mind to turn to what was coming up later after the schmooze with Breen, however. The field trip — he had described it to Brid. He had fudged it for her benefit though. A dog fight would horrify her, freak her out completely. Her husband attending one would be even worse.
As the bus carved its way through the lighter post-rush-hour traffic, Fanning’s spirits lifted. He was raring to go on this script, and he was so close now. Nobody had yet treated Dublin crime the way it should be treated, as social commentary, as critique — as family drama. Breen would get it, probably. But if he didn’t, well there were others outside of Ireland. The Sopranos would look like summer school compared to what he would be coming up with. He’d have a draft by the summer for sure. Then it’d be summer holidays for Brid, and they’d have the summer of their lives, the three of them.
The bus shuddered to a sudden halt by a zebra crossing. A black woman waited uncertainly by the curb, her hands on a buggy laden with at least two children that Fanning could see. A car horn sounded somewhere, then another. People were so impatient, Fanning reflected. He heard the driver say something that had an exasperated tone to it. Then he too hit the horn. With a stricken smile, the woman pulled the buggy back, and shook her head.
Fanning’s thoughts went to Aisling. After dinner he’d bring her out in the buggy. Brid could decompress, have her bath, a cup of tea on her own. Actually, he might even take Aisling over to Brid’s Ma and Da in the car. Ah, no. What was he thinking? It was not casual anymore. Danny, the Da, was okay, but the Ma was a different kettle of fish. Maybe it was just her age, but she was definitely going over to the dark side this last while.
Time was she was almost fawning over him. He’d heard she talked about him as her son-in-law, very well respected as a writer, you know. Fanning could see her trying not to be annoyed at him this past while, however. It was the little things gave her away. A look, a pause, the way she spoke slowly; the subjects she avoided, and the ones she went to too often. Her favourite in that area was loaded, of course: “God the changes we’ve seen in our own lifetime! My oh my, all the jobs and the opportunities out there nowadays.”
Fanning was first off the bus. He legged it up the quays smartly, not at all displeased with the dank, colder air coming at him over the parapet of the River Liffey. His Dublin had always been shabby and smelly, and real. That Dublin was still there if you knew where to look. Fanning had never had time for any nostalgia about Good Old Dublin. The new restaurants and apartments being steadily inserted into parts of the city centre areas that had been no-go areas were welcome. Sometimes, though, their sudden arrivals gave Fanning a feeling of bafflement, and even dismay. Still, he was careful not to fall in range of the running joke in Dublin for at least a decade now: “When did that place go up?”
Fanning was entering Smithfield sooner than he had expected, and within minutes of leaving the quays he was turning the corner in sight of the restaurant. There was Breen in the window, and as per caricature, he was on his mobile. Fanning stepped back, and he took up a spot next to a delivery van. No way would he be caught sitting meekly and waiting for Breen’s phone conversation to end. He’d watch the performance instead.
He could have predicted Breen’s smiles and shrugs, and the fake, rolling laugh that he retailed. Scene Two would roll out just as predictably. That was when Breen would wear that that put-upon look, the smile of regret that he excelled in. It would be followed up with an apology for being “so busy.”
The hardest bit to take would be Breen’s attempt to be the common man, a hapless beleaguered gobshite, sighing that he was “running around like a fart in a bottle,” or he “didn’t know whether he was coming or going.” Then, Breen’s twinkling eyes would almost disappear when he put out his fake smile. Fanning wondered if anyone had ever told Breen how fat he was getting these past few years, how… fulsome was the word, Fanning thought then, the exact word. He was pleased the word came to him so easily.
Fanning didn’t mind Breen’s act itself as a piece, say, of theatre. After all, Breen the impressario was a character study in his own right. He would find his way into a Dermot Fanning script soon enough. But the sting in it all was that Breen assumed that Dermot Fanning was stupid enough to be taken in by it all.
Fanning felt the injustice glow stronger in his chest, and so he distracted himself by beginning a careful, neutral study of the buildings around him. More than their lines or even shapes, he observed their textures and shadows and tones, all the things that escaped day-to-day notice. Behind the crane swivelling slowly overhead somewhere near Capel Street were light-grey clouds, like a cannonade from some long-ago naval battle. The sky to the south was parchment — no: pearl.
The cobblestone lane was new. The old one had been torn up last year and had been meticulously replaced. Brickwork had been repointed, pipes proudly exposed. Copies of recently discovered daguerrotypes of Dublin from the 1840s and 1850s had been placed in salient windows of the restaurant.
Sa Bhaile — My Place. Staff would speak Gaelic if requested, was the boast, or the “brand,” but diners could expect a savvy, cool dining experience in what had been a livery, a storehouse, a bicycle factory, and then lain abandoned for decades, and was now a backdrop for celebrity snapshots. The lettering on the restaurant sign was harsh modern, doubtless intended as a statement to that effect.
But he really should be thinking about his pitch, the three points, and no more. Three was a natural number for people to remember, a trinity, just like the old Irish proverbs. Breen sure as hell wasn’t one to take notes. He didn’t have to. The higher up in the firmament you were, the more causal things seemed to be. A whim, a mood, a coincidence, pure luck: they were the reigning deities in the world of film. The true talent had never been the actual writing.
Fanning had been to book launches here. No-one he had met those times seemed to be interested in the fact that ten years ago this area was where you’d come to fence stuff, to rent a gun, to buy heroin.
Oh oh: Breen had spotted him. He held up his hand, his fingers spread, and then detached the mobile slightly from his ear. He issued the smile and the eye-roll that Fanning had predicted, and went back to his call. Fanning had mustered a smile, and he slowly nodded his understanding.
His chest felt overfilled. He took a few steps toward the door of the restaurant, and made a last effort to get his thoughts in order. With Breen you basically had one minute, and it had to be clear and simple, the less said the better. Breen wouldn’t admit to calling it a pitch, of course. It was always “a chat,” or a “bring me up to date.” He wanted to just gossip, or tell a joke, or drop names and tell anecdotes.
Fanning let his breath out slowly and drew in another just the same. He was conscious of his smile, and maintaining it. Smiling alone, the act of it, made one relax, he had read.
Breen knew what the business wanted, network or studio. For one thing, poverty in Ireland didn’t sell anymore. As a matter of fact, Ireland didn’t sell anymore. Anyway, as Fanning well knew, the whole business was full to the gills with talent and writers. A few of the younger ones were smart enough to latch on the foreigner thing, like that Mira’s Story, about the divorcee who emigrates to the wilds of Galway. Light, merry, conflict-of- cultures stuff. Throw in a woman’s empowerment, craggy Irish faces, bleak and rain-swollen bog, and the search- for-home stuff. It wasn’t hard, when you thought about it.
Fanning strolled to the window display of a new decorative ironworks. A slideshow was projected onto a piece of glass just behind the window of the shop. He’d seen the stuff before, but it was still eye-catching. Pictures and movies seemed to float in the air, like holograms. Celtic designs twirled and shrank, and were morphed into door-knockers. Old photos of Victorian gaslamps dissolved into replicas in front of homes that looked Dublin-ish, or at least the U.K. A hotel balcony from a photo of Joycean Dublin gave way to an exact copy, mounted on a French window of a home with Killiney Bay in the background: “For your Juliet balcony.”
The show began to loop yet again. Just before Fanning turned away, a logo caught his eye, and he stared more intently as it appeared and grew. It was the Magritte all right, Memory: the bloodied head, the stone. Sure enough, he saw it was Mick Lally’s outfit — doublin. com. Talk about coincidence.
He hadn’t spoken to Lally in five years. Mick Lally, the great Bohemian, slagger and friend all through university and beyond, had gone into multimedia. Every time that Fanning had seen mention of Lally’s company, he was reminded of their endless arguments about Fassbinder or Antonioni and Foucault — everything and anything, for God’s sake. It was Lally who had been his partner in the first screenplay he’d ever done, made in pubs and flats, often stoned and more often half-drunk too.
He turned away. Breen was standing in the window, waving, with that hang-dog look. He made a big issue of powering off his mobile, and winked. Fanning took in the shirt collar opened the regulation two buttons, the straining belt turning down on his hips. As he made his way over to the restaurant door, he tried harder to smile in return.
