She worked her way through the crappy jobs and a string of asshole boyfriends. Angela wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense but she knew how to use what she had and, by Jesus, she used it. She was medium height with brown eyes and brown hair, but she changed all that – went blond, went blue eyed, went wild. She got a boob job, contacts for her eyes and already had the attitude. Then her mother died and they cremated her – her father said he wanted her burned, “lest she return.” Angela got the ashes, kept them in an urn on her bookcase. When Angela’s Ashes came out she rushed out and bought the book, thinking it had to be some kind of sign or something. She didn’t bother reading it, but liked having it on her shelf. Other books she bought but never read included ‘Tis and A Monk Swimming. She also had some DVDs like Angela’s Ashes, Far and Away, and The Commitments. When it came to music, only the Irish stuff really did it for her – Enya, Moya Brennan and, of course, U2. She would’ve stepped on Gerry Adams to get to Bono.
Most of her money went on clothes. The most basic lesson she learned was that if you wore a short skirt, killer heels and a tight top, guys went ape. Her legs were good and she knew how to hike a skirt to really get the heads turning. She saved her money and went online to book a week in Belfast, brought the urn with her – which caused some commotion with Homeland Security, but in the end she was allowed to bring her Mom if she stashed her in freight, which she did. She stayed at the Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe – that’s what Frommer said anyway – and the customers were pretty bombed themselves. The city was a shithole – drab, grey, depressing – and the Sterling, what was the deal with that? And people kept getting on her about Iraq, like she had any freakin’ say about it. She did all the sightseeing crap – maybe seeing blown up buildings did it for some people, but it bored the hell out of her. When she threw her Mom’s ashes into the Foyle there was a wind, of course, and most of her mother flew back into her hair. When she told the old guy at the hotel desk what had happened he said, “Tis proof, darling, that the dead are always with us.”
Evenings, she ate at the hotel and had drinks at the bar. She didn’t want to go out, not because she was afraid but because she couldn’t understand a goddamn word anyone was saying. The bartender hit on her and if his teeth hadn’t been so yellow she might have been into it. For the first time in her life, she felt American and that Ireland was the foreign country. The blended accent that got her so far in New York seemed useless here.
Her second-to-last night, she was sitting at the bar and a drunk began to hassle her. The bartender, of course, didn’t help. The drunk had a combat jacket, sewage breath, and was going, “Ah come on, you want to suck me dick, you know yah do.”
It took her a while to actually figure out what he was saying because of the accent; it sounded like, “Orr… kom on… yer want to truck meh duck.”
Finally, she put it all together. Before she could react, a man appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the guy by the front of the neck and had him out of there in no time. Shaking, she tried to put a Virginia Slim into her mouth, and the bartender raced over, flicked a bic, and said, “There you go.”
She accepted the light as she wanted that hit of nicotine then blew a cloud of smoke in Yellow Teeth’s face, said, “And there you go you spineless prick.”
Unfazed, the bartender said, “I love it when you talk dirty.”
The other man had returned and now stared at the bartender, and said “Leg it shithead.” Then he turned to her, asked, “You okay missus?”
She could understand him, because he was from the Irish Republic and had soft vowels, sounding kind of like her Dad. He had a scar on his face, long grey hair and was as thin as the guys on Christopher Street. His lips were mangled but, hey, he was the first guy in the whole damn province she saw with good teeth. And the lips were kind of sexy anyway. They’d be strange to kiss, but they’d be great for other things. Maybe it was the near violence but she felt a raw sexuality oozing off of him that was so freaking irresistible. One thing that got Angela hot was danger and this guy reeked of it.
She felt a burning rise up her neck, spread to her face, and said, “Wow, I’m so, like, grateful. Can I buy you a drink?”
He smiled then said, “Jameson.” He said it like a Hollywood tough guy, no bullshit with please or ice. No, just the one word, with a slight hard edge, the implication being, bring me the drink now and don’t even think about fucking with me.
She asked, “Are you, like, for real?”
He parked his ass on the stool next to her, said, “The heart wants what it cannot hold.”
Jesus, she thought, poetry and violence, how could a girl resist? The Irish might know shit about cool but they sure as hell knew how to talk.
And she loved his voice, deep, devilish, and, yeah, sexy.
With a little of the same flirty tone, she said, “You want that on the rocks?”
He gave her the look she would get to know and not always love, and said, “I take everything… neat.”
He put his hand in his jacket, took out a slim book and she saw the title, The Wisdom of Zen. She was impressed that a guy like him was carrying around a deep book like that.
He asked her, “You like The Pogues?”
She thought, Screw them, I like you.
Four
Never do evil, always do good, keep your mind pure – thus all the Buddhas taught.
Max screamed, “To hell with you, you crackpot!” and slammed the phone as he hard as he could and banged the desk with his fist. A moment later, he felt a jolt in his chest. Thinking, Fuck, I’m dying, he searched his jacket pockets for his Mevacor. Then he remembered he’d already taken his pills today but now feared that the Mevacor was interacting with his Viagra, causing some kind of reaction.
He was about to call Dr. Cohen, that jerk-off, back but he decided, What’s the point? So far nothing that schmuck suggested had worked. Max took all the goddamn drugs he was supposed to, had even hired an Indian named Kamal to come over to his house a few days a week to cook macrobiotic meals. But his HDL-to-LDL ratio was eight-to-one, up from seven-to-one at his last check-up, putting him in the super-high-risk group for heart disease. Right now, he could feel his heart working on overtime, the pump already on its last legs.
To help relax, Max did a yoga breathing exercise that Kamal had taught him, inhaling and exhaling through alternate nostrils, but it didn’t do crap. He made a mental note – fire Kamal, that Indian bastard, as soon as he comes back from his vacation. Taj Mahal that, you little prick.
There was a knock on Max’s door.
Max yelled, “What?”
The door opened slowly and Harold Lipman, Max’s new Networking Salesman, came into the office.
Lipman said, “Esc -” and Max said, “Not now.”
“I just wanted to ask-”
“I said not now!”
Lipman left and Max went right to his office bar and made a vodka tonic. Ah, Max loved his office, the only part of NetWorld that he’d remodeled. Besides the mahogany bar, he’d paneled the walls, installed brandnew carpeting, and bought the most expensive desk and swivel chair available in the Office Depot catalogue. He figured it made a statement, that here was a hip guy, not showy, but with refined taste and a serious edge. You saw the office, you saw a guy who probably had drinks with the Donald, though not often because Max was “too busy.” The office had no view, but elegant beige curtains concealed the windows. Behind his desk hung a custommade picture of a blonde with Pam Anderson-size breasts sitting on a red Porsche. Inscribed on the car was the company motto, NETWORLD OR BUST.
The booze soothed Max enough so that he was able to concentrate on the important stuff again, like money. Over the past two days, Max had put away ten grand in his private safe. He had made small withdrawals from all of his bank accounts – corporate and private – and from his brokerage accounts where he had cash balances. But the
