by Lorcan Roche
I say, ‘Rolling rock,’ with no please, which is unusual for me. He gets one, pops it open without looking, then he slides it over, except when I go to pay the prick moves down the counter to the register and I have to follow like a little lost sheep. I pass over the flyer but he just picks it up, crumples it, throws his bug-eyes skywards.
‘No discount on beer, just shots ‘n cocktails. Capiche?’
I hand him five dollars and he says something under his breath as he slams the register. I have my hand out, but he slaps the change down and this always pisses me off: I can feel tingling in my feet, like nettles stinging, and I have to be extremely careful it doesn’t spread to other parts, so I sit well away. Relax, don’t let him get under your skin, you have a job, you have 500 bucks in your pocket, you’re on forty an hour into your mitt, plus any accommodation problems you’re currently experiencing are shortly to be sorted, you’ll soon be living rent-free on Madison, eating like a fuckin’ King, OK?
The place is like a graveyard it really is dead, until the barman and the guy on the stool, the one who laughed out loud, start moving ashtrays and glasses with a flourish the barman wipes down the counter, excellent, they’re getting ready to arm wrestle.
I’m one of those people who truly appreciates free entertainment, you know, Do-Wop singers snapping ebony fingers and harmonizing, ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight’; unicycle-jugglers in the park, hovering like gigantic hummingbirds; apprentice break-dancers with skid marks on their backs. And you’ve no idea how much I love to spy little learning curved scars on the hairless arms of Chinese fire-eaters. To be honest, I even get a buzz out of bridge-and-tunnel types arguing over carspaces on Madison; as their fingers twitch like gunslingers, as they pretend to reach for non-existent guns I fuckin’ love it when rich kids in hoodies walk past trying hard to be something they can never be.
(black)
Anyway, the one who isn’t the barman is some kind of retired athlete or ex-ball player, I’d say And although he’s carrying a few kilos round his middle he’s still got the precision of movement that can only come from standing in the middle of a field with thousands of paying-punters looking, you only have one chance to connect.
He lights his cigarette with his left hand he takes a sip from his whiskey glass, immediately blowing long plumes into the other guy’s mush. You can see straight away he is cocksure, and also pretty strong: His right hand hardly falters all the while he is playing head-games with the barman who looks like a serious steroid-abuser. ‘That it huh, that your best shot, huh, that all you fucking got?’
It’s plain to see he can thrash Mr Abuser with his right or left, doesn’t really matter. He knocks back the dregs in his glass and orders another with a fuse-sized finger up. Then he starts looking around like a bear in a Rocky Mountain campsite, stiffly left, then here we go slowly right, Doobey, doobey doo, where’s the next lovely trashcan at?
He has to shout a bit – you can see he was a real asshole in school – but after a degree of goading and personal insulting he gets to take on a few more punters, including Match-in-the-Mouth who, to be fair, Ed would probably beat. Then comes the guy with the forearms, Mr Worry Beads; he’s a different kettle of fish entirely.
Worry Beads is one of those people that are completely and utterly silent, as if sealed off in some kind of invisible vacuumpack. He’s probably suffering from some strain of continuous low-grade depression like a lot of folk on the west coast of Ireland where it never stops raining for more than twenty seconds and no one’s clothes get properly aired, which has to be a contributory factor because you’re going around damp on your High Nelly all day reeking of turf fires and dung. Anyway, although he will eventually lose, Worry Beads is making Ball Player work pretty hard; if you do that Steve Austin thing with your eye you can zoom in on this lightening-fork vein starting to pulse at the side of Ball Player’s temple. You’d be very surprised how heavy and tired your arm can get after two or three bouts, and soon it will be my turn, so I let the tell-tale tingling filter up my legs and into my belly, then into my hands, and you’re right: the fucker behind the bar did burst my bubble, and sometimes no matter what you say to yourself the gnawing rat feeling won’t go away.
Abuser is sweeping up as I walk slowly over and ask for another. He says without looking, ‘One Rolling Rock comin’ right up,’ except he keeps on sweeping for three fuckin’ minutes, so I say, ‘Actually I’d like to hear that list of yours again, only a bit slower this time please,’ which really gets his goat. So he’s standing there reciting, like the school dunce: ‘Amstel, Dos Equis, Corona, Heineken, Miller, Bud, Stella …’ and I’m not listening because of course I’m going to have another Rolling Rock. I’m also busy sending Ball Player this excellent, faintly-amused-by-your antics look.
Which he falls for, hook, line. And sinker.
‘Ya wanna shot, huh?’
‘I think I’m safer with a beer. But thanks. Most generous.’
He calls me a ‘mook’, whatever that is. And that’s when I say: ‘You know what Pops, I’d welcome a shot at the title. But why don’t we make it interesting, say fifty of your American dollars?’
He’s laughing like a drain now he’s looking straight at my balls as if I’m going to fish them out and wrestle with them. Then the gobshite throws his dyed-black head back for even more effect. Ho, ho, ho, what would you like for Christmas little boy? And if you peer way, way up in his nostril hairs you can see these ancient grains of cocaine lodged there, I’ll tell ya one thing, he won’t be laughing in a minute.
‘Hey Petey. Big kid here wants to put fifty bucks down.’
Abuser stops and says, ‘There’s one born every minute, why not make it an even hunnert?’
So I say, ‘You know what Petey? You’re dead right. Let’s rock and roll.’
Ball Player wastes no time, he lifts his little hard-boiled egg of an ass up, puts his hand round into his back pocket, retrieves his wad and puts his money down. ‘One hundred bucks, let’s see the colour of yours kid. Ya better not be talking through your asshole.’
I really, really want to say, Actually, the only person who’s talking through his hole is you, but I don’t, I just take out my money, peel off the nice crisp notes and add them to his. Then I hand the pile to Petey the Pea Brain.
You can see Ball Player is a little surprised by this, but it suits him fine. Hey, no problemo. Then he asks me am I ready, and you should always make them wait, so I say ‘Actually, no I’m not’. And I don’t know why but I put on this Northern Ireland accent which I use to tell Abuser to fetch me a pack of Marlboros ‘if it’s not too much fuckin’ bother, that’s the chap, aye, step lively.’
Except he doesn’t.
They’re suddenly looking at each other as if to say, Ya think it’s fair to take this moron’s money, maybe he was only let out for the day?
Eventually Abuser takes the money off the counter, folds it and puts it in his shirt-pocket, then he brings me my smokes.
I crack my knuckles carefully. Then I place the beer bottle within easy reach, just in Casey.
Ball Player grins like a salmon shark and sets his big arm up there on the counter, making sure to show me the bicep moving like a python under the black silk of his sleeve, Ooh I’m so scared, help me mammy. I’m feeling very giddy now mostly because the guy is completely clueless, I mean, he’s so busy jerking his head this way and that way at the people who’ve gathered around trying to tell them with his low-voltage eyes, Hey you guys, watch how I make mincemeat of this punk, that he doesn’t even register the size of my hand.
Until it engulfs his completely.
That’s when you need one of those strange Coen brothers’ shots where the camera travels in behind his eyes, and you see the toilet of his Little-Italy brain flushing away the Tough Guy routine.
Before we’ve even begun, he has lost. And I’m recalling this embarrassing slow-motion date where the sister of one of the people at the Clinic asked me out
, and before we’d even finished our starters I knew it wasn’t going to work because everything in her life was sweet, ordered and sorted, and everything in mine was the opposite.
Ball Player has real power in his arm, and some in his wrist, but not too much in his hands. I can feel the little bones meeting and greeting each other in there under the tanned skin, Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go. I’m thinking of Mass and the best part where the priest used to say, ‘You may now offer each other the Sign of Peace,’ which I really used to enjoy, especially the time Ma and I were seated right in front of our neighbours who were always ‘officially informing’ us that our dog was doing his dumps in their garden, which was exactly what I’d spent hours training him to do with a torch and a rake that I’d used to poke holes in their hedge. After three or four nights, all I had to do was hit the spot where I wanted him to squat; it was as if we were planting steaming little landmines. Mister Whippys. When he emerged to cut the grass you could hear the idiot-husband fucking and blinding like a madman I used to run upstairs to my mother’s room, throw open the window, then we’d laugh ourselves silly at the sound of his Briggs-and-Stratton stopping and starting. The odd time if we listened really hard we could hear the blades slowing and squelching, it was probably the best sound in the whole wide world, her laughter.
I remember breathing in to give the neighbour’s hand a right fuckin’ squeeze, Peace be with you too. His pencil neck and pointy head went engine red and, bar one other episode, we never heard zilch from him again.
Ball Player is starting to suffer now. Once the bones begin to pop, they can’t stop. Firecracker fingers. If I wanted, I could keep his hand there for maybe another ten seconds and he’d never be able to hold a baseball bat or even a fuckin’ fork again, not properly. But I let him off easy, well sort of, just bang his baby knuckles down on the counter. It’s the sound of a big fish hitting the wet deck of a trawler, wallop.
One of the spectators, Match-in-the-Mouth, I think, says: ‘He ain’t got hands – he’s got catcher’s mitts attached to his friggin’ wrists. Kid’s a goddamn freak.’
Everyone’s staring now there’s a deadly silence, if you listen closely you can hear this high whinny, then hooves coming hard as Chaos comes in on his charger. And because Ball Player is the type that will definitely swing, I grab my beer by the neck and move around to his left, fast as I can. Liquid runs down my fingers, incredibly soothing after the lava-lamp heat of our hands.
He half-stands, half-slides his ass around to face me, except his bar stool makes this whoopee-cushion sound. Fuck it, I can’t hold it in any longer, I just burst out laughing. His head is all purple veins lifting out; he is like an old bull who’s been made a holy-show of by a matador from Palookaville in a silly borrowed costume. He also has this weird, yellow alligator-glow in his eye and I wonder, If I let the fire spread from my hands up into my neck and face is that what I’d look like? Nah, I’d probably wind up looking like a giraffe on acid.
He’s lifting his foot onto the lower rung of the stool beside him, hiking up his trouser leg. He’s got these really sad red-and-black cowboy boots with little ropes and lassoes stitched on, shite, there’s a black handle sticking out the top.
Backing away carefully, I’m thinking, Wasn’t such a good idea to hand the money to Abuser, now was it? And why have his hands got so busy under the counter all of a sudden. Time slows down, in fact it gets dug in like a WWI soldier in a trench. My heart speeds up. Sweat above my eyelids is about to fall in and make it hard for me to see this woman— who was there the whole time, but who I didn’t notice because her red hair was camouflaged against the tacky leatherette of the booth – stepping up: ‘Relax Gordy. Ya don’t wanna go an’ get barred all over again, now do ya?’
She has this slow way of asking questions that makes you think very fast, and when she moves you understand that in some Mid-western town fifteen or maybe just ten years ago she used to stop traffic on her way to the ice cream parlour.
‘Why don’t ya sit your ass back down again. Huh?’
There’s something in the air between her and Ball Player, she definitely has some hold over him, probably knows he needs to dress up as a baby or hold a rattler in his fist before he can rise to the occasion.
She smokes a bit as she pushes him back down on his stool.
‘Kid beat ya fair and square. Shit happens.’
She extinguishes her cigarette in the ashtray by Ball Player’s elbow as if someone’s jellied eye is staring up, squish-squash.
‘Hey Petey. Quit stallin’. Pay the kid. The rest of yiz, why don’t ya go back to the rocks you crawled out from undah?’
Abuser steps forward with the money much like a sentry who wants weekend leave, yes sir, sergeant major sir, and the rest of them slink back like extras in a Frankenstein movie.
She lights up, smokes some more, then puts the money down on a table near me. She really has an excellent walk.
Everyone is staring at the cash, you’d swear it had turned into a million. I trouser the money and try hard to stop myself grinning as Ball Player looks away in disgust. I move off very fast with my beer still in hand, then I retrieve Alan White and from a safe distance take a big swig from the bottle; you wouldn’t believe how parched my throat is, or how cold and slow the liquid. I’d really love to finish every amazing drop, it tastes of Victory and Ancient Greece but I have this image of Petey holding me from behind in some piss-stained lane with broken glass dancing all around while Gordy arcs these big, stadium shots into my gut, Not such a fuckin wise-ass now, huh kid?
And I’ve been down, way down, in a piss-stained lane before (and we’ll get to that later too, don’t worry) so I’m out the door, Warp factor fuckin’ ten, Mister Scott and I’m laughing my tits off as I run down the street humming the original Star Trek theme, except it’s quite hard because the first few notes are high, very high indeed.
I’m not in the next bar, nor the next one, but the next one after that, way, way down the block, some imitation Irish kip with a neon shamrock outside and a barman inside who should’ve been in Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
He has these tomato-ketchup cheeks and a little roundy belly like a beach ball someone just let the air out of, but the best bit is this freeze-dried rat he has stuck to the top of his head. He clearly believes it’s extremely life-like, and although you still see a few of these yokes in places like Drumshambo and Cootehill in Cavan, this is my first in the Big Apple so I’m laughing out loud when he says, ‘Would ya mind explainin’ please, what’s so goddamn funny?’
‘It’s just, well, this bar is exactly like one I used to drink in on my holidays in Skibereen in West Cork, it’s quite uncanny really, that’s all. No offence meant.’
‘None taken,’ he says. ‘None at all.’ In fact he seems very happy with the explanation, I’ve clearly made his day. He says, ‘beer?’ with a caterpillar eyebrow up, so I wink at him as if he were tele-fuckin-pathic. He brings me one straight from the tap, ‘There ya go buddy, get that inta ya.’ And in the filthy dirty mirror the guy looking back may not be beautiful but he is interesting, possibly even charismatic, plus he has the best part of 600 bucks in his arse-pocket, he is feeling quite inspired, Yep, you’re dead right there Trevor, it’s always nice to get one over on a complete and utter asshole, now isn’t it?
The beer tastes like more. I lift up my glass and he nods. ‘Right you are, friend.’
Jesus, this guy is so fake it’s flabbergasting.
I’m waiting for my heart to return to normal when in she comes, her big wool bag swinging in time to her hips. She lifts her red head up slowly, like the snake in that D.H. Lawrence poem – you know the one that’s set in some really hot oasis country.
She says, ‘Oh hi,’ and puts her head back down, debating, before the bag starts swinging again.
What a strut. She’s one of those people could put a pile of hardback books on her head and go water-skiing if she wanted. And do you remember at the start when I
asked do you ever look at people and wonder what sort of animal they’d be? Well, another excellent thing to do is grant them a little soundtrack of their own, and I don’t even have to think about it, right away she gets that Hendrix number, ‘Tyre marks across your back, baby. I can see you’ve had your fun.’ Still, I decide not to be judgmental, just to be friendly and open, then to see what happens.
‘Ya wanna buy a girl a beer?’
I look around in a real exaggerated way, bit like Little Bo Peep.
‘To be honest, I don’t see any girls. But I’ve no objections to buying an experienced woman like yourself a cold one.’
‘Whatever. Whiskey-sour, Mike!’
Every tiny transaction with these people is a scam, and buy me a beer means buy me a whiskey-sour and it may seem like a small thing to you but I find it hugely annoying on top of which she lights herself a Camel without offering, and I seem to have left mine behind in the rush so I have to ask, ‘May I?’
She just nods and slides the pack over a little as she blows smoke out both nostrils, which isn’t very attractive, in fact it makes her look like a Welsh fuckin’ dragon.
She collects her drink from Pal Mikey who started mixing it the minute she walked in. He brings me another beer without asking, this time with a paper mat attached. Gee, thanks Mike. Then he takes a pen from behind his cauliflower ear, he puts two little ticks on my frilly mat, none on fuckin’ hers.
She says, ‘Here’s mud in your eye, kid,’ which I haven’t heard for a while, not since I watched a Bogart movie and I say, ‘Cheers,’ but at the same time I’m thinking, Slow down now, Clever. You’ve already had two with Ellie, one and a half in Studio 54 and two here, plus there’s another one in front of you and you pumped out quite an amount of adrenaline; it’s still pretty early in the day, so don’t lose the run of yourself completely, OK?