Ken Bruen - Green Hell

Right.

Like my life, they withered. In studying Jack, I had fallen into the most obvious trap for a biographer. I was too close. Worse, in many ways my life was now imitating Jack’s. I had alienated my few friends, driven away my girlfriend, and, oh, sweet heaven, not only was I talking like him, I was steadily drinking like him. To some, strolling into a pub, having the barman holler,

“The usual?”

is some lame sign of arrival.

The fuck with that.

See, even the cussing.

A more worrying trait was the anger. Close up I had witnessed Jack’s volatile temper. When in doubt, he lashed out. The gauge was permanently set at aggressive.

I found a new simmering rage developing daily. All my brief life, I had been the mellow dude, my mantra,

“Whoa, let it slide, buddy.”

I’d discovered a curious phenomenon about living alone.

The utter stillness.

If you don’t move, nothing does. The very air seems to be suspended. Then you walk the length of the apartment, it’s as if you are part of that atmosphere and it closes behind you. No wonder people crammed their homes with kids, TV, radio, dogs, other people. Noise to break that eerie silence. Jack punctuated it with Jameson. I was beginning to understand a little more of what drove him.

I’d been almost feverish in my compulsion to contact Aine. Had been to her apartment probably a few more times than was prudent. Her roommate finally said,

“Just fuck off.”

And, too, I probably sent more texts than was appropriate. Worse, I’d been to her mother’s house. Oh, Gawd, wish I hadn’t. The woman was polite but adamant, advised,

“Time for you to move on, son.”

Still. I thought, if I could see her. . Hung around the college until a porter finally asked me my business. I didn’t play that well and though he didn’t actually lay hands on me, he did say,

“Don’t let me catch you here again.”

How did this even happen? I was a successful American doctoral candidate with a prestigious scholarship and I was skulking around like a love-torn puppy.

Not cool, dude.

Then the oddest thing. I had been out all day, paying utilities, soaking up the Galway vibe, even spoke to Jimmy Norman, the coolest DJ on Galway radio. The guy had, get this, a cordon bleu, a master’s degree in business, a daily show on early morning radio. . and. . a pilot’s license. The whole new man. . seriously? And when I had coffee with him, he amazed me with his knowledge of local politics. I felt I was becoming, if not one of the players, at least the guy who knew them. Then, on to the Galway Advertiser to meet with Declan Varley, the editor, and Kernan Andrews, the arts/entertainment, go-to guy. All these dudes were young, smart, clued in, and a testament to the whole new generation of Irish who bowed down to freaking nobody. I was pumped, wired on possibilities. To be American in Galway was still to be blessed with remnants of Kennedy afterglow. On the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s death, it was still currency to be a Kennedy. Man, I played that gene card.

Got back to my apartment, buzzing, the endless possibilities, and then. .

Something off.

Stood in the middle of my living room, sensed the air had been disturbed. A new presence had, oh, so slightly, altered the air. I checked thoroughly. My iPad, TV, all there. The sense of an intruder was almost palpable. I didn’t know what to make of it. I also didn’t know that by this stage Aine had been dead for two days.

Because nothing was taken, it never occurred to me that

Something. .

might have been added.

Miscellaneous notes, quotes,

chapter headings, descriptions Boru had

intended to flesh out

his Taylor book

Manic Street Preacher Richard Edwards was crucified by many Hounds of Heaven-

clinical and manic depression

anorexia

alcoholism

self-mutilation

He walked out of his hotel room in 1995 and was never seen again.

And yet you want to believe that in the place you’ve come to, where God has allowed you to prosper and for a few generations at least be safe, you honor your religion by doing this. By making something stunningly beautiful:

The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama.

Jack’s physical appearance was a testament to the myriad of

beatings

muggings

hammerings

he’d received by

hurly

hammer

baseball bat(s)

shotgun (sawed-off)

He had a distinctive limp and a hearing aid, and two fingers of his right hand had been removed by rusty pliers.

His eyes had the nine-yard stare of long-term convicts doing hard time. Hard time was the mantra of his bedraggled, violent existence.

The years of Jameson, Guinness, and coffin-nail cigarettes had lent to his voice a hoarse, creaky rasp.

The difference between a person who says

“Bring it on”

as opposed to

“Bring it”

is the difference between a person who comes at you verbally

as opposed to

with a hatchet.

It’s very simple.

It’s intent.

James A. Emanuel’s more than a poet,

more than an ex-pat: a man.

(Stanley Trybulski on the passing of a great poet, as written on Stanley’s blog, Mean Streets)

Slick lizard rhythms

cigar smoke

straight gin

sky laced with double moons.

Pinned on Jack’s wall was a print of Fabritius’s Goldfinch . It’s a tiny thing.

Tiny bird

Tiny picture

Bare wall.

Most telling is that the tiny bird is chained. That this bird has for centuries represented

Christ on the Cross,

Alone,

Suspended.

The city of Galway was Jack’s very own cross.

Jack had been watching Denis Leary’s series Rescue Me in what they were now terming a viewing splurge. Meaning, you have one mega cluster-fuck of the boxed set back-to-back.

Get this,

Series One through Six in one slam dunk until,

Bleary-eyed,

Dizzy,

Souped

And the wild, crazy world of firefighters seems more real than the wet dreary days of a cold Galway November. Tommy (Denis Leary) could have been Jack,

alcoholic,

screwup,

addict,

violent,

Catholic,

smoker.

Halfway decent shell of a human being. Too, in one way or another, Jack had been putting out fires all his befuddled life.

Starting them, too.

And shards, snippets of the Brooklyn catalog banged around in Jack’s head. More real than any lame conversation he’d attempted in any given Galway pub.

“I’m doing you a solid.”

Yeah.

Save Jack hadn’t, nohow, done anyone “a solid” for a very long time. So, ridding the world of scum like de Burgo might be his very own

White Arrest.

October 28, 2013: Jack heard of the death of Lou Reed at shy;seventy-one on the very day he’d resolved to yet again try a spell of sobriety. He didn’t of course confuse sobriety with sanity. The nondrinking patches he’d endured simply seemed to spotlight his areas of madness in stark relief. Back in the day as a Guard, through subterfuge and bribery, he’d landed the security gig for a Reed concert in Dublin. It was a small venue and Lester Bangs’s description of Reed as a deformed, depraved midget seemed cruelly apt. It was the high or low of Reed’s heroin daze. Dressed in black leather jacket, skintight leather pants, black boots, and the obligatory black shades, he’d mumbled, stuttered, and pretty much failed to deliver a version of “Walk on the Wild Side.” He resembled a crushed tarantula devoid of any sting. Helping Reed limp to his dressing room, sweat washing away the white makeup, Jack had ventured.

“Good gig, Mr. Reed.”

A mumbled response.

Only later, while he was sinking a Jameson and creamy pint in Doheny amp; Nesbitt on Baggot Street, did the mutter crystallize.