“Hey, I took the shortcut, rage to outright violence.”
The nine was in my jacket and I withdrew it, shot the fridge four times. Childish, indeed, but, you know, it felt better to actually let rip.
Got ready to leave, stared at the now dripping fridge, muttered,
“Soul on ice.”
I met a woman outside, elderly, not carrying rosary beads but had the look of it. She asked,
“Did you hear. . shots?”
I said,
“Only the one heard round the world but that wasn’t recent.”
Asking myself,
“Where would Oscar go?”
Not London. Not after they’d jailed him. Paris? Hmmm. . He’d lived on
The fake and humiliating kindness of strangers.
Italy?
I’d need to check that out. I was standing on the Salmon Weir Bridge, where the salmon no longer leaped, the water still, five years on, poisoned. Like the fucking country. The cathedral to my left, noon Mass letting out, and sparse-not too many attending these days. A forlorn priest outside, shaking the hands of the measly faithful, grateful they weren’t, I suppose, a lynch mob.
I turned my back on them, headed to town, stopped in the Cellar; used to be the students’ joint. But they, like everyone else, were getting takeout, bringing it on back home. Cider and Red Bull, instant wasted, from A to out of your fucking head in jig time. The Cellar had a flash coffee dock, with even a barista.
You’ve truly lived too long when an Irish guy, in a mock mid-Atlantic accent, asks,
“How would you like your java, sir?”
Way too tempting a question to answer truthfully. The bar was way too flash, too brightly lit. No hiding of blemishes here, every dark mark of my existence on neon. About to turn when a guy sitting on a stool went,
“Jack?”
Took me a second, then, Tremlin, joined the force just as I was about to get my arse handed to me. Had run into him a few times, not the worst, which in Ireland is a huge compliment. He liked his pint so he couldn’t be all rotten. I moved back, shook his large calloused hand, like the hand of a man who’d tilled fields-and recently. I recalled he’d a rep as a brawler. An essential if increasingly discreet part of most police forces. He asked,
“Buy you a jar?”
“Great.”
The barman, obviously related to the barista, judging by his fake tan and delicately tied ponytail, asked,
“Like to try the new concoction?”
Fuck.
Concoction.
The pubs I frequented, that word usually came with a phone warning, going,
“You have five minutes to clear the premises.”
I asked,
“What is it?”
“Lager and Guinness blended.”
“Holy fuck, you’re kidding.”
He wasn’t.
We’d got past, somehow, that we no longer owned our national beverage, even tried to forget the whole Guinness-Lite nonsense, and let’s never mention the White Guinness, but with lager?
Fucksake.
He did manage to pour a half-decent pint and Tremlin and I took it to a table. He sighed, said,
“God be with the days we could smoke.”
In a spirit of misguided camaraderie, I joked,
“And beat the be-Jaysus out of the public.”
Phew-oh, that sank.
Cloud of utter darkness flitted across his features. I could sense his whole body tense. I lied quickly, added,
“You’re looking fit, my man.”
Lame, huh?
He downed his shot and I signaled for another. I tried,
“Not your usual pub, this?”
He gave me a long look, then,
“Nothing is usual no more.”
He managed to include the whole of life’s rich tapestry in this. The drinks came. I handed the guy a twenty, wondering if in these days of baristas that even covered one drink. Tremlin hugged the glass with both hands, said,
“Your girl is making waves.”
Threw me.
Kelly?
Nope.
He continued.
“She was responsible for that major drug gig, you know, got some serious points there.”
I nodded, implying, a good un indeed, then he added, as if it was a throwaway,
“Pity she’s a fucking lezzie.”
As I took a moment to grasp this casual slice of ice bigotry, he knocked back his drink, said,
“My daughter, Oonagh, she finished college and, like every other young wan, looks like she’ll have to emigrate so I was wondering. .”
Let his wonder hang there, like a sad dead prayer. I asked,
“What?”
He fidgeted, took a whiskey breath, said,
“If you’d. . ask Mr. Reardon. She’s a great girl, real go-getter, he wouldn’t regret it.”
Fuck.
I asked,
“Reardon, why would you think he’d listen to me?”
He gave a sly smile, ugly in its nicotine blemish, said,
“You’re his go-boy. Jesus, no shame in that, we all have to eat some shite, right? Am I right, boyo?”
Go-boy.
Count the ways I was phrasing to tell him to fuck his own self when he said,
“Course, no one eats for free, right Jack-o? So I could put some info your way, as a. . sweetener.”
For once, I bit down, said nothing, waited.
He looked around, as if the pub were hanging on our every golden word, then,
“I know where the cunt is.”
You had to admit, the guy had new ways of using the language to foul and besmirch. I stared at him and he said,
“The American nutter, I know where she went.”
At least I figured his toilet mouth had wound down and I asked,
“Why would I want to know?”
He said, staring me right in the eye,
“Sure, the whole town knows you were riding the bitch.”
34
Manson was a crazy fucky, tipsy with demons which paced him a degree higher than Nick Copeland because Nick had everything to live for, had put his family first (so had Manson, well, in a way) and Nick had failed without even a hint of notoriety.
Prince Pauclass="underline" “I would much sooner talk scandal in a drawing room than treason in a cellar.”
Time ago, in The Killing of the Tinkers, a former priest said to me, bitterness leaking over every measured word,
“Jack, a terrible darkness is hovering. It’s going to be the passing of the priests, where once they trod on hallowed ground, now they will tread on the thinnest ice. Lunch parties will be replaced by lynch ones. To wear the Roman collar will be to wear a bull’s-eye on their back.”
I’d had a few, the Jay sinking nicely, whispering nice warm lies to me, and I trivialized his prophecy, said,
“Arrah, go on, they will always pull off the ecclesiastical smoke and mirrors.”
He’d stared into a dwindling pint of the black, seeing nothing but demons, howling ones, said,
“You will see, not so much the end of days but a rise in such as
Scientology
The Black Arts
Sham clairvoyants
Fundamentalism.”
He’d stood abruptly, shot out of the pub, and, in those days, I cared enough to follow him. He was huddled in a doorway, gulping down a cigarette as if it were Holy Communion, he coughed, and I asked him,
“What will you do?”
He gave me a look of utter surprise, as if the thought never occurred to him, said,
“I’m going the Irish way.”
I mused on that, then tried,
“Pretend it isn’t happening or, worse, confined to the U.K.”
He laughed, no relation to joy or humor, said,
“I’ll slow-drink myself to oblivion.”
I made light of it, said,