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I wondered if that had been his way of breaking the bad news. He hadn’t been friendly with Ken and Ray Murphy in years, not since they’d put his younger brother in hospital after a fight outside a nightclub. But surely our pasts warranted a little more than such a cryptic mention of their fate?
    Christ. My head was throbbing.
    “Roger’s alive,” I said. “Don’t tell me he isn’t.”
    The look Maureen gave me, the sympathy twisted into a face not built for it, made bile rush up my throat. My stomach contracted and I slid off the chair. “Don’t,” I told her and put a trembling hand to block her expression.
    Calm down, take it easy, get your shit together, this isn’t—
    “Overdose,” was the last thing I heard her say before I turned and fled toward the bathroom.
     
     
    *
     
     
    It’s all a blur.
    I remember praying to the toilet, cursing at it as I watched my own insides gush out in a brown torrent. The cramps seemed to take forever to subside, and afterward I was left weak, drained and convinced I was still in London, still in the flat. I was high, soaring inside my own head, in a dream, after falling off the wagon and letting Nancy shoot cocaine between my toes.
    Sure, life sucks, I said. But not this fucking much.
    I crawled on my hands and knees to one of the urinals, grabbed its porcelain lip and hauled myself up. The smell from the pink cake increased as my piss hit it until it was as nauseating as the thought of more drink. I zipped up and someone knocked on the door.
    “Are you all right in there?”
    Maureen. I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me, then shouted, “Fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”
    She didn’t wait. Instead she eased open the door and slipped inside the bathroom. I looked at her and wiped a hand across the back of my mouth, hoping it would be enough to rid myself of the taste of vomit. It wasn’t.
    “Lemme get some water,” I said and staggered toward the sink.
    She moved to stand before it, blocking my way and I almost collided with her, looked down into her moon-shaped face, craters and all.
    “You’re in a bad state,” she said. “Want a lift home?”
    “No,” I said. “I’ll walk. T’isn’t far.”
    “Sorry about your friends.”
    I nodded.
    “You’re a fine looking fella,” she said, then she kissed me. It was a clumsy kiss. Her lips were dry.
    I kissed her back. Mine was clumsy too.
    Can’t remember what came next, but I found myself sitting outside the door of the bar, in the cold. The sound of the latch being slid home was the only sound in the world. The streets were deathly quiet. My underwear was knotted around my balls and squeezing the life out of me, so I rose with help from the wall, and started to make my way home. Wondered if there were cabs at this hour. Forgot where I was. Not London, not the U.S., where the cabs last as long as the people do. This is Dungarvan, where if you’re out after two, tough shit, lad. Find your own way home.
    I navigated the streets as if they were the rolling deck of a ship on the high seas, and paused to throw up twice. Despite my feelings about alcohol, I wished I’d brought some with me.
    The chill crept into my clothes and made a home there. Wrestling with my underwear until I could walk without them carving a groove in my thigh, I stumbled on as far as the Causeway, where I stopped and leaned against the chain to look out over the dark water.
    Boats undulated silently on unseen waves.
    Somewhere out there a buoy clanged a funeral toll.
    Somewhere out there my friends had taken a breath and the tide had filled their lungs.
    I started to imagine it, then bent over the chain and retched. There was nothing left of me to offer the sea, so I straightened, wiped tears from my eyes and moved away, whispering a fond farewell to my fallen comrades. Quickly followed it with, “Fucking eejits, the two of ye,” and stepped back.
    Right out onto the fucking road.
    The last thing I remember are a pair of