“I also called Woody, hinted the cops might be en route.”
I took a deep drawn-out breath, asked,
“Who the fuck is Woody?”
She was regaining some control, the usual cockiness reasserting itself, said,
“Christ, you never listen, I have told you, the Ghosts of Galway?”
I sat back, trying to absorb the sheer insanity of it all, managed one question.
“This Woody, he a shooter?”
Smile on her face, said,
“He is now.”
I had so many avenues to respond to this revelation and all,
All,
Of them
Involved violence.
She took my silence as some twisted form of, if not approval, then assent. She said,
“I will admit she was hot in the bed.”
Holy fuck!
How is it possible to be simultaneously shocked, stunned, outraged, and absolutely homicidal? Too, I have rarely been lost for words. I have done silence but only because I was too pissed to talk, but a situation where I actually couldn’t find a response in my muddled mind? I stared at her and she gave me that radiant smile, said,
“Keep your enemies close, right Jack-o?”
Did I lean over the table and punch her in the mouth?
I stood up, said quietly,
“Get a lawyer.”
Confused her. She asked,
“You going to shop me, lover?”
I said,
“To draw up your last will and testament.”
“It is possible to
Dig up past misdeeds
So they become
A blight,
A veritable plague.”
(Alcoholics Anonymous)
16
Nun, but the brave and the rash.
I went to see a nun, weird as that is.
Me!
With a nun as a friend.
Years ago, I had helped out the Church and a nun, Sister Maeve, believed I did miraculous work.
I didn’t but take it where you can. We developed a curious friendship and she was always available for pup-sitting. Too, the pup loved her. You want to see the measure of a person, see how they behave with a dog. It is as good a litmus test as you could find.
Maeve worked as a conduit between the convent and the public. I really wanted an opportunity to use conduit in a sentence and now I was doing it.
I told the pup,
“Let’s go see your nun.”
Much tail wagging and bouncing off the walls. The death of Ridge, and Emily being the perp, it was more than my mind could bear. A knock at the door. I dunno but for some reason I grabbed my nine millimeter from under the bookcase. I had acquired it from a Russian bouncer.
Swear to God, the pup recoiled from that, as if instinctively he knew guns were bad news.
Lock and load.
Opened the door.
A young man who looked vaguely familiar. He said,
“Mr. Taylor, remember me?”
“No.”
He was disappointed, said,
“I’m a friend of Em, Emily, Emerald.”
The gun was in the waistband of my jeans. I said,
“Don’t mean shit to me fellah.”
He held out a book
... The fucking ubiquitous Red Book
He said,
“Emily feels this will make up for the...”
Stalled.
Reached
for
the
Least
Offensive
Description.
Got
“Incident.”
The gun was up. I shouted right in his face.
“Getting my friend killed is not a freaking incident.”
The pup was out, alarmed, and took a lunge at Hayden’s pant leg. Hayden yelled,
“Who let the dog out?”
I was of two minds:
Shoot him
Or
Burp him.
I said,
“Come in and watch your tone.”
He sat near the bookcase, asked,
“You don’t do Kindle?”
Fuck’s sake.
I said,
“How do you know the crazy bitch?”
I could not bring myself to utter her name.
He asked, in that new American lilt that young Irish males have adopted,
“Like, you mean Em?”
I said,
“Use that modifier again and I will shoot you.”
He seemed remarkably unfazed by my threats, asked,
“What’s a modifier?”
I sighed, sounding not unlike my dead mother, who could have sighed for Ireland and, in many ways, did.
I said,
“What’s the deal with you and... her... are you in a relationship or just her messenger boy?”
Didn’t much care for the term, his near constant smile was bruised. He tried,
“She is like a sister to me. We go way back.”
(Way back these days usually means about a year.)
“And we share, like, a bond. We got each other’s back.”
Sounding as if he was from lower Manhattan.
He continued.
“I was caught up in the Ghosts of Galway bullshit and Em, she showed me it was just all crap and, like, you know, showed me the light.”
“So why are you here again?”
He gave me a smile of such dazzling whiteness that I nearly warmed to him.
Nearly.
The pup seemed to have eased too in his response to him and actually lay at his feet. Hayden said,
“Oh, right.”
And then said nothing.
With all the smartphones and technology, young people seemed to lack the ability to pursue a thought. If it wasn’t text, it didn’t count. I said, with a trace of granite in the words,
“Focus, for fuck’s sake.”
He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, asked,
“What’s with all the hostility, dude?”
Dude.
I moved right in his face, said,
“Emily? The message. And if you call me dude again I’ll rearrange your face.”
He said,
“Em wants you to know that like, you know, no hard feelings and you can have The Red Book. You don’t even have to grovel for it.”
I stared at him.
I nearly said,
“You’re like a conduit.”
He continued.
“Fat fuck you used to work for?”
I nodded.
“He will pay serious green for it, even though it is, like, bogus.”
“Bogus?”
“Yeah, definitively. Em got some scholar to, like, check it out and at best it is Book of Kells lite.”
Then he reached in his jacket and the pup went on alert. I said,
“Better be a book.”
Got the radiant smile and
“You crack me up, dude.”
Put a very small battered red volume on the table. Stood up, said,
“My work here is done so, like, sayonara.”
He stopped at the door, said,
“Em got one thing slightly wrong, though.”
“Yeah?”
He looked like he might touch my shoulder but wisely didn’t, said,
“You’re not seriously old, like she said.”
“Jack, you remember how much affection I had for you
Once.
Multiply that by infinity
And that is how much I now
Loathe
You.”
“Anybody could be smart. It took a special somebody