Plugged

by Eoin Colfer

  Twenty-eight and she wants to feel young again.

  Every guy’s dream, right? Couple of no-strings nights with a cocktail hostess. I didn’t push it; now I’m thinking I should have.

  ‘It’s looking fine,’ I tell her. ‘I got my check-up with Zeb tomorrow.’

  ‘Can I see?’ she asks, long nails already peeling off the watch cap.

  My hands jerk up to stop her, but I force them back down. About time I got an opinion.

  She folds the cap into her long fingers, then pushes me back under a recessed spotlight.

  ‘Zeb did this?’

  ‘Yeah. He had a few nurses too, preparing the follicles. Students I think.’

  ‘This is not a bad job,’ says Connie, squinting. ‘I’ve seen plenty of hair plugs before, but this is good. Nice spread and no scars. What is it, rat hair?’

  I am genuinely horrified. ‘Rat? Christ, Connie. It’s my own hair. Transplants from the back. They’ll fall out in a couple of weeks, then the new hair grows in.’

  Connie shrugs. ‘I hear they’re using rat now. Dog too. Tough as wire, apparently.’

  I reclaim the cap, spreading it over my crown like a salve. ‘No canine or rodent. Irish human only.’

  ‘Yeah, well it looks okay. Another session and you won’t know the difference.’

  I sigh like it’s cost me a lot of dollars, which it has. ‘That’s the idea.’

  I roll the hat back down and take Connie’s elbow, steering her back to the floor.

  A Formica bar, low lighting that’s more cheap than fashionable. A roulette wheel that bucks with every spin, two worn baize card tables and half a dozen slots. Slotz.

  ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Take fifty. You squeezed it out of him.’

  I fold the note back into her hand. ‘It was a pleasure, darlin’. The day he licks my arse is the day I take fifty.’

  Connie laughs full and throaty and something stirs in my stomach. ‘Oh, baby. The day he licks your arse is the day I buy tickets to witness the consequences.’

  She’s back on an even keel, but it’s temporary; this place really takes it out of decent people. A toll on the soul.

  ‘You okay to go back on the floor?’

  ‘Sure, darlin’. You know Victor will dock me for the whole night if I quit now.’

  I lean down to whisper in her ear, smelling her perfume, noticing not for the first time how long her neck is. Feeling her peppermint breath brushing my cheek. Remembering.

  ‘Between the two of us, Victor is also a galloping gobshite.’

  Connie laughs again, something I would pay money to hear, then she grabs a tray from the bar and she’s back on the floor, hips swaying like a movie star from back when movie stars had hips worth swaying.

  She throws a couple of tantalising sentences over her shoulder.

  ‘Maybe we got another weekend coming up, baby. Maybe a whole week.’

  Connie darlin’, I think, then raise my gaze.

  Stick to the code. Eyes up.

  Eyes up, for now. But me and Connie have unfinished business.

  One more look at the hips, my dark side whispers. Then back to work.

  As is often the case, my dark side wins.

  I give myself a moment to get my head back in the game. That’s the most common rookie mistake in the security business: complacency. Thinking I’m big and scary and what fool is gonna take a swing at me, even to impress his girl. The key word in that sentence is fool. They come in all shapes and sizes and most of them are juiced, coked or both and would take a shot at the devil himself if they thought it would buy them a little respect from their crew or a special treat from a hostess.

  So I shut the drawer on Faber and Connie and give the crowd a once-over. Couple of college boys eyeing the hostesses, a few divorcees, and old Jasper Biggs playing the big shot. Tossing in one-dollar bills like they’re hundreds. No danger signs. Still, I decide to send Jason back here to throw around the steroid stare. Can’t hurt. Sometimes trouble begets trouble.

  Unfortunately, I am not wrong. Before the ghost image of Connie’s hips can fade, a dozen yeehaws barrel through the double doors. One of them either has a very dainty dick, or a flick knife in his jeans pocket.

  Jason, I think. These guy should never have made it in the room.

  As Bob Geldof once sang, Tonight, of all nights, there’s gonna be a fight. Unfortunately, Bob’s not wrong either.

  CHAPTER 2

  After my first stint with the Irish army’s peacekeeping corps in the Lebanon, I was flown home to a zero’s welcome and found the green green grass not so lush any more. Apparently the general public were of the opinion that peacekeepers don’t fight wars; we just stand between the two armies who are fighting the wars and say stuff like: Ah, lads, that’s a bit much or Show me the passage in your holy book that says ‘minefields are okay sometimes’. And then the armies say: You know what, you Irish guys have hit the nail on the head, no offence Christians, plus you have such a good record in your own country that we should all be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves for all this border conflict stuff and just accept our differences.

  I decided that the best way to fill the crater that had been blasted in my soul by none of this happening, plus all the exploding and stuff that did happen, would be to volunteer for a second tour, and my application apparently rang a few warning bells, because the sergeant major ordered me to sashay on over to Dr Moriarty’s office at my convenience. Minus the words sashay and convenience, plus the words hustle and right fucking now, retard.

  I know that traditionally I should have been outraged, smashed my fist into my palm and blurted this is outrageous, Sarge or I still got the stuff, but honestly, the notion of being probed kind of interested me.

  So I showed up prompt at o-seven-hundred the next morning only to find out that consultant shrinks do not do enlisted hours and spent the next two hours in Dr Moriarty’s waiting room reading a magazine that I swear to God was called Head Cases.

  Dr Moriarty? I know, almost a professor. Hilarious, right?

  By the time Dr Simon Moriarty finally showed up, I was starting to get to a handle on the psychology of the whole psychiatry thing: if bad things happen to you when you’re young, then you’re liable to blame someone for it when you grow up, possibly someone with a similar hairstyle to whoever did the bad things in the first place.

  I explained my conclusions to Dr Moriarty, when he finally rolled in looking like the guitarist from Bon Jovi and smelling like the drummer from the Happy Mondays. Not a dickie bow or elbow patch in sight.

  ‘Nice theory,’ said Moriarty, collapsing on to the couch. ‘I told Marion we shouldn’t leave psych mags strewn around the waiting room.’ He lit a thin cigar and blew the smoke in a dense funnel towards the ceiling, while I tried to remember if I’d ever heard the word strewn spoken aloud before. ‘The charming Colonel Brady suggested that I leave Woman’s Own out there so we can weed out the gays. Man’s a genius.’

  ‘Good kisser, too,’ I said, straight-faced.

  Simon Moriarty grinned through a mouthful of smoke.

  ‘There might be some hope for you, soldier.’

  I thought it best to burst that bubble. ‘I want to volunteer for a second tour in the Lebanon.’

  Moriarty expertly flicked his cigar through a half-open window. ‘Then again, maybe not.’

  So we talked for an hour. A bit like your normal pub chat, when you’ve been out for a few days with your best mate and your eyeballs are filmed with vodka.

  I sat behind the desk while Moriarty lay on the couch and frisbeed questions at me. Eventually he came around to:

  ‘Why’d you join the army, Daniel?’

  I remembered something from the magazine. ‘Why do you think I joined the army?’

  Moriarty did the kind of long hard fake laugh that would make a Bond villain proud. ‘Wow, that is hi-larious,’ he said with a confidence that made me feel I’d been saying hilarious wrong all these years. ‘I feel quite the fool now, was
ting all that time in university when all I had to do was read a magazine. Have a nice time in the Lebanon.’

  I sighed. ‘Okay, Doc. I joined up because . . .’

  Moriarty actually sat up.

  ‘Because?’ ‘Because the uniforms set off my eyes. Come on, Doc. Work for the money.’

  Simon Moriarty blinked away the previous night’s party. ‘They flew you home early, McEvoy. Remind me why they did that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I called in some gunship fire on my own position.’ The shrug was to make this seem like no big deal, but it was a big deal and my legs were shaking as I said it and my mind flicked back to the tracers criss-crossing the night sky like something out of Blade Runner or maybe Star Wars. Whichever one was in space.

  ‘That does sound like the action of a moron.’

  He was baiting me, but that was okay, because we were both smiling a little now. ‘What was left of Amal decided to overrun the entire compound,’ I explained. ‘Old-school style. An honest-to-God battle; couple of them had swords. Everybody made it into the bunker except the watch. I had a radio so I called in a gunship.’

  ‘Was that a good decision?’

  ‘Not according to the manual. Lots of property damage but not as much as there might have been. Plus a general got to live.’

  ‘So they shipped you out?’

  ‘Cos I was shell-shocked.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘Absolutely. No bowel movements for three days.’

  Moriarty hit me again. ‘So why did you join the army, Daniel?’

  He was good. I wasn’t expecting the change of tack. I mean, that gunship thing is an interesting story. ‘Because I reckoned dying overseas was better than living at home.’

  Moriarty punched the air. ‘One nil,’ he crowed.

  Most nights after work at the casino I take a couple of Triazolam to nod myself off. I go for as long as I can trying to tune out Mrs Delano in the apartment above, but she grinds me down with her ranting, so I pop the pills just to shut her out for a few hours.

  Usually we have a little exchange through a hole around the ceiling light fitting.

  I’ll lead off with something like:

  For Christ’s sake shut up.

  To which Mrs Delano will reply:

  For Christ’s sake shut up.

  I could follow this with:

  For one night? Could we have a little bloody peace for one night.

  Which she might cleverly twist to:

  One night I’ll give you a little bloody piece.

  You get the idea.

  Tonight I’m thinking about Connie, so I add the Triazolam to a shot of Jameson and manage to grab a few hours of sweet dreams, but by eight my crazy neighbour’s piercing tones have ruptured my rest, and I lie in bed listening as Delano lets fly with a few nuggets that wouldn’t sound out of place in The Exorcist.

  ‘If I ever find you, baby, I will poison your coffee.’

  That gets me out of bed sharpish. I’ve lived in this building for five years and for the first couple Mrs Delano seemed like a normal, non-homicidal human. Then, in year three, she starts in with the poisoning coffee spiel. I’m starting to believe that nobody really knows anyone. I’m pretty sure no one knows me.

  A hair-obsessed ex-army doorman. What are the odds of those Venn diagram bubbles intersecting?

  Venn diagrams? I know. Another nugget from Simon Moriarty.

  I jump in the shower thinking about Connie, so the shower is the right place to be. Everything about her stays with me. All the usual suspects. The way she walks like there’s a pendulum inside her. How her Brooklyn accent gets a little stronger when she’s pissed. The sharp strokes of her nose and chin. Wide smile like a slice of heaven.

  Oh baby, she’d said. Oh baby.

  Inside a cloud of steam, my imagination adds levels. A husky catch at the end of the phrase.

  Oh baaby.

  How could I not have noticed this at the time? Connie was sending me a message.

  I turn the shower knob way over in the blue.

  Sunshine is slanting through my bathroom window, warming the chequered vinyl shower curtain. It’s going to be hot today. Too hot for a woollen hat.

  That’s okay. I got lighter hats.

  I quite like this time of year in New Jersey. The air on my skin feels like home. The old sod, the emerald isle. Ireland. Sometimes, on a clear day, the sky has the same electric-blue tinge.

  Just go home then and stop bitching.

  I’m even beginning to irritate my own subconscious. Is there anything more pathetic than a Mick on foreign soil, wailing ‘Danny Boy’? Especially one who never liked the country when he was there.

  It wasn’t the country, I remind myself. It was the people in the country and the things that happened there.

  My apartment is two floors up, three blocks north of Main Street and ten blocks south of the line of buildings with mildly risqué fronts that pass for a strip in this town. I stroll down the cracked concrete, trying to rein in the menace. I dated a gypsy once who told me I had an aura that looked like shark-infested water. Sometimes I piss people off just by walking by, so I hunch a little and keep my eyes on the ground, trying to radiate friendliness. Think hippies, think hippies.

  Dr Kronski’s surgery is in a part of town where there aren’t any trees set into the sidewalk. The trashcans are generally teeming with beer bottles, and if you stand in one place long enough someone’s going to offer you whatever you need.

  All of which would suggest that Zeb Kronski isn’t much of a surgeon, which would be totally not true. Zeb Kronski is a hell of a surgeon; he just doesn’t have a licence to practise in the United States. And he can’t apply because he had a boob job die on the table in Tel Aviv; not his fault, he assures me. Implant-related death.

  The building is maybe twenty years old, but looks five times that. Part of a mini strip mall, mostly glass and partition walls. In winter, accountants and dental nurses freeze to death in these boxes.

  Zeb’s is wedged between Snow White’s dry-cleaners and a Brite-Smile. Chemical sandwich. No wonder my doctor friend has his off days, with fumes like that eating his brain. I make sure my appointments are in the mornings, before depression takes hold.

  The sign is flipped to Closed when I arrive. Surprising. Usually Kronski’s homeopathic centre is doing a brisk business in powdered crocodile penis capsules by this time. Zeb tells me that the homeopathic bit started out as a front, but now he’s having to file returns.

  People are fucked up, Dan, he confided one night at Slotz, down to a film of whiskey in the bottom of his glass. Everyone’s looking for the magic pill. And they don’t give a shit whose horn gets ground to make it.

  Wooden blinds stretch across the shop front; reminds me of a schooner deck I worked on in Cobh harbour. Kronski’s Kures reads the decal. This mall is big on misspellings. Two doors down is Close Cutz, and around the back there’s a roomful of Krazy Kidz slugging down Ritalin.

  I feel a little irritated. Zeb better not be face down in an empty jacuzzi, sleeping off a bender.

  Again.

  Last time it cost me two hundred bucks to pay off the madam. I’ve been working up to this session, mentally, running through the scenarios, playing devil’s advocate with myself.

  What if the follicles didn’t take? What if I end up scarred? What if I’m a vain asshole who’ll still be ugly after the next operation?

  And now that I have myself totally psyched, as my adopted countrymen would say, Zeb Kronski is running late. And when Zeb is running late, he is generally running tanked.

  I thumb the flap in my wallet for the spare key; at least I can get the percolator bubbling while I’m waiting. Then I notice the door is open a crack.

  A little odd. But no more than a little. Zeb doesn’t remember to zip his own fly when he’s drinking. One time in a bar, honest to Christ this happened, one time Zeb was five steps out of the john before he remembered to tuck his dick away.

  I n
udge the door open with my toe and duck inside. The light is sepia, and heavy with swirling dust spores. Something has been moving in here.

  Little moments like this, I can’t helping thinking of patrols in Tibnin. I try to avoid the whole flashback thing when I’ve got stuff to do, but some moments are more evocative than others. Some moments are fat with menace. For some reason, this is one of those moments.

  Suddenly Corporal Tommy Fletcher is in my head for the second time in so many days. Huge Kerry bastard, arms like Popeye, always complaining. Even on an early-bird mine sweep, Fletcher was mouthing off. This weather is murder on my complexion, Sarge, he was saying. My freckles are fucking multiplying.

  Then a Katyusha rocket took out the US M35 truck behind us and flipped it on to Fletcher’s leg, severing it at the knee. I walked away lugging Tommy on my shoulder, with a coating of B+ and a case of tinnitus.

  And . . . we’re back in the present. I try not to get bogged down in those days, but when the memories hit me, it’s like being there, except you know what’s coming next. You surface in the present and for a moment you are that scared boy again. Once I wet my pants. I wouldn’t mind, but I held it in during the real incident.

  I love watching the TV flashback guys. Tom Magnum, Mitch Buchannon, Sonny Crockett, all the greats. They have a ten-second jitter scene about ’Nam, then wake up bare-chested with a pained frown and maybe a light sweat on their smooth foreheads.

  Fletcher, I think. Jesus Christ.

  Inside Zeb’s unit, the dust is settling.

  This place is a real dump. Pills heaped in untidy pyramids on the shelves, a filing cabinet, its drawer hanging open like a drunk’s mouth. Papers everywhere, a few sheets still fluttering to earth.

  There’s somebody here, I realise, and miss a step, catching my toe on the carpet.

  ‘You okay there, bud?’ says a voice. There are crossed legs and loafers sticking out of the shadows in the waiting area. Penny loafers, with actual pennies. Who is this guy? One of the Brat Pack? But the pennies strike a chord with me; I half remember something.

  I cough to give myself a second, then answer, ‘Fine. Goddamn rug. Doctor is trying to kill me.’