Dear God, but if that shit didn’t stop moaning, I’d go out of my bloody mind.
"Momo pleassse," he’d say. "Come back, puleassse," he’d say into the phone. All bloody night until she left her phone off the hook and then he’d just gurgle and moan and cry.
Once, he told her that he was thinking of killing himself - he was going to write a note there and then before leaping from his balcony. She hung up on him. He called her back and said he had the notepad right beside him. All set. The blue lined stationery they had bought in Liffey Valley when they – She hung up on him again. I felt like popping next door and asking him if he needed a pen. In any event, he tossed furniture about until two.
And then he made tea.
Apparently he had a good reputation in the new Financial Services Centre - if they could have heard him then. This man sobbed when he took a piss, for Christ’s sake.
There was no escaping him.
These walls are as thin as the developer could get away with, but it’s spitting difference to the village of Clondalkin and the intended Luas Line and I liked the view over the Camac.
My neighbour, however, came as no surprise.
I’ve grown accustomed to expect such incidents. I mean, I'm the man you read about - the man who week in, week out throws a few quid into a Lotto syndicate apart from the one time when the numbers actually come up. If someone were to ask me, for example, what member of the Beatles I could empathise with, it would be the poor sap Paul and John bounced out just before they hit the big time. I’ve never been lucky, but I was always the kind of man that knew which way the wind was blowing. Sure, I could have hung on for some place a little bigger, with thicker walls, but I wanted to grab me a little property while I was still fully employed and loved by banks. We Pete Bests of the world need no convincing that the ship’s gonna hit the rocks, it's just a question of when.
For me it was last August. I guess that it was inevitable that someone had to get the heave-ho. The P45 which I'd have to post to myself. Dempsey’s were almost wiping us out with their pre-owned Jap cars at the top of the road, while we were getting shafted daily by a neighbouring dealer who played fast and loose with his tachometers. We scraped along on punctures and oil changes and then the girl drove in. Cute, pert in her buttoned-up suit and looking like she just stepped out of a board room.
From my desk in the office I heard her ask if her Beamer would pass the newly proposed Car Test. Said the NCT letter was just in the door. When she couldn’t pop the bonnet without Dicey’s help we knew she didn’t know a gasket from a goose. When she said she might as well come back for a full service, well, I thought, there’s the petty cash for this week taken care of. Dicey winked over at me and gave her the estimate, told her about the worn pistons, the damaged sump and the sucking magneto which needed replacing. He had the grace not to look her in the eye.
I should have said something, but at the time I was holding a South Dublin rate demand in one hand and a VAT demand in the other. The tiger who had punched the bottom out of the used-car market had made our margins smaller than that of my neighbour's blue lined notepad. She smiled coyly and said could she drop it in later and would we accept a cheque? I poked my head through the office window and said, sure, no problem.
She smiled.
I didn’t know it at the time, but we were well and truly screwed. Next time I saw that car was on page four of the Echo - the Clondalkin AND Tallaght editions. Our garage, which had scraped by with only a sign out front had struck the mother-lode of advertising. Its picture occupied pride of place. Turns out our executive was a hack doing a filler on auto dealers. We got a nice mention and what was left of the business disappeared right down the toilet.
I never thought I’d see the girl again.
Turned out I was wrong. Turned out that we'd meet again, months later. One of those Ripley's Believe it or Not coincidences. I was her last assignment for the day. Visiting the newly opened hospital off the Belgard Road.
Speak to the first patient in the place, her editor had said, think of an angle. And, mindful of the politics of the regional press, had added - If he's not local, pick someone else.
A different jacket, different hair-do - blond streaks - but I'd know that smile anywhere.
Of course, she didn't quite recognise me. How would she? I looked like the enthusiastic result of a Knights of Malta's first day on the job. She couldn't quite put a finger on how she knew me.
As it happened, a finger had put me here in the first place.
I hadn’t been sleeping when I smelled the gas. The Bollock’s really gone and done it, I thought and leaped out of bed. Before I knew it, I was in the corridor and hammering on his door.
"Are you all right?" I shouted.
Some of the doors along the way began to peep open - held by their chains.
"Gas," I shouted and most of the doors slammed.
A man tottered out in his dressing gown.
"I’ll call Bord Gosh."
"Yeah."
"Perhaps you should kick in the door?"
And that, because I felt like doing something like that for a long time, was exactly what I did.
The door splintered and I fell in under my own momentum. Bruce Lee, how are you. The apartment was in darkness but the kitchen door was open and in the light I could see the blubberer, dressed in a tuxedo, sitting beside the cooker. He started to get up.
"What the he - " was as far as he got when it seemed to me that someone let rip with the world’s biggest flashgun.
I don’t remember much after that, except when I awoke I was staring at a white ceiling, the hospital ceiling.
They said I was blessed, said I’d be fine and that my hair would grow back no problem but that I’d be with them for a ‘wee while.’ Turns out I’m not so unlucky after all. I was thrown back while the blubberer shot straight through the apartment's window. Like a champagne cork out of its bottle. I wonder what he was thinking in those last moments as he sailed out over the river? Clondalkin's tower silhouetted by the village street lights - Which stupid cunt flicked the light switch maybe?
I had grown kind of fond of semolina when they turfed me out. Said they needed the bed and that now I was up to patting the nurses on the backside, the prognosis was going to be just grand. They said I’d be as right as rain in no time and that while Matron appreciated the discount I was getting her on a Mondeo, could she have her office back. They said, maybe I should buy a hat.
Or two.
Molly and I went to the new Bewley’s at Newlands Cross. She said she felt she should do something. Buy me a coffee.
Even though we had almost done her out of two hundred quid, she hadn't meant my business to evaporate along with my eyebrows. I said a coffee seemed about fair.
She told me she liked my sense of humour.
I told her, I taught Hal Roach all he knew.
She told me I was some tulip and I replied by saying that underneath these bandages I was the spit of Harrison Ford.
She asked, was I serious?
And I said, stick around and find out.
She said, you're not as bold as you make out.
I said that it was the nature of malekind to come over all over eager to those who they liked. Said I liked her. Liked the way she was. The way she stood. The way her hair was illuminated by the light streaming in through the Bewley’s trademark leaded glass windows.
She said I was sweet.
I told her I liked her tits.
My apartment wasn’t exactly as I had left it. There was a dusty rectangle where the TV and video used to be and there were gaps in the bookshelf. Jimmy O - the caretaker stroke Landlord's Rep who lived in the bowels of the block - swore blind that he had locked everything up tight after I had been carted off, but that someone must have been in and out well before that. "There was plenty of commotion, I can tell you," he said. "What with the fire brigade and the ambulance and all."
"I’m very sorry," he whined. "I really don’t know what happened to your gear."
He was nervous, knew that a quiet word to the landlord and that would be that.
I believed him. I knew the type. He wouldn’t be above pocketing a few plugs here and there meant for the building, or fobbing off a few cans of paint to his in-laws meant for the corridors, but he wasn’t about to get turfed out because of no video. Still he knew damned well he shouldn't have left my door open for two days. Knew that if anyone found out he'd been on a week long bender then he'd be out and no mistake. Knew he owed me. Knew enough to lose some paperwork when he'd fixed up the apartment next door. Knew I knew someone who was looking for a place, how the whisper of a decent apartment could produce a queue that would make a U2 promotor wet himself.
Molly is happy with her new pad. She's done wonders with it. Sometimes you get the faint linger of soot, but it passes. She was pleasantly surprised at the low lease. Sure that Jimmy made a mistake, but not complaining.
She was there when the dressings came off. Told me I looked nothing like Harrison Ford, but then again she didn't bolt for the door either. She asked me why the stupid-looking grin.
I didn't tell her. Some words are never meant to be spoken out loud. How could I tell her that sometimes, just sometimes, we Pete Bests of the world get to stay with the Beatles.
Copyright © Martin Devaney 2001. All Rights Reserved
