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  “The Wesht,” Deirdre said with a deliberate slur. “I grew up in Connemara, County Galway. So yeah, I’m a right culchie but I’ve been living here over twenty years now. Came up to study nursing, and then I worked here for a while and met Fergal. He’s a real Dub. The rest, as they say, is history. I was doing some part-time nursing until recently, but it seems healthcare is a luxury we can’t afford any more. The nursing jobs have dried right up. That’s why I’m here. But I’ll hopefully get back into it when things pick up. We’ll always have the sick and eventually the powers-that-be will have to realise that. Unless people dying is part of the whole recovery plan.”

  She laughed, turning back to him and lifting her head slightly so her face caught the gleam from the over-bright strip lights on the ceiling. Now the bruise around her eye, sloping to her cheekbone, was all too clear. She’d done a good job with the make-up but it wasn’t enough. She caught Theo gawping and stared defiantly back, her head still raised. She didn’t want his pity. And in any case, he didn’t really feel inclined to give it. None of his business. Everyone had their own problems.

  He stepped around her. “Through here then?” He pushed through the swing doors, keeping his eyes firmly forward.

  Later, after they had toured the dimly lit dining room with its red velvet curtains to shield diners from the dispiriting sight of rain and wet, miserable people, and visited the cold toilet cubicles that Theo would be expected to clean, they tackled the dishes left over from the previous night’s service.

  “Here we go. Lobster thermidor dishes. The worst of the lot, after the lobster pots. That sauce dries so hard, it’d take your fingers off,” Deirdre said as she lifted four or five heavy clay-fired dishes from the trolley. One of the sauce-smeared plates slipped and she stumbled, flailing to catch it as it slowly slid off the top and thundered onto the floor. Theo bent to pick up the unbroken dish. Deirdre’s jeans were speckled with yellow globs.

  “At least it didn’t break. That would’ve come off my pay and God knows I get little enough as it is,” she said, offering him a weak smile. Her hands were shaking.

  “Sorry, I’m a bit on edge today. Didn’t get much sleep.”

  Her attempt at bravery, her trembling hands and the sauce teardrops on her smart jeans made Theo sad in a way he couldn’t explain.

  “Let me take those,” he said, reaching out for the stack of dishes still in her hands.

  “Thanks. Put them over there. Okay so, I’ll wash if you dry and then I’ll show you where to put them. We could pop them in the dishwasher there, but honestly, it’s not up to much and definitely not dried sauce. We’d only have to do them again,” she said, turning on the tap and squirting washing-up liquid into the sink.

  Theo watched the bubbles form and burst. Little things like this could still sometimes thrill the young Théoneste silently peeking out from below big Theo’s hard-man veneer. A liquid just to wash dishes. The extravagance still gave him a thrill. He remembered once, when he was about nine, he went to a kids’ party where the birthday boy was given a bubble machine as a present. An orange-and-yellow gun-type thing that shot bubbles up into the sky and into delighted faces. He didn’t remember anything else about the party. He stood for ages watching the bubbles fly out of the ‘gun’. After a while, he went closer to try to touch them. It was a wondrous thing. Bubbles from a gun! What would happen if all the guns in the world only fired bubbles? Surely, even the haters would smile. Just imagine: they shoot, bubbles fill the air, then everyone tries to catch them and laughs. It was an exquisite, extravagantly stupid idea. But then, he had remembered, there were still the knives, the machetes, the axes and nail-studded clubs they called masu.

  The rest of the crew began to drift into the kitchen. Deirdre introduced Theo to them all: Jason, a puffed-up peacock of a teenager wearing baggy, low-slung jeans and wreathed in the herby smell of recently smoked weed; Siobhán, only half as pretty as she thought with a loud voice and brilliant red nails; Cathal, a thirty-something moustachioed gouger who was, somewhat surprisingly, the chef; Barbara, a fragile mother-to-them-all who must have been in her fifties; and Cara, who was at the same school as Grace, Deirdre said, and who looked at Theo seriously as she twisted her hair around her fingers. Deirdre said there were two waitresses but they wouldn’t be in until later.

  “Ladies of the night,” she whispered, winking at him. She’d recovered her poise but he noticed that she introduced the others a little deferentially, as if she was afraid she was wasting their time. Theo tried to reconcile this with the hard look she’d given him when she’d caught him staring at her face. Clearly, there was some kind of caste system here, based on how close to the customer you were. He and Deirdre were at the bottom of the pile, along with Barbara who did the cleaning: Kitchen Untouchables.

  The grassy smell lingering around Jason gave Theo a longing, though he hadn’t smoked pot for years now. He said he was going out the back for a smoke. More than a nicotine hit, he needed a few minutes to form his opinions without them all gawping at him. He went out the back door, which gave onto a classic restaurant yard – skips, pigeon shit, skittering cans, and a cold breeze worrying discarded plastic bags in the corners. They must sell these yards in flat packs in Ikea, he thought.

  He lit up, dragging gratefully on his fag and wrapping his other arm around his body as the wind bit through his faded, knock-off Levis t-shirt. He was right feeble when it came to the cold, he blamed his early years in Rwanda, but Jesus, it was supposed to be summer anyways. His phoned hummed. It was Precious.

  “How is it going?” she said in her sing-song voice.

  She was trying to get the intonation right, to get it more ‘Dublin’, but in the two years since she’d arrived from Nigeria to study business, she hadn’t managed to shake off her Lagos lilt. She pronounced the ‘is’ and the ‘it’ entirely separately. She might never get it right, he thought, and that was fine too.

  “S’alright. Haven’t done much yet. Just having a fag outside now. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I’m in the library, swotting. I’m bored. Do you like the place?”

  “What’s to like?” Theo dragged deep and gave a tiny jump to warm himself. “Hopefully, this is just short-term, babe. I have other plans, you know.”

  “Yeah, like living off your sexy, smart Nigerian mama!” Her giggle was infectious.

  Precious often made him smile. She didn’t do sad. Demanding yes, furious yes, but never down. She was his bit of African sun. They’d met last Christmas in Spirals, a dive of a nightclub near her college. She didn’t know he was there to sell pot and yokes to the pretend-broke students from the posher colleges, the nobs from Dublin 4 who fancied a bit of rough now that they were living away from Mammy and Daddy’s six-bedroom gaff. They might whinge loudly about being skint but they’d cash for drugs, and that’s why he was there.

  Precious was with a bunch of girls in a corner – all tortuous cornrows, cloth handbags and colourful earrings. He was not a fan of ethnic chic but he thought one or two might be buyers and if not, they were good cover so the bouncers didn’t wonder what he was doing mooching around the club on his lonesome. He sauntered over for a chat. He didn’t like this part of the business but he was smooth, fairly good-looking when he smiled, and most girls seemed to like his mix of confidence and charm. Not to mention the exoticness of him.

  “Hello ladies, mind if I join ye for a bit? Ye seem to be having great craic over here but why are ye hidin’ yerselves away in this dark corner?”

  He squeezed onto the bench beside them before they had a chance to say a word. Precious arched one of her meticulously drawn eyebrows. Another girl, prettier than the rest, smiled warmly at Theo. She had a gold tooth. Africans, he thought, probably students, they won’t want the stuff. He was right but by now he was committed and sure, what harm?

  “So, what’re ye all doing here tonight?” he’d said. “Hen party?”

  “I hate that.” This came from Precious.

  “What
?” he said, wrong-footed and suddenly worried he’d said something stupid but at the same time noticing and liking her soft drawl.

  “Hen party. It’s demeaning,” she said, enunciating each word carefully.

  He looked properly now, taking in her full lips, the delicate shape of her head under the cornrows, the long nails painted with hearts and butterflies. In that moment, he decided he wanted to sell himself for once. He forgot the gear. There’d be takers later for what he had to offer, no doubt.

  “It’s demeaning of a party of women hitting de town before de marriage,” he replied, laying his Dub accent on thick.

  “Aren’t you the sharp one-oh?” she’d said.

  Her tone was dismissive but her lips were twitching. She waited a heartbeat and then smiled. An hour later, the bored friends had reluctantly moved on and then a couple of weeks after one of the worst nights for sales that Theo had ever had, Precious moved into his little flat behind the church. They were still there together. And for all her smarts, she still didn’t know he sold drugs. She’d kill him if she found out. Precious was a weird mix of uninhibited sexuality, boundless ambition and a kind of, in Theo’s opinion, bogus morality that she attributed to the hard hand of a devout mother.

  “I forgot to say. Michael texted. He’s coming round to see me tonight, so like, if you want to go out with the girls, maybe?” he said now.

  Her anger rang like the end of an echo in the silence that followed.

  “Why’s he coming round Theo? He’s no good.” She stopped herself but Theo could feel the unspoken Lagos ‘oh’ in the air. Her accent always came a cropper when she was mad.

  “Sorry. Last minute thing. He might have news of a job. Ah, Precious, he’s not that bad. You know, he’s got connections in construction and in the whole import thing. Could be good for me. For us, right? I don’t want to be washing dishes all my life.”

  “You haven’t even started yet, you fool! Today’s been so boring with the studying. I thought we could go out together, I’d love a night in the pub. I’ve been studying all week.”

  “We will. You go first, meet your friends, and I’ll be along later. It shouldn’t take long with Michael. You’re right, he’s a pain in the arse but he could be useful.”

  Precious didn’t answer. In the pause, he could imagine her studying her long nails, crimson red this week with a blue eye in the middle. He didn’t like this style but like most Nigerians in Dublin, or the ones he met anyway, she was obsessed with her nails. She’d found a lady, originally from Port Harcourt, who did it well cheap in a small shop off Grafton Street. But this new design freaked him out, especially when he saw the eyes caressing his chest, snagging in his hair. Bad omens.

  “Fine,” she eventually said, the word clipped and ominous. It was as good as he was going to get.

  “I’d better get back inside,” Theo said. “See ya later.”

  He hung up, took another look around the bleak, slash-your-wrists yard, sighed and pushed open the red fire door, gasping slightly in the already cloying heat of the kitchen.

  Deirdre was still at the sink.

  “Good, you’re back. You know smoking will kill you. You should give up the fags. It’s the one thing I tell my kids: don’t smoke. Mind you, I’m not sure how much notice they take of me, especially with their father lighting up out the back all the time.”

  Theo looked around. Jason was chopping red, green and yellow peppers in the corner, each strike of the knife managing to convey just how fed up he was. Siobhán was polishing a tray of wine glasses. She caught his eye and gave him a grin, all teeth and attitude. She was pretty in a brittle way. She had a strong chin, hair scraped off a face of angles, sharp nose, tight mouth, defiant freckles. She probably called them beauty spots.

  “Don’t just stand there with one hand as long as the other.” Deirdre was at his side again, holding out worn yellow rubber gloves. “Here, take over here from me. You can wash these pots while I go do the loos. You can have the pleasure tomorrow.”

  She pushed past him and for a second he was unbalanced by her smell, oranges or something citrusy anyway. Then he remembered. She must be wearing Anais Anais, the perfume Sheila used. When he first moved into their house, Sheila’s smell became his comforter. It reminded him of the flowers at home, and how their sun-filled, rainbow scents drenched the air after the heavy April rains. Of course, his Mama never wore perfume, although they were not poor, not there. Their house was built of bricks, not mud. His father, Thomas Mukansonera, was the village teacher and they lived well. They had Shema to work their three fields and his mother, Florence, did a bit of sewing as well. Buried in Sheila’s arms in those first weeks, crying endlessly, he would try to push deeper into her chest, losing himself in her perfume, drifting into dreams of home, of his mother walking with him along red dirt paths through banana plants and head-high maize, of playing under the bougainvillea bush with his older brother Clément, building mud towns, catching ants, scratching pictures in the dirt.

  “Theo, can you wash this glass again for me, please? It’s still all smudgy.”

  Siobhán crooked her head at him in a way she clearly thought was winning but which actually gave her the look of a pointy-nosed witch.

  “Sure,” he said, reaching out to take the glass. Her red-talon nails brushed his arm. Her hands were also very freckled and tiny.

  “It’s good to have a new face in here,” she said, perching on the side of the sink and leaning in beside him. He could smell nicotine on her breath, acrid beneath a minty top note. He flashed her a smile but didn’t say anything. With girls like this, he thought, less was often more. Better to leave them room to make up a more exciting version of yourself.

  “We’ve all been here since about April. Well, except for Cara. She only does a few hours at the weekend and afternoons sometimes cos she’s still in school. So how come you ended up here? Dream job?”

  She giggled, a deliberately girlish sound but with an edge. He’d have to watch her, he thought. “Yeah, I’ve wanted to work here since I was a wee lad. I used to stand outside looking in through the windows, dreaming of this day. This is such a great opportunity. Delira and excira, I am.”

  Siobhán laughed too loudly, flicked her ponytail and mock-slapped his arm.

  “Sure, that’s the case for all of us. Isn’t that right, Jason?”

  “You’re full of shite, Siobhán,” Jason muttered over his shoulder, his knife clunking steadily through the peppers. “You’d be better off getting those glasses inside to the tables.”

  Siobhán muttered “Wanker”, flicked her ponytail again – that hank of mouse-brown hair had a life of its own – and sashayed to the counter, picking up the tray of glasses and stomping out to the restaurant, her purple-skirted rear snaking provocatively.

  “She could wiggle for Ireland, that one,” said Barbara, who had just come out of the huge, walk-in freezer, rubbing her hands on a grey cloth and shaking her head.

  “Y’alright there, Theo? Getting the hang of things?” Her voice was brusque, as if she didn’t want to seem too concerned, as if that might seem a weakness. Another story there, Theo thought.

  “Not much to get the hang of really,” he said.

  “Too good for the place, are you?” side-mouthed Jason, who either suffered from a permanent humour deficiency, was not a fan of blacks, or was dying for a quick puff. Most likely the latter.

  When his shift was over, Theo went to get his coat from the back room. He found Cara, sitting on the threadbare, 1970s-reject sofa, hands between her knees, staring into space.

  “You alright?” he asked. Her blue eyes focused on him slowly. He wondered if she was slightly dim. A lot of that around as well.

  “Grand,” she said.

  Her voice was clear and light, not fake girly like Siobhán’s, just young. It was the first time he’d heard her speak all day. She was like a kitchen mouse, scampering around, staying out of people’s way, getting on with her crumb-collecting and hoarding while
trying to avoid the heavy tread of those around her.

  “Going home? Want some company? I’m heading down towards Hannigan’s, beside the church. I live just behind.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll probably hang out here for a little while.” She smiled uneasily. “I live down on Leitrim Street.”

  “I know it. A guy I know lives on the same road. Ronan Patterson?”

  “He’s my brother.” Cara’s eyes were wide but there was something other than surprise there. “How d’you know Ronan?”

  “I see him down the pub sometimes,” Theo lied, trying to cover his shock.

  Sometimes, this city really was too friggin’ small.

  “I’m often at Hannigan’s with my girlfriend, Precious. She’s Nigerian, a student. Saw him there a few times with some other lads I know.”

  He took a breath. He was starting to ramble and it was not like him.

  “So he’s your brother? Right. Small world.”

  He attempted a laugh but Cara was staring at him now. She was making him uncomfortable but at the same time, he couldn’t tear his gaze away. She’d fierce pretty eyes, he realised. Surely to God, Ronan, a fat-faced, twenty-year-old with a horsey laugh and badly bitten nails, hadn’t told his wee sister about the drugs, but you never know. Theo had learned, the hard way, that making assumptions about anyone in this town was a mug’s game.

  Theo first met Ronan – a gobshite he would never have given the time of day to if it weren’t for the drugs – through Neville, who had bought some pot off him after the guy they used when they were at school in Clontarf got nicked. God knows how Neville had found him but Theo’s best friend was the kind to have both quills and knackers in his circle. There was something about his poshness that made him more ‘of the people’ than the most bum-crack-showing builder. At the time, Neville was studying in Trinity, Theo was in DIT, and Ronan was one of the ranks of lads feeding the habits of students across the city. Somehow they all ended up in a pub near Merrion Square one night, and Ronan went on and on about how good ‘business’ was, telling Theo he should take the whole thing more seriously and offering to hook him up with ‘some of the serious lads’. Until then, Theo had mainly stuck to selling weed – he’d started when he first was smoking himself, just after doing his Junior Cert. Then, when he went to DIT, he kicked the habit himself but kept using the same dealer and selling on to friends and other students. Word got out and his stash started moving faster and faster. The dealer gave him some yokes, and a little coke one time, and that’s when, Theo supposed now, he became part of the loose network of sellers that made Dublin bump and grind.