Call Me the Breeze (13 page)

How wrong I’d been, I thought. I had put the book back in my jacket when I saw the bank chick coming out. I knew she had her lunch in the hotel across the road so once I saw her going in there I knew everything was OK. I wasn’t going to need long anyway. It
couldn’t have been more perfect — the window at the back was open so in a matter of seconds I was inside. I just left the
Spontaneous Apple Conclusion
record —
The Only One
— where she could not miss it, directly inside the door. Like I’d just slipped it underneath.

I didn’t want her getting to thinking that I’d been trespassing in her space. That would have been an impertinence. It wasn’t time for that yet. I had dropped a little note inside the sleeve. It would have been beautiful just to remain there awhile. I experienced the most delicious out-of-body sensation when I saw — at first I couldn’t believe it —
Steppenwolf
opened there on the bottom bookshelf. It was just lying with its pages open, as though she were saying: ‘These are the pieces, Joseph, that I would like you very much to read.’ I went over to it, and sure enough it was open at the passage dealing with surrender. If I had ever needed confirmation then this was it. It was like she was sending me a sign. A signal. Whatever. It was a blissful, revelatory moment and I would have loved just to stay running my hand across that paragraph, with the mote-dancing sun coming shining in through her bedroom window. But it was impossible. I sighed as I stared at her zippered denim jacket — the one with the cluster of flowers on the collar — neatly draped over the back of a chair. Even touching it made me feel … one with her.

And I found myself thinking:
Maybe I
will
stay. Just sit here and read
! But no. It really and truly was impossible for me to do that, I realized.

Not now that Total Organization had begun. This being the ‘first test’. I reached in my pocket and produced my aviator shades. I put them on and gazed at myself in her mirror. I felt every muscle in my body stiffen. ‘T. O.’ — I mouthed the letters, trying to remember what I could from the movie:
Total Organization is necessary. I must get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Twenty-five push-ups each morning, one hundred sit-ups. I have quit smoking
.

I whirled, aiming the ‘gun’ in a lethal, two-handed grip. Then sat again and closed my eyes in meditation. Reflecting on Tagore. Thinking of Hesse. But most of all, of her. And ‘T. O.’.

There would be no more spliffs. No more pyramid or windowpane acid, no more anything. No more anything that got in the way of
us, T. O.
and ‘
The Plan
’.

*

I didn’t want to walk away from what I’d felt in his car that night, before the slaying of Detective Tuite. Call it Nirvana. Call it whatever. I wanted it again, and I knew there was only one way to get it. By being close to her. To she. Who is the ‘Only One’. Just before I left, I strummed it on the guitar. Ever so softly as the sun danced on.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon — it was my day off — just squatting lotus in the caravan and reading. Then I drove off out to the Karma Cave and gave it another cleaning. It was really looking good now, with them wind chimes tinkling away and the scented candles burning in their little painted dishes. I opened out the
Abraxas
sleeve and tacked it to the wall. There was a quotation on it from Hesse’s
Demian
. It read: ‘
We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it. We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas
…’

I put on the record, the Afro-Cuban rhythms of ‘Singing Winds/Crying Beasts’ beginning to reverberate as I closed my eyes and opened them once more to drink in the painting’s fiery purple-winged angel, its luscious mounds of citrus fruits, the stunning colours of its exotic flowers, the swirling sweep of the painted silk fabrics. The burnished amulet that gleamed, the ancient ruined temple, the lines of coloured candles. I sat on the camp bed and meditated. To others, once upon a time, it might have been nothing more than a dilapidated cabin long forgotten by everyone. An abandoned old shack way up there on Tynagh mountain. But to a man called Joey Tallon it was already beginning to look … beautiful’s not the word — ‘precious’. Precious is the word. To us it would be precious.

Just as I was saying that I flicked one of the little rotating mobiles and it struck the most magnificent note. It just seemed to hang there, perfect. I tossed my head back and drank in the air. Then I began my press-ups. The movie lines out of nowhere came drifting into my head: ‘
My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now
.’

Then I stripped to the waist. ‘Vile!’ I hissed through gritted teeth. I knew I looked disgusting and that it was going to take time. Remembering the words of the prophet to the effect that you must assist the self, I did twenty-five press-ups. Followed by another twenty-five. By now the sweat was literally pouring off me.

But I felt good.

I had the half day off and was down at the back of the bar playing pool with Chico when Boyle Henry walks in along with Fr Connolly. He comes over to me with his thumbs in his lapels and says: ‘Man but you’re some basket of fruit, Joey! Leaving your property lying about like that where anyone could come along and lift it! Father, do you know the things that go fecking on! The things that go on in this town!’

I don’t think Connolly heard a word he said. He was much too preoccupied with his own business. Then Boyle looks at me with this big grin and says: ‘I didn’t think you had it in you, Josie! As God is my judge, I didn’t! But fair play to you for trying!
The Only One
! Ha! Well, boys, oh boys!’

I could feel the blood draining from my face, but before I got a chance to say anything he starts whistling and goes over to Connolly saying: ‘I think the flag should go up there, Father!’

I wasn’t feeling the best. You don’t just give up draw like that, you don’t just give up acid and all of a sudden — as if by some miracle — just come back to yourself. It takes time. And I could tell that Boyle Henry knew that — how fragile I was, I mean. But I closed my eyes for the tiniest of seconds and repeated to myself in silence ‘It’s OK, Joey!’ and waited for the dread to pass. But then, unexpectedly, Chico startled me by saying: ‘
Are you listening to me, Joey? Then take the fucking cue, will you, for Christ’s sake
!’

It took three attempts before eventually I managed to hit the ball, for all I could think of was, how does he know? Did he see me coming out of her flat?

What worried me most was that I was going to start thinking:
She told him. She must have
! which was the last thing I wanted to hear …

And was why I concentrated on
Steppenwolf
and her having placed the novel there. It couldn’t possibly have been lying there by accident.
Could it
? I thought.

Of course it couldn’t, I reassured myself. And smiled.

‘Don’t be dumb now, Joey!’ I murmured, stretching right across the expanse of green baize. ‘That would be impossible. Too much of a coincidence. It has to have been … a “signal”, one she could give without too much risk.’

I looked over, expecting him to be staring back at me. Smiling, most likely, in that way of his that had the effect of almost sickening me, making my stomach turn over.

But he wasn’t. He was standing on a stepladder arranging a string of small flags and pennants with the words ‘peace’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘rejoice’ on them. The others were busying themselves with loudspeakers and cables. I missed the balls a few more times before Chico eventually lost his rag and said: ‘Will you shit or get off the pot, Joey!’

I could hardly see the steak and kidney pie in front of me in its tinfoil tray as I sat up at the bar counter. The Olympics were on but seemed much louder than usual. ‘You Sexy Thing’ was playing on the jukebox. That seemed loud too, almost as loud as it had been the day of the wrestling. So did the fork, come to that, clanging against the plate. I tried not to drop it — but then I dropped it. When I made to get off the stool in order to lift it I looked over and Boyle Henry was standing right beside me, smiling.

‘You’re enjoying your pie there, Josie,’ he said.

A glass of sweat, please
, I thought. No, thank you. Knife. Fork. Pie.
No pie
! Sauce. Do you have any sauce? Salt?
No! Sauce
!

‘Yes, I am, Mr Henry,’ I replied as steadily as I could manage.

‘I love pies,’ he said. ‘I love them with sauce. Smothered.’

He rubbed his paunch and laughed.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s some on your chin. Hey, Austie! Get me a cloth!’

Austie arrived with a teacloth, and Boyle folded it into a triangle and dabbed at the sauce.

‘That’s better. You and your old beard. You can’t go around the town like that.’

He leaned across and put his hand on my shoulder. Looking over to check if Connolly was there, he dropped his voice and said: ‘You know
what I’m going to tell you, you crafty old trespasser you!’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t fucking blame you!’

‘What?’ I choked. He leaned in closer. His eyes were shifting back and forth — they were full of life now. Remorseless still, certainly, but leaping about with tremendous agility, like each one possessed a unique life of its own.

‘Once — I swear to God it’s no lie, Joey,’ he whispered, ‘once I was in a dive in New Orleans, me and a few of the boys — you can ask Austie if you don’t believe me. We were in this dive down south like, with all the bucks we wanted to spend. Money no prob., do you get me, Joseph? Next thing your woman comes out. “Boys,” she says to us, “we got ’em all —’”

His grin broadened and he rested his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it.

‘“Boys,” she says, “we got ’em all! Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Jap or Jew! Right in behind those doors! You pays your money and you takes your choice! And that door of your choice — it opens up!’”

His mouth hung open for a minute, and then he said: ‘What did she say, Joseph?’

I couldn’t take my eyes off the spot of sauce that had got stuck on the tip of my nose. It seemed huge and brown, almost as big as the nose itself.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Huh? How’s that, Josie? Eh?’ he said, and pinched me hard. I winced. He patted the spot, as a mother might to make a child’s bruise ‘better’.

‘What did she —?’ I began.

He drummed his fingers on his stomach. Beaming. He winked and said: ‘Yes, Josie! That’s the way she operates! You pays your money and you takes your choice! Then the door it opens up!
Austie! Austie
! Can I have a beer?’

After he got the beer he sat for an age with his two arms folded. Then he said: ‘Joseph — may I call you that? After all, it’s your real name, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, they call it to me sometimes,’ I said. ‘Mona especially used to-’

Already it was too late. Her name had escaped my lips. He patiently rested his chin on his fist and gazed into my eyes when he heard me saying it. His eyes might have been saying: ‘
Caught you
!’ It was as
though they were saying: ‘I knew if I waited long enough that sooner or later I’d catch you!’

‘Mona,’ he grinned. ‘That’d be Mona Galligan, I dare say. She was friendly with your father, as I recall.’

‘Yes,’ I said and stared at the floor. The tiles were black and white and very grimy. I thought I had better clean them.
Ask Austie for the mop, ask Austie for it
! I found myself thinking with an alarming urgency:
Ask Aust
-!

His hand was squeezing my shoulder again, the other stroking his chin. He fixed me with a stare.

‘Joseph!’ he said. ‘Look at me! Where did he ever go, that old father of yours? Where did he go, your old man Jamesy? Tell us, Joey, where did he go?’

I didn’t reply. I tried my best to wrest my shoulder away, but without drawing attention to it.

‘Did he have a wee girl maybe out foreign?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he went, Mr Henry.’

‘What did he have to go and do that for? That was a bad thing to do. Poor old Mona, shovelling gin into herself then and going around quaking like a jelly. A Chivers jelly! Say that, Joey — a
Chivers jelly
!’

I looked away. He clapped me gently on the back.

‘Ah well. Don’t say it then,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to.’

He sighed and sank his hands into his pockets. Then he continued: ‘And your poor old mother, she didn’t fare much better. That’d be the shame, I suppose. Shame is a bad boy, Joey. She mightn’t give a fuck about him, and the way I heard it, she didn’t. But the shame now, that would be different. That would be a different kettle of fish for a woman abandoned. Which is really what happened, Joey, no matter what way you might try to dress it up. Left on the dump so as he could ride all he wanted.’

He flexed his fingers and contemplated his nails. ‘He was a good singer too, Joey. He used to sing at all the concerts. Do you know what he used to sing? “Harbour Lights”, Joey. I wonder what harbour he sailed into? I know! The wee furry one, maybe!’

He clapped me sharply on the back and boomed: ‘Aye! That’d be her! Eh, Joey? Eh, Joey?’

I swallowed. All of a sudden he erupted into song.

He twinkled then and gave me a little shove. ‘Wasn’t he a desperate man now, doing the like of that?’

His eyes creased up and he laughed again. Then he said nothing for a while. He drank some more beer. The pool balls clacked. He licked his lips and gave his attention to the game for a while, commenting here and there. ‘Nice shot!’ he said, and: ‘
Lovely pocket, son
!’