‘Twist!’ I go.
He doesn’t even turn around in his seat. He just stops – his cords held out in a fan – and stares straight ahead for, like, ten seconds. You can even see the dealer thinking, what the fock? Then he turns around. ‘This is poker,’ he goes. ‘You don’t twist in poker.’ I’m there, ‘Well, you know me, Oisinn. I was never one to play by the rules.’ A smile suddenly breaks out across his face. ‘How did you find me?’ he goes. I’m there, ‘The old man spotted you in here last night.’ He nods, like it suddenly makes sense. ‘I thought I saw Helen on the Avenue des Castelans …’ ‘Er, is that all you can say?’ He gathers up his chips with one hand and gives the dealer the nod to say he’s calling it a night. The dude says au revoir. ‘What do you want me to say?’ Oisinn goes and he tries to walk away – he actually tries to walk away – until I step in front of him pretty smortly. ‘You just take off like that? Leave your cor in the airport? All your shit still in it?’ People are suddenly looking up from their tables. He goes, ‘Ross, do you have any idea the kind of trouble I’m in?’ And I’m there, ‘Er, yeah, I have actually. I read the papers like everyone else.’ He lets that one go. ‘Then you’ll know how much money I owe – more than I could pay in this life.’ ‘So what, you decided to just get yourself another life?’ ‘Something like that.’ ‘And no phone call to anyone? You know your old dear’s going off her nut?’ He finally looks at least guilty. ‘Oh, yeah,’ I go. ‘Tears in Marian Gale, the works.’ Then I regret it, roysh, because I suddenly see him filling up. ‘Hey, Big Man,’ I go. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’ He grabs me then – without any warning – in, like, a bear hug. His chips go flying across the floor but he doesn’t seem to give a fock about them? He stands there just crushing the life out of me and crying on my shoulder, while I’m just patting him on the back, telling him it’s okay – it’s going to be okay. He releases his grip on me and I take a step backwards, so I can see his face. I’m trying to think have I ever seen Oisinn cry. I actually don’t think so? ‘She used to be so focking proud of me,’ he goes. I’m there, ‘Dude, they’re our parents. They’re going to love us, whether we like it or not – for all our fock-ups …’ This sort of, like, waiter dude has gathered up Oisinn’s chips and he hands them to him, going, ‘Voilà,’ and Oisinn’s there, ‘Merci, monsieur.’ I laugh. Listen to him – he’s picked up the lingo and everything. ‘Okay,’ I go, ‘what’s Monte Carloan for let’s hit the focking bor!’ He smiles and says it’s the same as in English. ‘By the way, my name’s not Oisinn any more,’ he goes at some point in the, I suppose, foggy hours that follow. I’m there, ‘You changed your name?’ He nods, then shouts for deux more JDs. ‘It’s Johnny Keith,’ he goes. ‘Johnny Keith?’ After Hayes and Wood, I realize as soon as I say it – his two heroes. I tell him he doesn’t look like a Johnny Keith. He says I can keep calling him Oisinn, then. It’s actually a nice moment between us. The thing I don’t get, I tell him, is how he ended up here. He says he flew to London – which we all knew – took the Eurostar to Paris, then the old bualadh from Paris to Monaco. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that I didn’t expect to find him looking so well. He’s wearing, like, chinos and a pretty smort blazer, it has to be said, whereas I thought he’d be, I don’t know, sleeping rough somewhere? ‘I did have ninety grand with me when I left Dublin,’ he goes. Then he leans in close, as if to, like, confide something in me. ‘You can do anything in this town once you’ve got money,’ which I take to mean open a bank account under a different name. ‘Johnny Keith,’ I go, just shaking my head. He says he got my messages about Ireland winning the Triple Crown, roysh, and Leinster winning the Heineken Cup, which is nice to hear. He says he used to phone his voicemail once a day to listen to his messages – until he couldn’t take the sound of his old dear crying any more. Then the account got cut off anyway. ‘Fionn really did a streak?’ he goes. I’m there, ‘And JP … Dude, it was hilarious.’ He laughs. ‘We always said we’d do it if Leinster won.’ ‘We did.’ ‘Thanks for the messages anyway.’ I tell him it’s not a thing – which it isn’t. ‘So,’ he goes, ‘what’s been happening back home?’ I just shake my head. It’s, like, where to even begin? ‘You honestly wouldn’t recognize it as the same, I suppose, country. You know Renords has gone?’ ‘What?’ ‘Dude, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Cocoon. Mint. Yo Thai. Town Bor and Grill is supposed to be in trouble now. As is Residence, by the way …’ ‘Shit! The bed!’ ‘Even Sorcha’s shop went.’ ‘Hey, Dude, I’m sorry.’ ‘Forget about it. See, it’s like the old man says, there’s, like, a time for everything – she’ll find something else.’ I hate to bring the subject up, roysh, but I end up going, ‘I see you’re still gambling,’ because he had a major problem – with internet poker especially. Of course it’s only a major problem when you’re not very good at it. ‘Yeah, I’m still gambling.’ ‘What about …’ and I make, like, a sniffing sound. He shakes his head and I have to believe him. ‘You know,’ he goes then, ‘we all had a gambling problem when you thnk about it …’ He’s obviously talking about the Celtic Tiger – another one dissing it. ‘See, that’s why I haven’t been able to face my old dear. She used to say to me, how much will be enough, Oisinn? How much before you make do with what you’ve got?’ I order two more JDs. ‘Speaking of making do,’ I go, ‘did you hear Erika’s with Fionn – as in with with?’ ‘No! Focking! Way!’ ‘Way.’ ‘That’s great, isn’t it?’ ‘Well, I still think he’s heading for a kick in the balls – a serious one. But what can you do, except be there for the focker when she crushes him into the basic dirt?’ ‘Fionn and Erika,’ he just goes, shaking his head – as in delighted for them? There’s, like, silence between us then. I go, ‘Dude, remind me to tell you something when you’re pissed.’ He looks at me, half-eyed. ‘I’m pissed now,’ he goes. I’m there, ‘Okay. We’ve been stripped of our Leinster Schools Senior Cup medals …’ I don’t get the reaction I’m expecting. He just kind of, like, nods, except it’s like he’s still – I don’t know – digesting it? ‘It’s because I was on – let’s be honest – drugs,’ I go. ‘I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, but I did and now …’ ‘You know,’ he suddenly goes, ‘I don’t actually care.’ I’m there, ‘Are you serious?’ ‘What happiness did it ever bring us?’ I actually think he’s bang out of order there but I don’t say it. ‘Hey, let’s get out of here,’ he goes; ‘I need some air.’ We stagger down to the harbour, which is an incredible sight, by the way – we’re talking thousands of yachts, some of them the size of actual hotels. We stop and lean over a rail, looking down at, I don’t know, whatever focking sea it is below us. We’re both mullered. Of course I’m thinking, so what happens now, Johnny Keith? ‘Are you coming home with me?’ He laughs. ‘Home? You’re joking, aren’t you? Home to what, Ross? Ten years of court cases, watching everything I had repossessed, closed down, wound up? And at the end of it, what, bankruptcy?’ ‘Come on,’ I go, ‘you can dig yourself out of it. I’ve actually got a business idea for you.’ ‘A business idea? You?’ I laugh. ‘I know, I’m actually pretty surprised at myself. Okay, there’s, like, tens of thousands of vacant aportments in Dublin at the moment, which they haven’t a hope of focking selling. I mean, who wants to end up being practically the only person living in a focking tower block.’ ‘Not many.’ ‘Exactly. So what these property developers have to do is convince people – potential buyers basically – that the block is actually occupied …’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Now, we’ve just had yet another shitty summer in Ireland – focking third in a row.’ ‘Rain?’ ‘Like you wouldn’t believe. So I’m thinking, Woodie’s and all that crowd, they’ve got to be thinking about cutting their losses and flogging off their gorden furniture cheap. So what you could do, roysh, is buy it from them, then lease it out to these developers for, I don’t know, a certan amount every week, to stick o
n their balconies and make it look like someone’s actually living there.’ He doesn’t say anything for ages, just stares out to sea. Eventually, he goes, ‘You’d give me that idea?’ I’m there, ‘Yeah – are you saying it’s good?’ ‘No, it’s terrible.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘No, it’s not terrible. But it’s not going to raise the seventy-five million I owe.’ I’m there, ‘But I’ll come up with more for you,’ and I realize all of a sudden – very embarrassing this – that I’m suddenly crying. ‘See, all I need is a bit of time and space to think, Dude. I mean, that idea just came to me literally on the flight over here. I honestly think my old man was right. This recession could end up being the making of people like me.’ He puts his orm around my shoulder. ‘Ross,’ he goes, ‘forget the idea. It’s enough for me to know that you’d give that to me …’ ‘Well,’ I go, ‘that’s friendship, Oisinn. You can’t focking drug test it, man. Or put it in front of a jury. Or take it from one of the greatest rugby players of his generation and give it to some random focking livestock-worrier …’ He takes his orm from around my shoulder, reaches inside his shirt and pulls out his medal. Somehow I knew he’d be wearing his. He takes it from around his neck and, like, stares at it there in his hand. He’s there, ‘Of course, the cinematic thing to do would be to throw it out into the Mediterranean …’ The Mediterranean. See, I knew it was either that or the Pacific. ‘But I’m not going to, Ross.’ He grabs my wrist, roysh, turns my hand over and presses the medal into my palm. He’s there, ‘I want you to have it … Captain.’ Then he staggers on up the road. I don’t even hesitate. I reach out over the rail, open my hand and drop it into the water. It’s just as I’m catching Oisinn up again that my phone suddenly rings. Because I’m banjoed, it takes me a good few seconds to answer it, though when I do I instantly sober up. It’s Helen. She’s screaming down the phone at me, to the point where I can’t make any sense of what she’s saying, until she finally blurts out the words I instantly understand. ‘Your father’s had a heart attack.’ I just stop, roysh, dead in my tracks. I’m like, ‘What?’ Oisinn must hear something in my voice because he stops too. ‘My old man’s in hospital,’ I tell him. ‘He’s had a …’ He takes immediate chorge. He takes the phone out of my hand and asks Helen what hospital, while at the same time hailing a Jo. I get into it. I don’t even remember getting into it. I just know that I do, because the two of us – as in, me and Oisinn – are suddenly sat in the back, me feeling that everything’s happening a hundred times slower than usual. I’m like, ‘What if …’ Oisinn doesn’t even let me finish my sentence. But I do finish the thought. What if he … Then it suddenly pops into my head that the old man’s father went the same way. Is it in the family? We pull up outside the hospital. Oisinn pays the driver and screams at me to go on ahead. I peg it into the building, although I can’t actually feel my legs moving. I’m looking around for some kind of reception desk but, before I find it, I spot Helen running towards me. She’s lost it. ‘Your mother told me,’ she goes, between sobs, ‘she told me to watch his heart, Ross, and I didn’t …’ Then she buries her head in my chest and I automatically hold her. She mentions that Erika’s on her way – she’s trying to get a flight, which means it mustn’t look good for him. She’s there, ‘You’d better go and see him …’ She leads me down this corridor and points out the ward. For about a minute, I don’t even go in. I stand in, like, the frame of the doorway, looking at him, laid out on the bed, tubes and wires going in and out of him, this machine at his bedside beeping every second or two, measuring presumably his hort rate. I walk closer. I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly on, like, my tiptoes? His face is pale and he has a bruise on the side of his head. I’m presuming he must have fallen. So I touch his hand and he turns his head, slowly, towards me. His voice is just a whisper, which I suppose could be the meds. ‘Well, Kicker,’ he just goes, ‘this is a fine how-do-you-do, isn’t it?’ And I don’t remember what I say to him after that and I don’t remember what he says to me – because all I can think about is that he called me Kicker.
The Oh My God Delusion Page 11
