Excerpt from Refuge for Sinners IV
Sometimes she sits and thinks with a book on her lap. There's an old bowl of pasta waiting in the microwave. But she's stuck listening to a podcast concerning the desolation in the middle east, which she wants to understand, but knows that just as well can't, but she'd like to understand. Glances out the window, rain drops tapping again. Her roommate went home with a slick German man with slick black hair and gages in his ears and then there was an explosion in Brussels, resulting in a worrying phone call from the voice of her mother.
She's studying to be an engineer. He's trying to change his skin for the first time, for the last time. She crunches his numbers to infinite as he scribbles in a green notebook looking for the right answers. Drying her hair and looking out the window, it was still raining. She isn't sure why she agreed to go all the way to Galway with him, staying in this crummy hotel, with little to no warm water, and a crowd of noisy Germans in the room to the left. But she agreed.
Writing his death poem, he reflected as most men do. The beauty of the world had made me sad, this beauty that will pass. How then, would the beauty of her face be marred by time? How then, would he look at the city in the rain and the girl in the rain, bodies beneath? He was gripped by nightmares once. He was gripped by an old
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stranger sadness and when he faced the firing line like all the rest he wondered how soon spring would come around and how the trees would bloom abound familiar blush green, seaming with cold, still nature of the times. How this strange beauty would last once he left.
He was plugged into music and remembered when he went to Dunleary. When he went to all these places in his mind. The wind brushing against him. The tower still stands there. He saw Joyce's death mask and thought what an awful practice, but also thought it was strange to see him there, you know, frozen like that. The grin of his, unsure of whether that crack was a slight grin at recognizing the end or if it was just how he was to the end. The museum in the tower had much of his old belongings, an old shirt from his grandmother with flowers plastered on it, a cane, an ancient guitar, the eye patch, steamy letters from himself to Nora, it was all very private and open.
She remembered walking along the street of her temporary home with a takeout lunch. There was the unmistakable, out of place and decedent church there that she had been meaning to visit, not out of sense of religious duty, but because churches are such a calm place as designed. And in front of the church was a bronze statue of what she assumed was the Virgin Mary, with her hands stretched out in a warm plea of mercy, an expression of loss draped over her. It was always from a distance, across the street, tiny cars zipping by, and on a sunset dream.
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When they walked side by side, the streets that used to be Claddaugh look like the ordinary. Stone paths and old buildings spaghetti about. Tourists families wrapped in wool, making their way through the busy side streets, venders and street performers out for work. It was still windy, pulling at their hair. His hands tucked in his pockets, cursed himself for not brining gloves. She asked him if he was cold. He said it was bearable. The houses blurred in the wind. We can always go inside, take off the shoes and look at each other, maybe attempt to talk in the same accent.
Looking into the warm plate of beef n' potatoes and pint, they talked at the pub. She started on conversation after the waitress guessed correctly she was from the states, but thought wrong when she said he was an Israelite. It has to be since the dark skin, he said. They all think I'm Argentinian or something when I talk. She confessed that when she first saw him at the social, he took the imagine of a wealthy Panamanian, or something like that, and smiled when he laughed at the thought. We were poor for the longest time, said he, had to fish for cans, pa left at a young age and all. Yes, people the think the Chosen people are just that, but we struggle when we must. She was reluctant to say she came from money, not a whole lot, but just enough to embarrass.
In a fast moving car, a wide-open field of rocks presented in front of them. Once out of the car, she went directly for the shore, where the waves collide on boulders and looked in awe, turning around, a bedside of natures forgotten earth present in
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refuge. Spotting his figure in the cracked pavement, coat flapping in the wind, aimlessly stepping on rock to rock.
He was taken aback completely. No one told him he'd find this here. This ancient layer of history sitting here, dominating the skyline, and what was it with this place, this sudden beauty amassed in secret, uncontained, and here. As he often did he tried to make a picture in his mind, but in a lapse of concentration slipped his leg through a big enough crack, uttering an audible "oh" and planted in the ground quickly. His leg was stuck in a crack in the Earth, his jeans ripped, scrapes of blood running down.
His face stagnated, calling her name. She ran down to him, seeing his lips had turned black. It doesn't hurt so bad, he said. It's just stuck in here. He took a second and looked at his surroundings as a way to dismiss a scorching pain in his calf. Warming clouds and the misty rocks, and through the hymn of water and wind, they were whispers of the damned, the dead. Her hand tightened on his shoulder and he looked up to her face all concerned, frantically asking around for help. He thought, what a wonderful scene for a confession.
It took her and a few Australians to get him out without losing the leg entirely. She took her sweater and against his commands, wrapped around the gash in the calf. Helped him limp back to the car and drove him to the hospital. Talking to him in the soothing way her mother would whenever she was hurt.
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He was looking out the car window with a slight grin. The sun was setting on the west coast. Some things you can't outrun. Seabirds and their swarm shadowing the cross. She watched him and the sun and the stars forming, the spirits that had created this, to see and submerge. In the back backseat, they both held onto the bleeding wound, but he was losing feel. Awareness starting to slip away. He tired to think of something to say to her before he totally gone, something like don't worry or it's fine, but opted to simply place a hand on her shoulder as a last action. His head leaned back on the cushion accompanied by a shut of the eyes. She'd remember his passing out and this whole episode to be quiet peaceful, despite it all. She noted the way his head rocked a little here and there as consciousness left him completely, almost like waves, but the ones on an easy day.
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