Even before I've finished my pre-run stretches, I'm glad I'm not wearing headphones. Don't get me wrong: I like music, but head-space is what I need right now: room to think. My ex – wow, this will take some getting used to – is a musician, and when I booked this week of annual leave, I had planned to join him on the last leg of his band's summer tour. Yes, I've been dumped – last Friday – at work – just before lunch – by text. He has met someone who really gets him: some backing singer who joined the band for the Galway concerts. They've been inseparable ever since: ten whole days… Hah! What about the previous five-hundred-and-something days? What about the twelve-hundred euro I advanced him – less than six months ago – towards the Fender Stratocaster guitar he simply had to have for that gig in Whelan's? What about all the mornings I've had to walk to work in hail, rain, wind, and snow because he'd been too drunk, or too high, or – in the light of recent events – too preoccupied to drive my car back to my apartment after a performance?
It hadn't taken Moira – my boss – very long to wheedle it out of me and to subsequently spirit me off to the pub for the afternoon. Therapy, she'd said, but I still can't decide if the experience hadn't been more therapeutic for her than for me. It was through Moira I'd first met him after she'd dragged me to a solo gig in town in his pre-band days. Although she has always vehemently denied it, I still suspect that Moira's interest hadn't been confined to his accomplished covers of Clapton, Waits, Petty and Croce. Our Friday afternoon in the pub did little to allay my suspicions; there had been moments when I'd detected considerably more schadenfreude than empathy in the atmosphere.
Although not yet nine o'clock, the early August sun is pleasantly warm. I take a couple of deep breaths and then break into a jog. I'm no fitness fanatic – far from it – but following a spell of overindulgence, I know I need to sweat some toxins out of my system. In truth, I'd slipped into something of a rut after he'd gone on tour, trying to compensate for my lack of a social life by seeking comfort in a glass or two of wine while watching telly. My hangover on Saturday was a serious wake-up call – I even have a vague recollection of smoking some of Moira's cigarettes during our binge. Now, bearing in mind my sudden change of status from in a relationship to SINGLE, I've decided that, should I be allotted a hashtag, fit and free to mingle would be far preferable to gone to seed.
Dad is thrilled that I'll be home for an entire week. Mam is making all the right noises, but there is no escaping her furtive sidelong glances: that old I wonder what you've done this time look. In fairness, I can't really blame her: I don't think I've spent more than three or four weekends with my parents in any year since I first left for college at the age of eighteen. Only very recently have I begun to appreciate the sacrifices they must have made to put all three of us through university. I am the youngest and the only one still based in Ireland. My eldest brother has been living in Dubai for over twelve years; he is married with two daughters – the younger of whom has never seen her grandparents in the flesh. My other brother is a high-flier in Silicon Valley; he's still single but has visited only twice in the fifteen years since my parent's silver wedding anniversary. Ironically, if our parents hadn't been so thorough in preparing us for life, some of us might have settled closer to home.
Attempting to shake such thoughts from my head, I try to focus on the sights, sounds, and smells of a distant past. I leave the public road and swing left into the narrow lane that overlooks the path to the beach, a place that had served as both crèche and finishing school: the backdrop to many early childhood adventures and to a few landmark teenage escapades. Above vibrant swathes of orange montbretia and purple loosestrife, the blood-red fuchsia is at its blazing best, interspersed with the violet of hebe, and intertwined with the old gold of fragrant honeysuckle. The still, heady air is alive with a myriad of hovering and darting insects, while the ebb and flow of the nearby tide is an undulating accompaniment to the hypnotic drone of foraging bees. Breaking stride to monitor the haphazard fluttering of a red admiral, I wander a few steps from the path and then freeze.
Would I have noticed him if he was older, or younger, or dishevelled, or foreign-looking? I doubt it. After all, it's not unusual to see a figure – male or female – gazing out to sea from the little stretch of pebble beach below. The guy is fit, tanned, and barefoot; he stands at the water's edge with his back towards me, his curling dark hair nestling against the collar of a pristine white polo shirt. His right-hand clasps his left wrist above the mounds of his buttocks, while his muscular calves seem rock-solid below his knee-length khaki shorts. Battling the urge to stand and stare, I force my unwilling legs some fifty meters further along the path and, after taking a long swig from my water bottle, flop onto the seat of a wooden picnic table which offers an unobscured view of the only other human in sight.
When, after about twenty minutes, the man hasn't moved, I get to my feet, repeat my stretching routine, and then begin to jog back toward the road. The lane is suddenly alive with enthusiastic scatterings of preteen children armed with various combinations of hurleys, racquets, buckets, and spades. A little posse of women follows close behind, hefting bulging holdalls or pushing buggies laden with picnic baskets and towels. As the mothers draw to one side to let me pass, I hear my name – the pre-college form of my name, the one my parents still use – it's more a question than a call. The name sounds again, but it's now a summons. I break stride and, jogging on the spot, scan the line of unfamiliar faces before me. A ruddy-cheeked, matronly figure takes a step forward. Smiling self-consciously, she tells me I haven't changed a bit. Realising that I'm dumbfounded, she introduces herself, then points to a little sun-freckled redhead and identifies her as her baby.
I remember the feeling; I muse, reflecting on Sadie's comment that her elder daughter would rather die than be seen in public with her. I step from the shower and, towelling myself dry, wonder what sequence of words I had used to decline her invitation to drop by after supper for a catch-up drink. In a vain attempt to assuage my guilt, I tell myself that my response had been instinctive, an automatic defensive reaction, but why should I need to protect myself from Sadie in the first place? She had been my best friend, my closest confidante, throughout our childhood and teenage years. In all that time, she had never done me a moment's wrong: she had been both ally and alibi and had discouraged more than one of my unwelcome suitors. Assisting Sadie with the odd essay or procuring an occasional pack of cigarettes had been a small price to pay for having a personal bodyguard living just a few doors away. It wasn't even as if we had ever actually fallen out: circumstances had simply conspired to send us in opposite directions – me to college; Sadie to single parenthood.
I go to my room and check my phone. There's a WhatsApp message from Moira; I ignore it. After pulling on a sky-blue tee-shirt and a pair of maroon cotton shorts, I tidy my bed and then take a critical look at my surroundings. Gosh, I am stuck in a teenage time warp: although the ceiling, door, window frames, and bookshelves have been painted, everything is exactly as it was on the day I left for college. The walls are festooned with posters of Westlife, Oasis, Leonardo DiCaprio, and David Beckham. Dynasties of teddy bears and miscellaneous other furry creatures sit on the shelf above my bed, and twin stacks of CDs stand to attention on the dressing table at either side of my old Walkman. Can I survive being surrounded by this mishmash for an entire week? What would Neptune – I think Neptune is a good name for the mysterious man by the shore – or any man think if he were to walk in here tonight? Not that there's much chance of that happening. What would Moira, or even Sadie, or any of my contemporaries say?
It's amazing how quickly one can obliterate almost half of one's life. Gone into Mam's bin are Westlife, Oasis, Leo, and Becks; gone to Mam's friend's charity shop are the CDs and the Walkman, gone with them are two bags of clothes, a few pairs of shoes, some hand-painted runners, and a box of books that spans everything from my earliest Ladybirds to Harry Potter. The teddy bears and their friends, however, are a different matter. The charity shop manager is adamant: toys are one donation she cannot accept. Citing health and safety, she shakes her head and says that my former bedfellows may be destined to end their days in the council's landfill site at the other end of the county.
I cook dinner for Mam and Dad, and after a relaxing evening, followed by a great night's sleep, I'm in the perfect frame of mind for a morning run. Once my warm-up has eased the aches and twinges of yesterday's efforts, I'm into a steady rhythm well before I enter the lane. All seems just as it was twenty-four hours before: the brine and bladderwrack scented breeze, the flowers, the insects… and him. Yes, Neptune is there, standing in precisely the same spot, looking out to sea. Only his polo shirt has changed: yesterday's white is now replaced by today's primrose yellow. I continue to the picnic table, take a swallow from my water bottle, and then resume my vigil.
I check my watch, scarcely believing that thirty minutes have flown by. He hasn't moved, and neither is there any sign of Sadie or her gang. I take the footpath through the sand hills to the public car park by the main road. I don't know what I'm hoping to find: a car, a motorbike, a skateboard, some hint as to how he got here? Who is he, where has he come from, what is he looking at? Anyway, why should it matter to me? I stifle a smile when Mam asks if I've met anybody on my run. I tell her about the fuchsia, the loosestrife, the montbretia, the hebe, the insects, the scents of honeysuckle, hay, brine and kelp… Shooting me another of her looks, Mam says that my phone has been noising. Moira has left two voice messages, both asking if I've got any news. I don't respond. Anyway, what could I tell her? That I've seen a man.
Deleting phone content has proven more traumatic than bedroom decluttering. A further wave of emotion engulfs me as my trembling finger reaches the doorbell. From within comes the clamour of discordant female voices. The paint-parched door is jerked open, and a scantily-clad Barbie lookalike flounces past me without as much as a glance. My presence on her doorstep brings an instant halt to Sadie's pursuit of her daughter. Regaining her composure, she embraces me just as fiercely as her three-year-old hugs the pink teddy bear which her sister's hip has dislodged from the yawning mouth of my black bin bag.
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Rhythm
by Neil Brosnan
Bio- Neil Brosnan is from Listowel, Ireland, and has had his short stories appear in magazines, print anthologies, and in digital format in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the USA. He is a current Pushcart nominee and a winner of The Bryan MacMahon, The Maurice Walsh, (five times) and The Ireland’s Own, (twice) short story awards. He has published two short story collections: ‘Fresh Water & Other Stories’ (Original Writing, 2010) and ‘Neap Tide & Other Stories’ (New Binary Press, 2013).
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