Stag Night

Her name was Bambi. Probably not her real name, judging by the simper shaping her small mouth. Did it matter? She had eyes like molasses that blinked slowly at him and absorbed the lights of the pub so completely that he felt dizzy, suffocated. He looked away. His hand travelled the scuffed expanse of the table, fingerprints catching on a patch of something sticky and sweet-smelling.

“American?” she asked. Her accent was local.

Dempsey nodded. “I have family in Dublin though.”

“What brings you to County Wicklow, then?”

A hand slammed down onto his shoulder and gave it a rough shake. “We’re saying our goodbyes,” Ez said, his teeth gleaming beyond his umber skin. “He’s getting married in two days.”

Dempsey tipped his head back. Guinness rushed down his throat. “We were told the scenery was nice here.” He pushed the empty glass away from him and watched as white foam sank to the bottom in sluggish defeat.

“It is the Garden of Ireland,” she agreed. She was nursing something tame in her glass, fizzy but diluted with a layer of melted ice that stayed floating above a thin line of alcohol. She swirled her straw through it lethargically, her nails painted the colour of merlot. Her eyes flicked up. He averted his gaze. “Next round is on me,” she said. She stood up and left his protest dry on his tongue. The movement shifted the air with her perfume and filled his head with daisy chains and rainclouds and something too quick to hold onto. He watched her snake through the other tables, the play of light and dark upon her legs making her glow golden like poison in a glass, fighting with the red material painted over her body. She approached the bar and caught the barman’s eye with a wrist, brown and slender as it waved above her afro.

“Cool girl,” Gael said. He was talking to Jiyong but the words made Dempsey jolt and turn back to the table.

“Wonder if she has any friends,” Jiyong said. The apples of his cheeks were flushed, but they had been that way since their tour of the distillery this afternoon. He slapped Dempsey’s chest, then pointed at the bar. “Think she needs some help, dude.” Bambi’s eyes were deliberating the five tumblers in front of her.

Dempsey got out of his chair and stumbled towards her. “Let me,” he said, scooping up four of the glasses. The way she smiled made her lipgloss glitter like starlight and unzipped his skin in the most pleasurable way. The sweet smell of Jameson entered him. She led the way back to their table, laying out coasters in front of Ez, Gael and Jiyong. He shadowed her as he placed the tumblers down on top of them.

“Hope you boys like Jameson,” she said. Jiyong swallowed thickly as he looked down, the whiskey pulling his eyebrows together in a crease. She mimicked the frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just … nothing.”

“Jiyong’s a bit of a lightweight,” Gael said.

“Wrong,” Jiyong said. He swayed a little as he scooped his glass up.

“Ji, don’t,” Ez said, smirking.

Jiyong thrust his drink up. Some of it splashed onto the table. “To marriage.” He downed what was left in his glass.

Bambi laughed slightly through her button nose but held her own glass up anyway. “Sláinte.”

Dempsey did the same, mute, the clink of their drinks ringing in his ears.

Ez nodded and finished his whiskey. “What she said.” He got out of his chair and gave Jiyong’s back a pat before pulling him to his feet. “Come on, bud, let’s go play some darts. Maybe pool,” he amended. “Safer.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna step out for a smoke,” Gael said. He gave a little wave and took his glass with him.

Dempsey looked down into his own drink, twisting it so the dregs of alcohol ran back and forth, up and down, the crystal winking at him. He felt her eyes drag over his jaw and, for a sliver of a second, terror seized him. The bar was a dim affair. He struggled to see outside the reaches of the pendant light hanging over their table.

“Plans tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Hiking, I think.” He glanced up at her and regretted it. He wanted to know her name, her real name, but would asking for it scare her away?

She raised an eyebrow. “That is ambitious. Whereabouts?”

“The national park up in the mountains.”

“Somehow I do not think your friends will be up for much exercise when the sun comes up.”

“I wasn’t privy to the planning process,” he said with a small laugh.

“And what is your bride up to as we speak?”

The vowels cut deep into him. He tried to find an answer in her eyes for why she was asking, why she cared—or, rather, why she was acting like she cared. Women always said one thing and meant the other. Her eyes, however, looked as they did when the night began and they had accidentally caught each other staring. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “The boys and I have gone technology-free for the weekend. But she’s got her own thing going on. Hen’s night and all that.”

“A single night?”

He shrugged. “It’s all she asked for. What about you? Where are your friends?”

The corner of her mouth turned upwards and she tore her gaze from his, casting it over the rest of the room. “No friends tonight. I come here to watch strangers.” She picked up her glass. She seemed to inhale the whiskey. He imagined it sliding down the long column of her neck, exposed to him from the way she had her chin tilted up.

“You a novelist or something?” he said, clearing his throat.

“Something.” She smiled that same smile and nodded at his empty glass. “Can I get you another?”

*

The bones of his skull were moving, tectonic plates adamant on pushing up against each other, making mountains. Someone had taken a pickaxe to his temple. He went on one knee, then the other, and laid there, burying his fingers in the silky grass and watching the blue-black blood behind his eyelids zap like static. There was sand in his throat. He ripped a hand from the soil and shook it blindly in the air, fingers flared. “Water, someone.”

Ez’s voice laughed above him. “You’re so weak, man.”

“Told you not to race uphill,” Gael said.

Jiyong muttered something about not being the only lightweight.

Dempsey groaned. “Water.”

Cold plastic pressed against his skin. He almost drowned himself as he lapped until there was nothing left. He let the bottle fall from his grasp. It made a dull thud on the grass.

“Take your time,” Ez said, toeing the line between playful and patronising. The fault did not lie in racing uphill. It laid in competing with Ez, darling of his high school track team.

With a sigh, Dempsey forced his eyes open. The world was stardust for a second. He blinked it back into shades of green and grey and pushed himself up onto his haunches. Jiyong patted his head, laughing when his hand was swatted away, then decided to be of actual help and guided Dempsey to his feet. He faltered a little and clutched the sleeve of Jiyong’s bright orange windbreaker until the mechanics of walking came back to him. His own jacket whipped against his body with the wind. He had to resist tearing it off, tearing everything off. He was itchy.

The lake at the base of Cloghernagh Mountain gave off a thick smell, which reached him despite how far up they had hiked. Bluebells, toadstools, mud and moss, it all blossomed in his lungs. He didn’t know how the other three were so indifferent to it. They continued up the trail, talking about the breakfast served at their hotel, while Dempsey slowed to brush his fingers on the bark of every tree he passed. Dirt or something like it was lodged under his nails. He pulled his hands to his face and tried to pick them clean but his fingers were a little numb from the cold and refused to move the way he wanted them to. He clenched his fists and buried them in his pockets. The Irish sky was always in motion, always rolling back and forth, threatening a storm. The air was humid enough to drink.

They had stopped at a gas station before coming here and purchased some cheap drinks to fill up their cooler. Its white and blue plastic jumped out from those grey clouds as he squinted uphill but Gael, who had been forced to carry it after losing a round of rock-paper-scissors, was gone. Ez and Jiyong, too.

“Guys,” he called, struggling around his tongue. Bachelor party be damned; he was not in the mood for surprises. He looked over his shoulder but the lake was as stagnant as ever and the prints of Ez’s clunky Timberlands continued up the trail. He considered going back down anyway, turning the joke on them by just waiting in the car. He didn’t have the keys but he could lie down on the hood and take a nap, let the ducks serenade him. He made the first step, then a shoe cut him in the ankle.

“Earth to Dempsey,” Jiyong said.

“You sure you’re okay?” Gael asked. He set the cooler down and pressed the back of his hand to Dempsey’s forehead. “You’re a little warm.”

“Isn’t that normal?” Ez said.

Dempsey winced as he balanced against Gael and rubbed his foot. “You guys talk way too loud. Do you smell that?”

“What?” Gael asked, amused.

“Smells like it’s gonna rain.”

“That’s not normal,” Ez said.

They decided on cutting the hike short. Gael sat with Dempsey in the backseat while Ez started the car and Jiyong flicked through radio channels. The music grated on Dempsey’s ears. They stopped at the same gas station on the way to their hotel and picked up some painkillers. The boy behind the counter, recognising them, tried to make small talk but his accent was too thick to decipher. As they left, the automatic doors chirped and Dempsey scoffed at the noise before popping two pills onto his palm and washing them down with half a bottle of water. He gagged.

“You poor bastard,” Jiyong said, slapping his back.

Ez refused to have to clean up the rental car so Dempsey rolled down the window and stuck his head out, closing his eyes against the wind. Sprinkles of rain began to fall on his face. He opened his mouth to feel them on his tongue.

Their hotel was modelled after a lodge so they had been able to rent their own cabin with a driveway for their car. Ez held the cooler above his shaved head as his boots sloshed through mud. Jiyong complained about the flecks that splattered on his jeans. Gael laughed loud enough to be heard over the rain. Their laboured breathing was the only sound once Dempsey closed the door behind him. He still had a splitting headache. His fingers crawled their way up his Adam’s apple, over his chin, lips, nose, brow bone. The skin at his temple had ripped and the pain grew sharper as he prodded the seams. Something hard had burst forth.

“Dude, your head,” Ez said.

Gael cried out.

“Shit,” Jiyong said, “are you—”

Dempsey pushed his way into the bathroom. Blood slithered down both sides of his face. He had mistook it for rain but now that the red was staring back at him from the mirror, pain throbbed and hit and gutted and he leaned over the sink and threw up. The bathroom light flared upon his neck. He winced at his reflection, turning his chin from side to side, wiping his mouth with a thumb. His eyes followed the blood trail in reverse, dragging up his jaw and over his ear. It clotted at his hair, a frame for the white bone that had pierced through. Antlers.