Gurriers (34 page)

All of the laughing had helped me gain control of my motor functions once more but my head was still swamped by a dense haze of being stoned. Still it wasn’t such a bad feeling. As long as I was standing here against this wall with my new friends, things would be just fine. Actually, the empty feeling in my head was also empty of pain. The words emotional and anaesthetic swam past each other in the fog without making contact, but I knew what they meant. As an experiment I forced myself to think of her and was delighted to find that the pang of pain was nowhere near as intense as it had been only an hour ago. It was still there, but it just didn’t seem to matter as much.

I suppose nothing matters as much when you’re stoned, but this was the first experience I had ever had where that was actually beneficial. Getting stoned was the way out of my misery,
the solution to my problems. Wow!

“Four Sean.” Aidan’s voice came through the radio. This was something I didn’t need right now. I looked to Vinno in a panic but could see from his bloodshed eyes that my dilemma didn’t matter as much to him now that he was stoned. This was the negative side of the same coin.

“Four Sean, four.”

Okay, calm down, Sean. I told myself. Relax, nice and easy!

“Four Sean, four, four, four!” Aidan barked and was now clearly getting impatient.

Turning up the radio, I replied, “Go ahead.”

“Where are you now, Sean? What have you left to do?”

“I’m er…at Leeson Street Bridge just heading down to drop these two.”

“Were you delayed somewhere?”

“Er…yes.”

“Where were you delayed and why didn’t you call me?”

He must have known somehow that I was bullshitting. I was a crap liar at the best of times but a total and absolute disaster now. The couriers around me tried to mime possible delays in an effort to help me out. The one called Leo who had passed me the joint, pointed to a tyre and made a hissing sound; another one pointed to an engine and made a perplexed face to hint that something mechanical was wrong with the bike that I didn’t know anything about. Another pointed to a chain and made an off gesture to mime that mine had come off, but none of these could explain why I hadn’t called him. Then I looked to Vinno. He made circular gestures with one finger over his head, which meant a siren – cops. Then he pointed to my radio before making a no-no gesture with his finger.

“Four Sean answer me!”

Vinno then pointed to the kiosk and made a money gesture with his fingers. I understood perfectly, stoned and all!

“Yeah, sorry Aidan. I was just paying for smokes. The cops pulled me for speeding in Donnybrook and wouldn’t let me use my radio.”

“So why didn’t ye call me when they let you go?”

“I didn’t think they kept me that long.”

“I need to know about every delay, no matter how long or short.”

“Okay, no problem.”

“I’ve goh one in Young’s for you goin’ to Cherry Orchard. Call me when ye have i’ on board an’ the other two dropped.”

“Roger.”

“Jaysus, talk abou’ bein on yer case,” Leo sympathised.” Ye’re noh even here five bleedin’ minutes, man!”

“Are they not all like that?”

“No they’re noh! Our lad hasn’t goh a bleedin’ clue where we are. I’ve of’en gone AWOL for half an hour wi’ou’ getting’ called!”

“He’s sharper than most alrie bu’ tha’ has its good points as well! If your base controller swapped places wi’ him I would earn a loh less wages than I do.” Vinno seemed to be coming to Aidan’s defence.

“Yeah bu’ you don’t have a basic down there – we just make sure to call in before nine, do as little as possible an’ ge’ home as soon as possible for our basic wage.”

“Basic, me bollix. Most weeks I make twice the basic youse are gettin.’”

“Yeah, buh ye work yer bollix off for i.’”

“If you’re goin’ to be on the road for fifty odd hours a week ye mi’ as well make the mos’ money ye can in tha’ time!”

“Nah, give me a basic any day.”

“Well to each his own, I suppose.”

This was the first I’d heard of couriers making a basic wage. I was intrigued.

“How much is the basic?” I aimed my question at Leo but one of the potential non-smokers butted in.

“It depends on how good ye are; in our place i’ starts a’ two hundred and goes up to three twenty five. That’s the top basic.”

“No it’s noh!”

“Wha?”

“Are you on three twenty five?”

“Er, yeah.”

“Ye gobshite ye. I’m on three fifty!”

“Wha’?”

“Do you need a hearin’ aid? I kep’ earnin’ over three twenty five so I barged into Tony’s office, threw me payslips on the table an’ bullied him into puttin’ me up to three fifty. Haven’t made over three since bu’ fuck them, they make enough money on us anyway.”

“The fuckin’ bastard! He swore blind to me tha’ I was on the top basic. We’ll see abou’ this.”

“Eight Gary.” This must have been Eight Gary’s base controller.

“Fuckin’ bastard makin’ a fool ou’ of me!”

“Eight Gary, eight!”

It felt alien hearing a different base controller’s voice.

“Gary, go ahead.”

“I’m headin’ up to the office. Tell Tony I want to see him urgently.”

“I need cover in two, Gary.”

“Ye have Seven Leo here on the bridge.”

“Seven Leo.”

“Yeh fuckin’ rah, ye Gary.” Roared after the hastily departing 250 and then into the radio “Yeah, roger, just pulled up onto the bridge. I’m here for cover for ye.”

“When did you ge’ bumped up to three fifty?” the older, scary one enquired.

“Sometime in the next couple of weeks with any luck after the tantrum he’s goin’ to throw in the office!”

I was still laughing going into Young’s post room. I wasn’t laughing for long, though. As soon as I entered the post room I realised how stoned I was. The activity of the work place seemed surreal in contrast to the cannabis-induced lull in activity that was going on inside my head. I felt distinctly alien to the place, as I gingerly made my way to the cluttered desk in the centre of
the room.

“I’m here for….er.” I knew that the information was there but being stoned was just stopping me from getting to it. Maybe I could work it out: was I delivering or collecting?

“Are you collecting something?”

“Yes! Yes that’s it.” The over reaction to the prompt got me frowned at by the man, as he picked three small hard–backed envelopes off his desk.

“Dun Laoghaire, Sandyford, or Cherry Orchard?”

“Cherry Orchard, thank you.”

He was still frowning at me as he handed over the envelope. I felt like a schoolboy in front of the headmaster, and scurried out the door and up the steps as soon as I got hold of my envelope, not even slowing down as I shouted “yes” back to his customary question.

He shouted after me, “Are you going straight there?”

I was gone and didn’t answer.

“Four Sean,”

I knew I was in trouble now as I stood beside my bike outside Young’s, concentrating real hard on sorting my head out. I didn’t need this right now.

“Er…go ahead.”

“Where are you now? How’re you gettin’ on?” The double question a sign that there was pressure on. I had to come up with an answer and quick.

“Four Sean four, answer me.”

“Yeah, roger, sorry. I’m just leaving Young’s heading down to Baggot Street and then Merrion Square.”

“Wha’? Were you delayed again?”

“Em. Not that much,” I moved my left hand up to block the sound of my next statement lest anybody in the post room should hear me lie. “I was a few minutes in Young’s waiting for the package to come down.”

“That’s not like them! Anyway, I have two more jobs for ye: Coke on Baggoh Stree’ for Lucan an’ FAI 76 Merrion Square contact Paddy Marsh with tickets for Ciaran Reilly of Megaprint in Palmerstown.”

God, I remember thinking, how am I going to remember all that information?

While rummaging in my bag for my book, I had an image of the information swilling around in my brain about to disappear through some drug-induced plughole like the end of a bath. I had to get these details written down before they were gone forever.

“Okay. Coke – Lucan – FAI 76 M.S. for…erm…tickets – Megaprint. What was his name? What was their names? Contact somebody for Ciaran…Ciaran…Ciaran something in…er…that place in Palmerstown. Okay! We’ll go with that. With any luck yer man’s tickets will be sitting on the reception desk waiting for me.”

The two pick-ups couldn’t have fallen handier for me either. I was already delivering to both Baggot Street and Merrion Square. I had deduced that I should actually gain myself a bit of a time here. I got on my bike, started it up and wound the throttle on full – winding it back half way immediately and proceeding slowly at half throttle. Stoned people drive slow – very slow.

My imagination displayed its hyper-active state by bombarding my poor fuzzy brain with flash images of everything that could possibly go wrong as I crawled down Fitzwilliam Place past the continuous line of parked cars, each one a menacing threat – liable to spring to life and pull out in front of me at any moment. There was so much potential danger that the flashes evolved into one continuous alert, causing me to decelerate a little bit more.

My body was totally tense, my grip on the handlebars was way too tight and I wouldn’t even tear my eyes off the hazards ahead to look at the speedometer. Thus I crawled down Fitzwilliam Square onto Fitzwilliam Street Upper until startled by a pushbike courier overtaking me! He was one of the ones that did wear the lycra shorts – or tights as my mechanically driven compatriots called them – and he was a cocky little bastard. He looked back at me, shook his head slightly a couple of times and then swung straight across in front of me to get to the inside line. That snapped me out of it.

I nailed the throttle wide open just after he had begun his cocky swerve across and my front tyre missed his back one by inches. He went to look over his right shoulder but had to reel back, as my shoulder accelerated past his head with, again, inches to spare. It was gratifying to see his wobble; slight and short lived as it was, in my mirror. The same mirror that I observed him approach me in after the red light at the junction of Baggot Street caught me.

I lifted my visor to facilitate a reply to whatever he was about to say or shout at me. There was going to be something – the only question was what. There was a gap in the traffic moving along Baggot Street. He aimed himself for that gap with some expertise, barely slowing down to go through the red light, swinging sharply to his left onto Baggot bang on target, still taking the time to direct a retort at me.

“Stoner!”

“Woollie Willy!”

When the lights turned green, I turned left to go to Coke for my first pick-up, resuming at my previous crawling pace. Aidan called me as I was negotiating the gap in the island opposite number 34, as if he somehow sensed the worst possible time to do so.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“When ye have those two on board there’s one in IT Solutions in Fitzwilliam goin’ to Ballyfermot.”

“Roger.”

I tried to coordinate myself through two moving gaps to get me across the other side of Baggot Street, being rewarded with a bad tempered beep in the process.

I know I had intended to write the jobs down as soon as I pulled over, but I was distracted by my mission to give the two fingered salute to the impatient prick that hadn’t had the manners to decelerate slightly to let me across the gap before resuming in the exact same position as previously.

In a mindless display of narrow minded ignorance so common in the Irish motorist, the shithead accelerated to try to close the gap when he saw my intention to use it to cross the lane, but I still got
into it before him. Then - because of his own nasty acceleration – he had to brake, which infuriated him into beeping. This infuriated me into braking – hard and sudden – to bring him to a stop for his crimes. Two doors down, as I pulled over outside Coke, it was a matter of the utmost importance that I got to make abusive hand signals to the wanker as he went past. This I succeeded in doing, but the episode meant that I forgot to write down the job that I had said “Roger” to seconds earlier. Not writing a job down immediately, or at least promptly, is a big risk to a courier. There is so much going on around you that it is very easy, and commonplace, to forget being despatched a job. Of course, add being stoned into the equation and the result is predictable.

I forgot all about the IT pick-up. Worse still – with all the jumble of information about the FAI pick-up in my head – I went straight to Merrion Square when I had Coke picked up, forgetting to drop the Baggot Street delivery that I had brought in from Dun Laoghaire.

I was just about to deliver in Cherry Orchard when Aidan called me.

“Four Sean.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have IT Solutions on the line here wonderin’ when you’re goin’ to ge’ there to pick up tha’ one for Ballyer.”

“Oh no, Aidan! I forgot all about it…there was this prick on Baggot Street nearly hit me, and-“