Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

Yes, I suppose so, I said, completely baffled and now increasingly afraid. Was this all some kind of horrible joke? Was this the whole point of the evening? Get me to Brooklyn to Darkey’s place, everyone feigns to be wasted, and then Darkey deals his hand. Bob comes over with a knuckleduster. Darkey starts to scream: You think I’m a fucking moron. You think you, some potato-stuffing fucker just off the boat, can pull a fast one on me. Me, Darkey fucking White. You think you can fool me?

I was pale and sober now. Trying not to shake. Oh, Christ. Was that why they’d ditched Scotchy? ’Cause he might stick up for me?

I turned round, Bob was walking over.

I started to feel blind panic. Was there any way I could make a run for it at all? What the fuck was going on?

I have to make use of the facilities, Bob grunted.

I’ll join ya, Darkey said, cheerfully. And then I suppose it’s time we should all head on. It’s getting late.

He gave me a grin and a wink.

Youth does have some advantages. I can’t stay up all night no more, he said.

Me neither, actual- I began, but Darkey interrupted me with a shout back to the table.

Hey, Marley, off your ass. We’re heading. Go and get the van started.

Marley heard and said: Ok (his only speech in this whole narrative, as it turns out). Darkey went off to the bathroom. I sat down at the table, panting, relieved. I could see now that nothing was going to happen. Paranoia, that’s all. That’s all. I took a drink of someone’s wine.

You ok? Sunshine asked.

Aye. Darkey’s in a bit of a mood, though.

Sunshine regarded me.

I haven’t noticed anything, he said.

Sunshine was not to be drawn into any criticisms of Darkey whatsoever. He was loyal. You could grant him that. He’d be the Goebbels poisoning his weans for Darkey, you could see it. I’d be more of a von Stauffenberg character, I was thinking, but wisely I kept these observations to myself.

How did you get that pay-phone number, Sunshine? I asked him for something to say.

It’s not important, Sunshine said.

He wanted to keep it secret. He was clever, I liked that.

You went to university, didn’t you, Sunshine?

Yes.

Where, what?

NYU, French, Sunshine said.

Hey, I did French in school. Tu es une salope: I said that to the Haitian woman in C-Town. It was funny, she wouldn’t give me a refund for… but I didn’t finish. I could see Sunshine was not impressed. I went on on a different tack:

Point is, Sunshine, you’re smart. I mean, what exactly are you doing with us lot?

Darkey and I go back, Sunshine said, simply.

Like he saved your life or something. You were drowning in the YMCA pool, he dragged you out, forever loyal, or better. You were the smart kid with the glasses, he protected you from the school bully…

I was trying to be funny, but Sunshine was not amused.

What if I said it was something like that, would you believe me? Sunshine said.

Uh, yeah, I suppose I would, I said, a little embarrassed.

Let me give you a piece of advice, Michael. Never underestimate Darkey or me, ok?

Jesus, Sunshine. Don’t get all heavy on me, I was just joking, I said.

Sunshine smiled.

Me too, he said.

To change the subject, we talked movies for a while and I said I liked Orson Welles in The Third Man and Sunshine said I should really rent The Lady from Shanghai .

Darkey and Big Bob came back. Bob was looking peaky. Darkey came over and slapped me on the back. No harder than was strictly necessary, which was a relief after all his slabbering. He put me in a headlock and made me cry mercy. Again, there was no malice in it, and he didn’t hurt me. But even so, I was still filled with a sudden and dangerous resentment against him. Darkey, all things considered, was a bit of a prick, and I wouldn’t work with him for all the pay in hell, except that most of the time it was Sunshine, not Darkey, who had his steady hand on the tiller. I looked at Sunshine and he looked at me with what I took to be sympathy. Bob did the bongos on my head for a minute, and Darkey laughed.

He’s a bodh ran, a human bodh ran, Bob said, until Darkey told him to quit it. He let me go.

It’s pronounced “boran,” you ignorant shite, I said to Bob.

Sunshine, always eager for a new word, asked me what that meant, and I told him (with a nasty look at Bob) that a bodhran was an Irish side drum, not a bongo drum.

Darkey paid and left a miserly tip, and we were all about to leave when suddenly a joke occurred to him. Normally, his jokes were of the practical kind, such as telling Scotchy to kick my chair from under me, but occasionally he came up with a good one. Darkey wasn’t an unintelligent man, and often I think he tried to appear heartier and dumber than he actually was.

Ok, lads, joke. Everybody sit.

We sat. Darkey began:

Old monastery in the west of Ireland. Galway. Two parrots in a cage, and all day long they pray and recite the rosary and twirl the rosary beads in their little claws. Visiting priest is amazed, sees the birds and tells the abbot that they have precisely the opposite situation at the nearby convent, where they rescued two female parrots from a brothel after the police closed it down. Unfortunately for the nuns the parrots say all day long, “Fuck me, please, I’m a filthy whore.” The abbot suggests that they move the parrots from the convent and put them in with the good-living parrots in the monastery. The priest thinks that this is an excellent idea. The foul-mouthed birds will learn by example. Anyway, the two monastery parrots are in their cage one day when the two female parrots are brought in beside them. Both female parrots immediately say, “Fuck me, I’m a filthy whore,” whereupon one male parrot looks at the other and says, “Seamus, you can put the beads away now, our prayers have been answered.”

We all laughed. Sunshine louder than most, and that, believe me, was a scary thing to behold. Again, Goebbels came to mind.

They dropped me at 123rd. Darkey got out of the car and shook my hand.

I can count on you, can’t I, Michael? he said, his heavy-lidded eyes boring into me.

Without blinking I said, Of course. (I almost added “Sir.”)

Sunshine was also out of the car. I was bleary from drink, cigarette smoke, too much food, and exhaustion, but Sunshine wanted to tell me well done too.

I preempted him.

You know, Sunshine, Shovel didn’t do a damn thing. Not one thing, I said.

Sunshine nodded. I couldn’t be sure that he could see what I meant, but I didn’t want to go into it now. Maybe Sunshine knew all along, maybe it didn’t matter.

I walked up the steps to the apartment building. I checked that Rachel’s phone number was in my pocket. It was. I could smell dawn in the air. What a long, weird, awful night. I opened the jemmied door. The hall was full of steam from a broken radiator. Typical and insane that the steam heat would even be on in summer. Of course, in winter… I spat and ignored it and went upstairs. I hoped that I wouldn’t be so hopped up and overtired that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

I was to be disappointed.

S sshhhhh, ssshhhh , listen. Blot out everything else. The dark whispering. Can you hear it? Can you hear? Singing truths like apples. In a language that is universal and easy to understand. It’s singing for you. Big man, player, dealer in bruises. Its breath condenses on the mirror and its trace is visible. Curling from the sewers and the gutters and the storm drains, and speaking with the voice of graveyard stone.

I can hear it. I can feel its breath. Rank and awful. It makes things up: lies, half-lies, stories. It’s hushed but the building’s alert and attends and passes them on. Up the skunk trees, up the brick, through the window.