The Companion

by Lorcan Roche

  And I can’t stop this gleeful grin breaking out, shite, I wish I had more control over these things because he exhales sharply through his nose as if he’s just woken up to the fact he’s been conned by Antonio Vargas – you know, the guy who played Huggy Bear in Starsky and Hutch, or by some other jive-talking street hustler with Foster Grants, a wide brim hat and loud yellow flares on.

  He stands up with no eye contact whatsoever, then he starts imitating one of those white boiler suit guys out on the runway with the paddles waving me out as if I were this big huge blue-bottle at a family-picnic, not that he’s had too many of those in his time.

  Then the crab apple-faced wanker tells me to shut the door behind me.

  So I’m out in the corridor again, except this time I notice there are no tyre tracks from Ed’s room to his and for some reason this makes me unbelievably sad, plus there is the sinking realization that I have no one to spend this money with or on; it’s as if there’s a little elevator inside my chest, someone’s just stepped in and pressed ‘b’ for basement.

  Some days you can hear your heart descend.

  All the way down to your boots.

  This time it’s my eyes that close and have their spidery fine veins exposed. I sigh, and ask myself: Self, what are you doing here? What exactly are you trying to prove, and who are you trying to prove it to?

  Don’t worry. It’s just one of these bad moments. And bad moments pass like cars on the freeway without their headlights dipped. Anyway, it’s not like I’m the only person in the world who asks himself those types of questions, now am I? And sometimes it helps to realise that the thoughts you have swimming around inside are thoughts that others most probably have too. Except, sometimes it’s difficult to prove that, isn’t it? I mean, there is no way of actually knowing unless you stand on a street corner in a suit with a survey: May I have a moment of your time please? I wonder, have you ever felt completely and utterly vanquished, even for a day? Ever felt it’s all a pointless, uphill fuckin’ struggle? Ever resorted to physical violence when the old brain gets too hot and bothered? I wonder – Do you lie to yourself on a regular basis? Twist reality in order to keep marching on? And one final question if I may, how often are you confronted by Truth? I mean, do you ever find Him sitting there patiently at the top?

  Let’s get a few things straight before we go any further; if you don’t start un-knotting the little lies by the time you tackle the big ones the whole thing will have started to tilt.

  For the record, the Committee at the Clinic never called me in nor sat me down to offer me any kind of full-time fuckin’ position: They called me in to fire me.

  On the way up to Ed’s apartment I never told the little oily elevator guy he had a stupid hat on – I merely thought it.

  And sometimes I’m not sure if thoughts actually exit my mouth as words and phrases or stay stuck up inside. I’ve often uttered things out loud that I was convinced I’d kept contained, and vice-versa. And you’re not sure therefore if you’ve managed to turn the moment round, or just got stuck in its eternal creaking and twisting.

  And I never worked as a hospital DJ, OK? I just said it because it seemed to back up whatever claim I was making at the time. Call it a white lie, an embellishment, a spoof, a spin, whatever; truth is we all do it.

  Interesting question is why?

  I used to think about being a hospital DJ quite a bit though and sometimes at the Clinic that’s what I was like. A DJ spinning yarns, keeping them distracted from snide reality. And if you ask me there’s nothing wrong with lying to sick people, nothing wrong with running out a harmless spoof to a class full of people with no arms, no legs and no dreams to speak of.

  Some of the other teachers at the Clinic lied to themselves about the real reasons they were there. In the draughty staff room they sat around, giving out shite about the facilities and the lack of investment, the ancient fax machine, the poor recompense.

  Sometimes when I was filling the kettle, I’d say, ‘Well if it’s so fuckin’ awful, why do you stay?’ and they’d say, ‘Oh, but it’s easy for you, Trevor. You’re on a short-term contract,’ then once I’d made their tea and handed it to them they’d say the real reason they stayed was because they loved to teach, loved to impart, loved to give something back.

  Bollocks.

  They enjoyed the fact that they were standing up without callipers or crutches, the fact they were walking without canes or aids or talking without stammering or drooling or their heads drooping or quaking.

  They liked it because they had power.

  I know what I’m talking about: sometimes when the class were dribbling all over themselves at something I’d said or read aloud from my diary I’d feel it in my heart, and I’d stop and stare down at my hands – I swear to Christ more than once they were actually shining, a kind of mossy, brassy ancient gold.

  For a while when I was young I thought I had healing hands. I imagined these posters of me in a white suit on lamp posts across Ireland telling people I was coming to their village soon, that anyone with psoriasis or eczema or shingles, anyone with mysterious spots or pustules appearing on their face or forehead should break open the piggy bank and get ready to be saved, Hallelujah.

  4

  Walking along Madison thinking, I’d love to be a simple person with a straightforward workaday job, a plumber or plasterer, someone who whistles while he works, his (one syllable) name embossed on the side of a vintage Chevy van. Someone who fixes things, who comes from a laughing family who’d sat around playing board games instead of puffing on pipes and arguing Greek philosophy, pretending they liked one another.

  Someone normal.

  Sometimes you see these couples – I’ve just passed one – and they’re not the drop-dead gorgeous ones with chiselled features and Swedish au pairs or Mexican maids, or satin skin and racehorse shins. They’re not the ones with Farrah Fawcett teeth or 500 dollar haircuts or clothes that fit perfectly. The ones I’m talking about are everyday and unassuming, but when they pass you feel this aura of durability.

  He has his son perched on his surprisingly wide shoulders, while the bright-eyed mother casually holds hands with their smiling, freckled daughter. They’ve bought her one of those little red twirling windmills and it is visibly generating happiness.

  Every single object they witness is imbued.

  With possibility.

  They’ve been blessed with ordinariness, they’re content with their lot, not absurdly seeking miracles or popping pills or desperately trying to reinvent themselves. They’re not dreaming of another life. They’re not applying for reality TV or plastic surgery makeover shows, not paying disengaged doctors to half-listen, not shagging sad secretaries in crotchless undies. They’re not running first thing in the morning from who and what they really are. And when things go wrong – when money’s tight, when the kids need braces, when the van needs a new transmission – they sit in the kitchen, talk calmly, hold hands and work things out. And when they make love later, they are able to look inside each other because nothing is hidden. No one wears a disguise.

  They have so much it makes your heart race and your feet refuse to go any farther and your brain gets stuck on a really simple question: What is it they have that I don’t?

  The guy sees me staring at his little girl, his wife. He unhooks his son, steadies himself and begins to stare back. Except suddenly he seems to understand what’s in my heart, because he winks, ‘What’s up, bro?’ And in three little words he bestows upon me the no longer absurd possibility that some day I will have what he has.

  I too will radiate capability. Calm.

  Fuck’s sake, Trevor, you don’t even have a girlfriend. Get on with the fuckin’ show.

  There’s a bit of palaver at the Chase Manhattan, you’d swear I’d demanded the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. And I should’ve got the Judge to make it out to cash since the teller is one of those hatchet-faced old bags with big hair like Margaret fuckin’ Thatcher she gets a r
eal buzz out of saying, ‘No.’

  I ask to see the manager, so she presses a button and out comes this Puerto-Rican guy who hasn’t entirely left the streets behind. He’s shaking his impossibly smooth bald head, looking at his tacky big wristwatch as if it was the middle of the night. ‘I’ll have to ring the Judge. You sure you wanna do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’s on the phone now, describing me. I can see him smile and bite his big lilac lip like an angel fish at something Il Judgo has said, then he tells the woman with the hair to give me the money after which he struts away like a peacock with his pastel pink shirt on. You’d swear he’d just solved the Arab-Israeli conflict.

  She counts out the cash as if it was coming out of her personal piggy bank and when she’s finished, I take it and count it over again. Slowly. She asks is there anything else she can help me with and in terms of boredom in the voice she could give Ellie a real run for her money. I tell her yes, actually there is one other thing and she says, ‘Go ahead.’ So I say, ‘Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying this’ – I look at her nametag – ‘Mabel, but your stupid ass hair would make a terrific nest for a flock of fuckin’ seagulls or a big fat minah bird. Seriously, you should think about renting that Marge-Simpson mess of yours out to the Bronx Zoo since a lot of storks and pink flamingos find winters up here very tough going indeed.’

  She doesn’t bat an eyelid, just whispers through the glass, ‘You keep taking those pills now, you hear.’

  As I’m walking away, wondering who came off best in the encounter, she calls after me in a sing-song voice that’s incredibly irritating, ‘Have a nice day now!’

  And she very nearly wins, except I turn around and say even louder, ‘Hey, love that hair!’

  No contest.

  Then I start laughing out loud because I have this image of Mabel running after me, challenging me to a dance-off. And it turns out she’s into body-popping and was one of the original Michael Jackson Thriller dancers so I’m forced to do this elaborate Michael Flatley routine, jumping over trash cans. In the end, people in the street call it a draw, me and Mabel bow, smile at each other and walk away, happy.

  Strolling along, thinking, Nice to have a few bob again. Weird how having no money saps your strength; you feel as if someone has strapped a sadistic band on your back and they’re just waiting until you get to the corner, and it’s all a bit of a strain, and you’re forever counting out your paranoid change feeling incredibly guilty for not leaving tips in ancient aluminium diners in Astoria.

  I pass this black guy twice my age. He’s wearing a little coloured hat, like a wizard. He’s squatting on the sidewalk with every single thing he has left in the world laid out on a threadbare rug.

  I’m not good in these sorts of situations.

  When he looks up, he has the saddest moo-cow eyes with these huge baby doll lashes attached.

  There are Life magazines from the ’60s and ’70s with amazing pictures of JFK as a child inside, and battered books including one called The Dangling Man which is an excellent title altogether. Beside it there’s a record player in a box with a busted handle, leaning delicately against that a copy of the Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Underneath there’s another album called Ramshackled by some guy I’ve never heard of, Alan White, and you won’t believe what Squatting Guy says: White used to be the drummer in Yes. I’m thinking, Maybe I’ll buy it for Ed, so I put it back down. I don’t want to appear too interested.

  Squatting Guy has a stained, antique-lace tablecloth, a paperweight with a butterfly trapped inside, which has a hairline fracture, and this decrepit, dusty old typewriter. I hear this schmaltzy Waltons-type voiceover saying that some of the saddest achey-breakey letters home to Egypt or Ethiopia or Zaire – or wherever the fuck he comes from – were delicately tapped out late at night on this trusty old portable. How he was paying his way through medical school working as a doorman in some yuppie building. How he had a major falling out with some Aryan bitch because he failed to inform her that her personal trainer would be five minutes late. How she wielded her influence with the building manager and the Aryan Residents’ Committee. How she had him canned because basically he never smiled like a good professional doorman should. How he always had his goddamn nose stuck in a book when she was outside in the rain struggling to get out of her cab with three bags full of designer-label shopping.

  I try to stop myself touching the typewriter, but I can’t. The g and d keys aren’t working very well he says, but other than that it is a most reliable machine, a Remington, which is in point of fact the Rolls-Royce of typewriters. He stands up as he says this and nearly topples over because his little stick-insect legs have gone to sleep beneath him, which means he must have been there for the longest time, maybe even forever.

  There are lots of medical texts with their backs broken and I have this incredible urge to ask him, What went wrong? Was there a precise moment in Time where you felt it all slip-sliding away? But I know if I start getting into it I won’t be able to stop and what I have to remember is, I’ve only just got myself sorted.

  With his open palms and moo-cow eyes he invites me to make him an offer, but I tell him, ‘Nah, it’s OK.’

  He looks at his filthy toenails and worn-out sandals. You can see in his heart he doesn’t really expect anyone to buy his old junk, so that’s when I tell him I’m interested in Alan White. He picks up the LP as if it was a Stradivarius. With bone-thin fingers he slides out the inner sleeve, slowly, then the record, and it’s like new (or else he’s spray-painted it with some lacquer shit). Even so, I ask him how much and he says, ‘What about five dollars?’

  ‘What about it,’ I say, and he says ‘OK, my friend, what about four?’

  I know it’s cruel but I leave a tiny little pause before saying, ‘Actually, I think that’s way too little for such a rare and unusual long player.’

  He doesn’t understand, he thinks I’m taking the piss and his chest collapses in on itself with a little, sad sigh. I give him a twenty and tell him keep the change. His chest swells out again, in fact he becomes very excited altogether and tells me to take something else, please, take the typewriter, get the two keys fixed, write some nice long letters home, yes? I’m thinking, Actually, I don’t really write that many letters home but if I did I’d use email, thanks all the same.

  Then he does the strangest thing: he takes my hands in his, which are surprisingly cold, leathery and old; he kisses them twice with his parchment-dry lips and says in a Hammer Horror, Egyptian Mummy kind of whisper, ‘The money you have given me will return to you one thousand fold. Allah and the honourable Elijah Mohammed will see to it henceforth they will travel with you. You are my friend. You are my saviour also. Yes my friend, all this is true.’

  Which you have to admit is kind of overdoing it. I don’t really know what to say, so I just go, ‘Thanks very much, you are my friend also,’ and put my hand on his shoulder – shit, the guy really is cold.

  He smiles bravely. I don’t know why but I always expect black as well as brown people to have perfect teeth, but he doesn’t. In fact they’re yellow and soft-looking, like eggs, another reason the Aryan bitch might have wanted him to hit the road, jack.

  ‘Sir, he says, ‘you need to realize something,’ except he leaves a huge fuckin’ pause that makes me feel extremely ill at ease.

  Then at last: ‘You need to realize, you are a good man, a kind man.’

  I’d much prefer to keep moving, to re-enter the tumult of people chewing mobile phones, only that would be phenomenally rude.

  He’s blathering on about riches of the soul, how Heaven will reward me for my great act of charity. Jesus, I really wish he’d give it a rest because there’s always that thing in the air in New York, isn’t there? I mean, they’re always tuned in eagerly awaiting The Second Act in The Universal Freak Show. And I really don’t appreciate it when guys in expensive lightweight suits start staring as if I had two fuckin’ heads and to be honest it’s been a righ
t rollercoaster of a day emotionally-speaking, what with Ed and his mother, plus the whole bizarre experience of sitting on the side of her bed, which reminded me of sitting on the side of my own mother’s.

  By the way, it was my mother who first showed me how, if you sprinkled a bit of love on top of the other ingredients, you could rest assured someone at the table, usually my old man, would nod, tap his mouth three times with his napkin and say, ‘This is delicious darling. What was it you put into it?’ To which she’d answer, and not always in such a sweet and gentle voice, ‘A dollop of love and a little bit of understanding, dear.’

  A gay guy in a silver spacesuit that once belonged to a much bigger person hands me a flyer for Studio 54 which says all drinks are half-price, fuck it, why not?

  It’s half-empty, just your usual assortment of losers and day-time boozers, they all look like extras from a David Mamet movie, you know, Joe Mantegna-look-alikes with fake Rolex watches and grizzled chest-wigs on display. One guy even has a match moving about in his mouth, left to fuckin’ right, right to fuckin’ left. Another has forearms like Popeye; a set of worry beads lies idle on the sticky tabletop beside him.

  Rules of the house: No one talks to anyone else.

  I order a beer, the barman is a total dickhead, he lists off about fifty brands and I’m standing there thinking what would be nice when he says, ‘Take your time, I got all fuckin’ day.’ This other guy on a high stool laughs out loud, like Santa Claus.