Me, Myself and Them

by Dan Mooney

  “It went fine,” he replied. “I was trying to reestablish the order. I really don’t like it when things unbalance the order.”

  “Neither do we,” they replied in chorus.

  “Liars. You find ways to break the order around here.”

  “Only for fun though. And only at the right time,” Penny O’Neill replied. “Even we know that Sunday is for TV and movies. Today’s no ordinary Sunday though, is it?”

  “No. Sadly it’s not. I have something to tell you all.” Denis took a deep breath. The four facing him leaned forward in unison.

  “I’m going to dinner.”

  Three of them applauded. Plasterer did not. He folded his arms in front of his chest unhappily.

  “What? Applause? Why?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  “Why not?” two replied in unison. Plasterer tsked irritably.

  “Don’t do that,” Denis told them. This response was most unexpected.

  “Don’t do what?” they replied in unison.

  “That,” he snapped.

  “Aaaaaaaah,” they replied.

  “You’re all very annoying,” he told them with a half smile.

  “I think you’ll find that is not the case,” the Professor told him, raising one rotting finger in protest. “This one is Deano, the lady is Penny O’Neill and the undisputed champion at breaking all of my fingers when we arm wrestle is Plasterer. I am Professor Scorpion. So I think you’ll find that not one of us is Very Annoying.”

  The others, even Plasterer, had begun pretending to sleep midway through his declaration, and Denis found himself playing along, allowing his head to drop onto one shoulder and making slight snoring noises. Penny O’Neill giggled now and again.

  “Very well,” the Professor announced sourly. “Your point is well received. I shall desist from my modest attempts at humor for the time being.”

  More applause.

  “So is it Frank and Ollie for dinner? Or your mom?” Plasterer asked coldly.

  “It’s Frank and Ollie, but also—” Denis hesitated; this wouldn’t be easy “—their girlfriends.”

  “Shock,” Penny O’Neill cried in mock alarm, her tail standing straight out behind her.

  “Horror,” Plasterer added drily. He didn’t look like he was joking, but it was hard to tell under the makeup.

  Definitely not joking, you idiot. Not that one. No, no. That one is dangerous.

  “I’m not permitted to partake of humor,” the Professor told them grumpily.

  Deano just shook alarmingly.

  For some reason, Denis had decided not to tell them about Rebecca. If pressed, there could be no solid reason for not doing so, just a sense that perhaps it would upset them. If she had half the effect on them that she was having on him, he’d be cleaning the crayon off the walls for a week. His hand was in his pocket, idly rolling the bead she had given him in between his fingers.

  “Why?” Plasterer asked.

  “Well,” Denis stalled, he had to give them a reason. One that didn’t include her. They wouldn’t like it. “Ollie sort of bullied me into it, and he’s my friend, so I just thought, maybe it’s not a terrible idea.”

  “It is,” Plasterer told him gruffly.

  “No,” Penny O’Neill asserted firmly, “it’s not. It was bound to happen at some point. You wouldn’t want him falling out with them, now, would you?”

  Plasterer looked at her. It was a good argument. Falling out with them would mean breaking the routine, and the clown simply loved the routine.

  “It’s about time that you engaged with your friends’ better halves,” Penny O’Neill told him. “And by better halves I mean their girlfriends. No one’s actually able to split themselves in half. That’s stupid. Plus, then you’d only be allowed to talk to the good half, because the bad half would think you’re an asshole.”

  Denis looked at her, bemused. “Obviously,” he said finally.

  “What are you going to wear?” she asked him, plucking at his coat.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I was told to dress nice, but I thought I always did dress nice.”

  “You dress well. Not nice,” Plasterer told him, apparently warming to the idea. “There’s a difference.”

  “There is?” Denis asked.

  “Yeah. Anyone can dress well. All he has to do is buy some nice stuff and then spend exactly forty minutes ironing it. Then he can toddle off being well dressed. But if you take those well-looking garments and you wear them to look good, and I mean real good, then you’re dressing nice. And that’s different. Dressing nice gets you the ladies. I should know.”

  “You should know, should you?” Penny O’Neill asked, cackling with laughter. “Real lady-killer, eh?”

  “At least I don’t look like some slutty cat,” Plasterer told her, his clown hair bobbing around as he shook his head at her.

  “Meeeeow,” she replied. “We can dress you nice, Denis. You just leave it to us.”

  Denis looked at them all suspiciously, as every one of them looked everywhere but at him.

  “Why do I get the feeling I’m going to regret this?”

  “Suspicious nature,” Penny replied, taking him by the elbow. “You’ve always had it.”

  “I think you four may have earned such suspicion,” Denis told them as they made their way upstairs. “I seem to recall needing new nightwear after you had convinced Deano to shred mine in a blender.”

  “A minor detail,” Plasterer said, his face crinkling underneath his clown makeup. He was definitely coming around.

  Don’t be so sure.

  “Then you spent six hundred euro on my credit card buying women’s pajamas,” Denis added.

  “For the record, I think you looked rather fetching in those,” the Professor told him.

  “Can’t believe I let you talk me into wearing them,” Denis mumbled.

  In his bedroom, the three began a mission to dress him “nicely.” For some reason this involved tearing through the room. Plasterer took little part initially, just barking at them every now and then, but as the rumpus continued he seemed to warm up.

  If Denis had reservations about this entire event before they had started ripping his room asunder, he certainly had them five minutes into the adventure. There was seemingly nothing that didn’t need to be pulled out from every nook and cranny in the room. At first he tried to keep them in line, but it quickly became obvious that they were running on their own steam now, and in such situations, he had learned to simply sit back and let them work it out of their systems. They argued over clothes, such discussions frequently boiling over into shoving matches, until someone else suggested something that united two previous enemies back into allies. Denis sat there as they selected his attire. Finally, they came to a consensus on an outfit. He looked at it. It reminded him of college. It looked like something he might have worn on a night out back in his early twenties. The shirt was one of his better dress shirts, but the top two buttons were undone, and no tie was permitted. The suit jacket was a light gray. From somewhere they had produced a pair of jeans that Denis had forgotten he owned, as well as a pair of Converse running shoes. He was horrified at the ensemble.

  “I’m not wearing that,” he told them. “That is not dressing nice.”

  “You’re wearing it,” Plasterer told him, adjusting his white gloves menacingly.

  “I am?” he asked with a slight catch in his voice.

  “You are,” they replied. In unison.

  He dressed himself with an audience of one. Plasterer watched him as he disrobed and stepped in as he slipped on his jacket. The big clown reached out and adjusted the collar.

  “We have a system, Denis,” he told him in a low voice. He clearly didn’t want the others hearing. “And you’re messing with it. Dressing up and going out isn’t part of the system. When we leave t
he system, bad things happen. Remember that.”

  With that he turned on his heel and walked from the room. Denis had thought the clown was warming up to the idea.

  He stared after him for just a minute before he shook it off. “It’s just dinner,” he told himself. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

  Be afraid of that one.

  * * *

  And so it was that he headed into town that night, having locked his door, checked it three times for safety and counted his way down the driveway, to meet five people for dinner. It was nearly seven years since Denis Murphy had gone for dinner with five other people. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone outside his house without a tie on. He felt exposed. His running shoes made no satisfying pop as he walked. The unbuttoned shirt allowed the evening breeze to get down his top and ruffle the material against his skin. His muscles tensed involuntarily with each breeze, as though they could sense his discomfort. His hair was undisturbed by the wind, as Penny O’Neill had liberally applied the hair product to give a spiky effect. It was, Denis assumed, trendy. It was a dramatic change from his usual Sunday evening. No cop shows, no acronyms for investigators, no Penny O’Neill laying her head in his lap. It had been a long time since Denis Murphy had experienced significant changes in his life. None of them were comfortable. None of them were easy. Change, Denis concluded, was very much the enemy. And still, despite all that, he found himself oddly excited by the prospect of dinner. No doubt both Ollie and Frank would be agog at his choice of attire, and Rebecca, after demanding the dress code, would probably have something to say about his altered image too. He could hardly think straight every time she skipped into his head.

  As was typical for any meeting with his friends, he was the first to arrive. Ollie had texted him the location, and his phone had told him how to get there. Not early, not late, but almost exactly on time. If the world was trying to impose change on Denis Murphy, it was in for a tough time of it; there were certain things that simply couldn’t be wrested from him. Punctuality was one of them. The door to the restaurant presented certain problems, however. It had a stain on it. Right on the handle. It looked like ketchup, or perhaps jam; he was unsure. What was certain was that that tiny little glob could single-handedly deny him access to the restaurant all night. He looked through the glass at a waitress and shot her one of his courteous smiles. She waved back, but made no move to get the door. He stood there. Awkwardly. She beckoned him to come in. He smiled again and sort of nodded in the direction of the door, but made no further move. The waitress looked at him curiously. No doubt, she was beginning to think that this man was something of a weirdo, and, Denis thought to himself, she may be correct. Dressing up was fine and good, but weirdness had a way of outshining even the snappiest of casual wear. They stood there, regarding each other awkwardly through the glass panels of the door.

  “Idiot,” a voice muttered. Frank had arrived and reached past Denis to take the door handle. Clearly he didn’t recognize his friend.

  Denis jumped back, startled. They had almost touched. He tried to cover his shock, but it seemed that his clothes had done that for him. Frank and Tash were both looking at him with something approaching awe.

  “Denis...” Frank almost whispered. “You look like you.”

  “Let’s not make a thing out of it,” Denis told him, almost snapping. “I was told to dress nice. This is the best I could manage.”

  “You did a good job,” Tash told him, her brown eyes flashing at him. “I think I might just ditch this fella in favor of a better offer.”

  Tash didn’t know any better and hadn’t realized that talking to him like that was pretty much off-limits. He almost turned tail and ran. Only the thought of disappointing Rebecca kept him in place. Frank had dressed for the occasion too, as had Tash, who always looked glamorous. Her dark skin contrasting with the cream dress she was wearing, making her stand out for style as well as natural beauty.

  “Thanks, Denis,” Frank told him sarcastically. “The one night you actually behave like a normal human you have to go showing me up.”

  “The man has style, my love,” she said, appraising Denis. “Think you might give this guy some tips, Denis?”

  Denis didn’t trust himself to speak, fearing that if he did it would end up being a quick apology before fleeing, so he nodded dumbly instead. The restaurant was an assault on his senses, and it took all of Denis’s willpower just to step through the door. Inside, thick beams of stained dark wood supported the low ceiling, stretching from the front door all the way back to a private dining-room door. Platforms here and there gave the feel of split-levels, with banisters separating the dining area into little sections, rows of wine bottles stuffed with candles standing solemnly on each partition. It was positively claustrophobic. It was, to compound his sense of growing unease, a mess of odd numbers and haphazard seating arrangements. In between two tables, one rebel had turned his chair sideways so he could address diners at both. A fork, still smeared with the sauce of some meal or other, was on the floor next to a table. Here and there children moved about, as if attached to no one in particular. It was a busy restaurant. Sunday was most obviously a family night out. The subtleties of this level of social interaction were quite beyond his comprehension.

  “Can I help you?” asked the waitress who had been smiling at him through the door. She leaned forward into his personal space.

  He took a backward step, watching her warily in case she tried to touch him.

  “Unless you’re a qualified psychiatrist and a one-woman pharmacy rolled into one, I doubt very highly that you can help him,” Frank told her smilingly.

  “Witty,” Denis replied, still watching the waitress.

  “We have a reservation for about now,” Frank told her. “Six people, under the name Lynch. If you could arrange to have the six seats spaced exactly evenly apart, that would probably help my terrified-looking friend here.”

  “Genius,” Denis grumbled at him as Tash barked some good-humored laughter.

  The waitress covered her disgust at his behavior and showed them to their seats, eyeing Denis like he was some form of visiting alien. The other waitresses would surely find her story about the weirdo in her section hilarious. And then he stopped thinking. Just like that, all thought vanished from his head as Rebecca walked in with Ollie and Roisin in tow. The other two may as well not have existed; in fact, the entirety of the restaurant may as well not have existed. His eyes feasted on her. A slim black skirt, with a slightly loose-fitting white blouse, its sleeves rolled almost all the way back up to expose the skin of her arms, bedecked with bangles. Her curly hair was tied back, with what looked like a leather strap. Her black pumps were worn over bare skin, no tights or stockings needed for her smooth, tanned legs. She was glorious.

  “Close your mouth, Denis Murphy,” she said with a smug smile as she took her seat.

  Denis started. He had been staring. His mouth hanging open. Ollie was snickering as he held out a chair for Roisin. Denis had never met Roisin before, and was impressed that Ollie had found someone to match him. She seemed outwardly pleasant, and taller than most girls to equal Ollie’s height advantage. She had a pleasant face, but she was clearly nervous of him. He tried not to let it darken his thoughts as her eyes darted away from him and then slowly back again.

  “I take it you approve of the getup, Denis,” Rebecca stated, clearly enjoying the moment. “It was a real experience trying to get myself dressed up in the hostel. Privacy is a little hard to come by.”

  “Six bangles on each arm,” Denis replied. “Even and symmetrical. Thank you.”

  She winked at him.

  Frank and Ollie exchanged glances. Denis was sure there was meaning loaded in the look, but it would take a far more intuitive mind than his to decode it, and so he simply ignored it. He was introduced to Roisin who, clearly having been briefed by Ollie, made no effort to shake his hand. H
is relief was tempered by remorse. What great lengths his friends had to go to to accommodate him, and even after all this time they had not given up. It would have made a normal person cry. Denis simply looked at them both and nodded. He hoped they understood.

  He didn’t contribute much during dinner. Mostly because he had to keep his head down to avoid seeing things that made his skin crawl, but also because he feared that if he opened his mouth he’d say something that Rebecca would take offense to. Oddly enough, he also found himself considering both Tash’s and Roisin’s feelings. They chatted amiably, with Roisin casting him occasional glances. He just kept his mouth shut, smiling politely at the appropriate moments, laughing when called for and nodding seriously when he felt he must. What surprised him most about the entire event was not that he had lasted this long, but that he hadn’t had a panic attack or collapsed out of pure revulsion. The smudges of dirt on the aprons of the staff were bad enough, but the tightly packed restaurant space meant that they had to squeeze by him, almost brushing him with their dirty clothes. He suppressed a shudder every time they did. He watched the clock from time to time. One hundred fifty minutes was the time allotted; he mentally counted down with every glance. And yet for all of that, Denis had to admit, he was enjoying himself a little. He appreciated the easy manner his dining companions had with each other; the way Rebecca slipped back into Frank’s and Ollie’s lives, like she had come back from a two-week holiday and not a six-year hiatus. The way they all laughed so easily, so frequently.

  “Denis...”

  He looked up. He had been daydreaming. They were talking to him. They were all looking at him.

  “I’m sorry. World of my own. Can you repeat the question?”

  “Frank was just saying he’s never been to your house. You bought a place and everything. No housewarming?” Rebecca inquired.

  Here they were. Right at a topic he had no interest in discussing. They had ventured from the safe waters of comfortable chitchat to the reefs of personal interest.