Marquee Days

By Cian Mc Court

Photo by Emilio Garcia via Unsplash

The first twenty minutes of the match were niggly, with plenty of elbows in play. There would be purple bruises for the boys to poke at gingerly when they woke to their Sunday morning hangovers. But it wasn’t till Colum got shoved into a graceless tumble that aggression stole a yard on matters. He took a flat hand to the chest from their center forward, a ribbony ginger lad with no manners. Colum slowly two-stepped his way to a fall near the penalty spot. He stayed sitting there for a few beats too long, and I was walking over with my hand out to help him to his feet when I saw the look on his face. Did you ever see a baby who’s taken a bump or been annoyed in a way that’s fresh to them, when they can’t make up their small mind whether to wind up for a bawl or just laugh? The flickering mood on his face set me worrying. Colum’s a large lad and when he falls you’d want him to fall on the right side of the bed, otherwise no one’s having a nice morning. I took my hand away and moved it up to my hair, but he’d already seen it. He wasn’t accepting any of my offerings, not the offer of a lift to the match and not this. I’d hoped all was grand again. We hadn’t seen each other since we’d landed in Dublin Airport the previous Sunday, and hadn’t spoken to him, not properly, since that Saturday night. At the airport when I wheeled my case onto the escalator, he took the adjacent stairs at pace, and by the time I reached the top he was way ahead of me, bodies and bodies between us. When I got to the far side of passport control he was gone.

Play had moved down our end and the teams were shaping up for a corner. Colum, having gotten to his feet all by himself, made his way to the near post to pick up his man. The ball took its time in the warm air. There wasn’t a rag of breeze to bother its flight and everyone in the box knew where it would fall and when. There was ample time to time things, but Colum left the ground a second sooner than he needed to, and when he was on his way down his elbow was on its way into their forward’s face. You won’t feel a nose shift under an elbow the way you do when you catch one flat with the front of a fist, it’s a less intimate devastation. But something about the jaunty steps Colum took away from the incident let me know that he knew. He was light on his feet with villainy.

I wasn’t concerned about the lad’s nose, as our coach would be on hand to fix it. He’s a limited tactician but he’s very large–he often mans the door at AbraKebabra on weekend nights, the lively hours after the pubs shut. He can pinch a nose back in line, swift and sharp. He seemed set for a busy morning because Colum’s light steps didn’t take him far before three of the opposition players fell on him. Right away the world was roaring. The touchlines emptied. Hands grabbed the back of my collar and pulled me to the side. I lost my balance and dropped to one knee. The scrap quickly shifted to the left wing and once again I could not see my boy for all the bodies.

He was to marry Amanda the following weekend and we’d had our warnings. We were to run around enough that our suits would still fit us nicely—the fittings had taken place months back, and as all bar one of the groomsmen were over thirty-five, regular exercise was accepted as a reasonable cause for lining out for one last season, right on up to that last Saturday. We were to warm up and we were to cool down. Stay well clear of 50-50s and trouble. We’d come through the bachelor party, the week before, without a mark on any of those set for speaking roles on the big day, so what harm in one more match. It would likely be the last time Colum would play with us, on account of them moving to Cork shortly after they get back from the honeymoon in Mauritius. Amanda would have rathered we’d not togged out but there’d been a long string of restrictive rulings lately and, sensing more sentimental hearts than hers were swelling with notions of many a “last this” and “final that,” she gave in.

I’m the Best Man. It’s a role comprised of moments and tasks, responsibilities and license. I took to the job right away. I had been the one to book the hotel and the flights for the stag-do. I’d had to put him in the room with his father, leaving me, the odd man in a party of seventeen, alone in a twin room. I’d spent the extra sixteen euros so as me and Colum would be sitting together on the flights. Him at the window, me taking up all the space in the middle seat that his broad shoulders would be dropping his long arms into. I knew he’d need to slip by me to go to the bathroom too. It was a short flight, but there’d be pints in the airport and cans on the bus before that, and he wasn’t the sort to hold it in for the sake of not bothering me. And sure enough, he was soon loosening the seat belt buckle, his large hands fiddling with it and clicking it open. I made to stand and shimmy into the aisle and out of his way, but as he stood he put that same large hand on my shoulder to keep me where I was, and smiled as he levered one long leg over me at a time.

That evening, before the stack of twenties in the pint glasses (a fresh one allocated in each pub) had dwindled, and the big round became several smaller rounds, his dad had called it a night, as I had expected he would, shy of midnight. At around 1 a.m., a number of Welsh women attached themselves to our outfit and some pairings occurred, leaving myself, Colum and the bride-to-be’s two brothers holding it down in a corner of the last carpeted discotheque in the north-east of England. The brothers’ bathroom-bump schedule had hit a turnstile tempo and we were alone as often as not. I maneuvered us to the bar and ordered a pair of double whiskeys, and before the warmth of the first had sunk in, I was smiling at the barman and with my lips and my fingers signaling for another round. The bar top was beaten copper and sticky from spills. We’d lean our elbows on it and peel them off instantly, making faces, only to forget and do so again moments later. His forearm went down on the tacky counter again and he laughed, “some saint should introduce beer mats to this country, civilize it a bit.” For want of a dry place to rest it he put his left arm around my back and found a belt loop with his thumb. His breath was warm and peaty in my ear and he kept talking about her, but I didn’t mind. My arm was around him too now and the small of his back was warm and damp under his shirt. He kept saying her name as we made our way down the street but the tenor of it shifted a little each time, losing meaning.

There was a floating bedside locker between the two twin beds, stopping us pushing the beds square and flush, and this too I did not mind. I enjoy being moved and shaped to fit a smaller area. He’s only ever half on the mattress as he fucks me, one leg on the floor always. I feel like I’m made of hot, damp clay and if he puts just a little more weight on my body, he’ll push me right through the thin foam, through the popped springs, through the slats. Our bodies are heavier and softer these days but the feel of him on me is just as it used to be.

I woke up with nothing on top of me. He had moved to the other twin bed as I slept, his left arm was hanging off the side, his right beneath the pillow. His eyes were closed but his breaths were coming out as though in dialogue with one another. I took the pair of small grainy glasses from the bathroom and filled them with water. They were so little that my half- empty bottle of water was enough to fill them both. I only had two Solpadeine tablets so I dropped one in each glass and drank mine quickly. The tablet fizzing away at the bottom of his glass kept rising up and falling down again. When it had let enough of itself go that it rose for good and lay flat and shrinking on the surface of the water, I got up and left. He’d drink it later and feel better maybe.

On the flight back he’d kept his face turned to the window, earphones in, the thin white cable tracing the tanned line of his jaw. He’d been trying to rub his hangover away and had pushed his hair right up and back. His face hung sad and handsome. I’d told him once that he looked like a young Raul Julia, but he only knew him from the Addams Family films and bristled a bit at that remark. Cara mia, no más! We had lived together in college, become friends in a shared house too far away from campus to cost much. I knew I loved him when one morning he walked into my bedroom with tea on toast on a tray, singing “I’ve got breakfast for you” to ‘“Theme from S-Express,” which we’d danced to the night before. Boop boop b-boop bep b-bep ah ah. The toast was still hot and the butter had melted to the four corners, there’d been care in its preparation.

I joined the brawl hands first, but I was swinging too loosely and my hips weren’t at the ball at all. I moved my arms in wild arcs. I hadn’t felt right this past week, my belly fizzy with dejection constantly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the referee walk off to the dressing room, surely to get his phone and call this one off. Score stands. Nul points for Quay Celtic. But no matter, I’m legislating to thump the head off their fullback now. I’d seen him put his boot down hard on Colum’s calf. I felt more alert to my limbs then, and my feet were measuring neat steps so I could catch him flush—but then I was spinning; then I was flat.

Scalding blood flooding to one side of my head, my ear so hot it felt wet. I rolled over and put my face to the grass.

When I came out of the dressing room, showered and sore, he was alone in the car park, sitting on the bonnet of my car and playing on his phone. He was still kitted out, apart from his boots, which he had tied together by the laces and hung around his neck, like you see in old-timey player portraits.

“Do you need a lift?”

“Would you ever stop, please?” He had his eyes set hard. His lower lip was busted and was starting to swell in an appealing way, darkening beneath the split. “I need this all to stop.”

“How are you getting home?” I asked. “I’ve some sutures in the boot of the car. Let me have a go at fixing your mouth.”

“Don’t worry about it. Amanda’s coming.” I knew this to be a lie because as Best Man I was in group chats which he didn’t need to see, and I knew Amanda was elsewhere on bride business.

“I’ll just stall with you here for a bit. In case you get faint. You took a few to the head.” He didn’t say anything to this but he dropped his telephone into the mouth of a boot for safekeeping, and shifted a little on the bonnet to make room. The blood on his chin looked orange where he’d smushed it into his stubble when wiping it from his mouth. I wanted to lick my thumb and rub it clean.


About the author:

Cian Mc Court is an Irish writer living in London. He is also the fiction publisher at Verso Books, where his authors include Vigdis Hjorth, Jenny Hval, Marlowe Granados and Stephanie LaCava.

Gabrielle Lutz selected “Marquee Days” as a finalist in the 2022 Columbia Journal spring contest in the fiction category. Learn more.