Ken Bruen - Headstone

Done, I sat back, drained the coffee, and stared at the pad, willing it to speak to me. There was a pattern, a design; I just hadn’t got it yet. I brushed my teeth, the smell of burnt paper still lingering in the air, hovering above the sink, like some specter of paradise lost, a lost plea of transcendence.

Shrugged on my coat, the gun in place, and headed out to face the day. Whatever it brought, I was at least locked and loaded. As I opened the door, I glanced one last time at the sink and my dead dream, muttered,

“Smoke, that’s all.”

I came out of my apartment building, made a sign of the cross at the cathedral, moved across the Salmon Weir Bridge, and didn’t look to see if the salmon were jumping. The water had been poisoned two years now and the only things jumping were me nerves.

Of course, I ran into a wise guy, some fuck I vaguely knew, who immediately stared at my fingers, said,

“Not paying your debts, eh?”

It did flit across my mind to have him jump where the salmon didn’t. I said,

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

Smirk in place, he said,

“Common as muck these days, everybody’s in debt and having to give up parts of their life they never expected.”

I said,

“I gave them your name, said you’d cover my tab.”

Whatever he shouted after me, it contained not only invective but a sense of alarm.

Good.

Books.

I needed to ground myself and nothing, not even the Jay, quite does it like books. I don’t always have the focus to read them but I sure do need them around. Especially as a woman was not in the cards, not no more. I headed for my second home.

Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop has grown and become almost as important as the swans of Galway in the very pulse of the city. I hadn’t been since my most recent accident and felt almost content to be heading there. I passed the newest head shop, doing, it seemed, a brisk trade. Not a high away was the Oxfam shop, emanating a mellow vibe. And then Charlie’s. Sylvia Beach would have been proud of those guys.

Vinny was behind the counter, chatting animatedly to a customer. He had that Clinton touch of making each person feel like the most important one. His trademark long black hair was trimmed. He no longer resembled John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, whose character was named. . Vincent.

Go figure.

He handed a stack of books to the customer, said,

“Sure, pay the rest when you can.”

Why the town loves the shop.

He saw me, asked,

“Jack, it’s my smoke break, time to join me?”

Oh, yeah.

He has the laid-back gig down to a fine art, without working, and yet, if the situation requires it, he can focus like a hunting Galway heron. He lit up his Marlboro Light, offered the pack, and I said,

“Thanks.”

Forgetting, I tried to use my right hand with the Zippo and, without a word, Vinny leant over, fired me up. I folded my right hand in a feeble fist and asked,

“Want to know?”

He reflected, then,

“On reflection, no.”

Not that he didn’t care. It was the very caring that doused his curiosity. He said,

“A friend of yours was in the other day, the Ban Garda?”

I was stunned, asked,

“In an official capacity?”

He laughed, said,

“Jack, we’re a bookshop, not a speakeasy.”

Added,

“Least not yet.”

He finished his cig, extinguished it carefully in the provided

bin, said,

“She bought a stretch of James Lee Burke.”

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.

Guy like me, who the hell is going to give the dancer’s choice? I felt her loss like the departure of an aspiration you’d yearned for but never seriously considered.