The Gorgons of Grand Parade

By Jake Griffin

The steps of St. Patrick’s church were dawn-cold and damp. Behind the clouds, those white vessels, a piercing radiance was hiding. Filtered sunlight danced in ribbons, pirouetting along smokish locks of moisture from his waking breaths. Where the sun met the stone of the pillars, it yielded no warmth. As the last blankets of shade were ripped away from Tommo, he felt exposed. The polyester quilt was wet. Either the sleeping bag was ripped or he’d pissed himself in his sleep. The pills did that sometimes. The former was the case. This was fortunate for Tommo considering that a spare pair of underpants was not in his possession. He laid his pockets bare on the biting ground and blew air into his hands.

​He had a butane lighter with a picture of a Nubian woman’s breasts. It bore the words ‘Marijuana, Jamaica,’ in comic sans that covered the woman’s breasts. A bright apple of a sun was behind the woman, unlike the mean oppressor concealing itself on that morning. He withdrew from his pocket a pen knife, good only for paring packages or threatening someone who’d never been threatened with a real knife, and an empty prescription pill bottle. He peeled off a book label that was covering the information. His fingers were stiff but they warmed up as he scratched away at the paper. Tommo wanted to see the name on the bottle, for it always amused him. For three months he’d consistently gotten the opiate prescription of a man named Hieronymous McCarthy. He would often reminisce of the days of Jacinta Mulberry. Those were summer days when ripe cigarettes fell from trees and there was not a spritz of fentanyl on the isle. ​The bins outside the student bars were always full of half-eaten food. Tommo did not begrudge them, for their waste had become his sustenance. He found a burrito, and opened it. Chicken, beans, cheese, rice and black beans fell. It was still warm. He started eating it on the spot. He washed it down with a quarter of a bottle of Bulmers from the foot of the Michael Collins statue. The spray-tan victims of Sunday morning wobbled past on cheap stiletto heels. He washed the sour cream off his hands in the Berwick fountain. Murders of crows perched nearby, gun-blue in the bright sun. It stung the eyes, it turned all the glass panels of Grand Parade into glaring gorgons.

​Paul Street up as far as North-Main Street smelt of frying bacon and was torturous to Tommo. He watched fluorescent Barbies and Kens on their way to the gyms. TRT hulks stumbled in gumshield runners and gimpy forty year olds chopped by in shiny Asics. He stood in the water of the fountain and eyeballed the crooked-necked fools that cut past. How easy it would be to rob them. How disconnected they were from the world around them, the white-robed January world. He scratched at his wrists and broke scabs. Drops of sticky blood fell into the water. His sandals were soggy. Heavy clouds were rolling in, gray and forlorn. Tommo rolled out of the fountain. On Nano Nagle bridge, he found Tony Sulls begging for change. Sulls was a squat, one eyed codger with a big Ming Dynasty goatee hanging from his chin. Something about Sulls’ smile seemed wrong. It struck Tommo that Sullie had been avoiding him for weeks now. He’d been avoiding him because…he owed Tommo tic money.

​“Alright Tommo,” said Sulls.

He smiled a gravestone smile at Tommo, like nothing had ever passed between them.

​“Get up off the floor ya fuckin’ junkie,” shouted Tommo.

He kicked over the cup of coins. They sang out across the ground, all worthless coppers. Tony recoiled in genuine fright. ​

​“I’m sorry boy, I’m sorry. Tommo don’t hit me boy please boy,” and on he went, the cockroach.

He squirmed and thrusted out his good leg and put his runners to work. It was a pathetic pantomime, and Sulls’ mumming was drawing to a close. ​

​“Where’s my money?” asked Tommo, veins bulging from his head.

He felt his teeth grinding and his fists clenching. Tommo lifted up his boney chest and loomed over Sulls.

​“What?” asked Sulls.

​“What! What! You know very fucking well what, Sullie, you owe me a fuckin’ fortune, boy,” yelled Tommo.

His voice was carrying on the quay but pedestrians did not intervene.

​“I only took the first batch, Tommo. I got robbed, boy. Would you have some humanity?” begged Sulls.

​“Humanity? Alright so, humanity you’ve requested,” said Tommo.

He lurched forward, grabbed Sulls by his hairy legs and swung him over the side of the footbridge. Still, rather than intervene, a shoal of millennial brunchers were holding out the fruits of Silicon Valley and hitting record. This would have destroyed Tommo’s reputation, if he had one to begin with.

​“I don’t care if you only scraped off the film, you still took them off me, now you better tell me you’re gonna pay me back or I swear I’m gonna drop you into that water, boy,” said Tommo, concerned only that the gathering crowd could summon the Garda. Tommo felt his grip loosening on the stained tracksuit bottoms.

​“I will, I’ll go to Cash Connectors, I’ve chains and rings to sell! Gold! I’ll pay you back on the spot!” shouted Sulls, to the river as much as anyone.

Tommo dragged him back over the railing. Sulls’ face had flushed cherubic, like Santa in the Coca-Cola Christmas commercials.

​“If you’re lying to me, I’ll flay you. Do you know what flaying is, Sullie?” asked Tommo.

A true dramatist, he flicked his little pen-knife out to scare Sulls, who fell for the bit.

​“Flaaing?” asked Sulls, disturbed.

​“No, not flaaing, flaying!”

​“Oh god no, Tommo, I know what flaying is! Don’t flay me, brother, please don’t flay me, boy. Have some…” said Sulls.

​“Have some what, Sullie?”

​“Patience. Patience, Tommo.”

​“If I give you any more patience you could open up a clinic.”

​“Yeah, some clinic that would be, wouldn’t it. Like a Shanghai den,” said Sulls, bringing up foul breath with harsh sibilance. “Come up with me to MacCurtain Street and I’ll pay you back, with interest man.”​

​“I’ve the salt and the blade handy if you’re spoofing me. I’d as soon make a cloak of ya’,” boasted Tommo, helping Sullie to hobble onward on his gammy leg.

There were still a few other homeless people asleep on the Mary Elmes bridge. They crept past them. The River Lee shimmered. Tommo thought that the Dean and its surrounding obelisks would forever remain the ugliest buildings in Cork. Not even the wreaths of divine light could purify them: they had stolen the view. ​Sulls pulled up a manky bag of chains and rings and coins from the soil of a flower bed on Harley’s Street. Tommo waited outside Cash Connectors until Sulls brought the cash he owed. He hugged Tommo, and several times apologised and reiterated his plights. Tommo blanked him, snatched the cash and bolted onward into the cruel unyielding light. That was a good day; a great day; nobody had to die.