Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

But instead of turning left at Amsterdam we turned right and it seemed that we really were going downtown after all. The boys didn’t see, but my heart stopped beating like a steam engine and the tension eased out of me. It’ll be a bad night: drink, smoke, and some terrible restaurant at the break of dawn, but at least I’m going to live, which is something.

Darkey poured a half pint of some single malt down my throat and fell asleep in the backseat. With him practically out of it, Big Bob and Scotchy got to arguing about where we were going to go and, of course, with Scotchy and Big Bob trying to get things done it all ended farcically with us being pulled over by a cop. It was left to Sunshine in the front seat to deal with the peeler and take us to the first den of I., which was a strip joint in the vicinity of Madison Square Garden.

Darkey was revived and led us in. He was well received. The place was standard fare: dark booths, a gangway, stripper poles, main act, side acts, filthy glasses, spaced-out clientele.

I found a quiet corner to try and kip and I really must have nodded off, for Fergal’s droning voice woke me with talk about a redheaded girl he’d fallen in love with. Fergal was maybe traumatized by the whole Shovel business or maybe he was just being Fergal. He was a gangly bloke and always a bit of a high-strung character. He’d been a thief back in the O.C. Fingers, he tried to get everyone to call him, but no one did. He had a good five years on me, but I was the older brother.

There she is. Tell me, Michael, tell me isn’t she amazing. Jesus, look at her, Michael, come on, look.

I took a look and I thought he was pulling my leg, but he was serious. Aside from the fact that she was a working girl and coked out of her mind, she was four inches taller than him and with the heels it was nearly a foot. She was dancing at a side booth, not even the main show, and added to that she was skin and bones, she hadn’t eaten or seen sunlight in a good few moons, and the hair was a wig. Fergal is six foot two, so there was at least a possibility that the girl was in fact an emaciated, coked-out bloke.

I see what you’re saying, Fergal. She might be the one for you, right enough. Fair skin, red hair-man, you’re made, and you a big-time player and all.

You really think so? Really, Mike? Mike, I’m dead serious. I just looked at her and I had this feeling come over me. No, not what you think. It’s like this feeling of love or something, you know. Love at first sight. I mean, you can’t help it. It just happens. Jesus, out of the blue. You could be riding the bus and see somebody and they’d be gone forever. Could be anybody…

During this neat dissection of love, which wasn’t exactly Ovid, I was scanning the ill-lit club for a sign of the others. I didn’t see any of them and assumed that they’d either left us or retired to a private room somewhere. Either way, it was a sly move to leave me with love-drunk Fergal, and I thought I was supposed to be the man of the hour.

Bastards.

What?

Not you, Fergal. I was wondering where the others were.

I don’t know, Mike. Have you been listening to what I’ve been saying?

Of course, Fergal, your words are pearls.

Well, look, what do you think I should do? I have this warm feeling in my stomach.

I have that too, Darkey’s so-called single malt, I think-

Michael, for fucksake, be serious. What do you think I should do? I mean, she’s a dancer, maybe even a-he lowered his voice-hoor or something. Jesus, that would be bad. And anyway, I mean, do you think it would be right if I went over, and if I did go over, what would I say?

I beckoned him close.

Listen, Fergal, she seems like a perfectly charming girl. She might, for all you know, be a divinity student who dances to pay off her school fees. You simply go over to her and say politely: Madam, I wonder if it might be possible to see you sometime when you finish working in this establishment, not for any untoward purpose but rather merely to have a coffee or something similar, a meeting of minds, ideas and cultures, that would, I believe, be mutually rewarding.

You think that would work?

Undoubtedly, Fergal, my son of the sod, with your native wit and good looks she will be bowled over.

Fergal finished his Dutch and did go over. I slapped him on the back and watched him begin his little speech. He didn’t get terribly far into it before she said something to him. He immediately clammed up and came back broken and reasonably distraught. You wouldn’t have thought he was the same boy shooting people earlier.

She says they can’t go out with customers. It’s a rule.

I took Fergal by the scruff of the neck and pulled him over beside me.

Fergal, do you love this woman? Do you want her? Do you?

He nodded.

Then tell her that you are a Celt of noble race and you care nothing for rules, that if she will be yours, you will remove her from this place and give her a pad of her own and pay her divinity school fees and library fines and you will work tooth and nail twenty hours a day if necessary to keep her in the lap of luxury, anything to see her happy. Now, go. Say as I have told you and do not come back until victory lights your drunken Paddy cheeks.

I shoved him and he went over, and I closed my eyes again and leaned back in the chair. Sleep came like a welcome assassin and kept me away from all the crap for a while.

I was back in the gorse and heather for a brief but delightful moment. Slemish at my left and it was all fields and white flowers, bog grass and the loughs over the water to the low hills on Galloway. All of the highlands before me, blue and mysterious, and it must have been dawn or dusk or some other part of the Golden Hour because I could see lighthouses and counted six of them before being summoned back to the more prosaic world.

The next time it was Scotchy who woke me, kicking the chair leg from under me and laughing as I sprawled onto the dubiously stained floor. Darkey, Big Bob, and Marley were all laughing too, everyone in fact except Sunshine, who nearly always contained his emotions splendidly.

Ahh, you idle wee fucker, missed out, so you did, lap dances for all of us, Scotchy was saying.

Aye, there was this Thai girl, gorgeous she was, and I says, Where are you from? and she says, I’m Thai, and I says, I’ll tie you with this, love, Big Bob declared. I could see that he was attempting to be funny, but not feeling particularly generous at this moment, I said that I doubted that she would find anything but fat in the ample area of Bob’s lap.

Bob was too drunk to get it, but he knew it was an insult and called me a wetback bastard.

I was about to get into a long thing about his ancestry, but Scotchy shook his head at me.

Where’s Fergal? Sunshine asked.

And true enough, Fergal had vanished.

He went off with some ginger tart, I said.

For a quickie or the night? Darkey asked.

I think the night, I said.

Well, in that case, we’ve lost a man, because we, my friend, are moving on to pastures new, Darkey said and helped pull me up off the floor.

You should have seen your face, Scotchy said as we walked back out to the car.

Aye, you’re lucky you can still see yours, Scotchy, I said.

Is that supposed to be a threat? Scotchy mocked.

It is a threat, I said, getting angry now.

Aye, you talk the talk, big man, but I don’t see you doing anything about it, Scotchy said with a toty wee bit more than his usual sneer.

I stopped. I measured the distance from his head. I clenched my right fist and socked him one in the face. It was a good one too, an uppercut catching him square on the nose and staggering him back into a streetlight.

You wee fuck, Scotchy spat and came at me like a box of wild cats, clawing, biting, and spitting so furiously that I had to drop-kick him and even then when both of us were on the ground he was on me, pulling out my hair in big chunks and sinking his skanky teeth into my hand.