The Breezes by Joseph O'Neill

try it again.
    Wanted, the advertisement said. Trustworthy house-sitter for period residence while owners go abroad for a month. Generous pay.
    â€˜Steve,’ I said, ‘take a look at that. Now that’s what I call a job.’
    Steve reached out from the sofa and looked at the newspaper for a whole minute. ‘Thanks, Johnny,’ he said. Then he carefully placed the paper on the floor.
    I made a decision. I fetched a sheet of paper and typed out the application myself. ‘Sign here,’ I said to Steve.
    â€˜God, thanks, John,’ Steve said as he wrote his name.
    Then I posted the letter. I went to the post office, bought a stamp and personally mailed the fucker.
    The reply came quickly. It was good news: Steve had been granted an interview on Thursday, at nine in the morning. Great, Steve said. Great stuff.
    That Thursday morning I arose early – those were the days when I was still productive, back in September of last year. By eight-fifteen, though, Steve had not stirred from his bed: Rosie’s bed: the bed which Pa had shelled out for. When I opened the bedroom door, there he was, a mound under the duvet.
    â€˜Wake up, Steve,’ I said, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Wake up. You’ve got to go to your interview.’
    He rolled over and stared at me with uncomprehending, unconscious eyes. Then he rolled over again and went back to sleep. There was nothing I could do to rouse him. I said to Rosie, Rosie, for God’s sake, tell him to get up. Tell him to go.
    Rosie, who was busy getting ready for work, said, ‘Oh, forget it. He won’t do it, he’s useless.’ She put her head through the door and shouted, ‘You’re useless, aren’t you, Slug?’ Then suddenly she snatched up a handful of objects – lipsticks, hairbrushes, books – and started hurling them at him. ‘You just lie there and rot and vegetate and do nothing, you bastard! Get up!’ she screamed, tugging at the duvet. ‘Get up, you shit!’
    â€˜Take it easy, Rosie,’ I said. ‘It’s all right, don’t worry about it.’
    Rosie started weeping with anger and humiliation, the tears leaving tracks through her deep stewardess’s make-up. ‘He’s so …He’s just so …’
    I said, ‘It’s OK, Rosie … Rosie, it’s all right.’ I led her out of the bedroom and up to the front door. ‘We’ll sort it out. Now you just go to work, all right?’
    â€˜He’s such a bastard, Johnny,’ Rosie said, swallowing back mucus and cleaning her face. ‘He’s such a bastard.’ Then she put on her green hat and headed out into the street to the job she hates.
    What a dope I was to allow myself to get into that situation – to allow myself to get involved with Steve like that.
    Never again.
    Pa, though, does not see it that way. Again and again is his motto. As far as he is concerned, where there is life there is hope, and in spite of everything he still believes that inside Steve there lie secret deposits of energy waiting to be tapped, gushers. Pa has got it wrong. Steve is not the North Sea or the Arabian peninsula. There are no oilfields in Steve.

5
    I have to be careful – careful of letting myself be sucked in by Rosie and Steve and their wretched problems which I can do nothing about. But I can’t stop it because I have to live with them; and I have to live with them because there’s nowhere else for me to go.
    This may sound strange, but not long ago I believed that I had gone, that I had swum free from the dismal whirlpool of their lives and had hauled up here, with Angela. My clothes were in that cupboard, my toothbrush and razor were in that bathroom cabinet and my books and records were stacked on those shelves over there, indistinguishable from Angela’s. I spent nine nights out of ten here and the only reason I ever went back to the Breeze flat was