The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley Read Free Book Online Page A

the fucking saxophone at the—”
    His calling card ran out of minutes and the call clicked off. Maggie looked out the kitchen window at Ronnie, who was running in jagged circles around the yard with a school friend, trying unsuccessfully to fly a blue kite. She placed the phone gently back in its receiver and stepped away from it as if it was leaking toxins. It wasn’t so much the lecture she had just received—Kevin had been lecturing her all her life about politics, literature, art, and music—but the way he had delivered it. He had not sounded just passionate, but actually unhinged, strung out, crazy. She looked forward more than ever to Christmas, a month away, when he and Nanny Ei were coming. It was so hard to gauge a voice over a phone line.
    Aíne, ever punctual, was checking her watch in front of the HMV when Maggie approached. She was dressed in the same nondescript gray coat she always wore, but had slicked on a sad bit of lip gloss. This dollop of pink made Maggie hopeful—maybe her friend
did
care about what boys thought—and as they wandered among the aisles of the store, flipping through stacks of CDs, she considered telling Aíne about the night she’d met Eoin. But, ultimately, what was there to tell? That she met a guy and he gave her directions? That for a brief moment he had touched her back, and all week Maggie had been thinking of that touch? Pathetic. If she told Aíne that this minor incident actually counted as news, as progress, in her romantic life, it would only reveal her inexperience.
    In the dance music aisle, they stopped in front of a large cardboard cutout of Kylie Minogue in turquoise hot pants and pigtails.
    â€œSeriously, the pop music over here is even worse than the crap back home,” Maggie observed. She felt, then, under the corporate lights of HMV, a subtle change in atmosphere. Somewhere nearby, a crotch was being readjusted, eyes were appraising, testosterone was surging. She turned around just as the store clerk approached. His glasses made him appear older, scholarly; but a glaze of small, bursting pimples scattered across his forehead indicated that he was about their own age.
    â€œYou need some help?” he asked, his eyes hidden behind the thick window of his glasses.
    â€œWe’re fine,” said Maggie, glancing at him briefly. “Just looking around.”
    â€œYou girls go to Saint Brigid’s?” The boy ran his fingers nervously along Kylie Minogue’s cardboard arm. He was looking intently at Aíne, whose pale skin was now burning red.
    â€œYes,” Aíne said, crossing her arms and smiling shyly, the delicate white line of her palate scar folding neatly in half. “We’re in our junior cert year.”
    â€œI thought so!” the boy said brightly. “I’ve seen you during open lunch.” He moved forward a bit, stepping almost between the two girls. It was clear that, like a basketball player rolling a pick, he was trying to block Maggie out. She took the hint and wandered away, fleeing to a listening booth where she nestled into a giant pair of headphones and PJ Harvey’s
Rid of Me.
As she stole glances at the two of them over the racks of CDs, she wondered about Eoin. Had he really been as handsome as she remembered? Or had he been transformed in her memory by the gauze of the nighttime and her loneliness, the glasses of port and the heat that burned from his palm to her back?
    â€œDid you
see
that?” Aíne demanded, lifting a headphone from Maggie’s ear. “How he just came up to me like that?”
    Maggie turned down the music and smiled. In the short span of their friendship, she’d never seen Aíne so excited about something that didn’t involve her grade on a math quiz.
    â€œHe’s got a friend—another lad who works here. They want to meet us at the carnival after they finish work.”
    â€œWhat friend?”
    â€œI