Aloysius Tempo (20 page)

March 2017

BEEP.

And I can only grin at my old audible friends kicking off, bringing me to life each morning, the old Amsterdam car horns.

I can’t say I’ve missed them, the beeps, the double beeps, the long and short beeps, the little flashes of bad words they sparked from me, the curses in my head they covered like censors.

Beep
.

Hello, morning. Hello, Holland. Hello, cars. Hello beeps.

But.

No stars above me now.

And I know it now, these are not car horns.

This is not my old jar of a flat.

This is not Amsterdam.

And I let my eyes fill with this bright room, this Dublin bedroom.

Nothing has changed since I lay down to rest.

I look at my phone, reach for it, and there’s nothing, no alerts, no contacts.

Beep
.

And the phone rings now, just as I’m leaning to put it back on the table.

I see it’s Wayne, looking for me, for information on what to do with a troublesome woman called Martha McStay. And it’s a Facetime call, it’s Wayne seeking to see me, or Wayne wanting me to see her.

I accept.

Beep
.

I go, ‘Wayne,’ looking at my screen.

And it’s only his face, his eyes half open, as if half asleep.

‘You all right?’

It looks like the phone is moving away from him, as if he is stretching his arm out. I see above his head now, further into whatever room he is in.

And it’s a room I know. It’s my room. It’s my kitchen. And the positioning is all wrong, the place where his head is, it’s too low.

The phone is moving still further back.

It’s showing me that Wayne is on the breakfast bar. Correction – it’s showing me that Wayne’s head is on the breakfast bar, blood fanning out around the base, around where his neck had been.

Beep
.

And someone is walking backwards, walking away from Wayne. Someone is leaving what’s left of him right there as they come my way.

And they have broken in, cracked their way in through the door, the warning alarm beeping, signalling that the intruder siren will sound in 120 seconds.

I put the phone down and look around, look for something to help me. I have half a cup of cold tea. That phone and that cup. I try to climb out of bed but my back is hell. And the door clicks, opens, and I’m not even halfway up.

A pistol points right at me, a tall, wide man, at its other end.

Beep
.

Behind him, walking backwards, carrying what’s left of Wayne, comes Martha McStay, her shoes red with blood. Still in her yoga pants, still with an arse that could catch your eye no matter who, what, why, where, when – no matter if you’re about to die.

‘Ah. Bollocks,’ I say, nowhere to go, run out of road.

There’s another guy, walking after her. I know them, both of these guys. Her burly Belfast bodyguards, her loyal to-the-death servants.

Beep
.

Martha turns, hands the phone to her armed friend. She looks healthy, unblemished, someone who has not been through any recent, local difficulties at all.

‘You know, Aloysius,’ she says, taking the pistol off the man, looking it over, pointing it now at me, ‘you had no right to come barging into my life.’

Beep
.

And I sit back, my back springing a shock through my system, and I’m thinking how, in a matter of seconds, I may never need to ever worry about this back again.

She goes, ‘You’re not the first person to try to get the better of me, and you really won’t be the last.’

I say, ‘You are only alive because of me. Think of it that way.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I am only alive because you couldn’t kill me. What was it? Did you take pity? Did you like my intriguing chat? My yoga arse?’

Beep
.

I shrug and it hurts, and I feel like a failure and she knows it. My job is the only job in the world where people you should have killed will throw it back in your face.

She says, ‘Your friend with the wandering hands has nothing to put his clothes on because of you.’

‘What happened?’

‘I happened,’ she says. ‘I elbowed him in the bollocks, then kicked him in the bollocks, then bit him in the bollocks.’

‘Right.’

‘And then I head-butted him, knocked him back against a wall, knocked him out.’

‘Right.’

Beep
.

‘By the time these two arrived from Belfast,’ she says, nodding at each of her bodyguards, ‘I had kicked him in the bollocks 317 times, according to my pedometer.’

‘Right.’

‘Then I cut his noggin off with an electric carving knife, just to be sure.’

‘So I see.’

‘I have blood all over my good Nikes.’

‘I see that too.’

‘I’d do the same to you only I haven’t time and my foot hurts like fuck.’

I go, ‘Right.’

And she’s walking closer, that pistol very much looking like it is going to be used according to instructions the manufacturer will not have supplied.

Martha McStay places the barrel on my forehead and I feel how the steel is warm, how it’s a weapon that was recently pulled from a jacket, from under a belt.

‘And what now?’ I say.

Beep
.

‘Now your number’s up, Aloysius.’

And I don’t know where it comes from but my mouth says, ‘Don’t.’

‘Why not?’

But I can think of no reason, no honest defence for myself, for my life, no argument against it coming to a close. And I am now not at all annoyed with Martha McStay, not at all angry.

I was thinking about closing my eyes for this, but now I know I’ll keep them open.

She goes, ‘You should’ve killed me when you had the chance. Basically, you failed.’

I look up at her dark, lovely, wide eyes, smile my best smile and say, ‘Failure is beautiful.’

She goes, ‘Yes,’ and nods. Goes, ‘Yes.’

And I see her thin, hard hand move.

Should Aloysius return?

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Jason Johnson is the author of three previous novels,
Woundlicker, Alina
and
Sinker
. He lives in Belfast.