Galway Girl

As I prepared to leave my note for Jericho, I felt rage of biblical size, but after a large Jay, two Xanax, I felt sufficiently detached or, more to the point, in that part of my mind that is icy cold, a zone where nothing lives save sheer homicide.

If I was going to spend time with the eccentric falconer, I needed to put some plans in place:

1. Deal with Alice.

2. Leave a letter for Jericho for when she next housebroke.

3. Respect the passing of Maeve.

4. Buy supplies for my time away.

Finding Alice, I was supposed to be a detective of sorts, so I found her.

She was in the phone book.

Go figure.

Either stupidity or arrogance.

I watched her for six days and, on the seventh night, caught up with her as she staggered to her flat, the worse for wear drinkwise.

I said,

“Maeve sends her love.”

I did what I had to do.

And

  I

   Did

     It

      With

        Slow

          Measured

              Deliberation.

The second week, I had Liam Garvey of the gift shop on Shop Street cut me a scroll of ogham on slate.

Ogham is one of the oldest of alphabets.

The word for love, Gra,

Is like a cross, with seven horizontal lines, and is read from the bottom up.

I took it to the Circle of Life Garden in Salthill.

Founded in 2014 to commemorate the organ donors whose giving has saved countless lives, it is a haven of beautiful peace. You take some water from the well that is hundreds of years old, then stroll on and reach a lake where a steel heron rises from the water.

It is staggeringly beautiful.

I placed the ogham for Maeve in the water and said a silent

Hail Mary.

I said it in Irish.

It begins

Ar mhathair.

On my way out, I met

Stephen and Ann Shine, the sort of Galwegians who make you glad you live in this city. Just that rarity: lovely, warm spirit.

In town, I bought some parchment, the real deal, and the quill pen to seal the deal. Thought about getting red wax as the seal for the document but, hey,

“Don’t be showy.”

Pa rang to say Keefer had collected the falcon and would collect me on Friday.

Instructed that

I was to be sure to bring supplies.

I thought,

“Oh, how I love to be instructed.”

Especially by some half-arsed hippie drug casualty.

And then I said, unreasonably,

“Fucking nerve of him to take my falcon.”

My mind responded.

“Not your bird,”

I think.

I sat down, opened a bottle of Jay, thought about Jericho.

Emerald, my former nemesis, had been a ruthless psychopath but something,

Some weird, bizarre, fucked-up mind thing, still lingered in that

I liked her.

A lot.

Now Jericho was just a poor man’s Emerald. She never shone.

I had recently read New Yorker profiles of famous people:

Writers

Movie folk

Celebrities

By John Lahr.

The piece on Roseanne Barr described Jericho perfectly:

... her face and her presence have no luster.

Without makeup her definition is muted and vague, her face has little mobility.

Despite her intelligence and authority, there is something cadaverous about Roseanne,

A deadness that only rage and combat can banish.

Combat seems to make her more alive.

Something has been murdered in her; this is palpable in

The flatness of her voice, the slouch of her body,

The quicksilver shifts of mood from bombast to gloom,

The timidity and detachment behind her eyes.

She has none of the charm of Gretchen by Chelsea Cain,

Or the appeal of Lisbeth in the Dragon Tattoo novels.

Jericho is a dead thing.

And, soon, she’d be dead in a way that would spark in the utter darkness from whence she came.

By Christ, I swore on that.

Then I rolled out the parchment, wrote to Jericho.

Finished, I propped it against the skull she’d left for me.

I took a small envelope, put Deoch an Doras inside that, then opened my fridge, propped it against a bottle of Galway Hooker beer, closed the fridge gently, thought,

My parting gift deserves to be chilled/chilling;

On ice, as it were.