By the time I finally passed the written exam, Davie had already collected our bags and was standing outside smoking and sweating. I could see him through the glass as I approached the exit, but it wasn't until I got a blast of the hot air that I realised why he was dripping.
Heat. HEAT. We Irish aren't built for it. An analysis of one hundred years of Irish weather shows conclusively that we get one decent day a year and drizzle for the rest of the time. Warm days in Ireland are often described as 'close', but in reality they're about as close to being muggy as a cripple is to skateboarding down Everest. I walked out of the terminal and got slapped round the face by hundreds of Fahrenheit, not to mention the centigrade; they then drenched me in sweat for daring to hang around looking gormless. We were, of course, dressed for a summer's day in Belfast, black T-shirts, black jeans, black zip-up jackets and filthy attitudes. We looked more like we were waiting for a Stranglers reunion gig than a cab to the holiday capital of the world.
Davie took a final drag of his cigarette and said: 'Sorry.'
'What for?'
'Getting pissed. It's the smoking. I can't handle nine hours without a cigarette. I've got so many nicotine patches on I look like Pongo.'
'Pongo?'
'Hundred and One Dalmations. I'll be fine after a sleep.'
'Never worry,' I said. 'C'mon. Let's find a taxi.'
Davie dozed off, his head bumping gently against the window, as we were driven towards Orlando. I watched him in the fading light. We were the same age, but there was something still quite boyish about him. We had prized him in our youth for his ability to get served in off-licences while under age, but it was the only time he had actually looked older than any of us; in fact it wasn't older, it was taller. The rest of us had gotten tall as well, but we'd also aged, some of us quite dramatically. But Davie remained just Big Davie. Big Davie with the cavalier attitude to life and, as I was beginning to fear, a cavalier attitude towards the truth.
What he had said on the plane had kick-started a process of sobriety in me, sucked the benefits of drink from my soul and left the nag of a hangover in my head, which wasn't helped by the rap from the radio the cab driver insisted on blasting out. Davie started to snore.
Maybe I was just being supersensitive. Maybe I was jealous that he'd had his way with Karen Malloy. Maybe he was just pissed and mixed up. Perhaps it was as innocent as that. He was supposed to be on honeymoon with the love of his life, but she'd left him within sight of the altar — that was bound to fuck up your head. Add huge amounts of alcohol, deprive of nicotine, ascend to thirty-six thousand feet, then wait for hallucination to kick in. He had confused fantasy and reality, and come out with Karen Malloy.
Perhaps he didn't know she was dead.
Perhaps when he sobered up I'd tell him that she'd been virtually cut in two by an articulated lorry outside the newspaper office where I was then working. That she'd been on her way to a job interview, that where we might have ended up working together, I had instead ended up going to her funeral. I might have flirted innocently with her, become her confidant. We might have exploded the Harry and Sally myth that men couldn't be friends with women without sex rearing its ugly head. Or we might have gone at it like rabbits, Patricia be damned. Even in the fleeting glimpse I had of her as she crossed the road to our office that day I had registered that she was more beautiful as an adult than she had been as a girl. The old woman in the park had been wrong. There was nothing small village about this girl. She looked magnificent. She had gone blonde; she was wearing a fine business suit which also managed to show off her figure; she had breasts that could poke your eyes out; and then she passed out of my field of vision, and half a minute later she was dead. The next time I saw her she was in her coffin, her cheeks puffed up with cotton wool and somewhere beneath her funeral shroud her legs were stitched back onto her torso. I watched the wooden box shudder along a moving track and then come to a halt while we sang 'The Lord is My Shepherd'; I stood outside and shook hands with relatives while smoke billowed from the crematorium.
I thought the chances of her recovering from a slight case of death and getting engaged to Davie Kincaid were small to remote. Stranger things had happened, although mostly in Dr Who.
I shook myself. For Christ-sake. I was on holiday. I was taking it all much too seriously. Davie was winding me up, or talking the piss-talk. I needed to lighten up. I'd been in the air for nine hours. Back home it was two in the morning. I needed to sleep. Wind down. Enjoy America. Maybe take anything he said with a pinch of salt. Or wind him right back up.
We arrived at the Ramada Inn on International Drive in Orlando forty-five minutes later. It wasn't that far from Sanford, but the traffic was heavy. Big, in fact. Big traffic. Big hotels. Big weather. Big cars. It always takes a while to acclimatise to the bigness of America. Davie rolled out of his side of the taxi after some prodding and paid the driver, who looked at the colour of our money and said, 'What about a tip?'
Davie and I glanced at each other, then sang together: 'Don't sleep in the subway.' We cackled our way into the hotel and the desk clerk, a fruit in a suit, looked us up and down and said, 'Ah, Mr and Mrs Kincaid, welcome to the Ramada.' He then gave us the keys to the honeymoon suite.
Davie immediately suggested that he stick them up his arse. Luckily, his accent was thick enough to confuse, and before the penny dropped I quickly suggested that single beds might be more appropriate.
He looked us up and down again, then leant forward and whispered conspiratorially: 'You don't have to be embarrassed. I understand what it may be like in Ireland, but we're quite open-minded here. We host many gay weddings and honeymoons.'
I looked at Davie. 'It's only for one night.'
Davie shrugged. 'Any port in a storm,' he said, then added needlessly, 'you big ride.'
The desk clerk smirked. Davie tried to hold my hand as we walked across to the elevator. We went up eight floors and let ourselves into the honeymoon suite. It had a lounge, Queen-sized bedroom, ensuite bathroom, TV, DVD, Internet and minibar. We held a long discussion about which facility to use first, and chose the minibar. We pulled back the curtains and enjoyed glorious nighttime views of the traffic. It was Davie's honeymoon, so after a couple of drinks he wandered off into the bedroom and I lay down on the couch. I sort of drifted for a while without ever quite getting to sleep. The door to Davie's room was open and I could see the flicker of his TV screen. There were groans and squeals coming from inside.
'Davie?' I called. 'You awake?'
'Yipee!' he shouted back. 'Hot and cold running porn! Come on and take a look!'
'You're okay,' I said.
'It gets really boring after about an hour!' Davie yelled. 'They've all got inflatable tits!'
'You're paying for them. You do know that?'
He didn't answer, but the TV suddenly went off. A few moments later he appeared in the doorway pulling his T-shirt back on. 'We should go and get breakfast,' he said.
'It's the middle of the night.'
'So? This is America! Come on!'
Davie was an enthusiast.
I would hate enthusiasts with a passion if only I could summon one. As International Vice-Chairman of Sloth and Slow pic, I fixed him with two weary eyes and said, 'Catch yourself on, I'm knackered.'
He laughed. 'Come on, Dan, we're on holiday!' He pushed his T-shirt into his trousers and headed for the door. 'Come on!'
I moved into a more comfortable position on the couch.
'C'mon, Dan, you're only young once.'
'You're right,' I said. 'And I was. Good night.'
I closed my eyes. He tutted. 'Sure?'
'Sure.'
He opened the door. 'Well, see you later, alligator.'
'In a while . . .'
But I was asleep before I got to 'crocodile'. Or at least I pretended to be.
And I did get to sleep, eventually. I woke just after ten in the morning. The sun was blinding. I showered. I phoned Patricia at home and exchang
ed words of love. At the end she said, 'See you in two weeks,' and I didn't have the heart to correct her. And maybe it would be two weeks. Maybe it would only be one week. Davie was already showing the energy levels of a teenager, or speed freak. Or both. I put on my summer gear — black T-shirt, black jeans and sunglasses — and went to find breakfast.
Davie was already in there, eating an omelette. He was hollow-eyed and stubbled, but he smiled with real warmth and said, 'What aboutcha, big lad?'
'Great,' I said. 'What about you?'
'Fantastic.'
I sat down opposite him and folded my arms over the placemat. There were words printed all over it, but they were too difficult to read with my sunglasses on, and my sunglasses were too difficult to take off with my hangover head on. Davie reached into his pocket and produced a set of car keys. He set them down on the table.' Have wheels, will travel,' he said.
'Brilliant,' I said, as the waitress approached and poured coffee for me without asking.
'How do you like your eggs?' she asked.
'Fertilised,' I said, but it was an in-joke.
She said, 'Excuse me?'
I wasn't entirely sure of the terminology. Americans like variations in their food and drink; they have a thousand different ways of serving coffee, whereas we have black or white. It's the same with their eggs. All that over easy and sunny side up shit. I looked her in the eye and said, 'I'd like them oops outside your head, I said oops outside your head.'
She said, 'Excuse me?'
I said, I'll have Frosties.'
She said, 'Excuse me? Do you mean Frosted Flakes?'
'That's what I mean.'
'And how would you like your eggs?'
I sighed.
She looked pained. I ran up the flag of surrender and said I'd pass on the eggs. I could tell by her eyes that even if she got satisfaction on the eggs front she'd immediately move onto the even more complicated ham or bacon argument; then we'd get to discuss whether I wanted pancakes or biscuits or sausage and biscuits or pancakes and syrup and sausage or French toast or white or rye and then I would ask for Veda and she would look like I'd slapped her in the face and Davie would have to intervene and explain it was a Northern Irish baker's delicacy and not a sexually transmitted disease, although not before I'd committed suicide. America. Big traffic. Big noise. Big breakfast.
She eventually went away. There would have been smoke coming out of her ears, but smoke had been banned in Floridian restaurants.
'Guess who got out of the wrong side of bed,' Davie said.
I shook my head and smiled. I had a hangover, sure, but I wasn't upset. I was frustrated by choice. 'She should have given me a fucking menu,' I said.
'She did.' He nodded down. The placemat was the menu, I could see that now. I thought briefly about apologising to the waitress, then didn't. It's the thought that counts. Besides, I'd other, more important things to deal with.
I said, 'Seeing as how neither of us have a driving licence, where'd you find someone buck eejit enough to hire us a car?'
'I didn't,' Davie said. 'I bought it.'
'You bought it?'
'Nineteen eighty-five Dodge. Seventy-five thousand miles, five hundred dollars. You owe me two-fifty and I'll throw in the gas.'
I lifted the keys. They were rusty. 'You never thought of consulting me before buying? You never thought of asking me if I wanted to invest two hundred and fifty dollars in a car?'
'It's not an investment, Dan. You hope to profit from an investment. Look on this more as a donation to charity, plus we get to ride around in it until it gives up the ghost. One saying and one motto come to mind. "Beggars can't be choosers", and "never look a gift horse in the mouth".'
I sighed. I shook my head across the table at Davie's big grinning face. He looked so pleased with himself.
'Okay,' I said. I would let it ride. I didn't ask about insurance. There didn't seem much point. It felt somehow unAmerican to have insurance anyway. I couldn't remember a movie where Vin Diesel refused to partake in a high-speed chase until he'd checked his insurance documents. I couldn't recall Indiana Jones arguing over the finer points of his third party fire and theft policy.
'Good man,' he said. 'This'll be class, Dan. This'll be class.'
'If you're happy, Davie, then I'm happy too. You're right, you know. We're on vacation. We should enjoy ourselves.'
'That's the spirit, mate.'
'And to that end . . .' I produced a clutch of pamphlets I'd picked up in the lobby on the way into breakfast. They covered pretty much all of the local theme parks — Sea World, Disney, Epcot, Universal Studios. I spread them out at random before Davie, or at least as close to random as I could make it look. Actually I put the Universal Islands of Adventure leaflet in the most prominent position, because I was completely determined to have a go on the 3-D Spiderman thrill ride. It was the kind of subtle attempt at mind-control I was famous for.
Davie nodded down at the leaflets for several moments, then pushed them together into a neat pile and tore them in half.
'We're not doing the theme parks, Dan. It's not that kind of a holiday.'
He reached into his own back pocket and produced a different leaflet. It showed the other Ramada Inns dotted around Florida, but he'd clearly only picked it up because on the reverse of it there was a fairly detailed road map of the state. He jabbed a finger at it. 'Here,' he said. 'This is where we're going.'
He was pointing at the Gulf Coast, at the beaches south and west of Tampa.
'But why? What's down there? What's so great about . . .'
I trailed off. He looked kind of hurt. And a little bit angry. 'Because it's my honeymoon, and that's where we planned to go, all right? Is that too much to ask?'
I sat back. 'No,' I said.
'Okay. I'm gonna pack my stuff. See you back down here in ten minutes, and we'll get on the road, yeah?'
'Yeah,' I said.
He got up and started to walk across the restaurant. Then he stopped and came back. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, 'Sorry. I didn't mean to . . . you know.'
'Don't worry about it.'
'It just gets to me, you know?'
I nodded. I could understand. It was getting to me as well, as was the realisation that I had agreed to spend twenty-one days driving around Florida with a complete looper.
8
We took the 14 from Orlando to Tampa, then cut off onto the 275 for St Petersburg. I drove, Davie read the map. There wasn't a lot to it. Big road. Big traffic. Big easy. We didn't say much. Davie cracked a few funnies and I grunted. We listened to the radio. We heard 'London Calling' on an adult-orientated rock station, and looked at each other grimly. We liked that The Clash were recognised now, but lamented it as well. The sun was cutting our eyes out through our shades and the air conditioning on our Dodge rust-bucket was about as strong as a dead man's last gasp. We were sweating through our shoes. All around luxury cars were laughing at us as they cruised past. I'm not a car-boy, never have been, but even I felt embarrassed.
About halfway there, an hour and a half on the road, I insisted on stopping for doughnuts and Diet Pepsi. I insisted by pulling off the road and driving to a 7-Eleven while Davie flapped about in the passenger seat like he'd been hijacked. But he didn't reject the custard doughnut I bought him. He glanced at his watch as he ate it and I said, 'What's the big fucking hurry, Davie?'
'No particular hurry.'
'Then stop looking at your watch.'
'We have to check in. It's on the itinerary.'
I nodded and swallowed some doughnut. 'Anything else on that itinerary I should know about?'
Davie shrugged. 'Not really, no.'
'You know, you've been whining on about me relaxing and enjoying the holiday, you should take a leaf out of your own fucking book.'
I finished the doughnut and threw the napkin out of the window. I started the engine. As we pulled back out onto the interstate Davie said, 'You're pissed off, aren't you?'
'No.'
'Yes, you are. And it's my fault. I'm sorry.'
'And you don't need to keep apologising. Just stop doing it.'
'Doing what?'
'Winding me up.'
'I'm not doing it on purpose, Dan.' I gave him a look. 'Really. Maybe we're just different. Maybe we've grown apart.'
'Maybe we are. Maybe we have.'
Frankly, I didn't think there was much doubt about it.
'So what's the solution?' Davie asked.
I should have left it. But I never do. 'How about you get over the fact that you're not on fucking honeymoon. How about you get your story straight.'
There. I'd said it. I'd meant to keep it under my hat. But it was out there, slapping him round the face.
'What story?' he said quietly.
'What story?' I was getting angry now. 'C'mon Davie, how much of a fucking doughbag do you think I am?'
He raised his hands off the map and held them about twelve inches apart. 'This much?' he asked.
I couldn't help but laugh. We drove on. About another three miles down the road he said: 'What story?' again.
The road was straight and the traffic had thinned out after Tampa so I could afford to give him a long, hard look without writing off the car. He kept eye-contact for just a couple of seconds, then returned his attention to the road. I kept looking, daring him to look back, but he wouldn't.
'What story?' I said.
'What fucking story?' Davie snapped.
I snorted. 'What story. You know what story.'
'I wouldn't be fucking asking, you Clampett.'
'You and Karen.'
'Me and Karen who?'
'You tell me, you slabber.'
'No, you tell me, you wanker.'
'What the fuck are you calling me a wanker for? You're the one doing the slabbering.'
'Christ! Dan, what the fuck are you talking about!'
'About you and Karen Malloy!'
'Karen Malloy from Groomsport?'
'Yes — Karen Malloy from Groomsport!'
Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) Page 6
