Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

She did have blood on her hands. And so did he. For the short moment both his breath and arm were held, he considered telling her that.

‘The state of your hands is none of my business,’ he said instead. ‘This place used to be a whorehouse. That’s what I meant. Funny to have a Holy Mary chattyboo here then, see?’

‘This used to be a whorehouse?’

‘Not so long ago too,’ he conceded.

She paused.

‘Dirty little bollocks,’ she said, but she was looking down through the floor, so Tony knew it wasn’t meant for him.

‘I probably shouldn’t have said that so?’ he chanced.

‘You probably shouldn’t,’ she replied. ‘Not that it matters to you, my lad, because even if it wasn’t my transgression you were referencing…’ She stepped forward and he stepped back. ‘… you’re still warped in thinking that a whore has no right to be religious. Haven’t you heard of Mary Magdalene?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You did, boy, loud and clear. Funny thing to find a scapular in a place like this, because the only people worthy of grace are the people who’ve done the least to need it, hmm?’

The sun broke through outside the window, and a shaft of light appeared across the floor and opened up the room. Off the sage green walls it cast a spotlight on Maureen’s head, making her, for just a second, the bulb off the Wicked Witch of the West.

‘I’ve no problem with anyone getting religious,’ he said.

‘You do, and it’s buried so deep inside you…’ She poked his belly. ‘… that you can’t even see yourself for the bigot you are.’

‘Jesus, I was—’

‘Ah, and now you’re taking the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘Look,’ he said. ‘Clearly you’re into all that, and I’m sorry if I offended you—’

‘I’m not into any of it. I’m just pulling you up on assuming your right to religion if you’re going to deny it to whores.’

‘What? I’m not… I’m just… Jesus Christ.’

‘And you’re only saying Sorry if I offended you because you think the power of Christ might compel me to compel you to the next life, isn’t that it?’

‘Well listen, girl, whatever poor Robbie O’Donovan did to you, I want to avoid it.’

‘Robbie O’Donovan,’ she said.

Downstairs the door opened, and J.P. rolled his name out of his maw.

‘Cusack? C’mere timme and get these tiles! Maureen? Maureen! Did that fella not get here yet at all?’

Tony looked at the gleeful old dear, and turned, and walked downstairs to J.P. like a boy moving towards a principal sworn to mete out reprimand, screaming protest in his head and yet feeling the loss of will like a punch to the gut as his feet kept inching forward.

‘Nice one,’ said J.P., spotting the dustpan and the bin bags, and Tony sank to his haunches and started sweeping up the broken tiles.

‘I don’t know how she did it,’ J.P. said. ‘I swear to God, that woman wrecks all around her.’

‘It’s coz she doesn’t want to stay here,’ Tony said.

‘And yet here she’ll stay, because she doesn’t have anything to bargain with,’ J.P. replied.

Tony Cusack swept the tiles into the black bag, stood up and faced Jimmy Phelan, and from his thin dry lips he said, ‘C’mere, are you ever going to be ready for that piano, boy?’

The dew was heavy on the grass by the time he got home. He crossed the green towards his gate and the damp stretched from the blades to his jeans and up onto his calves.

She stood at her front door, hanging on to the jamb with a bare foot hooked round its opposite ankle.

‘Evening, Tony!’

His estate was an ugly thing — near thirty houses bordering a scruffy green, a couple more rows behind each terrace. You can’t look a gift house in the mouth , his sister once said under a wrinkled nose; he found that funny. It was home, at this stage. It wasn’t perfect, nor had it been long before his family outgrew it, but it was cheap and they weren’t going to be kicked out, barring his deciding to start dealing drugs out of the place or running a knocking shop in the box room.

The drawback was that there was no way of knowing what kind of degenerate would become your neighbour, seeing as the whims of the Corporation were rickety as a city of sticks and the only trait required in its tenants was a wallet full of moths. For a couple of years Tony had lived between the McDaids, who were coolly pleasant, and the Healys, who couldn’t wait to get out of there. The Healys made a break for it and in their place the Corporation installed Tara Duane, who he remembered vaguely from his own schooldays. She’d gotten knocked up by some Scottish fella and her lone sprog granted her placement in a house the same size as his own.

She was frail and bug-eyed, but he knew his mother hoped that one day they’d knock through the dividing wall; a single mother and a doleful widower, sure why not, sure no one wants to die alone in a double bed. For a while Tara seemed to have subscribed to this line of thinking, and her conversations would coast between flat jokes and forced intimacy.

It was bad enough suffering this breathy plámásing, but then she took an interest in his kids.

Kelly first, because her young wan was Kelly’s age and so naturally they became buddies. It wasn’t such a problem with Kelly. She was like her mother: a pretty face and a vicious bitch. Ryan then, and that bothered him a lot more, because boys will be boys and this boy was easily led and, occasionally, startlingly sentimental. There were indications that she’d been playing the mammy with him. There was a flaunted familiarity with his quirks; a slight, sickening competitiveness; a proper little devil in the details.

‘Nights are getting shorter,’ she beamed.

He grunted. The kids hadn’t closed the curtains. Every light in the house on again, and the place wide open to inspection. The idea of every biddy in the estate rubbernecking dismayed him, but there was no talking to his six; the darkening glass on the four walls didn’t prompt in them self-serving instinct, not yet anyway.

Through the sitting-room window he watched a lurid parade of TV cartoons and school jumpers and various projectiles.

‘And sure Ryan won’t feel it till the Junior Cert,’ Tara went on.

Tony’s shoulders drooped. He closed his eyes.

‘Sure he’ll fly through it,’ said Tara.

Even with the best will in the world Tony couldn’t play friends with Tara Duane, but her trilling was part of this landscape, and this landscape was his, boring and all as it was, sodden and all as he made it.

C’mon, boy. What would Jimmy Phelan want with this?

She’s grand for half an hour and the next thing she is totally off her game. I’m waiting for it, so it’s not a surprise.

We’re out at a Junior Cert results party in town which in fairness I’d otherwise have avoided like the plague but she was mad to go; there’s two floors and two DJs and kids here from every side of the city. I’ve been sitting by the bar all night and there’s been a few people coolly wandering over because they’ve heard I’ve got yokes. They sit down beside me with their hand awkwardly curled on the seat cushion by my arse and I exchange tablets for tenners.

Karine’s wearing hotpants and a tight top and a scalding pink bra and her heels are so tall they bring her right up to my height, and so she’s all legs and shoulders and skin. She’s sitting on my lap shouting over the music at her buddy Louise. I’ve got my arms around her and my mouth pressed to the back of her neck, coasting a boner that just won’t go away. Not that she minds. She’s figuring that if she stays sitting on my lap she’ll shield me from customers’ funny looks. It’s her sitting on my lap in fucking hotpants that’s doing the damage but no way am I telling her that.