My phone suddenly jumps to life in my hand, filling the apartment with the chorus of Westlife’s ‘Uptown Girl’. I bring it up to my ear on autopilot.
‘I never thought I’d see the day, Ballygobbard on CNN International, if you don’t mind! Did you manage to catch it, Aisling? We had a watch party here in the town hall. The whole place is gone berserk now that the Big Stink is finally behind us.’
Mammy is talking ninety to the dozen in my ear, but I can barely take in a word she’s saying because I’ve just opened the door to John. He should be in Dubai, where he lives with his fiancée, but he’s not. He’s standing in my doorway here in New York, and it’s knocked the wind right out of me.
‘I thought Trevor came across very well, didn’t you? His phone was beeping the whole way through the segment. Three texts from his daughters, all about how his tie was the wrong shade of burgundy. I made him promise not to tell them I picked it out. The last thing I need now is getting off on the wrong foot there. Did I tell you they have a podcast? What time is it in the Big Apple, love? Have you had your dinner?’
Across from me John mouths a silent ‘hi’, and I realise I haven’t said a single word since I opened the door thirty seconds ago. I’ve just been gawping at him, stunned.
‘Mammy, I’ll have to go.’
‘Did you think the Welcome to Ballygobbard sign looked a bit run-down in that montage of the village? Tessie Daly is saying …’
I hold up a hand to John, a signal to ‘wait there a second’, and I back into the apartment a bit, depositing my wine glass on the coffee table before sinking down onto the arm of the sofa while Mammy goes down the rabbit hole of Tessie’s impossible standards for the Tidy Towns committee. I grab the remote and lower the volume on the blaring telly. The last time I communicated with John was on the phone the other night. We were both sick with worry about our friends back home in the midst of the Big Stink. We even managed to figure out that it was probably Mad Tom and his counterfeit pig feed that was the source of the mysterious smell that had descended on the village, making people sick. I missed John so much talking to him that night, but it felt safe missing each other with him in Dubai and me in New York. Now he’s standing at my front door. I glance over and he’s staring at his feet, looking sheepish. I can’t just leave him there.
I stand up and interrupt Mammy, who’s moved on to giving out about parking at the nursing home. ‘Mammy? Mammy? I’ll have to ring you tomorrow, Mammy.’ She’s still doing the customary fifteen ‘bye bye byes’ as I knock her off, shove the phone in my back pocket and go back to stand in front of him at the door. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi, again.’ He smiles, just a tiny bit, and the whole world seems to narrow down to the two of us.
A rush of hot and then cold sweat shimmers over the surface of my body. I really take him in, going from his eyes down to his lips, across his shoulders and up to his hair, which is clinging on to quickly melting snowflakes. Back down to the soft edge of his collar and to the strap of the holdall across his chest. He’s doing the same to me, searching me for some kind of reaction. My mouth is slightly open. In the silence, the telly informs us about the side effects of taking a drug for indigestion. Hallucinations and purplish bruising across the entire body does sound like a high price to pay for negating the effects of a lasagne and chips. I’m blessed with a high tolerance for most foods, but the gin does have me reaching for the Gaviscon.
The longer I stand staring the more the tension builds up. I can feel myself leaning forward infinitesimally. I can smell him, just about. A smell that buried itself in my memory after all those years together. A smell he took with him when he left for Dubai with Megan. That mixture of his deodorant and the good hair putty that I bought him in a salon for Christmas about six years ago and that he’s been chipping away at, pea-sized amount by pea-sized amount. All mixed in with his innate John smell. I’d know it anywhere. It’s like there’s a tiny thread between us. I wonder can he smell me. I wonder does the American Herbal Essences Apple and Elderflower smell different. I’ve been using a sample of a Chloé perfume I got in Sephora. I wonder does he notice the absence of Clinique Happy. I’ve heard people talk about aching to hold someone, and for the first time I really get it. It’s like when my legs go restless on a plane, except in my arms. I have nothing to say in this very moment, and it seems like he doesn’t either. I just stare and that invisible thread pulls us closer to each other. I don’t know what my body might do if we touch. I lick my lips ever so slightly. I have it done before I can stop myself. He notices and his lips twitch into the tiniest little smile, truly one of the most erotic things I’ve seen in my thirty-one years on the planet, and I’ve seen Westlife in Croke Park with Golden Circle tickets on the tour where they wore jeggings. This is absolutely mad. What am I doing? Oh God, I’m leaning. What am I doing?
THUD!
The door of number 43 crashes open. I shriek involuntarily and John jumps, clutching his holdall strap. My next-door neighbour Candice emerges, bringing with her the racket from her telly inside and its usual messaging about how Satan is coming for us all and particularly us sinners. She’s clutching the biggest pizza box I’ve ever seen. I didn’t have her and the husband down as pizza lovers.
She ignores John. ‘Ass-ling. Can you get rid of this? I gotta watch Mo’s franks.’ She gestures back into the apartment where Mo is sitting in his armchair and certainly not watching his own franks. I gaze back at her, frozen once more. So she turns her attention to John instead, thrusting the pizza box at him. ‘Hey, can you help me, please?’
He utters his first proper sentence. ‘Sure. Yep, no problem. I’ll just …’
I watch, helpless, as he manoeuvres the pizza box out of her hands, his wingspan barely able to take it on.
It’s her turn now to stare at him, which she only does for one and a half seconds before barking at him, ‘The garbage. Put it in the garbage.’
As she returns to Mo’s franks she thanks him by way of ‘You’re an angel’ before slamming the door.
It’s back to just the two of us. His fingers turn white trying to grip the vastness of the pizza box and I finally snap out of it.
‘The garbage chute.’ I point at it and feel instant mortification for saying ‘garbage’ in front of him. ‘The rubbish chute,’ I clarify, gesturing at the metal door in the wall at the end of the hall. ‘Just pull the handle.’
He sidles over to the chute and drops the pizza box at his feet. I pad out after him in my slippers but quickly double back on myself to put the latch on the door. The last thing I need is to get locked out. I flip the latch and decide to reach for my keys from the little dish that also contains a bobbin and a book of matches from Shebeen. Better to be safe than sorry.
At the chute, John is trying to fit the colossal pizza box into the too-narrow opening.
‘Have you never seen Friends?’ I ask him, knowing right well he’s seen every episode at least twice because he owns the box set. ‘You’re going to have to tear it up.’
He gives me a look. It’s his patented ‘You always get to the solution a millisecond before me, Aisling’ look, and he laughs, pulling the box out and ripping the lid from the base, which I take up and start to tear into.
‘John, this is insane. What are you doing here, ripping up a pizza box on my landing in Manhattan?’
He shrugs. ‘I needed to see you. We’ve been talking so much, and I missed you and you said you missed me and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get home with all that was going on …’ His voice cracks and he trails off.
It has been such a stressful few weeks with the mysterious stench forcing BGB into lockdown. I know John was up to ninety over his sick friends and felt helpless being so far away from home. I was the same. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. Like, the world is huge, and you were just on the other side of it, and now you’re right in front of me.’
‘Planes are mad that way, Ais.’ He turns back to the chute, where he’s making bits of the box, and I gaze at the back of his head. At the brown curls at his nape that mean he needs a haircut. At the tiny hole in his earlobe that’s the result of a secondary-school bet he lost and ended up on antibiotics over.
Without turning around, he speaks again. ‘I got to the end of Sex and the City anyway.’ He’d been struggling to find a job in Dubai and had been watching the whole series from the start, sending me his thoughts along the way.
‘Big surprises Carrie in Paris.’ My eyes sting with tears.
Then John turns to look at me. He raises his eyebrows and does his best Miranda impression. ‘Go get our girl.’
I laugh. I can’t help it. ‘You big fucking eejit.’
‘Hey!’ He pretends to be annoyed, taking the last of the pizza box out of my hands and stuffing it down the chute. ‘Mr Big’s name turns out to be … John. Just saying!’
‘Yeah, and then he jilts her at the altar in the first film.’
‘Spoilers, Ais!’ Then he looks disappointed. ‘Does he really?’
I look at him for maybe five seconds, feeling sick and excited and dread all at the same time. I move back towards the door. ‘You know I’m not actually Carrie, don’t you? I only have four pairs of shoes, and three of them are flat.’
He follows me, and we resume our places in front of my apartment.
‘Yeah, but it’s pretty romantic, though, isn’t it? If I could have dramatically raced through the airport I would have. Although there was already an incident at Duty Free when a fight broke out between two influencers over a fancy handbag.’
‘Oh my God, which influencers? Was one of them Molly-Mae? She’s had the teeth done again and they’re much better this time round.’
‘I couldn’t tell you now, to be honest. But, Ais, I came all this way for a reason. I really needed to see you.’ He steps closer, decisively this time, closing the distance between us. ‘This is going to make me sound like a sap, but I was aching for you.’
We close in further on each other, and I can see where the snowflake from his hair has dripped onto his shoulder, leaving a small, dark patch. I lift my hand, wanting to touch it. He takes a deep breath.
SLAM!
The door downstairs crashes open and then shut with one cacophonous noise and my heart jumps against my ribcage. Jeff! Shit! The sight of John pushed the guy I’ve been seeing completely out of my mind. Ten minutes ago we were watching CNN together – he only went to the bodega on the corner for more crisps. There’s the sound of whistling as a person, unmistakably him, bounds up the stairs. I put my hand on John’s shoulder and push him away, stepping back over the threshold into the apartment. I only have time to take in his puzzled face before Jeff rounds the banister onto my floor, a paper bag in each hand.
‘They didn’t have any Flamin’ Hot Cheetos but’ – he lifts up his arm – ‘I got Ruffles.’
He steps around John, past me and into the apartment, deposits his goods and sticks his head back out. ‘Hey, howya doing? Can I help ya?’
‘No, no,’ I croak. ‘He was just wondering if I had time to talk about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’
John looks at me like I have two heads, but Jeff doesn’t miss a beat. ‘She’s Irish Catholic, so we’re all good, but you might have some luck next door. They are sure afraid of something. Maybe you can help them.’
He heads back into the kitchen while John gazes at me, baffled.
‘I’m sorry,’ I hiss, as I close the door.