Rory was embarrassed about the entire shooting range debacle. With hindsight, he could see it was an asshole stupid thing to do, but at the time he’d felt so compelled to get Laura to notice him that he hadn’t thought about the repercussions; about the danger, about the sheer psychotic way it would make him look. It was one thing messing up on his own, it was another to do it in front of his brothers and dad, not to mention in front of Laura.
Of course Solomon wouldn’t accept his apology, kicking him when he already felt down, and he knew that he wouldn’t pass his messages along to Laura. After he’d watched her audition on TV and the whole world was talking about her, he knew he had to come and see her himself. She wasn’t hard to find, any newspaper could tell you her whereabouts, and as soon as he saw she was staying in a Dublin hotel he knew getting to her there without Solomon around was his best chance.
He studies Laura now. She’s unusual, but the most beautiful kind of unusual. Exotic, in a Cork mountains way. He wonders what happened at the apartment, and what made her leave Solomon and Bo. But his brother’s loss was his gain, that’s the way it has always been.
First, an apology – not that he doesn’t really mean it; he intends to show how much he means it in the most genuine way possible. Big eyes, he knows the trick. Girls love that shit.
Laura’s head feels light as she sits in the pub with Rory. She’s had two glasses of white wine and she’s not used to its effects on her. She likes it, she could have more. She doesn’t feel so confused any more, that pounding headache that arrived in Galway after Rory’s gunshot, the one that throbbed right behind her eyes, is now gone. She doesn’t think it ever left her, just intensified in moments of stress. It’s fitting that her headache is gone, as Rory was the first to put it there and now he is the one to take it away. Or the wine is, but either way, he’s responsible. He’s funny, she hasn’t stopped laughing since he started talking. She genuinely believes that he’s sorry for what he did, even if he is heightening his apology more than she believes is true. He’s doing the flirty thing with his face that the photographer was doing, softening his eyes. It’s not real but they seem to believe it works, whatever it is. Not that he should be sorry at all for what he did. She’s not judge and jury, it was an incident that affected her deeply, but she doesn’t think she has a higher authority over anyone and tells him so.
He’s like his father. He tells long stories about mischievous nights out, stories of him and his brothers as teenagers. He seems to have spent more time stitching his brothers up than anything else, but he’s gleeful about it. She likes to hear these stories, particularly the ones about Solomon, about what he was like when he was younger. She tries to limit her questions after she senses him tensing when she asks too many, so she chooses to sit back and listen, waiting for the next mention with hope. When Rory says something about Solomon’s ex-girlfriends she tries not to sit up too much, or make her interest too obvious. What she learns is that the girls he dated were always edgy, weird; one girl he dated seriously for a few years went to art college and the family had attended her exhibition on feet. Hairy, yellow-nailed feet; then he laughs, and Laura isn’t sure whether it is true or not.
‘Why do you think he dated these girls?’ Laura asks, trying to sound disinterested.
‘Because Solomon is so uninteresting himself,’ he says, and there’s a hardness in his voice.
Being with Rory, bizarrely, makes her feel connected to Solomon. They’re alike, for a start. Rory’s hair is short and tight, and he’s shorter in height, his features are less defined, but he’s like a miniature version of Solomon. He’s mousier, more baby-faced, while Solomon is stronger, harder, has sharper edges, everything is more intense – his movement, his stance, especially his eyes. Rory’s posture is casual, his eyes rarely rest on hers, they’re always looking around. They sparkle, they have a glimmer, a playful shine that reveals his inner spark and his mischievous nature, but they don’t settle on anything for too long, nor does his concentration. That makes him an interesting person to be around. He talks while looking at something else, usually the thing he’s talking about, because most of what he says is about somebody who’s near them. He does funny voices, pretends to do the voices of the couple sitting nearby. He makes up their conversation until Laura’s stomach hurts so much from the laughter that she has to tell him to stop.
He’s a carpenter, and while she pictures him in a romantic setting carving furniture, just as his dad had for Marie on her birthday, he says it’s nothing like that.
‘Mostly it’s moving around building sites or businesses, doing exactly what they tell you to do, fulfilling a brief,’ he says, bored. ‘To be honest,’ he gives her big eyes and leans in as if sharing a secret, ‘I hate my job. The others don’t know. I couldn’t tell Dad, it would break his heart, I’m the only one who went into the same trade. All the others flew the coop. I’m the one that got left behind,’ he admits, with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
Laura feels he’s being honest, perhaps for the first time since they sat down. She feels she can identify with him in a way. Despite his confidence and his overflowing personality, he’s lost in there.
He finishes his fourth bottle of beer and she can tell he’s restless. She’s so comfortable here, particularly after the two glasses of wine, and she’d gladly stay but he’s fidgeting in his chair, which makes it hard for her to relax.
‘Rory I’m sorry I can’t buy you a drink, I haven’t got a cent to my name.’
He looks surprised.
‘I can’t even get on a bus, even if I did have somewhere to go. I have nothing,’ she says and realises as she says it how much this terrifies her. ‘At least at the cottage I could live off the land, I could forage, I grew my own fruit and vegetables, I had a cupboard filled with preserved foods, pickled foods, dried fruits, enough to get me through the winter when the options were small. I could survive without Tom’s supplies if I had to, but here, in the city, I can do nothing for myself.’ The irony of being surrounded by everything you could ever dream of and wish for and none of it attainable.
Rory’s eyes suddenly light up.
‘That’s where you’re wrong, my dear Lyrebird. You are the most famous person in the world right now.’ And though she tries to laugh this off as ridiculous, he is adamant. ‘I’m going to show you how to forage city-style.’
Foraging in the city includes going into an exclusive club with a twenty-euro entrance fee and not having to pay anything at all because Rory presented Lyrebird to the security guards as if she was a ticket herself. Foraging in the club was finding the right people to talk to who would buy them drinks, and welcome them to their table.
At midnight, when Laura feels herself stumble when talking to a man who reaches out and grabs her arm and continues talking as if nothing happened, with his arm still on her, she snaps out of her bubble of contentment. Excusing herself and freeing herself from his grip, the ground swirls as she makes her way to the toilet. As she goes, everything seems to get louder, the thumping music is in her head, in her chest, bodies bump her, seem closer together than they were. She’s aware of the lack of space when before she felt fine. Once inside the toilets, the music fades and becomes a mere thud in her chest. Her ears are blocked, like they felt on the plane, and need to pop. There is a long queue ahead of her. Things feel very far away, yet she is here. She feels like she is behind herself. Everything moves quickly, her eyes registering everything they fall upon. Girl’s shoe, cut ankle, smudged tan, wet floor, sink, soggy tissues. The hand-drier fires up beside her and she jumps, startled, she holds her hands to her ears and looks down. At her own boots. Drink stains on her boots, splashes of beer and wine and who knows what. She closes her eyes. The hand-drier stops and she removes her hands and looks up. The girl in front of her is looking at her, she recognises her. Laura wonders if she should say something. The girl says something but the hand-drier fires up and Laura blocks her ears again.
‘Rude stupid bitch,’ she reads the girl’s lips.
There’s a constant stream of toilet doors unlocking and opening, clickety-clack of high heels wobbling on tiles, doors banging. Everyone’s looking at her now. All eyes, wide eyes. The ground is swirling, Laura needs to reach out to hold something or she’ll fall. She decides against the girl in front of her with the mahogany skin and the big boobs in the belly-exposing top. Turquoise belly-button piercing. Lip liner but no lipstick. She looks out for something to lean on, the sinks, but there’s a line of girls fixing their make-up, with their phones in their hands, pointing at her. Flashes blind her. No one will help her, she’s not sure if she’s calling for help. Perhaps she should. They’re viewing her through their screens as though she’s not real, as though she’s not flesh and blood right there in front of them. They’re looking at her as if she’s on the television.
At the cottage, at home with her mam and Gaga, Laura used to look at people on television, or in books, newspapers and magazines. Sometimes she wanted to really see people, really touch them. In this world, people have that luxury and all they want is to see each other through screens.
She hears the clicking of the doors locking, the bangs, toilets flushing, the clickety-clack of high heels. The girls around her start laughing, throwing their heads back, loud, dirty laughs. Perhaps those sounds were from Laura’s mouth. She’s not sure, she’s so dizzy. She’s here but she doesn’t feel like she’s here. She holds a hand to her foggy head. She needs help, she reaches out to the mahogany girl, sees a snake tattoo on her wrist, black and spiralling up the girl’s arm. Laura hisses in acknowledgement of it, and falls into her, but she pushes her away. Some girls jump in and shout ‘Fight!’
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