Open-handed

by Chris Binchy

  ‘Will you do it? Marcin?’ the manager called after them. It was the first time he’d used his name.

  ‘Do fucking not,’ Ray said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Marcin called back. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hundred euro,’ the manager called after him.

  Marcin stopped. ‘No. Sorry. I can’t.’ The two of them faced each other across the damp floor.

  ‘Two hundred. Cash.’

  Marcin hesitated. ‘Into my hand? Today?’

  ‘Yeah. Okay, come on. Let’s get this thing sorted out.’

  He wore an apron tied around his face and a pair of rubber gloves. He had a bin liner in his hand as he worked his way along the duct on his stomach, clanging and booming as he went. The pipe swayed from side to side. He did not feel safe.

  ‘Is this thing going to fall?’ he shouted, but he couldn’t have heard any answer. It was hot and airless when the machine was switched off and the smell was intense. Sweat began to run on his face. When he got closer he saw the cat, a little stripy thing, grey and brown, not much more than a kitten, lying on its side and faced away from him. It was a very small animal to be causing all these problems, Marcin thought. He got the torch into a position where he could see what he was doing.

  ‘Got to move you now, fellow,’ he said.

  He lay on his side and opened the bag, held it in one hand as he reached out to lift the cat’s body by the tail. It came away in his hand and the air clouded with little black flies. The smell got much worse.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ he shouted, his voice too big in the tight space. He gagged and thought he could hear Tommy laughing below him. He threw the tail into the bag and grabbed at the body trying to get it all over with in one go. But his hand passed through the animal’s fur as if there was nothing there. He looked at the glove and saw a brown slime that was all that was left of its body. He tried to wipe his hand on the side of the duct and knocked the torch so that it skittered away and landed out of reach beyond the cat. Marcin lay still for a moment in the darkness trying to keep himself calm. He breathed in slowly but the smell was too bad now. It was a horror film. He took off the dirty glove first, then the other, threw them as far away as the limited space allowed. He turned back on to his stomach and began to wriggle towards where he’d come from as fast as he could, panic rising in him as he went.

  Marcin sat in the canteen drinking tea and eating toast. He needed something to put himself right. The day shift were starting and the place cleared out after eight. Tommy came in.

  ‘Are you not gone?’ Marcin asked.

  ‘Not yet. Is there tea in that?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He poured a cup and sat back.

  ‘Will you come for one after?’

  ‘Okay,’ Marcin said.

  ‘I thought you might need one.’

  ‘I do. Thanks.’

  They sat not speaking, the television booming out the news above their heads. The remote control was somewhere around the place. Marcin finished eating. He was going to ask Tommy for a cigarette when he saw someone he recognized on the screen. It took him a moment to place the face. ‘It’s him,’ Marcin said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our friend.’

  ‘What friend?’ Tommy said.

  Marcin looked over his shoulder. They were alone.

  ‘From upstairs. In the room. Five three eight. Every week.’

  Tommy shook his head. ‘I don’t know him,’ he said.

  A man was being interviewed on the steps of a building. He spoke in a strong, confident voice, welcoming this decision and expressing his pleasure at what it would mean for the residents of the local area. His full head of white hair was ruffled every so often by a breeze coming in from the sea, visible in the background. He was surrounded by a small group of smiling supporters.

  ‘This guy behind.’ Marcin got up, stood underneath the screen and pointed.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tommy said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life. And neither have you.’

  Oh,’ Marcin said. ‘I understand.’

  An hour later they sat together at a counter drinking in silence. The change from one of the fifties that the manager had given Marcin was on the counter in front of them and he knew they would sit there until it was gone. Outside on the street it was the middle of the morning rush-hour, a great common enterprise. To be doing the same thing as everyone else, that was worth something in itself. To be participating in the real world. There could be comfort in routine, no pain in boredom.

  ‘None of them will have to clean up a cat today. Not one person.’

  ‘Will you stop?’ Tommy said. ‘You got paid. Three hundred quid for five minutes’ work. You should be happy.’

  He had done it. He had gone back in. He hadn’t wanted to but he couldn’t say no to the better offer. He’d spent twenty minutes in the shower afterwards. But if he thought about it, the smell was still there, as if it was in his clothes or in his skin or in him. He tried to think of something else but after a minute spoke again. ‘It was like a paste, Tommy.’ He rubbed his fingers together. ‘Sticky, you know.’

  Tommy put a hand to his mouth and hiccuped. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Just forget about it. Have a drink. Shut up.’

  35

  At half six Dessie pulled into a garage on his way into town. He bought tea, twenty cigarettes and two sausage rolls, which the deli girl heated for him in a little toaster oven that did the job almost as quickly as a microwave and kept the pastry flaky. He gathered his things and went outside where he sat on a low wall facing out across the traffic. He was just finishing his breakfast when a man got out of a parked car and walked towards him. Dessie looked around to see if there was anything near him that the man might be heading for – a water can or a bin or something that would bring this guy in his direction. He might have said something, but his mouth was full. The man came closer, then stopped a couple of feet away and Dessie looked up at him. ‘What’s the story?’ he said, as soon as he’d swallowed.

  ‘Dessie, yeah?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You’re Dessie Considine, right? You’re Sylvester Kelly’s driver.’

  Dessie stood up. He was much shorter than this man. ‘Hang on. Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘My name is Declan Hennessy. I’m a journalist with –’

  ‘Are you the fellow was talking to Sylvester before? Annoying him with phone calls and ringing his wife and all?’

  ‘I spoke to him. I tried to ring you as well but you never answered.’

  ‘I don’t answer my phone to cunts I don’t know.’

  ‘I was just asking him questions about his relationship with David O’Donnell.’

  ‘Ah, here. You can stop with this now.’ Dessie started walking back towards the car. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Do you know anything about the Vienna Park apartment complex in Prague?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about anything.’ He opened the car door.

  ‘Come on, Dessie,’ Declan Hennessy said. ‘You were there too.’

  Dessie took two steps towards him and held his finger pointing at his face. ‘Don’t you talk to me like that, you prick. You don’t know me. Who are you to come up to me out of the blue when I’m having my breakfast, asking me questions and calling me by my first name? You need to get some fucking manners. Or have them put on you.’ Declan Hennessy stood at a safe distance watching him impassively, as if his words meant nothing to him. Dessie made a move as if he was about to rush him and Hennessy flinched and took a step back. Dessie laughed. ‘You arsehole,’ he said, and got into the car.

  When he was closer to town and had calmed down he rang Sylvester.

  ‘Early for a call, Dessie.’

  Dessie laughed. ‘You’re saying this to me? You? The scourge of my wife’s mornings?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I just got doorstepped by some
little pup of a journalist.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Eating a fucking sausage roll at the side of the road near Chapelizod. Walks up to me and says, “You’re Sylvester Kelly’s driver.” Starts asking me about David O’Donnell and Prague.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. Not a thing. I told him to piss off.’

  ‘How did he know who you were?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if he knew I’d be there or if he was following me or what.’

  ‘Hennessy. Was that the name?’

  ‘Yeah. Where is he getting this stuff?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Well, you should put a call in to his editor and tell him that it’s not on. He can’t be doing this kind of thing. He just walked up to me. How are you, Dessie? I thought he was going to fucking shoot me.’

  ‘Why would anyone shoot you, Dessie?’

  ‘I had a life before I met you.’

  ‘I know that. But I thought you’d buried all those skeletons.’

  ‘I did. But still. Sometimes they come back from the grave. What will I do if this guy comes near me again? Will I batter him?’

  ‘No,’ Sylvester said. ‘Jesus, are you mad?’

  ‘I wasn’t serious,’ Dessie said. ‘I just thought I’d check.’

  ‘Ignore him and he’ll get bored.’

  ‘You ring his editor and say you’ll get an injunction.’

  ‘What kind of injunction?’

  ‘I don’t know. A barring order or whatever.’

  ‘He’s a freelance. There’s nothing I can do about it. Just say nothing and don’t hit him.’

  ‘Cheeky little cunt, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is,’ Sylvester said. ‘But it goes with the territory. I think it’s O’Donnell he’s after, not me.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of it already.’

  ‘I’ll have to get you media-trained.’

  ‘The only media training I want to do is with an iron bar.’

  ‘Oh, Dessie. Bad press. There is such a thing.’

  36

  After a couple of drinks one morning on his way home Marcin wandered into Rathmines, the smell of fast food in the air and the ground sticky under his feet. In a Spar he bought a card with the red and white colours of the Polish flag on it. He held it in his hand like an ID as he crossed the road to a payphone, calculating that he had enough credit to talk to his parents for ten hours, more than he’d need in a year. He dialled, the familiar last seven digits beeping a melody he knew. The background noise of the street at least would convey to them that he was somewhere else. Maybe the sound of people passing would be foreign enough, the gull-like voices of the swaggering kids in tracksuits could transform into something exotic if you didn’t understand them. The different tone of the police sirens might distract them from the implausibility of what he was saying. But it wasn’t that implausible. It could have happened.

  ‘Hello,’ his father’s voice said, and Marcin waited a second before speaking.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Ah.’

  They talked about phoning. About how long it had been. How their Internet had been down or broken or had some minor technical problem that probably meant something needed to be turned on.

  Marcin told his father he was working on a dig. That he was excavating a site in the centre of Dublin, possibly Viking, and that it was going well. He said that the money was just about enough but he thought he might be able to get something related to supplement it. That the people he was working with were from all over the world, that he had seen Artur a few times and that he was doing okay. He asked for their news and his father told him, you know, nothing really. Everything was fine. The weather was a bit hot but not too bad. The cat had been at the vet because the fur on her back had got very thin, but she was home now. Taking the tablets.

  ‘That was before I left.’

  ‘Was it? Yeah, not much has been happening, really. Do you want to talk to your mother?’

  ‘Is she there?’

  ‘She’s here. She wants to talk to you. Fighting to take the phone out of my hand.’

  ‘Hello,’ came her voice.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. How are you? Any news?’

  ‘No. Tell me what you’ve been doing.’

  The same conversation over again. ‘Yes,’ she said, every so often. ‘Right.’ He stopped speaking. He could picture her where she was, sitting in a wicker chair facing down the hallway, staring blindly into the distance as she always did when she was on the phone, always lost in some sort of vision of whoever she was talking to, her memory of them, that distracted her from whatever they might be saying. He could walk through the door of their apartment now and she wouldn’t even notice. Go to the kitchen and find whatever leftovers were in the fridge and head out on to the balcony and drink juice and look across the playing-fields and the school building to the town beyond.

  ‘Are you even listening to me?’ he said then.

  ‘Of course I am. What else would I be doing?’

  ‘I’m going to go,’ he said, and put the phone down. He went into McDonald’s and bought a milkshake. On his way home he dropped the phone card into a bin, then a minute later thought better of it, went back and fished it out.

  37

  She saw Luke White walking through the place looking straight ahead but aware of the people around him. He came up to the bar, and when he saw her he nodded her over. ‘Are you finishing now?’

  ‘Ten minutes.’ She had arranged to get out as soon as the bar stopped serving.

  ‘That’s fine. Have you got half an hour?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘It’s work-related.’ He smiled.

  ‘Half an hour is okay,’ she said, ‘but then I have to go. I’m meeting someone.’

  ‘That’s fine. No problem. Will we go?’

  ‘Should I not…?’ She pointed down the bar at her manager.

  ‘I’m borrowing Agnes,’ White shouted over.

  She got her jacket and bag and they walked out on to the street. It was throbbing and messy, a blur of colour and noise, shouting and lurching.

  ‘It’s different when you’re sober,’ White said, over his shoulder at her as he walked along quickly, then turned down towards the quays. ‘How was tonight?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just to meet someone down here.’ He waved his arm vaguely towards the river. Her pace slowed and she walked behind him slightly at a distance. He turned and saw this. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m not taking you anywhere dodgy. Just here. Do you know this place?’

  It was some sort of club. Three big, suited bouncers, red carpet at the door, velvet rope and a few people standing around outside. The bouncers stood back when White approached and smiled at him. ‘Luke,’ one said.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Upstairs, is it?’ The bouncer held a door open. White waited for Agnieszka to go through. She walked up the stairs ahead of him, aware that the music she could hear was coming from the ground floor. Above, it seemed quiet. She turned into a room that was dark, lit by candles, spacious with more people than it seemed at first, sitting on couches and armchairs.

  ‘You haven’t been here before,’ White said to her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s nice, isn’t it? A good place to talk and there aren’t many of them in town at this time of the night. I just want to see…’

  He wandered away from her, looking for someone, then smiled and waved at a woman in a dark business suit who stood when she saw him. Agnieszka followed behind him.

  ‘This is Julia.’ She held out her hand to Agnieszka. She smelled nice, of something dark and spicy and warm. She looked in her late thirties but might have been older. When she smiled she was pretty but her teeth were crooked. ‘It’s nic
e to meet you,’ she said. ‘Luke’s told me about you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  They sat. A waiter came over and White ordered a bottle of wine. Agnieszka didn’t want to drink. She needed to get going soon. If Victor rang her she wouldn’t be able to answer.

  ‘They’re savvy, these guys. They know what they’re at. You should see this place over the weekend. You can’t move for people paying fifteen euro a cocktail. And for the nights like these the club subscriptions cover it. Tell them it’s exclusive and everybody wants to join…’ He tailed off.

  Agnieszka nodded and looked at the woman, who smiled back at her.

  ‘So, anyway,’ White said, ‘what we wanted to talk to you about is your future. You’re a bright girl and a good worker and we really appreciate that. But being behind the bar, it’s a hard slog for not great money.’

  Agnieszka shrugged. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘And a girl like you, with your intelligence and your looks, should be making a lot more money than you do. I mean, I assume that’s why you’re here? For the money? It’s hardly the weather, right?’

  ‘Yes. And the experience.’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely, of course. But you know that working in a club is never going to make you rich. We could make you a manager but, first of all, I would have to get rid of somebody to promote you, then find someone else as good as you behind the bar. And, anyway, for you it would mean a lot more work for not much more money and I’m not sure if that’s what you want.’

  Agnieszka didn’t know herself. It felt to her that just about now she was getting late. Victor might come down to the bar to see if everything was okay, and if they told him she’d left with White, what would he think? It was nothing. The boss wanted to talk about work. She shouldn’t feel guilty but she did. This place and this guy, who put too much voice into everything he said and looked at her with a directness that was presumptuous.

  ‘You’re good with people. You’re bright. You can talk and have opinions. And you’re very good-looking. I can say that, I think.’