Grapefruit
Drink? Kavanagh’s?
It was Mark. Like clockwork. There hadn’t been a Thursday night in years that Sorcha and Mark hadn’t met for one at Kavanagh’s after closing the shop. But he always texted her anyway.
She flung on her coat, stepped out under the shutter and slammed it down. As she walked she typed.
Yeah, see you there. Ten mins.
Kavanagh’s was packed, as usual. But tonight she didn’t mind. She let the hum and stench of the drinkers wash through her as she scanned the faces. She spotted Mark at the end of the bar, two pints of Guinness in front of him, two stools under his stewardship. Nice one, she gestured as she stepped into the throng and elbowed her way through the bodies between the door and Mark.
Madame. How are we this fine evening? You’re a bit later than usual aren’t you?
I am. Had a VIP. Five to nine he strolls in wanting to know which celebrity autobiography to get his girlfriend for her birthday.
Christ Sorcha, you need to tell people the shop is closing when that shit happens.
I can’t. Damian has a rule about closing-time queries. No closing ‘till the customer has self-evacuated.
Self-evacuated?
I shit you not. It’s in the employee handbook and everything. And anyway, since he put the cameras in I have to at least look like I’m trying to sell something. I’m pretty sure he watches my evening shift when he comes in to open for the morning.
Girl, that is not ok. That is NOT OKAY. What the fuck are you doing still working there? That fuckface is not right in the head.
I know, Mark. But I need the job for a bit longer.
No, you don’t. No job is worth Damian’s shit. Is he still calling you Grapefruit?
Damian had started calling her Grapefruit after she’d dyed her hair bright red. He’d been especially sleazy about it.
Sorcha, that red has me all hot and bothered. What shade do they call that now?
His eyes scanned her body from under heavy, hungover lids and he leaned towards her and smiled like they were friends. He looked like he was remembering how he had masturbated the night before thinking about her red hair.
I don’t know what the shade is called Damian. Can you get out of my way and let me pass?
Ah Sorcha, you’re always so sour with me. And I’m only ever the nicest of the nice to you. Do you know what it’s like, your hair? It looks like the red on the inside of a grapefruit. Sorcha - the sour little Grapefruit. I have ya now! What do you think, Grapefruit? That’s a good name for you, isn’t it?
Sorcha, SORCHA? Are you hearing anything I’m saying? Mark was looking at her like he always does when they talk about Damian and the bullshit she endures at the bookshop. He was looking at her with Genuine Concern.
I am genuinely fucking concerned, Sorcha. Damian is a pervert! I don’t know why you haven’t left or reported him to the Guards by now.
Just leave it Mark, will you? I only want a pint. No fixing Sorcha’s life tonight, alright? I don’t think I’ll be at the bookshop too much longer anyway.
Not the first time I’ve heard you say that.
I know, I know. But it’s different this time. I’m working on something.
Pray tell? A writing something?
Kind of. I can’t talk about it, but I think it’s going to be really good.
Well, cheers to that! Same again?
She and Mark had stayed friends after the writer’s club had ended. He worked in the student’s bookshop in Trinity, and she was in the big branch of Book Depot up on St Stephen’s Green. Mark’s sarcastic texts about the' ‘cretins that came in to buy shite self-help books when they should be studying for finals’ made her laugh, even if they were a bit mean. And she would always have a story for him about the weirdos at Book Depot looking for The Stalkers Guide To Life or Dahmler: In His Own Words.
Taking the job in the bookshop had seemed like a good idea - good for the writer’s bio she had sent out with her novel to every publisher in the country. But it didn’t seem to make a blind bit of difference that she worked in a bookshop, or that she had been published in four of the best lit mags, or that her play had been put on at the Gaiety when she was in university. Nobody wanted her novel.
Dear Ms Flynn,
We thank you sincerely for submitting your novel for our consideration. At this time, we don’t believe it is right for our brand. However, we think your novel shows a degree of potential. While your main character’s struggles to deter the advances of her boss are engaging, the plot lacks energy - a central conflict that will maintain the short attention of exhausted readers whose busy lives leave little time for books. We would encourage you to take more risks!
Best,
Jenny Sarzniak, Goldfinch Books.
She had fallen into a sort of depression after receiving the rejection from Goldfinch. There had been so many rejections before it, but this was the first that had contained personalised feedback. Someone - Jenny - had actually read her novel. And they still thought it was shit.
Until this rejection, she had been able to console herself with the notion that nobody had even opened her manuscript. That it had been filtered out in some sort of preliminary reading - the title, or her bio, or some other inane detail of her submission had not passed the elimination round. That was all. If someone had actually read the novel, the response would be different. She knew it would. How couldn’t it be? It was a fucking good novel. Years in the making. Solid. True. Art.
And her art was important to her. It was maybe the only thing in her life that felt… worthwhile. Her job was just a job. Her family only liked the parts of her that were normal. Her friends were great but she couldn’t really talk to them about the stuff that mattered. When she wrote, she was totally herself. All the parts of her were welcome there, in her writing.
For a few weeks after the Goldfinch rejection, she swore she would never write again, that she was done this time, that she would delete every unfinished manuscript on her hard drive. Mark had said she was just being dramatic.
You’re just being dramatic, Sorcha. You are a great fucking writer! If I actually thought for a minute that you were going to delete anything you’ve written, I would confiscate your hard drive and bury it in Phoenix Park.
After one particularly late night at Mark’s, she arrived home bleary-eyed and feeling sorry for herself and decided to open up another bottle cheap wine from Tesco’s and sit in front of her laptop. She was going to open up her novel, and read it for the thousandth and last time before deleting the whole fucking thing. But her cursor went instead to the email from Goldfinch and she clicked on it. She read the awful words again and again. She spat as she wished a bloody pathetic death on Jenny and everyone who worked at Goldfinch. She cried drunken hot tears on her keyboard between gulps of wine. And eventually, she trudged upstairs and passed out on her bed, face down, in all her clothes.
In the morning, her head hurt and her mouth was dry. But she wasn’t depressed any more. Take more risks, they had said. Take more risks.
It was Thursday again. Kavanagh’s was heaving as always. Sorcha hadn’t seen Mark in a few weeks, she’d been busy writing her new story.
C`mon let me read it, will you? You know I’m the only one who ever spots your pacing errors.
No, it’s not finished yet. I’m still working on the ending.
So what? You always let me read your stories, ending or no ending. Pretty please, Sorcha?
No Mark, Jesus you’re like a broken record!
Well… you’re a bit touchy about this one, aren’t you? But fine - if you insist on being mysterious, I’ll just have to wait and read it in the Dublin Review like everyone else.
I’m not sending this one to the Review.
Excuse me?! NOT sending it to the Review? That’s a first. They love the smell of your shit at that old rag.
This one’s not right for the Review. The only people that read that fucking thing are professors and judges. I dunno, this story needs a more… populist home.
Did you just say the word populist to me Sorcha Flynn?! What the fuck is going on with you? Are you on your period? There isn’t an ordinary bone in your complex, intellectual, elitist body. Populist my hole!
Christ Mark, I’m just saying this story is different, ok? Back off, would you?
Fine, fine. I’ll put my fangs away. But honestly Sorcha, you’ve really got me interested now! When will I be able to read this bloody thing?
I’ll probably finish it tomorrow night. It’s almost ready.
Damian arrived early for the Friday accounts. He fucking loved Friday accounts. You could see it on him. The way he walked into the shop with his sunglasses still on, Audi car keys jingling on his belt hook as he strode past Sorcha towards the back office, all important with himself.
Grapefruit - he nodded his usual sarcastic salute.
Dick head - muttered Sorcha to herself as she turned back to the queue of customers.
Sorcha saw the last customer to the door and stood there looking out at the wet street for a minute. It was a beautiful Dublin night. One of those where the rainstorm has already come and gone, and the tarmac is glistening black in the rain-washed air, and you can feel an early dew rising and settling on the hair of your forearms, bringing something of the morning into the night.
Sorcha, where are you? I don’t have all night!
Damian was shouting from inside the shop where he stood over the boxes of new books delivered that week, checklist in hand, ready to impart his wisdom. Good experience for you, learn a little of the biz, wha’ Grapefruit?
Damian’s idea of teaching her a little of the biz was looking down her top when she bent over to cut open a box of tourist guides. Damian’s idea of the biz was telling her he could help get her novel published as he grazed her thigh with his penis.
Sorcha fucking detested Friday accounts. But this was going to be her last Friday accounts and she had decided to get what she could from it.
Sorcha, are you listening to me?
Sorry Damian, yeah, go ahead.
Alright, box 415 - the Irish Woman’s Cookbook - 38 copies?
Sorcha put the cutter to the sellotaped box and leaned forward as she dragged it along. Her breasts fell heavy against the V-neck of her T-shirt and Damian moved in for a look. Just as the cutter snapped through the last fibre of tape, Sorcha rose her head and stared dead into Damian’s face. For a quarter of a second, she observed the confusion in his eyes, before she swung the box cutter up and sliced right through his lips, parting them in two so they hung like opened curtains and gushed red pools on the cardboard of box 415.
Damian screamed as he fell, grabbing his mouth with one hand, flailing in the air with the other. His back hit the ground and he started to wail. He tried to speak, but no words would come out of the shredded hole where his lips had been. Sorcha moved fast, her footing sure as she jumped over the box and straddled Damian’s body. She stood still for a moment to watch him writhe and gurgle, before lowering the cutter to his throat and pulling it slowly and deliberately, left to right, right to left, until he screamed no more, and it was done.
The Saturday papers broke the story with a photograph and caption.
The naked corpse of Damian Courtney is posed seated in a reading chair in the shop window display of the Book Depot where Mr Courtney was a manager. The corpse has been posed reading a copy of She Drove Me To It - the bestselling tell-all memoir by Jack King, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife, Gillian. The penis of the corpse appears to have been inserted into a Grapefruit. Spray-painted above on the glass of the shop window are the words TAKE MORE RISKS.
The Sunday papers led with an open letter to the editor.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to you with regard to the murder of Damian Courtney at Book Depot in Dublin city centre, which your newspaper reported on yesterday in its Saturday edition. I am the author of the murder.
This is the first major work of art I have been able to publish in my life, despite decades of dedication to my craft. I have written and submitted work tirelessly, but none of my novels have been deemed worthy of the attention of the book publishing industry.
I recently received perhaps the only useful piece of writing advice ever proffered to me: Take More Risks. This is the title I have given to the piece of work I published in the shop window of Book Depot yesterday.
I must apologise to my former co-workers at Book Depot. My decision to publish this work at our place of employment will surely upset them and for that, I am sorry. However, I felt it necessary that this piece of art be seen by as many people as possible, and I used the only location available to me that I thought would achieve that.
You see, I feel there must be hundreds of thousands of writers like me, writers who can no longer abide by the cultural gatekeeping and capitalist pillage of our art. Every artist has their limit. There is only so much we will allow. If we are told to take more risks in the interest of our art, that is what we will eventually do.
All I have ever wanted is to get out from under the predatory gaze of my boss, lead a quiet life, and write. As the publishing industry has seen fit to deny me that life, I haven taken measures to create it for myself.
This afternoon, I will surrender myself to Garda Síochána at Mountjoy Prison. Once I have been booked and can receive correspondence from outside the prison system, I would invite all interested publishers to reach out to me.
I have a story to tell, and I know you bloodthirsty fuckers are going to want it.
Best Regards,
Sorcha Flynn.
(Grapefruit).
This was so good, with such a satisfying ending! "Take more risks." Done and done.
How interesting that we’re both choosing violence this week - loved it. That “take more risks” feedback was the perfect setup. 👏🏼