Theater Macabre (3 page)

I acquiesced, but made it clear I didn’t appreciate it by stubbing the cigarette out on the freshly swept floor rather than tossing it outside.

The barmaid scowled.

I found a stool at the short side of the bar nearest the door. Should trouble erupt, the small amber lamps on the walls would provide illumination enough for me to see a punch coming, but not who threw it. Without the omnipresent veil of smoke, the place seemed less cheery, less comforting, though I had to admit I didn’t miss having my eyes sting every time I blinked.

The barmaid approached, still scowling. She looked like the kind of woman who scowled easily but a smile would require a warrant. “What’ll you have?” she asked.

“Pint of Carlsberg.” If there was sole comfort to be found in my homecoming, it would be that the beer here, imported or not, wouldn’t taste like it had already been used as mouthwash and spat back into the glass. A few moments later, the white-topped amber pint was set brusquely before me. I didn’t care about the method of delivery; I only cared about the pint. My last good vice.

“Well,” said a voice to my right and I frowned in irritation. I hadn’t even had a sup of the bloody drink yet and already I’d been interrupted. I looked at the man who’d spoken, quickly took him in.

My age, maybe older.

Soft blue eyes, hard face lined with tragic stories I suspected he was dying to relate.

Thin, almost cadaverous, and dressed like he wasn’t the only one who wore his clothes. Old jeans frayed at the cuffs, boots half a season away from the dump, and a shirt that had once been white but now looked like a smoker’s handkerchief.

I returned the causal drinker’s greeting. “Well.”

“Join ya?”

As he’d already parked his narrow arse on the stool next to me and set a bottle of Smithwicks and a half-pint glass on the bar, I didn’t see the sense in refusing him, so I shrugged and hurriedly took a deep pull on my pint out of fear that it might be my last chance before his intrusion soured it. Closed my eyes in appreciation as the ice-cold lager chilled my throat. “Jesus, that’s good,” I muttered.

“Been away, I’d say,” said my new friend.

“London,” I told him.

“Ah. Fine place.”

“Shithole.”

“Ah,” he said again. “Twasn’t what you’d hoped then.”

I didn’t answer, was too busy taking another hearty slug on the pint. Half the glass was gone when I returned it to the bar.

“Can I buy you another one?” he asked.

You have to be careful in Irish bars. We’re chatty. We’ll talk to a wall when we have a few pints put away. But there’s an element of folk who’ll only talk in the hope that you’ll be suckered into supplying them with beer for the night. They buy you the first one, maybe the first two, and you let your guard down, assume they have money for a night’s worth of pissery. And by the time it dawns on you that they don’t, you’re too drunk yourself to give a shit. Then you wake up in the morning with empty pockets and a hangover and a nagging feeling of being had. On the other hand, if you let someone buy you drink all night and never put your hand in your pocket, the likelihood is that some night when they’re down on their luck, they’ll trawl the bars looking for you, hoping you’ll feel obliged to return the favor. It can get ugly.

As I sat there in the afterglow of a drink I’d missed more than most of the people I knew, I didn’t care what this guy’s motives might be. He could buy me drink until we were kicked out if he felt like it. If he came looking for repayment at a later date, he’d be disappointed. And if he was looking for a supplier, he’d be equally chagrinned to discover I wasn’t a total fool either.

So “Sure,” I said, and drained my glass.

At the man’s summons, the barmaid appeared and snatched the glass from the counter. As she turned, I told her, “Same glass, please.” The steam from the glasses in the dishwashing tray told me they weren’t long out. Beer in a warm glass is sacrilege. Beer in a
used
glass, the sides of which are already coated with suds from the beer, meaning it’ll hold its head longer, is perfect. As a barmaid, she would know this, of course, but that didn’t mean I was spared a dirty look as she set about pulling the pint.

“You don’t remember me, I’d say,” said the man beside me.

I looked at him. Better to try now to see if he rang any bells. The first pint already had bumblebees droning lazily around inside my skull. A few more and my drinking partner could be Tom Selleck for all I’d know. But on closer inspection, I saw nothing familiar in his face, aside from misery.

“Sorry,” I said. “Should I?”

He nodded once, a look of seriousness on his face, as if we had matters of grave importance to discuss.

“New Year’s Eve,” he said, searching my face for signs that the memory was surfacing. It wasn’t, and he continued. “About twenty years ago it was. Snowed like a bastard.”

“Snow…yeah,” I said. Given Dungarvan’s proximity to the Atlantic, the closest we normally get to the white stuff is a brief glimpse of it atop the mountains that surround the town. Then it’s gone. No white Christmases here, but once, we’d had a white New Year.

“I remember the snow, all right,” I told him. “Not you though.”

“You were drinking in O’ Reilly’s,” he said. “They had a band playing there—The Amadans. Great craic altogether. Everyone in fine spirits. They locked the doors and let us drink until four in the morning. Then the cops came knocking, cleared us out.”

It was coming back to me, but only vaguely. I tend to remember the bad nights over the good, and if it was as he had described it, nothing had happened to make that night a memorable one. I did remember the snow though, and the more I thought about it, the more my hand began to stray to my right eyebrow, fingertips tracing the deep scar hidden beneath it.

“That’s right!” said the man with a satisfied smile. “You remember now?”

The barmaid deposited our drinks. My drinking partner paid her. “Thanks Mick,” she said, and that gave me a name.

“Mick Molloy,” he said, and carefully searched my face. His scrutiny was beginning to get annoying. “Where did you get the scar?”

“I’ve always had it, I suppose,” I said, but knew he wouldn’t buy it. The barmaid’s arrival had created a brief gap in the conversation, allowing me to remember more about that night than I was willing to let on for now. His interest bugged me, and I suspected I would do well to recall his part in that night so there would be no sudden surprises.

“You fell,” he said.

“Yeah.” I knew that much at least. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Slipped outside the bar. Ice on the snow. Slipped and spun around and hit yer head on the curb. You got a nasty ‘oul cut out of it.”

“I did. Where you there?”

“I was.”

For a moment he let this information settle between us. He looked calm, and I imagine I did too, but I got the feeling his mind was racing. So was mine.

“Well…I don’t remember you, sorry,” I said and hefted my pint.

“You headed home and I walked with you,” he said then. “Scooped up handfuls of snow and put ‘em against yer eye. Thought it might help.”

It came to me. Not his face, but the shape of him. Dark. Backlit by the cool lights from the quay as we traversed the Causeway—a three-quarter mile stretch of road that bisects the harbor.

Him raising his hand and putting it to my face.

Me, confused and more than a little angry. Who was this guy, I remembered thinking, and more importantly, what the fuck is he doing touching me?

Shit. In my chest, a sinking feeling. Was this guy about to spring a vendetta on me? Had he waited twenty years—or however long ago he’d said it was—to take me to task for being hostile to him when he’d been trying to help? That was all I’d need. I’d come here seeking a safe haven (though my belief in the existence of such places had been corrupted by time and experience) and now it was going to be spoiled by some old fart with a grudge.

Lovely.

“Remember?” he asked, leaning toward me a little.

“I do,” I said. “Thanks for that.”

I wasn’t worried about the guy. He looked like a scarecrow. If he decided to get violent, I’d snap him over my knee and split, as the Americans say. But I’d prefer not to have to. What I was, was dismayed. All I wanted was a few pints, maybe a shot or two before I went to face the false smiles and knowing nods at home. Trouble might reside in my immediate future, but I was in no mood for it tonight.

“You bled quite a bit,” he said with a convincing expression of sympathy. “I only meant to offer you the snow, to indicate that it was needed, but you were out of it. Thought I was attacking you, or something.”

I sighed. Lit up a cigarette. Offered him one. He waved it away. “I was out of it more often than not in those days,” I told him. “Had a lot on my plate.”

“I told you you can’t smoke in here,” the barmaid snapped.

“Call the pigs,” I said. “Or shut up about it.”

She looked as if I’d slapped her, and retreated to the far end of the bar, where an old man in a peaked cap was ruminating over a pint of Guinness.

“I should have known better,” Mick said, still marooned with his memories. “But I’ve always had this wounded animal thing. Better to help than not. Got it from my mother, God rest her soul.”

I raised my pint out of respect for his departed mother, not that I gave a fuck, but it seemed to thing to do. Maybe the gesture would be enough to convince him his beef of yesteryear should go unstated.

“You called me a faggot,” he said then, in a low voice, and I felt the smoke coil in my throat, burning it. I exhaled, took a quick and deep draw on my pint and licked my lips.

“I’m sorry about that. Jesus,” I said. “I’m sure I didn’t mean it. You know how it is when you’re pissed off and loaded to the gills. Everybody’s a target.”

He nodded sagely, looked troubled. One trimmed fingernail drew circles in the condensation on the side of his glass.

“I persisted, fool that I am,” he continued. “And then we ran into some of yer friends.”

Shit. That did it. Like the tumblers of a lock sliding into place. Even if I hadn’t remembered the specific occasion, drink and my friends more often than not meant trouble for somebody.

“You told them I was making a move on you,” Mick said, turning his head to look at me again. “Told them I was gay and trying to pick you up. Told them to show me what ye all thought of gays.”

I ran a hand over my face, momentarily forgetting the cigarette jutting from my lips. Burnt the edge of my palm, sent sparks flying. Quickly brushed them off my pants.

“Broke my wrists, my nose, my ankle, my fingers…”

There was only one way to deal with this. Sympathy or apology wouldn’t cut it. I knew by his face he wanted more.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked him. “I was a dickhead back then. You’re not the only one who ended up getting his face smashed in just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You want me to say I’m sorry, is that it?”

He frowned, and thick furrows appeared in his brow. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to say sorry.”

I shrugged, grabbed my pint. Sank it. “Then what?”

“I just wanted you to remember it, that’s all.”

I raised a finger to summon the barmaid. She ignored me.

“Well, I remember it,” I told him. “Feel better?”

He smiled, and it wasn’t pretty. Big yellow teeth. Traces of black. “I won’t ever feel better,” he said. “Maybe if I could change history there’d be a chance, but I can’t so…” It was his turn to shrug.

I considered leaving. There was nothing to stop me getting up and getting gone. There were plenty more bars in town where I wouldn’t have to have my pint made bitter by some old guy’s attempt to take me on an all expenses paid guilt-trip. But then the barmaid saw me, saw the empty glass, and retrieved it from the bar with an exaggerated sigh. Apparently her derision didn’t outweigh the need for money on a slow night.

One more, I decided. Then I’ll go.

“What you and your friends did that night is only part of it,” Mick said. “I wouldn’t change that at all.”

I appraised him anew. Just my luck to get saddled with a sadist more twisted than myself. “You wouldn’t,” I said.

“No. I don’t regret what happened to me. What I regret is not fighting back. Not defending myself.”

“There were four of us,” I reminded him, though given the accuracy of his recollection thus far, it seemed unlikely he’d need it.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s haunted me.”

“What has?”

“That I just stood there.” His eyes narrowed and quickly moved away from me to the bar, to where his other hand was clamped against the brass rail that ran the length of it, top and bottom. Stabilizers for the drunks, though Mick was not drunk as far as I could tell, only intoxicated by his own regret.

“You’d have hurt me worse, I’m sure, if I’d lifted a hand to defend myself.”

“True,” I told him, because it was.

“But I can’t tell you how often I’ve envisioned that scenario and wished to God I’d at least tried.”

“Probably better for you that you didn’t. We might have done you in altogether.”

“Maybe that would have been better.”

Off his bloody rocker, I decided. Of all the things in life to worry about, this fool is hung up on a fight he lost twenty years ago. But I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “Just let it go, pal. Time to move on. I’ve apologized for being a young drunken asshole, and I’m sure the rest of the lads would be more than willing to offer you the same if they knew ‘twas important to you.”

Very diplomatic. Pleased with myself, I accepted the pint from the barmaid, intercepting it before it had reached the counter. I swung the pint round to my right and toasted the old man. “To new beginnings,” I said. “Now let’s sink a few and forget about old troubles, all right?”

To this he replied, “You were in prison for a spell, I heard.”

Although the change of topic was encouraging, the choice of topic wasn’t. “Yeah.”

“What for?”

“GBH.”

“Ah.”

That single syllable spoke volumes, told me we hadn’t changed the subject after all.
What a fucking surprise,
that word said. And now I did want to hit him. Give him a thump and say, “You’re right. I’m still a drunk, still a brawler, still an asshole. Sorry about yer luck.” Maybe then he’d see the wisdom in letting old wounds heal.