fingers tucked under their arms. Hopeful eyes now. Expectations.
Word was a Rory pub was opening by the Royal Canal, and they wanted in. Rory was their man. Rory pushed the blood through their veins, and if someone was going to pay him tribute, they were going to be there, ice and snow and wind and hunger be damned.
“What the fuck?” the trader said, squinting against the silver light, suddenly wishing he hadn’t the need for more crank and something other than stale crisps.
By 8 o’clock they were three deep at the bar, totally jammers, and the snug was swollen, and Rory wailed, setting the fingerboard ablaze, and the trader had hired himself a bouncer and a lass to clear the tables. The next day he needed a man to pull the taps, and a plumber to fix the jax.
By the time he closed on Saturday night, he’d netted 1,100 euros on nothing but beer and Rory. The guy from the chipper round the block offered him a stake, saying business tripled since Desmond’s was born, thinking he’s on to the new Temple Bar. The Black Mariah pulled up, the Gardai came in, and the trader prepared to slip them a gift, “Sinner Boy” pounding the walls and all, but they loved Rory too and as long as no one lit up a fag and the coppers got in, Desmond’s was sweet, at least for now.
“Jaysus,” the trader said as he made a neat stack of his notes, “the whole country’s full of eejits.”
He folded the bills, crammed them in his pocket, and was thinking he’d found justice. Finally, he told himself, he was getting his due.
He did the lass on the cold floor, ripping her from behind, and she went home in tears, mascara running down her baby cheeks.
A week or so later, past closing time, but the little pink man in far booth stayed glued to the wood, though the power had been cut and the votive candles gave little light.
The bouncer was in the alley, tossing them off cobblestone, so the trader, his ears ringing, went across the beer- soaked boards.
“Thinking of moving in, are ya?”
The little pink man reached into his coat and placed an ergo machine on the tabletop.
The trader blew onto his hands, the chill returning now that the crowd was gone.
Suddenly, a piercing note from a Stratocaster split the air, followed by a blinding flurry that knocked the trader to his heels.
The music continued for almost four minutes, burning ice daggers, an angel blasting pure light. Pinwheels, butterflies, blood spatter on virgin walls. Grace.
Neither moved, the little pink man starting intently at his enraptured host.
“Where’d you get it?” the stunned trader asked when silence returned.
“It” being a Rory he’d never heard.
Little Pink Man eased back toward the brick.
“Well?” the trader repeated. The crystal meth had him pumping nitro, bugs crawling on his lungs, and yet it had been Rory, beyond doubt.
In a small, eerie voice, Little Pink said, “We call him up, is what we do.”
The trader frowned, scratched the top of his head. “Listen, just what’s your game-”
“We call him up and up he comes,” Little Pink repeated. “Now, for someone like yourself, that is all and more. A mystery, true. But all and more, is it not?”
The trader couldn’t focus to study the visitor, there in his too-big hound’s tooth, his black tie pulled tight to his pink neck. Nose a ball of putty, a hint of an impish smile.
Little Pink reached with a translucent finger, popped open the machine and pointed to a silver disk much smaller than a standard CD. Candlelight skittered across its surface.
“Take it,” Little Pink said as he wriggled out of the snug. “Take it and know there’s more.”
The top of the man’s head, covered in curly red hair, sat below the chin of the trader, who had snatched up the disk as if it were the gold of Mag Sleacht.
“Who are you?” His accent slipped, revealing his years far from home.
Little Pink turned up his coat’s collar, the darkness carrying a chill. “I’m the man who’s knowing how to bring you to Rory, I am.”
The trader watched as the little man leaped the moat and vanished.
A moment later, the bouncer, whizz-wired like his boss, said he hadn’t seen a little pink man, no, Eamonn, why? And if you don’t mind, I’ll be on me way…
“Lock it behind ya,” the trader said, turning his back.
Pitch black save the light of the player, cranked to the gills he was, listening over and over and over to the guitar solo until near dawn, the hair on the back of his neck up,
All. Of. It.
It took four days for Little Pink to return, four unbearable days, and he brought Fat Pink with him. They stood in the doorway on the business side of the moat, deadpan and composed.
The trader saw seraphs, and he tried to turn off the frenzy in his mind and under his skin.
The bouncer, dim bastard, held them back, being it was past midnight, and the trader had to scramble across the room to halt their dismissal, freezing the dope with an X-ray stare as he grabbed Little Pink by the forearm.
“Come,” he said, almost desperately, “come.”
They went to the little office he’d fashioned out of the storage room.
“Jaysus, where have you been?”
“It’ll cost you,” Fat Pink said, his voice a throaty growl.
“Huh?”
“What me brother is saying is that the ghost appears at no charge, but we have our expenses,” said Little Pink, collar up on the hound’s tooth.
He saw they had not a mind for charity.
“Sure,” said the trader. “Expenses.”
The Pinks kept still.
The trader took a breath. “Go on.”
“We all get what we pay for,” Little Pink said. “In the end, the accounts tally.”
And with that, the trader had found his hitching post. Negotiations had begun.
“But you’ve seen this place,” he said. “Be flattery to call it a dump.”
Big Pink looked askance at the beam an inch or so from his head. The cobwebs had cobwebs, and the wood wore moss.
“Suit yourself,” Little Pink said, with a faint shrug.
The visitors spun slowly toward the door.
“No, no. No,” said the trader, groping again for Little Pink and to hell with negotiating. “What I’m saying is I don’t know what I can raise.”
“Sure you do.” Fat Pink said it.
Little Pink dipped into his pocket: the machine, the button, and this time it was Rory on the twelve-string acoustic guitar, a slow, agonizing, gorgeous blues. No singing, not yet, but pain released from deep in the heart of Ireland filled the musty room. The sweet chirping of blackbirds too, and platinum rain, and yer ma’s tears.
“Oh,” the trader moaned. “Oh, sweet Jaysus.”
The music stopped when Little Pink popped open the device.
He held out the disk. A gift, and Fat Pink didn’t mind.
“Recorded not twenty-four hours ago,” said the little man.
The trader swallowed hard. “Name your price.”
They settled on 75,000 euros-Little Pink knowing the U.S. dollar was weak-and the Audi. In return, they’d record for as long as the ghost chose to play.
Driving in the rain through Ballsbridge toward Kill o’ the Grange, headlights sweeping across the diamonded windscreen, the trader had it figured. He’d report the Audi stolen before he left Stillorgan Road for the meeting, record Rory, glorious Rory, and then he’d double-back on foot to grab his money, putting the sight of the bouncer’s
