Unfamiliar Creatures

James Roseman

 

It was Thursday and we were in the graveyard looking at the stones. They stuck out of the mossy earth like crooked teeth, us in the maw of some great beast. Scanlan waved me over to one of them. He plucked the spliff from his lips and held it between his fingers.

“Is this one any good?” he asked.

The gravestone was thin and brittle, slanted at a sharp angle away from us and covered in growth. Scanlan hunched forward until he was nearly parallel with the ground, his face only a few inches away, and squinted at the faded letters. I stood next to him and read it out loud. He took another hit off the spliff. The air off it was sour and musty.

It had become a habit of mine to name characters in my stories after dead people. It didn’t feel right to make people up out of nothing. There was something grounding about starting with a name that was, that once had been. The grave Scanlan pointed out belonged to a man named Spud MacKenzie who had died in the 1800s. It sounded out of a nursery rhyme but here it was in the flesh so it must have been real. Someone had actually gone through the pain of childbirth and taken a look at the child that had come out of them and thought, Spud.

“You’ve some eye for this kind of thing.”

Scanlan laughed, spewing smoke. 

“I do to fuck.”

“That name sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” I asked. 

I wrote it on a page in my notebook. 

“I could have sworn I’ve heard it before.”

Scanlan shrugged and stretched out his back. I tucked the notebook into my back pocket.

“That’ll do you then, will it?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’ll do.”

“Will we get a pint?” he asked.

I nodded. “Give us a smoke there anyhow.”

“Mooching bastard,” he said. 

But he gave me one anyway and we walked down the road to Modeen’s.

 

The pub was warm and welcome with the bready smell of stout and hot breath. It must have been after our third that I told Scanlan I’d better preserve whatever was left of my head for this thing, it being my first ever reading and all. He shook his head in disgust.

“Some dose you are,” he said. 

Then he nodded towards a girl sitting by herself at the bar, reading a paperback book.

“Why don’t you go talk to her?”

“Why don’t you go talk to her?” I asked him.

He picked at something on the table. 

“I don’t go for the ones with shaved heads. That’s more your kinda job. Stick-and-pokes and Nirvana t-shirts and all that shite.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Tell her all about how you’re a writer. G’wan, you’re dying to tell her.”

“It’s one short story in one magazine.”

“Yeah, but still,” Scanlan said. “You could tell her all about how you write the words. The rules, and that. What was it you were on about, the tense.”

“Aye, the tense.”

“The fucking tense,” he said, laughing. “What’s that even mean, I wouldn’t a clue. If it’s happening that’s the present. If it’s happened that’s the past. It’s that simple, is it not?”

“It’s to do with style.”

He squinted at me. When I didn’t continue, he squinted again.

“Well, g’wan,” he said.

“You might write a story in the past tense for the reader to sit and wonder—‘hang on, now, where are they now?’ You know what I mean?”

“I have fuck all clue what you mean.”

“Well,” I said. 

“Sounds like the kinda shite talk you’d be better saving for yer one with the book.” Scanlan put his hands on the table. 

“So, it’s my round. Or was it my round? Or will it be my round?”

“Was I not just after telling you that I wasn’t getting pissed before this thing.”

“If you’re pissed off four pints that’s your own fault. What are we meant to do, just sit here chatting about tenses and not drinking pints, like? Honestly, the head on you. Where is this thing, anyway?”

“It’s in Temple Bar,” I said, but he was already gone.

He was right, we did have ages. The reading girl slipped her book into a London Review of Books tote bag and stood up. Our eyes met for a second before I looked away. Scanlan knew my type, that much was certain. I waited until I was sure she’d turned around before looking up to watch her go.

There’s a spectrum between nervous and drunk and I was on the wrong end of it. When Scanlan came back with the pints, I was glad he’d bought them after all. He knew best. We drank and pointed out old signs on the walls. That was the main draw of Modeen’s, that the barman had a fetish for vintage beer signs. Thin painted sheets of metal with rust gathered at their corners, like. He covered every open space with them.

“Fuck me,” Scanlan said. 

He pointed out one on the upper corner of the far wall.

I squinted at it.

“You’re joking me,” I said. “I mean you’re actually joking me.”

Scanlan laughed so hard he choked. His face went red. 

“For fuck’s sake.”

The sign featured a bull terrier with his paw propped up like he was holding a Bud Light pint glass. The top line read, The Original Party Animal. Then underneath, in curly font, Spuds MacKenzie.

 

Somewhere between Modeen’s and the Gutter, Scanlan rolled another spliff and we passed it between us as we walked the cobblestones. It was a grey, wet night. Our breaths made imprints on the air. I was telling him how there was something of a ranking of the local bookshops, at least when it came to readings and book launches and that kind of shite. The best ones were always at the Gutter.

“Winding Stair is great as well,” I said. “Hodges Figgis is all the big to-dos, like.”

Scanlan nodded. He kept asking me questions and I kept answering them. He got like this when there was something he didn’t want to talk about. He didn’t have to tell me what was on his mind, I knew it already. On Saturday, he was moving back up north into his parents. We only had a few nights left in town together. The plan was simple. Pack it in tonight to rest up for an absolute rip straight through Saturday when his ones were coming down to pick him up. He wanted, in his words, to be barely conscious for the drive back home. I didn’t ask him why he was leaving Dublin. I’d thought somewhere along the way these past months he might mention it but he never did, so I never asked. He didn’t ask me what I was going to do after he left, either. That’s just how it was with Scanlan. I’d have thought we would have built some kind of network of people like us by now. Some kind of community. I’d say Scanlan thought the same. But as it turned out, there were no people like us, or at least none we’d found in the years we lived in town.

A few months ago, the writing started. I had very little to do with it. Scanlan pushed me to submit a few places and one of them took a story. They called it “chilling” and “full of heart.” I got the email in a pub and showed it to Scanlan, laughing it off, saying it was amazing they could see their keyboards with their heads so far up their holes. But he took it seriously. He said it was some achievement and kept calling me a writer. Pissed me off, to be honest, but there’s no sense in taking Scanlan too seriously.

The only thing about the story was, well, there’s no easy way to say it, it’s not exactly my story to tell. My plan was to change the name of Scanlan’s brother as I was reading and hope nobody called me out on it. He’d be able to piece it together pretty well from the story itself, but I figured if I changed the name I could deny it at least. I was supposed to talk to him about it by now. The worst thing I could do, I had decided, was blindside him.

By the time we got to Gutter, I was half-baked. We grabbed glasses of free wine and stood with our backs pressed against bookshelves. Everyone was shaking hands and smiling and laughing. So many sweaters. Didn’t look like any of the men owned a comb between them. We stood there high, staring at the unfamiliar creatures. Scanlan nudged his elbow into my side and nodded towards the door as someone walked in.

“That’s the girl from the pub,” Scanlan said.

“So it is.”

“Let’s go talk to her.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Fuck’s sake.”

Soon the place was packed and all that smoke had settled well behind my eyes. Everything had a fuzzy sheen and I realized all of a sudden I’d have to stand in front of all of these people and read something out loud that they could read themselves on the printed page. There were copies being sold from a table next to the free wine. Wasn’t that why I wrote it down in the first place?

Scanlan nodded toward a fella with a metal hole in his nose and a mohawk.

“Mental,” he laughed to himself. “I’d say it whistles when he sneezes.”

Then a woman got on the microphone and everything settled down. It was time to start. 

“I am so grateful that you all have taken time out of your busy lives to join us here tonight,” the woman started.

Scanlan nudged me.

“What?”

“You’ve the look of a man with a mouth full of words. Spit it out, would you?”

“Don’t know what you’re on about.”

The cycle of readers began. They approached the microphone like a foreign object. Scanlan leaned forward when they were quiet, he shrunk away when they were loud. Someone read a poem about a swan in the canal that told riddles. In the midst of the muted applause that followed, Scanlan leaned towards me and said knowingly, “Tenses.”

I stood there sweating, wondering when if ever the woman would call my name. I’d sort of assumed I’d be reading but I didn’t know it for sure. It would be better, of course, if I didn’t read at all. 

I caught a glimpse of the girl from the pub on the far side of the bookshop during the next reading. She looked at me and smiled before looking away. I felt my heart in my throat. My mouth was very dry.

“I need more wine,” I told Scanlan.

He forced his glass into my free hand and told me to get him a refill, too. Then he told me to hush ’cause this one wasn’t half-bad. I stood at the wine table and reached for the bottle of red. Applause surrounded me as the reader stepped away from the microphone. And then I heard my name.

The crowd was faceless under the lights. My stomach was slick and my head felt light. The woman talked about how good my story was, how she’d personally picked it out of the submission batch. She hadn’t done that for any of the other readers. Then she stepped away and my feet filled the vacuum. She put a copy of the magazine into my hands. I squinted into the spotlight across all of those silhouettes and felt intensely alone. With no other choice, I began to read. 

The story was about two Irish brothers. It followed them through the tryouts for a football academy in Liverpool. One brother made it and the other one didn’t. There was never any resentment between them. As I went on, I could feel the silence between my words. It felt like being on another planet. Something between the smoke and the drink had me proper shining. When I got to the end, when the footballer was found by his brother hanging from a belt in his bedroom, there were audible gasps. And then it was over. I got more applause than any of the other readers by a fair and healthy margin.

I cupped my hands over my eyes, looking into the audience. Scanlan wasn’t there. I moved through the crowd looking for him, everyone shook my hand and told me what a great job I did. And there was herself, the girl from the pub. 

“That was really great.”

“Cheers,” I said.

“Really great.”

“That’s very kind,” I said. “I, uh, I like your hair.”

“Oh.” 

She looked down and smiled, cheeks flushed. “Thanks.”

I wish I could say that I left right then in search of Scanlan, trying to patch up things between us before he left, but the truth is that I didn’t. I figured he’d storm back home and I’d apologize to him there. Smooth it all over with a few cans. 

So I had another glass of wine and talked about grief in fiction, the role of the author in their stories, the distance of narrative. Honestly, what was I on about, I’ve no clue. Someone’s agent introduced himself to me. He told me that he was in town from the U.K., which meant London. I wondered why he didn’t just say London. He asked if I had any longer-form stuff I was working on. I lied and told him that I did, a novel, because that seemed like the right kind of thing to say to a fella in from London. He gave me his email address and told me to send it along. He was very impressed by my story. There was extra emphasis on the word “impressed” as if it didn’t happen often.

When I got back to the gaff that night, Scanlan’s stuff was already packed and gone. He didn’t answer any of my texts. I thought about ringing him but then I didn’t. I grabbed a can from the fridge instead and sat on the couch and pretended nothing was wrong. I pretended that I had done nothing wrong. A Google search of your man the agent turned up a few articles. A big to-do, I would have told Scanlan, and he would have laughed. He would have told me, dead on, that it’s some achievement, to send the fella an email and see where it goes.

The apartment is the quietest it’s ever been.

James Roseman is an American writer based in Dublin, Ireland. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where he received an Alumni Fellowship. He is the author of Placeholders, a novel.