Plugged

around the waiting room.’ He lit a thin cigar and blew the smoke in a dense funnel towards the ceiling, while I tried to remember if I’d ever heard the word strewn spoken aloud before. ‘The charming Colonel Brady suggested that I leave Woman’s Own out there so we can weed out the gays. Man’s a genius.’

‘Good kisser, too,’ I said, straight-faced.

Simon Moriarty grinned through a mouthful of smoke.

‘There might be some hope for you, soldier.’

I thought it best to burst that bubble. ‘I want to volunteer for a second tour in the Lebanon.’

Moriarty expertly flicked his cigar through a half-open window. ‘Then again, maybe not.’

So we talked for an hour. A bit like your normal pub chat, when you’ve been out for a few days with your best mate and your eyeballs are filmed with vodka.

I sat behind the desk while Moriarty lay on the couch and frisbeed questions at me. Eventually he came around to:

‘Why’d you join the army, Daniel?’

I remembered something from the magazine. ‘Why do you think I joined the army?’

Moriarty did the kind of long hard fake laugh that would make a Bond villain proud. ‘Wow, that is hilarious,’ he said with a confidence that made me feel I’d been saying hilarious wrong all these years. ‘I feel quite the fool now, wasting all that time in university when all I had to do was read a magazine. Have a nice time in the Lebanon.’

I sighed. ‘Okay, Doc. I joined up because. .’

Moriarty actually sat up.

‘Because?’ ‘Because the uniforms set off my eyes. Come on, Doc. Work for the money.’

Simon Moriarty blinked away the previous night’s party. ‘They flew you home early, McEvoy. Remind me why they did that?’

I shrugged. ‘I called in some gunship fire on my own position.’ The shrug was to make this seem like no big deal, but it was a big deal and my legs were shaking as I said it and my mind flicked back to the tracers criss- crossing the night sky like something out of Blade Runner or maybe Star Wars. Whichever one was in space.

‘That does sound like the action of a moron.’

He was baiting me, but that was okay, because we were both smiling a little now. ‘What was left of Amal decided to overrun the entire compound,’ I explained. ‘Old-school style. An honest-to-God battle; couple of them had swords. Everybody made it into the bunker except the watch. I had a radio so I called in a gunship.’

‘Was that a good decision?’

‘Not according to the manual. Lots of property damage but not as much as there might have been. Plus a general got to live.’

‘So they shipped you out?’

‘Cos I was shell-shocked.’

‘And were you?’

‘Absolutely. No bowel movements for three days.’

Moriarty hit me again. ‘So why did you join the army, Daniel?’

He was good. I wasn’t expecting the change of tack. I mean, that gunship thing is an interesting story. ‘Because I reckoned dying overseas was better than living at home.’

Moriarty punched the air. ‘One nil,’ he crowed.

Most nights after work at the casino I take a couple of Triazolam to nod myself off. I go for as long as I can trying to tune out Mrs Delano in the apartment above, but she grinds me down with her ranting, so I pop the pills just to shut her out for a few hours.

Usually we have a little exchange through a hole around the ceiling light fitting.

I’ll lead off with something like:

For Christ’s sake shut up.

To which Mrs Delano will reply:

For Christ’s sake shut up.

I could follow this with:

For one night? Could we have a little bloody peace for one night.

Which she might cleverly twist to:

One night I’ll give you a little bloody piece.

You get the idea.

Tonight I’m thinking about Connie, so I add the Triazolam to a shot of Jameson and manage to grab a few hours of sweet dreams, but by eight my crazy neighbour’s piercing tones have ruptured my rest, and I lie in bed listening as Delano lets fly with a few nuggets that wouldn’t sound out of place in The Exorcist.

‘If I ever find you, baby, I will poison your coffee.’

That gets me out of bed sharpish. I’ve lived in this building for five years and for the first couple Mrs Delano seemed like a normal, non-homicidal human. Then, in year three, she starts in with the poisoning coffee spiel. I’m starting to believe that nobody really knows anyone. I’m pretty sure no one knows me.

A hair-obsessed ex-army doorman. What are the odds of those Venn diagram bubbles intersecting?

Venn diagrams? I know. Another nugget from Simon Moriarty.

I jump in the shower thinking about Connie, so the shower is the right place to be. Everything about her stays with me. All the usual suspects. The way she walks like there’s a pendulum inside her. How her Brooklyn accent gets a little stronger when she’s pissed. The sharp strokes of her nose and chin. Wide smile like a slice of heaven.

Oh baby, she’d said. Oh baby.

Inside a cloud of steam, my imagination adds levels. A husky catch at the end of the phrase.

Oh baaby.

How could I not have noticed this at the time? Connie was sending me a message.

I turn the shower knob way over in the blue.

Sunshine is slanting through my bathroom window, warming the chequered vinyl shower curtain. It’s going to be hot today. Too hot for a woollen hat.

That’s okay. I got lighter hats.

I quite like this time of year in New Jersey. The air on my skin feels like home. The old sod, the emerald isle. Ireland. Sometimes, on a clear day, the sky has the same electric-blue tinge.

Just go home then and stop bitching.

I’m even beginning to irritate my own subconscious. Is there anything more pathetic than a Mick on foreign soil, wailing ‘Danny Boy’? Especially one who never liked the country when he was there.

It wasn’t the country, I remind myself. It was the people in the country and the things that happened there.

My apartment is two floors up, three blocks north of Main Street and ten blocks south of the line of buildings with mildly risque fronts that pass for a strip in this town. I stroll down the cracked concrete, trying to rein in the menace. I dated a gypsy once who told me I had an aura that looked like shark-infested water. Sometimes I piss people off just by walking by, so I hunch a little and keep my eyes on the ground, trying to radiate friendliness. Think hippies, think hippies.

Dr Kronski’s surgery is in a part of town where there aren’t any trees set into the sidewalk. The trashcans are generally teeming with beer bottles, and if you stand in one place long enough someone’s going to offer you whatever you need.

All of which would suggest that Zeb Kronski isn’t much of a surgeon, which would be totally not true. Zeb Kronski is a hell of a surgeon; he just doesn’t have a licence to practise in the United States. And he can’t apply because he had a boob job die on the table in Tel Aviv; not his fault, he assures me. Implant-related death.

The building is maybe twenty years old, but looks five times that. Part of a mini strip mall, mostly glass and partition walls. In winter, accountants and dental nurses freeze to death in these boxes.