by Dan Mooney
* * *
For their part, his housemates seemed intent on ignoring both of them. During the afternoons, while he worked, one or two of them would casually ruin something in the kitchen. One day they took a pair of his trousers, tied off the legs, filled the whole lot with fruit and then proceeded to smash them off a wall. It seemed to Denis though that their hearts weren’t really in it. He barely saw them anymore. Where they were, what they were doing were curiosities to him, but it seemed that pulling at that particular string would likely tangle him in something he wouldn’t care to get out of. For so very long they had been his truest friends. He had relied on them, and they on him, and now they were ignoring him. Years of late-night chats with the Professor about books or movies they’d read or watched. Nights of waking from a nightmare full of the sound of his sister’s screams only to find Penny O’Neill sprawled across the end of his bed. Now not one word passed between them, and they were hiding from him. Except for Plasterer. Not for him the cold isolation of the others. He would often sit with Denis all day long. They ignored each other, their cold war stretching onward, all day side by side. It was unnerving, but Denis vowed there would be no surrender. By Friday evening the standoff was so tense that Denis found himself massaging the back of his own neck to calm himself.
Rebecca arrived home in the early evening, calling out her hellos as she walked in the door. Plasterer made no move to hide, instead sitting back with his hands behind his head and giving Denis an appraising look.
“You in the office?” she asked from the hallway.
“Yes,” Denis replied, his voice strained. “Don’t come in!”
“Er...okay,” she called back, sounding amused.
He realized what she thought he was doing and blushed. Better her thinking that than walking in to see him and Plasterer.
“Can’t get away with it forever,” the clown snorted. “You’ll never hold it all in, you know. You’re like a sick person trying to mask your symptoms. Eventually something will show.”
“Shut up,” Denis told him casually. They were the first words they’d spoken since Wednesday. He left the room, locking Plasterer in as he went. He was still blushing. No doubt she’d take that as confirmation. He was happy enough for her to think what she wanted to.
“How was work?” he asked casually.
“Great,” she told him, shaking out her hair. She looked like she belonged on television in some ad for hair-care products, except she was real, and standing in his kitchen. He realized he wanted to brush one of the stray locks of hair behind her ear. He had done that absently for three years. He was sure that sometimes she’d shake out her hair just to turn that one curl loose. She’d do it just to give him the chance to push it back over her ear. For a second he thought about it, but recovered in time to stop himself. He thought he could hear Plasterer laughing to himself in the office.
“What would you like to do tonight?” he asked loudly to cover the sound and tried not to look at the office door.
“Er...” She paused, thinking. “I don’t know, how about some coffee in town and a movie when we get home?”
“Sure, sure,” he replied. “We should go right now though. How about it?”
“Give me a few minutes, will you? I just got here. By the way, how come you never clean the guest room at the top of the stairs? I went in there this morning for a hair dryer. It’s a disgrace.”
She had been in his housemates’ bedroom. He froze.
“It’s cool. The mess doesn’t bother me that much,” she said, laughing.
What if she’d seen something? What if they found out? The standoff would escalate. He hoped Plasterer had not heard. There was no sound from the office.
“I’ll take care of it tonight,” he told her, trying to sound calm. He walked to the office door to double-check the lock.
“There’s no problem. Your house, your rules.”
THUMP. Plasterer pounded the door from the inside.
“What was that?” she asked, as she walked out the door to hang her coat.
“Nothing,” he replied, rattling the key in the lock. “Just making sure this door is okay. I worry about burglars.”
THUMP. The clown pounded heavily again. He must have heard that she had been in his room. Even Denis rarely went in there, and never without permission. He had once wandered into the room in search of something about a week before Rebecca had strolled down a street and back into his life. Plasterer had destroyed his clothes in retaliation. He didn’t like people in his space.
“I think the door is okay,” she told him, walking back in. “It sounds like you’re trying to punch your way through it.” She looked confused.
“I’m sure it is. Listen, I’m just going to do a few minutes’ more work. You stay out here, and we can go for coffee when you’re ready.”
She was looking at him strangely. He left his fist on the door. If it sounded like anyone was punching it, she’d think it was him and not Plasterer.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’ll call you when I’ve had a bit of a nap.”
He unlocked the door and went back inside. Plasterer was back in the seat by the computer, his hands folded on his lap.
“Told you that you won’t be able to keep it together,” Plasterer said smugly.
“And I told you to shut up,” Denis snapped back at him. This was not going well. Denis was slowly beginning to hate when Plasterer was right.
“You’re sick, little man,” Plasterer told him. “And I’m the fucking cure.”
“No, you’re not,” Denis replied, but his voice cracked; it lacked conviction.
“You think she wants you, sickie?”
“Why are you doing this?” Denis asked. His voice sounded whiny even to himself.
“I’m what fixes you when you panic. I’m what keeps you being able to function. You’re nothing without me, little man.”
Denis felt himself getting angry, but swallowed it. It would be tough, but he could find a way through. He had to. He tried to aim his most contemptuous look at the clown. It had no effect, and so he walked out.
The struggle went on. It was a fact of life for someone in his position; sometimes you just have to struggle through. Others can float like leaves on a breeze through their day, but for some, for Denis, there was a constant struggle to get by. He wished it otherwise, but that’s life.
He sat by his computer next to a clown in workman’s overalls, who said nothing to him, but watched his every movement.
There was some respite in evening coffee in town, a combination of time with Rebecca away from his housemates, and escape from a power struggle that Rebecca knew nothing about. But when they went home, it resumed exactly where it had left off. Penny O’Neill seemed to skulk around every corner, watching Rebecca resentfully. There was no doubt that Plasterer was leading them in a mini revolution against him. He had made it perfectly clear that there was a path to returning to the life Denis knew and understood. The simple quiet life he had earned for himself through years of patient determination. That path started by removing Rebecca from the house. The trouble was, he didn’t want to anymore. At some point last week he had, but now that panic seemed to be a distant memory, replaced by a feeling in his stomach that he thought he might remember if he focused, but that he enjoyed nonetheless.
Rebecca left the house to go shopping on Saturday and to meet with Natasha and Roisin, which was a relief only in that she wouldn’t be there to witness the escalation from standoff to running battle. Escalation is exactly what the monsters wanted. A week or so of silence and half-hearted attempts at ruination were replaced by a new offensive. For his part, Denis stayed home and struggled to keep up with the whirlwind of destruction that was being wrought on his abode. Deano and the Professor ignored his every attempt to speak to them, which left Plasterer smirking from Denis’s seat in the office. Penny O’Neill s
poke to him only once, to ask him why he didn’t love them anymore. Denis had no answer for her. His housemates had been almost his entire life for years now. If he could have had them and Rebecca and live in harmony he would have, but he knew that would never work.
Something told him that it would be a disaster. Something told him it was one way or another and never shall the two meet. This new behavior and new territory was deeply unsettling for Denis. He found his eyes following the Professor and Deano in particular. They had been his closest friends, but now they took orders only from the clown.
“Why are you doing this?” Denis asked Plasterer again while cleaning coffee beans from inside his printer.
“It’s for your own good,” Plasterer told him. “We want the old you, the old us, but you’re on a path of self-destruction that we have no control over. We need to get you back to what you know. We want you back at the helm, Captain.” His tone was soothing a little, charming even. “You’re the boss, the leader, the brains behind the operation. This isn’t a mutiny, it’s an intervention. The sooner you realize that I’m right, that we’re right, the sooner we can all get back to being happy.”
“Why can’t we be happy with Rebecca?” The question was asked before the thought was fully formed.
“Because you’re you, we’re us and she’s her,” was the cryptic reply.
Denis sighed.
* * *
Now, for a man in Denis Murphy’s metaphorical boat, alcohol is simply out of the question. When he lived in the other universe, he had been something of a proficient drinker. In a culture where being able to hold your alcohol is considered a valuable attribute, Denis was highly regarded. He drank, and played a guitar, and sang. He could indulge in high jinks with the best of them, and delve deep into philosophy with old-timers propping up the bar in quiet pubs. He was a drinker in a drinkers’ world. In this universe, however, where coffee stains on a tie are the cause of horrendous panic attacks, and anything spilled inspires a terror that “normal” people can only imagine, alcohol had no place. For seven years, Denis had been a teetotaler, but on this particular Saturday, with his housemates throwing various temper tantrums, Denis decided that he would love a drink. In a quiet bar. Preferably with Rebecca, Ollie and Frank. Natasha and Roisin would be welcome too, he grudgingly admitted. So when Rebecca arrived back from town and tentatively broached the topic, Denis nearly hugged her. Nearly. He wasn’t so full of relief that he would deliberately touch another human being, but even contemplating it was a sure sign of just how much stress he was under. Rebecca smiled the same mysterious smile that she had worn when he had removed his tie one night not too long ago. It was a victorious little grin, and a paltry effort made at concealing it. So that evening, after dinner, they went to a pub. His housemates stood on the landing at the top of the stairs watching him as he put on his long black coat. He looked straight back at them. Plasterer shook his head slowly and turned away in disgust.
Decisiveness, the quality of being able to make timely decisions, was not a strong suit of Denis’s. When life is ordered, and a list made out for tasks, a timetable for existing on a day-to-day basis, there is little room for indecision. When one deviates however, there is a gnawing sense of worry. What if one makes the wrong decision? What if that decision has horrible consequences? What if it has great and amazing consequences that lead him to further disregard discipline, which in turn, leads him to make another reckless decision that has horrible consequences? What if he killed someone by making terrible decisions? The variables were simply too many to count, and so Denis walked quietly alongside Rebecca, trying with all of his mental powers, which were not inconsiderable, to push it from his head. Not wishing to push her luck too far, Rebecca walked alongside him saying nothing.
He imagined a world where he would sit in a bar, and drink a beer, and laugh loudly. Maybe even a little too loudly. He would tell a story and a small entourage of friends and relatives, impressed with his confidence, would laugh with him. Ollie would pat Frank on the back, and they’d both exclaim what a charmer he was. Rebecca would look at him admiringly. His mother would hug him and boast to her friends that her son was a great storyteller. Seconds later he contemplated a world where he returned home and Plasterer had led a full coup d’état, and his house would be burning to the ground. Then his thoughts got darker; he thought of a world where Ollie and Frank were dead. Killed by some terrible calamity, and once again, doctors were cutting a T-shirt away from his scarred and cut skin. He could hear Jules screaming. She screamed so loud.
“Denis...”
Rebecca had been speaking to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked tentatively. Clearly she had not forgotten the last time his head had wandered into that world.
“Yes,” he lied.
“Wanna go in?”
They were outside a bar. A small, tidy-looking bar that had not been open during his college days. This was a good sign. There would be no monsters waiting for him in here.
“Of course,” he told her, forcing a smile.
She smiled back at him, and they entered. Inside, the low ceiling trapped some of the smoke from a small fire by the door. The bar, which ran along the back wall, was manned by a friendly looking woman. The wall behind her was equal parts spirit bottles and bric-a-brac; old horns hung next to pictures of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. The whole place seemed a curious crossover of old world and new, where customers of various ages sat in comfort with one another. Frank and Ollie, Natasha and Roisin were waiting. Ollie was wearing his “lucky shirt.” Denis laughed when he saw it. No one commented, but it was obvious to Denis that they were shocked he was there. Shocked he was laughing. It was a sad indictment of his life that he had become such a recluse that his mere presence in a bar was the cause for such surprise.
“Guinness?” Frank asked.
Denis took a deep breath, gathered what was left of the old version of himself and squared his shoulders.
“The usual,” Denis said, nodding as he prepared to take his first sip from a pint glass in seven years.
They were all smiling at him. He smiled back.
VERY OLD CIRCLES
The first sip was bitter on his tongue, and he forced himself to drink it out of a pure stubbornness that was ingrained deeply in him. The second was the taste of every drink he’d had in nearly five years of college life. He was in another universe again, the old one. It smelled of bars and cigarette smoke. It smelled of Rebecca’s perfume too. It sounded like laughing and joking. It looked like smiling. Denis found himself lost in it. He was drunk from the second sip, not on the alcohol, but on the freedom.
By the time the first drink was finished, he had stopped looking at the stains on the floor, at the overspill from the taps and at the unkempt regulars who had been drinking all day with a determination that matched his own. He spent the time as he sipped that first beer simply listening and smiling, rarely contributing to the conversation. In turn, Frank, Ollie and Rebecca cast him sideways glances to check that he was okay. He couldn’t blame them for worrying. For quite a while his modus operandi was to bail when things became difficult, but that was when he lived in the universe that his housemates lived in. They didn’t live here, not in this bar, not with this Denis. Here, he was Denny. On his second drink he joked a little, he made fun of Ollie’s shirt and reduced Roisin to helpless fits of laughter with the story about Ollie’s attempts at talking to older women during college. Ollie and Frank both returned fire with jokes about his tie and shirt combinations. They mocked his regularity, and he lapped up the laughter they inspired in him.
“Serious question,” Frank announced, his face straight. “Exactly how many minutes did you agonize over the shirt and tie?”
Twelve was the answer. Denis said nothing, just smiled.
“C’mon,” Ollie interjected. “You don’t think he picked it tonight, do you? He had this combination picked on Mond
ay morning. It was item number twenty-four on the list. There is no item twenty-three because everyone knows you can’t divide twenty-three evenly.”
The laughter kicked in again. So often, Denis wondered if people were laughing at him. At his ways, his oddness. Were they sharing a joke about how he lived his life? Now, they were laughing with him. It felt good. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so much in such a short space of time. Frank tended to laugh quietly, and it suited his demeanor, while Ollie’s laugh was half a cackle and caused heads to turn. Somewhere, way in the back of his head, he could hear Plasterer growling at their laughter. How dare they? the clown would ask. Denis ignored the growling and bought a round of drinks.
Good. Good. I’m proud of you. So proud. You’re doing great.
They moved onto another pub, where Denis entertained the woman who worked behind the bar with a new answer to the question; “How are you?” every time he passed her or bought a drink. At one stage, on his seventh or so beer, he told her in confidential tones that he lived with four monsters who were trying to take over his home in a war of attrition where cleaning products were his only weapons. She laughed and shook her head. He winked at a young man who was nearby who shot him a broad and friendly grin.
He went back to join the others, but as he did so, his foot caught on a floorboard and he stumbled a little, his hand reached out to steady himself and found the small of Rebecca’s back. She half caught him. There was a momentary silence from the group before Ollie let a guffaw of laughter escape. Denis had to admit, people falling over was invariably funny when you are on your seventh drink. His hand felt good resting against the small of Rebecca’s back, and she hadn’t shied away, so he left it there. For some reason this made him feel immensely proud of himself, and she smiled her mysterious victory smile. Denis may have been fighting a war for control of his home with his four housemates, but Rebecca was fighting a war with them too. A war for ownership of Denis’s attention, and each little victorious smile marked a moment where she took ground from them and made it her own. Denis didn’t mind too much. She didn’t know she was fighting a war with them, but she knew she was winning. Before, they had once whispered “elephant shoe” at each other instead of saying “I love you,” in a competition to see who would crack and tell the other they were in love first. He wanted to whisper it to her right then and there. He smiled at her until he caught her eye and then blew her a cheeky kiss.