Wonders never cease. I muttered,
“Ridge buying books.”
He corrected, gently,
“Ban Ni Iomaire Jack.”
One of the girls stuck her head out the door, shouted,
“Vin… phone.”
I smiled, said,
“Bet you have them primed to do that after five minutes.”
He laughed fully and he has one of those great ones, makes you feel good to simply hear it. He asked,
“How’d you know?”
I said,
“It’s what I’d do.”
Now he did glance at his watch, left to him by his late beloved dad. He asked,
“You living in Nun’s Island?”
Surprised me and I said in a tone heavier than I meant,
“Keeping track of the customers, that it?”
It was unwarranted and I instantly regretted it. His eyes changed, the usual merriment faded, he said,
“No, it’s called keeping track of friends.”
In a piss-poor attempt at reconciliation, I handed over a list, said,
“Any chance you got any of these?”
Ten authors on there:
Jim Nisbet
Tom Piccirilli
Craig McDonald
Megan Abbott
Adrian McKinty and
Others.
You want to truly off end authors, list them under Others.
He scanned it, said,
“ Fifty Grand was terrific, the others, apart from Print the Legend,
I’ll need some time on.”
I took out my wallet. Vinny gave me the look, said,
“I didn’t get them yet.”
Money just doesn’t buy you out of a cluster fuck; ask Tiger Woods.
One last lame salvo. I said,
“We’ll have that pint soon.”
He nodded, went back into the shop.
I stood there, mortified. Maybe Vinny’s watch, my stupid mishandling of one of my oldest and closest friends, resurrected a painful memory.
My father, Lord rest him, had all his life, over his bed, a portrait of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. After he died, I’d been spending some time with a guy I regarded as a friend. By some odd coincidence, his father was terminally ill. In what I believed to be one of the few decent acts of my befuddled life, I gave the picture to my friend. Not easily, as anything to do with my dad was beyond sacred to me.
The man lingered on for two more years, painful ones, and during that time, my erstwhile friend, like so many others, had become, if not my enemy, certainly somebody who avoided me. No surprise there; business as usual, really. My existence of alienation even then was in full flow.
Few weeks after the man’s funeral, I received a parcel. It contained the portrait and a terse note: Jack I’m returning this as my father has no further use of it. Not that it did him a whole load of good. We are never going to be friends, Jack, and you know, I doubt we ever were.
There was more, it didn’t get better.
But that’s what I recall and I remember being gutted by the gesture. To return a holy picture seemed to be an act of desecration. I gave the thing to charity. What had been holy above my father’s bed had mutated to utter malice.
I didn’t understand the act then, I don’t understand it now. For a man like me, always rapid to anger, to flare-ups, I don’t think I for one single moment felt even a twinge of anger, I felt only sadness.
Outside Charlie’s now, I stubbed my cigarette under my boot, fuck the bin, and turned up the collar of my Garda coat and went, as the very last line of Padraig Pearse’s poem goes, went my way
…Sorrowfully.
An easier exercise is to look for evidence rather than jump to conclusions.
– Detective’s Handbook
I managed a day without much booze, cut way back on the pills, and so when the morning of Ridge’s arrival came, I was, if not clear-eyed, at least mobile. You take what you get. As I waited and sipped at a strong coffee, I practiced over and over with the Mossberg. I was getting there. It began to feel like an extension of my arm. That I thought this was some sort of achievement is a fucking sad depiction of how narrow my world had become. I blamed it on the loss of a love almost reached.