‘Just… why?’ I spread my hands, cigarette between my teeth. ‘That’s what I wanna fucking know! How? How could you fuck-up so fucking hard? How did you end up just standing there, like a prick, while some guy gets his head kicked in by your fucking degenerate mates? You fucking moron. You idiot. I mean, who even gets themselves into that situation besides you?’
That was what I’d wanted to say.
I turned, looking down, and Eamonn stared right back at me with the defiance of youth, a thirty-five-year-old teenager.
‘We both know I wouldn’t have been sent down if I hadn’t been your kid brother.’ He raised his eyebrows, taunting me with those stupid fucking tramlines. ‘They wanted to make an example of me. To scare you and Dad! And you guys didn’t even fucking care. You didn’t give a shit about family—’
‘What do you think this is, the lost sequel to The Godfather?’
‘You’re too scared to admit you and Dad owe me. They got to you, putting me away. That’s the only reason they didn’t come after you guys harder.’ He pointed at me. ‘That’s why you don’t wanna know anything! That’s why Dad can’t even look me in the eye!’
‘I owe you? Jesus.’ I shook my head.
‘Yeah, you do! I took one for you guys! Hell, I took fifteen!’
‘Because you were stupid. I’m not giving a job to someone who is that fucking stupid.’
He leapt at me.
I went to smack him down but he caught me off balance – stronger than he used to be – and I dropped the cigarette on my coat as we both went over the edge of the porch. I landed on top of him in a flowerbed.
‘The fuck are you doing!’
He swiped at me but I had him pinned down. Reaching out, he flung a handful of soil into my face instead.
I rolled off him and scrambled to my feet. He did likewise and tried to kick me. I jumped back onto the lawn, swatting dirt out of my eyes, and he seemed to lose heart. Eamonn ground to a halt, standing with one foot on the grass and one in the flowers, and exhaled.
I brushed my coat off, scowling. ‘Fuck’s sake, this is expensive!’
‘You’re being such a bastard.’
He sounded like a boy then. It was hard to stay angry.
I rolled my eyes, hoping that nothing had stained. ‘Thought you’d have learnt to fight a bit.’
‘It was just the porch. It was luck you came out on top.’
‘You tried to kick me. What are you, a little bitch?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Well, I’m not the one who’s going around kicking people.’
He snorted.
I put my hands in my pockets and looked at the black sky, and across the garden. Sure enough, tucked away where the lawn ended and trees began, was the trampoline. I sighed and started making my way towards it.
‘Where are you going?’ Eamonn called after me.
‘There’s a trampoline.’
I shrugged my coat off, dropped it on the grass – it was dirty now anyway – took off my shoes and climbed up onto the springs. With an awkward manoeuvre that made me feel about seventy years old, I rolled onto the mat and stood up.
‘Why do they even have this?’ Eamonn hopped around below me, trying to take off his trainers.
‘For my kids.’ I started bouncing. ‘Makes no sense really, they’re only here every so often.’
‘Who’s Eli?’ he asked, climbing up onto the mat next to me and bouncing on the opposite side. ‘That’s his name, right? The quiet English guy?’
There was no safety net.
‘He worked with Dad, ages ago.’
‘He kinda creeps me out. Has that look of the guys inside you’d wanna avoid.’
‘I think he likes the idea that he creeps people out.’
He gave me a shove in mid-air and jumped away. I could barely see the mat beneath our feet it was so dark. I could see Eamonn though, white teeth grinning. Springs creaking and exhales, coughs. I looked back at the house. The top lights were on, but no one had followed us out.
‘Do you remember when we used to jump between the two walls outside the old place?’ he said.
‘Yup, I remember vividly the sensation of busting my lip open.’
‘’S what happens when you try and eat a brick, man.’
‘Ha! Exactly what Dad said, the fucker. You were the one crying though, running inside screaming “It’s got blood! It’s got blood!” That was funny.’
Eamonn had to stop jumping before me. Smoker’s lungs, I suspected. He sat down with his legs splayed, breathing hard.
I carried on for a while, enjoying the sensation of cool air whipping against my face, jogging him up and down a little. Maybe it was just because he looked so small below me, but I started to feel sorry for him. It was a dangerous emotion, pity. It could drag you into all sorts of crazy shit for the sake of making someone feel better about themselves. I was sorry that he’d had to spend fifteen years inside. I was sorry that he didn’t know my kids. I was sorry for being an asshole, for not knowing what to say. Shouldn’t we at least try to be better at being human? Damned as we all were, shouldn’t we make the best of it?
Eamonn lay flat against the mat and with every pound of the springs he jolted.
The lights at the top of the house went out.
CHAPTER FOUR
Daisy
People said I shouldn’t have gone back to work so quickly, after Seven left the way she did. Not least because every time I came in I found myself looking at the patch of floor I’d crawled across in a pool of my own blood after she’d shot me, all the way from the middle of the club to the bar. I’d caught her trying to leave with the stolen money. She’d convinced me it hadn’t been her fault. She’d been my friend so I’d believed her, and I’d said that if her escape was to look convincing she’d have to shoot me first.
It didn’t seem like such a big deal walking in that morning, the morning after the morning after the day Ronnie left. But then I’d thought it would be amusing to take a half hit of acid before I left the house so not many things were gonna seem like a big deal for the foreseeable future.
I was glad to be away from humans, inside on my own.
My boyfriend said he found the sight of nightclubs during the day depressing. But I found the opposite. Turn the lights down and fill them with people and I’d happily see any place nuked, but during the day they were unwanted space for me to relax in.
I kicked off my shoes and padded around in my socks, going upstairs to get the cash float out of the office and bringing it downstairs again.
Noel was never here in the mornings any more.
I should ask for a pay-rise.
It wasn’t as if I was a fucking manager. But I didn’t see anyone else here with the cash and list of stock to be ordered, or checking on the gun I’d insisted we keep under the bar.
Noel had commented that it was a bit ‘dramatic and American’ to keep it there, but then – as I’d pointed out at the time – he wasn’t the one who’d been shot on the fucking premises.
Turning on the speakers, I put on some violin dubstep and zoned out.
It’s funny how Hollywood makes it look like a gunshot wound to the shoulder is something you can run off. It blew my fucking mind how much that wasn’t the case.
First off, you couldn’t walk or run because the very impact of being shot, before the pain even starts, is like being hit by a train. For fuck-knows how long afterwards, you’re on the floor looking up at the ceiling. No thought. No identity. No consciousness at all. When thought did return it was as if you’d forgotten even being shot. You start picking out faces in the copper pipes criss-crossing above you. Not entirely unlike the sensation of being on acid, right before the most nightmarish of trips.
You look to your left and your body has been replaced by some pulsing, gushing hunk of meat. There’s just red. Your outsides have become blood and you think I’m dying. I’m definitely fucking dying.
But that doesn’t bother you as much as you think it will b
ecause you can’t move and there’s no pain yet, just a swimming sensation like the floor is dissolving below you. But it’s just your brain trying to deal, trying not to break down with trauma.
Then the screaming comes, the faint ringing that existed only in your head but you now realize is coming from outside you, that screaming, animal screaming… You realize that it’s you, and you sound like you’re dying.
You look at the state of your shoulder and think about touching it but you want to throw up at the sight.
The phone behind the bar rings and suddenly that sound becomes the difference between life and death.
You roll onto your right side and shout at it with your voice, voice you’ve only just remembered you have. But language – fuck – language is barely a concept. Words are broken – not going to save you – no fucking use to anybody.
You roll onto your back and push your entire body towards the bar with your legs, until you realize that’s ridiculous and try to get to your feet, because the phone is going to ring off eventually and if it does you’re going to die.
You cry, because even kneeling hurts. The entire upper half of your body is agony and you cry like it’s going to help but it doesn’t, so you put one foot down and ease all your weight onto that and you rise, blinded, until you can see the phone, but it’s stopped ringing.
‘No! No, don’t!’
You lurch forwards, left arm hung uselessly across your chest, and scramble around the bar to the phone, and think, I don’t know anyone’s fucking number.
Then you look back at the trail of blood you’ve left behind and wonder how there’s still any left in your body, and everything’s gone numb and cold and you think that’s a pretty solid symptom of dying, right there.
Your mobile is right there.
Your mobile. You pick it up and call Nic, because it didn’t occur to you to call anyone else and you sound inconsolable and mental so he panics and then you explain:
‘I’ve been shot, Seven was here and she shot me!’
‘Where?’
‘At work.’
‘No, where did she shoot you, you fucking idiot!’
‘Oh… My shoulder.’
‘Get off the fucking phone and call an ambulance!’
‘But… Can’t you come?’
‘What use am I gonna be, I’m not a fucking medical professional. Hang up and call an ambulance now!’
‘But—’
He hangs up and it’s such an unsupportive gesture that you start crying again. And then you call an ambulance, and on the way to the hospital later you consider that he might have been right. But you never tell him that.
You also never mention how you poured a third of a bottle of Grey Goose over yourself because that’s what you’d seen in films, and collapsed to the floor writhing, smacking your head on the bar-top on the way down, because you’d never experienced debilitating pain like that in your fucking life. Luckily, before you had tried to be clever, a good deal of it had been poured down your throat, and the paramedics, when they arrived, didn’t ask why you were covered in vodka.
I realized I’d been staring at the money in my hands and listening to the music and not much else.
Someone called, ‘Hello? Anyone here?’
It wasn’t Noel. It was a woman.
Fuck, try not to seem high, I thought.
Try not to seem high.
‘Um… yeah!’
I put down the float but stayed behind the bar. I only felt safe in the vicinity of that gun now.
But I needn’t have worried, at least not for that reason. It was Edie, the club’s owner. She stepped down onto the club floor in alarmingly high heels and waved.
‘Noel’s not here,’ I said, maybe too quickly.
‘It’s actually you I wanted to see,’ she replied, taking off her leopard-print jacket and slinging it onto the back of a sofa booth. ‘You have time for a chat?’
Edie, at close quarters, was fucking formidable. A right hook from her would probably take the nose off my face. She was slim but there was something hard about her; athletic, like a cheerleader or a swimmer. Her features were large and intensely defined. Nothing petite.
‘Um… yeah. I guess so.’
I nervously emerged from behind the bar, concentrating too hard on walking normally. I hadn’t banked on making conversation with a fellow human. Facial features on acid, even a tiny amount, appeared uncanny and alien.
Edie sat at one of the tables with her high heels up and crossed. ‘Is the coffee machine on?’
‘No, I… No, sorry, it takes about forty minutes to warm up.’
Words. Words. Focus on the words.
‘Doesn’t matter. Sit down.’ Gesturing at the seat opposite.
I did as I was told, glad to be sitting again, trying to avoid her face, placing my hands firmly under my thighs so I couldn’t fiddle with them. I could feel, at the edge of my consciousness, that I was dangerously close to freaking out.
‘How long have you been working here?’ Edie asked.
‘Um, I don’t know. A year and a half?’
‘Ronnie mentioned that Nic Caruana put you forward.’
‘Well, he… put me forward, yeah.’
‘And Nic Caruana is your boyfriend?’ A small and slightly vicious smile spread across her face.
‘Kinda, yeah. Why?’
‘No reason. Me and Nic go way back. Isn’t he a love?’
I didn’t like the implication in her tone, so I just nodded.
‘So what exactly do you do here?’ she continued eventually, patting her hair.
I hadn’t interviewed for my job. Nic got it for me, because I’d been bored and wanted some pocket money to avoid freeloading off him. Every time I was asked for any sort of job description, it felt like a lie at worst and a blag at best.
‘Well, I run the bar most days. I take bookings, process memberships, I order stock.’ I tried to stop fidgeting but only succeeded in swaying left and right like a mental patient. ‘I’ve hired people, like… I help interview girls who wanna work here. I close most nights. I organize the bill, like who’s onstage. We have bands playing here now, which was my idea. If something’s not working and Noel and Ronnie aren’t around I get it fixed. Um… loads of stuff really. It probably sounds like more than it is coz Noel or Ronnie are here most nights. It’s just recently with all the… stuff that’s been going on they’ve been busier than usual. I think.’
Stop talking. For the love of fuck, stop talking.
There was a long silence.
She said, ‘You seem like an enterprising young lady.’
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, or what it was meant to mean.
‘There was some trouble here.’ Edie took her shoes off the desk, sounding grave. ‘I’m not going to pussyfoot around you, my love. Noel said you were shot. I’m very sorry about that. If you were ever looking for any financial compensation then feel free to ask me anytime.’
It had never occurred to me that I might be owed anything. I shrugged.
‘What happened?’ she asked, eyeballing me, with eyes almost identical to Ronnie’s. ‘I know what the boys are saying, but you were here. This Seven they’re talking about, she was a friend of yours?’
Christ, I thought. She knows I’m fucking lying.
‘I don’t really know that much. Seven worked here and we were… friends. Well, we talked a lot. Noel and Ronnie had been saying someone was informing on where they were keeping their… money, drugs and stuff. I didn’t realize it was Seven until I came in one morning and found her looking for a bag of money I’d found in her locker. I tried to hold her up but she shot me and then she ran.’
‘So you must have suspected, if you went into her locker?’
I hesitated. ‘I don’t think I suspected her of that. I just thought she was acting weird and hiding something. It might have been drugs or whatever. So I went into her locker that morning and that was when I found the bag.’
‘And then?’
‘On the way to the hospital I tried to call Noel but he wasn’t answering. So I called Nic and then Ronnie and they both came.’
‘Where was Noel?’
‘Um, well, she drugged him. He was at his place.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘So she what? Broke in?’
‘No, she didn’t break in, she was… there…’
‘With Noel,’ she finished for me.
I couldn’t tell if Edie had known that Noel and Seven were involved or not. She may just be confirming stories, or she could be pumping me for information and I could have just fucked over both my employers in the space of a minute. It was fucking terrifying. She was fucking terrifying.
She sat back in her chair and thought for a while.
I started chewing the hard skin around my thumbnail.
‘As Noel put it so enthusiastically to me on the phone, you practically run this place when they’re not here?’
‘I guess.’ There wasn’t anything I could say that would make things worse at this point. ‘He might be exaggerating a bit.’
‘Have you fucked either of them?’
‘Excuse me?’ I almost choked out the words.
‘I need to know that your relationship with your employers is strictly professional and not clouded by anything… else.’ She waved her hand in mid-air.
‘No! I mean, no. Never. I mean, Ronnie’s married and Noel’s… Just no. Even if I was single… No way.’
‘Well, you seem repelled enough by the idea to convince me.’ She grinned. ‘Now, is there anything else you want to tell me?’
I hoped there wasn’t. I wondered if she knew Noel was going to AA meetings again, but didn’t risk mentioning it. I’d probably done enough damage for one day.
I shook my head and started to get up, sensing the interrogation was over. ‘Look, Miss Franco—’
‘Edie, darling.’
‘Edie… I haven’t got anyone into trouble, have I? Because Seven was really smart. No one would have suspected her, ever. Whether they were shagging her or not.’
I’d flushed red in the process of making my grand statement and I averted my eyes. Edie had the air of someone who, at any moment, might just crush your skull to see what it looked like inside. Ronnie had that same air too, but it was more unnerving coming from a woman.
Road Kill Page 3