“Apple is the best of the best, fruit baskets and all that, and I still wanted to kill myself.” He grimaced. “Can’t imagine what that other place must be like.”
James and I were like those old broke ladies you meet in London, who say “of course, I could never live south of the river” and would rather starve in their pre-war Kensington flats. We had standards. We were town people. We would rather be on our feet all day, working at GAP, than tied to some desk phone.
People left O’Connor’s, which meant there were more hours for me and James, but now that our wages had been cut we were still taking home the same money. We became very bratty, and absolutely awful at our jobs. We closed progressively earlier every day, blared our own music during work hours, failed to update the bestseller charts every Thursday night. We developed a deep hatred of women who bought The Help to read on holiday.
“They should The Help us,” James sniped. “Their husbands should have The Help-ed the country by not The Help-ing themselves.”
We didn’t understand what was going on with the economy. Just that it was bad, not just regular bad, but corrupt bad. There were a few buzz phrases that we picked up from the customers, who would recycle information that they had heard on the radio. “The bloody banks,” we would say. “Bertie Ahern and his fucking brown envelopes.”
I missed Fred Byrne. I felt like he could have explained to us what was going on.
I never got to hear what went down in Dingle. James disappeared behind a cloak of shame and ironing starch spray on the matter. The only clues I was ever given were through his TV script, which was in full flow again, and even had a title: Discs.
James decided that if he was going to work more hours for the same money, he might as well get something out of it. He spent every spare minute in the Film & TV section, analysing screenplay writing formats and reading Robert McKee. He also took full advantage of the work printer, which he used to print off sheets of his script.
“I think I know what the big event is, at the end of the pilot,” he said one day, while we were cleaning up. “I think Michael leaves his boyfriend, and has to move in with Alice.”
“Michael has a boyfriend now?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly. “We never see him.”
“Like Maris? In Frasier?”
“Like Maris.”
“So the set-up for the show is that Michael and Alice have to live and work together?”
“Yes! And like, how do they negotiate work and life balance?”
“How do we?”
“They’re not like us,” he said defensively. He was nervous of me interpreting Alice’s actions as being too much of a parody. “We’re very evolved.”
INT: THE STORE
MICHAEL bursts through the doors, looking upset. ALICE is already behind the counter.
ALICE
Michael, what kind of time do you call this?!
MICHAEL
Sorry, sorry!
ALICE
You missed the Horror shipment! Do you know how sad it is to unload a truck-load of perverted violence at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday?
MICHAEL
I broke up with Craig.
ALICE
Oh…So…I guess you do know!
MICHAEL
Alice!
ALICE
Look, I’m sorry, okay! I’m in shock here! But you have to admit, your relationship with Craig wasn’t exactly…healthy.
I still have pages of that first draft in a shoebox. Every time I move house, I dedicate another day to sitting on the floor, reading all the voices James tried on before he found his own. I photograph every page, send them to him, and he replies either immediately or seven hours later with the vomit emoji.
One night we were having dinner at home. We were down to the last bottle of Fred Byrne’s wine and we decided to cook a spaghetti bolognese from scratch to honour it. The meal was horrible: the mince simmered so long that it was grainy, the tomato sauce splashy and slightly too cool. “I like it this way,” I said, several times. “I like the meat when it’s crunchy.”
“I think we should talk about our plan,” he said, dripping the last bit of the wine into my glass. “I think we should move to London.”
“Oh,” I said, chewing my chewy meat. It had the consistency of scabs. “Really?”
“We can’t hang around here. Cork is dying.”
I nodded. “Cork is dead.”
“I’ve almost finished Discs. When I’m done I’m going to send it over to production companies in London. And agencies, too. So I can get an agent.”
“Jesus.” I swallowed. “You’ve thought about this.”
“I haven’t thought about anything else. I’ve been looking online. I think we could get a flat in London. Not, like, near the centre of the city or anything, but somewhere further out.”
I had heard tales of people in the suburbs who commuted to the centre of London every day in the time it took to get a Ryanair flight. It sounded awful.
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of Carey, of Deenie, of the tendrils of life I had in Cork that were fragile but would also mean nothing without James.
“She would write you a recommendation for one of the English publishing houses,” he said; “she” meaning Deenie. “And you could ask Carey.”
I rubbed my ear. “Ask Carey what?”
“To come with us.”
I dropped my fork. “What?”
“Why not?”
“You would want to live with him?”
He shrugged. “I basically live with him already.”
“He’s not here that much.”
“No.” He looked at me with sly eyes. “I mean I basically live with him already.”
“Oh, come on. I’m not as bad as him. I’m housebroken!” I was washing my sheets now. Had he not noticed?
“Sure.”
“James!”
“The point still stands. Ask him to come with us. If we get a two-bedroom and the three of us are splitting rent, we’re quids in.”
MICHAEL
What do you mean? We were very healthy.
ALICE
Well, for starters, you never stayed at his place.
MICHAEL
He lives with his wife!
ALICE
And he lives with his wife!
MICHAEL
He’s saving on rent!
I had no idea when James became so business-minded. If I were to guess, I would have said that it came from the crisp, cut-and-dried Hollywood screenwriter language he was reading in all those books. The ones that were always saying things like: One page per one minute of screen time. Figure out what they want and don’t give it to them. Show, don’t tell. No character should have five lines of uninterrupted dialogue at any time.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if me and Carey are…there. It’s a big deal, to emigrate with someone.”
“Christ, I’m not asking you to get on a coffin ship with him. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll break up with him and he’ll fuck off back to Cork. What do you have to lose? You’re mad about him, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
He was mad about me, too, in the moments he remembered I existed. And wasn’t this the whole point of our joint effort to be adults? Wasn’t this where it was all going? I began to imagine him, imagining himself. How much he’d like to tell his parents that he was moving to London with his girlfriend. How pleased everyone would be. I imagined his sister Cate calling me in our shared flat, asking me to put him on. I imagined meeting Cate.