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By Root 6026 0

of newspapers under my arm and climbed on a bus and went racing across the Curragh with massive horses galloping beside. In the bus, a man studying butterflies with a magnifying glass. And we were going to the West. Then a bullock leaped from behind a hedge and the bus cut him up and left him hanging on a huge hook in front of a village butcher shop. Then suddenly I was in Cashel. Streets filled with goats and gutters brown with dried blood. And in the hot sun's stillness, a crowd of men and women in thick black overcoats walking down the middle of a winter road, summer's hesitating heat on every side. The funeral of the gombeen man. He caught her, lips bubbling, eyes spinning, sitting on the shop assistant on a crate from Chicago and he heard it collapse and was after them with a hatchet. And they conspired between hot wet lips, clutching at each other's clothes to put poison in the tea, trembling hands to the till and each other's flesh, to wind a cocoon of sin between the pineapple and peaches. The box was closed. Summer. The long line shuffling. Through Cashel. A song:

Shuffling through Cashel

A box in the sun

Through Cashel, through Cashel

The gombeen man's dead.

The gombeen man's dead

In a box in the sun.

The assistant got the wife

And the gombeen man got done.

Poor mercy on the gombeen man.

There's a hand in the till,

There's a box in the sun,

God's mercy on the gombeen man.

Someone talking to Felicity. Good God. Wow.

She was kneeling on one knee and crouched over her tight legs, Felicity tugging at her outstretched finger. She wagged her head. Hello, little girl, hello. Wearing a green skirt, matched on the grass and her lisle stockings, slim slender ankles. Her gleaming round bottom poked up her heels.

"Hello."

She didn't turn around. Prodding the baby belly. Fading magic moment. That bun of black hair.

"Hello."

Looking over her shoulder, direct dark eyes. Mellow voice.

"Hello. Admiring your child. What's her name?"

"Felicity."

"Really. Hello, Felicity, aren't you a pretty little girl? Aren't you now ? "

What lips across what white teeth. The shoulders of her suit, arms through small circles. I'd like to get my hands on you.

"You work in the laundry, don't you?"

"Yes. And you live in the house across the street."

"Yes."

"I suppose you've seen me looking in your windows."

"What do you do in that room?"

"That's my office."

"I see you drink a lot of tea."

"Coffee."

"Pleasant."

"She's got such lovely hair. Haven't you, haven't you, little girl? I must go. Bye bye now, Felicity, bye bye."

Waving long fingers. A little smile and she walks away on the asphalt path. Chevrons dividing across her calves and wider over her thighs. She waves again. She smiles once more. Please come back and play with me. Your sensible clothing is sexy.

Throw this damn law in the sea. I can't learn a thing. Children are good advertising. Shows them the end product, the thing you do it for. I think she has hair on her legs. That's what I like, slight suggestion of the male. I'm in love with that girl. The way she walks, a twist of the hips. The neck tells everything, slight gangle. Certainly I'm not homosexual or an elf's child. I want to know where she lives and what she does at night I must know. O I think things are beginning to straighten out. If I get that toilet fixed. Anything. Block it up, run it into the street, just anything. But there is so little that Egbert and I have in common, especially money. How does one make this approach about impaired function of the drain. I feel I am moving to a different level of experience. Get my dark suit out of pawn and take Marion to the Dolphin for a grilled steak and Beaujolais. She needs a little recreation. Poor girl. I'm such a hard bastard to live with. And I'll come to the park tomorrow.

There was a sheep's head simmering in the big black pot Marion washing her bottom in a pan on the floor. Fine thing for sixpence. The baby quietly to bed upstairs, the afternoon over, the evening begun. They are coming into their houses all over Dublin city with their arms