‘Okay! Okay! Okay!’
Clive was staring at his chest; staring at it pumping up and down; pumping up and down as if it were some far-off mountain range; some far-off mountain range with no connection to him.
‘Okay,’ said the woman, Casey. ‘We’re out of time.’
Her head and arms were drooped like a hanged person’s, her knees fallen wide apart.
He remained on his side and regarded her for a moment. He sat up, and dropped her fee – $150 for the initial consultation, a sign read – in the hat at her ankles. He regarded the money in the hat.
He said, ‘There’s another thing that perhaps I should confess, while I’m with you. I once stole a huge amount of money. Tens of thousands of dollars.’
‘If you want to continue with this some other time, please ring ahead.’
***
Jean Dotsy ‘put her foot to the gas’. She felt exhilarated with fear. A man in a herringbone overcoat sat in the passenger seat of her car. He had a brimmed hat set back on his crown leaving a high forehead exposed, and large but neat black eyebrows. He had yellow teeth, each edged with brown streaks of caries. He occasionally prodded the dashboard as he spoke. His fingers were peculiarly thick and long and smoothened. They had just left the county of Dublin, via some back road at the foot of the mountains. The stranger had a very particular idea of a route they would take.
‘At Edenderry then we will turn north.’
‘Where is Edenderry?’ said Jean.
‘It’s not for a while yet.’
‘I don’t have enough petrol to get back to Donegal.’
‘You will have enough petrol.’
‘I will need to stop at a garage.’
‘You will not stop at a garage.’
‘Will I die?’
‘You have already died.’
‘Will I die again?’
‘Not while you are of use.’
‘Am I alive now?’
‘Yes you are.’
‘Have I you to thank?’
‘Yes you do.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank ye, you mean. You can thank us all when you arrive.’
‘What do they want me for?’
‘You will wet-nurse a child. You will be put to proper and natural use. You were no use to anyone with your interests lying the way that they did. And you will perform your duty because you have been given another chance. Be grateful that you have been returned. Be grateful that your body was not replaced with a changeling, as is the normal routine of these things, and then you would have had nothing to return to.’
‘What is a changeling?’
‘A shambles put in the place of someone who has been called to better use.’
‘You have called me to another use and have not even left a shambles for my family to mourn over?’
‘We have not. As far as your family are concerned you have disappeared on them.’
‘How have I anything to be grateful for?’
‘Because you have been returned.’
‘How can you be sure that I will produce milk?’
‘You are a woman so you will produce milk.’
‘My fingers are very cold,’ said Jean. She could not feel them on the wheel. ‘I do not feel alive.’ Only the fear, she felt, was animating her.
‘Carry on now.’ He tapped the windscreen and she noticed he was wearing a garnet ring.
They had entered the plain of the Curragh. There was no hedge or wall or fence to hem the road in and on either side the grass stretched away into the distance. The clouds hung low, lobed and frowning. A squall blew up across the grasslands, buffeting the car from the side, carrying with it a riddle of hail. The air became a fizz of white and black speckles, like on a television screen; soon there was no black at all, it all was white. The rattle on the metal and glass brought her back, temporarily, her head among the typewriters in the central secretariat going like crazy and the windows fogging up from the heat of bodies; a scene such as she had escaped that morning in her car to go to Dunleary; and she had an urge come over her to have her vitality confirmed, to feel the little shots of ice pummel and pinch her skin. She leaned to her right and put her cheek on the window, to feel the cold and the movement of the engine. Then she stretched her left arm to bring the engine up to fourth; she could not reach, and in a moment’s panic her foot, by instinct, stamped down on the brake. The seat belt suddenly tightened at her neck and she was pressed hard against the door from the centrifuge as the car spun on the road. Miraculously, when it came to rest it appeared to be still on the road. And then, as suddenly as it had descended, the squall blew over and away, beyond, to Wicklow; to Wicklow, she knew, because that was the way her car was pointed, towards the mountains.
The clouds separated and became the most beautiful white and sublime things and the sun and the blue shone through. She thought of the Assumption. The stranger in the passenger seat was gone.
In the same direction as Wicklow was Dublin, and Dunleary, whence she had come. She looked at the little white balls strewn all over the tarmac and as far as she could see back up the road. Some poor sheep was collapsed on its front knees. She looked around her at the exposed plain. She thought she would go back to Dunleary, get the boat across and get out, take herself away, put herself beyond use – to who knows where. To America, eventually, if she could arrange it. The USSR and some gulag. Somewhere where she would be the most useless woman that ever came into being.
12
Rickard enjoyed the most magical few hours of his life. It was a day he hoped wouldn’t end, and indeed thought would go on into the night, until Fondler told him that she had to work an evening shift. By that moment he knew, anyway, that they were sweeties. The day began with a breakfast of vegetables at a former stevedores’ hut on the East River, one of the last of its kind in the city. He found the food largely indigestible, but the radio gave them endless terrible music to joke about and he was able, easy enough, to leave most of his food to one side on the pretext that he was laughing too much. At the end of their meal Rickard thought that they might part ways; that awkward moment came when knives and forks were left neatly on plates and throats were cleared. He suggested that they go for a walk so that she could burn off her food. She looked at him with a deadly serious avidness; ambitious, from deep behind her eyebrows. He noticed a tint to those darkest black eyes now: a golden sparkle, like the flash of quartz in the deepest pool.
But soon he felt completely relaxed in her company, and sensed that she was in his, and he allowed himself to believe that she was not so at ease with everyone she met. They sauntered here and there, with no route or destination in mind. He walked with his hands behind his back; she with hers swinging freely, or gesticulating energetically. She did most of the talking, and he was happy to listen. He learnt to his surprise that she was from Canada, and that her surname, which he forgot immediately, had a Q in it. She had threatened to throw herself in the Saint Lawrence Seaway numerous times over various Don Juans she’d been barred from seeing. She liked dogs and cats, and would like a house in the country. She had only taken up smoking recently, and would never smoke in her own house. Ideally, she would like one of those cute barn-like houses, with land, near the sea.
They stopped at a home-décor store and his thoughts raced out from him, but not at such a pace that he began to fret; they flowed one into the next, like little bubbles of dawn, dreamlike and pleasant; they were of barns, animals, pumpkins, straw, roof beams, gingham, snow, the Amish, handshakes, threshing machines, a brood of children. When she handled two small dried scented mandarin oranges and made suggestive remarks he surprised himself again by not becoming embarrassed. They laughed, in fact, both of them – so loudly in the middle of the shop that others joined in. By now they were able to laugh at anything: Puffball and the white terror; that he was a stalker and he would fucking murder her.
They went into the Chew-butter Cracknell Emporium on Times Square, a multi-storey candy s
tore themed around the candy-shell-coated chocolate candy. Flags of the world were assembled from variously coloured sweets in Perspex display panels. When she asked him which one was the Irish flag and he could not find it, he had a go at assembling one himself, on a huge plastic tray, from fistfuls of green and yellow sweets he scooped out of tubs. Not having any whites to hand, he tried to make the flag of another time – the Erin go bragh standard of romantics and poets, complete with fiddly detailing: harp, sprigs of shamrock and lettering. It would be a mess before he even started, he knew it. They laughed again. What was he trying to do? she asked. A store assistant approached them, telling Rickard he would pay for the upwards of two pounds of candy he had molested, and they ran from the shop with feints and whirls, pausing only so that Rickard could rub the green and yellow dye off his fingers on a man or woman dressed as a giant Chew-butter Cracknell, and then they joined hands out on the street and hurried onwards like schoolchildren.
They jumped on a subway train, changed trains, jumped out again, jumped back in. They exited at Columbus Circle, and entered Central Park. They spoke gushingly and vaguely about flowers and the beauty of New York in the springtime. Finally Rickard resolved to find the statue of John McCormack he had heard was in the park. He had no idea where exactly it might be; they asked questions, were met with bemused faces or replies (‘John Mac Cortlandt?’), and pushed on regardless, Rickard determining that they would find it by chance or be led there by a celestial finger. They never found it; but during their criss-crossing of the lower park he told her about this great singing count they were searching for, and many other things. Of McCormack, he pretended that he was more of an admirer than he really was, and that his interest in the singer was lifelong. He made up a life story for him too, or filled with fiction the yawning gaps between the few facts that he knew. He sang her lines from songs. The wind in the wall it is whistling your name/And giving a sound to the cause of your fame. She asked him if he spoke the Gaelic tongue. Ah, the language of the bards and poets! – of course I do, he said, although in truth he only had a smattering of the language. She asked him what the Gaelic for Central Park was. Fortuitously he knew – Phairc Láir, he told her. She said to him that that sounded like ‘folklore’ – and did he know much about the folklore of Ireland? Oh, Fondler, Fondler, he said, taking her in a one-armed bear hug across the shoulders and spinning her so that they were facing the opulent apartment buildings of Fifth Avenue that overlooked this eastern edge of the park. And would you give up your dream, please, he said to her, of an upstate barn-house for something a little grander, somewhere where you might have room to store a forest of fur coats and a thicket of evening gowns and a whole clerestory of perfume bottles, so that we might be nearer the centre of things, the centre of where all the great and wonderful things will happen when the dust has settled and all is resolved and the good and right are standing?
She was looking at her watch.
‘Damn it,’ she said. ‘I have to go.’
***
(‘Listen to me,’ he said.
‘Rickard, come on, I don’t have time. What is it now? What? Car horns? A gunfight?’
‘No. Listen to me.’
‘Pfff.’
‘Listening?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Honey, you think that rye is high,
Well you ain’t known nothin’ till you’ve scraped the sky,
And you ain’t tasted nothin’ like a Lalo’s pie,
But betcha don’t know what they do for sport.
Sugar, you think your world’s enough,
Well you ain’t thought nothin’ ’bout tons of other stuff
Till you’ve come and seen these people huff and then puff,
But betcha don’t know what they do for sport.
Baby, how’s Redcomb and how’s li’l Suze?
Well they ain’t seen nothin’ like tomorrow’s news,
’Cos the days go by here in their twos,
But betcha don’t know what they do for sport.
Bunny, you’re as sunny as a sheaf of wheat,
And there ain’t no sunshine in these grey streets,
So how’s about sellin’ up and comin’ out east?
And I’ll show you exactly what they do for sport.’
His throat was soldered together like poor Denny’s had been and his voice sounded like gravel and water in a cement mixer.
‘That was lovely,’ said Toni. ‘Genuinely.’
Rickard heard her blow her nose.
‘Toni, I know I’m a disappointment to you. You’ve never heard me sing before, and I said I was a singer, and you’ve just heard me, and I was terrible.’
‘Stop that now.’
‘And I know I’ve been consistently disappointing. The thing is … I’ve been thinking, and I’ve had an idea, and – beginner’s luck you’ll say, but … Yes, I’ve been thinking about the times when you said you had a crushing feeling of disappointment about me. Like when we made jigsaws and you said it wasn’t enough. Or when we gave out about the neighbours and you said it wasn’t enough. Or when we went to Zumba classes together and you said it wasn’t enough. I know I never said it to you at the time – it was my pride, probably – but, remembering those occasions, I can tell you that those moments weren’t enough for me either. Yes, really. But, now – isn’t it uncanny that we felt disappointed exactly simultaneously?’
‘Hmm.’
‘I believe in the concept of soulmates. That when people have that rare, precious, metaphysical connection they feel the same highs and lows, and they feel them as waves in that connection. Even when their bodies are separate, and their conscious selves are separate, they still share that connection. You know, Toni, honestly, I have this awful, doomy feeling about New York. It’s been coming down on me almost since I got here. Like … I don’t know, it’s like the opposite of romance. It’s like reality, but super-reality. Like, people are as hard as in the real world – harder – and they’re not real. They’re super-hard. And they’re not romantic because everything they do starts from without. It’s as if there’s no spirit there. And I know – I know – that in parallel with that feeling, that place that you work in has only seemed greyer and more synthetic and more spiritless. How has it seemed to you? Greyer? More synthetic?’
‘Yeah, look, you’re worrying me with this talk. What about this “doomy feeling”?’
‘I feel there’s going to be a war. Between humans and … zombies.’
‘Zombies?’
‘Yeah. Sort-of zombies.’
‘Pfff. That’s just typical.’
‘What is?’
‘Well, stereotypical. Guys. It’s always zombies, cyborgs and androids with guys. Just like it’s always fairies and the occult of northern and eastern Europe with girls. I see it a lot in fan fiction.’
‘You know I’m not stereotypical.’
‘Yeah, but then there you go with your zombies. It’s so disappointing. It’s not Mars versus Venus with men and women. It’s zombies/cyborgs/androids/aliens versus fairies/witches/vampires/necromancers.’
‘You’re not stereotypical either. You don’t go in for fairies. Do you?’
‘Pfff. Well. You know. I suppose a part of me does. Pfff. Yeah, it’s so disappointing.’
Silence.
‘My friend’s head exploded the other night at a concert.’
‘Rickard, I think you should come home.’
He sighed. ‘You sound more American than the people here. Your accent is different.’
‘I mean it. I think you should come home.’
‘Will you be there?’
‘I’ve told you before, I’m not going anywhere.’
‘So you will be there?’
‘I’ll be in Dublin, yes.’
‘Well stay safe.’)
***
Rickard and Fondler met a couple of evenings later at a diner of her suggestion. When he got there she was already seated at a table at the low central
partition. She gave him a tepid smile across the floor. Her hands were clasped, palms upward, in front of her on the table, and he dared to touch them as he took his seat. They were cold, and damp, like a mound of potato peel. Her hair tonight was messily tied up in ribbons, like a prayer bush aflutter with rags. There was something obscurely wrong with her, just as there was something obscurely wrong with him.
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