Story is the only thing that keeps the Rainy Town alive. Other towns have quaint cobble streets and flower baskets bursting with petunias; the Rainy Town has anecdote and whispered innuendo. The butcher tells yarns as long as his ball of string. Men loitering in bookie shops reflect at length on magical races and fabulous, mythical horses, long since gone to the glue factory. If you stopped in one of the town’s pubs for twenty minutes, locals would draw you into a mystery involving streams of consciousness and sheer cliffs of improbability.
But no traveller ever stops in this town unless their fuel gauge is hovering on red and all four tyres are flat. On a road map of Ireland, it’s nothing more than a small black dot where the hatched lines cross, the intersection of pipeline, power line, and railway line. On one side of Main Street, an unbroken line of tattoo parlours. On the other side, a string of tattoo removal clinics. The townspeople write stories on their bodies, and then erase themselves.
On this particular night, Kitty Holbeck, a rare tourist, sits under the canopy outside the Unexpected Hotel. She is approached by Johnny, a man who is as hopelessly broken as she is. Strangers, it would appear, but they share a common history that only one of them is aware of.
Later, Kitty lies on her hotel bed and looks out the window, to the looming church spire, a dead antenna, no longer capable of transmitting prayers to God.
“Tell me a story,” she says, “and help me fall asleep.”
“What sort of story would you like?” asks Johnny.
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
But there are so many stories in the Rainy Town. Enough to fill a book.
