Today found me standing on the corner of Donegal Sq South and Bedford Street looking up into the air. I stood there, perched on the edge of the footpath, assuming a static stubbornness to the tut-tut's of townie ignoramuses rushing by me and against me like a painiced stream round a smooth rock. Up above, in the sky, a plane spewed heavy metals and other assorted poisons upon us all in the form of chemtrails. This plane, one of a fleet of deathbringers sponsored by our Gifted and Malevolent Controllers, I could see through my Batman Telescope (which I carry with me everywhere now). It was painted with much the same material, the blacky silver, the same as the helicopter, and like it, was unmarked.
I cursed my luck at not having some kinda scientifical gidgerie-ma-do that might take a reading of what the air around us is made up with (as these type of machines do exist), but I didn't, so I turned abruptly, body popping round a fattie and a sharp edged skinnie (men) and went off to buy a cheap drink somewhere, the location of which I would determine using the Dice Man theory, and all with the help of my new fangled wooden dice that I found in a skip on my dander into town.
After tossing the thing about inside my pocket 3 consecutive times and finding it came up 6 each go, I pulled it out and saw it said 6 on every face. I was mightily disappointed by this and cursed the fate that brought me a 6 sided dice with 6 on every side. So I decided to just walk along and listen out for someone saying the name of a bar. This bar I would go to. Didn't take long.
And I went to Lavery's.
Outside I sat with my gin and tonic and rolled a fly wee one-skinner rocket (or SCUD more correctly, in a proportional sense) and sat sipping and puffing, little bits at a time to stretch it out, when a man in a suit sits by me.
This man's name was Tandy.
Tandy's drunk. He's just after quitting his job, and was on his way round to the estate agents to put his house on the market before he decided to call in for a drink to calm his nerves.
He begins to talk to me:
- I came home last week. This day last week... - he says. He has a lovely drinkers' voice, words rolled out like squidgy black hash pronounced in gravelly level inflections, though his diction's no the worse off for it, - ...So I come home last week, and there's my wife on the stairs getting fucked by the milkman.
- That's terrible, - say I.
- Worse than that. The milkman's also my brother.
- Ahh! That's a sick arrangement, there!
- Too right, mate. Too right. Why, me and Sylvia, we'd holiday, Italy, Venice, Vegas. Ha! Every time we'd book a room no higher than the 2nd floor. Sylvia reckoned one or the both of us might go over the balcony and break our necks if we were any higher up. We liked to drink, us. Holidays the most. Glug, glug glug. Fuck, when we went to Turkey we didn't leave the hotel once for all the screwing and drinking we did...
Tandy was a very handsome man of around 50. His hair gone white prematurely, white as the freshest snow, it was long and kept back with a little butterfly clip, which looked like it were encrusted with shiny, precious things. His face was triangular, and tapered off at his extremely pointed chin that was disguised beautifully by a miniature goatee of gnarly white hair, which, as well as disguising the pointy chin, paradoxically complemented his look exquisitely. His drinkers face was very red, and this, with his white hair, give the impression it'd been snowing on Mars. But more, much more than that, he resembled The Devil.
So I decided to tread carefully as I could but of course could not suppress the most pertinent character flaws...
- It's terrible. A terrible thing to be cheated on. I know how it feels, Tandy. Have been there myself. Recently. But with your brother...? God Save Ireland! You know what that is, on your brother, anyway? Incest Bi-proxy. I mean, he's shoved his dick where his brother's been putting it every other night for the past how many years. The dirty, dirty bastard. He should've gayed you up, his own brother, and been done with it...
On instantly replaying my previous words I was mentally kicking myself when it slapped me square in the face that what I'd said altogether made an already bad and dirty thing now a terrible and filthy thing. The Devil Tandy, throughout, nodded contemplatively, then sighed. I braced myself for his verdict:
- You're right, Daniel. But more than that you have made me see that in this they are much worse than I. Saying that I already knew it. But something about the empathy and understanding of a stranger, a stranger who has experienced similar, somehow is giving me a perspective from a place other than the place I've been lately, which is feeling the victim.
- Glad I could be of service.
- I'm still going to put my house on the market. Gonna take what I make of that and my retirement and fuck off out of this terrible country.
- More power to ye, Tandy. Wish I could do the same.
- You never know, Daniel. You soon might. I owe you a favour now.
He swung his mac on , round the shoulders, hem flying, and headed toward the big gate leading into the entry. Before he went he turned and winked, and I thought again about his resemblance to The Devil. Thought back too to my six sided dice, 6 on every side, and how I'd pulled it thrice, - always: .6, 6, 6...
And so The Devil, he owed me a favour.
