Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

‘Wait a second,’ suddenly something in the newspaper on the table caught my eye. ‘Look at this —’ I folded the page over and raised it up. ‘“Sick of the employment rat race? Still waiting for your slice of the pie?”’

‘Where is it?’

‘Here, see? With the picture of the pie, and the rat looking sad?’

‘Oh right.’

‘“Tired of watching your friends get ahead while you’re stuck doing the same old thing? Dublin is booming, and there’s enough to go around for everybody. If you want your slice of the pie, contact Sirius Recruitment, Ireland’s leading premium specialist in IT, multimedia and e-business solutions NOW. Why waste any more time? Call now and JOIN THE PARTY!”’ I laid the paper back down with an air of vindication. ‘Well, there it is, old man. There’s your answer. Give my regards to Broadway, if you get a chance.’

‘Eh, isn’t that all computer stuff though, Charlie?’

‘What is?’

‘Like, IT and multimedia and that.’

‘Well, what if it is? I’m not an idiot, am I? I went to college, I can learn how to multimedia-ize and so forth. Anyway, that’s just industry jargon. All it means is that they want people with a can-do spirit, such as myself. I’m going to go and see them.’

‘Yeah, and I s’pose if it doesn’t pan out I can always ring me mate…’

‘Yes, well, thanks, but much as I’d like to be stuck in some dingy old rat-race of a warehouse while, you know, my friends get ahead and Bel swans around in her fancy theatrical space,’ reaching into the fridge for a can, ‘I have to start thinking of myself. I’m not spending the best years of my life sleeping on people’s floors.’

‘You need your own place all right,’ Frank agreed.

‘Well of course I’d like to move into my old place,’ I plunked the can emphatically on the table. ‘Obviously in an ideal world there wouldn’t be any question about it. But this preposterous theatre is what Bel wanted and I can’t be expected to put my life on hold just in case it all goes wrong. I have to put the house behind me and, you know, claim my slice of the pie. I’m my own man now. Give my regards to Broadway.’

‘Yeah, you said that already Charlie.’

‘Well, I mean it.’

Trinity College, where I’d crossed swords briefly with higher education, was located right at the heart of Dublin, and as most of my time there had been spent bunking off lectures to play croquet with Hoyland, or flaneuring with him about the streets, I had come to know the city quite well. It was a comfortable, scuffed sort of a place, rather like an old shoe, consisting for the most part of greasy spoons, third-rate department stores and dingy pubs patronized by scrofulous old men. The talk among my peers then had been of where one would emigrate to after one had graduated — Dublin in those days wasn’t the type of place one contemplated sticking around in, not if one had any kind of pep or ambition. I say ‘in those days’, though it was only a handful of years ago. It was evident as soon as I stepped off the bus that everything had changed.

Frank was right: everywhere you looked something was being dug up or remodelled or demolished. The dilapidated shops and hostelries were gone, and in their place stood extravagant cafés, bijou stores full of minimalist chrome furniture, couturiers announcing the very latest fashions from Paris and London. The air crackled with money and potential. Help Wanted signs hung in every window; the streets teemed with people and beeping cars. It was like being backstage at a musical — everyone hurrying to get to their positions, scenery being carted on and off — or one of those old Ealing comedies where a ship is wrecked and its cargo of whiskey washes up on the shore of some wee Scottish island, except here instead of whiskey the crates were full of Italian suits and mobile phones, and instead of getting drunk the natives were running up and down trying on pants and ringing each other up.

The sky had brightened, tipping impasto clouds white-gold; the slanting October sun gave everything a new-minted look. As I stood on O’Connell Bridge consulting my street-map, with the river flowing beneath me, heterogeneous lights and sounds all around, jostled by umbrellas, schoolbags, newspapers, personal organizers, it all felt quite miraculous; and now someone bumped me, and the map fell out of my hands, and I let myself be carried off by the crowd. We surged up College Green, joined at every interstice by further tributaries of people, and it would have been easy to convince oneself that here was not just a random collection of bodies coincidentally going in the same direction, but a mass, a movement , on its way to doing something profound. I was so taken by the whole thing that I nearly walked right past Vuk, who was slouched against some railings in a line of nondescript foreigners. He hailed me and I stopped and said hello and asked what he was doing. ‘Waiting,’ Vuk said — I say Vuk, though I couldn’t swear that it wasn’t actually Zoran — ‘for papers.’

‘Really?’ There were about a million people ahead of him and the queue didn’t seem to be moving at all. I told him that the newsagent’s up the road wasn’t half so busy, if he wanted to go there instead, but he didn’t appear to understand me. Maybe it reminded him of home and the bread lines and so forth. I should have asked after Mirela, but I didn’t want to delay, and if she was kissing that Harry I preferred not to know about it; I quickly made my excuses and continued on my way to Merrion Square.

Sirius Recruitment was housed in a graceful grey building with tinted glass doors, in which I conducted a quick inspection of myself before going inside. It had to be said that my attire was not ideal for the occasion — the dinner jacket slightly foxed, the waistcoat a trifle gaudy. However, the rest of my suits having been redistributed among the patrons of the Coachman, I didn’t have an alternative; and secretly I thought it gave me a rather dashing, The Mummy Takes Manhattan sort of a look, even if Frank had said I looked more like Frankenstein’s butler, and Droyd had called me a shirtlifter. But they would soon see that what I lacked in style was more than made up for in can-do spirit.

I entered a spacious chamber filled with cool, silvery light. The distant sound of twinkling chimes permeated the air, and fresh-cut lilacs adorned the reception desk. One wall of the chamber was covered with photographs, showing the Sirius Recruitment team with satisfied customers, or enjoying themselves after a hard day’s work. Everyone was smiling and hugging each other. After the horrors of my recent life, all the serenity and welcome rather took me aback. In fact, for a moment I simply stood and gaped, like the man who has stumbled on the back door to Heaven; and then a voice addressed me, a voice of indescribable musicality.

‘Hello,’ it said.

I looked round. There behind the desk sat a beautiful receptionist. ‘H-hello,’ I stammered back. She was exquisite, tawny and elfin, wearing a telephone headset so tiny and golden it looked positively genteel.

‘You look lost,’ she said playfully.

‘No,’ I began, then stopped — realizing in that moment, for the first time since the Folly exploded, that lost was what I undeniably was. ‘That is, yes,’ I said. ‘What I mean is, I’m looking for a job.’

‘Then you’re in the right place to start,’ she laughed. ‘Fill in this form and Gemma will see you shortly. She’s the boss,’ she added. ‘But don’t worry, she’s an absolute sweetheart.’

I took a seat on a long plush couch and set to work. The form didn’t present me with much difficulty, there being several pages (Previous Experience; Languages; Other Skills and Abilities; Long-term Plans and Ambitions) that I was able to skip right over. I was soon finished and could turn my attention back to the photographs, mentally inserting myself beside the beautiful receptionist at the staff outing to the Go-Kart track, covering her with Silly String at somebody’s thirtieth birthday party…