Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [69]
So I put the word out that I was available as an accompanist, but all the decent players already had their own, and the people who did contact me weren’t much good. It was so frustrating. I ended up tak- ing gigs with some of them anyway, but they didn’t challenge me musically or help my bank balance—my bank being the left front pocket of my cargo pants, which I could at least button closed.
I ended up busking a lot—in the market, at subway entrances, down by Fitzhenry Park—but since I didn’t have enough presence onstage, where I had the benefit of a sound system, I sure didn’t have what it took to grab the attention of passersby on the street, where I was competing with all the traffic and city noise as well as audience indifference.My take after playing was never more than a few dollars. By the end of a month I was out of money and had to leave the boardinghouse where I was staying. I ended up in Squatland, sleeping in one of the many abandoned buildings there with the other homeless people, keeping my busking money for food.
I could have gone home, I guess. But I was too proud. Though not too proud to find another way to make a living.
I finally found a job as a janitor at the Sovereign Building on Flood Street. I got the gig through Joey Bennett, this cab driver I met when I was busking at the gates of Fitzhenry Park. He’d stand outside his cab, arms folded across his chest, listening to me while he waited for a fare. He was a jazz buff, but we got to talking on my breaks. When he heard I was looking for work, it turned out he knew a lawyer who had an office in the Sovereign, and the lawyer got me the job.
I guess it wasn’t much different than getting a job through an uncle or cousin, except Joey and the lawyer were my connections. I’d done it on my own.
I didn’t mind the job that much. I like seeing things put to order and kept clean, and it’s very meditative being in a big building like that, pretty much on my own. There are other cleaners, but we each have our own floors, and we don’t really see each other except at break time.
Now here’s the thing.
I’d paid my respects to the spirits at the boardinghouse, and later my squat—feeling a little foolish while I talked into thin air to do so. No one answered, and I didn’t expect them to. But I never thought about doing it at work. So, when I saw the kid tracking muddy footprints down the hall I’d just spent a half hour mopping down, I wasn’t thinking of house spirits and respect. I just told him off.
When he turned in my direction, I saw that he wasn’t really a kid—more a kid-sized, little man with brown skin and hair that looked like Rasta dreadlocks. He was wearing a dark green cap and shirt, brown-green trousers, and was barefoot—unless you counted the mud on them as footwear.Over his shoulder, he had a coil of rope with a grappling hook fastened to one end. In his hand, he carried a small cloth bag that bulged with whatever it was holding.
It was raining outside, so it wasn’t hard to figure out where the mud had come from. How he’d gotten into the building was a whole other story. Used the grappling hook to get up the side of the wall, I suppose, then forced a window.
He glared at me when I yelled at him, dark eyes flashing.
“How’d you get in here, anyway?” I demanded.
He pointed a gnarled finger at me.
“I give you seven years,” he said in a gravelly voice that felt like it should have come from a much larger person.
“Yeah, well, I’ll give you thirty seconds to get out of here,” I told him.
“Do you know who I am?”
Until he said that, I hadn’t actually considered it. Not after my first impression when I thought he was just some kid, nor when I realized that he was a weird little man who’d somehow found his way into this locked office building. But as soon as he asked, I knew. And my heart sank. I’d done the very thing my dad had