Ken Bruen - The Emerald Lie

She said,

“The very sight of you makes me want to vomit.”

I tried,

“Don’t hold back.”

And she came as close to walloping me as is feasible.

Fleeing Galway now, I wondered if Stewart would have tried to prevent me.

My heart scalded in my chest as I felt his utter loss sweep over me.

Park looked around his aunt’s home. Somewhere in his still clouded mind he knew he should be grateful for her help. She got him out on bail, secured a lawyer, let him stay in her house. But there were restrictions. She’d said,

“Best if you don’t go out.”

What kind of sentence was that?

It wasn’t just flouting grammar. Worse, it was as if she didn’t even care. He said aloud,

“They have to care and they will... care.”

The policewoman,

Ridge?

She danced before his eyes like words he couldn’t articulate. And he knew all words needed to be articulated, otherwise they atrophied. She’d mocked him, mocked grammar, and, with malice aforethought, deliberately mangled and mutilated the most basic rules of common speech.

She’d sneered,

“You’ll get your due.”

... Due to

... means caused by,

With a second meaning of

... “owing to,

because of.”

He said,

“She will die because of her manner due to an irate man.”

And he smiled.

Thought,

“I am definitely on the mend.”

The rules were their own reward, but the bonus and beauty were that they seemed to reach out and eradicate the errors. His mind went then on a tortured circuit of reference and distraction, settling on the wonderful wordsmith

Violet Asquith.

Now there was a lady who not only grasped the alchemy of language but implemented it to describe and dissect.

As in her famous description of Churchill:

“He rose like a trout to the fly of any phrase.”

There was a pack of cigarettes on the kitchen table. He wondered if he smoked. Gave it a shot, coughed, and decided he didn’t. He was staring at the coffee machine, a sleek state-of-the-art contraption and, of course, no instructions unless you read Japanese. The front door opened and Sarah came in, bearing parcels. She jumped when she saw him. He thought,

“Was I to be confined to my room?”

Followed by the not altogether thought,

“She is afraid of me.”

Fear was good, it was cleansing. She said,

“I took the liberty of getting you some clothes.”

Then, seeing him before the coffee machine, asked if he’d like some. He said he would and she busied herself at that, making inane small talk that he didn’t understand, like weather and the price of everything. Placing a mug before him, she asked if he was hungry.

He stared at her, said,

“The word preposition means ‘something that is placed before.’ It is its function to show where one thing is in position to another.”

She gave a weak smile.

“How little importance they place on the rules,”

He thought.

He asked,

“May I borrow the car?”

Startling her. She fumbled with the coffee things, then said,

“I’m not sure that is a good idea.”

He looked at her in genuine astonishment, asked,

“Did I ask what you thought?”

Her expression now confirmed she was indeed very afraid. He stood up, said,

“Good coffee, now keys please.”

Sarah watched him as he drove off in her relatively new BMW. She wasn’t sure which worried her more, him or her car. Crossed her mind to call the Guards but that would be counterproductive. She’d learned that in a class she’d taken on self-assertion. The class didn’t cover the...

“Possible serial killer staying in your home”

Scenario.

She called the lawyer instead and was put on hold for ten minutes. Finally the lawyer came on, sounding definitely testy. Went,

“This better be important.”

She sighed. The rate she was paying this prick, he could at least be civil. She decided to try some of the assertive shtick, snapped,

“I’m not one of those frivolous people who run to the law at every minor event.”

Sounded kind of, like, lame?

Now he sighed, said,

“Whatever.”

She told him about Park and the car.

He asked,

“How did he seem?”

Seem?

She near screamed,

“Seem? He seemed crazy is what he seemed.”

The soothing tones that cost the big bucks came into play as he purred,

“Now, now, we don’t want to be throwing around those kinds of words, do we?”

A question?

She took a deep breath, didn’t help, said,

“He was rambling on about punctuation.”

She thought she heard a chuckle.

It’s not easy to simply lose a month. But I had experience. One way or another, I’d been losing bits of myself all my life. In increments, as they say. I began my binge in Garavan’s on Shop Street in Galway and ended up in a dive on Kilburn High Road. Took the scenic route.

I was as usual on the opposite side of the current thinking. I was the guy who went to the graveyard on a sunny day while the world headed for the beach. Everybody and his nephew were searching for themselves. My mission, and I had chosen to accept it, was to lose all.

I can vaguely recall taking a room in Whelan’s Hotel in Dublin and cutting that short when I realized it had live music nightly. That is every single night. Music is a bad distraction when you are studiously avoiding guilt. I was drowning in clichés. If you are going to do just one thing, do it the best you can.

Right.

Dublin confused me. It was, on the surface, friendly, but only apparently. You were always a culchie. Not of the city. I didn’t help my case by sneering at their hurling team on a fairly regular basis. Was I looking for a fight? At every turn.

One memorable evening, and I use the description loosely, I sat in Neary’s on Chatham Street. Like all Dublin pubs, south of the river, it tended to boast some literary connection. I think it was Patrick Kavanagh that occasion and I had mocked,

“Apart from ‘On Raglan Road,’ what else is he remembered for?”

The lady in my company that evening knew nowt of Kavanagh or, indeed, “On Raglan Road.” I was at my most vicious, said,

“No doubt you are in mourning since Desperate Housewives finished.”

She’d given me a long look, said,

“You have a limp, a hearing aid, mutilated fingers, and you are insulting me?”

I think I laughed, went,

“Sorry, Sheila.”

“It’s Maura.”

Indeed.

That was Dublin.

London was cold and bitter, in every sense. Most of it I recall as dark pubs and darker people. Desperation is its own beacon and I seemed to attract the worst and the worthless. Insane conversations with the walking insane. A night in Notting Hill, in what used to be, I think, Finches, telling some arsehole,

Like this,

“I used to be a Guard.”

Him.

“Like, in security?”

He could give a fuck but I was buying rounds so he could fake an interest. I said,

“No, the police.”

He was in his late fifties and, like me, on the run from himself. He was, he said, or used to be,