Peter McFeely

Alan bobbed and weaved. He applied the skills acquired through hours of agility training, flitting in and out of plastic hoops and over hurdles. His back arched as he eluded the waving arm, the quick feet disappearing from under pouring amber. He sidestepped the drunk and flitted through a gap in the crowd to a relatively calm space. Straightening his pristine chambray shirt, and patting down the already immaculate parting which separated the stylised strands of hair from those cropped close to the scalp, he made his way back to his friends, water in hand. He was careful not to spill a drop, to bump into anyone, or to catch someone’s eye, so unprovoked had the attack at the bar appeared. Getting hurt would literally be the worst thing that could happen to him. He knew it had been a bad idea to come to the bar tonight. He’d considered leaving without saying goodbye but some kind of childish loyalty told him to go back to his friends, even if he couldn’t bear their company for another minute.

As he approached, he saw John with Kyle in a headlock. Cheered on by the others. Mary, Beth and the other girls laughed and clapped as loudly as the boys. Vulgar language filled the air and mixed with body odour. Seeing Alan, John released his grip to a tirade of good-natured curses from Kyle. He made for Alan and spread his arms like the wings of a falcon. Alan searched for an escape, his feet motionlessly dancing, but the crowd closed around him, rendering him helpless like farmyard prey. John’s arm pulled him tight, Alan’s shirt doused first in his own water and then in John’s beer. “Where have you been buddy?” he felt interrogated “we’ve been looking for you.” No doubt Kyle had been searching desperately in John’s midriff just moments ago but Alan attempted to smile through the lie before delivering his own. “Long queue at the bar.” “Toilet too” he quickly added, unsettled by the quizzical look. He had indeed been in the toilet. The cubicle on the right. Looking at the internet, re-reading his emails to confirm what time he was expected to arrive tomorrow. He even listened to a few media clips as he considered slipping out of the bar and heading home. He doubted he would be missed but guilt at too many a foregone occasion overcame him. “Well, we’ve missed you!” John somehow seemingly read his mind. “What did you get?” John grabbed at the flimsy plastic cup, sniffing it before cautiously putting it to his lips. He would have been as well wringing his shirt into his mouth, Alan thought, such was the amount of the drink which he now wore. “Water,” John said almost to himself. He gave John a disapproving look, like a mother catching her child stealing from the cookie jar. “Would you not have a drink? I mean come on… we’ve just got engaged!” He pivoted and pulled Mary to his hip with a movement which splashed drink over both and showered Alan with residual drops. Alan raised a toast with his near empty cup “As if I could forget Mary’s moment of madness. I’m still serious about taking her to get checked out by a doctor.” Mary doubled over in laughter and slapped him on the arm, spraying more water over everyone in a metre radius. He tried to ignore the fact they were all now covered in each other’s drinks, not to mention their bodily fluids, sweat rubbed against one other and sprays of spit which spattered his face as his drunken friends slurred the words directed at him. Mary attempted to get a sentence out, masking her inability to speak with a laugh reminiscent of a hyena being intermittently strangled and stroked, yet her eyes offered no mask to the depths of her drunkeness.

Feeling compelled to justify himself once again, while also trying to find an escape route, Alan said, “you know I have my trial tomorrow. It’s huge for me, I’ve put in a lot of work to get to this point and I don’t want to fuck it up. I’d love to be at home tucked up in bed but there was no way I could miss this. But even then, you know I’m not going to take a drink.” John eyed him suspiciously. A look Alan had become accustomed to over the years. “Yeah… your trial… I mean fair play, but you know Dessie was on the gas until about 4am before his and he still got a contract. What time do you even have to be there? 10am?” “8:30,” Alan answered too quickly. Dessie got a contract, but Alan didn’t want to sit on the bench for the reserves. “You know I haven’t had a drink for years now. Why do you think I’d do it tonight before the actual trial? Why do you always try to pressure me into it? Isn’t it enough that I’m here tonight?” The lack of control exhibited by his friends, liberation they might call it though the only thing Alan felt they were liberated from were their senses, seemed to have rubbed off on him. It wasn’t the first time he’d lost patience with John but he was usually good at biting his tongue. He doubted John ever remembered so, in his eyes, there wasn’t much point in debating. “Jesus, Alan, I’m only winding you up man, chill out! Nobody’s going to make you drink anything you don’t want to, we all want you to do your best tomorrow. We’ll be fucking thrilled if you get a contract. Sure in 20 years we’ll be in here telling everyone we used to drink with the great Alan Johnson!” Kyle’s head suddenly appeared between John and Mary’s sweaty shoulders “Well that’d be a fucking lie, Alan never drank with anyone!” Everyone cheered, competing with Mary’s wheezing cackle, and Alan tried to laugh along. Never mind the trial, every time he was with his friends for more than a couple of hours on a night out, he swore he would never drink. It turned them into preening idiots, lacking in both respect and control. John grabbed him by the shoulders and the plastic cup emptied its last vestiges as it crumpled in the embrace. Ironically, John was the only one who had actually consumed any of it. Just as John relaxed his embrace, he and Mary were pulled to the bar by a guy Alan had seen but couldn’t address by name. “Shots for the bride and groom to be!” Everyone cheered, including those in earshot who had nothing to do with the celebration. The nameless man turned to Alan, “Alan – you want one?” Stony-faced, he shook his head ‘no’, before dissolving, shirt dripping and hair displaced, into the bodies and towards the exit.

Perhaps Alan would have had a drink if he’d realised that getting a contract would only result in a lifetime of pain. His ligaments would prove as resolute as the gossamer woven by an apprentice spider. The friends who he thought he had made during his short-lived career would disappear as soon as the fame was gone and the only memories of his brief success were the crystal man of the match awards which adorned his own hallway. Thereafter, beer would be the only solace he would have, his childhood friends having long become too distant for him to see with any frequency. As he would sit on his sofa, too bitter to watch sport and instead filling the time with mindless action movies, he would open an envelope containing a handwritten invitation from Mary to celebrate their daughter’s fifth birthday. He would question how Sally was already five. He would think of when he saw her as a baby and tried to remember her other birthdays. But the memories would not appear. As he focused, trying his hardest to create images from events he hadn’t attended, he would realise that the John and Mary in his mind actually had the faces of the characters currently running across his TV screen. He would try to remember the curves of Mary’s chin and the sharpness of John’s tongue but nothing would come to mind. Instead all he would see were pitches and stands, changing rooms and early nights, He would begin to sob before shrieking in pain as he moved too quickly and his knee jarred. He would knock over the pile of beers cans on the coffee table in front of him, leaving them scattered, some standing amongst the crumpled tubes, so that they brought to mind images he had seen on the news following an airstrike in a once proud but now crumbling city. He would love to be with his old friends, joking and laughing. Sharing a drink. Perhaps if he’d known all this, he wouldn’t have made for the exit.

As Alan slipped deftly between a group dancing he saw a figure on the floor. She sat shaking, knees hugged to chest, broken glass around her. He paused for a second before accelerating past her. Who knew what had happened. Another fight. He couldn’t get involved. He needed to leave. Getting hurt would literally be the worst thing that could happen to him. He knew it had been a bad idea to come to the bar tonight.

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