‘No. You’re right there now, Louise. They do not.’

Charlie and Louise flicking more dollars on the counter. Ten-and twenty-dollar bills as they became more pissed.

‘Pissed, Birdie. You don’t mind the language.’

Oh not at all.

‘Pissed!’

The bar packing up with young people and U2 blaring from the jukebox.

‘Oh yes. The electric coal scuttle as the Vet used to call it. Dear oh dear. That’s not today or yesterday. But go on!’

Charlie and Louise are out on the town. Charlie twirls on his high stool to view the crush of young women in leather jackets and Louise twirls too, and gazes at the strong boys in sleeveless tee shirts and tank tops.

Two drunks walking down College Drive towards the river at midnight. Everyone knows they are lovers, the way they link arms, and stop every so often to hug and kiss and wag fingers at each other with profound advice, or sing together their favourite song.

‘What made Milwaukee famous has made a loser out of me!’

That was the way. Off down the alley, waving goodnight to the policeman in his car by the kerb, their hands high in the air.

‘Such a picture!’ said Birdie.

‘Oh such a life, Birdie!’ said Louise. ‘Such a life!’

2

LOUISE WAS SICK, the day she heard the news, lying in bed all day nursing a hangover. She cooked eggs, ham waffles and syrup. She thought the feed would put her stomach right. It usually did. And then she slept for most of the day. Charlie kept to his side of the bed until noon, watching the television. Then he got up.

A few neighbours came in. Friends of Charlie. They all sat in the kitchen brewing coffee and talking about the ice. Charlie kept complaining about welfare.

‘All these guys on the reservation! They get welfare,’ he says. ‘But me. I get nothing. Nothing at all.’

Then he started giving off about Europe. She shouted at him to shut up. He was like a radio. Sometimes you had to turn him off. Anyway, he came back to bed in the afternoon, and played with the TV remote control for a while, flicking from CNN to the local channels every few seconds. And then he wanted to talk. Something on the news had caught his attention, but she was still trying to sleep. He said a woman in Alberta had left a baby alone with a Dobermann pinscher, and when she came back, the baby was in shreds. Louise said she couldn’t care less. She wanted to sleep.

‘So later the police come and they want to shoot the dog. And what does she do?’

‘I don’t know what she does,’ says Louise, exasperated. She was trying to sleep.

‘She takes a case against them,’ says Charlie, ‘for shooting the dog. She tells the judge: a baby I can make any time, but that dog cost me five hundred dollars.’

Louise didn’t believe him but she said nothing. She knew he exaggerated stories just to get her attention. And she remembered it all in such detail because it was just then that she got the phone call from a friend in Ireland, a girl who had been in her class, who said she just wanted to say that she heard Gussie’s name on the television. He was in a road accident or something, and he’s badly injured, but he’s going to be OK.