Ciara O’Connor watched from behind the counter of Danger Dan’s, the vintage comic shop in Temple Bar where she worked part-time, for Jay to appear. She finished work in half an hour and he had said he’d meet her here.
‘Have you got a Vampire Brides of Transylvania?’ a nerdy guy with silver glasses asked. He was a regular, and Ciara pointed him towards the case over on the right, and the bottom shelf where the rare 1960s editions could be found.
Business had been good, and she’d been on her feet all day. She’d restocked some of the shelves with the latest X-Men issues and had taken incessant orders for customers.
‘Do you have issue number six of The Generation?’ asked Alan Swan, another regular. He worked as an editor round the corner in Film Base and Ciara knew that he was writing his own horror film script with the hope of getting the Film Board interested in funding it. A good percentage of their customers were either writing scripts, writing books or trying to develop games based on obscure comic-book heroes. They were dreamers! But, hey, some dreams do come true!
That was how Ciara had met Jay McEnroe. He was eight years older than she, with a shaved head, black goatee beard and a penchant for dressing like he had stepped out of a Mad Max movie. They’d met at a gig in Curzon’s, where her best friend Dara Brennan’s band was playing. Jay told her he was writing a big Gothic novel and that she looked just like its main character, Lisette.
A few weeks later, as she lay on the couch in Jay’s flat in Rathmines reading a few chapters, Ciara had to admit that Lisette bore more than a passing resemblance to her, and was very flattered.
Jay, she suspected, saw himself as the next Bram Stoker.
She was helping her boss Henry Dunne to cash up, and lock away some of their most expensive editions in the safe, when Jay appeared. Henry nodded to him and told her that she could finish up.
‘Thanks, Henry,’ she called, grabbing her black leather coat as Jay took her hand.
‘Let’s eat,’ he suggested, and they found a table in a small Vietnamese restaurant over a jeans shop. Ciara ordered a traditional vegetable and rice dish.
Two of Jay’s friends were putting on a two-man show in the Project at eight o’clock and he wanted to see it. ‘Fergal says that they have only sold a few seats, so we’d better go along.’
Ciara’s feet were killing her, and she wasn’t really in the mood to watch some crap play, but she went along with what Jay wanted to do on a Saturday night. The theatre was half-empty and the Beckett inspired monologues of the two main characters were a shambles. What a waste of a Saturday! she thought, as they left and went for a drink in Porterhouse.
‘Let’s go back to my place,’ he suggested half an hour later, bored by the noisy pub.
Back in Rathmines, in the second-floor apartment, they both watched a pirate copy of the latest Quentin Tarentino film. Jay loved it, and kept stopping it and replaying it over and over again, as they smoked and laughed and made love and eventually fell asleep together.
At 10 a.m. Ciara woke with Jay asleep beside her. She studied the tattoos on his back and arms, noticing that he had got a new one of an owl near his shoulder blade. She kissed it and he stirred.
‘Love the owl,’ she whispered.
‘I got it a few days ago,’ he explained, leaning over. ‘Just came to me that I needed an owl, and I went down to Pete and got him to do it.’
Pete Freedman lived on the landing below, and ran a small tattoo parlour off Essex Street.
Ciara ran her fingers over Jay’s skin, tracing the owl’s outline.
‘Lisette gets a tattoo,’ he said nonchalantly.
‘What kind of one?’
‘A dragonfly.’
She rolled over on her side. She had considered on and off over the past five months getting a tattoo to prove her individuality and her love for Jay, but she knew if her parents or family saw it there would be war. Also, she wasn’t into needles and pain!
‘Pete’s the best in the business,’ Jay said, kissing her shoulder. ‘You tell him what you want and that’s what he’ll do. He’s a true artist.’
‘I’m just not sure.’ She sighed.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he soothed. ‘My beautiful dragonfly.’
She liked Jay calling her that, and the thought of a dragonfly tattoo perched on her pale skin was appealing.
‘Do you think Pete would do it?’ she asked.
‘Pete can do anything once I ask.’
‘I’ve to go in a few hours,’ she explained. ‘I’ve an assignment due on Tuesday, and I’ve got to work on it. Plus I’ve an essay to write.’
‘You do what you’ve got to do, Ciara,’ he said, rolling over on his side. ‘I just want to chill today.’
Ciara knew that Jay hated being tied down to any form of routine. She saw him twice a week maybe, and that seemed enough for him. He worked in a big computer call centre during the week, telling her that it was only a stopgap till he got some kind of recognition for his writing. She had asked him a few times since they had met to come to her house, even when her parents were away, but he always had some excuse not to. Even on the night of her sister Amy’s engagement party he hadn’t bothered to show. Jay was like that, immersed in his own life. He was mature, and so different from all the other guys she had dated, who were students and spent their time hanging around the UCD and Whale, the unofficial college hangout, trying to impress everyone with their drinking and stupid talk and stupid music. Jay cared about all kinds of things, and had big plans for the future. He talked about getting out of Dublin and moving overseas.
‘New York or San Francisco, that’s where it’s at,’ he explained. ‘There’s plenty of opportunity and none of the bloody begrudgery and putting you down you get here. People outside Ireland want new voices, experimentation.’
Ciara knew that one day Jay would make it big in whatever field he chose: his writing, his poetry, his scripts. He said she was his muse, and she loved watching him work, and the intensity that surrounded him. He made her feel grown-up. She loved to listen to him read out loud to her or to pore over his laptop screen, trying to make sense of his words and imagination. Jay was confident that it was only a matter of time before he was discovered. He wanted to immortalize her. Immortalize his characters. Being with Jay was so surreal and removed from college life and everything else around her.
‘Chilling is good.’ She laughed, slipping back into the warmth of his arms, reluctant to leave him.