Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [6]
The leprechaun chewed. “But no,” he said. “A decent wage was too much for them. Why should we pay you minimum wage, they say, when we can get the work for almost nothing from these poor starving mortals over in Indonesia or wherever, who’re grateful for a penny a day? And so they gave us their back.”
He poured himself more sake, drank. “We were to be here for you, from the beginning of things,” he said more softly; “we were to help you have the things you needed when you couldn’t have them otherwise. But your people have made us redundant. Spiritually redundant as well as fiscally. So now, as we can’t earn, neither can we spend. ‘And who of late,’ he said sadly into his sake, ‘for cleanliness, finds sixpence in her shoe?’ ”
“Bad times,” I said, looking past the Mercedes and the BMWs and the ladies walking past the sushi bar toward the “signature” restaurants farther down the road, where you couldn’t get out the door at the end of the night for less than three hundred Euro for just a couple of you and wine.
“Bad times,” the leprechaun said.
“And it’s hard to find a decent pint,” I said.
His eyes glittered, and I kept my smile to myself. Any Dubliner is glad to tell a stranger, or somebody with my Manhattan accent, where the best pint is. Sometimes they’re even right. Sometimes it’s even someplace I haven’t already heard of. I don’t drink the Black Stuff myself, especially since there’s better stout to be found than Uncle Arthur’s overchilled product in the Porter House brewpub in Parliament Street; but that’s not the point.
His eyes slid sideways to betray the great secret, whose betrayal is always joy. “You know South Great Georges Street?”
“Yeah.” It was a few blocks away.
“The Long Hall,” he said. “Good place. The wizards drink there, too.”
“Really,” I said.
“That’s where most of us go now.” There was a silent capital on the “u” that I nodded at. “We go down there Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the back, for a pint. And the wakes,” he said.His look went dark. “A lot of wakes lately . . .”
“Suicide?” I said softly. Irish males have had a fairly high suicide level of late, something no one understands with the economy booming the way it’s been, and somehow I wouldn’t have been surprised to find the trend had spread to the Old Ones.
He shook his head. “Nothing like,” the leprechaun said. “None of these people were suicidal. They had good jobs . . . as good as jobs get for our people these days. Coding over at Lotus, hardware wrangling up at Gateway and Dell. They never seem to stop hiring up there in the Wasteland.” It was a slang name for the jungle of industrial estates that had sprung up around Dublin Airport, and there seemed to be a new one every month, more and more land once full of Guinness-destined barley, or of sheep, now full of Europe-destined PCs and other assorted chippery.
“But it’s not the same,” I said, because I knew what was coming. I’d heard it before.
“No, it’s not,” the leprechaun said with force. “Once upon a time I didn’t even know what the ISEQ was! When did our people ever have to worry about stocks and shares, and ‘selling short’? But now we have to, because that’s how you tell who’s hiring, when you can’t make a living making shoes anymore.” He scowled again. “It’s all gone to hell,” he said. “It was better when we were poor.”
“Oh, surely not,” I said. “You sound like those people in Russia, now, moaning about how they miss the good old days in the USSR.”
“Poor devils,” the leprechaun said, “may God be kind to them, they don’t know any better. But it’s nothing like what we have to deal with. Once upon a time we gave thanks to God when the leader of our country stood up and announced to the world that we were self-sufficient in shoelaces. Who knew that it could go downhill from that, because of