He doesn’t ask your name.

“Been a long time,” he says, pressing a battered copy of Ulysses into your hand. “There’s something inside for you.”

You find it wedged between the pages. A letter. Violet paper. Elegant handwriting.

“Begin where he did. Dublin remembers. So do I. Follow the words. You’ll know where I’ve been.”
No signature. Just the single initial: M.

You step back into the rain. It has thickened into a gentle mist. It coats your shoulders like memory.

The city exhales. And the streets, wide with potential, call you forward.

You pass through Grafton Street, among the early stir of shopkeepers pulling up shutters and buskers tuning fiddles. A blackbird sings over St. Stephen’s Green. By the time you reach Sweny’s Chemist, the scent of lemon soap is already in the air.

The chemist is frozen in time. Bottles in neat rows. Yellowed labels. Dust motes float above the counter like ghosts. A man in a chair near the back reads aloud from Joyce, voice soft as a hymn.

You buy the lemon soap. Of course you do.

When you leave, something is written in chalk on the lamppost outside: a spiral inside a clover. The first sign.

You head east, through a city both familiar and freshly drawn.

The door to Davy Byrnes swings open without you touching it. Inside, the warmth hits you — mahogany walls, the scent of old porter and blue cheese. You slide onto a barstool.

Before you can speak, the bartender places a plate before you. Gorgonzola sandwich. A glass of Burgundy. You didn’t order. You don’t have to.

There’s something folded beneath the napkin — not a note, but a page torn from a novel, margin-lined with handwriting. The ink has blurred, but one line remains:

“Every love is an echo. You are listening for mine.”
Across the pub, a man in a tweed coat raises his glass to you. When you blink, he’s gone.

You leave half the wine. You leave the rest of yourself behind.

You walk along the river, where grey gulls circle the rooftops and reflections shift in the water like unspoken thoughts. The city thickens around you — statues, steeples, the quiet dignity of buildings that have endured too much rain and too many rebellions.

At Sandymount Strand, the tide is low. Vast, wet sand stretches before you. The sea murmurs something old. Something sacred.

She waits there — the woman with the red umbrella.

Her back is to you. Her coat is green and rain-darkened, her boots half-buried in the tide-washed sand.

When she turns, she is not beautiful in the way of paintings, but in the way of poems.

She offers you a slim cloth-bound book. No title. You open it.

Inside are verses in a woman’s voice. Not Joyce’s Molly. Someone fiercer. Clearer. Present.

The pages smell of ink and salt. You read one at random:

“I was never waiting.
I moved through the city like wind through lace.
I left you signs.
You left me silence.”
She presses the book into your chest.

Then she turns and walks into the fog. Her umbrella disappears last.

Evening has taken the streets. Lamplight slicks the pavement in gold. You find yourself climbing the stone steps of the National Library, your reflection trailing behind you in puddles.

Inside, it’s nearly empty. In the map room, a single desk lamp glows. On it sits another book — a first edition of Ulysses, opened halfway.

You thumb through.

Someone has underlined a single sentence, written in pencil: “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

You sit. You listen to your own breath in the hush of marble and books.

And then, a postcard slips from the book’s spine. It shows the Ha’penny Bridge at night. Fog. Lamplight.

On the back, only one word:

Midnight.

At midnight, the bridge is quiet.

Rain tugs lightly at your coat. The river is black velvet beneath you. Reflections ripple. A distant tram hums like a memory out of reach.

She steps from the shadow, no longer carrying the red umbrella.

Her hair is loose. Her voice is clear.

“You came,” she says.

You nod. There’s nothing left to say.

“You were never him,” she says. “You were only ever you. But you needed to become someone else to find your own name again.”

She walks with you across the bridge. Neither of you speaks for a while. The city doesn’t demand words. It demands presence.

At the far end, she stops.

“I’ve left everything I could in the pages,” she says. “You’ll write the rest.”

And then she is gone.

This time, without looking back.

Morning breaks slow and pale. The city breathes in tea and toast and traffic. Delivery vans hum along wet kerbs. Windows blink open.

You walk through Merrion Square. Past poets in bronze. Past students with earbuds and paper cups of coffee. Past a world that continues, unaware of the strange day you’ve had — or the strange day you’ve become.

You find a bench. You sit.

Your notebook is open on your lap. Inside it are sketches, lines, fragments: the shape of a woman in fog, the taste of blue cheese, the scent of lemon soap. Your own handwriting, but sharper now. More certain.

A single word repeats itself across a torn page:

Yes.

And that is how Dublin gave you back to yourself.

Not through directions. Not through history.

But through a single day that folded fiction into fact. A city that let you play Bloom for a while — not to become him, but to remember that you are someone worth following.

You close the notebook.

You rise.

And walk back into the rain, unafraid.