Chiseled valleys and stiff peaks of ridged muscle were among the many benefits of wood chopping. I imagined my life with him as an imported wife while he, the father of my children, stood on top of the wood chopping medal podium. Then a friend let slip that the Wood Chopper was also sleeping with a short blonde from New Zealand.

I decided to get even.

Tears fell from his big blue eyes and eventually he offered two hundred pounds for the procedure. He said he couldn’t stay with me. His feelings were stronger for the New Zealander and his social life was finally improving. Within hours word had spread, a development I hadn’t anticipated. Jen Smith told me she was on my side and offered support. We walked to the hospital together and then she hugged me and left after I insisted on going on ahead by myself. I lingered in a ward full of old people in wheelchairs and watched her leave through a large window. Afterwards I walked over to St Andrew’s Square and spent some of the money on a silk scarf that was orange.

I saw the Wood Chopper for the last time in the pub a few nights later. He and the New Zealander were arguing. Rumour was they were having difficulties. I never told him what happened to his baby. In fact, he never asked.

And, of course, we will be selling copies of Town of Fiction. Where else will you find out how to kill your boss in exactly the proper method; where else do the citizens fizz and burr with regret, with lust, with all the darting shadow thoughts we try and keep inside our heads? Nowhere else but here. Forget Sesame Street. I’ll tell you how to get to the Town of Fiction.

Henry fills his mouth with urine and looks across at Jasper. He swirls it slowly around in his cheeks, with a look on his face that conveys the impression that he’s sampling a particularly complex burgundy.

“It’s like pear juice.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like.”

They sit facing each other, nodding agreement. Wind whistles wickedly around the timber cabin, celebrating its triumph over electricity, probing for further weakness.

“Never drank pear juice.”

“Me neither.”

The door rattles on its hinges, and both turn towards the disturbance. Flame hurls shadows into the slipstream of their collective gaze, gifting an almost ethereal quality to their surroundings.

“Just the wind.”

“That’s all.”

Jasper reaches onto the floor, grabs a half-full bottle of beer and takes a hearty swig. He holds the bottle at arms length, subjecting it to intense scrutiny, struggling to focus on the label in the poor light.

“It’s called Bokkøl…not bad either.”

“Does the job”

Henry turns and picks up a log, throwing it onto the fire, sending a galaxy of sparks up through the chimney and into the cold night sky. He stands to reach the iPod station on the mantelpiece, opting for shuffle before slumping backwards into the high-backed armchair, a drunken prince falling onto his throne.

“What’d ya put on?”

“Don’t know.”

The delicate opening strains of Shine on you Crazy Diamond merge with the sounds of nature’s fury, accompanied by the hiss and crackle of fresh log on red-hot embers. Both tilt back heads and close eyes, allowing the soothing sound to shuttle them back through moments played out to this particular soundtrack. Lead guitar licks seductively at their consciousness, providing aural bridges between synapses and neurotransmitters that had lost touch with one another over the years, reintroducing them as long-lost friends.

Jasper is whisked to Goa, to a party in the jungle at Anjuna, lying mangled in the arms of Claire as the sun rises over the mayhem, dispelling the mysteries of the night. He can taste her salty lips, smell the coconut oil on her soft skin, feel the lust, the love, the obsession of a younger man. It’s November ‘96: Another lifetime.

Remember when you were young?

You shone like the sun

Shine on you Crazy Diamond

Henry travels back a further ten years, to the West of Ireland, a house party in Furbo. It’s his first trip. They lie listening to Floyd for hours, finally understanding; thrilled by each revelation. They escape the confines of the room for the vast openness of Furbo beach, which sparkles invitingly under a full moon. Twelve run madly in the shallows of the low tide, sucking the salty positive ions deep into their lungs, exhilarated by the re-birth they feel within. Cian, overcome with lust for life, picks up a smooth chunk of granite and hurls it into the air with a scream, challenging God’s supremacy on earth. The clunk of stone on skull ends the euphoria abruptly, and Robbie slumps face down into the ice-cold water, slimy kelp his pillow for the minute it takes them to drag his body from the laughing waves.

Now there’s a look in your eye

like black holes in the sky

Shine on you Crazy Diamond

Claire’s married now, with three kids and a body that would have shamed her back in those heady days. She sold her freedom cheaply, to a bald man with a fake tan and a big car. She still loves Jasper. He senses her spirit seek him from Valium dreams, begging him to join her in the Indian jungle, assist her in recapturing those lost moments, the last time she felt alive.

You reached for the secret too soon

You cried for the moon

Shine on you Crazy Diamond

Furbo is no more, pillaged by property whores during the good years. Positive ions replaced by the stench of raw sewerage as the new rich gradually sink into the filthy cesspool created by their greed and opulence. Henry hasn’t been back in years. It’s not his home anymore, isn’t anybody’s home really, just a showcase of human vanity. Henry opens his eyes and looks across at Jasper, who’s skinning up on his lap. He rolls the spliff and looks over it at Henry as he licks the skins.

You were caught on the crossfire

Of childhood and stardom

Blown on the steel breeze

C’mon you target for faraway laughter

C’mon you stranger, you legend, you martyr

And shine

“Jesus, that track brings me back.”

“Sure does.”

Jasper sparks up and inhales deeply, closing his eyes as he leans back and lets blue smoke seep from his mouth and curl towards the ceiling, like an ancient dervish escaping its earthly vessel.

“So Henry”

“What?”

“How does it work exactly?”

“It has a rechargeable battery, should knock a few hours out of it.”

Jasper giggles as he leans forward to pass the spliff.

“Not the iPod, the piss. How does the piss work?”

“Oh! As far as I know, this time of year a specific magic mushroom grows, and they feast on the fuckers.”

“Why don’t we just eat the mushrooms?”

“They’re poison. A single mushroom is enough to kill a human. These gifted beasts filter out the toxins and piss out the good bits.”

“I wonder which intrepid explorer first discovered that.”

“Not only that, but when they eat enough of the tiny mushrooms, the toxins make their noses glow red.”

“Hence the song.”

“Exactly”

Henry hands Jasper the spliff and both men turn to watch the flames, waiting expectantly for their respective time machines. Jasper’s is first to arrive, whisking him to Kenya, and the coastal town of Malindi. It’s his first night staying at Kenjack, low budget accommodation, which doubles as a brothel. He’s smoking on the balcony when she joins him. Maureen takes the spliff from his hand and they smoke together in the dark, angelic face lit at intervals as she pulls on the joint, dark curls blowing across her forehead in the breath exhaled by the Indian Ocean. She leads Jasper by the hand into her room, careful to slide the heavy bolt across, locking them into a concrete, windowless cell.

You reached for the secret too soon

You cried for the moon

Shine on you Crazy Diamond

Henry can’t settle on any one time or place. Flashbacks flitter furiously around inside his mind like caged budgies on speed. He senses the potential timelessness of experience, how all these events can on some level, happen simultaneously. His whole lifetime condensed into one moment, containing all the smaller moments in a single capsule, the way an atom contains protons and electrons, with consciousness being the nucleus of it all, the control centre for all knowledge. He feels tantalisingly close to the answers, can almost pluck them from the air, if they would just slow down for a moment. Perhaps he can speed up.

Threatened by shadows at night

And exposed in the light

Shine on you Crazy Diamond

“Henry! Henry!”

“What?”

“What do ya call those Northern Lights?”

“It’s Purple Haze.”

“What?”

“It’s Purple Haze.”

“It’s not purple haze, well there’s purple bits in it… it’s the Northern Lights I tell ya.”

“It’s not Northern Lights. I bought the stuff for fuck’s sake. I know what it is.”

“Stuff? What stuff? What did you buy?”

Henry opens his eyes and looks across at Jasper, who’s staring intently at some point behind Henry’s right shoulder.

“The weed you muppet, I bought the weed…and it’s Purple Haze.”

Jasper turns his head to assess Henry, who is leaning forward in the chair, clutching the arms as if he’s suspended two-hundred foot in the air. His face is all scrunched up, like he just bit into a lemon. Jasper can barely make out glinting eyes through tiny slits and bursts out laughing at the intensity pouring from the contortion. His loud laugh shocks Henry, who lurches backwards onto his throne, before sitting bolt upright and looking left and right and left again, like a paranoid meerkat. His eyes finally settle on a guffawing Jasper, firelight glinting off  bared teeth as he howls manically with head thrown back. For a moment Henry fears the worst, fears that his good friend has mutated into a werewolf and is about to devour him.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” He hisses, as the howls continue, eventually fading to sporadic gurgles as Jasper struggles for breath.

“Jasper!”

“Ah that’s brilliant.”

“What?”

“I’m not on about the weed?”

“Weed? What weed? What the fuck are you on about?”

“The lights man, the fucking Northern Lights, out the window…look!”

Henry turns around expectantly towards where Jasper is pointing, hoping all will be revealed. He sees nothing out of the ordinary, apart from two Eskimos standing in a darkened corner.

“How did they get in here?”

“Not there you clown, come over here.”

Jasper pulls him over by the shoulder and points at the window. Henry sees now and settles on the rug at Jasper’s feet, transfixed.

“That’s fucking amazing.”

“Sure is.

Shine on you Crazy Diamond is replaced by Gimmie Shelter. Its smooth sensuality seeps through the men like warm milk as they watch the universe perform through the window, losing themselves in the flickering multi-colour swirls dancing a tango across the night sky, bright tongues licking the darkness. Red and orange and yellow and blue, a temporary gateway to another dimension, luring them in with its obscene beauty. Jasper is twelve years old – Halloween night. Brothers stand in the drizzle as he attempts to curse the bonfire alight. The wood is too wet to ignite. He won’t use petrol, it’s too dangerous, not even a tiny drop to get it started. Their weeks labour wasted, father a failure to two sons, who look longingly at the glow from their neighbour’s garden as they return dejected to their mother in the kitchen, the nearby squeals of delight burning their ears.

“Jasper!”

“What?”

“Did you spot those two Eskimos?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Henry is sitting on the ghats as dawn breaks over the Ganges. Candles float in lotus cradles on canoes of banana leaves, silent lovers lamenting the loss of their dark shroud. He watches as the first corpse arrives, wrapped in white cloth and covered in a bright red blanket with yellow trim. Men hustle and bustle the body down the steps and onto the pyre, women wail as the fire gathers strength and devours their loved one. There’s a herd of black cows in the water below, an Indian boy brushing his teeth between them. When the corpse is burnt they sweep the ashes into the sacred river, the main vein into the heart of the universe.

Jasper is on Koh Tao, eating Tom Ka Gai, drinking cold Singha, listening to the dissection of the days diving from an adjoining table. There were three White-Tips sighted at Chumporn Pinnicle, a turtle at White Rock. Tommy McCarthy interrupts with his news of a mermaid sighting on the beach late last night, not twenty metres from where they now sit, with his own two eyes. He looks at the divers, deadpan. They nod respectfully; momentarily silent, wishing themselves submerged in the safety of the warm sea. The scents of weed, jasmine and green curry mingle seductively in the awkwardness. Geckos observe silently from above.

Three drunken Aussies set off fireworks on the beach, breaking the tension. All watch them shoot into the night sky, exploding into a thousand sparkles that cascade dying down into a wet embrace. An off-course rocket shoots into the restaurant with a piercing whistle, hitting the bamboo ceiling before falling down into the long black hair of an English girl. Tommy is first to react to the instant fireball, drenching it with water before it catches, saving her from disaster.

Cockroaches taste like pears, dry pears. A drunken night in Pattaya: playing pool in a Boy-Bar with Seamus Kelly and his young lover. A lady-boy takes a break from wailing karaoke to offer a bag of deep-fried roaches around. For reasons that Henry will never understand, he’s fearful of losing face in front of his gay companions and eats the vile creature, biting off the legs one by one, then the crunchy head, and taking two bites to finish the two-inch body, just as he had observed the Thai’s doing. There is a leg caught in his throat for hours. No amount of beer will wash it down, and late that night, as he’s dosing off, Henry feels the cockroach crawling drunkenly up from his stomach, hell-bent on revenge.

“Henry!”

“What?”

“Do ya remember Tommy Mc Carthy?”

“Sure do…mad fucker…sound though. Where is he now?”

“Banged up in the Bangkok Hilton.”

“Fuck off.”

“Yep, got busted with a load of pills in Hat Rin about two years ago at one of the full-moon parties…remember that bunch of Israelis?”

“Who were fighting with the Thais?”

“Exactly, those scumbags ratted him out.”

“Fuckers! Still, at least he has plenty of food.”

“What?”

“Sure that place is full of cockroaches.”

Jasper looks down at the back of his friend’s head, and decides not to pursue conversation any further.  Henry has obviously slipped into another dimension, leaving Jasper a little jealous. They watch together as the Northern Lights eventually fade in the sky, Henry sitting on the rug at Jaspers feet. The iPod ran out of juice while they were away, leaving the storm the sole soundtrack to the scattered fragments of memories blowing around the room. The door of the woodshed is left open. They hear it banging outside. It will stay that way. The cabin is almost in darkness. Henry reaches to the right and throws a log onto the embers, before stretching across the floor to grope for his beer.

“Oh my god, look at that!”

Henry bolts upright, certain that Jasper has caught sight of the Eskimo intruders.

“What?”

“A huge explosion, look…a meteor shower.”

Henry looks and sure enough the sky is filled with speeding orange spheres, shooting up to be enveloped by black. It all looks familiar somehow, like déjà vu. Realisation dawns on him as Jasper whistles in wonderment. His laughter is sudden and violent and takes Jasper by surprise, making him knock his beer off the arm of the chair. He looks down at Henry, who is choking at his feet, rolling around on the mat like a spaniel in from the rain.

“What? What is it?”

Henry lies on his back choking, beer froth splattered on his face, tears streaming from his eyes. He turns onto his side to save himself, manages to catch his breath, then bursts into laughter again. Jasper kicks him in an attempt to distract him long enough to share the cause of such mirth.

“What you fucker? What’s so fucking funny?”

Henry is choked up. He pulls a tissue from his pocket and blows his nose, before throwing the rag onto the fire. They both watch it flare and sizzle momentarily before Henry giggles away to himself again.

“For fuck’s sake, what is it?”

“It’s the Northern Lights…a meteor shower…what are we like?”

Henry breaks up again, infecting Jasper with his mirth, despite Jasper’s position of ignorance.

“What about the Northern Lights?”

“There are no Northern Lights dude…there isn’t even a window.”

Jasper looks down at his dear friend, who is now kneeling before him with an inane grin on his face, gigantic black pupils threatening to suck what little light there is out of the room, a big stoned lemur. Henry senses that he’s not getting through.

“Alright, look out the window there.”

Jasper turns towards the window. A faint glow on the horizon is the only remnant of the spectacle that kept them enthralled for the past hour or so. Henry picks up a log and throws it onto the fire. Jasper immediately perks up in his chair and points.

“Oh my god, look…”

He stops mid-sentence, looks at the fire, back at the window, back at the fire, then into Henry’s eyes. There’s a moment of silence before both explode simultaneously, Jasper falling onto the floor beside Henry. The laughter is violent and unstoppable, the kind of laughter that prevents breathing, and sends piss squirting uncontrollably down the leg. Even the wind joins in the mirth, rattling the front door in jubilation, as if it had been eavesdropping all along; waiting for the punchline. Jasper is first to regain some semblance of control.

“The fucking mirror, the fire in the fucking mirror…fuck’s sake.”

“Sure there was never a window there.”

Both cackle away as they climb into their respective chairs, turning them to face the fire, so the heat can reach their damp crotches. Jasper reaches into the ice-box and pulls out two beers, handing one over to Henry, who cracks it open with his lighter before taking a grateful gulp. They sit looking into the fire, drinking and giggling, both acutely aware that life rarely gets better that this. It’s some time before Henry breaks the silence.

“Jasper!”

“What?”

“They’re called the Aurora Borealis”

“What?”

“Is that not what you asked me?”

“What? Sure I didn’t ask you anything.”

“Ages ago, about the Northern lights…they’re called Aurora Borealis.”

“It was just the fire in the mirror dude.”

“I fucking know that.”

Henry glares across at Jasper, who is sunk into the cushions with head tilted back, staring at the ceiling.

“Jasper”

“What?”

“Should we drink more piss?”

“Definitely”

Lyrics, Shine on You Crazy Diamond copyright of Pink Floyd Music Ltd.

They sat out at noon in a line, Susie beside Eamon, Gary beside Jenny. They uncovered their skin like new ground for the hot sun to shine on.  They drank gold cans from the blue square of a freezer box. The car ticked, its metal doors were open like wings to let the radio play in wrinkles on the still water.

Susie could kiss him right there as they hugged and never go back to work again maybe. The four of them worked nights in a factory making those plastic things for the tops of syringes. They took the job out of school saying ’six months and I’m gone’ but not believing it. They got lost in the nights on the sodium floor. They forgot about the sun, looking out, from the canteen, into the car park marked in lines of streetlights at the frost or rain, or the silence that’s always somehow waiting at the gate.

After all those days without a drop of sunlight on his eyelids, he could kiss her right there for every time he almost did.  Those quiet pockets at the turn of hallways when nobody was watching. He could kiss her right there and take her away to the sea, and she could let him.

They’d been drinking through the afternoon.

‘I’d love to see the sea’, Susie said.

Eamon was rubbing sun cream into her making her white skin whiter.   She sat up and flicked her sunglasses back down onto her nose. There were birds chirp chirping in the green trees. A plane passed over and droned louder than usual with all that blue to sing in. The heat tightened in around their eyes.

‘I haven’t seen the sea in years’.

Eamon opened a can with a Tss. A bit of breeze threw the trees of balance and sprinkled the ground with cool squares of almost shade. Blades of grass frayed at their toes.

‘And what about work?’ Eamon said.

Piles of rocks jutted out from the shore where a small harbour had been cleared. A rusty line of barb marked out some farmer’s right to the squelchy ground.

She could kiss him right there and be new and in love like the young couple who were there that afternoon. They pulled up in the hottest part of the day. They might have been eighteen – dressed up for their first day in the sun – brown cheekbones falling from sunglasses. They looked around like they were looking for somewhere quieter.

‘She’s gorgeous’, Susie said.

‘She is’, Eamon said.

‘Eamon’, she said, then to no one in particular.

‘I wish I was that young’

‘You’re only twenty-two’, Gary said.

He could kiss her right there with Eamon watching from the woods, with just enough light thrown up by the fire for him to see. They’d built the fire earlier near where others’d left circles of charred stone and burnt cans on the grass. They were sitting around the fire as the blue night squeezed the red evening onto wisps of cloud and the trails of planes. They’d started into the spirits when Susie stood up.

‘Let’s go to the sea’ she said.

Eamon snorted through his nose and picked at hairs that’d curled into gold on his chest.

‘I wouldn’t mind’ Gary said.

‘Gary…’ Jenny said.

Susie grabbed Eamon by the wrists and started to pull him saying, joking maybe.

‘C’mon’

His skin was humming with browny red.

‘We can watch the sun come up tomorrow’ she said.

‘Will we fuck’ he said.

He flicked her away so she fell on the grass. No one did anything for a second. A swan skidded to a stop on the lake and unzipped its metal surface. She got back up, pressed blades of grass down with her small, white feet and dusted herself down carefully. She plopped into her chair and picked up a glossy magazine and started to flick the pages with her red painted fingers. The pages ripped where she grabbed them and made a noise like chopping.

‘I’m off for a piss’ Eamon said.

She could have kissed him right there for the night when they were younger when they almost did. It was after a youth disco, standing in the car park of St. Peters square.  Someone’d been stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver, blood spraying on the wall as Sweet Caroline played and everything. Everyone had to wait outside and Susie was shivering and he fancied her from seeing her coming out of the girl’s school, so gave her his jacket. They stood there and almost kissed as lads in hoods threw hollow eyes at the lights from squad cars.

She could have kissed him right there as she heard the sound of sticks breaking that could been a fox but was actually Jenny, dropping the sticks she was carrying as she watched their charcoal impressions come together as Gary pulled his jumper down over Susie’s head. Her lifting her arms up straight: him swiping a stray hair from her lips. And Eamon could see them too from among the smell of leaves. Arms tangling and shining with that sheen that night gives, heads hanging at opposite angles and lake behind them licking at the moonlit stones. They could kiss right there and get into the car and keep speeding west without stopping so fast the gear changes sound like the breaths you’d take when you’re kissing.

I was standing outside Fahy’s looking up at the roof and waiting for Angie. It must’ve been three in the morning. You’d always get a few late ones in Fahy’s, specially on nights like that round Christmas. The pub’s on Friary lane. One of the four lanes that run down off Church Street towards the Shannon the way water would. It’s a grand spot or so I used to think anyway, it’s sorta hidden away between the terraces of narrow townhouses that look away from the river. It’s a real drinker’s pub. Before I gave up I’d be the first man inside in Fahy’s and usually the last leaving it too. Nights like that night I’d be in early getting warm inside and glowing with the feeling of being someone new. I’d be thinking this could be a great one. But it wasn’t always like that either. The weeks before what happened it’d been turning on me, sending me the other way – crying and that.

The lads were on to me earlier to come in. I won’t tell them what happened. Won’t tell Angie either. She’s seven months pregnant now. She shouldn’t be drinking and that’s a fact. It was the lads who told me she was in there. She was sposed to be at her sisters. We’d one of our rows the day before what happened happened and she moved out again. They texted me saying, come in, everyone’s here even Angie. It’s not like I’ve been doing much sleeping since what happened anyway so I got up and walked into town. I don’t mind the walking really. Don’t think I could drive now even if I still had the van. When I got to Fahy’s I couldn’t trust myself to go in so I waited. I stood and watched the frost come down and settle on the rooftops.