Surviving Michael

by Birchall, Joseph

  ‘If Charlie gets caught,’ Nick says, ‘Plunkett Motors losing their contract with the Department of Justice will be the least of our worries.’

  Danny mutters something under his breath which we all take as reluctant acceptance.

  ‘And what if I do get caught?’ I ask.

  ‘Well,’ Nick says, ‘everyone’s hair stays the same.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Any more questions?’ he asks, avoiding eye contact with me.

  ‘No,’ Liam replies taking more fries off my plate, ‘all sounds good to me. You don’t punch a gift horse in the mouth.’

  ‘I’ve no fucking idea what Liam means,’ Danny says, ‘but I suppose seeing Charlie driving over a hundred miles per hour down the M50 will be worth it.’

  ‘With the sirens on,’ Nick adds.

  I look in the mirror again and touch my hair. ‘So when do I have to do it?’ I ask.

  We pass by the first trickles of a fast food seeking drunken Saturday night crowd as we leave and make our way to Danny’s car.

  Danny

  BY THE TIME I drive to my dad’s garage, it’s nearly three am. We sit outside for half an hour or so. I tell them I want to see when the security van will do his rounds to check on the place, but I haven’t a clue if that happens. I’m just trying to summon up the courage to go in. I think they know that but aren’t saying. At first Charlie said he was coming with me. Then I said I’d go on my own. Then Liam said he’d go. There was no way that was happening. Finally it was decided Nick would go in with me.

  ‘I need a smoke,’ Nick says.

  ‘You can’t smoke in the car,’ I tell him.

  ‘I’ll go outside.’

  ‘No wait,’ Charlie says, ‘you can’t smoke outside. It’s too conspicu… it’s too noticeable. Roll the window down.’

  ‘He’s not smoking in the car,’ I tell him. ‘Nick, you’ll have to wait.’

  ‘I’m an addict. I can’t wait,’ he says.

  We bicker back and forth like this until Liam says, ‘lads, I think I need a shit.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I say, ‘come on, Nick. Let’s go. Everyone else wait here.’

  Apart from a few security lights over the forecourt, the building is in darkness. We cross the road and head straight to the front door, unlock the metal shutters and pull them up slowly. No matter how carefully I do it, it still sounds like a tank coming down the street. Behind the shutter is the glass door, and this I also unlock, and in one movement, I open it, push Nick inside and close it behind us. The alarm starts to beep its countdown, and I tap in the four digit code: One, two, two, one.

  ‘So far, so good,’ Nick says.

  I ignore this and take out my phone, turning on the torch application to light my way.

  ‘Turn it off,’ Nick says and holds his hands up to his face. ‘The cameras. They’ll see our faces.’

  ‘They’re infra-red. They’ve been recording us since we crossed the road, and they can see your face just fine with or without my phone.’

  ‘Should we have worn balaclavas then?’

  ‘It’s not the movies, Nick. There isn’t someone sitting somewhere watching a hundred screens. They record everything. The cameras won’t be checked unless...’ I don’t finish the sentence but instead climb the stairs to the offices. Nick follows behind.

  At the top I look down on the darkness of the garage floor below. I can hear the large clock ticking on the back wall. I wasn’t even aware it gave off a ticking noise. The main shutter door creaks rhythmically in and out as the wind pushes against it. The whole building is like a giant beast sleeping soundly.

  ‘It’s a bit scary, isn’t it?’ Nick says.

  ‘You should see it during the day,’ I tell him.

  I only left this place yesterday afternoon, never to return again. Christ, was it only yesterday?

  I go straight to the small cabinet on the wall where the keys for all the Garda cars in Rathfarnham are kept. Sometimes they forget to lock it, but I can see as I walk towards it that its metal doors are fully closed, and the brass lock is hooked in place. I didn’t want to, but I go into my dad’s office to get the key. All the faces from his framed pictures stare down at me, but I ignore them and open the first drawer in his desk. It’s not there.

  I open the second drawer. Then the final bottom one. I look in all the drawers in his desk. Then on top of his desk.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Nick comes into the office. ‘What’s wrong?’ he whispers.

  ‘There’s a lock on the cabinet where the Garda car keys are kept.’

  ‘Can’t you open it?’

  ‘Of course I can’t fucking open it.’

  ‘Okay, okay, relax,’ he says. ‘Where are the keys normally kept?’

  ‘In the cabinet of course.’

  ‘No, the key for the cabinet. Where should that be?’

  ‘It’s supposed to be here in my dad’s desk.’

  ‘And it’s not?’ he asks.

  I look at him.

  ‘Okay, okay. Where else could it be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I tell him, ‘he could have brought it home with him. He could have hid it. I don’t know.’

  ‘I can’t see a fucking thing,’ he says and goes over to the window and opens the blinds slightly to let in some moon light. We both start to look for the hidden key.

  After about five minutes, I’m about to tell Nick it’s pointless when there’s the sound of a door slamming closed downstairs. We both freeze and stare at one another. I run to the window. Charlie is standing outside the car but leaning inside and flashing the lights of the car.

  ‘Someone’s inside,’ I whisper to Nick.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ he hisses back.

  ‘What’ll we do?’

  We hear footsteps on the garage floor. We walk slowly out of my dad’s office but a light from a torch shines up into the main offices. The torch light stops on the opened door.

  ‘You left the door open,’ I whisper.

  ‘How the fuck did I know...’

  ‘Sssshhh.’

  The torch light moves away from the door and the footsteps start again.

  ‘They’re coming up,’ Nick says.

  ‘My dad’s going to kill me.’

  Nick runs to the window and closes the blinds. I hear the footsteps begin to climb the stairs. Nick looks around the room, then goes over to my dad’s desk and crawls under it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.

  He sticks his head out from under the desk. ‘Hiding,’ he says and disappears again.

  The door to the outer offices opens further and the torch light enters the room. I duck behind the door. The beam of light points into our office. Silence. The light approaches. I side-step very slowly and crouch behind a filing cabinet just before the torch comes through the door.

  The light switch is flicked and the room explodes in bright fluorescent light. I shut my eyes tight in pain.

  Liam

  ‘NICK. DANNY. Are yous in here?’

  Nick’s head pops up from behind the desk. He’s rubbin’ his eyes.

  ‘What the fuck are you doin’?’ I ask him.

  ‘Liam?’ he says.

  ‘Turn off the fucking lights,’ Danny shouts but I can’t see him. He jumps out from behind a fuckin’ filin’ cabinet beside me and frightens the shite out of me, then rushes past me and turns out the lights.

  ‘What are you doin’ in here?’ Danny asks me.

  ‘I told you I needed a crap,’ I tell him. ‘I was touchin’ cloth, man. I’d no choice.’

  ‘I told you to wait in the car,’ he says to me.

  ‘Charlie wants to know what’s takin’ you so fuckin’ long.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Liam,’ Nick says. ‘You frightened the shit out of us.’ Nick falls back into the chair in relief and takes a few deep breaths.

  ‘Yous are in here about twenty minutes,’ I tell them. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘
We can’t find the poxy key to the cabinet,’ Nick says.

  ‘What cabinet?’

  ‘The cabinet with the fuckin’ keys in it,’ he says, hold your fuckin’ horses. Where is it?’

  ‘Don’t break the lock,’ Danny tells me.

  ‘It’s over here,’ Nick says and walks out of the office. ‘The small metal cabinet over there.’

  I go over and look at the small lock on the doors and hold it in my fingers.

  ‘It’s not locked,’ I tell them.

  ‘What?’ Nick says.

  ‘The lock is on it, but it’s not locked.’ I unhook the lock and open the two doors.

  ‘Shit,’ Danny says.

  ‘Come on,’ says Nick, ‘grab a set of keys and let’s go.’

  As Danny approaches the cabinet, I step to the side and wave me arm, as if I’m a host on a game show. He gives me a dirty look and I grin at him, then take a bite out of another biscuit.

  ‘You’re getting crumbs all over the place,’ he gives out to me.

  I just shake me head and walk away from the grumpy fucker.

  ‘Where’d you get them?’

  ‘Get wha’?’ I say.

  ‘The biscuits,’ he says, ‘where’d you get the biscuits?’

  ‘They were in the canteen. I’m fuckin’ starvin’,’ I tells him, but he just shakes his head and lays me with a few more dirty looks.

  ‘What’s your problem,’ I says to him, ‘you’re nickin’ the keys to a cop car. They’re hardly goin’ to care about a fuckin’ packet of Hobnobs.’

  ‘Nick, talk to him will you,’ he says.

  ‘Let’s just get out of here,’ Nick says.

  ‘I’m coming now,’ Danny says. ‘I forgot something in my dad’s office.’

  When Nick and me are halfway down the stairs, Danny catches up with us.

  ‘What’s that?’ Danny asks behind me.

  ‘What’s wha’?’ I ask.

  ‘The porno mag, that’s what,’ he says pointin’ at me back pocket.

  ‘What do you bleedin’ think it is.’

  ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘What’d you mean?’

  ‘What do you mean, “what do I mean?” Where did you get the magazine?’

  ‘It was in the jacks.’

  ‘Put it back.’

  ‘There’s loads down there. They’re not goin’ to miss one mag.’

  ‘Are you brain damaged, Liam?’

  ‘Come on,’ Nick says, ‘can we just go?’

  ‘Put it back,’ Danny says again.

  ‘Danny, let’s just get out of here. Please,’ Nick says.

  I realise why Danny is in such a mood tonight. At least, more than he normally is. Because of Ruby, of course. Charlie told me the whole story in the car, about the baby and all that.

  I’ll probably never have any kids of me own. It’s funny all me relatives and ancestors for thousands of years found someone to mate with and have kids, and all their kids found someone and had more kids. That goes back since the year dot, a long, long line of babies will now end with me. I doubt that if they were all able to look at me now today, they’d be too impressed after all that ridin’ each other and surviving dinosaurs they done. When you think about it, I am the final result of all that spunk and effort.

  ‘Sorry to hear about Ruby,’ I whisper back up the stairs to him. ‘Charlie told me all the tip bits in the car.’

  I’m not sure he’s heard me as his face is a bit blank.

  ‘Would she not even tell you who the bloke is?’ I try again.

  ‘It’s tidbits, and I don’t want to talk about it,’ he mutters.

  ‘Fuckin’ dump her. That’s what you should do.’

  ‘Liam, leave it,’ Nick says.

  I don’t see why I can’t have me own opinion about it. We get to the bottom of the stairs and the reception area is in darkness.

  ‘You should sort him out as well. That’s if you know who he is,’ I advise him.

  ‘Just shut the fuck up, Liam,’ Danny says. He stops at the exit door and taps in the first number of the alarm. BEEP.

  ‘Maybe she won’t tell you who it is ‘cause she doesn’t know.’

  Danny taps in the second number. BEEP.

  ‘She might have been with a few different blokes,’ I suggest.

  I see Danny close his eyes for a second and clench his fist, so he must be thinkin’ about that possibility. He opens his eyes and taps in the third number. BEEP.

  ‘Once,’ I tell him, ‘I heard of this other slapper...’

  Before I know anythin’, Danny pivots around at me and pushes me hard up against the wall. I’m a bit taken by surprise to be honest. Me head goes back and knocks off the switches on the electrical board behind me. All the lights in the reception and up the stairs come on.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Nick says, so I spin around and try to flick the lights back off quickly.

  Every light in the place comes on, includin’ the warehouse and the outside forecourt. To make matters worse, some 80’s hit from U2 blasts. Danny, who already has his hands on me, pushes me hard out of the way.

  ‘Get away from it,’ he practically screams at me, and starts flickin’ all the switches back up. The whole place falls back into darkness and there’s complete silence again. We all breathe heavily for a few moments.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say to them, but mainly Danny.

  There’s the sound of a car chargin’ towards us, just as its headlights fill the reception in white light. My first thought is it’s the cops but then the door opens and Charlie’s head pokes in the door.

  ‘Are you lot taking the piss?’ he asks.

  Nick

  THE SUN IS beginning to make itself known by the time we get back on the motorway. I look back at Charlie and Liam. Liam has his mouth open with his head against the window and Charlie’s head leans against Liam’s shoulders.

  ‘Have you got a camera?’ I ask Danny.

  He looks in the mirror at them and smiles, but the smile leaves his face too quickly.

  After a couple of minutes pass, I ask him, ‘have you thought about what you’re going to do about Ruby?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘It’s alright if you don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘No, it’s not only that,’ he says, ‘it’s just there’s nothing to say, that’s all.’

  He drives for another minute or two, occasionally biting on his nails.

  ‘I’m trying not to think about it,’ he says, ‘but the harder I try not to, the more I think about it. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought we had a future together. I just can’t believe that’s it. That it’s all gone so quickly. Sorry. You probably know a bit about that.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. So, are you going to leave her?’

  ‘Am I going to leave her? Of course I’m going to leave her. I told you what she did, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did I tell you everything?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘So how can you ask me that? Of course I’m going to leave her, Nick. There’s not even a question there.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I just thought...’

  ‘You just thought what?’

  ‘I just thought the two of you might be able to work things out, that’s all.’

  ‘Work things out? There’s nothing to work out, Nick. It’s over.’

  He lowers his window slightly and turns his head towards it to breathe in the cool night air.

  ‘And I didn’t leave her, by the way,’ he says after a few moments. ‘She left me.’

  ‘Oh sorry, I didn’t know she said she was leaving you as well.’

  ‘What? What does that mean? As well?’

  ‘That she said she was dumping you.’

  ‘She didn’t say she was dumping me. She didn’t need to. Actions speak louder than words in this case.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I say.

  ‘She’ll probably rai
se the kid with this new bloke, whoever the fucker is.’

  ‘She might. She might not. By the sounds of it, it was just a one night thing. A once off.’

  ‘She says that,’ he says, ‘but who knows? Maybe Liam’s right about her.’

  ‘Liam’s never been right about anything. Don’t listen to him. You know Ruby better than that.’

  ‘I thought I did. I’m not so sure about anything now. Anyway, babies aren’t a one night thing, Nick.’

  ‘No, you’re right. They’re aren’t.’

  He takes his right hand off the steering wheel, looks at his fingernails and bites viciously into one.

  When we get back to my place, the house looks colder and darker than I’ve ever seen it. I invite them all in to spend the night at my place, and Danny parks the car.

  This time last year I would have seen a small light in the bedroom window; a light waiting for me. Opening the door to a warm house, thinking of my warm and occupied bed. Then there’s so much silence in the house, waiting for me in every room. I never sit around listening to any sad songs. That’s only in the movies. I just sit around listening to the silence. But just like Danny, everything has changed. And so quickly. I understand his vulnerability. His sense of being unsure about everything. If this can happen to me, then what else can? What else can go wrong in my life?

  I used to be so sure about things, almost cocky. Then she’s gone. Suddenly there’s a huge open space. No, not a space. A cliff, a cliff in front of you as if your future has been wiped clean. All bets are off. When the most important relationship in your life changes or disappears, it affects all other relationships. Once Aoife was gone, I felt so uncertain about everything and everyone.

  I was so angry for so long. Where did all that anger go? I don’t think it went anywhere. Just like Danny’s limp it becomes a part of you. You become unaware of its constant presence. But I know it’s still there. The blame. The anger. The violence. Other people see it in you, and you’re only reminded of it by their reaction to you. Hard to believe you can forget about it, but you do.

  Harder to believe it can all change so quickly. What did I say to her as she walked out the door that night? A habitual kiss, perhaps. I had one eye and one ear on the television as she told me her plans. She looked so beautiful in her black coat with its white fur caressing her face and her green eyes matching her necklace, but I never told her. Her words interfering with the lines from a film I was watching. A few drinks, going into town with her friends, not too late home. The front door closing.