Cassandra Voices

Category: Literature

  • Poetry: Nicholas Battey

    Last Breath of Leaves

    Cup a pear, hear it abscise,
    number the days until ripe;
    the river chuckles with swollen pride –
    back to a ditch by six,
    drained away to the scaly, selfish sea.

    At dawn there’s steam across the water,
    a cloud of egrets scuds over;
    old and waiting, mud for water,
    leaves for a last breath
    of wind, tremor, helical free fall –

    after life, lope and leap
    to nattering heaps; then left
    to turn to mull, down horizons sift,
    forgotten shades of ochre,
    lignin nets over rheumy, russet stones.

    Fish the shilletts from their dark homes
    in the deep, brown ocean;
    grateful, cosseting crumbs swirl in,
    close and ready for roots:
    succouring limbs of bulb, corm, meristem.

    Here my mulling days are numbered,
    pride in appearance doomed;
    hares teem across the water,
    while clouds of regrets scud over;
    for I am old and loping after life.

  • The Candidates Explain

    The Candidate Explains
    after Charlotte Nichols MP

    I didn’t know the meaning
    of “incursion” or “dealt with”
    the negative connotation until this morning.
    Didn’t realise the possible definitions
    of “parasite”, “rubbish dump”, “bad human material”.
    Didn’t know until this morning the connotations
    of “dismantle”, “pikey”, “assimilate”.
    The negative meanings of “scum”,
    “child thief”, “branding iron”.
    Didn’t know “dirty”, “asocial”, “expel”.
    The connotations of “a people involved
    in the manufacture of human freaks.”
    Didn’t know the meaning until now
    of “Rahoonery”, “pollutant”, “Pharajimos”.
    The problematic side of those over the age of five
    being taken away and civilised.
    Didn’t know the meaning of “The Devouring”,
    “The Cutting Up”, or “behind concrete walls”.
    The negative connotation of “whoever kills one,
    shall be guilty of nothing.”
    Didn’t know the meaning of “deport”
    until I saw it done this morning,
    clean as a Police Superintendent’s signature
    or a Councillor’s campaign for re-election.

    Feature Image: Constantino Idini

     

     

     

  • Parallel Weekend

    I hadn’t heard from you since Wednesday, the morning before you flew to Copenhagen. You’d messaged me while I was at work “Are you free at all, can I give you a quick ring?” I was the only one in the office and Jen, my manager was in a meeting. “Yeah, go ahead.” You proceeded to tell me your fears about whether you would make your connecting flight from Stansted to Bordeaux. “I’ve left it very fine and I’ll be checking in a bag.” I’d talked it through with you and reasoned that since your flight from Denmark was so early in the morning it was unlikely to be delayed, plus you had four hours to play with in Stansted. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be fine.” You’d started to list some of the things you still needed to do before heading off, and ended the call.

    Afterwards you sent me a photo of yourself in your suit with the new shirt you’d bought, a white floral number. “What d’ya think?” In the fitted suit you looked like someone else- older, more serious. The long, toned body, normally swaddled in a woolly jumper and loose jeans, was picked out. “You look UNREAL.” The last thing you’d said was, “Thanks”.

    Now I was walking into town on Friday night, for pints in Neary’s, then techno in Tengu. Neary’s was a pub off Grafton Street I’d never been in until a week before, but was now promoting as a summer meeting spot, mainly down to the fact it had a few tables outside that got sun until late. It was still warm, a gorgeous evening coming to its end, and as I walked down Fenian Street I could see the sun, fat and orange, half hidden by the dental hospital, the sky around it stained hot pink. My outfit was a bit of a departure.

    Instead of a soft, flowing shirt tucked into jeans, I had on a tight, short skirt and boots, plus a shiny black top I’d bought that day. I’d gotten my hair cut earlier in the week and I had mascara on. I looked hot and I felt excited to be heading towards town, my friends and dancing. It’s partly to pass some of the ten minutes I had left before I reached Neary’s that I started recording you a voice note. But I also wanted to share my jubilant mood with you.

    I told you about the sunset, the warmth, though not my outfit or the details of where I was going, and said that I hoped you were having an amazing time with your friends and that you were going to totally nail playing fiddle at the wedding.

    Two drinks in at Neary’s, sitting outside with Conor, Rachel and Nessa, I took out my phone to take a photo of a snail we had collectively noticed climbing up the side of a plant on the windowsill. It moved with impressive speed. You had texted me back “Thanks! I having a great time! I love Copenhagen”. There was no need to reply, the “I having” told me you were already fairly on it, so I put my phone away.

    A few hours and several dabs from a bag later, I went upstairs to the bathroom in Tengu. It was hot in the crowd of bodies and I felt sticky but good. We’d been dancing and chatting shite to strangers since midnight. Now, checking my phone while I peed, I saw it was 2.37 and it seemed time to update you.  As fun as the downstairs antics were, I wished you were there. To get to know my friends better and to see me around them, in my element. We mostly spent time with your group where I was an outsider trying to establish myself. “Sounds class, in Tengu. It’s turned into a very gurny evening.”.

    I came out of the bathroom, and as I passed him a guy standing near the top of the stairs called to me, “You look like Amelie Lens”. I stopped beside him. He was cute; tanned with dark hair that fell into his brown eyes. “I don’t know who that is.”

    “She’s a DJ. Look.” He took out his phone and googled her, then held the screen towards me so I could see the photos coming up on screen. A very thin woman, with dark hair and eyes and sharp cheekbones. “Oh, I don’t look like her. I mean she’s very pretty, but I’m nothing like her.”

    “You are,” he said, meeting my blue eyes. “You’re very pretty”.

    “Thanks”, I said stepping back from him. As I did, he said, “My friends and I are going to an after party near Stephen’s Green now, do you want to come?” I stopped again. I hadn’t planned on a big night. I’d been half thinking of catching a train home to see my parents the following day. I hadn’t been near them since the last bank holiday. My friends didn’t know the offer had been made, and I could have just walked away. Of the four of us, I was probably the least likely to take it up. But a voice in my head said, “Go! You’re always letting what you have to do tomorrow decide what you do right now.”

    While I considered the idea, he showed me his phone again, a video on screen this time, panning across a crowd full of people dancing in a dim room, coloured lights falling across them to the rhythm of the techno track I could just about hear, up to a DJ booth I couldn’t see anyone behind. “Looks cool. I’m out with friends, can they come?”

    “Sure.”

    “OK, I’ll go and see if they’re up for it”.

    He took my number, only then did we exchange names, his was Al. “I’ll text you when we’re leaving.” Seconds later I got a message, “Hi Amelie 😊”. I went back downstairs and found the others outside in the smoking area, pupils huge. “I just met this lad outside the toilets who knows about an after session. Would you guys be up for going?”

    A few minutes later we were outside, introducing ourselves to Al and his friends. They were a mix of ages, mostly younger than us, and from abroad, Turkey, South Africa, Spain. After weighing up whether to hail taxis, we started to walk. On the way, we called into the 24-hour Centra on Dame Street to get cash for the door and whatever we wanted to buy inside.

    I fell into step beside Jorge, from Alicante, got talking to him and as we made our way up George’s Street, a couple of younger guys, sensing we were going somewhere besides home as the closing bars around us emptied their contents onto the streets, asked us where we were headed and if we knew of anything open. “Ah come with us,” Rachel said without hesitation.

    We picked up a couple more people this way as we passed the junction with Kevin Street. It felt nice, a troupe of pied pipers drawing in strays just by walking a little faster than those around us. Eventually Jorge noticed we’d lost Al, the only one who knew where we were going and stopped to call him.

    He’d gone ahead to talk to the guy he knew on the door and sent Jorge directions that brought us down a side street to a row of Georgian houses. Al was waiting on the curb and pointed to a house a few doors down. On the bouncer’s orders, only two or three of us could go in at a time. Conor and I went first. I paid his entry as he’d been handing me drugs all evening. The man in a red woolly jumper who took our cash pointed us towards a staircase and once Rachel and Nessa had paid in, we went down to the basement.

    The floor was covered in grime but I didn’t realise until I was taking my boots off several hours later. Downstairs was busy, the scene similar to the video Al had shown me. There was a five deep queue at the bar, which was at the far side of the room, past a crowd dancing in looped movements to the pulsing tune. Rachel and I left Conor and Nessa to queue for drinks, not before we each took another dab from Conor’s bag, and nudged our way into the crowd. We found Al and some of his friends who had come in after us, and he made his way around the circle to me. Leaning in, he asked, “Do you want some coke?”.

    “I’m ok,” I said. I didn’t want the shrillness of coke confusing the soft high I was getting from the MDMA. I also didn’t want to take anything from him while he was still under the impression that I was single.

    “Ok. Well do you want to come upstairs with me for a cigarette?”

    “No thanks.” He cocked his head, frowning and I looked into his eyes. “I should be clear. I have a boyfriend”.

    “Ahhhh”, he shook his head then but smiled. Like for a moment me rejecting him couldn’t have made sense but now there was a reason he could metabolise. “Ah, ok. I understand. “He left then, for a bump or a smoke or both and the rest of us kept dancing. There was a tall guy, dancing near us, pretty out of it but doing nobody any harm. He leaned in towards Rachel and I. “Is this not class?”

    “Yeah, it’s pretty good”, we returned. Kept dancing. A few minutes passed and I felt someone very close behind me, then hands placed on my shoulders. I shifted forward. Again, this time hands around my waist. I reminded myself how high he was and turned my head to him as I stepped forward, “Could you please not do that?” But Jorge and the others had already seen. The group had shifted away from the guy while Jorge came and planted himself between us, so I could move in the same direction, into the middle of the circle.

    He turned to me. “Are you ok?”

    “Yeah, no worries, thanks.”

    We got back to dancing and after a while Jorge said in my ear, “You’re a good dancer, I’ll give you that.”

    I smiled. “Thanks. The trick is to not think about it or give a fuck.”

    “Ah so you just dance like no-one is watching?” I laughed at that.

    “Can I kiss you?” he asked.

    So, he hadn’t heard me tell Al. “I have a boyfriend”.

    “Oh, are we doing that?”

    He thought it was a line. I didn’t mind you not being there anymore. I shouldn’t have to prove your existence to this guy. I looked around, Rachel wasn’t on the dancefloor and suddenly I felt like getting off too.

    I went in search of her and Nessa. I found them in the toilet, which was visible from the corridor as there was a massive hole in the door where there should have been a pane of glass. Nessa and Rachel were blocking the space so a woman with long wavy hair could pee in privacy. When I came in, they did the same for me and from outside, two more women asked if they could come in. While they took turns peeing and Nessa and I once again covered the open space in the door, we got chatting.

    Everyone was gurning a little and we were all extra interested in one another.  The smaller of the two girls, Charlie, said she felt a good energy in here and asked us our star signs. When we told her: Cancer, Pisces and Sagittarius, she started to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

    “I’m a Taurus rising”, I added. Not knowing what that meant really, but thinking it might be relevant. The four of us moved into the hallway. We stayed there, for what felt like hours, talking about how we’d ended up at the rave, our jobs, what Dublin used to be like and what was going to happen if rents didn’t somehow magically drop.

    “Are ye single girls?” Charlie asked. “I’m not”, I said.

    “Oh”, Charlie turned towards me, “What’s their star sign?”.

    “Scorpio.”

    You’d told me that on our first date, and when I asked you what Scorpios’ deal was, you said, “Well, raw sexual power”. That was a bold move. I don’t remember anything else you told me about Scorpios after that. But it made me curious, so I’d read up on our compatibility.

    Apparently, Scorpio and Cancer make a seriously good sexual pairing. And that’s what I had found so far. A year in, and I was still just as impatient to be naked with you whenever we met up, as I had been that first night. “Oh, a Scorpio? Really?”.

    “Yeah. He’s a Scorpio. He’s great”.

    “I don’t know,” she said, “I just find Scorpios can be really temperamental, you know? Plus, Scorpios, when they turn on you, It’s brutal.”

    I felt like I had read this exact description of Scorpios in Allure, or some other online magazine, whenever I was scrolling to see if you and I were a good match after that first meet up and decided she was repeating from the same article, rather than speaking from experience.

    “Aw I don’t know; I have two Scorpios in my life and they’re both really sensitive and kind and creative”.

    “That’s fair enough,” she said. “They can be.”

    At that moment she caught sight of a guy with a beard who seemed to have been looking for her. “Sorry Matt, I got talking to these girls in the bathroom.” She introduced us, and I suddenly felt like this was the time to go dancing again, so I caught Nessa’s eye and tilted my head towards the main room.

    “Will we get back in amongst it?”

    Inside we found Conor and Rachel dancing with some of our strays from earlier, the cute young Australians who’d first approached us.

    “Do you want half a yoke?” Conor asked me. I thought for a second. I hadn’t taken a pill in a while…but it was hard to pass up the chance. He’d already bitten into it and was holding the remainder, pink and tiny, towards me. It’s only half. I thought. It mightn’t even do anything after everything else.

    I took it and swallowed and he passed me his drink to wash it down. About ten minutes afterwards, I took my phone out and seeing the time, 6:38, I suddenly just wanted to be home. Looking around the room I felt like all the good juice had been squeezed from the night already. Nothing new was about to happen. I ordered a taxi and told the others I was heading on.

    Getting out of the taxi, I realised I was only coming up from the little bit of yoke. I’d already been acting strange in the car, rubbing my hands up and down my tights, looking out the window as if I’d never seen any of the streets we went down before. I’d caught the taxi driver’s eyes in the mirror and he didn’t look too delighted to have this space cadet as a passenger.

    The rational part of my brain panicked. Why had I left the others? I was just alone and high now. But that concern couldn’t override the feeling of my chest floating upwards and the desire to spread my hands out and touch things with my fingertips. I half ran, half skipped to the door of our building and up the stairs to the flat. It was empty.

    Francesca and Darragh were spending the weekend with Darragh’s parents in Galway. My bedroom door was open, and sunlight was pouring in onto my bed. I walked past to the living room and sat on the couch. I could feel my mouth contorting and twitching, it had been a long time since I’d taken anything that made me gurn that much.

    I took out my phone and laughed at my face in the camera. I took five or six pictures as my lips and cheeks moved involuntarily and the photos made me laugh even more. I was having a good time. I hooked my phone up to the speaker in the living room and put on a playlist I made in January when you were being kind of a dick.

    “Fucking catch”, It’s called. I took my boots off and started to dance, sliding around in my tights on the wooden floor, the curtains open. I thought about the start of the night, walking into town in the still warm summer sun and the turns it had taken since.

    A while later, I’m not sure how long, I got into bed and tried to sleep. Flat on my back, on my side. Duvet on and then kicked off. It wasn’t coming. Even with the curtains shut it was bright enough to read in my room. Around 8.30, I started to feel low. I wished you were there again. This is exactly the kind of moment when I’d been single and regularly recovering from raves that I had wished to be in a couple. Now I was, and you weren’t even there.

    “What is the actual point?” I asked myself. “No, you’re being unfair, It’s not his fault he happens to be away this morning”. I knew it would be hours before I could hang out with anyone and being by myself was making it impossible to ignore how slowly time was moving. I text you “Hey. Feeling a bit ropey, could you give me a call if you’re free”.

    You wrote back, “We’re all busy here. Rushing to get suited and booted and head out for the wedding”.

    “Yeah, I figured it might not be a good time. Have fun. Just feeling a bit edgy/shook here cos I haven’t slept.”

    I texted a few people to see were they about today. The problem with deciding not to go and see my parents was that now I had an empty weekend ahead. Mark had a friend visiting, and he had asked me to go out to Howth to walk the cliff path with them, but I wasn’t feeling up for that. Though maybe in a while I’d change my mind.

    Since the sleep ship had clearly sailed, I decided to get up and shower. It was hot in the room, even with the curtains closed, and I felt like some direct sunlight might do something for my serotonin. The normal joy of morning, waking up hungry and pottering around making breakfast, was absent along with my appetite. I did force down some heavily buttered toast so I could take a couple of Ibuprofen. Again, as you know, on an ordinary day I’d be stopping mid-bite to exclaim how great toast is, but this was purely functional eating.

    “Even food don’t taste that good,” I sang to myself, smiling in spite of the dread. When I’d cleared the dishes away, I got into the shower and let the water run down my head. I’d only washed my hair the day before, but I felt like it was holding onto all of the sweat from the past twelve hours.

    When I was dressed, I put my wallet and a bottle of factor 30 in my little backpack, and headed outside. I didn’t know where I was going to end up, but headphones on, I played the John Prine song you’d shared with me a few weeks before, “That’s the Way That the World Goes Round” and turned on the song radio feature so that Spotify would follow it up with music of a similar mood. Upbeat acceptance of life’s lows as well as highs was what I needed to hear.

    It was still only coming up to 11am, and nothing was giving me joy. It was going to be hard to pass this day. By the time the next track on the list had started to play, I was turning onto that little path by the Dodder near Lansdowne Road. I didn’t know it, but I recognised the voices, and then heard the chorus “How lucky can one man get”, followed by this gorgeous instrumental. And somehow, I remembered that I am lucky. I wasn’t alone. Ok, so nobody was free to immediately come and hang out with me early on a Saturday morning. But I had so many friends I was able to ask. I had someone I loved.

    I was alone now, but that only felt terrifying because I’d had too much fun the night before, and I would feel like myself again soon. Then another song I’d never heard before, The Swimming Song by Loudon Wainwright came on, and the opening bars were just so buoyant and beautiful I forgot I was in a chemical hoop for a couple of minutes. I wished the other people strolling along the boardwalk could hear it.

    At this point, I hooked around to the left and took Newbridge Avenue to head toward Sandymount, thinking I’d walk out to the coast, but then I got a message from Nessa. “Are you awake? I’m in bits. Rachel’s asleep on the couch. Don’t be on your own. Come over.” I was saved.

    I walked back to mine to grab my bike, and listened to the Swimming Song on repeat all the way to Nessa’s flat in Terenure, bouncing out of the saddle to every loud strum of the banjo. People in the horrors should be prescribed Loudon Wainwright and John Prine I thought.

    I got to the estate where Nessa lives with Helen. You’ve never been there but their place is great. It’s a duplex flat and they have a little yard outside that they’ve put a fire pit in, which was great last summer when we were all supposed to be meeting up outside. I went to a lot of parties in that garden while you were away.

    As soon as I saw Nessa, (and Rachel, who was now awake and sitting up on the couch telling us about some guy she’d managed to shift, changed her mind about and escaped without any of us even noticing the night before,) I started to feel better. Appetites now returning, we walked to the deli up the road to get rolls, and then got straight back into the soothing dim of Nessa’s living room where we watched an episode of Peep Show, before deciding it was actually too bleak for our fragile mental state and switching to the American Office.

    Hours later, while we sat in comfortable silence eating takeaway, I said to Nessa “You know, if you’re with someone and you love them, but you don’t think It’s something that can last… Like maybe it’s something that has two or three years in it, but you just don’t think it can go the distance. Is it ok to stay in it and see it out to its natural end? Or is that stupid, like should you cut your losses and finish it?”

    Nessa considered this, probably wondering where this slightly pleading question had come from. “There’s just no way of knowing”, she said.

    I cycled back from Nessa’s, listening to the Swimming Song again. During the day, Aoife had written back to one of those desperate texts for company I’d sent out, to say she wasn’t about today but that she’d love to go for a swim tomorrow. I met her early the next day and we spent the morning chatting. First in the water, after jumping in at the Forty Foot. Then over coffee in Sandycove.

    On the way home, I bought groceries. Back at the flat, I cleaned the bathroom and started on a pie for dinner. Felt better, but still uneasy that I hadn’t heard from you. I’d told Nessa the night before, I didn’t expect to until Monday, when you’d be traveling all day and have some free time. I knew you were with all your friends and wouldn’t be focused on your phone. You aren’t someone who has it out to take pictures. All your friends were there. Besides me, who would you be texting? But you did have me to text. And I’d told you I wasn’t feeling great.

    I woke up on Monday to a message from you. Sent at 6:40. “Just about to head to the airport. Phone is gonna die soon. Hope you’ve had a good weekend. I’d love to talk to ya soon.”

    Great, that was all I needed to know. We would talk soon. Maybe once you were through security and could charge your phone. Or when you landed in London. I texted back that I was heading into work, but that things were quiet. So, you could give me a shout when you had battery.

    I got to the office before 8am and while my laptop was loading, I went out to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Sometimes I wait to do that at work if I need to get out of the house quickly. Today had been like that. I’d been rushing to make it in early, so that I could leave on time for a gym class.

    At the sink, as I gently scrubbed my molars, my gaze unfocused, I had this sudden fear there was something wrong in your message. Why did you want to talk to me? Had something happened at the wedding? I imagined you running into someone there, a person you hadn’t seen in years. An old friend, someone’s sister, or even someone you had hooked up with before we got together and something happening. You were calling to tell me that you’d realised you wanted to be with them, whoever they were, because they were already part of your group of friends and it made more sense. I wouldn’t be able to convince you otherwise.

    I shut my eyes and shook my head. You are being ridiculous. He said he’d love to talk to you. That isn’t exactly suggesting a heavy chat.

    Around quarter to ten, you called. You asked me how my weekend was and I chattered happily about Friday night, the come down, being rescued by Nessa and Rachel. I told you about the Swimming Song. How it had saved me while I walked along the Dodder and helped me enjoy the sun and know I was going to be ok. “I think It’s now my favourite song.”

    “Oh, send it to me,” you said, “I need something like that to cheer me up right now. Feeling very shook.”

    “Ah, ok. How was the wedding?”

    “The wedding was good, yeah. Very Danish. Irish people losing the run of themselves.” Then a pause. “Alice…This is really hard to say.”

    I knew then. You weren’t going to break up with me from departures in Stansted, so it had to be. “What is it?… What happened?” Silence. “Just tell me.”, I said, my voice hard.

    “I kissed someone else at the wedding. An old friend.”

    Staring at the wall opposite the windowsill, I felt like I should react in some way. Cry. But I didn’t feel sad or even angry then. Rather, it was like I’d gone through a door that had disappeared behind me, and now I was stuck in this horrible place I didn’t want to be in. Still on the phone to you.

    “How could you do that to me?” I asked but didn’t actually want to know. There was no answer you could have that would give me any way back to where I’d been before. “I don’t know, Alice I’m sorry I was so drunk, I…”

    “Like, at the wedding? In front of people? In front of your friends?” For some reason, that aspect was the part to bother me. I wasn’t thinking about you flirting with someone else or leaning in towards them. Yet. You had humiliated me in front of those people I’d spent months making an effort with, getting to know. “Yeah. Well yeah, they saw us kiss. It was…”

    “Wait. They saw you kiss? What else happened? Did you sleep with her?”

    Another few seconds where you said nothing and then. “Yes. Alice, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe…”

    I hung up. Sank down until I was sitting on the carpeted floor of the office and stared forward. In my hand, my phone started to buzz again, your name lighting up on the screen. I ignored it and went to Spotify. Put on the Swimming Song. And for some reason what I was thinking as it started to play, is that I am someone who tells people my story too easily. I’ll confide in almost anyone if they want to know. But you used to call me mysterious. There are so many things about me you don’t know. That I never told you. Because you never asked.

  • Three Parables / Short Tales

    ABOUT A GIRL AND HER DATE OF BIRTH

    Once upon a time, there lived a girl who was so used to being accompanied by her date of birth, that she couldn’t imagine herself separated from it. For seven years following her first birthday, the girl and her date of birth were always seen holding hands, and people who knew the girl well were surprised when on her eighth birthday, they saw the girl walking alone, although strictly speaking, she was not alone, as her date of birth ran just a little behind her. Everyone got so used to seeing the girl’s date of birth running just a little behind her, that when the girl turned 15, they were surprised yet again to see her date of birth lagging behind, not just two steps away as it did during the last seven years but almost fifteen steps away from the girl. The number of steps between the girl and her date of birth grew with each birthday, and when the girl turned twenty-five, her date of birth was lagging twenty-two or twenty-five steps away, no one knew for sure how many, as there was no way to measure the number of steps. When the girl, by now no longer a girl but a woman of course, was celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday, her date of birth was so far behind her that it was no more than a small dark silhouette on the horizon, running, running, trying to catch up with the girl, that is, the woman, and of course, its efforts were in vain, as there was no way for the date of birth to catch up. Ten years later, when the woman was celebrating her thirty-ninth birthday in the new millennium, her date of birth tumbled back into the 20th century where it belonged and, no matter how hard the woman tried to pull it back into the 21st century so the two of them would stay together, she could not see her date of birth in the darkness of the past millennium. From then on, the separation grew harder for both of them, the woman and the woman’s date of birth. When the woman turned fifty, she walked to the Edge of the World, which was nothing but a precipice that divided the third millennium from the past, and she called out to her date of birth, hoping to hear its voice, even if she could no longer see it, but her date of birth did not respond. The woman spent the next ten years weaving an unusually strong rope, and when the rope was finally long enough as well as strong enough, the woman once again came to the so-called Edge of the World. She dropped her rope into the darkness and waited. Finally, someone tugged on the rope at the other end, ever so slightly, and although the tug was ever so weak, the woman knew it was her date of birth tugging, for who else would care to catch the other end of her rope? The woman spent the next twenty years standing at the Edge of the World, trying to pull her date of birth out of the abyss of the past century, but as every passing year her date of birth fell deeper and deeper into the past, the woman’s task looked quite hopeless, even to the woman herself, who just couldn’t quit and she stood there year after year and pulled and pulled, until her hands were so sore that she couldn’t hold the rope anymore, and when she gave up and died at the age of eighty-three, she was finally reunited with her date of birth.

    ABOUT THE APACHE AND A POET

    A long time ago, when the Spanish first encountered the Apache, whom they called Querechos, the Apache managed to capture five Spaniards, and they did to four of them what they always did to their enemies, and when they were about to do the same to the fifth man, their medicine man warned the Apache chief that the man they were about to execute was what the Spaniards called “poet”, which was similar to what a “medicine man” was to the Apache. It was decided that the life of the “poet” would be spared if he composed a “poem” every day, so the Apache medicine man could use it as a spell in his healing ceremony, and of course the Spaniard complied, under fear of death, and produced a poem per day, for many days, and after six months of this, the chief of the Apache pardoned him and changed the sentence from death by lancing and scalping to suicide. Thus, as soon as the poet ran out of poems, he would have to kill himself. Under this sentence, the poet went on and on writing poems every day, until he outlived all the Apache who had been present at his sentencing, and even though no one any longer remembered the sentence of suicide, he continued composing a short poem daily, because he knew that he would kill himself if he stopped composing poems. Come to think of it, this isn’t very different from the way some of us write poems today, is it?

    ABOUT INDIFFERENCE TO FAME

    One poet was very concerned about his future immortality, therefore he did everything possible to ensure that his works would remain for centuries. We will not waste time recounting unnecessary details of the steps he took to achieve his goal. We can only say that when that which will happen to all of us, happened to him, his soul instantly forgot about its existence in his body and began to fly around the world. In its seemingly aimless flying around the world, his soul sometimes flew over the city in which the poet had lived, but it recognized none of the streets or houses, including the poet’s own house. The poet’s soul flew into a book fair where his books were being sold and advertised, but after circling first over his books beautifully laid out on counters, then over the magnificently illuminated advertisements of his books, it flew out the window, as if the image of its former self on book covers had nothing to do with it. Just as accidentally, it flew into the house where the poet’s wife and children were still living, and without recognizing them, flew out the open door. The soul, freed from the body, was deeply indifferent to the man’s dreams of the immortality of his name, which it had long forgotten.

    Feature Image Daniele Idini

  • enuff

    live long enuff yoolsee enuff war –
    yool think this is not what life is for –
    yool feel all the feels feasibly feelable –
    yoolbee both heart sleeve-able and heart konseelable…
    live long enuff yoolhear enuff bang –
    yool vibe off protest songs yoor parents sang –
    yoolyawn at the yarns elected folk spin –
    yoolbee both heart open and heartbroken…
    live long enuff yoolsee enuff war –
    yool think this is not the days of yore –
    yool roar all the roars possibly roarable –
    konflikts not adorable – kuntreeze are not hoardable…
    live long enuff yoolhear enuff bomb drop –
    yoolwish yookood command call all bomb stop –
    yoolwince once more wearily – weep waspish tears –
    we all be humanity – same loves – same fears…

  • Poetry: Kevin Higgins

    Memorial to Myself

    I have been away toasting tables lined
    with the pricier variety of imbecile;
    humouring old buzzards in Aran sweaters
    and cranky caps
    until their sweaters collapsed
    threadbare off their bastard backs.
    I have cut ribbons for guys
    floating balloons across the town square
    and calling it dance.
    I have eaten with people of enormous importance
    and forgotten most of their names.

    I did not shrivel like the rest of them.
    Though they thought they had me
    I was not bought and sold at the market stall
    where you can get (third hand)
    Fianna Fail senators cheaper
    than Mayo flags two weeks after
    an All Ireland defeat.

    I am again what I was before
    and secretly always was
    though I sometimes had to hide it.
    I did not kill the dream I dreamt with those others
    not all of whom made it this far.
    Tonight I consult their ghosts.

    Feature Image: Higgins and Ivana Bacik campaigning during the 2011 presidential race.

  • Poetry: Peter O’Neill

    Irish Rail

    Dublin, that old whore, with her piss -stained pavements
    Abruptly transforms into a woman of a certain station.
    Such are the, at once, brutal and subtle shifts where
    In an instant, Hell aligns in an altogether strict

    Congruence… Like when you climb aboard
    The final commuter train of the week on a Friday
    Evening on Platform One at Pearse Station.
    And, as the train finally pulls out, leaving

    Behind her the contents of a working week,
    Passing images are reflected back to you
    Through the compartment windows, revealing

    Dune and marram at Portmarnock, to a passing
    Lagoon at Malahide, and then the panoply of imagery
    Miraculously washes away all of the whoredom from your mind.

     

    The Great Burnishment

    Your Pirelli calendar moment must last, at least, twenty score years;
    Nobody makes this very important point entirely clear.
    So, try to remember, while cavorting in the Sun,
    That the memories must endure, and for everyone!

    Call it, if you will, the great Burnishment.
    When like two figures from a fabled myth or play,
    You roam the most remote shores and the very
    Earth appears made for you both alone.

    It is the cliché – you look on her then and on those mythic shores –
    With the aroma of wild rosemary, myrtle and Goat;
    Desire bears you both ever onward with its emblazoned sail.

    Fast forward two decades now and she stands before you in your kitchen,
    And the initial violence of the sun from that first day,
    Tell me, do you still feel its impact burning your skin?

     

    The Flies 

    The two house- flies, Beckett and Joyce, buzz about you
    And the TV screen. There they land, buzz again
    Before flying off to Memphis copulating
    And multiplying on the wing. As a sign of virility,

    The Egyptians displayed them on their amulets.
    That great race, unlike our own, had a great respect for insects!
    Even the Greeks showed a similar respect,
    When having a BBQ they offered a sacrifice to Shoo Fly Zeus.

    The crabby meat men, in this way, could eat their own
    Undisturbed by patrolling swarms and Oxen that had fallen
    Were replaced by Lotus Eater, and burning eucalyptus in the Sun.

    Now, you look at the books of both these modern sages
    That you have been reading for an eternity,
    And still you hear the flies buzzing across the pages!

     

    The Vico Road

    From the vantage point of Strawberry Hill,
    A Victorian Villa recently selling for a cool 5 million,
    A place more evocative of Raymond Chandler
    Than anything remotely Irish. I am reminded,

    Again, of the Neapolitan philosopher who
    Peopled his New Science with giants. In fact,
    While lunching there on one of the picnic tables,
    I had a slightly hallucinatory vision of Gulliver

    Striding in 18th century breeches, and croppy hair
    Over the Sugar- Loaf Mountain, while
    The Lilliputians below discussed the ongoing

    Business in the property sector: vulture funds
    And NAMA; hedge funds in Texas,
    Where the multi-headed Cereberus roars.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poetry: Haley Hodges

    Faking It

    When Cleopatra rolled
    Out of the rug, she thought:

    Don’t worry! Even if
    I do not enjoy your performance,
    You will enjoy mine—a lot.

    I’d like to credit myself
    As an actress, but the truth
    About men is: I’ve yet
    To meet one unwilling
    To believe he is a singularly
    Exceptional lover—yeah, baby.

    I am your captain aboard the Beguile,
    Cruising down that long denial
    With no wish to make things
    Worse by undeceiving
    You—mm, hail Caesar—
    I offer half-lidded eyes and
    All the right sounds at all
    The right times and rely
    On the fact that truly
    What you pay close attention to
    (Unduly) is yourself. You’re watching
    Me, but it’s astounding—genuinely—
    What you won’t see, though you should—
    There, right there, that’s good.

    Charming, cunning queen, lay the tracks,
    Set the stage and land the scene. He’ll believe
    Because he wants to—oh, I want you—
    And yet you’ll wish that you’d stayed home—
    It wasn’t worth the trip to Rome.

  • Poetry: Edward Clarke

    At Rudy’s Bar, Alassio
    (After Thomas Hardy)

    –                       O how could I order that tuna and chips,
    –                       And sip my beer and gaze at yachts and cruise ships
    Beyond the tops of changing booths and beach umbrella tips;

    –                       And glimpse and catch the sea’s soughing of old truths
    –                       Through exhaled smoke of bronze Italian youths
    And cries of a fat child a made-up plastic granny soothes;

    –                       And not think of a Romantic poet’s pyre,
    –                       Or Claude’s Seaport, which Turner set on fire,
    Or brine-drenched heroes Neptune saved from Aeolus and Juno’s ire.

    –                       But I confess it took an old tourist’s poem,
    –                       And my desire to make his tercets my own,
    For me to see this sea transcending our own and Aeneas’ Rome.

    –                       When we were on our way down here through Nice
    –                       We saw b-boys do flares, headspins, then freeze.
    On Friday nights the promenade is checked by Finance Police.

    –                       But all the while, at the sandy edge of sight,
    –                       On feathery legs of old, gods roll from the night,
    And we would sense them could we still perform the proper rite.

    Feature Image created by Daniele Idini.

  • Girl Without Mercy

    My father was a French lumberjack. That’s just a joke. People don’t always know I’m joking. Especially men. They laugh when I’m being serious, then nod or look blank when, well… guess I’m not too good at telling jokes. Now, I know how to act funny. On camera, I mean. In character. From the inside out. If that’s funny, then okay. Wish I could be funny in real life. Witty! I want to be thought witty, but most men look more like they’re waiting for me to get my tits out.

    There I go again, sorry. I’ll be good. Doris Day good. Promise we’ll stick to words you’re allowed to print. What was it you asked me?

    Right… Dad. My father could’ve been anyone, anybody in the whole wide world. When I found out Sylvie is French for of the forest, I figured Mom must’ve shacked up with a French guy, like maybe French Canadian, you know? Because she lived up in Washington State for a while. Before I was born.  She’s not from there. She’s kind of from everywhere. Or nowhere.  But since she did live there, I figured she got mixed up with some forest ranger. Or something. Something to do with trees. Et voila! Sylvie. That was a joke too, by the way. I’ll warn you about the jokes. Maybe, if you wouldn’t mind, you could laugh a little bit?  I mean if you want to. Et voila!

    Once a reporter, not a journalist like yourself, some sleazy newshound, snuck into the hospital to ask Mom who my father was. They say she said, with perfect serenity, that it was her left bedroom slipper. Those were nice soft slippers. Powder blue. I make sure she has nice things.

    Now where was I? Oh yeah… my dad. It’s a fact that all girls are attracted to their fathers, isn’t it? Where that leaves me, I don’t know. Wait, you wanted to ask me about Johnny.

    Johnny was… wow! Valiant. How come that word’s gone out of style? I’m not the only girl who likes valiant, am I? Like, someone who’d come to your rescue? He was no bedroom slipper, I’ll tell you. Had those old-fashioned English manners that make a girl swoon. Of course, the first time I saw him, Johnny was wearing a suit of armour. That was his role in the picture we made together. There he was. A knight in shining armour among the dress racks. I didn’t stand a chance.

    In the movie, I’m this mythical creature, like a fairy-elf, who meets the knight in a summer meadow. And she seduces him!  I did loads to prepare for the role.  Read everything I could find on elves before I had lunch with Hiram, the director. Over the shrimp cocktails, I explained to him how I was going to need special makeup, because elves have oversized eyes and small, pointed ears. I had made a couple sketches. He pushed those sketches right back across the table and gave me a look over his glasses.

    “Syl, Cookie,” Hiram said, “your adoring public are not paying their seventy cents to see you prancing around in a pair of pointy ears.  They’re paying to see Sylvie Davenport. America’s wet dream.” Seeing me droop down, arms crossed over my chest, he said, “It’s a compliment, Cookie.”

    So, they made me up to look the way I always look. Only with longer hair. I wore a sort of gypsy costume. Johnny had to string garlands of flowers in my hair. Around my neck, my waist. The warm summer meadow we were supposed to be in was really Sound Stage Four. Johnny’s breath smelled like sardines. And the garlands were plastic flowers with wire. They snagged my skin.

    But there’s this thing I do, once the camera is on. A place I go inside myself. Where the flowers are real. The sky is a true sky and everything is marvellous. So marvellous I almost can’t stand it. My eyes become like broken windows, with all the light and wind rushing through. People love me. I just have to look at you. You’ll love me. Like he did.

    Johnny followed me into my dressing room after. Pressed himself up against me. He said, “Sorry about the kippers.” No kidding, that’s what he said.

    I stared up into his blue eyes. His noble face. “That’s alright. I like sardines.” Which I don’t, but I didn’t want to break the spell. “Kippers aren’t sardines, they’re herrings,” he said softly. Then he kissed me. He, Johnny, kissed me, Syl. Which was different from the knight kissing the fairy. Mainly in that there was more tongue.

    That was the start. We were together for seven months. Oh, here, take one of mine. There’s an ashtray there, right by your elbow. You want a drink or anything? I make a mean martini. Sure? Have to butter you up, don’t I? Otherwise, you might write nasty things about me.  Aww, that’s sweet of you. You’re nice, too.

    When he spoke, his mouth hardly moved.  I used to kid him it was because he was trying not to spit out all those marbles. He said shag instead of fuck… of course that cracked me up. Johnny liked to quote Shakespeare…and the Greeks. Which was all Greek to me! Oh good, you got that one? See? I can be funny!

    He was a wonderful lover. Passionate. With lots of stamina for a guy his age. That first time, he crushed those stupid plastic flowers. It was heaven.

    “God, you’re amazing,” Johnny said to me once… in bed. “It’s like you have no bones.  Those breasts, that belly, the great big thighs – “

    “Hey!  My thighs aren’t fat!”

    “No, not fat, they’re perfect. All that soft flesh.  It’s like riding a cloud.” He took a drag off his cigarette, slipped it between my lips. I sucked in some smoke, while he twisted a handful of my hair around his knuckles. “All these golden locks…”

    “It’s not natural. The golden…”

    “Well, yes I noticed, but oh Sylvie.”  Eyes on the ceiling, he said, “You’re like America itself. Completely uncomplicated. Open. Welcoming. Saying, Come on in….”

    Okay, Johnny talked a lot of shit. Sorry. He talked a load of baloney, but his accent made it sound less silly.

    Was I in love? I’m always in love. All the time. I wake up, first person I see, I want to paint sunrises. Just for them. My heart comes cheap, you know. But Johnny, he was like an answer to a prayer I hadn’t even got round to praying yet. I felt safe with him. Until I didn’t.

    Know what was funny? He always wanted to go to Chasen’s. I had my own booth there. We went at least twice a week. Johnny didn’t even like American food. But he was always dying to go. So, I’d get all dolled up, and we’d go. The minute our car pulled up, bang! Photographers. Every time. You’ve seen the pictures. Me and Johnny, under the awning at Chasen’s. Me smiling. Showing a little leg. I could pose like that in my sleep. Johnny glaring at the cameras. Clutching my arm. That wasn’t play-acting, by the way. I’d have bruises the next day from him holding on so tight. He hated that whole scene. So, I could never understand why he wanted to go in the first place.

    Life Magazine sent a photographer to my house to take pictures of me in my kitchen. Me stirring a pot. Me staring into the oven. Me chopping carrots. You know the kind of thing.  About how I’m really an ordinary person. How I cook for my man like any normal girl does. Fact is, I am a pretty good cook. Betty, one of my foster moms, taught me. Betty was great to me, but her husband Jim, he…he paid a little too much attention to me. So, I had to leave. But I remember everything she taught me. Dan… the Life photographer… he was surprised I even knew how to turn on my oven. This is another thing: I’m not supposed to be witty, and I’m not supposed to know how to make a pot roast. I don’t know who made these rules. So, I said to Dan, “Actually, you’d be lucky if I made you dinner.”

    “I sure as heck would be,” he said with a grin. He had a sweet, Mickey Rooney sort of face, so he could get away with being flirty.

    “I mean it!” I tapped his arm. “I’m an excellent cook. I’d adore to have someone to make dinner for, but Johnny likes to go out. Well, you know.” Dan had snapped us outside Chasen’s so many times.

    “Poor little movie star,” he chuckled, tucking his camera back inside its case. “But you know, if you were my girl, I’d wanna show you off too.”

    “Oh, he hates all that stuff.  Posing for you guys drives Johnny crazy.”

    “Syl?  How do you think we all know to be there when you get outta your car?”

    My stomach sort of dropped. “Beats me.”

    “He tips us off. His assistant phones up every magazine, every newspaper. She tells us where you’re going. That’s how.”

    “But that doesn’t make any… If Johnny wants his picture taken, why does he get so mad?”

    “Maybe because he’s not the main attraction?  If you weren’t there, we wouldn’t bother.” Slinging his camera bag over a shoulder he says to me, “I’ll be going. Listen, Syl…  uh, Miss Davenport. Thanks a lot. We got some great shots today.”

    “Well, that’s down to you.”

    “Nah, it’s all you.” And Dan was out the door.

    In our movie, Johnny strips his armour off to lie in the grass with his head in my lap. This is the seduction bit. I feed him berries I’ve gathered myself that stain his lips. Bread with wild honey dribbling down, glistening on his knightly chin. My line is, “I love thee true.” I tried different ways of saying it, to make it sound more natural. In the end what worked best was to almost throw the line away. To say it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I love you; I was made to love you. She’s a fairy, and I think in her mind she has been sent to him. To love him. Help him. She has magic that makes plants grow, makes summer out of winter, and all she wants is to do the same for her knight. To bring back the summertime of his life.

    So, while he’s eating her food and feeling the sun on his skin… while all that’s going on, she sings to him. This little fairy song about love, the blue sky and tra-la-la. They were thinking they’d dub it, but I practiced a lot and, in the end, they used my voice. The song is a spell. As she sings, all the lines disappear from the knight’s face. His hair goes from grey to a warm brown that Gordon, the hairdresser, mixed just for Johnny. And then the knight gets all virile and sexy. It’s my favourite part of the picture. Not for the sexy bit, but the way she’s able to make him feel young again. Like his best self. Shouldn’t love be able to do that?

    The reviews were awful.

    I’ve gotten bad notices before, but these were really stink-a-roo. Thou Hast Made a Flop, is one headline that hurt. They weren’t gonna buy my talking all thee and thy. I feel like if someone could’ve coached me on that, I would’ve got the hang of it. Hiram always said there wasn’t time. Hey… At least they didn’t pan my singing!

    But poor Johnny. Nymph and Gnome in Garden Frolic was the tag line that stuck. Variety said he looked more like my father than a lover. That he should trade in his sword for a walking stick. That it’d take a team of fairies, weaving spells night and day, to make John Sampson Law leading man material again.

    Johnny said it didn’t matter. But it was right around this time he started bruising my arm outside Chasen’s. Then if the photos appeared with the caption, Nymph and Gnome, he’d break things. A glass ashtray. Souvenir plate from San Francisco. A framed photo of my mom. Once he punched a hole in the wall. Right there, by the patio door. Plaster dust drifted down like snow. And so all of a sudden, he started laughing. Worst sound I ever heard. The breaking and punching were easier to bear than that. That laugh.

    I’d hide. Well, not hide exactly. I’d go into the bedroom. Sit on the floor and smoke. I’ve sat on a lot of floors in a lot of bedrooms. Listening for the breaking to stop, or the car to drive away. Guess what I keep wishing for is that there might be a someone somewhere who will want to sit on the floor with me. Someone who can stand me when I’m scared, or crying, or smoking too many…no, wait. Don’t write that down. That’s not… I don’t mean to make too much of it. Everyone has their blue days, right?  Even here, in sunny Los Angeles. Sometimes I wish it’d rain so I could mix a pitcher of martinis and have a good cry. This weather is a lot to live up to.

    Still, we had our good days, Johnny and me. Had some laughs. Sometimes he’d use one of his funny expressions, like don’t get your knickers in a twist and I’d giggle. He’d beam like he won an Oscar. And I’d think, okay. I can do this.

    The last time we were out in public together was that premiere last Christmas. What was the name of that movie?  The Brave Men of… Something or Other. For publicity, the studio had invited some soldiers to watch the picture. The armistice thingy had happened that summer.  So, these were the first boys back home from Korea. They were under the marquee, in their uniforms, posing for photos when we got there. So fresh. So bright and alive. Cheeks like apples. You couldn’t look away from them. Then they saw me, and started chanting. “Syl! Syl! Syl!” Oh, they were boys! But boys with big men’s voices. Shouting my name as I walked right into the middle of them. It was like they each had their own separate engine running inside. The heat. The purr. And all talking at once. Flashbulbs popping all over the place.  I’m smiling. Touching one on the elbow. Another on the shoulder. Cradling one’s face like he was my son, another like my kid brother. “You glad the war is over? Glad to be back home?” Yes, they said, and it was lovely. So sweet, to see how happy they were. It was all so…vivid. I’ll never, ever forget it.

    The crowd started moving, what with everyone going into the theatre. Thinking Johnny had gone in ahead, I was surprised to see him still behind me. Still at the curb, where the car had dropped us off. Just standing there, on his own. Heading over to him, I saw something in his face.  He was white. Eyes blazing. I held out my hand but he wrinkled his nose at it. As if it was rotting meat on a stick. Then he leaned in and hissed into my ear, “Why don’t you just shag them all?” My face went hot. Like I’d been slapped. He smiled that vicious smile of his. Turned and walked away. I watched him go, hands jammed in his tuxedo jacket pockets.  Johnny walked right down the street. No one recognised him. No one noticed him at all.

    When I got home that night, he was here. Sitting here, in the living room. In the dark. Except for the Christmas tree lights blinking on and off, like they do. They’d blink on, and in this reddish light, I saw his face, and his knuckles gripping the arms of his chair. Then they’d blink off and I couldn’t see him at all. I remember thinking it seemed like the scene of an accident. You know, when you pass one on the road? Squad cars, an ambulance. Red and blue lights flashing. I sat down on the sofa. Didn’t even take off my coat.

    “I’ve been having this dream.”  He started as if he was in the middle of a story. “And in this dream… well. I don’t want to upset you, Syl.”

    “I won’t be upset.” My legs were pressed together. Hands on knees, I could feel the cool sheen of my stockings.

    “That’s right.You’re really very strong, aren’t you? Stout Yankee stock. Whereas I…”  He stopped talking and the lights flashed off.

    “Are you sick, Johnny?”

    Again, the laugh. Like a donkey with a chest cold. “Not at all! Kind of you to be concerned. I only meant that I’m old. Very. Very. Old.”

    Then silence, woolly thick. I had a thousand different answers at the ready…  No, you’re not. Don’t be silly. Come here and I’ll make you feel young again. I’d used all of these on him before, and they had mostly worked. This time though, I just couldn’t manage it. I was hurt.  But it wasn’t only that. I was waiting to see how bad this was going to get.

    “So, in this dream,” he said, “you come home from some gay, glittering Hollywood gig. You float in, just as you have tonight. You’re perfect. All hair. Teeth. And tits. That sexy little wiggle when you walk. Wearing some champagne coloured, tighter-than-fuck frock leaving little to the imagination. Because why should it?  Nothing about you, My Darling, is engineered to appeal to Man’s mind. Your aim is…somewhat lower.”

    Johnny was pale. His forehead sweating. And I was holding onto my knee so hard I could feel my nails making half-moons in the flesh.

    “Everything on display. What are shop windows for? Let’s get those punters in!  This is, after all, America.” Arms open as Jolson singing Mammy, the ruddy light made Johnny’s features grotesque.

    “Why weren’t you at the party with me?”

    “Because I’m not wanted.  I’ve got grey pubes and I quote King Lear.  I don’t fit. But you!  You fit right in, and every man fits right in you. And I do mean every man, Syl. I could smell them off you. You came to me. In your frock. You kissed me. And I smelled their spunk on your pretty neck. Tasted it. In your pretty mouth.”

    “I’m going to bed.”

    “Oh no you’re not.”  He stood up, throwing the shadow of a giant on the wall. He was leaning over me, his hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop looking at his face. His long, noble face. So haggard now. The last thing he’d broken in my house was himself. Into a hundred un-mendable pieces.

    Then Johnny said, “They warned me about you.”

    In our movie, there are ghosts. Two kings, in jewel encrusted crowns and velvet robes. Two knights in full armour but for their helmets, which they carry under their arms. Two who I think are supposed to be princes… tights and swords and shining hair. They appear to Johnny. That is, to his character, when he wakes up in the morning to find I’m gone. He stumbles down to the edge of this pond, rubbing his eyes. Looking around the whole time like he’s wondering where I am. He kneels in the mud to splash cold water on his face. In the close-up, we see droplets beading on his majestic brow as his blue eyes widen in surprise.

    The ghosts are on the far side of the pond. You know right away they’re ghosts because they’re very pale, with dark staring eyes and black, toothless holes where their mouths should be. They appear out of nowhere. This is why Johnny’s character looks so surprised. They start calling out to Johnny, something like, “Beware!  Beware!  She’s got you under her spell!”

    Basically, the ghosts are my ex-boyfriends doing a spooky version of you’re better off without her, Pal. You’d be surprised how many of my movies end like that.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  I’m bad news, right?

    So, I asked him, “Who, Johnny? Who warned you? About what? What did they say about me?”

    His fingers were drilling down into my shoulders and his breath was hot and stank of booze.  And just when I thought I’d scream, he started saying one word, over and over, in this weird stage whisper.  Just one word, while Johnny’s face turned redder and redder.

    Beware.

    Beware.

    Beware.

    Then he stood, opened his arms again and bellowed, “Beware the girl without mercy!”

    “For God’s sake, Johnny, it was only a movie.”

    He stood right there, in the middle of the room, and he laughed.  Laughed his horrible laugh at me and said, “And I am merely a ghost.” I stood up. Still tall in my heels, and turned to go upstairs. Locked my bedroom door, and cried myself to sleep.

     

    That was it for us. In the morning Johnny was gone, and we never spoke again. Yeah, just about a year ago now. I haven’t got around to putting up a tree this year. It’s a hassle, isn’t it, all that ‘deck the halls’ stuff? I’m not really in the spirit this year.

    When I heard about his heart attack, I remembered the way his face went all red that night.  And I wondered… I mean, if he was already sick, that might sort of explain? I don’t know.  Maybe not. What else can I tell you? We were happy. For a while.

    No, really, thanks so much for coming. Hope it was okay. Hope I gave you what you need. I’m always nervous until the article comes out! I’m sure it’ll be fine.

    I’m actually going away in January. To Korea. Some of our fellas are still over there, and they’ve asked me to go do a few shows for the troops. Not sure what I’ll do. Thinking I might sing a few songs? I mean I’m no Rosemary Clooney, but I can carry a tune. Well, enough that they won’t throw stuff at me.

    I just think it might be good, you know? How can you be lonely with all those beautiful boys around you?  How can you be sad? With all that youth? All that life?

    Feature Image from the 1928 move Dry Martini.

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