Cross - Ken Bruen [14]
Yada yada.
I wanted to shout, 'Do frigging better.'
He asked, 'Do you talk to him?'
'What?'
'We don't know for certain, but it's been shown that talking to a comatose victim helps the visitor, if nothing else, and who can say? Maybe he can hear you.'
What a load of bollocks.
I asked, 'What do you suggest – the football results, how Man U are faring, that Giggs is playing out of his skin? You think that might snap Cody out of the coma?'
God, I was so angry, a rage that threatened to engulf me.
The doctor caught it, said, 'You'll know best.' And strode off.
I know it was unfair, but, as they say, he was there and an easy target. Part of me wanted to call him back, apologize, but, nope, didn't do it.
When I got outside, I breathed a sigh of relief and muttered my old familiar mantra: 'This calls for a drink.'
I looked up at the darkening sky – summer was definitely done – and muttered to the God I no longer trusted, 'Couldn't I just have one day on the piss, and not have a hangover?'
I already knew the answer, but sometimes you pose the question just to keep your own self well and truly vexed.
8
The stations of the cross.
I was reading – trying to read – Bukowski, South of No North. My mind was going in a hundred directions, none of them good. Willed myself to concentrate, but couldn't do it. My mind filled with dread about Ridge and breast cancer, and Cody in the coma, was I going to settle down and read?
Yeah, like that was going to fly.
Put the book aside. This was not the best territory for me to be travelling. Checked my watch – thirty minutes to pub time. Somehow, I was holding it vaguely together, boozewise, though the urge to lash out was edging closer. The radio was on, playing tracks from Elvis Costello's new album The Delivery Man, which had a crazed duet with Lucinda Williams and a riot of guitars blowing rough alongside, then 'Heart Shaped Bruise' with my long-time favourite, Emmylou Harris. All you need to know is in the title, kicked the tattered remnants of any longing I still clung to. I stood, turned it off. My hearing was definitely on the blink. I could only do so much anguish before I went searching for a rope.
Looked out the window: a minor storm building, as America was being battered by the third hurricane in three weeks. This one, aptly called Ivan, was heading for New Orleans and I was heading for the pub. Storms of my own. Pulled on my all-weather Garda coat, item 8234. They still wrote me letters attempting to get it back.
Dream on, fuckers.
A slight perspiration on my brow as I walked down by Eyre Square. And for the sheer joy of it, I walked to Eglington Street. It's about fifteen minutes from my flat. I cut across the back of Eyre Square and came to it from the west end. The Lions Tower, known as the Bastion, used to be here and then became the site of the Garda barracks.
You can turn into Francis Street from there, and they have the best greengrocer's in the city. You can buy seaweed there, known as Crannog, supposed to cure all ails. I'd once tried it for a hangover and was as sick as forty dogs, but I can't really blame the seaweed. Americans were intrigued by this 'commodity' and were never quite sure if we were serious. Me neither. I think it belongs on the beach, washed up and abandoned.
The Sisters of Mercy had a school here and my mother and Nora Barnacle attended, though not, of course, at the same time. To hear my mother tell it, Nora was a 'brazen hussy'.
My bitter Mom's one and only review of Irish literature. She believed, as did many of her generation, that Joyce was 'a writer of pure filth'.
I moved quickly along that street, memories of my mother not being my favourite ones, and into Cross Street. I like that one, it has the office of the Connacht Tribune, and you want local news, that's the paper you need. There's a nice vibe here, and just along, parallel to Shop Street, is the situation for the Saturday