Thirst Trap, page 21
‘Friends.’ Róise wishes she had the composure to laugh in his face. She takes a drink of her wine and steadies herself. ‘I don’t know where to put all this fucking fury. Lydia’s dead, and you want to be friends, and I’ve got all this pure rage that’s got nowhere to fucking go.’
‘Róise,’ Brendan says, looking hopeless. ‘I don’t know how many more times I can say I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry. I want to know why you did it.’
‘Listen, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it honestly wasn’t about you.’
He said this at the time, in his letter and in person. Being demoted to the status of supporting character without agency or impact feels somehow worse than being provided with an inventory of specific ways in which she was inadequate. She looks at Brendan, into his hurt, are you mad at me eyes, and knows that it is pointless to persevere. She finishes her wine and rises from her seat. ‘Thanks for meeting me. I’m going to head off.’
‘Already? Róise, come on, I’m really sorry. It’s good to see you – I want to catch up properly.’
She whips her coat up over her shoulders in a movement that is satisfyingly fluid. ‘I’m homeless, my best friends aren’t speaking, I haven’t eaten in nine hours, and I may have to change jobs because I’m getting the ride off one of my co-workers. That’s about all my craic, Brendan. Enjoy your night, get home safe, I wish you all the best in your future endeavours.’
* * *
—
Róise can smell Liam’s tea from the front door when she lets herself in. She joins him in the kitchen. He is making a cheese toastie with thick crusty bread, mozzarella drooling down the sides like candle wax. ‘All right, stranger?’ he says.
‘I saw Brendan,’ she replies.
Liam does not flinch. ‘Any craic?’
‘He’s the same.’ Róise shrugs.
‘Ah. Sorry.’ Liam prods his steel turner towards the sizzling pan. ‘Do you want this? I’ve got bread that needs used up while it’s still fresh – I can make another one.’
Róise opens her mouth to decline, and her stomach gives a yawn of betrayal. Liam raises his eyebrows, his face saying ahh, go on, go on, go on, Mrs Doyle–style. ‘Go on, then,’ sighs Róise. ‘I’ll try it.’
what are we after
Astrid told Maggie, back at the beginning of their counselling sessions, that she would only breach confidentiality if she was concerned that Maggie posed a threat of serious harm to others or to herself. At the hair salon, Tess seems to feel a similar duty of care when Maggie sits down in the black box-chair in front of the mirror, and states that she has been thinking about getting a fringe.
Maggie’s original instinct was to lock herself in the bathroom and dye her hair a bold new colour, fire-engine red or chocolate-wrapper purple, until she remembered Harley once tried a home dye that called itself ‘Peach Breeze’ and gave her hair the colour and texture of Animal from The Muppet Show. Maggie has spent this week browsing different colours and cuts into the small hours of the morning, texting Liam, do you think I’d suit being brunette? or honest opinion: should I shave my head? after scrolling through twelve pages of image results for Kristen Stewart. Liam replied, you suit your hair the way it is. If you showed up with any of these styles then I’d think you were going into witness protection. Can you please get off Pinterest and reply to Róise’s messages xx
‘Now,’ says Tess, coming to stand behind her, smiling at Maggie in the mirror, ‘what are we after today?’
‘I want a change,’ says Maggie. The woman in the next seat along from her has gorgeous silver-blonde hair swept to one side, the other side of her head shaved down to duckling fuzz, and Maggie gets cold feet about asking for anything dramatic. ‘I was thinking maybe a fringe?’
Tess bends down to peer at Maggie’s reflection at eye level, close enough that Maggie can hear the chewing gum clacking between her teeth. She says, ‘Okay; and what’s brought this on?’ like a doctor asking and when did these symptoms start?
‘Do you not think I’d suit one?’
Tess either isn’t listening or pretends to have heard a different question. ‘I reckon a couple inches off the end – maybe collarbone length? – and some really subtle pink highlights, if you fancy.’
Maggie is not quite ready to admit that this suggestion sounds extremely attractive; she imagined sweeping into the salon and dictating the terms of a dramatic new style herself, and instead now feels she is being babied. She presses, ‘Would I really look that bad with bangs?’
‘Darling,’ Tess says kindly, ‘I’m trying to help you.’
‘It’s just a fringe!’
‘It’s never just a fringe.’
Maggie concedes defeat, and allows Tess to swathe her in a black gown and lead her to a basin. Tess has a fresh manicure, nails filed almost to spikes, and Maggie wonders if they will catch and scratch and tangle in her hair, but Tess’s fingers are gentle as they massage the shampoo and warm water together.
Maggie and Tess have not yet arranged a second date. Tess either has not noticed Maggie holding back, or she has noticed but is choosing to be patient. Maggie cannot help but wonder whether this apparent mellowness is an indicator of indifference, but she has too many other concerns clamouring for attention in her head to consider this at length. Earlier this week, Maggie sent Tess a message saying I need a haircut urgently, and Tess replied with, who hurt you, and Maggie chose not to outline the details of the Cate conflict, but instead told Tess about their collapsing house. Tess was appropriately sympathetic, and booked her in for a Friday afternoon appointment.
‘Any plans for the weekend?’ Tess asks from behind Maggie.
‘Not sure yet.’ Róise sent a passive-aggressive calendar invite to both Maggie and Harley during the week, with a brief agenda of items to discuss, the main ones being clearing out the house and trying to find a new one. Maggie does not know whether Harley and Róise have been in contact. She herself has not spoken to Harley since they argued, and Harley has not tried to reach out to her.
Cate has not been in touch either. The predictability of her silence is almost comforting. The loss of her has not come as much of a blow to Maggie, since the last year has been a loop of losing and finding and then losing her again. The feeling is like sitting in a chilly bath that has cooled from piping hot over time, gradually enough that she barely feels the drop in temperature.
Maggie starts at the quick blast of cold water from Tess’s hose as she does a final rinse before swaddling her head in a warm towel. When Maggie is back in front of the mirror, Tess brushes her hair carefully, stopping short each time the bristles meet a knot. She gestures with the handle of her comb and explains where she plans to make cuts. ‘We’ll get rid of the dead ends and add some colour afterwards. Sound good?’ Maggie nods.
Tess brings her a coffee while the colour is setting in Maggie’s hair. ‘You up to anything tonight? One of my friends is doing a DJ set at Union Street, if you fancy coming along.’
‘Are you going to give my hair a beautiful finish only to watch it slowly congeal in a lesbian sweat cloud?’
‘Who said I was giving your hair a beautiful finish?’
‘I knew it – there’s Veet in these foils, isn’t there?’
‘Nah, I just went with pure acid. You’re going to smell like a crucified cat in about seven minutes.’
Maggie smiles. ‘Union Street sounds good.’
After she’s been rinsed and blow-dried and had a look at the back of her head in the mirror, Maggie gets out her purse at the counter and Tess gives her a subtle don’t worry about it shake of her head. ‘I do nails, too, so just come back sometime. I put the good ones on Instagram, if you’re interested in my shameless self-promotion.’ She taps her phone screen a couple of times and shows it to Maggie.
Maggie scrolls down the colourful grid and stops on a set of nails painted neatly with lemons and limes. ‘You did these?’
‘Yeah, do you like them?’
‘Do you remember – sorry, you’ve probably done loads of them – but do you by any chance remember who you did these for?’
Tess peers at the screen. ‘Aye, she used to come in every couple of weeks. Australian girl. Haven’t seen her in a while.’
‘She got deported,’ says Maggie. Tess looks curious, and Maggie adds, ‘Mediocre therapist. Great nails.’
* * *
—
The first time she came to Union Street with Harley and Róise – before she dented her perineum on a steel pole – Maggie waxed with drunken nostalgia about the fact that the building had been a shoe factory in the nineteenth century, as though she herself had once worked there.
‘MAGGIE!’ Tess flags her down from the bar. Maggie realizes she was looking automatically for Harley’s and Róise’s heads in the crowd, forgetting who she is meant to be here with.
‘WHAT ARE YOU AFTER?’ Tess asks. ‘MY ROUND!’
Maggie orders a vodka tonic. Tess also gets two shots of tequila, and the salt mingles with the taste of sweat already beading around Maggie’s lips. Heartburn fumes in her chest as she swallows the shot, and she forces the lime wedge into her mouth. She spends the next few minutes trying to dislodge the strands of lime pulp that are now trapped between her teeth.
The club is lit with the pink and blue of sunset clouds. Friends and couples lift their interlocked hands over the crowd when they have to pass around people, as though they are making an arch at a céilí. The dancefloor is packed, bodies gasping and sweating and pulsing in time with the drum beat. Maggie is strung between wanting to go immediately to bed and wanting to get so drunk she wakes up tomorrow afternoon missing a minimum of one vital organ. She gulps down her drink like an athlete hydrating after a sprint.
Tess says a quick hello to her friend at the DJ booth. Maggie’s attention drifts, expecting not to be acknowledged, or to be introduced as a friend. ‘THIS IS MAGGIE!’ Tess says simply, touching Maggie on the arm.
‘LOVE YOUR HAIR!’ Tess’s friend comments.
‘SHE DID IT!’ Maggie replies, pointing to Tess.
‘LOOKS CLASS!’
‘MAGGIE!’ She turns around to see who is summoning her. Cate is standing two feet away, her black hair in a ponytail and her cheekbones bladed in the blue light. She is wearing her snakeskin Doc Martens with denim shorts and a white T-shirt with Kate Bush on the chest.
‘THAT’S MY TOP,’ Maggie says, pointing.
Cate looks confused, not expecting this to be the thing she was first challenged on. She glances down at her chest. ‘IS IT?’
‘YOU KNOW IT IS.’
‘WHO YOU HERE WITH?’ Cate asks, glancing around for Harley or Róise.
‘THIS IS TESS.’
Tess smiles at Cate, leans in to Maggie to ask, ‘ALL OKAY?’
‘SHALL WE GO OUTSIDE?’ Cate says to Maggie, as though a private conversation between them has already been agreed.
Maggie pauses. ‘SORRY,’ she says to Tess. ‘JUST GIVE ME A MINUTE?’ Tess nods.
Maggie takes a swallow of the cool air outside as though she has come up from underwater. Cate crosses the street to stand on the corner opposite and folds her arms across her chest. Maggie does not know if she is cold or if she is trying to cover up the T-shirt.
Maggie waits. Cate says nothing. ‘So?’
‘Sorry. I should have told you.’
‘Which part? That you stole my T-shirt, that you pulled my best friend, or that you had a boyfriend the whole time we were getting with each other?’
‘I didn’t steal it. It was that night ages ago when I spilled a negroni all over me and you said I could borrow a top.’
‘Never occurred to you to give it back?’
‘I forgot! Jesus Christ.’
Maggie sighs. ‘Would you ever have told me if I hadn’t found out? Like, how did you imagine things were going to go?’
‘Do you mean Dara?’
‘Of course I mean Dara. I didn’t want to come out here to talk about a fucking T-shirt.’
Cate looks inconvenienced rather than remorseful. ‘I didn’t plan any of it. I didn’t mean to do either of you over.’
‘Have you cheated on him before?’
‘Not before you, no.’
‘Were there other people, or was it just me? And now Harley, obviously,’ Maggie adds bitterly.
‘There were a couple of people. Women.’ Maggie takes ‘a couple of people’ in the way that her granny might say she’ll have ‘a couple of biscuits’, which could mean any number south of ten.
Nevertheless, she softens very slightly, against her better judgement. ‘Are you worried you’re gay? Is that what this whole thing is about?’
Cate looks away, seeming almost huffy. ‘I don’t know what I am. I’ve had a boyfriend since I was in school, I never really got the chance to find out.’
‘Are the rest of us just meant to wait around until you do, aye?’
‘I never asked you to wait. We never said what we were.’
‘You never asked me to wait, but you asked me if I was single, you asked me back to yours, you asked me Maggie, you out?? wanna come join?? every time you were steaming. You asked me if I wanted to start running together. You asked me to come out here to talk and now you’re acting like you’ve been summoned to the principal’s office. Take some fucking responsibility, Cate.’
Cate bites the inside of her cheek and says, ‘I’m sorry I kissed Harley. I don’t even like her.’
‘More fool you.’ Maggie crosses her arms, mirroring Cate. She wants to ask whether Cate is single now, since that information has not yet been volunteered, but she worries Cate will read this question as a proposition. She swallows her pride and asks it anyway. ‘So what’s your craic now, then? Have you told Dara? Are yous still together?’
Cate rolls her lips together as though rubbing lipstick into them, and says, ‘We’re still together.’ She does not say whether she has told him, and Maggie decides she would rather not know.
They stand in silence for a few moments. ‘It’s cold,’ Cate says eventually.
‘Should have worn a jacket.’
‘I did. It’s inside.’
‘In that case, you may go and put it on for the rest of the night, because I want my T-shirt back.’
‘I’ll give it back to you when—’
‘You’ll give it back to me now.’
Cate, to Maggie’s surprise, does not argue with her. She removes the T-shirt in the club bathrooms and returns to Maggie with her jacket zipped up over her bra. ‘Happy?’
Maggie breathes out slowly. ‘Dead on.’
They part ways. She sees Cate leave with her friends a few minutes later. Maggie goes outside and takes out her phone, blocks and deletes Cate’s number before she can overthink it. Her phone vibrates as several messages come through, and for one truly wild moment, Maggie thinks Cate has used a friend’s phone, or found her on social media, gone some kind of roundabout way to find her and ask for her forgiveness. It isn’t her, of course. The messages are from Harley.
I’m so sorry
I’ve been an absolute weapon
A classic fool
I hope you’re all right
I love you
Maggie hears the music swell behind her as the door of the club opens. ‘Hey,’ says Tess. ‘Everything okay?’
Maggie locks her phone. Tears prickle her eyes, and she pinches the bridge of her nose as if she might stop them like a nosebleed. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s okay. What do you need?’
Maggie wraps her arms around herself. Cate was right, it is cold. ‘I should go find my friends,’ she says.
afters
saplings
They planned to bring flowers, but next to the fresh blooms were the days-old discounted bunches, their petals already puckered and brown-edged like ageing skin.
‘Maybe we should get her something else,’ muses Maggie. ‘Flowers’ll just be dead in three days.’
‘What else are we meant to bring?’ Harley says flippantly. ‘Bottle of champagne and a scented candle? Great big shiny helium balloon that says “Happy Thirtieth”?’
‘I think Maggie meant something else in the horticultural genre,’ Róise points out. ‘Although by all means continue to be a cunt about it, Charlotte.’ A woman browsing potted orchids with her two young children shoots them a glare.
‘Language, Rosie,’ says Harley, sniggering. Róise made the mistake of telling them that the panel who interviewed her last week referred to her as Rosie in all their correspondence, including the letter she received offering her the job. (‘I don’t know whether I’ll take it,’ she told her friends over drinks one evening. ‘Fair,’ said Maggie. ‘But how does Rosie feel about it?’)
They linger over roses blushing in containers, although the labels suggest these would need semi-regular maintenance, feeding and mulching and pruning, which they are reluctant to commit to. They examine tiny trees in teacup-sized planters, and wonder if they will stay small or whether there is an absurd chance they might spring up fairytale beanstalk–style and dominate the surrounding area. Maggie spots a display of cacti and wanders over. Most of them are spiky pillars clustered together in a way that looks unnervingly like a reptilian hand is trying to push its way out of the earth.
‘Róise,’ says Maggie, ‘you’ve got one of these, haven’t you?’ The cacti are almost completely white, almost completely spherical, adorned with small pink flowers as though on their way to a wedding.
