maybe she feels judged as I watch her sniff my line off the top of a manky toilet. When I step out of that cubicle the real me steps out. And perhaps the real her does too. No pretence now, we’re on an even footing. She can do her and I’ll do me.
The rest of the night is an incomplete jigsaw. Holes in a picture that stop me from seeing the entire image in its totality. A series of places that not so much as blur smoothly into each other but jut sharply in and out of each other. At one stage we call by a dingy building that ends up being Daisy’s place. She shares a bunkbed with a stranger, a Chinese girl who’s shouting at us for turning on the light while she’s trying to sleep. George is laughing, and so is Daisy. She’s searching under her mattress for something, I don’t know what, I assume drugs or money and I leave the room when the roommate throws a hot-water bottle. It just misses my head and then explodes against the wall, and I feel scalding water drip onto my arm. There’s a shower at the foot of their bed, a microwave on a desk. Daisy gets a drawer in the hallway outside. She tells me this as she rifles through all those beautiful Instagram clothes that are under lock and key in this dusty drawer in the hallway, not looking so picturesque right now.