The artificial calm. Breathe in and out, then resumed the letter of insanity.
“Did you have to go and grab a drink, Jack-o?”
It was eerie and downright spooky how she could predict my responses.
I read on.
Search la femme and I will admit, the nun, Maeve? She was the very soul of hospitality but, truly, a silly bitch. She bought every line of bullshit I trotted out. I nearly offed her there and then and, get this, you’ll laugh (if not yer actual ha ha), she gave me a rosary. You think it would be ironically religious if I strangled her with them there beads (South Carolina accent here; pay attention!)?
Would killing a nun merit a special fire in hell and, make no mistake, mister, you and me are hell-bent. I love you Jack, moi coeur, but you have become a distraction and, let’s be honest, a tiny bit boring and, while we’re deep sharing here, fellah, what is the fucking deal with the dogs? I mean seriously? To lose one, okay, no harm, no foul, and tragic and all that good shite, but two, c’mon, what’s that about?
Deep sigh here my alky friend, can you hear it, like a cry dredged up from the pit of an emerald soul. I gotta fly so get your fucking act together and do something. Don’t be a whiny arse all your wasted life. One last memo afore I go. You look at the green dragon and listen up! It’s Emerald you stupid bollix.
Yours in infamy,
Em.
Xxxxxxxxxx
P.S. Did you get the lit references to
Joyce,
Kafka,
Rilke,
South Park?
The difference between
A ghost
And
A banshee
Is
Seeing a ghost is literally
A scare;
Seeing a banshee
Is death.
32
Sister Maeve had been in my life for over a decade. And, oddly enough, we hadn’t become enemies. She had once enlisted my help in Church matters and per usual I muddled through, not doing a whole lot but not really causing a whole lot of damage, either. She was the outreach for the Poor Clares and if she were the face of a new church, it might yet survive. She had a sweet tooth and loved few things more than Black Forest gâteau. I liked her a lot.
En route to warn her about Emily, I stopped at Griffin’s Bakery, which specialized in a wonderful bread called the grinder. Sounds like a euphemism for Trump, who had been mercilessly skewed by the brilliant Alec Baldwin on SNL. A line had already formed for grinders.
Such was their word-of-mouth fame.
I thought about the perfect pint:
Hold the glass at 45-degree angle
Pour slowly
To halfway
Stop
Go for a smoke
Return and fill
Let sit
For the head to form
Voilà!
The papers screamed not of
Aleppo,
Or
Trump,
Or even
The looming Guards strike.
No.
Kim flaming Kardashian.
You believe it?
Robbed, bound and gagged, in her exclusive Paris apartment.
Of ten million in jewels.
Her bodyguard was away in a nightclub. Whatever else you thought about clan Kardashian and, God knows, one tried to think nothing at all, you had to admit to Kim’s ability to make money. Okay, so she made it by showing every bit of her bod in every possible way but, fuck, last year she made sixty-five million.
Yeah, read that and freaking weep.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at who he gave it to. Young girls didn’t want to be Hillary Clinton (God forbid) or Katie Hopkins; they wanted the Twitter/Instagram fame of a vacuous Kardashian.
Woe is indeed fucking us.
Big time.
And I was going to visit a nun.
From
A
Kardashian
To
A
Nun.
From
A
Jack
To
A
King.
Big hit when I was a kid.
Like a bad title for a bad Lifetime Channel movie.
I walked the William Joyce route.
Infamous during the Second World War as the voice of Nazi propaganda.
Known as Lord Haw-Haw.
The night before the British hanged him, he wrote,
My Dear Margaret
I am anxious that you should
Go to Galway and see the docks,
Long Walk,
O’Brien’s Bridge,
Nile Lodge,
Taylor’s Hill,
Lenaboy Castle on the Corrib,
But, above all,
The stretch from Salthill to Blackrock
The promenade where we used to live behind.
As I reached Sister Maeve’s small house I didn’t realize that over the years I had
Dangerously
Recklessly
Missed the point.
But now
I had missed the play.
Mystery writers like to utilize misdirection. I had not only
Been misled but played, as British novelists say,
Like a sap.
Sister Maeve opened her door with
“Oh, the Lord sent you.”
I thought,
Probably not the Lord.
She wrapped me in a warm Galway hug and, take my battered word, you have never really been hugged until a nun grabs you. Then she stood back, surveyed me, said,
“Come in and have tea.”
I went into her spotless living room, and she indicated the comfortable chair. I handed over a box of Black Forest and a bottle of Baileys and she literally cooed with delight, though protesting,
“You shouldn’t have, you lovely man.”
Me and lovely have rarely inhabited the same sentence. She opened the Black Forest box and swooned.
“These are a wicked temptation.”
She made tea and put the treats on a dainty plate. Then sat, looked right at me, said,
“You have a gorgeous daughter.”
Fuck
Sweet
Fuck
Again.
I had come to warn her of the danger of Emily and now what?
“Oh, by the way, my daughter is going to kill you!”
Yeah, that would fly.
Maeve put her cup down, rose and went to the cupboard, took out a heavy large crucifix, said,
“Your girl gave me this.”
There was a question lurking in there so I waited as she handed me the cross. She said,
“It is a beautiful piece but odd.”
I echoed,
“Odd?”
“Yes, see how the figure of Christ is huddled to the left, leaving a space almost vacant to the right.”
Indeed, the figure seemed to be almost cowering away to the left. I said,
“It is certainly...”
Searched for a less threatening description and gave
“Different.”
Maeve had a tiny smile in play, as if she shouldn’t be amused, then,
“Your girl said she wanted to leave room for you on the cross.”