Paul Murray - An Evening of Long Goodbyes

Mr Appleseed kept watch on us at all times, patrolling tirelessly through the unbearable heat of Processing Zone B, or peering down from his perspex foreman’s box like a monstrous dungareed spider. Standing up straight, he would have been about nine feet tall, but he never stood up straight: he stooped with his shoulders gathered around his neck, muttering constantly in a gravelly maledictive rasp. He was impossibly thin, with thick glasses and a downturned mouth, and we were all afraid of him. In the early days, when I still held hopes of somehow rebelling or escaping or breaking free, it was always the thought of Mr Appleseed that stopped me.

I suppose it was because I spoke the best English that he singled me out as his confidant. It wasn’t that he cared anything for me personally; he told me so in as many words.

‘I hate bastards like you, know that, Fuckface?’ he’d say.

‘Yes, Mr Appleseed.’

‘I’ve seen your file. I know your type, all right. Think the world owes you a living, and Yule Log just drops out of the skies.’

‘Yes, Mr Appleseed.’

‘“Yes, Mr Appleseed,”’ he mimicked, his malign yellow stare boring into me through a mask of congealing sugar.

I had never met anyone who was quite so enthusiastically devoted to hatred. He hated everyone working at Mr Dough. He hated the countries they came from. He kept a sort of league table of his most hated races, on which they could move up or down.

‘Did you ever see anyone as bone-stupid as those Latvians?’ He’d lurch over, munching on a dry cracker, and lean against the rim of my conveyor belt. ‘No wonder their country’s such a shitheap. They must have driven poor Stalin to drink. If you’d said to me ten years ago, Fuckface, high up in your ivory tower, that some day I’d be in charge of a team of Latvians, I’d have told you where to go. But there it is. These days it seems that working in an international bread concern isn’t good enough for the Irish.’ He’d gaze mistily over Processing Zone B a moment, perhaps thinking of better times. ‘In fairness, though, I suppose these Latvians have their advantages. Cheap. No fuss with unions or anything like that. Hit them over the head enough and they usually understand what I tell them. And they work hard.’ He chuckled. ‘Bastards have their hearts set on winning that Productivity Hamper of Luxury Goods. Think they get many hampers where they come from, Fuckface? In Latvia? Think they’re already overrun with luxury goods over there?’

‘No, Mr Appleseed.’

‘No, sir,’ chortled Mr Appleseed. And then he’d catch sight of me, staring glumly at the logs going by and wishing he would let me go back to my hallucination, and his countenance would blacken. ‘Oh, you can call me a racist, Fuckface. You can think you’re better than me. But let me tell you one thing, Mr Theology Course, Mr Trinity College, all it takes is one phone call from me and they’ll be flying your replacement in from Latvia faster than you can say Abner Applese — actually, two things, the second being that I went to university too, except it was a university called the University of Life. And I may not have a lot of airs and graces, but there’s a blue Lexus out there in the car park with my name on it that’s fully paid up and no one can take away from me. Remind me again, Fuckface, how many Lexuses was it you said you had out in the car park? How many was that again?’

‘None,’ I’d mumble.

‘That’s right, Fuckface, because for all your fancy ways you own precisely — what was it exactly?’

‘Nothing,’ I’d confirm, and he’d slap me on the back and say that I had a sense of humour at least, which was an important quality in a worker, and that he saw good things happening for me at the company, or rather he would have were I not on a temporary contract, which meant I would remain a straightener for the rest of my days, which by the way were numbered.

It quickly became apparent that I would not be learning values or realizing my potential or anything of that nature while at Mr Dough. It seemed clear as well that I would not be getting out of the rat race and joining the party for the time being. No sooner did I lodge a cheque than Frank would be after me, hounding me for his due. If it wasn’t groceries, it was central heating, and if it wasn’t central heating, it was rent –

‘Rent? What do you mean, rent? I gave you money for the rent last week, what have you done with it?’

‘Yeah, but see there’s more rent this week, and anyway you only gave me twenty quid and then the next day you borrowed fifty so you could buy that big fish…’

‘That “big fish” happens to be a wild salmon from County Donegal, and if you knew anything at all you’d know that fifty pounds is practically giving it away. I’m trying to make some sort of stab at civilized living here, I mean my God man, we’re not wild beasts, are we?’

‘Yeah, but see we’re a bit behind, though, Charlie…’

‘Huh,’ I said. To anyone who had witnessed Frank’s attempts at a household budget this hardly came as a surprise. Every few weeks he would sit down at the kitchen table with a six-pack of Hobson’s Choice and a plastic bag full of bills, receipts, scraps of paper and beer mats with numbers doodled on them, which he would empty out into a pile at the centre of the table. Then, slowly and carefully, he would drink the cans. Then, when all the cans were gone, some hours after he had originally sat down, he would with a little sigh sweep the pile of bills back into the plastic bag, which he then placed carefully in the dustbin.

Rarely had I seen someone in such dire need of an accountant; but Frank didn’t have so much as a bank account. ‘They’re only robbers, Charlie,’ he’d say. ‘If I wanted to give me money to robbers, I’d give it to robbers I knew, not some bunch of prats.’ Instead he kept it in his ‘secret hiding place’, namely a Celtic FC sock under his bed.

It seemed to me that he had plenty of it, too, and he was only haranguing me out of spite. Ever since Bel’s visit the two of us seemed to be bickering constantly — usually about money, though anything could set it off. It was plainly obvious that, although he pretended otherwise, Frank was also deep in ennui . Oh, he larked about with Droyd as if nothing was wrong; he drank countless cans and smoked countless joints; but he left his chicken balls untouched on his plate, and on more than one occasion I found architecturally salvaged items hidden behind the couch, crushed and twisted beyond recognition. He was oafish and unbearable even by his standards, and I was grateful that he was going out even more than he had before, and not returning until late.

With winter coming in, and me and now Frank both plunged in ennui , it was small wonder that Droyd too was down in the dumps. Frank never invited him along on his sprees, and apart from trips to the methadone clinic and to see his parole officer, he didn’t leave the house. He’d taken to spending whole evenings just sitting at the window, gazing out at the rain-swept street. He didn’t play his music as much as he used to, either, though I can’t pretend this troubled me overly. One night, however, he asked me if I could check something he’d written for spelling, and he handed me a grubby serviette on which, I saw, wedge-like forms had been inscribed.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Press release,’ Droyd said. ‘For me music.’

‘Oh.’

‘Have to get word to my people that the Droyd is back,’ he clarified.

‘I didn’t know you composed,’ I said.

‘Wha?’

‘Music, I mean.’

‘Ah yeah.’ He scrutinized one of his chunky gold rings. ‘Well like I haven’t done any yet, cos I was banged up in the nick and that. But I’m goin to, as soon as I get meself sorted out. Play all the big clubs. Rotterdam. Ibiza. You ever been to Ibiza?’