Rhino What You Did Last Summer

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  The next scene is Cillian in the gorden, sitting in the swingchair with Honor, telling her that the economies of the developed world have downgraded manufacturing as a means of wealth creation and become almost wholly reliant on a financial sector that sees speculation and risk-taking as its raison d’être. He says that the great political project of the early years of the twenty-first century was selling people a dream of an expanding home- and share-owning middle class, where people could exist off the income from multiple rental properties, giving them time and money to consume more. Then he says that people bought a lifestyle dream that they believed was prosperity and that millions of people are going to pay for it with their jobs, their homes and their pensions.

  I stand up and throw my half-full Coca-Cola cup at him and it hits him – thwock! – on the back of the head. ‘Don’t you be filling my daughter’s head with that shite,’ I go, but Sorcha turns around in her seat and tells me to leave him alone, then I see her put her orm around him and say something – presumably soothing? – in his ear.

  The next scene is, like, Sorcha and Erika in the kitchen, shooting the shit about some floor-length Versace that Han Ye-Seul wore to some charity benefit or other in Pepperdine University. Then Sorcha mentions that I’m getting, like, a nose job – not a word about it being an old rugby injury. In fact, Erika even says that she’s glad that she got her mother’s nose and not her old man’s, like I did.

  Everyone in the cinema cracks up laughing – it’s like, yeah, whatever.

  Then it’s back to me again. You see me in, like, the hospital waiting room, checking out the different noses to see which one suits me best. Harvey has been, like, spliced out of the scene, which was his choice, I suppose.

  It comes as news to me that I actually died twice during the surgery – as in, my hort literally stopped? – and that two scrub nurses had to twice go up to the roof of the hospital, first to talk San Sancilio out of focking himself off, then second to talk him into putting some kind of feature over the gaping hole he’d left in my face.

  It’s all very Grey’s Anatomy.

  I’m just about to tap Trevion on the shoulder, roysh, to ask him if that actually happened or if it was all set up for the cameras, when it suddenly flicks to the next scene and it’s, like, him and the old dear, sitting in an office in Columbia Records, negotiating her so-called record deal. And she’s full of it, of course, demanding this, that and the other – the water has to be San Pellegrino and it has to be, like, a certain temperature.

  But to be honest, roysh, it’s more the caption that grabs my attention because it’s like, ‘Trevion Warwick, agent and boyfriend’, and I’m thinking, I don’t believe it – she’s leading him on, the poor focker.

  I’m sure she’s only dying for me to say something, though, which is why I don’t.

  The next scene is, like, me and Erika, face to face in the kitchen that day, the deep meaningfuls, blahdy blah, then the final credits roll and it’s, like, Greg Laswell singing an acoustic version of Madonna’s ‘Beautiful Stranger’ while the two of us just, like, stare into each other’s eyes and – I’m happy to say – you can’t see that I’ve got a horn on me.

  At the end, roysh, they show a preview of, like, next week’s show, which is basically me giving my old dear dog’s abuse while she’s trying to sing. I actually forgot that I called her a truffle-hunter – it was just one of those moments of, like, pure inspiration, some would say genius.

  We all give ourselves a major round of applause, then we head down to the kitchen, where Sorcha’s prepared some canapés – chicken and chickpea satay skewers, prawns wrapped in courgette strips, then duck and spiced nectarine miniature bruschettas, which are all my old dear’s recipes, by the way. She’s such a lick-orse.

  So we’re all standing around – the cast and crew. I notice Sorcha piling food onto a plate for Cillian, who wants to eat his in the study – sitting with his money.

  I’m holding Honor in one orm and I’m milling into the chicken with the other and I’m going, ‘Honor, can you say, “Daddy”?’

  But she’s just going, ‘¿Me trae helado, por favor?’

  Then, for some reason, she wants to go to her grandmother, so I hand her to the old dear, then take my nosebag outside and sit eating it in the sun. A couple of minutes later, Trevion comes out and sits down on the step beside me. He says that MTV focking love the scene in the recording studio – one of the senior executives even said I was a bigger orse-hole than Spencer and Justin Bobby combined – and they want more of the same. He says Joni Mitchell’s playing at the Hollywood Bowl next week and they’ve managed to secure the old dear a guest slot singing a duet with her. Johnny Sarno wants me there, hurling abuse at her from the audience.

  I’m there, ‘As long as you think you can handle it this time.’

  I look at him, checking out his face. The focker looks like he’s been bobbing for apples in a deep fat fryer. ‘I got to admit,’ he goes, ‘when I hear you talking to her the way you do, all I want to do is rip your fucking head off…’

  I nod like I understand. ‘I saw the caption,’ I go. ‘You’re together now? Congratulations. Although from Sahara to her – that’s some comedown.’

  He just stares off into the night. ‘I seen bad things in my life. Man’s inhumanity to man. I been tortured in a thousand different ways. When I hear about waterboarding, I laugh – waterboarding would have been a fucking holiday for me. It hardens your heart, I can tell you, to the point where you think you can never truly feel again…’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I go. ‘Then you met my old dear and all that changed?’

  He goes, ‘You betcha, Swayze.’

  Being honest, I’ve never heard of Joni Mitchell, although the Hollywood Bowl is rammers in fairness, we’re talking fifteen thousand people paying up to two hundred snots apiece to hear her sing a collection of her favourite songs, along with – get this – her friends.

  I only laugh, roysh, because you already know who one of her mates suddenly is.

  It’s an unbelievable evening – must be still, I don’t know, eighty, ninety degrees out, even though it’s after nine o’clock – and the bag of rotten fruit that I’ve got between my knees is actually starting to hum, and we’re talking seriously hum here.

  Beside me, Johnny tells me to try to recapture, if I can, the same intensity of feeling as that day in the recording studio. I tell him it won’t be a problem.

  Out she eventually comes – not the old dear, I’m talking Joni Mitchell – and the crowd goes ballistic, even though, if I’m being honest, it wouldn’t be my kind of music? Her voice is a bit, I don’t know, miserable, like one of those whalesong CDs that Sorcha used to listen to when she was up the spout.

  Anyway, she tells the audience how wonderful it is to be here, blahdy blah, and how she’s going to be singing – like I told you – some of the songs that have inspired her, from way back to the time she was busking on the streets of Toronto exactly forty years ago. Yeah, whatever.

  That even gets a round of applause. See, it’s that kind of crowd – easy to please, which should suit the old dear.

  She says she’s going to be joined in this celebration by some of her dearest, dearest friends and I end up turning to the couple beside me – we’re sitting in sort of, like, pens? – and going, ‘You know who one of those friends is, don’t you?’ but they just blank me.

  I’ve a bit of a wait ahead of me, as it happens.

  First up is, like, Carol King and the two of them end up singing ‘I Feel the Earth Move’ and ‘Sweet Seasons’ together, followed by – apparently – ‘Smackwater Jack’ and you can see everyone, like, really getting into it? Then it’s, like, her and Carly Simon giving it ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ and ‘You’re So Vain’, which makes me laugh, roysh, because that was Sorcha’s breaking-up song for me when I finished with her once – I have to admit – two days before her Leaving.

  Then it’s, like, Faith Hill, who I have heard of, and
they end up singing ‘Where You Lead’, then some other song I’ve never heard of.

  Then, finally, Joni goes, ‘My next guest is someone who, in the very short time that I’ve known her, has inspired me greatly and reminded me that art, ultimately, is about confession. She is a wonderful writer. She is an extraordinary singer. But most of all… she’s a woman.’

  That actually gets a massive round of applause by itself.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she goes, ‘Fionnuala! O’Carroll! Kelly!’

  The audience, I’m ashamed to say, goes absolutely ballistic. The next thing, she appears, the focking plumpa lumpa. They’ve got this, like, trapdoor at the back of the stage and the guests come up through it – presumably there’s, like, a lift underneath it?

  She walks to the front, waving, and airkisses Joni twice on each cheek. My phone beeps – a text from Sorcha, who’s sitting with Erika in the front row. It’s like, ‘Omg she luks AMAZING – thats d ruffled moschino i told her to get insted of d catherine malandrino 1! U must b SO proud .’

  I send her one back, just going, ‘Proud? She looks like she should be sweeping the stage.’

  But then the singing storts. ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’. What else? She focking slaughters it. And that’s me being, I don’t know, objective. I mean, Joni holds her end up, but the old dear sounds like a brick in a focking tumble dryer.

  ‘Okay,’ Johnny goes beside me, ‘we’re rolling here – whenever you’re ready.’

  I stick my hand in the bag and whip out what I’m pretty sure is a mango. Gerry Thornley, who’s one of the few people in the world who’s ever seen me take a lineout throw, actually wrote in the Irish Times once that I could even do a job for Leinster as a hooker, if it came to it. And it’s Gerry – obviously a legend to me – that I actually think about when I shout, ‘Get off the focking stage!’ and launch that mango in her direction. It goes ppphhhttt, flying through the air and lands, splat, right at her feet, exploding everywhere and splashing her, I don’t know, Sergio Rossis.

  Suddenly, roysh, there’s, like, literally hundreds of people turning around in their seats, squinting into the sun, trying to see where it came from, and the one or two who know where it came from tell me I’m an asshole.

  Of course, I’m thinking, fock it, I lived with that – and worse – for most of my rugby career and I never let it put me off my game. So I reach into the bag again and pull out, this time, a honeydew melon, big and heavy and dripping like a focked fridge.

  ‘You suck!’ I shout this time.

  And, again, I launch it, straight and on target, and the old dear has to actually step out of the way to avoid having her focking head taken off by it.

  Again, it just explodes all over the stage and I turn around and look at Johnny, who gives me the thumbs-up, as if to say, yeah, he got it on film.

  The old dear finishes up and gets – unbelievably – a standing ovation, while I continue giving her dog’s. And it’s at that exact point that I sense the mood of the crowd stort to turn. There’s a lot of people suddenly turning around in their seats, telling me exactly what I am, then more and more stort to suddenly recognize who I am.

  It’s all, ‘Hey, that’s her son.’

  And then, ‘It’s that jerk off the TV with the bandage on his nose!’

  And even, ‘Fucking a-hole gave coffee to a baby.’

  I’ve always been pretty good, roysh, at gauging the public mood, which is how I’m already up out of my seat when I notice this humungous focker, three or four pens in front of me, with a shaved head, pretty much bursting out of just a leather waistcoat, turn to his wife and go, ‘I’m going to go beat the shit out of this guy,’ except he says it, like, casually, like you’d say, I’m just going to go get a hot dog.

  Then he storts making his way out of the row and up the steps towards me. Again, it’s my turn of speed that would have impressed most neutrals there. I leave him standing and eating my dust. But there’s a lot of people who get suddenly brave when they see me running for my life. They’re, like, kicking me in the orse as I leg it past and throwing shit from their picnic baskets at me. A piece of Stromboli hits me smack in the face and an entire rotisserie chicken misses my head by, like, inches.

  ‘Fucking a-hole!’ they’re all shouting. And then, ‘Show your mother some goddamn respect!’

  There’s actually a herd of people chasing me, but thankfully, roysh, I just so happen to have what they don’t have – in other words, a backstage pass. I head for the VIP area and stort flashing my laminate at the bouncers – four of them, standing shoulder to shoulder – from, like, forty yords away. They sort of, like, part at the last minute to let me by, then – suddenly safe – I turn around and watch them hold back the angry mob, who are shouting all sorts of abuse in my general direction, like I’m the biggest orse-hole on TV and how if it was, like, Big Brother, or even Dancing with the Stars, I’d have been voted off the show after week one.

  I’m standing there, picking bits of avocado and meatloaf out of my hair, suddenly seeing the funny side of it now. I just laugh, give them the famous finger, then I turn around and go look for her, just to rub it in, I suppose.

  It turns out she’s in, like, her dressing room? Her and Trevion are having a moment. I can hear him telling her she was sensational. And – get this – they’re, like, kissing, as in kissing on the mouth?

  ‘Did I keep my composure,’ she’s going, ‘when the first piece of fruit struck?’

  ‘Hey,’ he goes, ‘you didn’t miss a note. Did you hear that crowd? They loved you.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ I go, sticking my head around the door.

  She’s in his orms. It’s like, puke!

  He looks at me like he actually wants to kill me.

  ‘Remember, Trevion, it was acting,’ I go, with a big smirk on my face. I still owe him big-time for letting that lunatic loose on my body. ‘It was all just for the cameras,’ and of course he can do nothing.

  She doesn’t even look at me.

  ‘Come on,’ he goes to her, like he thinks it’ll bother me, ‘LeAnn Rimes can’t wait to meet you.’

  I end up hanging around backstage, roysh, drinking a beer, not knowing at that point that the evening is about to get even focking better. I find myself standing, roysh, directly under the stage and I’m watching the live feed from what’s happening above me on this little monitor. There’s, like, a kid singing with Joni now and they’re doing, like, a medley of songs from all children’s movies?

  It’s, like, ‘A Whole New World’. ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight?’ All that muck.

  All of a sudden, roysh, I realize there’s something about this kid that’s, I don’t know, familiar? Then suddenly it hits me.

  It’s Danny Lintz.

  I barely recognize him without the Coca-Cola-bottle lenses. He’s got, like, a little tux on as well and his hair has been Brylcreemed to one side. But it’s him. I’d recognize that face anywhere. I think to myself, okay, let’s see how big you are without the rest of the Barney kids to back you up.

  I look over both shoulders. There’s no one else around, although I still haven’t made my mind up yet what I’m actually going to do.

  The last song they do together is ‘A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes’ and it finishes with what I’m pretty sure is called a crescendo, then yet another standing ovation and the crowd going basically ballistic.

  I’m watching on the monitor as Joni gives him a hug, then goes, ‘Ladies and gentlemen – Danny Lintz,’ and he takes the applause of the crowd – the little prick – with his orms outstretched, walking backwards.

  Backwards…

  Backwards towards the trapdoor…

  Any of the greats who’ve played the game will tell you that in the split-second before you get an intercept, you know firstly exactly what’s going to happen and secondly exactly what you’re going to do.

  That’s what this is like.

  My eyes immediately turn to the right and I c
op this massive hydraulic machine thing, directly under the trapdoor, which I know straight away is the lift that takes people up and down through the stage.

  Without taking my eyes off the screen, I kick away the two blocks that are holding the wheels in place.

  I know that timing is everything here.

  So I’m looking at him, holding out his orms, nodding and smiling and mouthing the words, ‘Thank you!’ the little focker that he is.

  He’s walking backwards, backwards, backwards… Until his foot reaches back to step onto the platform behind him.

  That’s when I suddenly throw my shoulder against the machine and roll it out of the way.

  The next thing I hear is, ‘Aaarrrggghhh!’ as Danny Lintz comes hurtling through the focking ceiling and hits the floor beside me with a pretty much splat.

  All of a sudden, people come running, people with clipboards, people with headphones, people with walkie-talkies, going, ‘There’s been an accident! There’s been an accident!’

  I lean over him, roysh, pretending to be checking on him. He looks seriously dazed, but he looks at my face and, even allowing for the bandages, I see, like, a flicker of recognition in his eyes.

  ‘No one,’ I go, ‘and I mean no one – focks with Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.’

  It’s some question.

  ‘When you meet a girl for the first time, what goes through your mind?’

  I’m about to say that it depends what she looks like. But that’d be a lie. ‘I usually think, I wonder what she’d look like naked,’ I go. ‘And that’s me being honest. Either that or, how do I get her naked? I’d be considered a major player back home.’

  I have to say, roysh, it should feel weird talking about this shit in, like, a yoga pose, but it actually doesn’t?

  ‘So sex is about ego for you,’ Hugo goes. ‘It’s about domination.’

  ‘Can be,’ I go. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t be, like, anti it?’

  ‘And this girl you talked about the last day…’