Under the Arch

The guy was going to jump. I could tell by the way he gripped the stone ledge, his whole body shaking like a leaf in winter.

"Hey!" I yelled, my voice reverberating off the old railway arch above us. "What're you doing up there?"

He turned slowly round, and I got a good view of his face. Young guy, maybe twenty-five, with messy brown hair and tired eyes.

"None of your business," he replied, though his voice trembled a bit.

I was just cutting through on my way home from work. The arch was an old railway bridge that no one used anymore - trains haven't come through here in years. Most people avoided it, said it was seedy. But it was the fastest way back to my apartment, and I'd walked beneath it a hundred times before.

Never saw anyone up on the ledge, however.

"Look, I don't know you," I said moving a step forward. "But jumping off there ain't gonna solve whatever's gnawing at you."

He let out this bitter laugh. "You think I haven't heard that before? From therapists, family, friends - everybody's got advice until they don't."

"What's your name?"

"Kieran." He rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. "And you're going to try to talk me down now, right? Tell me life is worth living and all that crap?"

I shrugged. "Actually, no. I was going to ask if you've ever been to Murphy's Diner on Wellington Street."

That caught him off guard. "What?"

"Murphy's. They do this thing - uh, what d'you call it - shepherd's pie on Wednesdays. Sounds stupid but it's. it's really good. My mum used to make something similar before she passed."

Kieran stared at me as if I'd lost my mind. "Are you serious right now?"

"Dead serious. I've been going there for three years. Old Murphy, the owner, he knows everyone's order by heart. There's this regular, Dolores, she goes in every Tuesday and Thursday. Orders the same thing - coffee, black, and a slice of apple pie. She's probably eighty, maybe older."

"Why are you telling me this?"

I took a seat on the broken concrete bench under the arch. "Because last month, Dolores didn't show up for a week. Murphy was worried sick. Turns out she'd fallen in her bathroom, wasn't able to get up for hours. When she finally returned to the diner, Murphy had saved her a piece of pie every day she'd been absent."

Kieran's grip on the ledge eased just a little.

"Point is," I continued, "people miss you when you're gone. Even if you think nobody does.

"You don't know what I'm going through."

"You're right. I don't." I pulled out a crushed pack of cigarettes from my jacket pocket. "Mind if I smoke? This is kind of stressful."

He almost smiled at that. "Go ahead."

I smoked a cigarette and took a drag. "My old man took off when I was fifteen. Packed his bags and disappeared one Tuesday morning. Left a note to say he couldn't handle it anymore - the bills, the responsibility, my mother's depression. Real standup guy."

"I was angry for years. Wanted to go look him up and. I don't know, punch him in the face or something. Make him feel as worthless as he made us feel."

"Did you find him?"

"Yeah, sure. Two years ago. Married a new wife and twin boys in Birmingham. As happy as could be." I let ash fall to the ground. "You know what was weird? When I saw him, I didn't get angry any more. I just didn't feel anything. It was like looking at a stranger who happened to bear a resemblance to someone I used to know."

Kieran climbed down from the ledge and sat on the opposite end, his legs dangling over the side. Still too close to the edge for my liking, but a step in the right direction.

"My girlfriend dumped me," he muttered. "Three weeks ago. Said I was too much work. That she couldn't fix me."

"That's rough."

"We were together four years. Had a plan; marriage, kids, suburban house. The whole deal." He played with a loose thread on his jacket. "Then my dad died, and I just. fell apart. Started drinking too much, couldn't sleep, couldn't work. She tried to be helpful at first, but."

"But she's not a therapist."

"Right. And I guess I thought she'd be. Put all this pressure on her to make me feel better, to fix whatever's broken in me. Wasn't fair to her."

We were silent for a while. The arch we were sitting under was blanketed with old graffiti - names, dates, crude drawings. Someone had sprayed "TOMMY WAS HERE 1987" in red letters that had faded.

"You know what's funny?" Kieran started. "I keep thinking about this one time we went camping. Must've been two years ago. We got completely lost looking for our campsite, stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight that was dying on us. It Should've been terrible, but we couldn't stop laughing. Everything was just.simple then."

"Sounds nice."

"Yeah. I just wonder if I'll ever be that light again. That way of being really happy without having to think about it."

I stubbed out my cigarette. "Can't say you will. But I can say that sitting up on that ledge isn't going to help you work it out."

He looked at me properly then. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Bennett."

"Bennett." He tested it. "That's not common."

"Irish grandfather. He was a hard man, by all accounts, from what my mum says. Stubborn as hell but loyal to a fault."

Kieran smiled - "You remind him of yourself?"

"More than I'd care to admit."

The sun was starting to set, and in a couple of hours, this place would be black as anything except for the one working streetlight some fifty yards away.

"I should probably go," Kieran said, but he didn't move.

"Where to?"

"I don't know. Home, I guess. Though it doesn't feel much like home just now."

"Hungry?"

He looked startled. "What?"

"Murphy's is still open. And it's Wednesday - shepherd's pie day. You could come along with me, meet old Murphy. He makes terrible coffee but the food isn't bad."

"You don't even know me."

"So? Neither did Dolores when she first walked into Murphy's three years ago. Now she's part of the furniture."

Kieran was quiet for a moment, staring at his hands.

"I have no money on me," he said finally.

"I'll pay. Consider it payment for not leaving me to this place alone. It gives me the creeps when I'm here by myself."

That got another weak smile out of him. "Okay. But I'm not exactly good company at the moment."

"Join the club."

We both moved out from under the arch.

"Bennett?" Kieran said when we reached the main road.

"Thanks. For not giving me some bullshit speech about how suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."

"Those speeches don't do much, do they?"

"Not really. Sometimes you just need someone to sit with you for a while."

Murphy's Diner was warm and bright when we pushed open the door, the smell of coffee and gravy hitting us immediately. Murphy himself - a round man with a thick Belfast accent - looked up from behind the counter and nodded at me.

"Bennett! Wednesday special?"

"Two plates," I said. "And whatever coffee you've got that isn't totally terrible."

Kieran laughed - a real laugh this time. "You weren't kidding about the coffee."

"Murphy's got many talents. Making decent coffee isn't one of them."

We sat down in a booth near the window, and I noticed Kieran taking in the mismatched chairs and faded photos on the walls. The place wasn't much to look at, but it was warm and real. Just what both of us needed right then.

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