When All Is Said(72)

A woman in high heels, holding a handbag over her head and squealing, skids in under the awning beside me. I shimmy up to make room. Not that there’s any need, I’m the only one out here – the smokers have flicked their fags and taken refuge back inside long ago.

‘I’m soaked,’ she says, panting like she’s just swum the Liffey. She looks at her bare arms and legs and feels her hair. ‘Fuck sake.’

I look over at her sparkly toes and smile.

‘Aye. Looks like someone’s angry about something, alright,’ I say, looking back out at the town, hoping it’s not my good lady wife.

‘Well, I’d like to wring his bloody neck whoever the hell he is,’ she says, passing by me, going in through the hotel door and shaking off the rain, like Gearstick used to do. Wouldn’t that be an easier way to go? Someone’s hands ’round my neck so I need do nothing. It wasn’t me your honour, I can say to Saint Peter at the gate. It was your one with the soaking wet hair and streaking tan.

A flash lights up the sky beyond the town. I count in my head until God moves his furniture. A big fucking wardrobe. The roar of it. Six, I get to six before the crack of thunder explodes above me.

Out, I step. My eyes close and I lift my head into its howl. The rain soaks through me and it feels feckin’ marvellous, washing away my worries and doubts. Like an electric current it gives me a bolt of energy and I dance. Not a word of a lie, my feet slap, slap in the rain and I kick like I’m in a chorus line. There’s no one here now to see me make a fool of myself as my knees jerk high and my legs shoot out. ’Course, they could be watching from the windows, but I don’t give them a second thought as I attempt a heel kick but no more leave the ground than an old cow in my field. But in my head I’ve done it, clicked those heels as sprightly as Gene Kelly. Around I spin and spin. Letting every drop soak into me. Deep down, drenching my very bones. Then gravity takes me and I lunge against the wall. Panting and laughing. Trying to catch my breath. My body bends, as my hands clutch my knees.

The rain quietens, and stops abruptly, like it was one big mistake and it has moved on to the place it was meant to attack all along. A moment of silence hangs over me, the silence that comes with snow. I stand tall, one hand splayed against the wall. I close my eyes so I can let it surround me. Breathing in its calm. Letting it slip down into my jittering bones and fidgeting muscles. It irons me out and I become still. Ahead of me in the street, voices trickle out from other drinking holes. Goodnights are called and engines start. The town comes alive again after its scourging; waking up to the divilment of a Saturday night. Car horns blare and arms wave into the balmy night.

There you have it now – my work here is done. My life boxed away, neatly wrapped, sorted and labelled. My night of celebration is complete. Feck me though, when I set my mind to something, there’s no stopping me.

The band is giving it all they’ve got down the corridor. I can hear their muffled efforts even from here. The tunes mean nothing to me, but I hum along anyway to notes and words I make up in my head: Eleven o’clock and all is well. Time to go, so much to tell. I smile at my talent. Then doors open and out they come: the weaklings who ran from a drop of rain. I move upstream, weaving my way through them, back inside. Reaching reception, I stop for a minute, hands in pockets, eyeing the door to my left to the rooms that I must go through.

‘Ah, I find you, Mr Hannigan,’ Svetlana calls, coming up alongside me, taking me by surprise. ‘I thought you leave. I look everywhere. You forget this.’

I look at the bottle of Jefferson’s she holds in her hands.

‘Well, aren’t you the clever girl.’

‘I not want Emily to see. I don’t want to get sack. Not for you, anyway.’

I laugh and take the bottle.

‘Where you go now, the dance?’ she asks, with a cheeky smile.

‘No, that’s me done. Me and this boy here have a date with destiny,’ I say, looking at the bottle.

‘You right. The band,’ she says, coming close to me now and leaning to my ear, ‘they called the “Rhythm Kings”. I don’t know why? They have no rhythm. They play only hilly-billy music. I hate hilly-billy music.’

The back of her throat has a way of dealing with h’s, taking its time over them then spitting them out, that tickles my ear. I laugh one last time for her and move on, but before I push open the door, I call back:

‘Svetlana. Thank you.’ I raise the bottle.

She smiles: ‘Next time just Guinness, by the neck, yes?’

‘By the neck. Now you have it,’ I say, pushing my shoulder against the door. At the other side, I stop and listen to it swing shut. And then turn to look back through the glass to watch her disappear into the bar.

I don’t use lifts so I find my way to the stairs and begin the climb.

‘You and lifts,’ Sadie used to say to me, dismissing my distrust.

‘Before you start, it’s nothing to do with The Towering Inferno,’ I’d reply, looking at her lips puckering away, ‘it hasn’t, woman. There was a man in Mulhuddart—’

‘Ah, the man from Mulhuddart,’ she’d say, pressing the button like she was playing some game in an arcade.

‘Yes! A man in Mulhuddart who suffered untold and lifelong damage to his legs because of one of those yokes falling and him in it,’ I’d protest to her profile that refused to acknowledge me or the poor man from Mulhuddart. ‘And pressing the hell out of it doesn’t make it come any quicker,’ I’d say, my voice raised so she’d be sure to hear me as I began my ascent, step by step, muttering at the injustice with every lift of my foot.