Evenings and Weekends

by Oisín McKenna

Maggie and Phil have spoken every day since they were kids. They’re so accustomed to each other – dependent, really – that they begin to feel unlike themselves when they’ve been out of touch for too long.

That’s the extent of the fantasy: first to be seen, then, to be envied, and over the past months he’s reduced his food intake to such a degree that he often feels dizzy.

but that was the thing with words: you only knew they were the wrong ones once you’d already said them, and by that time it was too late.

He thinks he keeps his feelings to himself, but he doesn’t really; he just expresses them indirectly, so that everyone has to jump through hoops to interpret whatever he means in his one-word answers, his silent staring at the TV, his getting up from the dinner table without saying a word to anybody.

‘Think I’ll miss you forever, like the stars miss the sun in the morning sky’

So basically, she would say, it’s fine, and besides, it’s possible to support a political cause without your every emotional, sexual and psychological drive aligning precisely with the principles of that cause.

How can I describe them – all in lower case – with irony and insight to my 2,000 and climbing Twitter followers?

unable to resist her vulgar jokes and fluent command of pop culture trivia.

Make no mistake, chica, the reason he’s so unbearably sexy is precisely because of his unavailability; as soon as he decides to commit, you’ll wonder what you ever saw in him.

The idea of living in a place which felt like an actual home was such an abstract concept that he didn’t even consider it to be possible within his lifetime.

It makes the city feel bigger, the future feel wider, and even though it only happens every so often, he thinks it could be different.

He is always ready to be awed. He takes the world as it comes, luxuriating in the uncomplicated pleasures of glorious weather and witnessing a rare animal in the flesh.

Rosaleen makes herself smaller and smaller to the point of barely existing at all.

They asked few questions of Maggie’s life, because why would they? What was there to say? It was only a half-life to them, and it was a half-life, too, to the relatives at family get-togethers who always prodded You won’t be young forever! It was a half-life to the doctors who had mentioned, unsolicited, that her eggs were deteriorating in quality, declining in number, and biologically speaking, she was already past her prime.

In all other parts of her life, she’s a performer. With him, she can be quiet. A silence comes over her, and everything is still, and she sinks into a love beyond analysis.

Maggie has endless reserves of kindness for any situation. She’s always ready to smooth things over.

He had wanted the guarantee of love, someone to protect and feel protected by. These are now desperately humiliating things to have wanted. He is desperately humiliated.

London wouldn’t be half the city it was without the people who had dragged themselves there from all over the world.

Pulsing towards Keith is beyond bad or good: it’s an automatic bodily function.

‘You stand me up all the time. You only respond to half of my messages. I feel so incidental to your life, but you’re so central to mine. It doesn’t feel good. I can’t do it forever.’

She would never forget the pleasure her father took in taking her down a peg. There are adults who thrive off the puncturing of children’s fantasies.

Their wordlessness is a symptom of their intimacy, so attuned to each other that they are beyond verbal language altogether. Barely saying a word, these two are understood.

He wants a little romance, adventure.

It means nothing, nice.

He thinks of his dad: another awkward man. He never said, ‘I love you,’ but instead, he’d come round to make sure your boiler was working

But also, he thinks, life is short. Why not just try to see what happens? Why not try to push things forward?

‘You’re a talented writer Rosaleen, don’t ever stop’ and that was the only teacher to ever call her anything but stupid.