On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland (5 page)

He ignored her, and continued:

‘
Some create suicides by jumping from bridges

or rolling under trains.

Others by blasting bridges of thought

or derailing trains of communication.
’

‘Morbiddd!’ Eva snarled, putting on a face. ‘Mr Jor-ge baby, come, come.’

‘It’s sad, very sad. I know it’s right what this man says.’ He paused, then went on:

‘
Loneliness is so punctual now;

It arrives on Sunday morning

and stays the whole week through.

I try to fight it off

with poems and prayers

when I can find someone

to pray to,

but not even
 
–
’

The door opened in.

‘Tony!’ Eva scurried off the bed. ‘You’re home early.’

‘What are you doing in my room?!’ Tony powered toward Ravarro.

‘Gringo, you sit!’ Ravarro thrust out his hand, behind it a rough stare. ‘This,’ he said, holding the notebook out of reach, ‘is better than I seen my whole life.’

Tony grabbed for the book.

Ravarro thrust his hand into Tony’s chest. ‘Back up! You watch it, you hear, Irishman. Back up!’

Tony knocked his hand aside.

Ravarro hardened his pocked face, stood square. ‘I read because I respect you; you write beautiful things. And is true what you say.’

Tony’s swipe knocked the book to the floor. Their hands locked into each other’s shirt.

‘You want to fight me, your parole officer, eh? You loco. You get killed. I kill you. Or you get back for another ten years. You want that, eh?’

‘Fuck you, we’ll see who kills who,’ Tony said.

‘You make trouble, gringo, I shoot you. You die, you not die, bad trouble for you. You let go. Sit down now, eh? Eh?’

‘Hey guys, guys, for fuck’s sake, it’s cool, it’s cool. Come on!’ Eva shouted.

Tony released his grip, pushed Ravarro’s hands away. He bent to pick the book from the floor; Ravarro kicked it aside. They grabbed each other again, faces inches apart. Ravarro pushed hard, backed Tony across the room, forced him down onto a chair.

‘Son of a bitch. You are a smart man, but you don’t act like no smart man, you act like a dumbass. I say I like how you write, you want to fight me.’ Ravarro backed away. As he picked up the book he glanced at the open page and shook his head. ‘
This day, in losing and finding you I have become you, and all before the sun
. Very beautiful.’ He handed the book to Tony.

‘
This day, in losing and finding you I have become you, and all before the sun
,’ Ravarro recited again. ‘I will remember. I will say to a friend: the loco Irishman, he write this. But when I say to a woman, I say Jorge he write these beautiful words.’

On no response from Tony except an unbroken stare, Ravarro turned to Eva. ‘Muchacha, adios,’ he said and made to give her a lip kiss. She offered her cheek. He hesitated, then accepted, firing a look at Tony. ‘You watch what you do here, gringo. And you put ice on your temper, eh? Or one day maybe I shoot you.’

‘Barrio pig,’ Eva said when he had left. ‘No class, doing a thing like that.’ She approached Tony, arms crossed to opposite shoulders. ‘I told him twice, I told him stop, when he was going through your shit, before you got here, but you know the fuck-ass he is.’

He remained seated in the chair, said nothing.

Eva’s expression changed, her arms fell away from her chest. Her well-preserved middle-aged body moved toward him, breasts swaying under her cotton shirt. ‘I said you were very, very, very satisfactory, to all his questions: what you do, your work, all that shit.’

He ignored her. She moved closer and without warning pulled his head to her breasts. He yanked back. She dropped to her knees in front of him.

‘Tony, screw that dickhead wetback. Don’t let him bum you out,’ she said. ‘Snap out of it. You’re too good. Okay?’ With that, her hands were groping at him through his work shorts. He swore, swept her away roughly. She persisted. He sprang up, started to move away. She hooked her fingers into his waistband.

‘Y’know I adore you; you’re strong. I watch you on the weight bench all the time.’ He wrenched hard. She held tighter. ‘Y’don’t have to be scared of me, you little shit.’ Her arms encircled him, face jammed to his back, and she groped again at his groin.

‘Eva! Lay off!’ He forced open her grip, pushed her away. ‘My letters!’ he said, standing over the bureau. ‘They’re gone! The letters, the papers, where – ’

‘Cool it, will you, fuck’s sake. They’re stashed. Real safe. I hid them from Ravarro. See I figured out what you’re scheming, weeks back.’ She spoke now with the conceit of perceived advantage. ‘Junk put away, pictures taken down, shit like that. Figured you were hauling ass.’

His hand demanded the items.

‘Could’ve told him. Be dick deep in shit now, wouldn’t you. Parole violation big time. Bum city, fleeing the jurisdiction, no authorisation.’

‘Joel Vida got clearance for me.’

‘No shit, Antoin. Fucking Antoin? On your passport, the new one. You a frog now?’

He demanded again what she had taken.

‘I feel for you, Tony. I’m serious. Always did, you know that. I would never never never rat you out. Your shit’s under the locker, safe; y’have to stick your hand under.’

He lifted the locker aside, grabbed the papers.

‘See, I protected you. Wasn’t for me you’d be riding the DOC Cadillac, back to the country club. Soooo.’ She cast off her turban, shook out her hair, and with the confidence of a woman submitted to by men she swaggered toward him.

‘Quit it!’ he said, his voice full of threat, trying to push her back. She bored forward, head lowered. ‘Stop it, fuck it!’ he yelled.

‘Whyyy!? You don’t have to love me, you jerk.’

‘Just quit it, will you. We’re friends.’

‘Friends?’ She spit out the word and bulldozed inside his guard. ‘What’s wrong, cat got your dick?’ He forced her head back. Until suddenly she let him go, stepped away, looking upset. ‘I’m sorry, Tony. I’m being very unfair. Amigos always, always amigos. We cool? I apologise. That was wrong of me, I know. You’re a gentleman. I care about you; you know how special you are to me.’ She turned aside, eyes to the floor. ‘I’m a schmuck.’

He did nothing but observe, realising that there was a side to her that he admired: this brusque, sometimes humorous woman who went after what she wanted, the men she wanted, and rarely suffered defeat. But the warning signs had been there from the beginning: her lustful staring, open sex talk, her pressing her breasts and pelvis to him at greetings and good-byes, things a raw teenager would have objected to, but not him, he thought, not soon enough. All he wanted now was to avoid trouble, bide his time, just five days left, then go.

He accepted her atoning hands, a brief touch. But instantly, her arms jammed her body to his again, head buried into his chest, and she let out a loud libidinous sigh. ‘Come on, come on, come on, Mr Ireland; it’ll be dynamite, you and me.’

‘I’m warning you, Eva. Last time, let go.’

‘Wanted to screw you since you got here. Y’must’ve known, stuck-up little prick.’

His hands found her throat, fingers and thumbs sank into her flesh, deeper in, until he made himself stop; he forced her chin up, glared into her face. ‘You want a real fucking problem?! I told you it’s not on!’

She let go, a look of imminent retribution in her face. ‘Y’don’t get it, do you? Think it’s weird: man fucks woman? Huh? Can’t talk, can’t fuck, huh? You ungrateful faggot, you don’t get to say no to me. Know what I’m saying? Get it? We have one killer of the time, or I talk to Jorge, your buddy. Now you get it?’

His explosion of power knocked her back, a two-handed thrust to her chest. Power he had not allowed himself to use since he’d left prison.

Her plump face froze, flushed. ‘Tough-guy! Fucking faggot! Car washer con – ’

‘Get out! Fucking now!’

‘Out?! Get out?! You forget, sucker, I’m on your parole team. You were a stray mutt; I took you in. This is my house, all twelve rooms. You get the fuck out, jerk!’

His eyes scoured the room for anything to anchor to, a memory, a meaning, a thing to come.

‘And take your third-grade poems with you. Think I don’t know? I read them. All of them. She must be a dork to hang with a dumb fuck, double-killer, loooooserrr – ’

He burst toward her, rammed both hands into her hair.

‘Gonna kill me too, faggot, like you did those other people? I’ll put you back in for life, fucker.’

In a sea of obscenities, he ran her across the room, heaved her out into the hall. She thudded against the wall, crashed to the floor and quickly sat up, speechless. He kicked the door shut, sent a thud through the house. Then, shaking, he listened. At first, there was just ruffling, muttering.

‘Going down, sucker,’ she shouted moments later, her voice hoarse, sounding venomous. ‘Real quick, real quick. Fried fucking meat, dumb Irish jerk. Jorge’ll nail your fucking ass good.’

Her slapping footsteps grew fainter and fainter, until he could hear them no longer, then all he could hear was an incessant replaying in his head, over and over and over.

Eyes shut, he braced against the room door. The quiet spooked him, more than her raving and ranting. Spooked him this much, he knew, because of the favours she could call in, the quick damage she could do. But more immediately because of Ravarro, tough and dangerous, yellow-eyed mercenary, crazy man. A maze of thoughts flummoxed his brain. What should he do now, he asked, what could he do? Five days, nearly a week, to go.

He started packing away the few small items still on the bureau top: Kate’s letter, his half-read copy of
Borstal Boy
, father’s watch, his journal, hand-written poems, parole papers, new Irish passport; he then retrieved his ticket from Los Angeles International Airport to Dublin, undisturbed inside a sealed envelope he’d hidden well.

Minutes later a fit of doom choked him. He sat hard onto the floor. Felt the room become a cell, walls closing in, ceiling coming down, suffocating him. No bars to grip or steel to see, but that’s what it was, how it felt, how it smelt, another rotten cell. The darkness he thought he’d beaten, that he had beaten, it was still alive in him, coming back, and he had to make it stop, make the buzzing stop, make it all stop, find something, anything in his screwed-up life to hold on to.

He plunged his face into a sink full of cold water. Left it submerged as the air in his lungs grew scarce. Then a burst of air roared out of him and became a whine. His head went under again; he could go mad, he thought, maybe he had gone mad; same choice he’d had for nine years, give up, go mad; he’d fought it off every day for all that time; now pain like a knife in his lungs; but he could leave Arizona right now, go for good; he could do that, before the sirens came, before Ravarro came, because then he’d be dead again, and he wasn’t going back inside, insane or not, never going back, the one thing he could swear to; just get out now.

His face came up out of the water, blood-filled, coughing out a drool that splattered the glass, melted his reflection, until it all seeped away and left a man recognisable again. Had to stay sane, he warned himself, stay sane. She’d be crazy to call Ravarro. Or the cops. He had too much on her: cops, attorneys, politicians, councillors, in her bed. And she knew he knew. Too many would fall, big wigs in high places. The twosomes and threesomes he’d stumbled over, in the pool, the gazebo, inside the house. All moral crusaders. These were the fuckers to fear, who’d kill to stop him identifying their faces and license plates, soldiers against grass, gas chamber salesmen, smug hypocrites. Dangerous people. Make murder look like suicide: unstable ex-con takes own life, falls down mountain, drowns drunk in pool, puts bullet in brain. Eva’s boys.

Nah, he was losing it, he thought, imagining shit, turning into a screwball. No, he wasn’t. He’d nearly killed her, maybe he had killed her, banged her head, she could be dead. Felony murder, prison, lethal injection, odourless gas. No, she wasn’t dead. But she knew about Ireland, figured he was jumping out for good; she’d try to stop him, that’s how she worked: blackmail, make him stay, become her gigolo. And that would be that. No escape. No home. No Lenny Quin. Nothing. Couldn’t let that happen.

Maybe right now she was on the phone, spilling everything to Ravarro. But Ravarro would be miles away by now, abusing other ex-cons. Which meant he had time, a little. When Ravarro found out, he’d come for him; Ravarro would come. Calm down, he told himself. Think. Stay sane. Remember Joel Vida’s advice. Keep control, find options, choose. He’d slip away quietly.

Suddenly, a sound. Somewhere in the house. Someone. Couldn’t be Ravarro. Had to be her, he thought. Doing what? His head dropped into his hands. She wasn’t dead. He could make it, all set now, set to go. Everything he could call his, that had any value, was stuffed into two bags in readiness for this moment, five days premature as it now was. Five days to lie low, somewhere, anywhere but here. That was it. He was leaving Arizona, for good.

He freed the window shade, exposed his shaking self to glare and heat. A big, hot, perilous outside that was once a world of green fields and boyhood freedom. A life lost, he thought. But maybe not forever. He’d make his break through the rear garden.

Outside, yellow grapefruits hung still and glistening; beyond them the rich blue of the Arizona sky, the cool blue of the pool, treasures he’d basked in in the eighteen months he’d been here. Under the acrylic canopy, his weight bench sat loaded. He whispered farewell to his time in this desert, this half-way house to nowhere. And then it was gone, this phase of his life over. His gut was ready for different air, different sky, for fields and mountains, a new life. One good chance to come, and what he would make of himself.

He manoeuvred through the yard, bags in hand, out through the side gate and past the yellow public utility truck parked next to his old white Mustang. As he placed his backpack in the trunk a blow from behind thudded into his shoulder, knocked his head against the lid. His reflexes pivoted him aside. Instantly, he was pumped up, ready to call on everything he had. The only way they’d get him, he vowed, was dead. As he spun back he recognised his attacker, Rip Wundt! Not Ravarro! Rip Wundt, a large roustabout type he’d seen about the place, utility company boss man, one of Eva’s boys. The blow had been meant for his head. Sucker punch. Designed to pulverise. Instead, it shot a spark into him, provided license, the rush he had once loved, that he had learned to un-love but had never dismantled.