White-Headed Boy:
‘Begob I am smitten,
Oh diddle-ee aye.
Oh wirra machree,
Will she be my young bride?’
They lay opposite each other as pictures of cherubs on boxes of sweets. The blue in their eyes was tiny pricks of paint and sharply blue indeed. Their cheeks were rosy and fruity. Their hair was curly. She smelt of wild lavender, Scotch raspberries, Wexford strawberries, the fullest English pears, elderflower, rosehip tea, peas. He smelt of garden gooseberries, blackberries, liquorice, crab apples, sloe berries, pine needles, mint. ‘Oh, do you think we’re in Heaven?’ she said. ‘If we are in Heaven,’ he said, ‘we are going straight to Hell. And I have something here for you. Vulcanised. The better to play in Hell with.’ ‘Do you believe in Hell?’ she said. ‘I think that the most literal elements of that part of the doctrine will be cast off soon enough,’ he said. ‘And what about Limbo?’ she said. ‘Limbo I believe in, whatever happens,’ he said. The boxes sat opposite each other against the umbrella stand. The umbrella stand was circular, representing eternity. Romance was yuck unless you could put it in, or on, a box, he thought. He looked out a window. It was like a loophole in a citadel. Hell was a skyscraper in danger of flaking, from the heat at its core versus the ice on its skin. Hell was hoping. Heaven was seventy Stain Devils at the grocery store, and finding one for black ink.
White-Headed Boy:
‘Hark! Listen to the voice of my heart!
Listen to my cry of love!’
‘Explain Limbo to me,’ she said. ‘It’s a very confusing part of the doctrine. And I think they deliberately confuse it, because they don’t know themselves. Well I’m ready to throw the whole lot out.’ ‘Limbo,’ he said, hating his own tone, but going on, as he’d committed himself anyhow, even if her question was rhetorical, ‘is different from Heaven or Hell, in that spatial time passes. One is given the confusion of the world there, and one is given a test to find the purest form of oneself there, but one knows one will be released once one finds it.’ (What was all this ‘one’ pomposity? Damn it, man.) ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘what you’ve explained there is Purgatory. Isn’t Limbo for babies?’
White-Headed Boy:
‘And by this I have tried to bridge the wide ocean,
My long
Lost
Love.’
Static panning in: thunderous applause.
10
The line of Denny’s shoulders lay more or less flush with the edge of the stage. Beyond it the first rows of audience members sat splattered in Denny’s blood and brains. Many among them were lacerated by splinters of Denny’s skull.
Immediately Denny’s head exploded some in the audience jumped from their seats with a curious readiness. Rickard retained just enough of his senses – like Clive, he had cramped in shock – to notice that those who sprang into action had all been seated at the ends of rows. They fell into line behind one another – five in one side aisle, five in the other – and ran up the steps flanking the stage. By the time Rickard had limbered back to some measure of mobility and turned around, the stage was empty, save for Jeremiah and a dark gritty track of blood that led into the wings and out through the stage door.
A pity, the whole episode, because up to that point the concert had gone exceptionally well.
Back in Denny’s apartment – Jeremiah let them in with the master key – they complimented each other on their individual performances: Clive had sung high and sharp like a piccolo, Rickard’s vibrato had been so rich and resonant that it was felt through the boards of the stage, and Jeremiah had manipulated Denny’s voice with deftness and virtually perfect timing.
***
Clive made tea, putting eight spoons of sugar directly in the pot, and they sat in silence sipping the astringently sweet beverage. When, after some time, the noise of their slurping was joined by Bit’s purring, Jeremiah called the dog over with a click of his fingers, rubbed it on the chin, and said:
‘So, then. Splat.’
‘Mmmh,’ said Clive. ‘It was a stroke, I fear. He can get very wound up.’
‘I could see that about him all right,’ said Jeremiah.
‘A curse, they are. One day you’re yourself, the next you’re not quite. But he’s in the best hands. I suppose we should think about ringing around the emergency rooms.’
Rickard absently eyed Bit, then fixed on the animal. He whistled and tapped his ankle, but the dog would not move from Jeremiah’s caress. He became aware once more, by a deep ambient silence, of the absence of Denny’s clock, the one that had been cleared out to the skip; and then conscious again of the sound only of slurping, and of the satisfied grunting (and mellow flutings) of a snub-nosed dog, and of the distant cacophony of a New York night.
He remembered the girl in the Puffball Store, with the wolfish grey eyes, and that one of the people who had taken Denny’s body away was this girl. He remembered how the halogen light in the store had caught her name tag and flared.
He got up out of his seat, electrified by a revelation, and made a new pot of tea, unaware that that was what he had done. He saw the thing he would do. He would go to this girl, Fondler, as if she were a white sacrificial slab, or a dark jagged reef, and offer his own self up, fling his own self down, and be obliterated, foundered.
A blood sacrifice.
The others were looking at him.
He tried to describe the girl but struggled for precise enough words.
‘She sounds delicious,’ said Clive.
Three minutes later, after trying to describe her better, and telling them how he had seen her a little while before – and how the image of her from that first time and the image of her from hours earlier had moved one over the other and matched like two of the same bloody fingerprint – he had convinced the others that he was smitten.
‘She sounds like the kind of female that a male would know by instinct was beautiful,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Really very beautiful,’ said Clive.
‘You should have courted her.’
‘You should have taken the chance.’
‘You should have heard you there.’
‘Our man is in love.’
Rickard was aghast.
‘But I’ve only seen her twice – briefly.’
‘Briefly is all it takes,’ said Clive.
‘You should have let your heart do the talking,’ said Jeremiah. ‘You should have said to this female there in that Armory concert hall, “X.X., we were put here together at this time for a reason.” Because that is Denny’s message – yes, Clive? Allow the feeling to fill your sails.’
‘Oh yes. Denny is a great believer in acting on impulse.’
‘Go with the life force, that’s what he says. It’s the cord –’
‘The filament –’
‘– that runs through us all. Do not resist. Love’s sweet ways are all that count. Love’s accretions mount and mount. But love’s too shy to show its face. And when it does, it is too late. You must find its hiding place.’
‘Well done, Jeremiah,’ said Clive.
‘These are very stupid songs. They are not philosophies,’ said Rickard.
‘But in them all, taken together – layered, serried, racked – is the truth,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Rickard, you must never let guilt hamper you,’ said Clive. ‘Was it guilt that got in the way last night?’
‘Well – yes, actually.’
‘Rickard, Rickard. Don’t let guilt ruin your life. Guilt is a terrible thing.’
‘And it’s dishonest,’ said Jeremiah.
‘It is,’ said Clive. ‘It’s dishonest. When we feel guilt we are hiding.’
‘Guilt is false. It’s a false emotion, that’s what Denny says. So you must be honest always – he says that too.’
‘He’s all about the honesty. As a singer. As a man.’
‘We could all be more honest, and it would bring pain, but there’d be less pain in the long run, that�
�s what you’ll find, that’s what he says,’ said Jeremiah. ‘He says where honesty meets danger, that’s love. But we get asphyxiated in all sorts of whores’ front-bottom farts. He didn’t say whores’ front-bottom farts. This is what I’m saying, all of it.’
‘But he says that too,’ said Clive.
‘And … yes, carpe diem. He learnt that in Italy.’
‘Italy,’ said Clive.
‘Desperate,’ said Jeremiah.
‘Don’t talk to me,’ said Clive.
‘All those young females he met over there.’
‘Oh no, the young females came later,’ said Clive. ‘Remember, Aisling was after Italy.’
‘All those young females he met after Aisling.’
‘He never got divorced from her, that’s the thing,’ said Clive. ‘That’s where your guilt comes in.’
‘But even if he could have got divorced, he says it wouldn’t have mattered. He always feels … or felt … I suppose he’s a little past the point now –’
‘Oh, there’ll be life in the old dog, you’ll see, once he comes around from this stroke.’
‘He always feels that he needs Aisling’s blessing. Have I got that right?’
‘That’s what he’s been telling me too. He should have moved on. And everyone saying she was the great love of his life. That was false too. Listening to all that, in his head, that’s what held him back.’
‘When he should have listened to his heart.’
‘Yes! At all times.’
‘So.’
‘There’s a message for us all there.’
‘So go after this female!’ said Jeremiah, cracking a fist into his palm.
Rickard could hold back no longer.
‘Gentlemen! It just wouldn’t do! It would not do to ask a girl out at a murder scene! Especially if the girl in question is complicit in the murder!’
‘Who’s talking about murder?’ said Jeremiah.
‘Murder?’ said Clive.
***
The next morning Rickard lay in his bed, his bladder a balloon of moiling brown bog water, thinking about this girl, and thinking about his coming end. He imagined the words of his death notice – the ‘loved by his many cousins’, and the telling absence of Toni – and the sentimental music that would play at his funeral, and he imagined also how the goo of that sentiment would remain to sicken and spite some, but calcify in time to inspire others. He was never surer that an enemy was ranging against him and his kind, but the only way he wanted to belong to his side now was as a symbol, a talisman, a totem, as some kind of idol that could be held on a bier in battle. He recognised, as a witness to the nefarious act of the night before, and as one who understood its implications, the great solemnity of a calling: as if Justice, with her gold scales, hovered in the roundel of the porthole; or Hibernia, with her gold spear, stood in the grotto of the wardrobe. He could, of course, have willed to his flesh the point of Hibernia’s spear, but that would have been inglorious and meaningless. A more effective use of himself would be as he had first conceived – to force from the enemy the very worst kind of outcome. He would predecease his parents. At any rate, he would force an outcome. He got up and finally went to the bathroom.
Later that evening – he had fallen back to sleep and dozed for hours, terrorised by horribly vivid dreams – he returned to Denny’s building in Morningside Heights and found Jeremiah in the basement. The unmistakable popcorn smell of Bit infused the fuggy air. The dog, now taken into the care of Jeremiah and his brothers, had the run of the place.
‘This is a very serious situation,’ said Rickard.
Jeremiah entered the main part of the basement from a side room.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said. He was grimy from work, and wearing a jersey of the Gaelic Athletic Association county of New York.
‘Your brother directed me.’
‘Oh did he now? Well isn’t he very clever. Would you like a cup of this?’ He held out a mug. ‘It’s buttered coffee what all the youth are drinking. Healthy, they say. And they say only Irish butter will do for it.’
Rickard took one look at the lacquery black liquid with the shining globules on its surface and waved it away.
‘Jeremiah, we must examine this music machine. We must open it up.’
Jeremiah scratched behind his ear, making a scouring sound. ‘And what would you hope to find?’
‘It’s not what I’d hope, it’s what I’d dread.’
‘Would that make it any closer to your understanding?’
‘I’m merely looking for evidence. I feel there’s a link between that machine and what we all witnessed happened to Denny last night. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I think he went out like a watermelon, that’s what I think. He wouldn’t have suffered a bit. Now,’ – he took a loud slurp of his coffee – ‘if you don’t mind, I’m in the middle of work.’
‘Oh, and Jeremiah – this girl that I talked about.’
‘Yes.’
‘I want someone to know. I’m going to go to her. To these Puffball people.’
‘And do what?’
‘I’ll have to think about my words carefully. I want to really put it to her. The thing is – I know exactly what it is that I want to put to her, but –’
‘And that is what?’
Rickard described his vision of a future war – the Sharks, the Owls.
Jeremiah swilled and inspected his coffee. ‘I know nothing about women. But what you say there does not seem, any of it, the wise and fructifying thing to be telling them.’
‘Yes, you’re right, you’re right, that’s the wrong approach. The thing … The thing is – I know what I want to do, I know what I want to represent, I know the outcome I want. I think.’
‘Maybe you think too much.’
‘I must inveigle myself.’
‘Let what happens happen.’
‘And be damned.’
‘A man can be thinking too much. Actually,’ – Jeremiah clunked his mug down on a shelf – ‘can I come and observe?’
‘No, Jeremiah. No. But if you’d remember please this exchange, and my motives.’
***
By eleven o’clock most of the tourists were gone from the plaza. A light spring rain had fallen and the granite surfacing gleamed. Not a droplet of water clung to the Puffball dome and its green laser spider. Rickard had worked his way down to the bottom pretzel in a stack of five. The foil was opened in his hand like a tawdry moonflower. He was on his third paper cup of coffee, and his heart was bouncing.
The girl came to the door of the building, stopped, and zipped up a black leather jacket. He was certain it was his girl, though her hair was different this time – tied up at the back. She looked straight in his direction. He dipped his head to the centre of his flower. All he had to do was let her know – soon, but not now, and somewhere private – and his martyrdom would be assured.
He came to the back of the store, on to 39th Street, and looked right, then left. He spotted her across the road, a hundred metres away. He was happy to leave this gap: it was narrow enough so that he could keep an eye on her, wide enough so that if she turned around he could sidestep, duck his head, become just another head in the crowd.
She led him down through the old business heart of Manhattan, under the bulk of the Empire State Building and the other mud-coloured ziggurats. Something about the area always made him shiver and speed along. Half of it was lost to the night – hardly a light was on above, the mud of those ziggurats dissolving in the oily dark – but on the streets was madness contained. Steam hissed from the ground; magnesium sparked in grilles and catch basins. Many times in the past he had strolled these unfaltering streets without any purpose at all. How had he kept going? Walking in Manhattan without purpose was boring and exhausting. Only romance had kept him going: songs about this or some other avenue and cross-street, The Severe Dalliance and the hope of that dream in his head and this in reality converging.
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br /> Occasionally the girl was lost in the clusters, reappearing with a zing of bright yellow – her jacket had a lemon stripe across the shoulders. His eye was tricked more than once: tiger stripes rippling through the backlit vapour; dazzle-ship taxis with their chequered flashes. It became a game of keeping pace: taking ninety seconds to reach the end of a block, running a light when he could. How before now had he not thrown himself under a bus with boredom?
On to Broadway, then the strange lonely Bowery, with its pot-and-pan shops, its procession of domestic dioramas. A clatter of windblown litter brought echoes of skid row. At a window she halted. Catching up, he noted a fan of spatulas, knives on a magnetised strip, sharpening rods. On she led him; left again on to Houston Street and southwards; eastwards. Was this Alphabet City? East again of Alphabet City?
As the streets condensed so he had let the gap narrow. Now only fifty metres separated them, with no one else this side of the empty street. She stopped again and turned around.
‘Hey!’ he shouted.
She went on, quickening her pace.
Into a courtyard in the middle of a squat housing project, each building just five storeys high. Two rusty basketball hoops craned at either end of the space from chipped, rotting backboards. Many windows in the buildings were broken, the walls sprayed here and there with graffiti. From the windows in one block soot streaked up the brickwork. Behind him a fire escape rattled.
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