Figured now he could hide in plain sight, more or less.
With all the expenses, he still had about 300,000 euros stashed here and there. No one knew, not even Trudi.
Decided to buy himself a perch and look down on the world, laugh as the rabble passed by. But then it came to him: no, he wanted his nose in it, wanted to smell the stench of ordinary life, to listen to the love song of the forlorn, revel in their petty grievances, in their miseries, watch as the bloody stasis took hold, watch as the light dimmed and died.
The trader bought himself a pub.
A dump over on the north side of the Liffey, off the Royal Canal, a regular shitehole it was, a right kip. Entrance in a stone alley beyond mounds of rubbish, and you couldn’t stumble upon it without a map. Celtic Tiger, my arse, it seemed to say. Two steps down and the rainwater flooded the drain, and that was all right too. Mold and rotten wood, the floorboards sagging.
The place reeked of failure, of resignation.
Perfect.
“Welcome home, you bastard,” the trader said as he stepped over the moat, dusted his hands, coughed.
It needed a name, didn’t it?
The trader, who by now was calling himself Eamonn or English Bill, depending, thought about it, and his first instinct was to call it “Rory’s.” No, “Ballyshannon,” after Rory’s birthplace. “The Calling Card,” that’s a good one, after Rory’s-
“I must be out of me feckin’ mind,” said English Bill to no one.
Which wasn’t far from true now, was it? Talking to shadows, the cobwebs: took more than one roundhouse to the side of the head in the community shower in Coldbath Fields, he did, though well short of what he had coming.
Pitch black now in the pub and he doesn’t know it, maybe his eyes have gone weak again. Thinking a little crank would do him good.
“The Rag and Bone,” he said, his throat feeling like he ate sand. Thinking of his childhood, and Yeats.
Yeah, and soon tour buses are parking out front and the Japs are snapping photos, thinking they’ve tripped over history.
Back to square one, and two hours later, still not a clue. And then another hour after that, come and gone.
Cheesed off, he came up with “Póg Mo Thóin,” as in “Kiss My Arse,” but he let it float, and he fell asleep on the bar, woke up to the gnawing and cheep-cheep chatter of a rat inches from his skull.
Got up, pissed in the sink when the jax was two feet away. Cupped his hand and took a mouthful of brown water, felt the rust wash over his Italian teeth.
Soon, sunrise and thin white light through the veins in the painted windows, and he can see the booths against the mud-brick walls, drunk-tilted and ready to fall in on themselves, creaking even in the shouting silence, and who’d give a shite?
And then, like inspiration, like Yeats dreaming, “Cathleen Ni Houlihan,” it comes to him: “Desmond’s.”
Brilliant.
But he don’t know why.
“Desmond’s,” and he likes the sound of it. “Desmond’s.” Likes it because it don’t mean nothing.
They started coming within minutes after the Guinness and Murphy’s trucks pulled out, smelling it as they stumbled along, squat little men, and they were the dregs and had nothing to say. The same story, again, again: never had a break, this bastard or that, she was hell on earth she was; ah, but me dear sweet mother, I’ll tell ya, and me da, Fecky the Ninth he was, but, God, I loved him. Sitting but a stool apart, three, four of them, each brutalizing the same tune. Clay faces in the flicker of cheap candles, a motley bunch straight out of Beckett, and moths flew up from under their tattered greatcoats.
The trader wanted entertainment, stories of the long, long fall, and soon he realized he had put Desmond’s at the end of the shite funnel, and who but them was going to appear?
“Jaysus,” he said as he rinsed a glass in foul water, “the sin of pride, my arse.”
“What’s that you say, Eamonn?” asked one of the sagging men, spider veins, rheumy eyes, fingers stained piss-yellow, paralytic before noon.
“I said, ‘Get the fuck out.’ All of you.” Shouting, bringing it from the bellows. “You and you and you!” Finger stabbing the air, and there’s the door. “Out! O. U. T.”
The men shrugged, plopped down, hitched up their trousers, and slouched out, forearms a shield from the sun.
And then the trader made a mistake.
He jammed the bolt across the door, poured himself a pint to wash the crystal meth off the back of his throat, went into a threadbare carton, and dug out Rory’s BBC Sessions, cut in ’74 but released when he was in Coldbath Fields, four years after Rory died. Whipsnap “Calling Card,” “Used to Be” like a cold knife against yer spin. The trader blasted it, oh did he blast it, and they heard it in the alley through the cracks, the ancient splinter wood, rattling bricks. The trader had every piece of music by Rory Gallagher that was ever recorded-all the officials, bootlegs too, bits of tape, third-generation copies; snatches of solos, rehearsals, sound checks, Rory turning the white Strat into a chainsaw, Rory levitating.
The bastards didn’t get the trader’s stash when they sent him up, the pricks, they let his lawyers cart it away; and he could tell you which was the solo in “Walk on Hot Coals” on Irish Tour ’74 and which was the night before, two nights hence, thanks to some boyo who smuggled in a recorder under his coat. The trader had twenty-one versions of Rory doing “Messin’ with the Kid,” one more kick-ass than the next, and he blasted every one of them, and more, for four days and nights straight, shaking Desmond’s to its foundation.
And when he opened the door, they were lined up halfway to the Liffey, shivering in the cold, shuffling, frozen fingers tucked under their arms. Hopeful eyes now. Expectations.
Word was a Rory pub was opening by the Royal Canal, and they wanted in. Rory was their man. Rory pushed the blood through their veins, and if someone was going to pay him tribute, they were going to be there, ice and snow and wind and hunger be damned.
“What the fuck?” the trader said, squinting against the silver light, suddenly wishing he hadn’t the need for more crank and something other than stale crisps.
By 8 o’clock they were three deep at the bar, totally jammers, and the snug was swollen, and Rory wailed, setting the fingerboard ablaze, and the trader had hired himself a bouncer and a lass to clear the tables. The next day he needed a man to pull the taps, and a plumber to fix the jax.
By the time he closed on Saturday night, he’d netted 1,100 euros on nothing but beer and Rory. The guy from the chipper round the block offered him a stake, saying business tripled since Desmond’s was born, thinking he’s on to the new Temple Bar. The Black Mariah pulled up, the Gardaí came in, and the trader prepared to slip them a gift, “Sinner Boy” pounding the walls and all, but they loved Rory too and as long as no one lit up a fag and the coppers got in, Desmond’s was sweet, at least for now.
“Jaysus,” the trader said as he made a neat stack of his notes, “the whole country’s full of eejits.”
He folded the bills, crammed them in his pocket, and was thinking he’d found justice. Finally, he told himself, he was getting his due.
He did the lass on the cold floor, ripping her from behind, and she went home in tears, mascara running down her baby cheeks.
A week or so later, past closing time, but the little pink man in far booth stayed glued to the wood, though the power had been cut and the votive candles gave little light.
The bouncer was in the alley, tossing them off cobblestone, so the trader, his ears ringing, went across the beer- soaked boards.
“Thinking of moving in, are ya?”
The little pink man reached into his coat and placed an ergo machine on the tabletop.