Julie has a minor grass allergy that she considers major, she carries rustling rectangular packets of tissues in her bag, she has limited hip mobility, she has a poor circulatory system, she sighs and tuts, audibly, loudly, everytime someone else shares a woe or an injustice. She is barred from a hotel in St. Agnes.
Julie hasn’t got a car, she hates the driver of the 151 with a passion, she is never late (unless that fuckin arsehole driving the 151 makes her late), Julie says that she’s there at the moon, that she got fired on her day off, that she’s never played water polo, but she doesn’t just live in the moment, she is the goddamn moment.
Julie can be in a sauna for twenty minutes and still have a cold bum, big icy round thing. She is the she-wolf and she’s never lost a battle. Julie has a gun. Back in the day Julie got married, Julie got the cake and then what Julie said to Romeo pissed him off so hard he never came back. Julie got 21 out of the 23 questions right and still has no one to love.
Julie thinks beer is for fat electricians but reckons her blood type’s probably still 40% proof. Julie thinks she’s Mary Boyle and dabs her eyes when anyone talks about missing children or lonely dads. Julie says to John I’m an actress, but she hasn’t been on stage in twenty years. She says blue is orange and black is the new black and won’t we all be wearing that at her funeral, no? That when Julie finds me on the doorstep of The Queen’s Head, she will say no Tony, no. That Julie will give me tea and won’t fuck me, even if I cry.
Julie’s been coming here longer than anyone else. Julie says we’re all she’s got and swallows loudly. Sometimes she farts and says oops, flames a bit but says she’s not embarrassed. Julie wants to go to Zimbabwe and look at zebras, but she hasn’t got a passport anymore and she never used it when she had one so what’s the point? That she imagines taking the kids to Disneyland, except they’re not kids, they’re dolls that she knits and cats that she feeds and names after her dead relatives.
Julie turns grey when a slim man with an early widowers hump stands in the circle and says my name’s Nick and I’m an alcoholic, Julie stares at the floor the whole time he’s talking and then softly, so no-one except me hears says I almost fell in love with him once. Julie’s fingers tremble as she passes out the mints and Nick smiles with a vague detachment that suggests there are no Julie-shaped holes in his memory.
Julie once smashed the window of a Turkish cafe, not because she hates the Turks, but because she thought they’d understand, that she used to dance with the sinewy tentacles of the 80s reaching from her darkest parts, that she loved to dance and drink but didn’t know when to stop, didn’t know how to stop.
Julie can tell when I’m about to fall apart and she picks at the seams, not to hurt me, but until there’s a decent shaped hole to sew back together again. That Julie says chemo doesn’t hurt, but watching her hair seek refuge in the shower drain does.
Julie thinks July is her month, that only good things can happen in July. Julie in July she says and she is wheezing up the steps.
That Julie thinks I’ve got this.
That she laughed when I said Julie don’t go. That after the last Friday in July, Julie didn’t come back.
Julie is not coming back.
Written by Jay McKenzie
Jay McKenzie is the author of Mim and Wiggy’s Grand Adventure. Her work is found or forthcoming in adda, Maudlin House, Fictive Dream, Roi Faineant, The Hooghly Review and others. She is a BOTN nominee who was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Bridport Prize, Bath Short Story Prize, Fish Prize, Exeter Novel Prize and the Edinburgh Short Story prize. She has a soft spot for knitwear and lives with her husband, daughter, and too many cardigans.