Trevor Conway, from Sligo (Ireland), writes poetry, fiction and songs, but has also worked occasionally on scripts, plays and non-fiction. He has been interviewed for RTE Radio 1’s Arena arts show. He has also read work/been interviewed at Over the Edge, O Bheal, the Belfast Book Festival and Tozeur International Festival of Poetry, in Tunisia. His first collection of poems, Evidence of Freewheeling, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2015 (http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=374&a=278). His second collection, Breeding Monsters, and his third, No Small Thing, are available from Amazon. Website: trevorconway.weebly.com.

Buenas Noches, Irene

“Banana”. Imagine. I lingered on it, delving into the endless froth of a cappuccino down a busy alley. The café was so full I couldn’t get a seat inside. There were balding men rolling kegs of beer at full throttle, but I swam in the sea of that noise, imagined the hard metal rolling over rough concrete. I watched a man slather his sandwich in chutney. It came out thick. A blue coat passing with a gold brooch seemed such a beautiful thing. I suppose it was a reaction to how numb I’d been feeling. I clung onto the world like a cherished toy, as if it could be taken from me. For once, I was content to just sit and do nothing – until the woman at the next table made eye contact. She was smoking a cigarette. Held it at an unusual angle. The kind of angle I associated with a telescope, for some reason. Cappuccinos and all things within touching distance, even smoke, become precious after traumatic news.

That word, “Banana”, it came from the woman smoking the cigarette. She, too, was sitting by herself. Her hair was tied across the back, pushed up, with hay-coloured tendrils drizzling down. I wouldn’t usually start a conversation with a stranger, but this day was different. I’d lost all sense of who I was. It was liberating.

“Banana?” I repeated. “Interesting name…He’s cute.”

She lifted her head to blow smoke up, drifting into the space between the roofs. It was then that I noticed she wore lots of makeup. It seemed thicker around the jaw. 

“Yeah, he sure is cute,” she said. “And he knows it.”

A whole minute passed before I spoke again:

“I don’t think people name their dogs after objects enough.” It sounded daft once I heard it.

“An object,” she replied, tapping ash onto the ground. “Would you call a fruit an object?…Yeah, I guess you could,” she answered herself. “We don’t call them after objects enough, I suppose.” She had a strange way of looking at me, never quite landing at eye level, dodging them just as she scaled up my body and around my mouth, with the eccentric rhythm of a butterfly.

The dog was small and hairy, with dark grey curls tumbling over each other. He gazed up at her every few seconds. It reminded me of a meek old man dominated by his wife.

“I always thought Alistair was a good name for a dog,” I told her.

“Sounds more like a politician than a dog,” she quipped. I was surprised, then, to see how warm her smile was. “It’s pretty nice for a human, though.”

Three ladies left their table just inside the café. My first reaction was always to snap up such opportunities, but I was glad I didn’t. She had this odd effect on me. Although she didn’t seem particularly friendly, I felt compelled to talk to her.

“Ah, sun,” she whispered, sitting back with her eyes closed as her face took on a yellow glow. I could feel the heat on my neck. I turned my chair to face away from it, trying not to think of the sun or of sickness. I’d spent most of my life happy at the thought of sunshine. I wouldn’t let it unnerve me now.

Usually, I’d pin a person to one of five personality types within a minute. It was impossible to do so with this woman. Her earrings – gold loops about the size of an orange – seemed at odds with other things about her. I associated them with loud people, but she was reserved. One of the guys rolling kegs was a textbook freewheeler. Not because he was rolling the kegs, but because of how he stood between bouts of activity. He had this slanted stance, his jeans dipping to a kind of scowl near the hip. The other guy was a diplomat, I guessed, with a serious expression, always measuring the actions of others. Among the café-goers, I noticed a neurotic (stooping to smell the coffee, depositing brown sugar with a circular motion). An extrovert was seated just inside the door, expressive arms going like tentacles. But I couldn’t tell if the woman beside me was one of these four. Perhaps she was the other – an advocate. If I had to guess, though, I’d put my money on neurotic.

The heat rose to the curve of my skull. It collected there, like a puddle. I lifted my chair to the shaded side. She watched me.

“I have to,” I explained. “Doctor’s orders.”

“Fair enough.”

“Actually, the doctor didn’t say anything about it,” I thought out loud. She had no idea what I was talking about. Context. I was never good with it. As if all conversations started with prior knowledge. She was staring through me. “You’re an idiot,” I could hear her thinking. My ex had once told me my biggest flaw was vagueness. It took me years to realise how infuriating it could be – to talk with someone so scant with important details, I mean.

“Skin cancer,” I blurted. It tripped from my mouth in a vacant kind of way. I could feel blood rise to my cheeks, so I took a long, slow breath. It was odd that the first person I told was a stranger. Most people tell their partner, I guess. I wanted to keep it secret for as long as I could. If the visit to the specialist had turned out better, I wouldn’t have said anything. All notions of silence were ridiculous now. I’d say the words and wait for that look of sympathy.

Tears.

Questions.

Somehow, I didn’t expect sympathy from the woman sitting across from me. It wasn’t her thing. She had an air of selfishness. Or was it just independence? She’d probably surmised that I did something stupid like fall asleep on a beach somewhere near the equator.

As it happened, there were no words between us. Only a great cacophony of noise erupting so suddenly that I lobbed a dollop of coffee overboard. It wasn’t the kegs – those guys were taking an extended cigarette break. It was Banana. He’d launched himself forward, straining at the leash. I wondered if he felt more defensive than normal in an enclosed space like an alley. The other dog was much bigger, something like a sheepdog. Their noses were barely three inches apart, but both owners seemed undisturbed, with a perfect sense of how far their animals could reach. My new companion didn’t even look at the man holding the sheepdog. It could’ve had something to do with his shirt – a sad, raggedly affair of black and blue squares that barely covered the underside of his belly. She slid a cigarette out of the pack with one hand, planted it between her lips. By the time the big guy had passed, she’d lit it. I watched the first brightening of its tip, imagined its energy fuelling the process that carved deep hollows under her cheeks.

“Skin cancer,” she said, and released a long, dense cloud of smoke. I had no idea what she’d say next. She closed her eyes. White specks of light showed that moisture was seeping through her eyelashes. Banana rubbed his nose under her knee, and started whining.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Of course, I thought it odd that I was the one saying this. Her head dropped. It lasted so long that I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. She bent down and kissed Banana behind the ear.

“We know all about that, don’t we?” she whispered.

“Oh, I didn’t realise,” I said, assuming she meant that she’d been diagnosed with it, too.

Her eyes trailed up my body, till they met mine. I glimpsed her shaded breasts under the loose, round neck of her woolly sweater. There was hurt in her face, like she was turning a tap on a painful memory she hadn’t touched in a long time.

“What’s your doctor’s name?” she asked. Her voice took on a fragile quality that surprised me.

“The specialist?” I said.

There was no change in her expression. Answering obvious questions pained her, too, it seemed.

“Moriarty,” I answered.

“What’s he like?”

“Okay, I suppose. Apart from…giving bad news.” I smiled at my own pathetic attempt at wit. She batted her eyelashes at speed.

“No – what does he look like?”

“Taaaall” – I said it slowly.

“Heavy build?”

“Yeah. I suppose.”

“Balding?”

I had to think about it.

“Kind of,” I answered. “He’s light on top, yeah.”

“I think that’s him.”

“Who?”

“My sister’s guy. He diagnosed her two years ago.”

I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this. It wasn’t exactly a coincidence, but she seemed preoccupied with something.

“She’s okay,” she added.

“That’s good.”

“I mean, she never had cancer.”

As I stared at her, she put her hand across her eyebrows and shook her head.

“Fucking idiot,” she muttered.

I realised why she thought it so important to tell me this:

“It was a wrong diagnosis?” I said. Again, she didn’t answer, so I went on stating the obvious: “And you think it’s the same doctor?”

She nodded.

“But that doesn’t mean–”

“He has a reputation,” she caught me short. She paused, about to say something, planning her words carefully. “He drinks.” I thought she was finished, but then she added, “He should be struck off, that fool.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, spreading my arms across the table, stooping closer.

It’s difficult to describe what I was feeling. It was as if the deep, crippling pain in my stomach grew lighter – sweeter, even. It had been there for three hours, since the diagnosis. There could’ve been a flower blossoming in my colon now.

“I’ll text her,” she said, and lifted the phone from her navy and gold handbag. “Three operations,” she whispered, typing with two frantic thumbs. She was finished in seconds.

“Three operations?” I repeated. She didn’t answer. “And he, like, drinks on the job?”

She gave me her stern stare again:

“I’m not gonna make accusations.”

I felt like a child being scolded.

“Oh, I know. Of course,” I explained. “But…like…you don’t rate him…in your opinion.” I was aware that it didn’t sound like a question, but she understood.

“If he sat down beside us, I’d smack him. Right there.” She pointed to the edge of her jaw.

Banana turned his attention to me. He trained his eyes on my mouth, and I wondered if he’d picked up this trait from watching his owner talk. I wondered if he guessed at the meaning of the strange shapes our mouths took on, the different sounds that came from them. Maybe he even thought he understood some of it.

“Mind him, will you?” she said. She got up and went inside without waiting for my answer. I took the leash. Her pale, skinny legs rose up the dark stairs leading to the bathroom.

“I guess it’s me and you,” I said to Banana. He looked at me with pity, almost seemed aware that I had little experience with dogs. He crawled closer and sniffed at my sandals. Before I thought to take them away, he licked my toes. One quick swipe. I imagined a light, yellowy growth appearing on my sandals over the next few weeks. The same happened to a pair of black runners I had. Since then, I was suspicious of dogs inspecting me below the shin.

I pulled my legs in and let my eyes wander. Old Raven Lane, a sign read opposite the alley. I’d never noticed it before. In fact, I wasn’t one to linger on street signs at all. But I’d remember this one. Not just because of the unusual name. Because I’d always associate it with this day. Everyone thinks their first experience such overwhelming numbness will come after the death of a parent, don’t they? Not many encounter it while their parents are still alive.

I wanted to paint. I hadn’t held a brush since I was in primary school, but, for the last eight years or so, I’d fixed on the idea that I’d take up painting when I hit fifty. Now, it seemed like a foolish notion. I wanted to travel, too. New Orleans. Vancouver. Maybe way down south to Sao Paulo.

I was starting to believe what the woman said could be true – maybe I had nothing more than a bad rash. The kegs kept rolling by. I felt a great shield between me and them. Some people say they do things on auto-pilot. That was how I felt. Not the kind of auto-pilot that fuels a busy parent on a Saturday afternoon. Mine was a cushion pressed to my face, keeping the world at bay. Even my breath seemed fake. It wasn’t me breathing at all.

You’d think I’d be making plans in case the worst happened. But no, all I cared about was this moment. The sound of traffic. The jagged, dark roofs cutting into the blue sky. And then, how I’d break the news to Mel. Or whether I’d do it at all. If someone had asked me whether I imagined us together in ten years, my answer – if I was really truthful about it – would be no. I’d been thinking for the past few months that I might be better off single. So, I had two options, as I saw it. Simple. Call it a moment of clarity.

I looked at the sign again, and wondered if there was a New Raven Lane somewhere. It was better that I had some company, I thought. Talking to the woman beside me had shifted some of the numbness, but I didn’t expect it to disappear for days, maybe weeks.

I offered her the leash when she came back. She didn’t take it, just checked her phone.

“Frig her. She never gets back until she’s kissed her kids ten fucking times on the lips.” She poured more tea from the pot into her cup. No milk. She held the tea in her mouth – swirling it like wine – and swallowed it. Back to her phone.

“Oh, buenas noches, Irene,” she said, and slammed it on the table.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Buenas noches – goodnight, Irene.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a phrase. It just means…It’s like a sigh, I guess.”

She turned her head away. I knew she wanted to leave. Realising this made me a little sad, though I didn’t expect strangers to cling to my company. She was waiting for my benefit. At least I could say that.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she said, and didn’t wait for me to answer: “What would you do if you didn’t have much time left?”

“Jesus,” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know.” My chest grew heavier at the thought. As if my lungs were filling up with liquid. “I…I was never the kind of person to make big plans,” I said. It sounded silly.

She could see the spice in my eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said.

“It’s fine,” I told her, trying to hold onto a tear hanging at the rim.

“You probably have no need to think about that, anyway.”

“Yeah, I hope,” I smiled.

We didn’t speak for a while after that, just watched the men roll kegs past us. Even Banana seemed restless now. He watched her constantly. His tail stopped wagging. I thought she’d leave without getting her sister’s reply. So, I imagined myself researching it. Maybe there’d be something about Moriarty online. Maybe not. People might be afraid to say such things openly in print.

Her phone lit up. I could tell the message wasn’t long, only a few words. Yet she stared at it for the length it’d take to read two messages. She looked at me. Her lips were thinner.

“Murtagh…Fuck. I’m sorry.” She looked me straight in the eyes. “Are you sure your fella is Moriarty?”

“Yeah,” I said, just a whisper. Somehow, this news hit me worse than the diagnosis itself. I was starting to feel, I suppose.

“You never know,” she said, taking out a cigarette. “Doctors get things wrong all the time. You should get a second opinion.”

I’d already decided that’s what I’d do. And maybe the news could remain between us for another while. I had no idea how I’d feel in a few hours, though. Full disclosure might seem like the best option.

She got up, sucked in her first puff from the new cigarette.

“Well, anyway, best of luck with it,” she said. I thought she was reaching for my hand, but she took the leash instead. “Stay strong, okay?”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

Banana trotted off with her. He looked back at me. I was sure there was pity in his eyes. As they rounded the corner, I thought about her personality type again. Maybe she was a freewheeler. Or else a neurotic. Me, I just felt like a victim. I got up and took a deep breath. The shadow that cut across the alley went from dark to faint.

“Buenas noches, Irene,” I said, and sidestepped the keg trundling towards me.