Authors: Declan Burke
“
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 where 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.
Gonzo, the Eight Ball Gonzo, was coming home. I sparked the jay, waited for the lightning to crack, the earth to erupt beneath my feet.
10
Dutchie had a theory about Gonzo. He reckoned Gonzo wasn’t a bad bloke as such, it was just that the universe was too small to cope.
Halfway down the jay I took Gonzo’s photograph down from the mantelpiece. I’d have binned it years before but Denise had insisted on keeping it, Dutchie playing shutterbug the night Ben was born, Gonzo flat on his back, panned out on Dutchie’s pool table. Long and skinny, shoulders hunched, like he was always waiting for someone to sandbag him from behind. Laughing up at the camera, face flushed and eyes small, a jay smouldering between the fingers of his right hand, the black ball in his left.
Gonzo cut to the chase, reckoned that pool was a simple game. People complicated things, trying to play shots you’d need a degree in quantum physics to understand. He reckoned the only eight ball worth worrying about was a gram of crystal meth, which he claimed was just about enough to keep you wired for the weekend. For Gonzo, playing pool was all about getting the black ball into a certain position and letting gravity do the rest. Which was why, in the photo, his left hand was hovering over the centre pocket of the pool table, ready to drop the black. It was the only trick shot he ever learned, the only angle he ever worked out. He called it the Eight Ball Boogie.
We’d been close for brothers, close enough to want to kill one another and too close to actually follow through, although he’d tried it on one night, out back of Dutchie’s place. Late enough to be getting early, a lock-in in full swing, the doors bolted. A couple of jays doing the rounds, a game of cards on the pool table, stud poker, two cards down, a three-card flop showing. I was sitting on a pair of tens, a king showing in the flop. We were the only two left in the pot, and it was all paper but not so much you could have dressed a skinny stripper. Gonzo wasn’t too flush, and he needed the pot to stay in touch. He dug in the watch pocket of his jeans, dropped a wrap of silver foil into the pile.
“
That’s an eighth,” he said. “I’ll make it fifteen. Seeing as how I know you.”
“
You’re a sweetheart.” He could have been bluffing, or he could have pulled a second king. It wasn’t likely, I’d pulled one myself, but I didn’t have anything to back up the tens. And he could have just been having a laugh, knowing we’d end up smoking the dope anyway. It was hard to tell what he was thinking from the wrong side of his shades. He was sitting back, relaxed, like he was waiting to thumb a lift on the next glacier passing through.
“
He’s spoofing, Harry.” Celine, head on my shoulder, eyes closed. Not needing to look to guess that Gonzo was on a bluff.
“
No speech play,” Gonzo intoned, mechanical. He grinned at me. “Fifteen to you, Harry – time for steel balls.”
“
Let Celine have her say.” The pot wasn’t worth throwing fifteen quid away, but I wanted him to think I was tempted, make him sweat for it. Besides, I liked to hear Celine talk, liked it so much I’d asked her if she was interested in talking at the top of an aisle. She said she’d talk about if we talked about getting a place together. Once we moved in we talked about everything except getting married, but we were getting around to it, and sooner rather than later.
“
Sting the fucker,” she murmured.
Dutchie and Chizzer took a bet on whether Gonzo was bluffing. Michelle started shuffling the cards, impatient.
“
C’mon, Harry,” Gonzo said. “Call it, or I’ll be showing Celine my balls of steel.”
That she didn’t like, and edge in her voice.
“
Take him to the cleaners, Harry. Teach him some manners.”
He just laughed at that. Michelle pppffffed, threw the cards on the table, climbed down off her barstool.
“
Anybody for a fresh one?”
“
I’ll have a cider,” I said, throwing the cards on the table. “All yours, Gonz. Take it home.”
Gonzo flipped the shades up, cackled harsh, turned over his cards, no king. Celine shook her head, disgusted. Chizzer took Dutchie’s fiver. I watched Gonzo’s eyes, dead and shiny, a double eclipse.
“
Play the player, Harry, not the cards.” He raked in the cash, jabbed a forefinger in my direction. “Lesson number one.”
“
Send me the bill.” He was about to kick off, you could always tell with Gonzo. I needed to get away from the table. “Deal me out, I’m giving Michelle a hand with the beers.”
“
Work away.” He nodded at Celine. “I’ll show blondie some real stud while you’re gone.”
“
Asshole.”
She sounded tense.
“
Change the record, Gonz,” I said, but he left the needle in the groove. I took off to the bar, he followed, one thing led to another and from nowhere Gonzo swung his bottle. It broke my arm, but only because I had my arm up to protect my face. When I fell back against the bar he freaked, coming at me with the broken neck of the bottle. I grabbed for his wrist and he battered me with his free fist until Dutchie and Chizzer jumped him.
It took both of them to hold him down. Michelle and Celine bundled me into the car, drove to Casualty. It took three or four hours to see a doctor, another couple for them to X-Ray my arm, set it in plaster. By then Gonzo had calmed down, which was just as well, he was the only one waiting when I came out of the cubicle. We sat in the car, smoking, burning off the hospital smell.
“
Something I want to say,” he muttered.
I was touched by his penitent tone and then it all kicked in, the dope, the broken arm, the early hour. I realised that it couldn’t have been easy for him, my moving in with Celine. Gonzo and I had been living together for nearly twenty years, wards of the state after a drunk driver orphaned us. All our lives we’d been shunted from one institution to another, being fucked over by staff, or bigger kids, or teachers who knew they could vent their frustrations because no one gave a fuck about us back home.
We’d grown up and grown hard, fighting the odds and always losing, but one thing we never did, we never took it lying down. An allergy to penicillin was about all we had in common, but he was my kid brother and all through the bad years, even during the hassle from the Dibble, the Provo threats when Gonzo started dealing, nothing had prised us apart. But even that doesn’t tell you how close we were.
“
I wanted to tell you,” he said, “that I fucked Celine.”
I didn’t kill him. That’s how close we were.
The worst thing was the way he smiled when he said those words. It was a canine smile, dead and dry. I sat there, dumb, the cigarette smouldering as I read the No Smoking sign on the glove compartment over and over again. Not knowing if I should laugh or cry or kick someone’s head in. Celine’s, preferably, but Gonzo’s would have to do because you don’t hit a woman. Not even if she’s dug her talons in deep, ripped your guts out, so you don’t have to go to the bother of puking them up whole.
After that night I knew only two things for sure. One, you play the player, not the cards. Two, I would never, in my entire life, be as happy again as I was before Gonzo said those three simple words, ‘I fucked Celine’.