And we sat there for a second, marvelling at all the possibilities that the future had in store. One day we’ll be redundant, boys, Tommy says to us, and he shrugs. Enjoy it while you can.

*

We’d be making love in the Europa and I says to myself, this can’t last forever, Xamuel, her legs wrapped around me and lost in her smells and her tender fingers in my hair are like the words of the song come in, upon my pillow, hold your warm and tender body close to mine, hear the whisper of the raindrops blowing soft across the window, and make believe you love me one more time, as I pictured us wrapped around each other, and raised up, as the hotel dissolves all around us and all around us Belfast is in ruins, Belfast lies in ruins beneath us, and the two of us, entwined, stand at the beginning, all true lovers are the first lovers, forever, we tell each other, with our eyes, we see each other, as returned, and then, of course, I start to hear the voices, they would interrupt my reverie, fucking Tommy and Barney are a pair of bastards, standing there in the ruins, shouting up to us, get back down here, you no-user, they’d be shouting, what are you, some fucking woman, they’re shouting, get back down here from up in them airs, and we are raised up on secret umbilicals, the two of us, and using my powers, my secret superpowers, I spy us an island off the coast, just beyond the horizon, a secret island where we could be naked together, and where we could live without smoking ruins and twisted metal and upturned cars and soldiers in the streets, an island where we could start the whole game all over again, but even then, even as our bare feet touched down on the grass, this soft grass that has never been trodden, can you imagine such a thing, I knew that beginning all over again meant the same things forever, meeting only to be parted, building to destroy, rising up just to fall back down again. Where are you? Kathy says to me. I’m on a virgin island of Ur-lan’t, I says to her, right back at the beginning. Can we live there forever? she says to me and I think of her curled up on a bench with her husband, and I says to her, no, not forever, we can’t live there forever, honey, but for a summer, maybe, I think we can manage a summer, a summer before we burn it to the ground.