Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Monday
Dear Pop
Dublin’s very different to Derry. Far, far busier. A lot more Yanks to take care of, and a helluva lot more Irish to placate. Not unlike Boston in many ways; low-rise, green and sprawling, with rows of spectacular Georgian terraces in the center. A few rougher neighbourhoods too, naturally enough. But I’ll fill you in on them later.
The ambassador’s recall was a big surprise to him – almost as big as the one I got when I was asked to stand in for a few weeks. But that picture of the guy in the rubber gimp-suit with the foot-long attachment looks nothing like him, no matter how many affidavits the Daily Dublin says it’s got.
Not that I should get too comfortable here. Billary warned me herself: “It’s just until we can make a proper appointment – no offence...”
Why would I get offended? It’s not as if I want to spend the next five years apologising for every American computer company that’s shutting up shop and calling home its dollars.
We fund one in five jobs in Ireland, which was great when we were rich, way-too-busy and needed the help. They gave us pretty much carte blanche – a smart, lost-cost workforce, no unions worth a damn, little or no business tax in the middle of the Eurozone, and, to cap it all, they speak better English than we do. In short, we could crap all over them, just as long as we kept crapping money. Now, though, they’ve become expensive, so our corporate giants are hunting the world for newer and cheaper back alleys to crap over.
When I’m not listening to greasy little bagmen telling me their money’s drying up, I’m spending my time sorting out the messes of US passport holders.
Take this morning for instance. One of our citizens walks into the cops on Pearse Street and tells the Guards (police) that he knocked down and killed a girl when he was a gap-year student here back in the late eighties. Full confession, apparently. Right down to where the body is buried.
Normally, we wouldn’t get involved; it’s a straight criminal matter. Except for two things. First, the confessant happens to be a Hollywood big-noise, who’s currently in town shooting a movie. And secondly, the Guards are demanding his records from the States, but the geniuses at home are refusing to release them - probably on the grounds that he’s such a well-known hell-raiser that the Irish will throw away the key. (You know this guy well, by the way. As do the rest of the world, so I’ll just refer to him by the codename ‘Champagne Charlie’ in honour of his two lifelong pursuits).
The good news for me is that I’m now going to have to spend my entire afternoon in a cold prison cell, hand-holding an A-list prima donna, all the while trying to convince the Los Angeles DA, long distance, to forward details of the 160 crimes and misdemeanours that Champagne Charlie has committed since he graduated from the School of Soft Porn.
To add to the charm of it all, our client is still stinking drunk – and by stinking, I’m given to understand that he has committed the holy trinity of drinking transgressions – i.e. wet himself, puked all over himself and soiled himself as well. Not surprisingly, I’m now taking a quiet half-hour to drop you this note, while the station sergeant gets him another set of clothes. And a hose.
The good thing about Ireland, though, is that they’re more close-mouthed about stuff like this. Charlie’s in the chokey three hours already and not a word has leaked to the press. The stricter libel laws tend to slow things up as well. Back home, it’d be a front-page splash in The Enquirer before steam had finished rising from his pants.
Back in Derry, the biggest problem I’d ever have to face is whether to have a riverbank stroll with Ellie before or after a fresh salmon dinner at Da Vinci’s. Oh yeah, and Ellie’s just tickled pink that her new fiancé has blown town less than a month after promising her he’d never leave her behind ever, not even for the top job in London itself. (Irish women have great memories for detail.) Though she says she might come visit me at the weekend, if only to run a nail along the side of the company Daimler. I’ll keep you posted.
So long and slán
Your loving son
David
____________________________________________________________________
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Tuesday
Dear Pop
Good news, bad news.
The good news is that our friend from Hollywood refused a film company lawyer and appointed our buddy from Derry, Tommy Bowtie, on my say-so. That keeps the movie people out of the loop, which will be very important when they start looking to cover their asses. They don’t even know what he’s coughed to – and we’re sure as hell not going to tell them.
Naturally, they tried to outmuscle us by getting the studio-boss to ring head office in Washington. But Bowtie quickly convinced them to back off by warning them he’d release a few blood samples. And these, of course, strongly suggest that Charlie had been using Grade 1 narcotics during the entire filming process here – so violating about a hundred different insurance regulations, including the one that insists that our man gets tested each and every single time he goes on set.
Our other umbrella in the shitstorm was that I persuaded Ed O’Conway, who’s now an Assistant Commissioner, to oversee the interrogation. This way, we’ve got a fighting chance that there’ll be no leaks. Last time Ed caught one of his men passing papers to a journalist, he shut his fingers in a cabinet drawer so hard it actually sliced the top off his pinky. He then warned the guy, if he ever did it again, they’d play the same game in the restroom with the steel stall-doors. Only they would not be playing with fingers.
The bad news, though, is our client’s head is full of jelly beans. He didn’t say a coherent word during the two hours I was in with them yesterday. And today, he still looks and sounds like he’s just been dragged out of an ER room. Eyes puffed up like a well-beat boxer, hair stiff with grease and jail-soap, skin the color of Grandma’s corpse. No belly-fat though, despite his best efforts – but by my reckoning he’s got a year tops before he gets his sandbags.
The only time he stops shaking is to wipe his nose on the back of his hand. And the little part of his brain that remains undamaged from years of partying is screaming so hard from withdrawal that we have to feed him half-tabs of calm-me-downs to get any sense out of him at all. And yes, these pills are of the fully-prescribed variety, but so help me, if I could get anything stronger and faster-acting, I’d serve them up to him on a spoon myself. The man is fried.
Bowtie finally gave in and let Ed’s men question him this afternoon, for one hour only. Best we can tell, at this juncture, is that he was driving through Dublin city-center one night during this great smog they had in 1988, when a fair-haired girl of about seventeen staggered backwards out of a bar, right smack onto his hood. She flew straight over the car and thumped her head on the road, deader than an old joke.
He says it happened on Merrion Row or Baggot Street – not far from his dorms in Trinity College. He’d just left there to visit a pal in Donnybrook. He hadn’t been drinking, he swears, though he may have been going “a little too hard” given the conditions. Because of the fog, there was very little traffic about, and no pedestrians, so “in a blind panic” he threw the girl into the trunk of his car and drove off again. He then drove around and around the city wondering what the hell to do, when it suddenly came to him that he could use the cover of the smog to bury her in Stephen’s Green. This would be like their version of Boston Common, only a lot more secluded at night.
He borrowed a spade from his pal out in Donnybrook, telling him his room-mate at Trinity needed it to dig his car out of a ditch he’d driven into in Monkstown. And he headed back to town.
This, however, is where the fun part starts. The smog – which was caused by Dublin’s myriad coal fires (long since outlawed) – was so dense that he got lost on the way back into the center. After about an hour though, he eventually saw a couple of landmarks he thought he recognised, and before long he was pulling his Ford Capri into a parking spot just outside an urban park. He hoisted the body over the railings very quickly - “she was just a light, little thing, man” – got his spade, and set to work. He buried her under about four feet of dirt, in the hollow middle of a thicket about ten yards from the fence.
Now at this point, Ed stopped the interview and quite reasonably suggested that they should all take a field-trip to Stephen’s Green. To maybe recover the remains and put an end to the horror show. But the words were barely out of his mouth when Charlie announced: “Here’s the thing, Mr O’Conway. I’m not sure I got the right park. Man, the smog was terrible...”
And of course, he started to cry again. So bad that Tommy called in the doc to give him a double dose of the there-there medicine. And we closed down proceedings for the day.
We’ve trawled the missing persons’ files for the entire ’80s but have turned up nothing so far. Ellie reckons the poor girl might have been an illegal from Eastern Europe. Though Ed reckons they didn’t start coming this way until the early ’90s.
Ellie says hello, by the way, and told me to advise you that your son is a lying, no-good shite-bag, (direct quote) who’s lucky she’s still speaking to him. It’s her own little way of telling me she misses me. And you’re right, Pop. She is far too good for me. She’s taking a few days leave from the radio station to come down from Derry tomorrow and help me settle in.
Naturally, her reporter’s instincts have been piqued by this nonsense as well. Yes, God help me, I told her... But I made it clear to her that this is all hush-hush and that a good wife should always mind her husband’s business.
She then pointed out, with some feeling, that she is not my wife. Despite all her damned waiting. And despite all my damned promises. And when will I ever just clear two damned weeks of my schedule to make room for the most important damned person in my life...? And while we’re at it, where’s her goddamned diamond ring? (Except she didn’t always use the word ‘damned’.)
Boy, I just love feeding her straight lines. She heard me laughing, realised what I done and slammed down the phone so hard that my ear is still popping. There is nothing in life as hot as a bad-tempered, red-headed woman.
So long and slán
Your loving son
David
____________________________________________________________________
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Wednesday
Dear Pop
Curiouser and curiouser.
Our man was telling the truth about being sober. According to his Trinity roommate, he never touched a drop until his last week or two in Ireland. Not ever. His only interests were girls and films. But here’s the kicker, he paid for his year here, and bought his Ford Capri, by smuggling booze down from the North.
Charlie shared his dorm with a guy called Jimmy Blakeson, who was president of the student body and got a free room from the university for the privilege. Blakeson is a consultant surgeon at the Mater Hospital now. And as healthy and lucid as our guy is a big ugly mess. Makes Charlie look like the picture in the attic.
Ed visited Blakeson at his office, rather than bringing him in. They’re still treading very softly as, incredibly, the story hasn’t broken. Tommy Bowtie has warned the film company that if anything spills from them, he’ll release the blood tests and close them down permanently. And Bowtie still has the biggest mickey on the table, as they say over here.
Blakeson told Ed that our man never mentioned anything about his hit-and-run. Stuck up for him – said he was very careful driver. No surprise there. But the Doc was more than forthcoming about their regular jaunts into Newry, when the two of them used to fill the Ford Capri to breaking point with cases of whiskey - Powers and Bushmills. In those days, liquor in the North cost about hs;g of what it sold for in the South. So there was money to be made, good money, if you could get it past the customs. Beer was cheaper again, though a lot harder to transport.
The boys sold their wares all the bars in Dublin 2, splitting the profit fifty-fifty with the publicans. And that’s how Champagne Charlie, who Blakeson says wasn’t a Champagne Charlie at all back then but really a sweet guy, paid for his sabbatical. Just one trip a week could net him three or four hundred clear; handy money in the eighties.
Blakeson himself never took a dime from the trips. He just went along for the rush. And anyway, Charlie took the real risks. It was his car that would have been seized. And he was the guy who charmed the cops and the customs men into waving him through checkpoints, time after time. Just gave them that warm Southern grin or maybe a little joke in that soft Texan accent. Cool as ice, too. Wouldn’t have mattered if he’d had a crate of Semtex in his trunk. So damn plausible. Little wonder he made it big as an actor.
Blakeson did tell Ed a couple of useful things though. He revealed that Charlie was extremely athletic and strong, and once hoisted a full barrel of Guinness over a six-foot high fence, after a security man forgot to leave the gate unlocked. So a little thing like an eight-stone body would pose him few problems.
He also said our man had a steady girl for the last couple of months he was a student here. Name of Sue. Bit younger than him. Absolutely beautiful. He met her on Grafton Street, where she used to busk, singing Dylan on a jazz guitar. One day, after she’d finished her set, he went up and started talking to her and it was like something switched on in their heads at the same time. And that was that.
Blakeson couldn’t remember her surname. But he said they were very serious. So serious that when he realised he was going to have to leave her behind, he started on the sauce. She was too young to go back to the States with him, and by the time he’d returned for a holiday the following year, she’d met someone else.
Blakeson sometimes wonders if the missed opportunity wrecked his pal’s life. He stayed in touch with him for about three more years until Charlie began making it large as an actor, and it became more and more difficult to get past his PA. Over the years, they arranged to meet twice when Charlie was filming in Ireland. But he blew Blakeson off at the last minute both times. So when his agent rang to say he wanted to meet him this time around, Blakeson didn’t bother returning the call.
“He was a great guy then,” Blakeson told Ed. “Even gave me his car as a going-away present. Made me promise I’d never drink when I was driving it. In case I hit someone. Maybe that was his guilty conscience. I don’t know. I was delighted. It was such a big thing to have a car back then. And that very same day, I suddenly thought to myself, why the hell am I bothering with drink at all? And I’ve been that way ever since. Ironic isn’t it? I quit the booze almost exactly the same time that Charlie started up. I know who got the better end of that deal.”
For what it’s worth, Blakeson finds it hard to accept Charlie was the type of guy to bury a body in the woods. Now, maybe – but back then, absolutely no. Last person in the world he’d have expected to become a lush.
The Guards, meantime, spent all day today conducting very discreet searches in Stephen’s Green, using dogs and heat-seeking equipment and so on. But despite an extensive trawl, they found nothing apart from a wallet belonging to a government TD, who insists he was mugged a couple of weeks ago, and the condoms inside it aren’t his.
Tomorrow, Ed’s going to deploy a separate squad to Merrion Square, another fine Georgian park about half-a-mile from Stephen’s Green, as it’s just possible our man stashed the corpse there by mistake. Ellie reckons we’ll have dug up half of Dublin by the time we’re finished.
She landed in town this afternoon, by the way, and is currently out buying a pair of shoes for the supper we’re throwing for some New York banker tonight. Very, very important - I’ve been instructed to kiss his ass until it bleeds money. It’s her first gig as my official partner here, and she’s solemnly promised not to swear, spit or play slap the capitalist in the mouth. Not that I’d mind, though. It would sure beat spending two hours discussing Keynesian macroeconomics.
We’re placing bets on the number of times our guest says “fiscal rectitude”. Any more than ten and Ellie has to pay me a forfeit. I’ll not tell you what, though - you’re too frail and easily-shocked. Which reminds me, I’d better go and tell the nightshift to knock off the CCTV before we get ourselves another case of Death By Camera. Accidentally forgot to wipe the tapes? Yeah, and my butt smells of blue roses.
So long and slán
Your loving son
David
____________________________________________________________________
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Thursday
Dear Pop
We stuck a beanie hat and a pair of aviator sunglasses on our man and took him out to visit the two possible burial sites today. The three days off the happy juice has levelled out his thinking, and he’s making a bit more sense. On the downside, Charlie now realises the scale of trouble he’s in and is a lot more circumspect about what he’s telling us.
Tommy Bowtie told me privately that he believes the guilt may have been eating at his client for years, causing him to drown himself in hooch. Something set him off that way, and no mistake.
The film people tried to hit us with a Habeas Corpus writ in closed session yesterday, arguing that the “unlawful detention” of one of their employees was costing them a hundred grand a day. They have still no idea why we’re talking to him. Bowtie was ready for them though and released a statement to the Press Association last night, confirming that his client had admitted himself voluntarily into a Dublin facility which caters largely for substance abusers. Not a complete lie, nor even close to it – given the current crop of Charlie’s current housemates.
The papers all had their splashes about him this morning, a couple even speculated he’d nearly OD’ed. But it’s nothing our man hasn’t seen before. When he heard on the car radio that he was being treated at the Mater for suspected liver failure, he laughed out loud (if a little sheepishly).
At Stephen’s Green, we spent two hours pushing back bushes, before Charlie announced that the railings looked a little lower than he remembered. He remembers it being a bit of stretch to get the body over. So we drove down to Merrion Square in the Hummer with the blacked-out windows and started the same palaver there. Again, he thought the fence was too low – but we walked him around and around, forcing him to point out possible spots.
There was a bit of excitement when he stated a thicket behind the recumbent statue of Wilde looked familiar to him, but predictably, it came up dry.
After another half-hour of this nonsense, I skipped out to have lunch with Ellie at Patrick Guilbaud’s Restaurant, a hundred yards away, and bring her up to speed with the investigation. I had the Black Sole (very apt given my company, said Ellie), while she had the Mushroom Rizotto with Puntalette Pasta. Though when she saw my fish arriving, she was so impressed she nearly gave up vegetarianism on the spot. Instead, she treated herself to an extra forty-dollar dessert for being good. And yes, you read right. Forty Dollars.
Over coffee, I thanked her for being such an angel with our guests last night. They were shaping up to be the dullest couple I’ve ever met - and I’ve had dinner at the London Embassy - when Ellie started telling stories about life at a small-town radio station. (Like the time she asked one rough old bartender to stop saying “shit” live on air, only to be told, “But you say ‘f***’, ‘c***’, and ‘b******’ every time you come into my place...” By the end of the night, she had the banker laughing so hard that the Veuve Cliquot was running out of his nose and onto his red silk bowtie. Indeed, he laughed so hard he’s going to build us a new IT factory in Dun Laoghaire.
We were staring out the window of Guilbaud’s, holding hands and happy to be together again. And I was just about to produce the ring, when Ellie suddenly sat up straight, snapped her fingers and said, “I bet I know where the body’s buried. Pay the check, and let’s go.”
We rushed on our jackets and headed down the steps onto Merrion Street – and she pointed down the road, directly across the road from the square.
I spotted the high railings she was indicating and closed my eyes in dread. Then I saw the copse ten yards behind the fence and knew immediately it was true...
America’s top movie star had somehow killed a young girl and interred her in the gardens of Ireland’s seat of parliament, Leinster House. And we were now going to have to ask the government for permission to dig up their front lawn.
My short but illustrious career as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Ireland is about to come to an abrupt end.
See you soon – sooner than we thought.
So long and slán
Your loving son
David
We stuck a beanie hat and a pair of aviator sunglasses on our man and took him out to visit the two possible burial sites today. The three days off the happy juice has levelled out his thinking, and he’s making a bit more sense. On the downside, Charlie now realises the scale of trouble he’s in and is a lot more circumspect about what he’s telling us.
Tommy Bowtie told me privately that he believes the guilt may have been eating at his client for years, causing him to drown himself in hooch. Something set him off that way, and no mistake.
The film people tried to hit us with a Habeas Corpus writ in closed session yesterday, arguing that the “unlawful detention” of one of their employees was costing them a hundred grand a day. They have still no idea why we’re talking to him. Bowtie was ready for them though and released a statement to the Press Association last night, confirming that his client had admitted himself voluntarily into a Dublin facility which caters largely for substance abusers. Not a complete lie, nor even close to it – given the current crop of Charlie’s current housemates.
The papers all had their splashes about him this morning, a couple even speculated he’d nearly OD’ed. But it’s nothing our man hasn’t seen before. When he heard on the car radio that he was being treated at the Mater for suspected liver failure, he laughed out loud (if a little sheepishly).
At Stephen’s Green, we spent two hours pushing back bushes, before Charlie announced that the railings looked a little lower than he remembered. He remembers it being a bit of stretch to get the body over. So we drove down to Merrion Square in the Hummer with the blacked-out windows and started the same palaver there. Again, he thought the fence was too low – but we walked him around and around, forcing him to point out possible spots.
There was a bit of excitement when he stated a thicket behind the recumbent statue of Wilde looked familiar to him, but predictably, it came up dry.
After another half-hour of this nonsense, I skipped out to have lunch with Ellie at Patrick Guilbaud’s Restaurant, a hundred yards away, and bring her up to speed with the investigation. I had the Black Sole (very apt given my company, said Ellie), while she had the Mushroom Rizotto with Puntalette Pasta. Though when she saw my fish arriving, she was so impressed she nearly gave up vegetarianism on the spot. Instead, she treated herself to an extra forty-dollar dessert for being good. And yes, you read right. Forty Dollars.
Over coffee, I thanked her for being such an angel with our guests last night. They were shaping up to be the dullest couple I’ve ever met - and I’ve had dinner at the London Embassy - when Ellie started telling stories about life at a small-town radio station. (Like the time she asked one rough old bartender to stop saying “shit” live on air, only to be told, “But you say ‘f***’, ‘c***’, and ‘b******’ every time you come into my place...” By the end of the night, she had the banker laughing so hard that the Veuve Cliquot was running out of his nose and onto his red silk bowtie. Indeed, he laughed so hard he’s going to build us a new IT factory in Dun Laoghaire.
We were staring out the window of Guilbaud’s, holding hands and happy to be together again. And I was just about to produce the ring, when Ellie suddenly sat up straight, snapped her fingers and said, “I bet I know where the body’s buried. Pay the check, and let’s go.”
We rushed on our jackets and headed down the steps onto Merrion Street – and she pointed down the road, directly across the road from the square.
I spotted the high railings she was indicating and closed my eyes in dread. Then I saw the copse ten yards behind the fence and knew immediately it was true...
America’s top movie star had somehow killed a young girl and interred her in the gardens of Ireland’s seat of parliament, Leinster House. And we were now going to have to ask the government for permission to dig up their front lawn.
My short but illustrious career as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Ireland is about to come to an abrupt end.
See you soon – sooner than we thought.
So long and slán
Your loving son
David
____________________________________________________________________
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Friday
Dear Pop
What a difference a day makes.
It was Blakeson who started things, when he asked me could he visit his buddy last night. We decided to let them meet here, in the drawing room of the residence, and gave them a bit of privacy to catch up. Ed, of course, stuck a mike in the room. (Yes, another one.) And Tommy Bowtie had no objections, so long as he could hear what was being said as well.
Ed and Bowtie had been planning to come here anyway to discuss our campaign strategy, which boiled down to one single issue: should we tell the government what it is we’re looking for?
Yes, and we find nothing, and we’re up to our ears in shit. No, and we find something, we’re in shit from our ears down.
We decided to hold fire on a final plan until after the boys had their chat, just in case Blakeson might discover there were more bodies lying around.
“You still a doctor, Jimmy?” Charlie asked him by way of hello.
“Yeah,” said Blakeson, “but I’m not giving you anything ...”
“It’s not that ... I’ve got a terrible pain in my back. Any chance you could take a look?”
“Take off your shirt, you drunken bum, and we’ll see.”
“It’s really bad. Did it on the set a couple of weeks ago. Can’t remember how. They gave me a whole bunch of horse tablets. But they’ve all worn off now.”
“Yeah, sure. You’re still not getting anything... ah, I see what’s wrong. You’re misaligned. Probably a bad strain. Let me see if I can tweak it straight.”
“Must have lifted something wrong ...”
“What were you lifting?”
“I dunno. Some dumb actress no doubt. You gonna come visit me in jail?”
“No way. Hate the places. I’m far too pretty. You’ll do just fine in there, though ...”
The two friends laughed easily.
“I’m sorry,” said Charlie gently.
“Me too,” said Blakeson just as quietly. Then, “She wants to see you, you know ...”
“Who?”
“Sue. She called into the office today when she heard you were supposed to be lying on my operating table. I hadn’t seen her since the day you left.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope. Says she never got married ...”
“Neither did I ... how’s she looking?”
“Better than you ...”
They laughed again. “Like a million of your money,” added Blakeson.
“Has she forgiven me yet ...?”
“For what?”
“For killing her off like that. Refusing to write or take her calls. Then blaming her when she tried to pick up with someone else.”
“Jesus, man, you were twenty, and she was seventeen. These things happen.”
“Yeah, but I cut her dead.”
“True – but you were just trying to cope. She knew that then and knows it now ... so, do you wanna meet with her?”
“What do you think? Might be too late, though.”
After a pause, Blakeson spoke again: “I told the cops you would never have killed someone and hid it like that. It’s not your style.”
“Then why the hell has that dead girl been haunting me every single day for the past week?”
Just then in the little control room, Tommy Bowtie’s eyes lit up and he smiled broadly. The lawyer looked directly into the Assistant Commissioner’s face and spoke just four words. “I know what happened.”
Twenty minutes later, the squad car with the film director inside pulled up at the Embassy back door. I could hear him coming down the hall, demanding to know what in the hell this was about and bitching to the cop that he was going to lodge a complaint with me personally as soon as this was all over. How we’d been friends since kindergarten and talked every day on the phone. If ever an industry bred assholes ...
Tommy, Ed and I got him settled in the conference room, gave him a large bourbon to calm him down and then got started.
“Tell us the plot to your new movie,” said Ed.
And that, as you guessed, put an end to our story...
It is, of course, a horror flick where our man knocks down and kills a girl during a fog, before burying her in a Dublin park. But the twist – and you’ll love this – is that when he goes looking for her body twenty years later, it’s gone.
According to the director, Charlie ripped his back lifting a six-stone dummy over a fence about twelve days ago and has been whacked out on under-the-counter ketamine ever since. By Sunday past, he’d resorted to self-medicating as well, and the next thing they knew he was in Pearse Street Garda Station, and they couldn’t get anywhere near him. Meanwhile, he was stuck inside, with more drugs in him than Elvis, confessing to his latest movie.
We laughed so hard we nearly called in the Secret Service to have the director shot...
After an hour of assorted explanations and just as many threats, we let everybody go. Blakeson took Charlie off to meet Sue, and the director swanned off to the Clarence Hotel, promising to call me tomorrow.
Ed, Tommy and myself sat and finished the bottle, counting our blessings, until Ellie came in and ordered them home.
She poured herself a small brandy and sat down beside me. “So, a struggling young wannabe becomes famous and ditches his girl. She gets another boy, and he loses his mind with grief. Spends the rest of his life committing slow suicide.”
I nodded slowly, fully aware of where this was going.
“She was right there for him, but as soon as he saw the lights he just walked off. Broke her heart and wrecked his own life into the bargain.”
“Indeed,” I replied, watching her lay it on with a shovel.
“Isn’t it terrible what happens when you give up your best friends for fame and fortune?”
“Awful,” I agreed.
“God-dammit Dave, are you not getting the point of this at all?” she snapped, suddenly firing up.
So, with that, I put my hand in my pocket and held up the little ring-box.
“Gotcha,” I said.
She looked at me in shock, horror and delight, before starting to laugh.
“You sure did, you bastard.”
And she snatched the box from my hand.
So be sure and finish off that speech you’ve been writing for the past thirty-seven years, Pop. You’ll finally get to deliver it over here in a month’s time.
I love it when I win one.
So long and slán
David
____________________________________________________________________
Extract from “Dublin
Author: Garbhan Downey
Editor: Roslyn Faller, Irish Writer’s Exchange
Published by the Irish Writer’s Exchange 2010 p153-169
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