Irish Arms

I wake up at eight and get a soda from the corner store, something large and unwieldy with added cherry syrup. When I struggle back there's a pack of them, the Irish kids, standing outside the door of my building. They're smoking thin cigarettes, hand-rolled, and they look like they've just gotten up, too. One of them, some boy with a red mane, comments on the superhero donning the side of my enormous cup. But my eye goes to the blonde girl with the slightly crooked smile. She's the one I've seen. I ask her if they're all here from the same school, part of some program. All of a sudden the building was flooded with the Irish and every day it seems I see more and more. No, she tells me, she was actually only here with a few friends. That's what this was, several small groups put together to make an invasion. And somehow they all ended up here.

She invites me up to their apartment. The air is thick and off when the door opens, as if stored up in an airtight box and shipped across the ocean with them. What I find inside is not far off, as the place is crawling with students. Trash and loose change litters the floor. There is a room with half a dozen mattresses and half as many sheets. Nothing is made or in its place. Whatever the empty take out boxes held is long gone. The beer is warm and the cups are used. How many people are living here, I ask the girl, whose name I now know is Erin. Seven or eight she says, she doesn't seem to know. I ask how many it's supposed to hold, and she makes me promise not to turn them in. Everyone is having a good time.

A DJ starts playing. The songs are long and simple, bass-snare-bass-snare. The boy wonder DJ, Liam, is apparently learning, and I think it's funny how much attention these kids who don't want to be caught are drawing to themselves. He's just starting out, things don't meld and mew as they should, but no one seems to care. It's a hundred degrees and the walls are filthy, but their time and energy are spent on more important things, like drinking, and where we should be drinking next. As a joke I suggest Irish Arms, the worst bar I know, and they love the idea. They bet they can get free shots. There's talk of going but no one really goes. Maybe everyone is stuck to the floor, I wouldn't put it past anything. Liam's drones get louder and louder, the mix of rock and electronic never quite achieving anything other than loud, and suddenly half the apartment is gone and we all follow suit. Come on, American, they shout at me, take us to the Irish Arms. Take us home.

I lead my little children out of town to the establishment, telling them all along the way how truly awful it is, and that it was a joke, and that I can pick another place, and that they'll hate it. Nonsense, they tell me, which makes sense, considering their living conditions. I'm starting to think they're not wired the same way I am. We arrive. This bar has carpet, and that's really all you have to know about it. What bar has carpet? You feel the humidity and beer festering in it. Everything is stale, and damp, and soft. If the room was quiet you'd hear the squish of my footsteps, the squish of my soul. The Irish kids love it, and the first round of Jameson is on the house. The fulfilled prophecy is met with thunderous, thunderous approval.

Underneath one of the TVs is a patch of wall and I post up underneath it. In a minute Erin comes up to me and sits, two pint glasses in tow, snakebites. It's a crisp, refreshing drink on a night like this, a night filled with hot oxygen and cloudy minds. I ask her why she chose here of all places to spend her summer. There must be European cities, other American cities, places far more exotic with far more history where she could have spent three months. She says she wanted somewhere cheap where she could have a good time and not have to worry about constantly making the most of every moment. She asks me why I moved here, and I tell her the same thing.

The next morning I wake up next to her on a mattress. I'm nestled against her, her arm hangs over me, her hand clutching my T-shirt. I don't know where my sweat ends and hers begins, I only know we're stuck together. Somehow we've gotten one of the bedrooms all to ourselves, and the sun is pouring in, it's egregious. I figure it's the morning light although I'm not sure. And the bass-snare-bass-snare that starts up from beyond the closed door doesn't give as much information as you'd think.