Peter McFeely

Martin perched on the edge of the bar stool, slumping on his elbows, back arched like the frame of a penny farthing. The phone he cradled in the basket created by his arms, cast an eerie glow over his face. He looked like a morbid child attempting to accentuate a ghost story with a torch. His whiskey shimmered, gently rocking with vibrations from other drinks thudded to rest further down the polished yet peeling bar top. The large jagged ice cubes, hollow in the middle and tinted blue by his phone, looked like icebergs in the night ocean, the murky water eating away at their edges. With the caress of a hand and tilt of an elbow, Martin drained the offending liquid, pursing his lips as his throat cooked, and the glaciers feel to the bed of the glass with a chime. He read the message again, pleading with himself that the whiskey would work its way to his fingers and imbue upon them literary inspiration. He prodded at his phone’s screen with two forefingers, not once lifting it from the bar, as tentative as a pensioner taking first steps with a new wave of technology. Having a great time so far. Settling in well. Just met some colleagues for a few drinks in a bar. Miss you. In truth, he had never felt so lonely. Drinking alone was bad enough but seeing the fight and the way everyone moved in groups only accentuated his solitude. There was nobody here who would defend him if anything happened. Worse, there was nobody here for him to defend.
He shot furtive glances side to side, paranoid the text on his mobile had been read and he would be mocked for his lies. On his left was only a wall, decorated with fading photographs of a local junior football team the bar had once sponsored. To the right, the back of a broad man engaged in conversation. Nobody paid him any attention until the barman mistook the tension in his jaw as an order waiting to be flung across the counter. “Same again?” Martin tried to speak but felt only sand in his throat. He coughed and, if only to get the barman to go away, nodded yes, tapping the edge of the glass. He deleted the last two words of his message and stabbed the send button.

This was Martin’s eleventh night in the town. Well, sixteenth if you counted the two other trips he had made in order to sit through the interviews and find an apartment. He did count them. Every night was one away from Maria and Anna. He thought of them always, hoping that they would give him strength in his journey. Martin had literally left a piece of his life behind when he moved here, a faltering economy and rising bills leaving him no choice but to travel through the country, so far that he crossed the same meandering river three times as he pressed his forehead to the bus window. It was as if each of his wife and daughter extracted a part of his soul when they withdrew their arms from embracing his neck at the station. Their lips took away rather than supplied courage. He cried permanently, the taste of salt and mucus constantly in his mouth, but he only let tears fall in the dark of his apartment as he lay on the single mattress. In the first two nights he had hurt himself, throwing his arms out as he dreamt of holding Maria, only to fling them into the metal blinds which failed to keep the fluorescent streetlight out, or to knock over the cheap lamp which exploded in a puff and seemed to vanish from existence save an artificial yellow-stained shade no doubt produced in China and sold exclusively to home-owners furnishing their segregated boxes to let to desperate men like him. He fought his instincts, clothing his face with forced smiles and pleasant greetings when he could. He knew his eyes were hollow, but with new bandages and plasters adorning his hands and arms on a regular basis, he couldn’t come across as any more depressed than the other employees or he may be deemed a health risk and relieved of his work. Martin saw the same deflated look in the other men’s eyes as they cranked and manoeuvred heavy swathes of steel, so he settled on allowing his eyes their freedom, fighting only to control the other contours of his face. As mundane as the work was, at least the other workers were able to go home to their families at night. He could tell from their looks that they didn’t trust him. He wore a shirt and tie, the years of manual labour behind him and yet he had the audacity to carry the same self-pity through the workshop? Perhaps it was that any aspiration they had was crushed, feeling that even at the tip of the pyramid the same emotions abounded, but ultimately, the floor was filled with empty men and there was no room for Martin. He hadn’t tried but he resigned himself to having no friends in this town. All he had here was eight square inches of steel, plastic and some of the microchips he absently watched roll off the conveyor belt every day.

He gently swiped the phone, bringing up image after image of his girls. Maria’s sepia-tinged skin shone against her sparkling teeth, black ringlets of hair dropping over her eyes. Anna, head half the size and draped in knotted bandana, but smile twice as broad beamed through the screen. He pulled his arms tighter and dropped his head closer to the basket. He didn’t speak but he let himself believe he was with them now, laughing, playing, telling them how much he loved them. Even in a bar comprising such a rag-tag bunch of patrons, Martin looked out-of-place. The morbid drinker usually settles for a quieter establishment, frequented by solo-drinkers who sit alone save their thoughts, soundtracked by a melancholy country singer twanging a guitar over a static-laced speaker system, accentuated by horns blown in handkerchiefs amidst a choir of sniffles and sharp intakes. Martin had first met Maria in a bar like this, in university. Loud rock music, unruly dancing and even unrulier drinking. After two nights of vandalising his own apartment, he took to walking aimlessly at night until he was tired enough to sleep dreamlessly. He had passed the bar before, but tonight was the first time he set foot inside. Anna had inherited their musical tastes and, as a toddler, thrashed manically in their kitchen when they plugged their iPods into speakers. She was scared the first time they had to take her to hospital. She asked her parents to bring their iPod and the three shared one set of headphones, pressed face to face, Anna in the middle holding the buds outward from her ears. Every time they returned, the iPod came. As Anna lost her hair and became weaker the volume had to be turned down, but the soundtrack remained the same. It comforted each one of them. Martin carried the fear and sadness with him like an embarrassing tattoo from a drunken holiday abroad but the music softened the edges somewhat. He fought to show strength to Anna but also to Maria, though he felt like the Captain of the Titanic, saving others while his own vessel plummeted. She hadn’t wanted him to leave but it was the only way he could get work. It was also the only way he felt he could protect Anna now. The day she walked into his room at home and found a terrified father sobbing uncontrollably she collapsed. She blamed herself, overcome with guilt that she could cause such pain. Her body couldn’t cope with such emotional instability and, while it quietly destroyed him inside, at least here Martin could pay Anna’s hospital bills and fade into the emptiness of anonymity. It was important they thought he was coping.

“Another?” the bar man asked, opening his arm and motioning with the bottle the way a street dealer might showcase a counterfeit watch. Martin noticed his glass was drained again. He nodded. The barman wore a sympathetic look but one that Martin appreciated. Not one of pity, rather of understanding and humility. “This one’s on the house,” he said, submerging the ice in brown. “My name’s Dan by the way.” Martin nodded acknowledgement and before he could spade the sand away from his tongue and reply – “My son has been undergoing treatment for nearly a year now. I don’t see him enough. It’s hard but…” the sentence trailed off and Martin swallowed his lower lip, digging for a response. “I get off in an hour. If you’re still around, I’ll let you buy me a beer” Dan said, flashing a smile before turning to a customer further down the bar. Martin pivoted his neck back to the light that illuminated his arms. Anna’s eyes spoke to him from the screen. Gently, he lifted the phone from the counter, pausing to rub his hand over the warm rectangle of wood. With great care he typed I miss you both and pressed send.

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