She hadn’t seen a car but there could be a garage in the back of the house. All the same, it was best to believe him, and she turned and started to run across the yard. However, when she reached the road, the rough terrain hurt her bare feet and she had to take a moment to put her heels back on.
Harvey was still on the balcony, his hand in the air with the keys, his other hand holding a liquor bottle. He was so tall, the railing reached below his knees. He took a drink. “Where are you going, peach pie?” he called into the night. “Mary, Mary, you got a job to do!” He thrust himself forward, back, forward. “Get back here, Mary!” Harvey rocked harder – thrusting, hooting, hollering, climaxing: “Mary! Mary! Mary!” And then suddenly, on the final thrust, he lost his balance and just tumbled over the balcony. Mary watched him flop to the ground.
She stood still, listening for a moan, a reaction, but there was none. She thought about walking across the grass and checking on him, but decided against it. He could be pretending. Mr. Parker used to pretend he’d had a heart attack and when she would check on him, he would holler like a bear, grab her with both arms, and tackle her down.
Mary got the second shoe on her foot and began to run down the road the best she could in her heels, checking behind her for Mr. Gilbert. But he never came.
She had to wait on the platform for another hour and a half, the chilly air putting goose bumps on her skin until it was light. She worried that a squad car might pull up but one never did. Eventually, men in their suits and black hats arrived and they stood with her waiting for the train. When the train came, Mary sat in a seat and paid the conductor for her ticket with Harvey’s money. She wondered if Harvey was dead. She worried about fingerprints in the kitchen. Not that she’d ever been caught stealing and been brought to jail, or had ever been in trouble. The cops didn’t even know she existed, she told herself, and most likely she had nothing to worry about.
An hour later, Mary was walking through Grand Central, her gloves on her hands, Harvey’s money and Mrs. Gilbert’s hatpin in her pocketbook. When they found Harvey, and if he was dead, there would be men that would say they saw a woman with light brown hair and strappy heels at the station that morning. Mary realized she would have to dye her hair. She had the cash to do it.
Red, she figured. Apple red.
She walked out to 42nd Street and because she had Harvey’s money, she took a cab back to 13th.
Mary realized that if Harvey wasn’t dead, he knew where she lived and he’d come after her.
Damn. She’d have to move, too.
Spice – by Seamus Scanlon
IN THE EARLY GREY GALWAY DAWN my brother Rob waited outside for me in his black Opel Vectra. He was driving me to Shannon Airport for my flight to New York. I lived half the year on the fifth floor of a walkup in the war zone of 186thStreet and St. Nicholas in Washington Heights. Outside in DR Land music (so called), i.e., merengue burst out of cars, apartments, bodegas, hair salons, bakeries and El Pollo Toxicado outlets. DR women burst out of nail salons and their tight-fitting tops. The other half of the year I lived in Galway, Ireland, home of Nora Barnacle, Lord Haw Haw and the Great Fire of Galway (see below). If I was needed for special jobs during my six months in Galway I flew back to the U.S. I hated the killing July sun in NY but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.
Rob had the driver’s window rolled down. He was blowing cigarette smoke from a Woodbine out into the quite crisp air. The car was pitted with rust and stains. His face was rutted with acne scars and knife cuts. I had perfect skin. Under the hood I needed some work. Ma was framed in the doorway as I sat in. She waved. We did not wave back. Our family foreshore was as bobby trapped as Omaha Beach. Psychic and emotional corpses floated facedown in the shallows.
Rob stared after every Shell Oil truck that we passed until their red taillights faded in the pale light. He was a menace on the roads. Not to mention around inflammable materials (coming). As we drove into Shannon Airport he examined the squat ugly oil storage tanks on the periphery of the runways. Once I checked-in he watched the fuel trucks pumping gas through fat fast hoses into the planes deep hidden places. He was a pyromaniac with exhibitionist tendencies. He started the great fire of Galway when he was twelve. He was a bit precocious. It lasted for five days and five nights – destroying timber yards, coal silos, turf stacks, the railway station, shops, pubs, cafes, garages and the Galway Family Planning Clinic (divine intervention proclaimed the Galway Christian Family Army). Tramps had to run for cover. It was their first cardiovascular exercise in decades so some of them had heart attacks and strokes and perished and were consumed. Their tissue alcohol levels meant they were perfect pyre material.
The firestorm stopped just short of the Galway Great Southern Hotel and just in time so that the annual weeklong Galway Racing Festival could go ahead. Otherwise there would have been trouble. Black smoke hung over the town for weeks. Petrol and diesel that had seeped into the soil for decades burned away underground – slow and long.
All the neighbors in Mervue knew Rob did it but kept it to themselves. Mervue was an open prison and no one liked the Gardai. They never found out. They were as thick as the medieval Old Walls of Galway that Rob’s torching had uncovered. TheGalway Archeological Review mentioned this as a very positive outcome of the Great Fire of Galway. Academics! During Race Week the Gardai had to deal with the annual invasion of 6,000 hooligans (Northerners, Dublin Jackeens, pickpockets, shop lifters, gamblers and three card trick hustlers) as well as 20,000 race goers from all over Ireland. It was easier for them to manage this influx than conduct a full-scale forensic arson investigation. Also they could not be arsed basically, races or no. They were hardwired lethargy-wise.
The Russians used Shannon Airport, which lies on the edge of the Western Atlantic, to refuel planes on flights between Russia and Cuba. Che Guevara had a pint of Guinness in Shannon Airport once while an Aeroflot transport plane (also know as a Flying Coffin) waited on the tarmac for a spare part from Mother Russia. Some Cubans and Russians defected during other stopovers. Che Guevara was probably sorry he hadn’t. He could have ended up in a Corporation house in Dublin where his guerilla acumen would have come in handy.
Mother Ireland wants to erect a statue to Che (as we now call him) in Galway. We will claim anyone. We already erected one to Christopher Columbus who allegedly stayed in Galway over night before he sailed for America. And the rest is history – yes Galway is now the B&B capital of the world.
I had to jerk my black hold-all free from Rob when we got to the departure gate. He was mesmerized by the smell of jet fuel vapors.
Rob – fuck off home!
He nodded, turned abruptly and left me there. Brotherly love.
The plane I was catching was a Jordanian Airways jumbo jet from Amman on a stopover. None of those passengers ever jumped ship. Too rainy. Too windy. Too blustery. And no sand. Except the grey coarse Irish variety blowing inland from various desolate inlets. It was like a Bedouin camp as I made my way down through the cabin looking for my seat, stepping over kids and adolescents sprawled on the floor. Old men and women with creased faces – desert effigies – sat huddled, talking in harsh guttural accents like my grandparents speaking rapid fire Irish. I could never understand them either. Their voices cascaded over me. I drifted off. Reverie was my middle name.