Eight Ball Boogie - Declan Burke [40]
“Enough,” he said, terse. “Any more and you’re both out. Hear that? Harry?”
There was blood on the back of my hand. I’d bounced my head off the bar on the way down and my eyes were watering. It was a good buzz, though. Gonzo’s fists were still clenched, waiting for it to kick off. The old Gonzo, unrepentant, the thin veneer of contrition scraped bare and ugly in the slipstream of one vicious swing. I patted Dutchie on the back, dabbed at my bloody nose with the tissue he gave me. I’d got what I wanted.
“Second time today,” I told Gonzo. “First one hurt.”
“Thought you might laugh if I tickled. You being such a grumpy cunt and all.”
Dutchie manoeuvred his stool between us, put up another round. Then Gonzo got one in, and after that we started to lose count. We talked at right angles for a while, slow to start, faster as the beer paid off. He told us about Greece and Spain. I told him about Denise and Ben, Ben mostly, but I didn’t say anything he couldn’t have guessed anyway.
Closing time came and went. Dutchie suggested a few late ones. The idea of a club, all noise and desperation, was appealing for once. When we got inside, we settled ourselves in the darkest corner we could find. We shouted at one another across the table until we realised we weren’t saying anything worth hearing. Dutchie went to the bar. Gonzo shifted around to sit on the stool beside me, nudging me in the ribs.
“Who’s the bird?” he shouted.
“What bird?”
“That bird, on the edge of the floor. She’s been clocking you since we came in.”
She looked away when I glanced over my shoulder but there was no mistaking the delightful Miss Conway’s pout. She was standing on the edge of the dance-floor, grinding a hip against the big bloke beside her, hips kinking in time to the rhythm. She was wearing a cropped belly top that showed most of her flat stomach and all of her cleavage, which was also flat.
“Never seen her before.”
“Sweet.”
“The way cyanide smells.”
Dutchie came back with the drinks. He had just settled into his seat again when Michelle came back from the toilet and dragged him, protesting, onto the dance floor. Gonzo shouted: “Fancy a buzz?”
“No.”
He slipped the corner of a plastic wrap out of his shirt pocket, twitched it. Then he squeezed two pills from the wrap, holding them in his palm under the table. They looked like Paracetamol except for the grooved line running across the circumference.
“C’mon, Harry. You know you want to.”
I knew he wouldn’t give up until he got his way. I knew, from bitter experience, that it was easier to agree, to succumb. Maybe that way, when I woke up in the morning, Gonzo would be gone again, taking the car with him, maybe, and it’d be worth it just to see him gone.
Then I met his eye. He was the old Gonzo again, the one-man party who didn’t give a shit and took even less, the five-year-old trapped in the body of a sociopath.
“No chance, Gonz. Forget it.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, popping both pills. “These fuckers haven’t paid off all night. That’s four and five right there.”
“Five?”
“Nothing’s happening. You get a quick buzz like you’re about to come up and that’s your lot.”
“Maybe the pills aren’t the problem.”
“There was a time you weren’t such a pious bastard.”
“And there was a time you weren’t a total cunt.”
He sipped his pint, chewed the inside of his lip.
“Fuck sakes. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”
“Once’d be a start. Wouldn’t mean a fucking thing, but it’d be nice to know you can say it all the same.”
“Jesus. Okay, Harry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I fucked Celine. I’m sorry I didn’t come to Ben’s christening. I’m sorry I didn’t ring. I’m sorry your life is a pile of shite, that you’re a miserable fucker.” He sparked a smoke. “Let me know if I’m leaving anything out, yeah?”
“How about being sorry for coming back, for lying through your teeth?”
“What are you talking about? I told you, I’m looking to get started –”
“Yeah, I know. Sign-painting and a second-hand Hi-Ace. Give it a rest, Gonz. It’s so tired it’s yawning.”
He looked at me, shrewd.
“Never could