CC5: The Trouble With Spillage

Reaching for a lighter on the table, I knocked Emer’s glass over and the spill spread out over the table until it was a long island waterfall stabbing our footwear.

‘Oh, you’re in trouble now,’ Carol, transported by the glee.
‘Trouble, trouble. Double it, treble it.’
‘Whatever you think yourself.’

The troubles. One begot another. The problematic never came alone, invited itself and its family and its friends and their families into your home, and if you didn’t open the door, they all came smashing through your walls waving hatchets. When I was laid off, the trouble didn’t just exist in that terrible moment of discharge. It was up at the front, of course, leading an endless parade of its associates in a march across a thousand graveyards. As the detail of my mortality was relayed, I was clobbered hard with flashes of additional problems I’d have to deal with – how to actually tell Emer, how she’d react, how we’d both react in the imminent. I didn’t blame the bosses even at that moment. I blamed myself for believing it wouldn’t or couldn’t happen to me, investing in the home, thinking it at the time to be a plan, when in fact, all planning had been fucking superfluous from the get-go.

She looked at me like I was just about nothing when I told her. ‘A few less trips up to Brown Thomas for me then?’ she said, her head dithering disappointedly over a pink paperback with a stylishly-dressed lady on the cover. ‘I’d hope so,’ I told her.

She was safe in her profession. If you’d put a public sector worker in a room with a private sector worker, who do you think would have lasted until nightfall without a worry in the head?

I wasn’t the only one. Nearly a thousand men and women were flung from their places of work that month. Ever since, there was a rise in the number of old men you could see riding their bikes around town with their heads down, going nowhere in particular. You could tell they’d been fucked over royally.

‘You’ll land on your feet, I’m sure,’ Emer’s father said.
Go fuck yourself, I thought, when he said it. I’ll have enough of the platitudes, thanks very much. I won’t be appearing on Oprah any time soon, either wallowing in misery, or rejoicing in resurrection. Go back out to Cooley, you cunt, and rape a hill with your poetry.

As Emer was returning from the toilets, I was already on my feet, having anticipated a variety of possible troubles ahead following the spillage.
‘I spilled your drink by accident, on my way now to get you another. Long Island?’
‘Yeah, Long Island. You should fucking know by now!’
‘I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe you were drinking something else tonight as we haven’t been here in a good while.’
‘Long Island. How did you spill it?’
‘I was trying to get a lighter.’
‘You’re smoking too much.’
‘You’re smoking too.’
‘Not as much as you.’
‘I’ll just go and get the drinks.’
‘Drinks? I thought you were just going to buy me another.’
‘I’ll pick one up for myself as well.’

She eyed me with her eyes, which always spooked me out, and with that, I had to anticipate a host of new possible troubles ahead.