Phase One
Sold Out
Ciara was struggling to force shut the door of the Sales Suite. People were clamouring for entry. Tired people, thwarted people, demoralised people, panicked people, people shouting that they’d been queuing for days.
Ciara clicked her fingers over her head like a flamenco dancer and cried ‘Security!’ Two heavies from the former Eastern Bloc, who were built like the former Eastern Bloc, appeared and enquired if there was a problem. Fucking right there was a problem, said one man pointing at them, and a struggle ensued. The insurrection was efficiently quashed by the hired goons, as insurrections in the former Eastern Bloc tended to be.
The man who had pointed his finger rolled onto his side clutching his knee. A small child wailed in fright. Hickey clapped his phone shut and stood up to claim his winnings. ‘Gracious,’ he said. ‘That’s the word I’m looking for. Isn’t that right, Tristram? Isn’t that what we’re selling here? Gracious living.’
*
M. Deauville didn’t materialise. Hickey stood between his big box balls at the close of business that evening and jingled the coins in his pockets. ‘Cristal?’ he offered, then winced in mock apology. He took off his sunglasses to admire them. Two grand, he remarked they’d cost him.
He turned his back and headed off, holding up a valedictory hand in that way that used to drive me mad when I had less to be driven mad by (what made him so very positive that I was looking at him?) but then he paused, dropped his head, relented, and turned around. ‘Lookit,’ he said, as if making a major concession, ‘I’m having a barbeque next Saturday, okay? Me an the wife, up at the ranch. I might see you there. I know you’re a busy man.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, getting up to allow two men in overalls to remove my chair and load it into the back of a truck. The rest of the bistro set had already been packed. I stood there watching the place being locked up. Checked my phone: no calls. Busy man.
I looked about for a chair but found none and in the end sat down on a kerbstone. It rocked in its moorings. Everything built by Hickey rocked in its moorings. There were no moorings.
I loitered there until the warmth went out of the sun, waiting for M. Deauville to walk through the gates and find me, the abandoned birthday boy, surrounded by burst balloons and half-eaten cake, party hats and torn gift wrapping strewn at my feet.
He didn’t come and he didn’t ring either but he was there in spirit. I see that now. I see it all now. Every aspect of the launch bore his hallmark. The Devil is in the detail.
~ ~ ~
‘And at what point did Dominic Dowdall enter the picture?’
~ ~ ~
I’m sorry, who?
~ ~ ~
‘The Viking.’
~ ~ ~
Oh, him. Yes. I should have mentioned. He pitched up on launch day to sniff around, sensing that juicy spoils were to be had. That’s what Vikings do. They raid juicy spoils. It was only a matter of time before he stuck his whore — I mean, his oar in. We’ll get to her — I mean, to that.
He rocked up with his wife and their three blond children, all of whom had ridiculous names. I realise I stand in a glasshouse in this regard, but at least my ridiculous name is hereditary. ‘Leave that tree alone, Roman,’ he called as the boy struggled to wrench a young Japanese maple out of the ground, but there was no conviction in the Viking’s voice. Pull it if you wish, Roman, he was saying. Do what feels good. Do what feels right. Nobody is going to stop you, son, that’s a valuable lesson in life. The maple snapped. Roman looked at the slender antler of branches in his hand. ‘Put that down,’ his father told him, and the boy cast it aside and moved on to the next target. Hickey shook his head. ‘That little bollocks is going to get such a boot up the hole.’
His wife held her husband’s hand and kept her counsel, smiling about herself vaguely. She was dressed for a skiing trip on a beach. Fur-lined boots on her muscular brown legs, denim shorts, a sheepskin gilet over a sun top. Hickey sized her up with interest. She had a gleaming mane of chestnut hair and a hard little nut of a face beneath it.
If the Viking noticed Hickey and me sitting at the bistro table when he came through the gates, he didn’t betray it. We watched him regally making his rounds, his brown queen on his arm. He surveyed the Lambay building with a proprietorial tilt of the head before cocking a hind leg to squirt his scent on it. Tsss. Hickey was itching to belt over and counter-spray — I could feel him chafing beside me.
‘You know he has a conviction for beating up his former partner, don’t you?’ he muttered.
‘Yes.’
‘Girlfriend partner, not business partner. He beat up a woman.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
Even I knew that. We all knew that. Everyone on the hill knew that the Viking had been handed down a suspended sentence for breaking a former girlfriend’s jaw. Somehow, this hadn’t impacted on his social standing.
He came upon us at the bistro table when his tour was complete. ‘I like what you’ve done here,’ he told Hickey. ‘I like the look you’ve achieved, yeah?’ His great bullish head was blocking out my sun. He was a handsome man, in a coarse sort of way.
‘Phase One sold out in forty-five minutes,’ Hickey stated.
The Viking tossed his hair. ‘Sweet. A lot of new customers for my bar.’
Hickey tossed his hair back. ‘They’ll be at my bar.’ He nodded at the trunk of the hotel. ‘Have you seen me hotel? It’s going to be eleven storeys high.’
‘Yeah, your hotel.’ The Viking stroked his smig. ‘I wouldn’t mind a word in your ear about that. I have, uh… a proposition. You must come see my operation some evening. You know, get the tour.’ He made eye contact with me to indicate that the invitation extended to us both. ‘Why don’t I give you a call?’
‘Yeah, why don’t you?’
‘Excellent.’ The Viking touched his temple in salute before rounding up his feral children and sauntering off. I won’t repeat what Hickey called him when his back was turned. I don’t approve of that kind of language.
*
Three days later, we were summoned.
‘Why are you after wearing a suit?’ Hickey berated me as we made our way to the Viking’s bar, ‘did you have to go and wear a bloody suit?’ He had never objected to my suits before. I always wear a suit, and have done ever since giving up the drink. Even on weekends. It is my Sober uniform. Every morning, I must get up and put it on.
The Viking was parading himself outside his bar on his phone in his linen and we hated him. His bar was a block of jade glass like Hickey’s hotel, like McGee’s bank, like the Lambay building, like everything. He lowered the phone. ‘Guys, I’ll be with you in a tick. Have Svetlana bring you a drink.’
He pointed to a blonde who was standing sentry inside the door. Svetlana stepped forward and held it open to welcome us into the Viking’s emporium. I noted Hickey noting this — the Viking’s hand command; the beautiful blonde leaping to his bidding. She was dressed in a fitted white shirt, black tie and black trousers. A long black apron was knotted around her waist. Hickey stared at her trim backside as she led us upstairs to the VIP area. He would have liked to have run a woman like that — five foot ten and slender as a runway model, her hair pinned up in a French twist. He would have liked instructing a woman like that to serve his friends.
The VIP area was empty. Nobody was Very Important that night. Svetlana guided us to a raised platform and took our drinks order. We sat looking out the window at the Viking, still strutting up and down his patch of Harbour Road. Tsss: he cocked his hind leg to mark the lamppost. ‘I could burst that X,’ Hickey remarked quietly, resorting to that word again that I find so objectionable. I nodded my agreement all the same.