Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks June 2015 (Concrete Nature) | Page 22

old Dunne’s and the new gaiety of former Riddler’s bar where gays once gaily riddled
around tables and puzzled the fears of an outer world. Across Henry Street and up
towards what she had looked towards on the bridge, Abby traversed the city’s main
thoroughfare and walked along the wide paths of a revamped William Street past a
sandwich bar, a jewellery shop and an electrical store across from a bus stop in front
of a street beggar.
Turning onto Little Catherine Street, Miss Carey glanced upon a dark skinned
busker opening his violin case for morning’s inaugural performance at the exterior of
a religious outlet selling religious wares where an elderly vagrant had urinated before
daylight moved him to consider his options in a wet house. The busker flicked his
brown milky eyes upwards and caught Abby’s stare in sadness. This was averted.
Past the busker and across from a life sized plastic butcher outside an identically
scaled butchers was a tidy sized coffee shop with hollow metal tables and chairs on the
street beneath a wide canopy. Beneath the canopy sat a sparsely dressed middle aged
woman of blonde hair and rotund dimensions pinkie finger extension sipping an ice
cold brown liquid of the mid – priced and decaffeinated variety. As the lady placed
her glass back on the white brown ring stained coaster she noticed Abby’s approach
behind the plastic butcher and raised one hand in the air to harness her attention with
a loud ‘You hoo!’ Abby reciprocated with the physical but not the oral gesture and
spoke softly on arrival at the silver table top.
‘Hiya Dolores, it must be nearly six months?’
Dolores Keyes smiled deeply into round cheeks and slid a pair of sunglasses up
her moist forehead to nestle in the straight yellow lines of her bottle blonde hair. Abby
had long decided that she would loath the woman if she were not the mother of her
boyfriend and husband to be.
Dolores spoke heavily of her desire to see her son settle down and asked lightly
why they had set no date. It had been due to the coldness of his feet of course and
Abby began to feel harassed by the enthusiasm of the mother behind the apathy of the
man.
What a man, she thought, and was he even really a man. Stringing her along by
his mother’s apron strings. Too much of too little is what she had become too used to.
The eternal engagement had been taxing on her soul and she wondered hotly on
her desire to engage or converse with his mother. Hot coffees passed between the two
women and they left as cool as they had begun.
Abby walked around the corner of Thomas Street and down towards old King
Harris once more. The iPhone numerals would say ten twenty and Penny’s clock said
twenty too but only one was worth her trust. She felt angry at Dillon’s thoughtlessness
and thought he’d sooner let down his mother than move in with her sooner. Up the
garden path she considered as she strolled up O’Connell Street and left to leave into
the fashion quarter. Tired now, she browsed the window ledges and stopped half way
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