Routines

      ‘IT’S the first Wednesday of the month.’

      ‘And?’

     Arthur looked up from his newspaper which he read every afternoon at the kitchen table since retiring last year. He enjoyed watching Mary run around the kitchen polishing things that she had polished not twenty-four hours before. It was time he valued with his wife because he got to spend time with her without him being the full focus of her attention.

      ‘PJ will have made his challah. He won’t sell to me. Acts as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about and just tells me he’s not Jewish.’

      ‘Shouldn’t have complained about his shortbread.’

     Mary put down the cinnamon on the counter with a clack. Her eyes narrowed and the cracks around them dug deeper into her paper thin skin.

      ‘That was in nineteen-eighty-six,’ she told Arthur.

      ‘You know how artists are.’ Arthur responded adjusting his wire-thin spectacles and scratching his chin. He had maintained a perpetual grey stubble in recent months which he had become quite proud of, now finding little projects in every corner of his life.

      ‘Oh don’t give me that,’ Mary’s hand was now firmly placed on her hip mimicking the teapot on the shelf behind her. ‘The gobshite makes dough.’

      ‘If it’s so easy you do it so.’ That shut her up which in turn gave Arthur a shiver of glee that ran up from his arse to his ears.

     It was Autumn and though the sun glowed like a mandarin in the powder blue sky above, there was a crispness in the air which whispered to the people of Dublin that winter would soon be knocking on their doors. Arthur wore his deep green Aran wool jumper and walked without a dusting of haste towards the village. The grandkids had bought him an eye-pod for him to listen to on his walks but after six months he had had just about enough of Van Morrison and too many theories about exactly what the little midget meant when he said, into the mystic.  People always said hello to Arthur. He took it as a compliment but he never wanted to speak to them, even more so since he stopped working. “How are you finding being at home,” they ask him. “What at all will you do with yourself?” Many expected him to take up golf, a sport he had never shown interest in but appeared to be a sort of purgatory on earth for retirees before the inevitable kicking of the jam jar. When people don’t know what to say they tend to talk a load of shite to avoid a moment of awkwardness, Arthur thought to himself. Fortunately it was a quiet day on the pedestrian front and so he enjoyed the sound of the breeze fingering through the branches of the trees and the occasional tweet of a bird.

     PJ’s Bakery was just on the corner ahead and Arthur enjoyed another shiver of glee as he walked straight past it and into the pub. His stool was there as always and there were a few bodies scattered. Men his own age watching the T.V. which Barry the barman always kept muted because Barry loved having a centimetre of power at the tips of his chubby fingers.

      ‘A Guinness when you’re ready please Barry.’ Barry said nothing but motioned towards the tap and got to work.

      ‘Paul,’ Arthur nodded at man down the far end of the bar. The décor and faces here had not changed in years. Even Barry who was situated firmly in his mid-forties had worked at the pub since he was a lad. No doubt it was a huge day in his life to be elevated from the floor to behind the bar-top … to become a keeper of the gate.

     The Goo was placed in front of him and Arthur took a moment to watch the chemical reaction within the glass of rising whites transforming into a pitch black. Barry seemed to watch Arthur watching which Arthur found a little odd but then again Barry was an odd one.

      ‘Is everything alright with you Barry?’ Arthur scratched his sandpaper chin again.

      ‘Why do you always watch it?’

      ‘It relaxes me.’

      ‘You should be doing more with your life while you’re still here’

      ‘If I want life advice from someone with sausages for fingers I’ll come to you Barry, until that time please fuck off.’ Barry looked at Arthur confused and then at his own hands. Arthur sensed clarification was needed. ‘You’re overweight Barry. To the point that I’ll still be here when your heart lets the rest of your body know it’s going on strike. I’d say its strength is receding faster than your hairline.’ While Barry silently calculated Arthurs words Arthur shlupped half of his Guinness down in one go as Paul chimed in with a little snigger.

     The door behind the bar opened with hard swing and announced Nadia’s arrival. The landlady had adopted the steely posture of her late husband when she took on the establishment and as she walked towards Barry, Arthur could almost feel the barman go as flaccid as his … well, you know.

      ‘The Carlsberg needs changing Barry. Be a dear.’ Barry shuffled away leaving Nadia to eye Arthur silently.

      ‘I take it you’re here for my bread?’

      ‘Worst thing I ever did bringing that bread home and saying it was from PJ’s.’

      ‘Some part of you knew what you were doing as it gives you an excuse to sit on that stool more than usual.’

      ‘I can sit here whenever I want.’

      ‘You’re only tough when you’re bullying Barry, Arty. Mary has you by the short curls.’

      ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

     Nadia wore a white blouse and lipstick as red and shiny as an the apple. ‘This way so,’ she gestured to the door with the cock of her head and walked back to the inner workings of the pub. Arthur left his Guinness where it was, confident it wouldn’t be taken or tainted.  The corridors that led from the bar to the kitchen were tight, a one-way system practically and Arthur was suddenly very concerned that Barry could come barrelling towards them and they would be forced to squeeze by each other.

     The kitchen smelled of warm dough - sugar, chocolate, coffee - almost every aroma Arthur was in love with. Nadia wrapped up a loaf and threw it on the counter which he was leaning against and stood in front of him. Without hesitation she clasped between his legs with one hand and with the other pinched his chin to steady him as she, with calculated passion, stuck her tongue into his mouth. Arthur seized and felt her do the same and his hands did their routine of grasping her ass before making their way up her body. She pulled away when he gave her a little pinch. The dart of pain sketching a grin across her face. Arthur drank the smell of her perfume and met her green eyes with his greyish blues and told himself not to think of Mary because he had started to and pulled Nadia into him and whispered in her ear before taking her lobe in his mouth, ‘thank you for the bread.’ The buckle on his belt jingled, and he closed his eyes.