Free The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost by Rachel Friedman Page A

those three moments constitute his entire life. When he’s caught a cold, he exchanges his two-euro beer for hot toddies. Since he never swaps out the glass, you can tell how many he’s had by the number of lemons piling up.
    The Hole in the Wall’s original rock walls have been plastered over, and now they resemble clotted cream. There is dark paneling everywhere, chipped wooden tables, and tiny windows with crisscross frames set deep into the walls like those of a fairy-tale cottage, perfect for when we pull the shades for a lockdown, where we hunker inside and drink until sunrise. The entire place has a fantastic slope. Walking into the back room is like an expedition aided by the dim lights of the old-fashioned gas lamps. The owner has hung pictures of himself with a multitude of winning horses taken during the yearly Galway Races, when the pub practically implodes with thirsty bodies. There’s Guinness paraphernalia everywhere: GUINNESS FOR STRENGTH and GUINNESS EXTRA STOUT . As at the Quays, the benches that line the walls resemble pews, though the upholstery is worn from an altogether different type of devotion. There is a rumor—told with varying degrees of supporting detail, depending on the teller—that many years ago a nun hanged herself in the attic.
    â€œOn glasses” turns out to be collecting the dirty glasses from around the pub and returning them to the bartenders to load in the tiny dishwasher. One night a bartender makes the mistake of unloading a still-steaming pint glass with cold hands, and it explodes inside his fingers, rendering them as useless as Carly’s for a few weeks. Unlike the club, the Hole in the Wall is packed almost every night. I push through overheated bodies to get at thestacked glasses that line every available shelf and threaten to topple off the rickety tables in the front room, where a few lucky groups have managed to score seats. I work for four or five hours at a stretch, sweaty and claustrophobic but elated to be employed.
    After four trial shifts as a “glassie,” I convince Brian to let me train on bar. Ever the dutiful student, I scrawl the following notes in my journal after my first lesson: Bud, Hein, Carlsberg = lagers = fizzy, let tap run for one second then tilt glass under, also Tennent’s. Bloomers/cider—hold glass straight under tap. Guinness—tilt all the way for ¾ cup, let settle, then glass straight under and push handle back = perfect top-off.
    Even with my shifts at the pub, I’m forever short of cash, and Portu is constantly lending me rent money. When Carly leaves, Portu and Patchi replace her with a girl who is the cousin of a cousin of someone Portu knows back in Spain, leaving me the only native English speaker in the house. I start hanging out more with my new bartender girlfriends. Instead of my previous sober afternoons, my days are now one long stint at the Hole in the Wall. I bartend three or four or, if I’m lucky, five nights a week, then end up drinking there or at another bar for the rest of the evening. After midnight, we spill into the clubs, dancing more than I have before or since, buzzing from vodka and Red Bull. I sleep until noon, then meet the girls for “the cure”—the Irish logic of banishing your hangover with more drinking.
    My friend Dee is a skinny thing with a small smile, lovely dark hair, and pale Irish skin. Her father was a bus driver for many years, the route from County Clare to Dublin and back, and she tells me how she and her younger sister learned to rollerskate in the aisles. Una doesn’t work at the Hole in the Wall with us but in the boots department at Top Shop. She’s blond and bouncy and enviably fake-tanned. When she’s drunk, she tells strangers she’s related to Kylie Minogue, since they share the same last name. Siobhan is studying to be a nurse, a pursuit thatunfortunately involves many early-morning exams. Eileen is the wild