Sal-Francisco - D. S. Maolalai

It was the summer. I was out of college for a while and working as a clerk for a small magazine, mostly selling ads and features and proof reading. I was there to act as a buffer between the world and the boss's hangover, which was generally bad. Sometimes I'd be sick from drinking too, but I normally saved it for the weekend, where as my boss could call on a Tuesday to let me know he was sick and would not be coming to work today.

            But this story, it isn’t about my boss. I met this dark haired girl there, Sally-Francis, and God o God she was a better girl than any other girl I knew. The office was in Ranelagh and there were dozens of beautiful women that you could see on one walk to the shop, all of them breasts and asses under the sun that moved a rhythm they moved. But Sally, she could beat off the lot of them. When I met her, after she replaced the last girl, who had complained of sexual harassment, I took her out for a drink. We acted like friends and we were friends, because she had a boyfriend that she was trying not to despise. She had no breasts, and normally I like breasts, but with Sal I could just talk and drink and look at the other women, just as she would look at the other men. I felt drunk after three beers when I drank with her.

            Once, when me and some guys were drinking together after work she arrived with her sister, and as soon as they arrived her sister ran off to talk to a friend of mine, Chris. It turned out that the previous night they had fucked each other and neither had known that they would see each other that day. It was enough for them. So far as I know, they are still together. But before the two of them arrived I had been drinking heavily - rum, tequila, beer after beer after beer, more rum! - and by the time Sal came to speak to me I was drunk enough to try and make romantic. I said some things I don’t remember. Hell, I thought I was being romantic, I thought I was a poet, but when I woke up the next morning she wasn’t there, and I had a hangover and a dead face.

            Sally quit the job soon after and I didn’t see her for months. I ate my lunch alone and watched traffic. The next time I saw her it was around December. I had just finished with this girl called Morag. I was drinking in this bar called McGuire’s, like I usually did after work, and Sally just sort of sat down next to me. I was still pretty sober and she hadn’t had a drink all day.

            “Where've you been?”

            “Here.”

            “You never rang me.”

            “Why would I? I figured if I left it, it would be less embarrassing.”

            She looked at me over a glass. She had a thing, like a wart, growing on one of her eye lids and a way of looking at you that let hair fall over it. It made her look shy and beautiful and like no other woman all at once.

            “I wasn’t embarrassed.”

            I put my arm around her a little. “Well then I'm sorry I never rang you.”

            I kissed her, and it was odd. She had a small mouth that tasted of beer, and her lipstick stuck to my mouth a little. I pulled away from her and ordered another drink. She had one too. I got two more rounds into me, and she told me she had been putting off going home because her housemate had a boy over.

“She said they'd be in bed by ten. I’ve been watching the clock, it’s almost half past.”

            “Let’s go,” I said. She looked at me like she was surprised. When we had worked together I had never been direct like that, I had been shy, sort of quiet. But I no longer cared very much for shyness. I just wanted to have her.  

“Ok,” she said.

            We walked together to her house. I was a little drunk from the beer, but most of the drunk came from having a woman next to me that would make a man care. Here was a woman who would give you a better drunk than whiskey, and her arm was on my waist! I had grown two feet in minutes. Come on you chicken shit mother fuckers, bring it on, I'll bury the lot of you! Let's me and her show you something that will burn the stars! We walked slowly enough, and we didn’t really say much. It was comfortable, even though the excitement was enough to power a steam train.

            When we got in to her house the room mate was nowhere. I could hear noises upstairs though, and it got me looking more at Sal. I was hard. She was taking me upstairs. We passed the roommates door and it was ajar. Her roommate was in there, making those noises, with some guy beneath her, in the warmth of her. I looked at her back. Short honey hair. A tan. Slowly moving on him. He made no noises. All the noises were her. I felt myself get harder and grabbed Sal close, kissing her face. Oh God God God I was in it good.

            She brought me to her room, brought me to her bed. I fell on her, kissed her hard, but that was as far as it went. The most beautiful women in the world have a habit of letting me fall for them and then revealing their issues about sex. I don’t know if I attract them or if they attract me. She had a bottle of whiskey and we sat together for a while drinking it. I was hard the entire time and she never let herself look down. We kissed a little more, but it wasn’t as good as in the bar. She wouldn’t open her mouth properly and wouldn’t let me touch her legs. Probably she was interfered with when she was younger. I held her, touched her tits, but that was it.

            In the morning the barrier was broken, so I was able to get the train home for free. That was alright.

D. S. Maolalai studies English at Trinity College. He has been trying to be a writer for years, with little success until very recently. He currently lives in Dublin, but plans to leave as soon as possible. His poetry has previously appeared on strangebounce.com and he has some short pieces forthcoming on a few other sites, but hasn't bothered to make a website of his own.