“For you?”
I stared at him before he said,
“Jeez, lighten up. I’m kidding.”
He handed over a fistful of notes, said to the woman,
“We’ll be at the corner table. Try not to fuck up the pints.”
We sat, in silence, needing the drinks.
When they came, Owen examined the heads of the pints, said,
“Not bad.”
I said to the woman.
“Thanks a lot.”
The woman moved away. Owen asked,
“The fuck is with you? Thank you? You trying to make me look bad?”
I took a sip of the Jay, said,
“No, you need no help there. You manage to bollix all by your lonesome.”
He downed the pint in almost one go, burped, said,
“Ah, better.”
Then to me,
“This fucking miracle business is some mad shite. Half the city is delighted at the incoming business, the other half is worried about controlling the chaos.”
He thought about that, asked,
“You think there was anything in that first event? I mean, you and the truck is just blind luck...”
Did I believe there had been miracle/miracles?
No.
I said,
“I think the world is so fucked. Trump has America literally shut down, Brexit is a mess beyond belief, Venezuela is becoming the new Syria in the worst way, so people are desperate for something miraculous. There was never really a better time to provide a miracle.”
He ordered another round. I said,
“Not for me. I’m supposed to take it easy.”
He laughed, snorted,
“That’ll be the day.”
Indeed.
He worked on the fresh drinks, then,
“Your name came up in another case.”
I said,
“I have the perfect alibi: a coma.”
He asked,
“You ever meet... wait, I’ll check my notes.
Took out a battered Garda notebook. I felt the familiar pang of regret at having been thrown out of the force. He double-checked, then continued.
“Renee Garvey?”
It sort of rang a bell but elusive. I said,
“Why?”
He said,
“She has a young daughter who is obviously a victim of abuse but is in some sort of shock and not talking. The mother, Renee, was apparently thrown through a third-floor window, worse, a closed window.”
I asked,
“Did she survive?”
He gave me a withering look, said,
“No miracle for her, she’s dead as dirt.”
I felt terrible. Now I remembered her desperation and how flippant I had been.
More points on the guilt sheet. I said,
“I failed her.”
He looked at me, interested, asked,
“What’d you say to her?”
I could recall the words clearly. I said,
“I told her to get a hurley.”
He shook his head, said,
“You’re a cold fuck, Taylor.”
And he was my friend?
I asked,
“Where is the husband?”
“He has a solid alibi but we’re fairly sure it’s him. He is one vicious bastard and only last week collected the insurance on her, which he is now drinking big-time.”
I asked,
“Where does he hang?”
He shook his head, ordered,
“No, no way, stay out of this.”
I tried,
“If only to offer my condolences.”
He stood up, said,
“Condolences, like fuck. You can walk back, see it as penance.”
I sat there, looking at an empty glass, as empty as my soul.
It was a long walk back to town but the power of the wind, the unaccustomed pints after my hospital sojourn, helped me walk, if not briskly, at least determinedly.
In town, on a whim, I went to the Protestant church, St. Nicholas, seven hundred years old. A man inside the door, guiding visitors, welcomed me. Said his name was Andrew. He had warmth that I no longer felt in my own churches.
Best of all, the candles were not the electronic ones littering my usual churches. Real candles, with a long taper to light them. It was reassuring in the old way. There was no slot for money; that seriously impressed me.
A German couple stopped, asked me,
“Do you know the Crane Bar?”
I did.
A TV series was currently filming there. I gave them directions and they said,
“We love Galway.”
What do you say to that? I said,
“And Galway loves you.”
We can now repeat
That all of them are illusions and insusceptible of proof.
Some of them are so improbable,
So incompatible with everything we have discovered about the reality of the world, that we may compare them — if we pay proper regard to the psychological differences — to delusions.
The nurses were staging a one-day strike, the government was deep in panic as to what would happen if the U.K. crashed out of the EU with no deal in place. Talk of return to a hard border in the North sent shivers through the land; already, two bombs had been exploded in Derry.
Trump was pictured in the White House surrounded by hundreds of McDonald’s Big Macs, fries, milkshakes, for his guests.
A priest refused Communion to a politician who, he said,
“Supported abortion.”
Another step in the Church’s insane determination to alienate all of the people all of the time.
I was in my apartment, reading Declan Coyle’s The Green Platform. I literally had weights on my feet, doing exercises to strengthen the wasted muscles: The weights on my mind had no known exercise to help there.
There was a timid knock on my door.
All sorts of calls had come in the past and none of them ever could be described as timid; knocks usually announced chaos and strife.
I opened the door cautiously. A woman in her fifties stood there, holding a large parcel. She was dressed in what used to be called a sensible coat.
Meaning no frills, simply utilitarian.
She had a face about one feature short of prettiness but energy there suggested a decent nature, which in my troubled life implied she was not going to knife me in the doorway.
Yet.
She had an unlined face, such as you observe only in nuns.
She asked,
“Jack Taylor?”
I nodded: She put out her small hand, said,
“I’m Saoirse, a friend of Sister Maeve.”
Phew-oh.
I said,
“Come in.”
She sat near the window, the large package near her feet. I asked,
“Tea, coffee, whiskey?”
She gave a lovely smile, tinged with melancholia, said,
“No, thank you.”
I asked,
“Are you a nun?”
I seemed to be up to my arse in nuns. She said,
“Heavens, no. Maeve and I have...”
Paused, corrected,
“Had been friends since school.”
Then silence until she shook herself, said,
“Dear me, you must be wondering why I’m here — it’s just so odd to meet you after all Maeve told me.”
Oops.
I tried,
“I was not always at my best in her company.”
Alarm on her face, she protested,
“Oh no, Good Lord, she loved you.”
Wallop my heart. I was astonished, went,
“What?”
She gave me a look that showed some steel beneath the gentle face, asked,
“Nuns can’t love?”
I was lost, said,
“I’m going to have a drink. You want something?”
She relented, asked,
“Perhaps a small sherry?”
I laughed, said,
“Seriously, I look like a guy who keeps sherry?”
I couldn’t quite keep the contempt from my tone, and added,