Andrew Fox: Over Our Heads

I took a step forward into the muck but Maria’s hand on my elbow restrained me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s not.’

We trudged back to the front door of the building and sat on the lips of two enormous planters empty of plants. Together we looked across the street through a gap in the hoarding at the stretch of waste ground I had seen from Turlough and Maria’s window, which now had been deserted by most of the kids. The few who remained sat on thick-treaded tyres and threw stones at the windows of earth movers.

‘Whose kids are they?’ I said.

‘I don’t know.’ Maria shrugged. She ran her hand through her hair and gave me a white smile.

I watched the arc of a well-launched stone, heard the shatter of glass and the trill of thin voices swallowed in space. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to think of Sarah but instead I found myself picturing the dog. First it was a Jack Russell, then a sad-faced boxer, now a golden retriever jumping for a lofted tennis ball, now a greyhound running through tulips.

When I opened my eyes again I saw, at the end of the street, the gloom begin to coalesce into the shape of a figure who could only have been Turlough. The dog was at his heel. I pointed. Maria shouted. The dog broke into a gallop. Earlier, hunting, I had admired the languor of Maria’s gait, but now, as she started to run, I saw an awkwardness: she lifted her knees too high, planted her feet too heavily. A few feet from the dog, she dropped to one knee. The dog leaped into her arms. She snuggled it, whispered something in its ear and rose to kiss Turlough. They stood for a moment, his hand in her hair and her hands against his chest. Then they started back, coiled together, the dog trotting in obedient step.

‘Told you I’d find her,’ Turlough grinned.

‘You were right,’ I said. ‘And fair play to you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Maria whispered to him.

‘Me too.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I’ll get a locksmith out tonight.’

I looked down at the dog: a muscular red setter with clouds of steam rising from its coat. The blacks of its eyes flashed white and its pink tongue lolled in slaver.

‘Good stuff,’ I mumbled. ‘Listen, I should get going.’

‘Nonsense!’ Turlough said and slapped my shoulder. ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll have a drink with us. I won’t hear no. Come on, now. We’re celebrating.’

He led the way back upstairs, ushered us inside and opened the patio door. ‘Pull up a pew,’ he said as Maria folded herself into a deckchair. ‘I’ll run in now and open us up a bottle.’

‘This’ll be nice,’ Maria said to the dog. ‘Won’t it?’

I leaned over the balcony and looked down at the stretch of waste ground, now fully deserted; and beyond that at the halogen fog that signified the city, the red blinking eye at the top of the spire; and, in the distance, a hulking blackness spread beneath the arched spine of the Dublin mountains. I thought of Sarah, far away.

The dog nuzzled the backs of my knees.

‘She likes you,’ Maria said. ‘Don’t you?’

The dog shuffled its front paws and licked Maria’s outstretched fingers. Turlough came back with three glasses and a bottle of wine. He uncorked the bottle and poured us each a glass.

‘Your health,’ he said.

We clinked glasses and Turlough leaned back in his deckchair. He crossed his legs and let a sandal dangle.

I sat forward. ‘So, Maria was saying you’re an engineer?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What do you work on? Buildings? Bridges?’

‘Aircraft.’

‘Really?’

‘No joke.’

‘He’s very clever,’ Maria said.

‘At the airport?’

‘Where else?’

I finished my first glass quickly. Turlough topped me up.

‘And you’re a — what?’

‘Music journalist,’ Maria said.

‘Fancy.’

‘Freelance,’ I said.

‘Still. Sounds creative.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Maria said.

Turlough frowned. ‘Where can I read you?’

‘I have a blog. I’ll give you the address.’

‘Do.’

‘I’d like that too,’ Maria said.

Turlough nodded slowly. ‘I’d be interested.’

‘But he wanted to be an explorer.’ Maria smiled at me.

Turlough frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

The dog parted its jaws in a wide-open yawn. It shook its head and stretched itself out flat.

‘She’s had a long day,’ Maria said.

‘We all have,’ Turlough said.

Maria bit her lip.

‘So, you live by yourself?’ Turlough said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, yes, at the moment.’ I explained my situation.

‘It’s temporary,’ Maria said.

‘Good,’ Turlough said.

‘We might have them up soon? Next time?’

Turlough finished his second glass. ‘Sure.’

We killed the bottle. I looked at my watch and made my excuses. Turlough walked me to the door. As I was passing the kitchen, I saw the parcel sitting on the island, and thought for a moment, until I thought better, to ask him to open it in front of me. Turlough opened the door and I stepped out into the corridor. He spread himself in the doorway, his arm locked solid against the frame. Maria leaned over it to shake my hand. Turlough held firm.

‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he said.

‘I won’t.’

Maria leaned and nodded. The door closed. I stood for a minute and tried to listen through it but they didn’t seem to be speaking.

Back downstairs, buoyed a little from the drink and a little desperate for ceremony, I decided to forgo my usual sans-Sarah meal of noodles or pasta and instead went foraging in the freezer. I found a vegetarian chilli I remembered Sarah having made on one of her first weekends back. I defrosted it in the microwave and, as it heated on the stove, I set the table with a placemat and a plate and arranged cutlery with care. The chilli tasted muddy, freezer-burned and old, but I took massive consolation in its moments of clean spice. When I was done, happy and full, I turned on the computer and searched my music library for a sad, hopeful song that Sarah and I had once spent a long weekend listening to. I played it as loud as I could, and as it played I washed the dishes, moving between sink and cupboard with a tea towel swinging in my hand.

I set my alarm for the next morning an hour earlier than usual, and when I woke I used that time to drink a cup of coffee on the balcony. Then I took a long shower, combed my hair, moisturized the patches of eczema that had begun on my elbows and which I had angered in my sleep. I cut the nails of my fingers and toes and shaved off the patchy beard I had neglected. Afterwards I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, saw the spread around my waist, and made a resolution to exercise. I threw my sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms into the wash and dressed in fresh clothes. I emptied the laundry basket into the washing machine and, as the drum whirred, I dismantled the apartment. I repositioned the floor lamps and moved the bookshelves, rearranged the books in ascending order of height. I dusted the TV screen and Windolened the balcony windows. Then I worked all day, with a joy I could only dimly recall. I started an essay I had been thinking about for a long while and finished it over the next few days, during which time I resumed my skype appointments with Sarah — who was snowed under with work in Stockholm, who was sorry she had missed my flowers, who couldn’t wait to come home.

I started jogging nightly through the grounds, and by Thursday I noticed an improvement in my breathing. That night, at the edge of the development where Maria had restrained me, I saw her and Turlough and the dog. Turlough was hitting a tennis ball with a hurley for the dog to give chase. His shoulders were powerful, his movements fluid. Maria stood off to one side hugging her elbows and looking out towards the motorway. I waved as I wheezed past but she didn’t see me. I ran on.