‘Crack on the tunes, ladies,’ said Scag, nodding towards the set of portable white speakers and the iPod beside the bed. Nicky put on something that was like punk and electro mixed together. I was about to ask what it was, but Scag said, ‘So are yis writers or wha?’ He was gesturing towards the notebooks on the ground.
Lorna started dancing while we opened up the cans we’d bought with the girls’ money, behind the bar at inflated, post-offo prices. Nicky said, ‘Ah, yes. Yes and no. Mostly no. I write what I feel and think. It’s … I do it for myself. Poems, but not really poems. Feelings and impressions mainly, I guess.’
‘And you, Lorna?’ I said.
‘Me too. The same, I suppose. Feelings, memories. I try to write everything down so I can keep it with me when it’s over. When something is finished, how can you know it ever happened, apart from the memory it leaves you? I don’t like to take photos too much, so I write it down.’
‘Yis can write about us then, your two gentlemen hosts and guides for the night,’ put in Scag. ‘Make sure ye portray me as havin a smoulderin Byronic intensity. Use that phrase.’
They laughed. ‘Yeah, we will, undoubting. Cheers. Sláinte.’
Scag mooched over towards Nicky, who was sitting on the bed, and a moment later the two of them were kissing again, laughing, saying hushed, hurried things to each other. I sat on the chair by the bed. Lorna kept dancing. ‘I can’t sit still when I’m on the cocaine,’ she said. I watched her, horny yet anxious. She laughed a little, then stepped over, leaned down and kissed me. She took my face in her hands and guided me to my feet. We started kissing, more and more heavily, and her hands began sliding over my body. Behind me, from the bed, I heard rising groans from Scag and Nicky. He was hardly going to start shagging her here, in a room with one bed while we were here too, I thought. And then I thought: of course he is.
Lorna was shoving me towards the bed, and then we were spiralling down on it. She ran her hands through my hair, bit my lip, and rubbed her groin against mine. I was hard as wood, but kept swerving between lust and distress. I looked to my side as she started kissing my neck: Scag was lying over Nicky, propped up on one hand, kissing the tops of her breasts whilst rubbing vigorously between her legs with his free hand. She was moaning loudly. As I watched, he undid her jeans and pulled them around her hips, then slid his fingers under her knickers.
Lorna was getting more excited too. She clawed down my body and began to unzip me. Before I knew it my cock was freed, exposed to open air. She took it in her mouth. I closed my eyes and tried to forget there were four of us in the room. But I couldn’t overcome my self-consciousness. I pulled her head away from me, which needed some perseverance, and grinned awkwardly at her quizzical look.
‘Em, can we do another bit of coke or something?’ I said.
She smiled. ‘Sure.’
I put my dick back into my trousers and zipped up. She looked like she was trying not to appear frustrated as she fixed her hair a little, then reached out for Nicky’s jeans, which were now completely off her and flung across the bed. Scag’s trousers were off as well, and now they were plainly screwing, he lashing into her, and she throwing her head back and grabbing the headboard behind her.
We watched for a few moments. Scag and Nicky were oblivious to us. I turned to Lorna. She looked at me. There was a strange, wordless moment, the shagging noises intensifying beside us. Then we both erupted in laughter.
She cut out the coke on a book that wasn’t in English.
‘What is it you’re reading?’ I said to dispel my nervousness with some conversation — an absurd intention, with Nicky now yelping in what I presumed to be an oncoming orgasm, right beside us.
‘In fact it’s Joyce, Dubliners,’ she said.
I looked again at the book, where I now saw the author’s name. ‘So it is.’
‘Have you read it?’ she asked, finishing off trimming two thin, tidy lines.
‘No. Is it any good?’
‘It’s not bad. I always try to read about the places I go to. I was going to try to read Ulysses but I thought, maybe I’ll leave it until a longer trip.’ She laughed at this. I laughed too, though I had no idea what was supposed to be funny about that.
She let me sniff up the first line. When she took the second, the two of us looked again at Scag and Nicky. He had hoisted her legs up behind her head and was banging into her with sweaty ferociousness. His grunts were now discernible as curses: Fuck, Jesus fuckin Christ, Holy Jaysus. Nicky started screaming like she was being raped.
‘Anyway,’ Lorna said, turning to me with a playful smirk.
‘Anyway,’ I replied. I didn’t know what to say after that. But she saved me.
‘How old are you?’
I considered lying.
‘But be honest,’ she said with an encouraging smile. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Twelve.’
‘What!’
I laughed a little. ‘No, I’m seventeen.’
She nodded at this.
‘And what about you?’ I said.
‘Twenty-four.’
‘Right.’
I knew I should have been feeling proud like a conqueror — I knew that I should also be shagging her, oblivious to all but the task at hand, just like Scag, who still hadn’t come. But I was feeling too weird, too nervy and fucked-up. I only wanted to talk to her.
‘You seem a little nervous,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ I gave a nervous little laugh.
‘Don’t you like me?’
‘Of course I do, you’re gorgeous.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
‘No. It’s not that, I’m just … this is too weird. With Scag here, I mean.’
‘There’s nowhere else we can go.’
‘I know.’
Her disappointment had vanished, if it had been there at all. She lay back on the bed, dangling her head over the edge.
Finally Scag came. I didn’t know where to look; after trying out several options I settled on the bathroom door, draining my can in hefty gulps.
‘JAYSUS HOLY FUCKIN SHITE!’ roared Scag, bludgeoning out the screams issuing from Nicky, who he had now turned over and was banging from behind. ‘HOLY FUCKIN CHRIST ALMIGHTY, FUCK ME!’
Lorna was shuddering with laughter at the situation, which must have been strange, even for these worldly Scandinavian girls. I started to laugh as well, and soon I was doubled over and hooting as Scag seemed to drop dead, slumping off the bed and out of Nicky with a final, prolonged moan. He crashed on to the floor out of our sight, as Nicky continued to groan and gradually came to her senses. Through my tears of laughter, she looked like she’d just suffered a harrowing and violent ordeal at the hands of some crazed molester, which I supposed she had.
Me and Lorna laughed until we were spent. Then, from in behind the bed where we couldn’t see, came Scag’s voice, keen and collected as ever.
‘Time for another line, comrades, what do yis say?’
30 | Matthew
We left the girls in their one-bed room the next morning. It must have been about nine o’clock, a reassuringly grey Saturday morning in the city centre, Dublin waking up but not yet overrun by the shopping hordes that would descend upon it by noon. We helped ourselves to a free breakfast on the way out, in a dining area with ‘Breakfast is strictly for paying guests only’ printed on a sign on the wall.
We hadn’t slept. Scag had had sex once more with Nicky, but this time Lorna and I had left the room, walking upstairs to the rooftop and looking out at the river and the buildings on the other quay, watching Dublin stumble home to bed, howling at taxis and vomiting on its shoes. We had kissed again, but that was as far as it went. Lorna had told me I reminded her of herself when she was my age. We’d taken a good bit of coke by that stage and I felt sure of myself once more. Then we’d gone back downstairs and the four of us danced, laughed and chatted as the river outside slowly ran a dull grey, then murky blue, and it was dawn. Before leaving, Scag had assured the girls that we’d be seeing them again, and taken their mobile numbers and email addresses.