The fuck he said?
I went,
“What?”
Drinking the Jameson, he, brazen as a wild pup, tells me,
“AA meetings. Kiki has a year now.”
I wanted to strangle him again, asked,
“But you’re drinking and aren’t those meetings supposed to help? And, mainly, aren’t those meetings meant to be anonymous. Isn’t that the fucking point?”
He said,
“I can control my drinking. It’s okay once you know when to cut back.”
I used all my wisdom, all my experience, all my failed methods of a way to drink without being slaughtered, summed it up for him with
“Horseshite.”
Kiki.
Phew-oh, to capture Kiki in a brief summary.
Years back, after I’d investigated the suicide of young girls, I fled to London and I mean I was truly fleeing.
Spent a year on Ladbroke Grove, wasted, like the character in Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square. Thank God, most of it is a blur, my very own version of London fog.
Got married, yeah, fuck me.
To a German metaphysician, Kiki,
The top had barely settled on our Guinness when we got divorced and I slunk back to Galway with a leather coat I bought on Camden Lock. The lyrics of Van Morrison’s “Madame George” wafting in my head.
Such are the vagaries of my life that in my holdall were albums by Rory Gallagher and the Pogues. I was barely a week back home when the leather coat was stolen, much like my marriage.
Years later, Kiki turned up with a gorgeous little girl. She said,
“This is your daughter.”
Like holy fuck.
Right?
Took a time but I bonded with the little girl and my heart was fit to burst. I could hardly breathe for sheer joy.
The child was murdered right in front of me.
And Job wailed he got a rough ride?
Kiki in her own form of insane grief took up with a psycho known as Silence. A savage ice-cold calculating predator that became fixated with destroying slowly everything and everyone I held dear.
I was slow to react as I was in a state of traumatic paralysis until, finally, I stole a high-powered rifle and gut shot the fucker in the drive of the home he shared with Kiki.
Kiki went back to the booze with fixed fatalism.
Our child was buried in Rahoon Cemetery, made famous by James Joyce with his ode to Nora Barnacle’s dead lover. With apologies to Joyce, I saw it as
The place where my dead daughter lies.
There is no greater grief. None.
Dysart held out his glass and I snapped,
“How can you attend AA meetings when you drink and it seems you drink like a sailor?”
He gave a self-satisfied smile that riled me. I pushed further.
“You went half-cocked or, now I imagine, half in the bag, to see Keefer, got a shotgun in your mouth?”
He said,
“I wanted to get the perimeters, not to mention the parameters, for when we go to take the girl.”
The sheer bloody cheek of the prick. I said,
“I’ll take care of the girl.”
He lit up, amazed, echoed,
“You will?”
“On one condition.”
He agreed foolishly fast, said,
“Name it?”
I said,
“Phenobarbital.”
Now I had his full attention. He asked,
“What on earth are you planning? You’re not going to kill yourself just when we are bonding?”
He really did need a wallop to the side of the head. I lied,
“I’m going to go to the farm, reconcile with Keefer, bring a celebratory bottle of bourbon. The devil child likes a wee dram. She’ll get a real kick out of her dose.”
He gave a smile that lurked somewhere between the sacred and profane, very unpleasant. He asked,
“But won’t you kill your buddy, your bro” — he leaned heavily on the sarcasm — “too?”
I gave him a nasty smile right back and, when I put my mind to it, I can go dark with the worst of them. I said,
“He regards Sara as if she were his own. When he sees her go, he’ll murder me and come looking for you also, I imagine.”
He rubbed his hands in glee, said,
“You’re quite the evil little fooker, aren’t you?”
I said,
“I was taught by Jesuits and one important note.”
He was reveling in this, the bad bastard, asked,
“Pray tell.”
I said,
“You ever refer to Keefer as my bro again I’ll kick the living shite out of you.”
He laughed, said,
“Scary. Anyway, back to the issue. I can get Seconal, crush up ten, you’d kill them both and maybe all the animals on the farm.”
I asked,
“Where is the Church currently on suicide and priests?”
He was wary, tried,
“We, or rather they, regard it as a mortal sin.”
I was no wiser, pushed,
“But do priests their own selves kill themselves?”
He was now very antsy, said,
“Well, I’m no expert but drink is a form of slow suicide.”
Before I could ask more, he said,
“Kiki wants to meet you.”
Lord wept. I snarled,
“What? You’re a dating bureau?”
He gave me a patient look, said,
“The poor woman is lonely.”
I stood up, said very quietly,
“Time for you to fuck off out of here.”
He put his arms out, asked,
“Hug?”
I could only think he was on serious medication.
The Hummingbird
At the exact moment of death
You lose twenty-one grams
Which is believed
To be the weight of your soul.
It is also the exact weight of a hummingbird.
The Galway Arts Festival was in full show; Burt Bacharach was headlining.
On a Sunday night. Now, I don’t know how God feels about ol’ Burt but here’s the thing. The three weeks preceding the festival we had scorching heat, a rarity of biblical proportion for the city and, worse, humidity.
The Sunday night after this heat wave, the heavens opened, thunder, lashing rain that made you reach for holy water.
I went to the exhibition that people told me was
Unmissable.
Beautiful.
Awesome.
Sam Jinks on his second visit to Galway with sculptures made from human hair, wax that eerily seemed like skin, and shown in a black space lit only by the exhibits.
I know how fucking contrary I am but the exhibits freaked the shite out of me. I’ve seen too many bodies in morgues to actually go see it in a festival.
I know, I know, art is to provoke, so it sure as hell did that.
But being some kind of masochist, I wasn’t done. Oh no. I went to a play based on Rosemary Kennedy, her years of confinement in a madhouse, with a soundtrack of discordant music shredding my nerves.
I swore to readdict myself to Xanax.
“There is no refuge from confession
But suicide, and
Suicide is confession.”
Daniel Webster.
Bizarre as it sounds, this was printed on a T-shirt worn by Malachy as we met to discuss the details of his murder/suicide.
I said,
“What the fuck, are you advertising your imminent death?”
He was offended, said,
“I bought you a T-shirt too, do you want to see it?”
Fuck.
I said,
“Go on then.”
Just a tiny bit curious, God only knows what this was.
He handed me a black T, XL, with gold writing; it read
Dead is
Not always
The worst thing
Stephen King.