While visiting Dublin from her home in Cork, a woman meets with an old male friend and their flirting turns into a sort of challenging emotional combat.
This is a quietly dark little story, with a surprising level of cruelty – intentional or unintentional – in the pair’s interactions. The language is striking – the dialogue is especially crisp without being mannered – and the last section, in which Oweny imagines Jenny’s nighttime drive back to Cork, is poignant and poetic.