Dead I Well May Be

3: THE NICE PART OF THE BRONX

Ssshhhhh, ssshhhh, listen. Blot out everything else. The dark whispering. Can you hear it? Can you hear? Singing truths like apples. In a language that is universal and easy to understand. It’s singing for you. Big man, player, dealer in bruises. Its breath condenses on the mirror and its trace is visible. Curling from the sewers and the gutters and the storm drains, and speaking with the voice of graveyard stone.

I can hear it. I can feel its breath. Rank and awful. It makes things up: lies, half-lies, stories. It’s hushed but the building’s alert and attends and passes them on. Up the skunk trees, up the brick, through the window.

You’re a thief, you’re a bully. You hurt people. You’re nothing, a shadow. You’re a fool. A nasty wee piece of work.

Accusations. From the world out there. Go away. Please. Please.

But the world out there. It isn’t quiet. It never is…

My eyes fill, flutter. I wake.

It is impossible to sleep. I generate white noise from a fan which on level three does its best to erase the sirens, the crying, the yelling, the music, the nightmares, and-melodramatic but nevertheless true-the gunshots.

It’s around dawn. I’ve been in bed at most an hour.

The clunk is the arrival of the Times.

Jesus. Bad dreams. Not what you’d think, but bad dreams nonetheless. I throw back the cotton sheet and yawn and go to the front door and bring the paper in. I throw the paper at a roach in the hall. I take a bagel from the freezer and put it in the microwave. Something about microwaves, I remember. Oh yes, Scotchy, last night. Where did he come up with that? Wait a minute. Last night. Suddenly I feel the need to sit down in the middle of the kitchen floor.

I sit.

Exhausted and nauseated.

Alone.

Relax, be calm. Try to breathe. Breathe. I lean on the window and cough so hard my lungs hurt. It goes on for about a minute.

I’m going to stop smoking, I say.

The microwave dings. I get up and eat the bagel. You can get six for a dollar, so this one is sixteen cents. And the paper is free for some reason, like the cable. It just keeps getting delivered.

I tie my dressing gown, make some coffee, and retire to the fire escape. There’s no news. I read the sports section. Things are not going well for the local baseball teams. The leader writer is explaining why the Yankees will never win another championship with George Steinbrenner as the owner.

Sun is coming up. The day banishing the thoughts of yesterday. I stretch and go back inside and decide to shave and shower. I turn on the water for the pipes to get going and look in the mirror. I was in a fight, so it’s worth doing an inspection. Really, is this the face of a monster? My hair is sandier than it’s ever gotten in Ireland and my stubble is blond too. I study myself. No bruises. Ok-looking, green eyes, good jaw, a wee bit more filled out than I used to be, which is good, because I was always too thin, nice eyebrows, reasonably symmetrical face, bit of a broken nose, though, which fucks things up a bit, but still a decent, dependable-looking chap. Probably, but for the green card problem, I could get a real job, in a real company, for real money. I can do better. I’m not thick.

I’m not thick, I say aloud.

I sigh and take out a new safety razor.

Shave. Stop. I cough and spit. I’m bloody famished. A bagel is just not going to cut it this morning. I take the headlines and quickly dress and turn off the water and open the door, go down the steps, and head for Broadway and the McDonald’s on 125th…

It’s definitely early. On the far side of the street there are still homeless men sleeping on filthy mattresses on the sidewalk. I wonder for a moment how they manage to get through a night without being stabbed or beaten. Shit, maybe they have been stabbed and beaten. The homeless camp from here all the way up to Riverside Park and some sleep in the Amtrak tunnel beneath the park. Generally, only the hardiest ones sleep east of here on Amsterdam, and there a few mad souls who make Morningside Park their home.

If it were me and I was cut off from Darkey and the boys and I couldn’t get home and I had to be on the streets (a recurring fantasy/nightmare of mine, incidentally), my plan is to buy a hammock and attach it to a rope and throw it up over a tree limb, hoist myself up, and sleep up there in the canopy. In the summer you could probably get away with it. In the winter you’d freeze to death. North Central Park is where I’d go, big and anonymous and reasonably safe. For some reason, every time I think of this plan it gives me a great sense of comfort. If all else fails, I can live in the trees of Central Park. It’s a bit silly, but that’s the best I can come up with.

Down to 125th.

Past the bodega and the impressively armored Chinky with its steel walls and buzzer to get in and thicker-than-thick Plexiglas counter and vandalproof reinforced iron chairs. When Klaatu and the other aliens finally show up and nuke the world, Mr. Han’s Chinky will, I’m sure, be the only thing left standing amidst the rubble. His food is probably nukeproof too, for it leaves your body about three hours after it enters virtually unchanged by digestive juices. I wave to Simon, who, of course, is up already, but out here in the early light and through that five-inch glass he fails to recognize me.

McDonald’s is just opening, and there’s me and a line of homeless guys. I order the pancake breakfast and a nasty cup of coffee and sit at the window.

My “hotcakes” come and they forget the syrup and there’s a whole ta-do while they find it, and suddenly I’m the pushy white guy making a fuss. I’m not the only one, though. Danny the Drunk is here and he’s already plastered. I don’t know how he does it. The man has dedication. He’s getting a milk shake for breakfast and paying in pennies and nickels. There’s word in the building that there’s more to Danny than meets the eye, but frankly I don’t much care. I don’t believe in the homeless sage who has attained wisdom by years of hard knocks and brutal experience. Danny has nothing to teach me. He’s a hopeless purple-faced alcoholic, of which I’ve seen plenty in Ireland, and I’m really not bothered if he was the president of some company or one of the Apollo astronauts or a bigwig at MIT. He wasn’t, in any case. He worked for the subways in a ticket booth, but that’s a fact getting in the way of the myth and Ratko, in particular, is always ready to emphasize the mysterious nature of his fall.

Since we live in the same building, I suppose he feels a kinship. I can smell him getting closer, and then he comes and sits down opposite, the bastard.

Morning? he says, as if unsure of his bearings.

Aye, I say, head down, shoveling in pancakes with whipped butter and corn syrup.

Cold, he says. Whether this is about the air temperature, his milkshake, or my demeanor, I’m not sure, but I say again:

Aye.

They have the story about the body on 135th?

What?

Your newspaper, do they have that story?

Uhhh, yes, they do, I mumble reluctantly.

It was the story I was reading. They found a body on the campus of City College. Black guy, he’d been shot, and maybe that would have gotten it onto page 23 or something because of the college connection but for the fact that his heart had been removed and straw placed in the cavity where the heart had been. It would grip the city for about a day until the next grisly murder came along, which it would-tomorrow. The police spokesman in the Daily News said that in the Jamaican gangs this is what they did with a stool pigeon. It shows that the man had no heart, no loyalty, that he wasn’t a real man at all. A dummy.

Stuffed him with straw, Danny said and took a bit of his shake. I suppose liquids are the only thing he can stomach now. I suddenly felt a bit more charitable to the poor bastard, there but for the grace of God, et cetera.

I’m surprised they don’t call it the Wizard of Oz killing, you know, because the straw man wanted a heart, I said.

That was the tin man, Danny said.

Oh, I said.

More like the Emperor Valerian, Danny said. Heard of him?

Rings a bell, I said, truthfully.

They stuffed him.

Who?

The Persians.

Why?

To mock Rome.

What?

He was taken prisoner and they used him as a footstool and stuffed him when he died.

I was annoyed. You see, this is the sort of thing that gets Danny a reputation for having sense. He really doesn’t, but Ratko or someone else in the building will hear him come off with this sort of shite and think that he’s on to something. It pissed me off. And I knew that I was going to be forced to tell Ratko this little story and it was going to reinforce all his prejudices.

Have to head, I said and got up.

You want the rest of your coffee? Danny said.

No.

I passed it over; our eyes met for a second.

Did you go to university? I asked him for some random reason.

I did. Rutgers.

Huh, well, look at you now, I wanted to say, but of course didn’t.

I dumped my plastic utensils and plate in the garbage and went out. I was dying for a fag now, but I tried unsuccessfully to kill the thought. Danny waved at me and grabbed the paper that I’d left.

Outside it was getting a wee bit hotter, but it was still ok. From 125th you can see up to the City College campus, and I shook my head. It was all a bit awful, that killing; I thought about it while I looked in my pockets for my cigarettes before remembering I’d left them in the house.

Shite.

Later, when I’d come back from the Yucatán and was thirty pounds lighter and shell-shocked and was in a bar with Ramón Hernández, I found out all about that murder and, believe me, it had nothing whatsoever to do with Jamaicans or stool pigeons. The cops couldn’t have been more wrong, in fact, unless they’d been deliberately misleading the press. Ramón told me that it was all a Santería thing. The heart gets burned and the straw that would have been burned goes where the heart was. As long as the heart stays in your hearth or fireplace no harm can come to your house; the bigger the villain whose organ it was, the more evil is warded off. Santería is really crazy, but Ramón believes it and a lot of other Dominicans do as well; it’s what comes of sharing an island with Haitians, I suppose. But also, you have to ask yourself, how many people in New York actually have a fireplace in their apartment? Not too many I would imagine.

Anyway, at this time, I didn’t know Ramón, and after about five minutes that killing went out of my head completely. I was too annoyed with Danny showing off to care about another dead black guy in the long, vague list of horrible violence which was engulfing Upper Manhattan this year.

To walk off my urge for cigarettes, and perhaps for some other reasons, I decided to dander down to the river. It wasn’t too far, and there wouldn’t be anyone about to hassle me.

Not the nicest walk in the city. Chop shops and tough little bodegas and empty lots. On the left-hand side of the street, the relocated Cotton Club, which seems a sad reflection of the original. Next, the West Side Highway, whose elevated steel girders form themselves into a beautiful series of diminishing arches. A Columbia building, parking spaces, another chop shop, a few guys fishing, but that’s about it.

To see people fishing in the Hudson always made me unhappy. They weren’t just fishing for sport, they were eating those things or selling them. Little black ones and green ones and big ones that in another universe entirely could perhaps be trout.

Morning, I said to the boys, and I got some grunts back in reply. Didn’t want to upset their casting, so I went up about half a block and sat down on some tires. I was sweating now, some kind of hypoglycemic reaction to all that sugar at breakfast, no doubt. Probably kill me.

On the water an enormous garbage barge going up to the 135th Street depot. Farther up, coming under the George Washington Bridge, there was a yacht with its sails tied up and motor on. I sat on the railing for a while, looking at the water, thinking about cigarettes. I decided to head home. Shower, disconnect the phone, go back to bed. I’ll set the alarm for twelve so I don’t destroy my sleep cycle too severely. Maybe call that girl later.

I looked at my watch; it was around seven. I wasn’t as tired as I should be.

Riverside Park was relatively empty, a few dog walkers, a few joggers, homeless guys, and the Columbia University women’s volleyball team, which cheered me up immensely. At the top of the many steps, I had to catch my breath for a moment or two. I went by the dreadful wreck of Grant’s Tomb and down 122nd past the music school. I got my keys and did that gun-keys-keys-gun thing I’d been doing recently and went in the building.

I made some more coffee. Showered, shaved again by mistake, brushed my teeth, put on the fan, and climbed into bed. Only about another hour and the doorbell went and it rang and rang and I almost cried out in frustration: Dear God, will no one let me sleep in this world? I got up, and when I opened the door Bridget came in without a word.

Bridget. She is almost too beautiful. Ethereal, poised, elegant. Some days, it’s as if she’s just stepped out of a poem by W. B. Yeats. Aye, you can imagine her haloed against a dewy wood, singing of Tír na nÓg, summoning you to a barrow in the earth. You would know all this and still you would bloody follow her.

Yes.

Bridget. Heart-attack red hair. A dancer’s grace, but with curves and long, long legs and a bum Rubens could have spilled a few pots of paint depicting.

She dresses well, too. Today she’s in jeans and a white T-shirt that has a daisy in the middle of it, between her breasts. She’s wearing Converse high-tops, which make her look goofy, a counterbalance to the haircut that makes her look a little older. None of this, though, is important. She could be two hundred pounds heavier and wearing a potato sack and it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s her face. The expressions that move across it like a storm on the lough. The thin nose that gives her an aristocratic bearing. The pale skin. And those eyes. I can’t describe them. Lieutenant Narkiss and all other women are put out of your head in a second. Blue and green on different days, but those are just the names of colors. When they flash dark you want to crawl into a hole somewhere, and when they’re lit up you feel the universe is too small to contain your happiness.

Bullshit, I know, but once you’ve seen her, you’ll get it.

She was going out with Andy for a while, but Andy has enormous, complex, and ongoing problems with the INS, and apparently the buggers hassled the poor kid so much that he couldn’t really give her the time that she deserved. He had to work and he had to get down to the INS office at four in the morning (they only let in the first thousand applicants every day), so Bridget eventually dumped him. Bridget was seventeen then and Andy, who was nearly two years older, was her first boyfriend, I think. It was a very tricky situation, and I, for one, suspected that Andy was relieved not to be going out with Bridget anymore. I’m not a huge conspiracy theorist but if one was of a conspiratorial nature, one might have gotten the impression that Andy was somehow not really into Bridget at all, and in fact he was perhaps the stalking horse for another party entirely. Sure enough, Darkey started going out with her about a month later. Darkey is mid-forties, and her parents might have been more disturbed about the age gap had she not shown that she could handle men by dumping that inconsiderate eejit Andy, who was always arranging to go places with her and then pulling out at the last minute because of his difficulties with the authorities. Though now, with Andy apparently skulking around death’s door and in a coma, I’m sure all is forgiven.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Bridget is Darkey’s girl. Whether she’s the only girl, I don’t know, but he plays it like she is. They’ve been going out over a year and there is some old-fashioned talk from Mrs. Callaghan of an engagement. Bridget is the youngest of five and the rest are scattered to the winds at university or in California or wherever, so it wouldn’t be such a huge loss for cute wee Bridget to end up with less-than-cute Darkey White. She could do worse, in fact, for although twice divorced, Darkey is sitting pretty with his building business, his glass company, and his shares in Mr. Duffy’s various coys. Both Pat and Mrs. Callaghan like Darkey too, and it’s not that they’re afraid of him; they’re not, they really like him. They’re afraid of Sunshine (and who isn’t?), but Darkey they like and trust.

So poor Bridget, it’s all mapped out, and the only alternative would be to fly the coop, but she isn’t the type. Besides, the coop suits her fine, and if nothing dramatic happens she will, I suppose, settle down and marry him. I doubt she’s in love with him. It’s possible that she’s in love with me, but who can know their heart at that age. At my age. I am crazy about her, though, and it’s not because she’s a looker. I don’t know what it is, actually, but it’s more than that.

Within a minute of coming into the apartment the high-tops were off and the button-down blue jeans were being buttoned down.

This place is disgusting, is her opening line.

I know. I do clean it, Mouse, is my romantic response.

Mouse is the cute pet name I’ve been attempting to impose on her, with some success. Her name for me was Rat, but I was never very keen on this and it has petered out recently.

Fucking bugs everywhere, she says.

Not literally everywhere.

There’s a dead one beside the phone, on the wall, disgusting.

I’m sorry, Mouse.

I mean to say, Michael, can’t you get DDT or Raid or anything?

I’ve tried boric acid.

What about the exterminator?

Been and gone.

So far it’s hardly Abelard and Héloïse, but she is naked, which is something. I pull off my jeans and T-shirt and carry her into the bedroom.

Have you got a beer? she asks.

It’s hardly my place to lecture her about the hour, so I go get one from the fridge. I take one myself and it hits the spot.

On the bed her back is arched and tense like a long bow, her lips are red, and that’s all it takes. She’s so pale, you could lose her in the sheets. I kiss her white belly and she lies there and grins at me, that hair curling down onto her shoulder. Looking at her, I sometimes forget to breathe. It’s all worth it, the risk, the fear. I mean, Jesus. I slip beside her and we make love, very slow and intricate for a half hour, and when we’re done we take a drink and lie there and then we do it all again. Fast this time, frantic. I climb on top of her and she wraps those long legs around my back; she moans and digs her nails into my shoulder. She’s intoxicating. Heady. I close my eyes and drink in her smell and feel her touch. I kiss her breasts and her neck and I lick under her arms, and she bites me on the shoulder.

More, she says.

More what?

Shut up, she says.

We screw like I’ve just been released from prison, and we come together and lie there panting in each other’s sweat.

When we’re both recovered we have another beer, stick on the radio, and I wander into the kitchen to make her breakfast.

I’m taking up riding again, she says from the living room.

Horses?

No, pigs, what do you think? Darkey’s getting it for me.

Nice of him.

He’s a nice guy, you know.

Yeah, that’s the rumor.

It’s when I’ve made scrambled eggs and tea and a toasted bagel that I remember to ask:

How’s the big guy?

Andy?

Aye, Andy.

A little better; he’s breathing well. Darkey phoned this morning with info, and he says he’s good, he’ll be ok. They’ve moved him to some new place.

What sort of a place?

Different part of the hospital, not the morgue or anything.

Good.

It was terrible. What do you think about it?

I don’t want to tell her what I think about it, so I just say:

That’s good about Andy. How did you get down here, anyway? The bar must have been crazy still with people.

No, no one’s there. Just Mom and Dad and me.

Yeah, well anyway, shouldn’t you be in bed? You were up with him half the night.

I was, and me and Mom actually went to visit him first thing this morning. We didn’t get in again, of course. Mom says she was always very fond of Andy, which isn’t true at all. Anyway, you’re right. I am tired. Mouse is tired. I want to sleep here, with you.

I’m suddenly very thoughtful. I wouldn’t put it past Darkey to have had her followed. Could be a goon outside right now. It’s by no means impossible. Andy getting beaten up and all Darkey’s talk about Bridget being his and the young don’t have his stamina or whatever. A chill goes through me.

No, seriously, though, how did you get down here? I ask.

I took the train. Where’s my eggs?

Eggs are coming.

You know, Bridget, I think in the future we have to be a lot more careful about-

Where are my eggs? she screams, pretending to be a diva.

We eat and go to bed, but I can’t sleep. I find myself obsessed by the idea of Darkey tailing her. In my first week in America, Scotchy sold me a pair of binoculars he’d stolen from some guy’s car. He said I’d need them all the time in this line of work and, of course, I’ve never used them. While she snoozes by the fan, I pull on some clothes, grab the binocs, and take the stairs up to the roof. It’s a hot day and the light up here is blinding off the water tower and the roof and it takes me a minute or two to adjust to it. I go over to the side of the building and look down. Most of the cars are familiar, but there are four I don’t recognize. It’s hard to tell if anyone is inside them. If you walk on this roof and over to the next building you can get a better look at the plates and the make of vehicle. I stare through the binocs and memorize all four numbers to write down later. I wait for a long time for something to happen but nothing does.

I go back downstairs to Bridget.

I meet Ratko outside the apartment, and he’s coming in to see me. He has a bottle and three glasses. Three. Christ, she must have been pretty damn loud and obvious.

I open the door and shout through:

Mouse, make yourself decent. We’ve got company.

I hear her wake groggily and go off to the bedroom to pull on some clothes.

Her panties are in the hall, and I crack open the bedroom door and pass them through to her.

Your whips, I say.

My what?

Underpants.

That’s so Irish of you, she says and kisses my hand.

Ratko sees me smile and laughs his Santa laugh.

He loves to see me and Bridget together. I sit next to him. She comes out in my jeans and my Undertones T-shirt. Of course, she looks devastating.

Ratko Yalovic pours us a drink from a clear bottle. When he’s in a good mood, he pours me from the bottle that has the gold leaf in it, but it’s hot and his wife has been on to him about the mice and the roaches, so today it’s the rotgut.

He tells us about his problems, which are all domestic, involving wife and child, and are not really problems at all. I solve them with platitudes and clichés and he seems satisfied and genuinely grateful.

We talk about the weather, and he asks Bridget about her life. She gives him answers that are neutral and noncommittal, designed for my ears too.

I ask Bridget if she wants to nap while we talk, but she doesn’t. She likes the different company. She kisses me on the cheek as a thank-you for my concern.

Handsome couple, you two should just go off together, Ratko says, maybe getting a little buzzed and weepy from the booze but eerily echoing what I’ve been thinking for the last couple of hours. For my heart is suddenly filled with warm feelings towards Bridget: a little difficult she may be, but she’s good and sweet-natured and you’d be lucky ever to come across such a one again.

Strong childbearing hips, I say.

Bridget laughs, and it pleases all of us.

No, you should go, leave the city, go to country, Ratko persists.

We’d go to California, she says. Or Hawaii or someplace where there’s sun and a big ocean.

Sounds good to me, I say and look at her, and she takes my hand.

What’s Yugoslavia like? she asks Ratko, knowing that he would love to tell her.

Beautiful country, coast, mountains, rivers, my parents from close to Nis, where Constantine the Great is born.

We could go there, she says.

No, you could go Ireland, Ratko says firmly.

He leans over, clinks my glass, to emphasize his point.

Yeah, we could go to Ireland, she says, liking the idea.

I thought you wanted sun, I say.

It must be sunny sometimes, she says.

I shake my head.

She laughs again.

Sometimes? she asks.

Not a time, especially not in summer, Mouse. Hell no, why do you think they’re always killing each other over there? It’s the bloody weather. Depressing.

She’s not listening.

I really would love to go to Ireland. It’s my roots, she says.

She wrinkles up her nose and looks wistful for a second or two. It makes her so unbearably beautiful that I get a little mad at her.

Get Darkey to take you, he can afford it, I say, with a hint of a sneer. She doesn’t pick up on it, though.

Oh, he is, next year. We’re going for three weeks. Darkey knows someone that owns a castle in Donegal. Maybe it doesn’t rain so much there.

Listen, in Yugoslavia, Ratko says, and he’s off on some story about the Old Country. This one involves Tito and the National Science Institute’s attempt to control the weather for a crucial World Cup match in the middle 1970s. The whole story reeks of bullshit, but Ratko’s fat face is choking with laughter, and whether it’s true or not all three of us are in stitches by the end of it:

The snow comes-Ratko concludes-and Yugoslavia beats West Germany, two to nil, and Marshal Tito promotes the colonel to general after game and everybody in the whole country but Tito knows truth but we like him, and no one wants to spoil it by telling, and poor Tito go to his grave thinking Yugoslavia leads world in controlling atmosphere…

Ratko laughs, and his face goes pink and he is barely able to contain himself.

Tears are in my eyes, too, and Bridget looks over at me and kisses me. And I’m thinking we should run away together. Ratko, of course, is right.

We have another shout, and Ratko must have knocked a few back already this morning because he starts to sing a depressing little Serbian number about the Field of Blackbirds.

Michael, you sing something, Bridget says, and it’s not the time and it’s not the place and I’m not in the mood, but how could you say no?

Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen, and down the mountainside, the summer’s gone…

I give her the first couple of verses, but I can’t finish the song. I’m all choked up and a little disappointed in her. Why doesn’t she ever listen to me? I was serious about us going away together. I mean, really, what is there for us here?

Bridget lies down on the couch with a grin on her face, but Ratko senses my mood and a cloud of gloom passes over him, and I know I’m going to have to cheer him up now with the one topic that will please him.

Listen, Ratko, you know the way you’re always saying that Danny the Drunk is some kind of genius, well, this morning, I’m in McDonald’s and he comes off with some remark about the emperor V-

Why is this place always so dirty? Bridget asks Ratko, sitting up, interrupting me. It annoys me and my mood flips. Maybe we’re not so bloody compatible.

Ratko stands, sighs.

I better go, my friend, he says, terribly slowly and tragically, like bloody Topol or some East European dissident being carted off to Siberia. I can see he really has to go, so I don’t press him.

Aye, well, see ya, mate, I say, closing the door after him.

I turn to Bridget.

Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? I say.

But she’s been quiet, and now she lifts her head and stares at me. It’s the look. I can tell. She’s about to say something that will frighten the bejesus out of me. Please, God, make her not be pregnant. Darkey would insist they get married, and then if it came out looking like me? Please make it not be that.

Let’s go away this weekend, both of us together, she says.

Where would we go? I ask, relieved.

She shrugs, tugs at a knot in her hair. She looks like the mouse I always call her.

What happened last night, Michael? she asks.

I can’t tell if she’s avoiding the question, or bored with the subject, or suddenly remembering that she likes to live only in the world of the possible, or maybe she’s just now recalling the horror of less than a dozen hours ago.

With Andy?

No, afterwards. What did you do? she asks.

What did I do or what did we do? I ask.

What did you all do afterwards? To get back for Andy. You had that blood on your shirt, and, and I heard something, she says and does not finish.

I look at her. This baby talk has irritated me, irritated me more than it should irritate me, but it still has.

Ok, Bridget, if that’s the game, let me ask you a question. What exactly is it that you think this nice guy Darkey does?

He works, he has a business, she says nonchalantly.

And what is it we do, me and Andy and Scotchy and Big Bob and his boys? We have our union cards, but I’m no brickie or spark or anything like that. I wish I was, I’d get more.

I know what you do. I think I do. Darkey pays Mr. Duffy and Mr. Duffy gives Darkey building contracts and Darkey employs you to make sure that all the regulations are right.

She doesn’t fool me. She’s being coy. She knows it all. All the ugly little details, which makes me wonder even more what game it is exactly that she’s playing. Does she want the details so it strengthens me over Darkey, or do the details strengthen him over me?

Well, that’s mostly it, I suppose, I say, confused.

What happened last night? she asks again.

No one died, if that’s what you want to know, I say.

Breath escapes from her body and her face loses its rigidity. So that is what she wanted to know. That’s the line. Murder is the line. As long as it stops at that. But that’s ok. There are worse places to draw it than that.

You should head up. You should head up home, and I’ll come on a different train, I say after a moment.

She looks at me. Her eyes are green. Emerald, in fact.

Michael, what do you want to do with your life?

What do you want to do with your life? I say straight back.

You first, she says, twisting her hair with a finger.

I don’t know. You know, I, I read a lot of books on the train and stuff, I begin, embarrassed.

You read books?

Yes, Jesus, of course. Anyway, I might try to get to college or something. I don’t have any O or A levels, but I don’t think that matters over here.

She yawns inadvertently.

What does Darkey want to do with his life? I ask, sarcastically.

She smiles in a dreamy way. Jesus, they’ve discussed it-their future-and it’s one she likes. Christ on a bike.

He has all these silly romantic notions, she says.

Darkey, romantic? The thought makes me sick, but I don’t say anything. I stare at her but she doesn’t see. She’s getting ready to go.

I’ll take a cab up, she says.

Lucky for some, I say, but it doesn’t touch her.

She gets dressed and kisses me with real fondness. I walk her to the front door. She looks at me and kisses me again on the cheek.

Say goodbye to me in Irish, she says.

I don’t know it, I say.

Say goodbye, she insists.

Slán leat, I mutter.

Slán leat, she says.

The person leaving says slán agat, I say, wearily.

Slán agat, she says happily, kisses me, turns, goes down the stairs. When I hear the front door wheeze open I run up the three floors to the roof and check to see if any of the cars I’d singled out earlier follow her. She’s in the street and she’s walking down to Amsterdam to get a cab. A blue Ford, which was one of my four plates, turns on its engine and does a U-turn and heads down to Amsterdam. Could be complete coincidence, I tell myself. A cab comes and she gets in, and the Ford accelerates past the cab, just making the light, which the taxi doesn’t, and, on balance, you have to think that this is a wee bit of a good sign.

The train again. This time it was full of commuters and slightly more cosmopolitan. Harder getting a seat, but I managed in the corner. I got out my paperback. Rich people, Long Island, days gone by. A death.

The crowd thinned as we edged out of Manhattan. I put the bookshop bookmark in and as I did so I noticed that a note had been written on the back of it. “Too much reading, not enough fucking.” Bridget’s ornamental handwriting. It ticked me off. Bloody dangerous. What if someone in the Four P. says, “What’s that you’re reading there, Mike?” grabs the book, bookmark falls out, sees the scrawl, recognizes it? Jesus. I ripped up the bookmark and dropped it on the floor.

I got off at the last stop and went up the steps.

Early, Pat said.

Aye, train wasn’t as bloody useless as it usually is, I said.

Time for me to pour you a pint, Pat said.

Cheers, I said.

He poured me a pint of Guinness, but Pat, bless his heart, was second-generation Irish and, in any case, something happens to the black stuff when it leaves the Pale. It takes a real professional schooled in Leinster and within a stone’s throw of the Liffey to pour a stout correctly. Pat hadn’t got the gift or the patience or indeed the right materials to work with. It wasn’t a bad jar for the Bronx or indeed New York, but still…

I thanked him anyway and took a big gulp and ate some Tayto Cheese & Onion.

The others arrived and I bought a round, and at seven we went upstairs to the meeting. Darkey must have come in the back way, because I didn’t see him till we were up there.

The room was full of cigarette smoke, which was particularly annoying since I was, as of this morning, trying to give up. Darkey was sitting at his usual spot at the head of the table and Sunshine was to his immediate left. Darkey liked to run this side of his operations the way he ran the other aspects of his business. This was a meeting, he was the CEO, we were executives.

We were in the function room above the front bar of the Four Provinces. The room was seldom used for anything else but Darkey’s weekly meetings, which usually took less than an hour. Darkey had a lot on his plate, and this side of things he left to Sunshine.

Under Darkey and Sunshine there were two small crews. Me, Andy, Fergal, and Scotchy in one; Big Bob, Mikey Price, and Sean McKenna in the other. Various people floated in and out, David Marley being a good example. Of course, we were one short tonight because Andy was in Columbia-Presbyterian down on 168th recovering from his pretty nasty hiding. When I say crew, it was less formal than that. We didn’t really work all the time. Sunshine more or less took care of everything, and it was only in extreme cases that we had to be sent charging in. Pay was a bit erratic too, because Sunshine doled it out in terms of hours worked. If he could have made us punch in and out, I’m sure he would. We hardly ever saw Big Bob and his two boys, because it was the rare day that all seven of us were needed for something. Most of the time Big Bob, Sean, and Mikey did the collections. These were monthly or fortnightly, and it was usually pretty easy work, and I think they got regular pay for it. Certainly they dressed nice (Bob wore suits), and they hardly ever had to do any of the seedier stuff. (They were the ones, too, who got to go to the meetings at Mr. Duffy’s in Nassau County, and this made Scotchy madder than anything because that was supposed to be some place. I’d been once to Mr. Duffy’s Tribeca pad, and it was spectacular enough.) Under Scotchy the three of us did all the shit jobs: anything that needed doing, heavying, guarding, collecting, a lot of times manual fucking labor.

The arrangements couldn’t have been more different from back in the Old Country, where there’s a rigid command structure and a cell structure, and everything gets talked to death before anything gets done. Here it was laid-back and informal and looked a lot as if Darkey kind of made things up on the hoof. But Sunshine kept people in line. Basically, my job was as a bruiser. I’d been reluctant to come to America, because from the ages of fourteen to sixteen I’d been part of a gang running rackets in North Belfast. I’d seen some pretty unpleasant things, and when my cousin Les suggested I go to work for Darkey White in New York, I didn’t really want to be part of it. I was sick of all that. At sixteen I’d quit the life and run off and joined the army, but that hadn’t worked out either. And then I’d been on the dole forever and when my check went up the old fiasco spout I’d really had no choice. Les promised she could get me a job as a brickie like her brother-in-law (and we’d all done a bit of that when on the double), but Sunshine didn’t need brickies. So it was the other side of the law. The operation wasn’t as big as I’d been expecting, though. Darkey basically ran two rackets, Union and Protection, and with only mild intimidation they pretty much ran themselves. There was some loan-sharking too, but only to the very latest immigrant Micks, and this business was not so important. In fact, I supposed that none of this was that important to Darkey now that he had successfully diversified his portfolio into other areas.

I was dreaming. Darkey was speaking:

So it seems that Scotchy took the initiative and settled things in a way that made clear our position. Shovel is in the same hospital as poor Andy, but from what the doctors tell us Andy will probably be up and around in a couple of days. Shovel will be lucky to be out before Christmas. A job well done, Scotchy.

There were nods and murmurs of contentment. Darkey continued:

And if anyone thought about visiting young Andrew, I’m sure all of his friends would consider this as a nice gesture. I have been to see him already and he’s a brave one.

Darkey smiled.

He was a middle-aged man with lots of worries, but I had to admit he looked well. He was pudgy, but he worked out and dyed his hair, and he had a slightly corrupt state senator sort of cast about him. He had blue, almost black eyes. He was lightly tanned, and you couldn’t tell him, but he didn’t look Irish at all. Arabic, I would have guessed. Scotchy, extremely drunk, sells a story that Darkey’s father was in fact some Portuguese boy and not Darkey’s father at all, which is just typical Scotchy talk, but you can see where he’s coming from. The nickname was inevitable since his last name was White. Hs real name is Terence, but everyone in his presence calls him either Darkey or Mr. White. For a minute, as I was sitting there, I wondered what Bridget called him at home.

He was still speaking. Loved the sound of his own voice:

But once again to that fucker who did him. Excellent job. I heard you in particular performed wonders, Michael. When you want the cream, Sunshine, you have to look to where the pasture is greenest, and Michael, you and Scotchy are two of my very best, Darkey said warmly.

I was, despite myself, glowing with pride, and Scotchy up at the other end of the table turned and winked at me.

Thank you very much, Mr. White, we both said.

Sunshine gave us an appreciative nod too, and Big Bob muttered something like “Well done.” It was true that Scotchy, Fergal, and myself were the only real Irish at the table, all of us from the North too, and despite our lowly positions in the hierarchy, being from Northern Ireland did give us a certain cachet. Scotchy typically played his up to the hilt, of course, talking about his teenage scrapes and how to make nail bombs, booby traps, and other crap, but I liked to keep quiet about it, and I think that worked even more effectively.

Darkey’s spiel was done and Sunshine took over, telling us about a few wee boring things. Darkey then began again with a bit of talk about some local union election, but I’d long since stopped paying attention. There was some further housekeeping after that, but Sunshine didn’t like to burden us with details. The only thing that really stuck in my head was the meeting with Dermot we’d had to postpone from yesterday, Sunshine saying that he would go with us in a few days to impress the serious nature of the situation on the young scallywag.

There was nothing much left, and after a while Fergal, myself, Sean, and Mikey Price were dismissed downstairs. Bob came with us to use the bathroom, gave us a pissed-off look, and went back up.

The bar was pretty full, and Pat had to find us a poky table in the corner. It was Mikey’s shout, but I went since Fergal was well into the story of the first part of last night’s adventures. When I got back carrying-rather precariously-four pints, Fergal was finishing up the story at McDonald’s, except in this version we all got Big Mac meals to show what hard bastards we were.

Mikey was lapping it up, but Sean McKenna had been to federal prison in Texas and had done four years upstate at Ossining or Attica or one of those places and therefore wasn’t that impressed by our little tale. You could tell he had something better on the back burner. In his narrative someone was going to be beheaded by a jigsaw or disemboweled with pliers or crucified to a ceiling or tortured with arc-welding gear. I went to the bathroom before it got started.

I chatted to Pat and Mrs. Callaghan and asked around for Bridget, but apparently she was out with some girlfriends.

When Scotchy came down, he said that Darkey and Sunshine wanted to see me.

This is the moment when I really should run for the bloody door, I told myself, but I didn’t have the bottle for it and went upstairs.

Darkey, Sunshine, and Big Bob looking at some papers.

Uh, wanted to see me? I said.

Darkey, not looking up, Sunshine smiling.

Yes, Michael, come over here, Darkey said.

I sat. Darkey turned and looked at me. Bob stood up. To free his weapon hand?

Michael, we talked last night and Sunshine and I were discussing you earlier. I just want you to know that if you continue to be loyal and work hard you will go far with us, Darkey said and handed me an envelope containing five twenty-dollar bills.

Thank you, Darkey, I said.

Sunshine grinned. Now be off with you, he said.

I tried not to appear like I was running out of there.

Try to see Andrew, Darkey said as I was just at the door.

I’d had my regulation four rounds anyway and so I said goodbye to the lads. It was a long ride back and, following Darkey’s hint (despite my exhaustion), I wanted to stop at 168th to drop in and see how Andy was doing. Not to visit-visiting hours were probably only daytime anyway-just to look in and see how the big wean was.

Try to see Andy, he’d said. As an example of what might happen to those intimate with Bridget? Hmmm.

The hospital was spread out all over the shop, and I had to ask four different security guards before finding the right place, and even then I walked into a huge homeless shelter by mistake.

’Course, no visiting in the ER, and once the nurse found out that I wasn’t family, she sent me on my way with instructions to come back at a presumably more Presbyterian hour.

I tried to exit after that but instead found myself in a different part of the hospital entirely. I discovered a bog and went and relieved myself and was just trying to figure out how in the hell I was supposed to get out of there when who should I see but Mrs. fucking Shovel. She was standing there, staring right at me with murder in her eyes and a shaking cup of coffee in her hands. I’m sure Scotchy would have turned and legged it. I should have bolted too. It would have been the sensible thing, but instead I went over to her and said:

Look, I’m not here because of Shovel. I was seeing someone else and I got lost and I’m just heading out. I didn’t mean to upset you. Sorry.

She stared at me for a long time, and I thought she was going to lash out or throw the coffee at me, but instead she started to cry. She was sobbing and the coffee was spilling out over the sides of the cup, burning her fingers. I took it out of her hands and led her over to the plastic seats. She cried and pulled out a hanky and blew her nose and cried some more. After a while, she stopped and looked at me again. It was unsettling, and I felt I had to say something.

How is he?

He’s awake. Four hours of surgery. Four hours under the knife, pumped full of anesthetic and painkillers and he’s fucking awake. Typical of him. The nurses were impressed.

He’s a tough guy, I said.

Not against three, she said.

No.

We sat there and didn’t say anything for a while. I looked at her.

It doesn’t help, but I hope he gets better, I said.

Why did Scotchy have to shoot him? He would have paid. He always pays, she said.

She thought Scotchy had done the whole thing. That I was just help. Well, I didn’t enlighten her.

Scotchy thinks he beat up big Andy, cold-clocked him, really gave him a hiding, I said, letting Scotchy take the guilt.

He didn’t do that, she said sadly.

Yeah, I know, I said.

There was a bruise turning blue on the side of her face where Scotchy had pistol-whipped her. Her hair was short and blond and it suited her, and it made me wonder why she’d had the wig on yesterday. The wig didn’t become her at all. The thought became word.

Are you Jewish? I asked her.

No, why?

You were wearing a wig.

His idea, she said and jerked a finger behind her towards the ward.

Shovel’s? I asked stupidly.

She nodded, then shook her head.

I cut my hair short and he hated it, and he said he would make me wear that thing until it grew, she explained.

I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. It was certainly an odd occasion for levity. She was younger than Shovel by a good ten years. She seemed to come from a more elevated social sphere. It made me wonder how they’d met, how they’d got together. It seemed an unlikely pairing now, big boozy Shovel and his demure, soft-spoken wife, but then again, love’s a wild card.

Why a brunette wig? I asked.

She laughed. Ask him, she said.

He went out and bought it? I asked.

I don’t know, she said and laughed again.

Jesus, he’s a bit of a bloody nutter, that Shovel. You look so much better without it.

You think so?

Without a doubt.

She bit her lip and sighed.

I’m surprised at you and Fergal, following that monster Scotchy. He’s a mental case. You two must be born stupid.

I hadn’t thought that she knew us that well. Certainly I don’t recall speaking to her before. But probably she’d seen us in the Four P. or somewhere. I said nothing, and we sat there for a minute or two.

Let’s get out of here, she said.

That’s what I was trying to do. It’s bloody impossible. I’ve been here since this morning, and I only came to get a prescription, I said.

She gave me a thin smile.

Get me a cab, she said.

She stood, and I got up with her. She led me to the exit.

So I hear he’s not going to be out until Christmas? I said.

Who said that?

What I heard.

Be out in a couple of weeks. He’s a strong motherfucker.

Aye.

We waited on the street for a while, and she pulled out a gold-covered pack of cigarettes. She offered me one.

I’m trying to quit, I said.

How long? she asked, conversationally.

Since last night, I muttered.

That’s when I started, she said.

I saw a cab and hailed it. She got in.

See me home? she said.

I go downtown, I said.

See me home, she insisted.

And that was that. We rode up together, and I paid the cabbie since I was flush.

She walked me up the stairs of yesterday. You hear stories of female Provos who lure Brits into their houses where they or an Active Service Unit kills them. Classic honey trap. And all that time it wasn’t completely out of the back of my mind that at some point a pistol was going to be shoved in my face, followed by furious yelling and recrimination and then a muzzle flash, and that would be the end of it. Even as she took off my T-shirt and jeans and took off her blouse and pants and led me into a pink bedroom and a big bed, I wasn’t entirely sure that everything was as I thought it was.

You’re beautiful, she said.

I asked her her name but she wouldn’t tell me. She put her finger over my lips, she didn’t want to say anything now. Words were dangerous, they were reminders and could ruin everything.

I held her and touched her. Her breasts were small and her body was thin and supple and that hardness I’d seen in her yesterday was a reaction to us and was not reflected in her kisses and her touch and her warmth. She was so pale, and where Bridget was passionate and businesslike and pretty, she was all need. That was everything about her, and it was almost overwhelming. She was hungry for a body. No, not just a body, I could see that: it was me. It was me, and it almost hurt to be with her.

And this was me punishing Bridget for being with Darkey. Punishing Darkey for loving Bridget.

She could see that I was afraid that she was broken, fragile, but she showed me. She was tender and composed and urgent. She was all need. I kissed her bruises and her eyes and her mouth, and she kissed me and we spent the night giving and being given unto, and sleeping into the new day.