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against
    the window It was only then that it dawned on me.
    “How the hell did a little dude like you manage to find
    your way onto a second-floor windowsill?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “That’s impossible.”
    Leonard wasn’t much interested in giving away any
     
    secrets — he was too busy walking around in circles. I watched him feeding on two-day-old tuna.
    “Where did you come from? Did you send him, John? Did you send him to get me out of bed? You never did like it when I overslept. A waste of a day, you’d say.”
    Leonard was finished feeding. He wanted to sleep after his ordeal. I couldn’t blame him. After all, his encounter with nature’s wrath on my windowsill was akin to any one
    of us surviving an earthquake. I found a shoebox and filled it with a fresh hand-towel. When I placed him inside he snuggled up instantly and closed his eyes. I put him on the bed beside me. I got back under the duvet and watched him sleep his troubles away
    “Hey, John, remember the moving statue? Thousands of people made a pilgrimage to pray at the foot of a statue
    of Mary in some barn in North Kerry. Remember Leonard removed the statue of the Virgin and Child from outside
    the principal’s office. He hid it in the girls’ toilets and left a note on the podium saying ‘Cone to lunch’!” I was
    laughing. “The principal went nuts and called him a blasphemer. Moving statues! What a fucking joke!”
    Leonard opened one eye to see what the joke was. I wasn’t laughing anymore.
    We both fell back to sleep shortly after that.
     
    Anger
    Clo would call me once a day
    “Are you OK?”
    “Yes!’
     
    “Do you need anything?” “No.”
     
    “Do you want me to come over?”
     
    The call would end and we would both be relieved.
    She didn’t get four weeks’ compassionate leave. She only lost a friend, he wasn’t family to her. Her pain wasn’t valued as highly. She returned to her stressful job the day after the funeral. She walked into the office to be greeted by seventy pieces of post requiring urgent attention, three press releases, a magazine shoot for Fruit and Veg Awareness Week and a very disgruntled client. She dealt with her post methodically. Her client was placated within minutes. She managed to write three press releases within an hour, meeting the deadline with time to spare.
    The shoot, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Two underfed models, one dressed as a cabbage, the other as an apple, cold and cranky waiting for the fruit man to deliver the display. He was caught in traffic on the M50. The girls were fending off teenagers’ abuse of their fruit
    like appearance while the photographer bitched about the
    time. Clo remained professional throughout.
    She didn’t get home until after seven. She entered her empty apartment, deflated. She pulled the coffee from the shelf. It slipped from her grasp and she could hear the thick glass jar hitting her head before she felt it. The coffee jar continued toward the floor. She nearly caught it but her grip let her down once more. It smashed onto her white tiles, the coffee grains bursting out of their glass prison in their bid for freedom.
    “Enough!”
    Heat blazed inside her. The erupting tears burned her eyes.
     
    “All I wanted was a cup of fucking coffee! Is that too much to have fucking asked? Fuck, I’m not cleaning up! Fuck, I’m not dealing with this!”
    She was screaming and moving towards the press. She started to pull out glasses, throwing them across the room, watching them hit, smash, then trickle down her kitchen wall. She aimed a cup at a picture of a boat sailing on blue sea. She threw it with the concentration and professionalism of a star baseball player. The glass shattered on impact, leaving the picture torn and hanging from the chipped
    frame. She screamed and cried and danced on the coffee and glass broken under her feet. Then she stopped cold, her heart beating wildly, attempting to break out through her ribcage, her hands shaking