Celtic Fringe

‘Shame about the parade.’ The blurred city skyline was dotted with those old rooftop water tanks, or beehives collecting the grimy pollen off street and subway. Saint Patrick’s Day in the rain.

‘Ah!’ Eamon our janitor lived on top of the block. ‘But they’re not what they were in my day!’ He added a drop of the hard stuff to our coffee and lit a joint that filled the room with peat smoke.

‘You’ll know of the Hill of Tara,’ he went on, ‘sacred site of the ancient kings of Ireland, and of Brian Boru, greatest of them all. He, who played the famous Irish harp that you can see on every bottle of Guinness.’

Another drop of the hard stuff, and he started to sing, ‘If You Ever Go Across the Sea to Ireland,’ unless it was ‘Danny Boy’.

Going back down the stairs was much more difficult than going up. So where was the bloody elevator? Where I’d left it, broken down again.

I knew there was something.