Кен Бруен - In the Galway Silence

Really, she had to ask?

A girl came up to me, got right in my face. I said,

“Back it off.”

The dog poisoner said,

“David has got a broken arm, his face smashed, and said to give you a message.”

I said,

“Make it brief.”

She did back off, a vicious smile in place, said,

“He’s coming for you.”

Of course he was. I said,

“Tell him to join the queue.”

Confused her, she went,

“What?”

I shot my hand out, tapped her lightly on the head, said,

“God bless you child.”

I walked off.

She shouted some obscenity at me but it was caught on the wind, went in the other direction, much like the story of my life.

North Korea continued to launch missiles, edging closer to the U.S. mainland.

The Guards were still involved in the massive breath-analyzing scandal, where it now emerged that close to a million tests were blatantly invented. The Garda commissioner finally resigned.

You grasped for any hint of light in a world darkening by the very minute.

Took:

A homeless Irishman found dead in Manchester. Despite repeated searches, no relatives could be found.

The Met, in a compassionate move, appealed to the Irish community to attend the poor man’s funeral.

They did.

In the hundreds.

Such moments gave you that breath to keep going another day.

Finding Kiki.

Like a poor version of a Pixar movie.

My daughter.

Fuck, My daughter ?

The very words filled me with a range of emotions from joy to despair.

Me, who could barely run a cigarette lighter, was a father.

Then Kiki found me.

Kiki stood in front of me.

Looking gorgeous.

She had called at my apartment, came in, and gave what could only be interpreted as look of disapproval, said,

“Are you moving in or out?”

She had a doctorate in metaphysics, so I drew on that, asked,

“Is that a philosophical question?”

She looked like she might give me a hug. I said,

“I thought you were headed for Berlin.”

She was dressed in light leather jacket, dark jeans, boots, and had the appearance of casual wealth. She said,

“That was the plan and then the most extraordinary man came into my life.”

Fuck.

I asked,

“How fortunate. Are you, like, collecting men?”

Her mood soured. She said,

“No need to be jealous.”

I had a hundred answers but none of them even touched on civility so I said nothing. She gathered herself together, asked,

“Would you like to come to dinner and meet him?”

Would I fuck!

I said,

“That would be just lovely.”

There are times I stand on the Salmon Weir Bridge and just stare at the salmon leaping. Not that they do much leaping since the water was poisoned. But if you focus, seriously concentrate, you may, in your ideal vision, see a massive brown-red specimen jump absolutely clear of the water, and then, with a fine lunge, clear the very weir.

That delights me to my core.

A tinker woman once told me,

“Free your mind of the narrow world amac [son], let the wild entrance you with a magic that is not of this space.”

Times I could, others I let Jameson do an artificial version, neither endured but briefly. Alongside the river are wooden seats, relatively free of graffiti and vandalism. A woman sat there, staring intently at me. I did what you do.

I stared back.

She summoned me.

I sighed, muttered,

“What fresh hell awaits me now?”

I wasn’t far off the mark as it turned out.

As I approached, I could see she was in her mid-fifties, petite, with a very elegant coat that didn’t quite disguise that here was a person who had recently emerged from major trauma, the stain of tragedy large in her eyes. She might be moving away from whatever it was but she certainly wasn’t recovered.

I know this from bitter experience.

From such events you can put distance but, really, that’s all it will be.

Distance.

She said,

“Mr. Taylor.”

Patted the seat beside her.

Something in the gesture implied gentleness. Of course, it might be just an empty gesture. I sat.

She gave me a look of deep sorrow.

Up close, you could see she’d been a looker in her day but life had beaten the hell out of her. She said,

“I’m Loren Renaud.”

Oh, fuck, Pierre Renaud’s wife, mother of the murdered twins, and now a dead husband. The fact wasn’t that she seemed beaten but that she was still functioning on any level. What did I say?

“Sorry your old man killed the kids”?

I tried,

“I am so sorry for all your...”

Fuck, pause.

“Grief.”

She made a small sound not unlike an involuntary laugh, said,

“It seems too much for one family, n’est-ce pas ?”

Of course, she was bound to have absorbed French. I asked,

“You wanted to talk to me?”

Long silence, then,

“You are yourself pursued by ghosts, I think.”

Indeed.

I said,

“Most days I outrun them, not by much but enough to keep going.”

She said,

“ Une chambre sans meubles .”

Explained,

“My mother used to say grief is like a bedroom stripped of all furniture.”

She asked,

“Would you have a cigarette?”

Now that I could handle.

Her hand shook as she took the cig. She said,

“You should have seen me a week ago.”

I liked her, the bald honesty of the admission. It was simply heartbreaking.

I said,

“Been there, even my voice shook.”

And she hesitated, then laughed, echoed,

“Your voice?”

“Yeah, imagine how fucked you have to be for that.”

She didn’t have to imagine as she still had some occupancy of that dark borough. I said,

“It is a wonder you are here at all.”

And could have bitten my tongue.

She nodded, said,

“I was in a haze of booze and pills for a long time and only one thing pulled me back.”

I didn’t ask, waited.

She said,

“Cross my heart, I didn’t know Pierre killed his...”

Pause.

“ Our sons. Until the animal told me.”

I had a fair idea who that was but, again, waited.

“Michael Allen. In the beginning, he was all charm and Pierre, he was in awe of him, gave him money for that ludicrous vendetta, Two for Justice, as if Allen cared a toss for that.”

She gave a deep sigh, reliving many nightmares, then,

“When Pierre died, I really believed it was suicide until Allen laid out the whole shocking series of events. He told me he’d need to keep the cottage Pierre had let him use and that he would be...”

Deep breath.

“Requiring funds from time to time.”

She gave me a look of utter outrage, said,

“In effect, I’m to support the man who destroyed my whole family.”

She shook her head at the sheer horror of that.

Crunch time. I asked,

“Why have you come to me?”

She said,

“You have to stop him.”

Right.

How do you dress to meet your ex-wife’s new man?

Carefully.

I put on the obligatory black jacket, white shirt, tie (loosely, to suggest mellow or couldn’t give a fuck ), black jeans, Docs. The Docs had steel toe caps because who knows? Checked in the mirror, saw a battered undertaker’s assistant, the guy you keep in the background.

Took a deep breath, a Xanax, and good to go.