“Nothing,” he said to Cully. “It did nothing.”
Cully hawked, rolled down the window and spat out. He rolled the window back up slowly, as though listening for something. Fanning’s heart began to speed up.
“All I hear is ‘you don’t know this’ and ‘you’re clued out.’”
“You said that already.”
“You were actually listening to me? You know how hard writing is?”
“Pencil and paper. It can’t be that hard.”
“It’s damned hard. It’s the hardest thing. Nobody knows that.”
“Nobody…?”
“And I’m sick to death of people who…”
Fanning stopped. He glanced at Cully and saw that he seemed to be concentrating on something.
“I’m talking a lot, aren’t I.”
Cully nodded. Whatever he was interested in seemed to be in front of the speedometer.
“You do understand that, right? What I said about writing, being a writer?”
“What did you say about it?”
“I’m saying it’s tougher than anything. It takes it out of you like you wouldn’t believe. No-one gets it. No-one.”
Cully looked over.
“Yeah they do.”
“No they don’t,” Fanning said. “No way. No how.”
“Shut up,” said Cully.
“Oh, it’s a one-way street, is it? You say whatever you want — nothing most of the time, for Christ’s sake and I get told to shut up?”
“You’re yelling,” said Cully. “And I don’t like it. The yelling. So I’m telling you again, shut it.”
“‘Shut it.’ Who says ‘shut it’ here in Dublin, in Ireland? You’re English, you’re Irish. You’re this, you’re that. But you tell me nothing. What the hell use is that?”
Cully was staring at him.
“You’re losing it,” he said. “Calm down.”
“How often do you do this, snorting-”
“None of your business. And shut up.”
“You’re undercover,” Fanning said. “That’s it. Now I get it. You’re trying to entrap me. That’s what’s going on.”
“Listen to yourself,” said Cully. “Do you know how paranoid you sound?”
“Admit it, come on.”
Cully shook his head. He began feeling around in his pocket for something.
“See,” said Fanning. “Don’t think I’m blind, right? Or stupid. Treating me like some kind of child, like an iijit. You don’t know me — nobody knows me, what I do. What I can do.”
“Really.”
“There you go again!”
“What?”
“Discounting, that’s what.”
“Discount?”
“Fobbing me off. Like…”
“Who?”
“A guy called Breen.”
“I don’t know any Breen.”
Fanning realized that he was beginning to sweat. Things were getting stranger, like when he’d had the flu or a fever. He felt almost painfully alert to everything now. He could feel the blood going around in his body. He could hear the sound of Cully rubbing his eyelids.
He stared at the islands of light in the deserted street ahead. Flashes of images came to him, a satellite image zooming down to nighttime Dublin, hovering over the black Liffey waters nearby, over the flat where his wife and child were turning over in their sleep.
“You’re off your trolley,” Cully said. “Look at you, listen to you.”
Fanning felt his chest was rising up through his throat. He had to go, had to. He imagined himself sprinting away along the wet pavements all the way to Hope or some place and then back.
Cully was turning a lighter over in his hand. He lifted a joint to his lips then and lighted it. The end of the paper sparked as he drew hard once, paused, and drew again.
“You smoke dope too?”
Cully ignored him, taking two more long pulls. Then he held his breath and passed the joint over.
“This will calm you down, Superman.”
“I am calm.”
Cully coughed but kept scanning the mirrors.
“So what’s next?” Fanning asked.
“What’s next?”
“Yeah, what’s next?”
“We’re ditching this car is what.”
“But what then?”
“So far as I know you’re going home to your missus,” Cully murmured. “And I’m off about my business.”
“That’s it?”
“Was that you a minute ago, saying you had to go home right now?”
“I know. But I’ve got my second wind.”
He passed the joint back to Cully and watched the eddies of smoke that he released every few moments rising and then sliding toward the window.
“How long does it last?”
“What last?”
“The coke.”
Fanning reached out, his sleeve held by his fingers, to wipe condensation from the windscreen. The rain had stopped, for now, at least.
“You get your fifteen minutes of being God,” said Cully. “That enough for you?”
Fanning saw a moving shadow down the street. Somebody walking.
“And you crash afterwards. Right?”
“Not right away.”
The person walking was a man. He was carrying a packsack on his shoulder. Fanning looked over at Cully. There was something disappointing in seeing Cully trying to get the last toke, taking short stabs at it.
The man walking sidestepped the brimming puddles, but then he missed one. Fanning sniggered.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“Better that than yelling your head off,” said Cully, rolling down the window and blowing out a volley of smoke.
The man stopped and drew out a map. He angled it, held it up, turned to the light to read it. Fanning knew by Cully’s stillness that Cully too was watching him.
The man lowered the map and turned to face the end of the street. Then he turned back and resumed walking.
“Talking to himself,” Fanning murmured. “Must be local.”
Within a few steps the man had noticed them. His gait slowed slightly and he pulled the pack tighter on his shoulder. How amazing to be able to read a person’s mind by how they walk Fanning thought. How easy it was now.
Every minute movement was apparent to Fanning now: steps taking him away from the curb toward the wall the closer he got to the car. The hand now holding the strap of the packsack tighter, the head apparently turned away but the lateral vision locked on the car. He heard the footsteps now, saw the white lines on his runners against the wet, glistening pavement.
The man slowed and readjusted the strap.
“What the hell,” Cully murmured.
The man was almost stopped now, uncertain.
Fanning tried to see into the shadows on the man’s face. The man sniffed the air and nodded appreciatively.
“Good,” he said. “Is good.”
Fanning’s mind teemed with detaiclass="underline" a foreign accent, twenty or twenty-one; pale with an excuse for a goatee; a smell of saturated clothes, cigarettes.
“Ah, you can maybe give…?”
The man mimicked a quick pull on a joint.
“No much,” he added. “Just one, man?”
“Where are you from?”
“From Poland.”
“Poland.”
“Yeah man. Is like Ireland, you know? The people, nice. Cool, you know?”
“You’re from Poland, and you’re looking for…?”
“Fun, man. Good times. This I hear, Dublin is good times. People they are fun.”
“Fun? You’re looking for fun?”
The man made a self-deprecatory smile.
“No much English. Fun is, cool, you know? Good times.”
Again he raised his two fingers to his lips.
“How do you know we’re not the Guards?”
“The Guards? I don’t understand.”
“Guards. Police. Politzei?”
“Ah. Politzei is German. Yes. I go Germany but no like. Some Germans people cool, nice, but not all. No, no.”
“Pretty high standards you have, haven’t you?”
The smell of the man’s breath seemed to be everywhere now.
“Uh-uh, no understand. Sorry? Is big problem, this English, I am-”
“So you come here and you wander around the place looking to score?”
“Shut up,” said Cully, “just leave him.”
He turned the key. The engine didn’t catch at first.
The man shrugged, and made another cautious smile and he nodded. Now the engine caught. Fanning’s chest felt like it was ready to explode. He tugged hard on the door release.