by Declan Burke
“Sorry, I can’t afford medical advice. I like your hair, by the way.”
“Thanks. I had to cancel my appointment, by the way.”
“Yeah, I like the fact that you left it alone.”
She smiled. I thought of a second-hand car with ‘Wash Me’ scrawled on a dusty back window.
“Ever drink anything stronger?” she asked, sitting up on the stool beside me.
“Sometimes I leave the sugar out.”
“Maybe I should introduce you to alcohol.”
“We’ve met. Town wasn’t big enough for both of us.”
Dutchie wandered back down the bar. I introduced them, ordered a round. Katie swirled the ice around her G&T, downed the lot in one swallow.
“Tough day?”
“First anniversary.”
“Of what?”
“Learning to mind my own business.”
“Not so long ago when you were interested in my business.”
“That was just business. You’re being personal.”
“And I thought we were friends.”
“You know what thought did?”
“What’s that?”
“Pissed the bed and thought he was sweating.”
“I remember that now.”
We chatted for a while, talking about everything and saying nothing, and the while nuzzled up to a couple of hours and started whispering sweet nothings. She was good company, sharp with it, and she liked to talk. I liked listening, liked her frank opinions and the way her smile caused her nose to wrinkle. Liked that she took the time out to flirt without really meaning it, the way that, five or six pints later, she was still tossing her hair and laughing at my jokes. By then I had the idea that she reckoned I was a challenge, and I didn’t have the heart to pretend otherwise.
“Messing aside,” I said, “the first anniversary of what?”
She stared into her drink, stirring it with the pink swizzle stick that was Dutchie’s idea of a gag.
“I was getting married.” Her fringe fell forward, hiding her eyes. She shook it back, straightened her shoulders. “Then I wasn’t getting married.”
“He broke it off?”
“Three weeks from the big day out, his brother’s family home from South Africa, the works. We were going out for a year, engaged for eighteen months. Next thing he turns around and says he can’t go through with it, he doesn’t love me anymore. What the fuck love had to do with it in the first place. He was good in the nest, took regular showers, paid his share of the bills. That was about the height of it.”
The pub had filled up, the babble of conversation loud enough for us to talk without being overheard. It was pleasant sensation, like we were trapped in a bubble.
“There’s worse reasons for getting married.”
“Ach – I was just fed up with the job, doing the same thing every week. The wedding was just an excuse, something other than the pub on a Friday night, curry chip for a treat. Biggest favour anyone did me, him walking out.”
“Sounds like a bit of a prick if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking. You’re as big a prick as he was, Harry, most blokes are. That’s your job. A woman’s job is to change you from being pricks to something better. I wasn’t good enough at the job, that’s all. End of story.”
It was getting on for eleven o’clock, as good a time to change the subject as any.
“Seeing anyone now?”
She looked up from her drink, nose wrinkling.
“That’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks. So you can imagine how pathetic the others were.”
“I didn’t mean…”
She laughed.
“So say something you do mean.” Her voice soft and warm again. Eyes locked on mine, gaze steady. Fear churned through the anticipation, and a warm tingle ran up my spine. My throat went dry. It was the old familiar feeling, the kind of old and familiar that needs carbon dating. Besides, there was already plenty of space for a wedge to be driven between Denise and me, and with Gonzo back in town I wouldn’t need to buy a new mallet. I took refuge in my pint. She laughed, frustrated.
“You play this hard to get with every woman who buys you a pint?”
“I’m not hard to get. That’s my jokes.”
“True enough.” She sipped her drink, considered me across the rim of the glass. “So what are you, queer?”
“It’s worse. I’m married.”
“I don’t see any ring.”
“We call him Ben. He’s four years old.”
“Nice name.”
“I couldn’t spell anything more complicated.”
“I can sympathise.” The wide-eyed gaze dared me to look away. I took the dare. She stubbed her cigarette out and said, just loud enough for me to hear: “I’m not that fussed on complications myself.”
She dug a pen from her handbag, scrawled a number on a beer mat. Then, without saying another word, she got up and left. I watched her go and then tore the number off the beer mat. I looked at it for a long time, knowing what I should do. Then I put the scrap of paper in my wallet where I knew Denise would never find it, behind the condom.
Dutchie leaned across the bar as I put my jacket on.
“Are you driving?”
“Don’t be daft. Alfred’s waiting with the limo.”
“Don’t take the bridge. The Dibble were pulling there earlier on.”
“Cheers.”
I downed the last of the pint, which put me at least five full pints over the limit, but I’d never thought with such clarity before. My reactions were sharp, vision twenty-twenty. I hadn’t had a woman come on to me like that in years, not even Denise, especially not Denise. I felt buoyant, untouchable. Bulletproof.
Of course, that was before all the shooting started.
8
If you’re going to get kicked senseless it’s best to take certain precautions. Getting drunk is one. That way you go with the flow and don’t resist, which is how bones get broken, especially when there’s three of them and one is wielding an empty beer keg like it’s a beach ball.
I didn’t even see them coming. One moment I was drunk and warm, thinking about Katie and feeling pretty damn good about myself. The next I was rolling in the gutter, ducking flailing boots and what felt like a length of thick chain. I locked my hands around my head, curled into a ball and tried to scream.
They were quiet, efficient and deadly. The only sounds were hollow thuds, squishy splats. They booted my kidneys, chain-whipped my legs, pounded my stomach. One of them rabbit-punched my shoulders, fist wrapped in a knuckle-duster. I drifted into semi-consciousness, feeling the blows but not the pain. And then something heavy bounced off my shoulder and clanged away across the cobblestones, jerking me back to reality. It was the beer keg and they had stopped.
I heard a voice close to my ear, straining to catch its breath, a voice with a northern twang.
“Stay away from her, big man. Ye hear?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t able to breathe, the gorge in my chest rising into my throat. I managed a nod, a snuffle that sent something thick and slimy down the back of my throat. The voice came again.
“Else it’ll be the wee man getting it. Ben, ye call him?”
He ruffled my hair and then I heard footsteps, quick but not hurried as they strolled away down the alley. Leaving me to snuffle some more snot and blood, face down in my own vomit. I tried to move. Bolts of pain shot through me, tripped the circuits. The world went black except for a dull red glow right in the middle of the nothingness. When it started to fade I followed it down.
I couldn’t have been lying there long. Dutchie said, after, that a bloke angling for a sneaky piss behind the beer kegs spotted me, rapped on the pub door while Dutchie was still clearing up. They carried me inside and Dutchie propped me up in one of the cubicles. Once we figured out nothing was actually broken, he went for tissues, hot water and Dettol.
“Fail the breathalyser?” he asked.
I groaned.
I was wedged in an oil drum that some maniac was attacking with a Kango hammer. Except it wasn’t noise that brutalised every synapse, it was pain. Searing here, vicious there, throbbing everywhere. Funny was the last thing I needed. What I needed was a syringe full of the purest smack to wrap me in a cotton-wool cocoon.
Dutchie dabbed at the open cuts and grazes with the Dettol-soaked tissues. Compared to what the rest of my body was feeling, the stings were fluttering kisses. When he was finished he collected the tissues, dumped them in the bin. He came back with a bottle of brandy, poured a couple of large ones.
“Get that into you. Any time you’ve brandy inside you, things could be a lot worse.”
I hate brandy but the double went down the hatch like it was suicidal. Dutchie poured another, kept pouring, and after I’d lost count of exactly how many brandies I hated, the pain started to subside. Dutchie watched me drink, sipping his own. Eventually he said, in a neutral tone: “You were lucky, Harry.”
“I’d come out of a barrel of tits sucking my thumb. Luck had nothing to do with it. They knew exactly what they were doing.” I grimaced, shook my head, which only caused me to grimace some more. “Bastards,” I whispered. “Fucking bastards.”
“Without doubt. Any fatherless fuckers in particular?”
I shook my head again, gently this time.
“One of them sounded northern.”
“Those fuckers never need an excuse.”
“They had one.”
“You got verbal with northern cunts?” He pursed his lips. “Not like you, Harry.”
“I never said a fucking word. They jumped me from behind. Never even seen them coming.”
“So why?”
I drank the rest of the brandy, pushed the glass forward for a refill.
“He told me to stay away from her.”
“Her? Who her?”
“He didn’t say. All he said was, stay away from her. Otherwise it’ll be Ben next time.”
“Scumbag.” He drained the dregs of the bottle into his own glass and said: “Katie?”
“I doubt it. She used to be engaged, some bloke who did a runner. He’s hardly following her around, knocking lumps out of every bloke she meets in a pub.”
“So – who her?”
“Who else? Helen fucking Conway.”
“You were seen? Today?”
“Maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am.”
“No one’s that smart, Harry. Think it was the bloke or her that sent the lads?”
“Does it matter?”
“Depends on whether you’re taking it any further.”
“With the Dibble?”
“It’s what any law-abiding citizen would do.”
“That’d be right, give the boys on the nightshift a laugh.”
“Give them something to do, at any rate.”
I shook my head, the brandy kicking in nicely. I was tired, sick and sore. Tired, mostly. No, sore mostly, and tired. And sick. I thought of the backroom in the office, dark, cold and empty. It made me want to puke.
“Drive me out home, Dutch. I’ll sort you with a cab when we get there.”
“You’re going to Dee’s?”
“I’m paying for the place, Dutch. Since when is it Dee’s?”
“Since she keeps chucking you out if it.”
I shrugged. It was too late to get into it about Gonzo. He said: “If you want to stay here, Michelle won’t mind. The bed’s made up in the spare room. Don’t worry about the kids, a bomb wouldn’t wake them.”
“Cheers, Dutch, but no. I want to die in my own bed, boots off.”
I was lying, naturally. I didn’t want to die in my own bed, boots on or off, or in any other bed for that matter. I didn’t want to die, period, but even then I didn’t know then how fragile life can be, and how permanent death is. How squalid and black and final death really is.
Dutchie rang for a cab to meet us back at the house. I limped down the alleyway at his shoulder, the side he was carrying the baseball bat. He poured me into the car and we drove for home.
“What are you going to tell Conway?” We were passing the hospital.
“That a bottle of brandy is going on the expenses.”
“You’re keeping the case? What are you, fucking insane?”
“Only now and again. You’d go mad otherwise.”
“Cop on, Harry. What about Ben?”
“Ben’ll be okay. I’ll look after Ben.”
“You’ll look after Ben? Check the mirror, Harry, you’ve got mail.”
“No fucker’ll touch Ben when I’m around, Dutch. I’ll be cute.”
“You look cute. Cute like Quasimodo. And what happens to Ben if you’re not around?”
“I don’t know, Dutch. Give me a clue.”
“Jesus, Harry. It’s loonyfuckingtoons.”
I don’t like agreeing with people, it gives them the confidence to contradict you next time out, so I left that one hanging. The cab was waiting when we arrived. Dutchie turned as he was about to get in. I waited on the doorstep, not wanting to hear what he had to say.
“Let it go, Harry. It was only a hammering. Don’t take it personal.”
“I hear you.”
“Yeah, that’d be a first.”
“Take care, Dutch. And cheers.”
I should have listened to Dutchie and not taken it personal. Maybe that way I wouldn’t have ended up at the bottom of the river, a bullet under my ribs. Then again, maybe I’d have ended up there anyway, things have a way of working themselves out. Look at the platypus.
9
The lights were on in the sitting room, and I could hear the low murmur of the TV. I padded upstairs to the bathroom. Hoping the mirror would hold, because I still had three of seven left to serve on my current run of bad luck.
I’d got off light. The only visible damage was a bruised nose, a cut above my right eye. I mopped up with a handful of toilet paper, stuck a Band-Aid on the cut, went back downstairs.
Denise was curled up on the couch, a duvet tucked around her legs, smoking a joint, a fire dying in the grate. She didn’t offer the jay so I slumped into the armchair, wincing at the dull bolts of pain, and looked at the TV too.
She looked lifeless, sprawled out on the couch, worn, tired. Denise could sparkle when she scrubbed up but when she wasn’t interested she really let things slide. Shrouding her body under baggy jumpers, hiding behind a stony mask that emphasised the lines around her eyes. Laughter lines, she called them once, but nothing’s that funny. Nothing had been that funny since Ben was born, anyway. That day, Denise retreated behind a wall there was no climbing over, no going around and no tunnelling under. A damsel in distress, waiting in her tower for a handsome prince to saunter by, or maybe just a different frog.
It wasn’t post-natal stress either. Denise loved Ben right from day one and without reservation. Denise just hated Ben’s father, hated herself for succumbing to his soft-chat. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t much like Ben’s father myself, and I liked him less with each day that passed.
There was a movie on, based on a true story, Denise loved true stories, they made her feel that her own life wasn’t as bad as she thought, or maybe they just distracted her from how bad it actually was. We sat in silence for about ten minutes until the ad break kicked in. When she spoke her tone was flat.
“I presume you’ve a good reason for being here.”
“I lost my keys to the office.”
“Well, I hope you’re here to pick up spares.”
I sidestepped it.
“I thought Gonzo might have arrived.”
“You couldn’t ring to find out?”
“I did ring. You weren’t home.”
“You couldn’t ring again?”
I shrugged. She tried another tack.
“You drove in that condition?”
“Dutch drove. He wasn’t drinking.”
“And what happened your face?”
“I slipped in the alley. That’s w
here I must’ve lost the keys. It looks worse than it is.”
“Pity.”
“Jesus, Dee.”
She whirled, face flushed.
“Don’t Jesus me, Harry! Coming in here half-pissed, giving me grief.”
“I’m giving you grief? You need to get out more.”
The words were out before I realised what I’d said.
“Think I don’t know that? Think I like sitting at home on my own while you’re out gallivanting? Think I prefer sitting in this… this fucking hole while you’re out enjoying yourself?”
“You’re the one chucked me out, remember? And all I had was a couple of pints in Dutchie’s.”
“Really? And how is Dutchie? I haven’t seen him in months. Oh that’s right, I haven’t been out in months.”
Part of the problem was that Denise didn’t have many friends. Some of them had moved away from town, some married, most of them wanted to talk about something other than their kids when they went out for a night on the tiles. There were times when Denise bordered on the obsessive when it came to Ben. It was probably because he was an only child, but the time had never seemed right for us to have another kid. The fact that we’d had sex maybe five or six times since Ben was born didn’t help.
“Give it up, Dee. I was always asking you to go out.”
“To the pub. That’s not going out, it’s a life sentence.”
She shook her head, disgusted, and then realised the ad break was over. We sat in silence for the rest of the movie. When it was over, and Sally Fields had finished crying and kissing the lawyer who’d vanquished the fiendish Iraqis, Denise got up. She emptied the ashtray, stood on a stool to put the joint makings on top of the bookcase, picked up the duvet.
“By the way,” she said, the door half-open, “Gonzo left another message. Said he has a couple of things to do tomorrow but he’ll meet you in Dutchie’s, after ten.”
She closed the door. I stayed sitting in the armchair, feeling like someone had just kicked me in the gut, how I’d puke if I tried to get up. Then I remembered that someone had already kicked themselves happy on my gut, how there was nothing left that nature hadn’t screwed down tight. I went out to the kitchen, made a sandwich, washed it down with a pint of milk. Then I went back to the sitting room and put on some mellow trip-hop, the volume low because Denise hated trip-hop and pretty much everything else I liked to listen to. I rolled a joint, for medicinal purposes only.