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Whenever they stopped somewhere that sold it, Laura made Sweeney buy her a coffee. She didn’t drink it, and most of the time didn’t even hold the cup for very long. Heat was not her friend. She did, however, like to wait until it began to cool and then pour it slowly away where Sweeney could see. She enjoyed the look on his face, a mixture between hate and frustration she guessed from the way his mouth went thin and tight, and his jaw clenched. By now, he’d learnt not to say anything and so a look is really all he could give. He really threw his back in to it though, she had to admit.
Nevertheless, fucking with him was really only an inadvertent side effect. The first time, she just wanted to remember the smell. She liked the way the corrugated cup felt against her hand. She liked the satisfying pop when the plastic lid clipped in to place. It was all a faint replica of what she remembered though. Nothing was the quite the same now she was dead. She would find herself absent-mindedly pinching her arm sometimes, squeezing so hard that her skin turned… oh wait, no. It was already white, wasn’t it? Underneath this spray tan and paint, there was no blood to squeeze away. She was still quietly fascinated about how much it didn’t hurt though. In the quieter moments of their journey, she wondered if there was a cut off to all of this. Is there a point passed which the body just forgets these things forever? She couldn’t dwell on that for too long though, and decided to throw some peanut shells at Sweeney so he could fill the air with his cursing and muttering, and to reminded herself that she’s fucking dead in a cab with a man who says he’s a leprechaun and a boy who thinks he fucked a genie and she tore the spine out of man not that long ago so really anything is possible now, isn’t it Laura?
They stop one evening at a little roadside café that still looks open. Salim is the only one of them that apparently still needs to eat with any regularity, and although Laura was always eager to keep going, she found it hard to begrudge Salim anything. He was earnest in a way that Laura used to find cloying, someone who she would have normally felt pity for. But it was all just too awkward for her, and she tended to find herself leaving him to this thing more often than not. She hadn’t got a template for this. They seemed to have so little in common, this man with his faith, and his love, and his beating heart; areas in which it was clear she was lacking.
Which of course just left her with Sweeney. They’d stopped on a hillside with a sweeping view down on to the city in below, a pool of glowing neon in the growing dark. When she found him, he was leaning against the bonnet of the cab, arms folded and his gaze out across the valley. He shot her a brief glance, and she smiled quietly at the slight snarl his mouth made.
‘You know what’ve forgotten, don’t you?’ she said blithely, propping herself up against the car next to him. He shot her another dark look, and fished a cigarette from behind his ear.
‘You can fuck off dead wife. Fuck right off.’
The flare of the lighter briefly illuminated his face orange and gold. He took a long drag, blowing the smoke towards her.
‘I want my coffee’ she said simply, her mouth maintaining a calm smile. ‘It’s a tradition now.’
Sweeney inhaled sharply and ground his teeth.
‘It’s bullshit is what it is.’
‘I don’t care what you think ginger minge. I just want my coffee.’
Sweeney sucked his lip and turned back to the cityscape, flicking ash on to the ground. He held out his hand in front of him, making a quick gesture with his fingers. Gold coins began to fall around his feet.
‘There you go. Now fuck off and leave me in peace.’
Laura raised an eyebrow, the smile curling in to something more rueful. It was always nice when they played this game, even if the ending was always very fucking predictable. He seemed more morose than normal though tonight, and she wasn’t in the mood for that.
‘Don’t be rude.’
Sweeney had balanced the cigarette back between his lips, letting it hang precariously. He shrugged, and kicked a few of the coins towards her along with a cloud of dust.
‘There’s your fucking coffee. Now seriously, fuck off.’
Laura liked the way he flinched when she moved towards him.
‘We’ve talked about this. It’s very simple. I’m letting you tag along so the least you can do is get me a fucking hot drink every once and a while.’
The exasperation in his face was etched deep, and she could tell he was dying to respond. He dragged his hand across his jaw as if reminding himself of what her fists could do, and ended up swallowing whatever it was in another long drag from the cigarette. It was nearly down to the filter.
‘In a minute ok? I’ll get your fucking coffee.’
This pleased her, and she decided not to acknowledge the muttered curses from under his breath, although they seemed less passionate tonight. A little more resigned. She relaxed back against the car and the pair stood silently for a little while, looking out in to the night.
‘What will you do, if he doesn’t want you back?’
Laura turned but Sweeney was not looking at her while he spoke, still smoking, still staring out. Normally, that would have been a loaded question but there was nothing in his tone that suggested any attempt to rile her. It was her turn to shrug.
‘I’ll figure that out if it happens. But it won’t be that way.’
Sweeney considered her a moment from the corner of his eye, looking down at the tiny little dead woman. Her skin was silver and grey and violet, reflecting the colours from the lights below. Deep shadows grew under her eyes and on the bones of her chest and at her thin wrists. Her expression was hard. Her mouth set in a line, her eyes focused. She was all angles. Sharp. Jagged. She licked her dry lips and pushed her hands in to her pockets. She was silent again for a little while.
‘He’s always been mine.’
It didn’t sound like a statement of fact.
‘I suppose the question now is whether you’ve always been his.’
Sweeney slid down to come sit in the dust, his back against the wheel of the cab. It was a welcome relief to take the weight of his legs and have them stretch out, something he couldn’t really do curled up in the back seat. But to Laura, it meant his head was now about waist height to her. Suddenly, being the taller of the two made her feel extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t always so. Far from it. Many a time Sweeney had been under her boot or her hand, crawling around her feet, wincing. At no time had she felt anything at all about bringing him low. Except now, here, tonight, with her back exposed in to the dark and that question still hanging in the air around them like a threat, and his weird blank expression….She quickly slid down too, joining him in the dirt.
Sweeney was lighting another cigarette. He took a puff before handing it to her. She took it without thinking.
‘People move on. Death has that knack of being final, present company excluded. You can’t hold on to a thing forever. No matter how much you love it, or it loves you. It’ll move on.’
She sensed then a hint of something in his voice that suggested he was no longer talking to her, that she was merely there while he spoke. She passed the cigarette back to him. The road was quiet this time of night. No other cars were pulled up, and none could be heard approaching. The ground was still warm from the days’ heat but she could feel it leeching away with every passing minute as the coolness of the night rolled on past them down in to the valley. The city lights seemed to throb in the distance, pulsing erratically with every flicker. A living thing sat in the heart of the dustland. Laura dug her fingers in to the dry earth and felt the grit get under her nails, then brought her hand up to her face to inspect the dirt there. Dark trails caught in the whorls of her fingers tips, feeling course as she rubbed them together.
One of the questions Audrey had asked, after the screaming had subsided and Laura’s arm was once again attached to her body, was whether Laura felt guilty. She’d said yes because she knew that’s what she should say, that guilt was an appropriate emotion in this situation. Laura had learnt some years ago that even if she didn’t necessarily feel a certain way, that it made things easier for her and for other people if she said she did. Less complicated. She even learnt that it didn’t really matter if she actually behaved as if she felt it, just saying she did was often enough. And so when Audrey asked her if she felt guilty for screwing her husband and cheating on Shadow and betraying her, Laura said yes even though nothing in the way she had acted before or after being dead would suggest that was the case. And she said yes because of course she must have felt guilty, somewhere. Of course. She loved Shadow and she really liked Audrey and of course she must be guilty even if the part of her that allowed her to actually feel it wasn’t really working. It was an exercise in logic really, more than anything else. But she remembered the look on Shadow’s face in that motel room. She remembered the way his softness had turned hard, as something deep closed to her. And she remembered thinking that maybe just saying you felt a certain way was no longer enough. Her thoughts were broken as the cigarette was passed to her again.
‘You alright there dead wife?’
Sweeney wasn’t in the habit of asking people how they felt. He was certainly not in the habit of asking how she felt. Only hours ago he had been starting at the ceiling of the cab thinking about creative ways he could insult her without her really noticing. He had used some old Gaelic at one point but without the right inflection, it wasn’t really as stinging as he’d hoped and the inflection tended to be what gave him away so he had to rethink that. There was also something…. distasteful…. about using those words in this time, in this place, to her. It had brewed something in his mouth that he didn’t like the taste of and made him feel something that he had fought very hard to forget. Sweeney felt, for the most part, angry. Angry was a good state to be in. Angry gave you energy and focus, and made you hard. Angry was righteous and liberating and chaotic. But sometimes when he spoke the mother tongue he felt something else, something younger and wiser. More playful. It reminded him of a time when he had been truly free, his world turning on his whim and there were no great plans to worry about. Power, such that it was, to bless or to curse and no consequence to either. And he was loved.
So no, he didn’t normally care about how these people felt. He certainly wouldn’t have given a fuck about her if they’d met under different circumstances, with all of her coldness and disregard for the world she had been given. But she was dead now, and the order of things had been disrupted, and he couldn’t look at her the same way as the rest of them anymore, because she wasn’t the same as the rest of them anymore. He had yet to fully reclassify her in a way that made him comfortable again. But here, in the dirt and darkness at the edge of an oasis full of people who didn’t give a shit about either of them, was some common ground.
She handed him back the cigarette. She was looking tired, stretched too thinly across her bones.
‘What will you do, if you can’t get your coin back?’
Sweeney eyed her for a sign of malice but she was looking back at him with a blank kind of curiosity. He noted too the subtle rearrangement of words. Not ‘if I don’t give you your coin back’ or variations on that theme. Progress at least. He met her unapologetic stare with one of his own.
‘I will have it back. There ain’t no alternative.’
She sucked her lip and lent her head back on the cab, seeming to think, stretching her legs out as he had done.
‘You ever think that maybe we’re both idiots?’
She was looking down at her feet, and passed them to where the valley fell away, her grey eyes focused on nothing in particular.
‘No’ he said, although that was a lie. ‘I think you are’ he added, just because he felt he should.
More silence.
And then, quietly.
‘He’s the sun.’
And Sweeney knew then exactly how she felt, when all of the world’s meaning has been shaved down to this one tiny thing that you must protect all costs. That you must fight for, and must follow, and must have, because otherwise you are left alone in world that hates you. In a world that wouldn’t care if you’re dead.
And when he reached out across the small gap that separated them he wasn’t thinking of the pain in his back, or the bruises to his ribs, or the cut to his mouth, or any other damage she could inflict. He wasn’t thinking of much at all.
And when his hand came to rest on her tiny shoulder it wasn’t delicate or hard or trying to be kind. It was just an acknowledgement that he was there, and that he knew.
She didn’t look, but she didn’t move. He looked, but then turned back to the valley. And they remained like that for just a short while longer, silently, until she too reached up and put her own hand on top of his.
When Salim came looking, he found them still sitting, still quiet, but no longer touching - a fact that he could not have known, and which left no trace, until sometime later when he realised with surprise that it had been a full 2 hours of driving before either of them insulted the other again.