Lisa McInerney - The Glorious Heresies

He stepped back out into the landing and considered the mistake as a lifeline. How easy it would be to skulk back down the stairs and return to his own home without having left anything but his uneven breath.

But what of tomorrow? What of her rage once he backed out of her plan? What of her informant’s mouth?

He slipped into the back bedroom and closed the door out silently behind him as quickly as he could, and Duane stirred in the bed, sighed and turned onto her back.

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stepped over to stand by her body, and bit down on his lip so that the pain would chase away thoughts of this bedroom having hosted his boy, and crossed himself for a god he didn’t really believe was there, and straddled her and put his hands to her neck and leaned down and closed his eyes. She thrashed and gurgled. Her hands flapped against his. Her knee curled behind him, he felt her thigh against his back and then nothing, but he kept pushing down and kept his eyes closed and afterwards told himself she’d barely been conscious at all.

He remembered the way more from his journey home than his own death march, so he had to navigate in reverse.

He had no torch in the car but he told himself he’d be better off, not wanting to be noticed from land or from sea. It was an awkward task. He found a sheet of tarpaulin and tucked her up tight. She looked light as a feather but dead weight was dead weight.

The walk along the overgrown path to the old quay, pointed out by J.P. on Tony’s first visit, was harder than he had imagined. The ground was wet, the flora overgrown, the light non-existent and his burden enormous. He imagined himself losing footing and sliding into the black water below to be found alongside his enemy’s body three or four days later. He imagined what his children would think. He imagined the traitor Jimmy Phelan, livid as the scandal threw light on his butcher’s yard. He imagined his investigation. He imagined him coming face-to-face with Ryan and trying to bleed out the boy’s ignorance.

The water churned as he rowed out to J.P.’s fishing boat. He didn’t think he’d make it. It was dark, the wind was vicious, his arms sang as soon as he set them to work, and he thought he might not deserve to make it either, no matter his reasons, no matter how far he was backed into the corner… But he got there. He sat for ten minutes in the bobbing dinghy wondering how in Christ’s name he was going to get her into the boat. He managed it through the devil’s favour. He found rope and trussed the dinghy tight to the stern and dragged her into the fishing boat through strength of desperation. And then he left the rowing boat to its buoy and set sail, believing with every passing second that he was heading to his doom, to the unforgiving open sea, to the end maybe, but at least he was taking her with him.

This is what it boils down to: image. And not like wearing designer sunglasses and jeans so tight they melt your balls. Just in general. What you give out, what people see in you when they first meet you.

I don’t play piano.

I haven’t forgotten it; you don’t forget something you’ve been doing since you were three years of age. No, it’s like… I started dealing and I fucked it up. Doing what I do for a living in and around playing the piano would be fucking ridiculous; I’d either be seen as a precious cunt or worse again, I’d be transparent. So I don’t play piano. Not so’s you’d notice, anyway.

The music won’t go away, though. You learn that language and you’re pretty much stuck shouting in it. So I fake it. I put my fingers to a set of decks and I learned to mix. That image works. People are comfortable with stereotypes; they want to think they have a handle on their merchant. You gift them an image so you can keep earning and you jettison whatever bit of yourself doesn’t fit. That’s just how it is.

Me and Karine go off to a gig on Saturday night and when it wraps up we get invited back to a party. I get to talking technique with one of the DJs and he tells me to throw a couple of tunes together. So I do. And he goes a bit googly-eyed because he thought I was talking out my hole.

Mixing’s easy to me. I’m a bit nerdy about the science of sound, and those few months of Leaving Cert Physics and Maths stood to me, I suppose. ‘Let the dealer DJ,’ the partygoers think, and then it shifts to ‘Why’s that DJ dealing?’ I don’t stay on that long. I want a bump.

Karine comes over before I’ve even taken the headphones off and she says, ‘I’m bursting .’

‘I’m sure they have a toilet, like.’

‘They do, but they don’t have a lock.’

I go with her and keep the door shut and she hitches up the dress and sits down.

‘D’you need another yoke?’ I ask her.

She makes a face. ‘I don’t want to be dying Monday morning.’

‘Have half a one.’

She makes another face.

‘Go on,’ I tell her. ‘I need a top up anyway.’

I take a pill from my pocket and bite it in two and suck my half down. I wait for her to get up again. She washes her hands and takes her half from me.

I take a piss while she checks her fake eyelashes.

When we leave the bathroom there’s another girl standing waiting and she smiles at me and says, ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’

Karine steps past to retrieve her drink and so I get to smile back. ‘I don’t think so,’ I say.

‘I’m sure I do.’ The other girl is tall, athletic, you know the type. She’s wearing a tight, short dress and spike heels and she has a dark bob that swings when she cocks her head. She steams into a cascade of places she thinks she might know me from and you know what? They’re all gig-related. Like, she sees me as the DJ, not as the dealer. She’s wrong on every geographical guess and she’s wrong about my professional position too but her attention is light and warm and, all right, a bit touchy-feely because she’s fuckerooed but I could do with it, I’m swelling up in it, it’s fucking lovely.

And of course she makes the mistake of touching my chest and Karine is catapulted back over.

‘D’you mind?’ she says to the athletic girl.

‘Sorry?’

‘D’you mind keeping your big orangutan hands to yourself?’

There’s a quarrel that fizzles like a damp match because the athletic girl is too high to want to respond, apart from a short, ‘Girls like you give us all a bad name,’ and because I’m catching Karine’s wrists and pushing her gently backwards out the front door, catching each spat accusation with a headshake and a smile. There’s a car parked outside and I keep walking her backwards until her arse bumps against it, and she’s protesting but I push up against her and put her wrists around my neck and then my hands on her thighs and ask her what in God’s name she’s doing.

‘Oh, you know that Mister DJ,’ she says. ‘All the girls love him.’

‘Let’s not do this now,’ I say. I’m conscious of the top-up yoke, and the mood inside so essential to its success.

‘Am I wrecking your buzz?’ she says, accusingly.

‘You are my fucking buzz, D’Arcy.’

‘So on that basis I’m not supposed to mind you flirting Bigfoot’s knickers off?’

‘I’m not flirting.’

‘You are flirting. And they all know in there that I’m your girlfriend and it’s making me look, like, so tragic.’

‘Bollocks,’ I tell her. I slide my hands around under her arse cheeks and push harder against her. ‘Besides, wouldn’t you rather be going out with Mister DJ than Mister Dealer?’