Theater Macabre (4 page)

“What do you remember most about it?” he asked, and I told myself to calm down, that walking was still an option with less risk attached, reminded myself of the topic at hand and how fast the past could become the present if I wasn’t careful.

“A man named Sam,” I said, without pause for thought. “Black fella. Nice guy. Bit dense. In for rape. Got shanked in the laundry room.”

“Why do you remember that?”

“Don’t remember him so much as the scream he let out. I thought they’d kept him alive to torture him or something that scream went on so long. Even told the screw “For God’s sake do something. Tell them finish it or at least close the fucking door.” But he did nothing. Said he didn’t hear a thing. The scream went on for days, weeks, maybe months. But I was told Sam died quick. It was the echo I was hearing. Awake, asleep, didn’t matter. That scream just kept on going, bouncing off the walls like a siren. It got stuck in my head and wouldn’t come out.” I looked squarely at him. “That’s what I remember.”

“And nothing will make you forget,” Mick said, and finally reached for his drink.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “It’s in there too deep.”

“Well then,” he said. “You’ll understand why I can’t just let my bad memories go either. They don’t listen to reason. They stay in my head and refuse to leave.” He sipped at his drink, set it down and folded his arms.

I tipped my cigarette, prepared to drop it on the floor but the barmaid’s cough drew my attention to the small glass ashtray she’d put on the bar.

“You a smoker?” I asked her.

“Only on my break.”

“So take one. I’ll buy you a drink.”

She didn’t smile, but didn’t scowl either, which I considered progress. “No thanks,” she said and moved back to the grizzled old sentinel at the far end of the bar.

Three pints ago, I’d have left.

Three pints ago, I wouldn’t have talked about prison.

Three pints ago I wouldn’t have endured Mick Molloy’s bullshit.

But three became four and I felt myself melting into the seat, the old man’s words like rubber darts thrown at a steel door.

“You home for good?” he asked me at one point, after I’d treated him to enough long silences to give him the hint that I was done talking about his misery when I had my own to worry about.

“Dunno,” I said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

“What are you going to do for work? Got something lined up?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, a strapping lad like yourself will find something I’m sure.” He nodded, then said, “It’s getting late. I suppose I’d better be heading home. The wife’ll have a fit and I’ve a long day ahead tomorrow. I’ll be seeing you I suppose.”

He stood, seemingly annoyed that he hadn’t gotten from me whatever reaction he’d expected. I straightened, looked at him in surprise, thinking, “Surely after that drama there’s going to be some equally dramatic climax.” I’d anticipated a sudden outburst of rage, or tears, maybe. It wouldn’t even have surprised me if he’d tried to clock me across the head with a bottle. After all, he was obsessed with what the lads and me had done to him, to the point where he’d carried the burden of it on his shoulders like an old coat for two decades and had shown it to me as soon as I’d walked in the door. And all of it for—what? Was I supposed to feel guilty? Apologize again? What was it he’d expected to achieve here?

I didn’t know, but after another pint, I knew I wouldn’t care. If he was leaving, then there was a chance that the night could be salvaged yet, unless all I encountered were more bitter figures from my past.

“You sure you won’t have another one?” I asked, out of courtesy and not any desire for him to prolong his stay.

“I won’t,” he said and brushed at something on the breast of his shirt. Ash, maybe, from the only cigarette in a non-smoking bar. It wouldn’t be hard to find the culprit. I couldn’t help but smile. At least if he’d ruined my night, I’d ruined his shirt.

Small consolation. The shirt was already past it.

“See you Maureen,” he called to the barmaid. Then he looked at me with his liquid blue eyes. “See you, Gerry.”

I winked at him and watched him leave. His gait was stiff-legged and uncomfortable. He didn’t look back and the door groaned shut behind him, sending in a gust of fresh air that mangled my smoke. The shape of him passed the stained glass window, reminding me of his silhouette on the Causeway all those years ago as he packed snow against my face.

You all right, lad? You’re bleeding something wicked.

I returned my attention to the bar and his unfinished drink, slid it close and drank it down.

Lit another cigarette. Got the expected sigh from down the bar.

*

Three more pints and I felt inspired to join the old man at the far end of the bar, if only so I could voice aloud my disgust at the world and the hand it had dealt me. He was as talkative as a plastic bag, but that didn’t matter. I’d done my share of listening for the night and found it particularly unpleasant, so I wasn’t in it for the conversation. Now and then the barmaid materialized before us, looking put out that I had stolen her confidant. I smiled at her to let her know her worries and complaining would have to wait. The old man was booked for a while. Chilled her a little with some crass flirtation, and wondered how much more drink it would take before she started to look good enough to ride.

Midnight came like a pickpocket, unnoticed.

Another hour and “Last call,” said the barmaid, drumming her fingers on the counter. I wondered if that call was universal, or just for me. The old geezer had a full pint before him, untouched. Maybe he was waiting for me to leave before he gave it his full-undivided attention. Maybe they were both waiting for me to leave so they could give
each other
their full-undivided attention.

“One for the road, Maureen,” I said. Feeling magnanimous, I added, “And one for yourself and the elder statesman here.”

With as close to a smile as I had seen all night, she nodded. Poured herself a glass of Heineken and another Guinness for the old man, who offered a tip of his cap in thanks. Then she trudged around the counter as if the floor was made of mud and sat down beside me. Her perfume was nice; her face wasn’t. Chicken pox or acne had made a lunar landscape of her cheeks and chin. No wonder she never smiled.

“You know Mick, then?” she asked me.

“Not well. We were…acquaintances years back.”

“What’s your name?” Her elbow brushed against mine. I felt a slight spark of electricity run through me, a twitch in my nether regions. Proof positive that the mind and the body have different standards.

“Gerry Kelly,” I said and extended my hand.

She gave it a limp shake. Her hands were cold and moist. I wondered if the rest of her was the same way, then shook off the thought.

“He mentions you a lot,” she said.

“Who does? Molloy? Fucking obsessive that fella. Is he a bit cracked?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Lost his father there a few months back. Went quiet after that. Used to be in here nightly, the two of them, until the cancer. Now it’s just Mick, and we hardly see him at all.”

Just my luck that he picked tonight to come here, I thought, then immediately wondered if luck had anything to do with it. But how would he know I’d even be in town? Unless one of the lads told him. Roger knew I’d be home. Maybe he’d squealed on me, the bastard.

Christ. I lit up a cigarette, ran a hand through my hair. Drink always makes me paranoid. Call it my own ghosts from prison. Watch your back or the next time you look there’ll be a knife or another man buried in you. I exhaled heavily.

“So did ye sort it all out?” Maureen asked.

“Sort out what? His
issues
?” I said, using an Americanism I was quite fond of.

“Yeah.”

“Doubt it,” I said. “It looks like he latched onto it. Like he needs it or something, like I need this.” I tapped a nail against the pint glass. “Poor bastard.”

“Maybe it’s because there’s only you left out of the gang,” Maureen said and took a hearty swig from her glass, then belched. It made her sizable bosom jiggle. I couldn’t help but notice. She blushed, put a hand to her mouth. “Excuse me.”

“What do you mean there’s only me left out of the gang?” I asked her, and willed my eyes up to meet hers.

The blush on her face lingered as she noticed my attention. “You’re Gerry Kelly, you said.”

“I am.”

“You used to hang around with the Murphy brothers, and that little shit Roger Kennedy.”

“That’s right,” I said, amused at her opinion of Roger. If he was in here and heard her call him that, he’d wreck the place, and probably her. Only the old man would be left unharmed, because Roger had great respect for the elderly, don’t ask me why.

“Yeah, I did. Still do,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows and the flesh above them wrinkled. “Still? Up at the graveyard, is it?”

My drinking had slowed, and as a result the lager wasn’t nearly as cold as it should have been, but upon hearing her words, it turned to liquid ice in my throat and caught there. I coughed, spluttered, let it pour from my mouth to the floor between my feet. Maureen jerked back.

“Aw for feck’s sake. I’ll have to clean that up you know.”

I didn’t care, barely heard. The word “graveyard” was bouncing around the walls of my skull like poor old Sam’s scream. When I could breathe without choking, I grabbed the barmaid’s elbow. She looked down at my hand, looked up with her trademark scowl, and yanked it free.

“What do you mean, graveyard?” I asked, and waved away a cloud of my own smoke that had drifted to me from the ashtray. “Why would they be there?”

Her scowl softened a bit. “Oh…you didn’t know?”

I had to restrain myself from throttling her. “Didn’t know what?”

“The Murphy lads. God bless ‘em. They were drowned.”

My heart felt like a debt collector’s knock on the door. “Where? When?”

“The Causeway,” she said. “About a month ago, I suppose it was. They were going home and must have been fooling around behind the chains.” She shrugged. “Current probably dragged them down.”

The chains were designed to keep young children and dumb drunks from falling into the harbor. The amount of bodies from both categories hauled out of the water in the sixty years since it was strung up said all that needed to be said about its effectiveness.

It was a tragedy. It hurt, but I could grieve later because there was no way she was going to tell me Roger was dead. It wasn’t possible and if she disagreed, I’d laugh in her face, and she’d be lucky if that was all I did to it, because I’d spoken to Roger two weeks before. He’d been alive, and better than that, he’d been high as a fucking kite. The dead do not answer phones. They don’t talk. And they don’t smoke pot.

“Looking forward to seeing you,” he’d said. “It’s no fun in this town by my lonesome.”

I’d taken his words to mean
without you.
Now I wondered if that had been his way of breaking the bad news. He hadn’t been friendly with Ken and Ray Murphy in years, not since they’d put his younger brother in hospital after a fight outside a nightclub. But surely our pasts warranted a little more than such a cryptic mention of their fate?

Christ. My head was throbbing.

“Roger’s alive,” I said. “Don’t tell me he isn’t.”

The look Maureen gave me, the sympathy twisted into a face not built for it, made bile rush up my throat. My stomach contracted and I slid off the chair. “Don’t,” I told her and put a trembling hand to block her expression.

Calm down, take it easy, get your shit together, this isn’t—

“Overdose,” was the last thing I heard her say before I turned and fled toward the bathroom.

*

It’s all a blur.

I remember praying to the toilet, cursing at it as I watched my own insides gush out in a brown torrent. The cramps seemed to take forever to subside, and afterward I was left weak, drained and convinced I was still in London, still in the flat. I was high, soaring inside my own head, in a dream, after falling off the wagon and letting Nancy shoot cocaine between my toes.

Sure, life sucks, I said. But not this fucking much.

I crawled on my hands and knees to one of the urinals, grabbed its porcelain lip and hauled myself up. The smell from the pink cake increased as my piss hit it until it was as nauseating as the thought of more drink. I zipped up and someone knocked on the door.

“Are you all right in there?”

Maureen. I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me, then shouted, “Fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She didn’t wait. Instead she eased open the door and slipped inside the bathroom. I looked at her and wiped a hand across the back of my mouth, hoping it would be enough to rid myself of the taste of vomit. It wasn’t.

“Lemme get some water,” I said and staggered toward the sink.

She moved to stand before it, blocking my way and I almost collided with her, looked down into her moon-shaped face, craters and all.

“You’re in a bad state,” she said. “Want a lift home?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll walk. T’isn’t far.”

“Sorry about your friends.”

I nodded.

“You’re a fine looking fella,” she said, then she kissed me. It was a clumsy kiss. Her lips were dry.

I kissed her back. Mine was clumsy too.

Can’t remember what came next, but I found myself sitting outside the door of the bar, in the cold. The sound of the latch being slid home was the only sound in the world. The streets were deathly quiet. My underwear was knotted around my balls and squeezing the life out of me, so I rose with help from the wall, and started to make my way home. Wondered if there were cabs at this hour. Forgot where I was. Not London, not the U.S., where the cabs last as long as the people do. This is Dungarvan, where if you’re out after two, tough shit, lad. Find your own way home.

I navigated the streets as if they were the rolling deck of a ship on the high seas, and paused to throw up twice. Despite my feelings about alcohol, I wished I’d brought some with me.