The Glorious Heresies (12 page)

“I'll mind them. Anyway, they're not yours anymore, so relax.”

She sat in the circle of chairs and opened the second wrap.

“Have you got anything to chop this with?”

He was wearing combat-style jeans; folds and compartments enough for the one-man band. He reached into a pocket and produced a small knife.

“Aren't you ever worried you'll be stopped and searched? Drugs and weapons on you; it's like something out of
The Wire.
”

“That's not a weapon,” he said.

“Yeah, I'm sure the guards would see it that way. Here, pass me one of them Bibles.”

The faux leather wasn't the ideal chopping platform; she'd have to wash the cover after. She opened the wrap.

“Sit down,” she said, and he did, across from her.

“Your congregation aren't on the way back for you so?”

“They'll be a couple of hours yet,” she said. “I told them I was going to visit my mam and dad.”

“But you're from Millstreet.”

“Exactly.”

She was glad to see him. It wasn't wise to get too fond of your dealer, and the likelihood of one of that breed gaining her approval had never come up before. It's just that Ryan was…well, young. And though his existence was proof that they were learning the dark arts prematurely these days, she still felt safer in his company than she had done with any other dealer.

“Is it good?” she asked as she chopped, and he said, “It's unreal. Seriously, Georgie, you could get ten lines out of that, especially if you've been dry this past while.”

“As a bone,” she said.

She wished she had figured out sooner that young merchants were the way to go.

Maybe, too, young punters.

It was a bad thought to come roaring in after two months of Christian healing in the arse end of nowhere; she hadn't killed off the whore, not entirely. She told herself she had yet to bring her thinking back in sync with the rest of the world. The longer she stayed out of sight in flowing garments in West Cork, the more likely the stench of sin would be obfuscated by contrition's perfume, until repentance diluted her history, until all but lupine senses were confused by her spick, span self.

But the thought was there now and the ghost of who she was an hour ago bleated its dissent.

She'd heard of fathers bringing their sons out for a taster, and wasn't Hollywood always eking out the comedic charm in golden-hearted hookers and the desperate young virgins who found more than surrender in their welcoming depths? Oh yeah, it was really noble. Popping cherries all around her, that would have been the way to go. Charging them fifty quid to bob, red and tearstained, on top of her with her sworn guarantee she wouldn't laugh at the size of their winkies. Ridding them of the burden of inexperience so they didn't make fools of themselves when their pretty little girlfriends finally granted them entry. Before they fixed on their own perversions and started getting grabby.

She bent over the Bible with a rolled-up fiver and snorted her line.

What difference would it make to get them young? They were animals soon enough.

She passed the Good Book to Ryan, and as code dictated he accepted.

“Never did one off a Bible before,” he said, pinching his nostrils and blinking.

She took the book back. “Mass produced and made of dead trees; there's nothing special about them.”

“It's a bit mean though, isn't it?”

“What?”

“Snorting coke off your Christians' favourite book?”

“It's not like they'll ever know.” She tucked up the wrap and dotted the residue from the book's cover with a licked thumb.

“Are they not nice to you?” he asked.

“Eh?”

“The Christians, like.” He gestured at the book. “There's a bang of vengeance off that.”

“That's not it at all,” she said. “I didn't even think, to be honest.”

“So they're not bad to you,” he said. “They're not asking you to change anything but your wardrobe.”

“Well, and my wanton ways.”

He pushed the chair onto its back legs, folded his arms and looked at the ceiling.

“That's it, though,” he said. “All the judging. Doesn't that put you off?”

“They're not really judgemental,” she said. “They're meek and mild and shapeless. They think God has a plan and that all they need to do with their lives is follow it. Live in the country and milk goats.”

“No wonder you were aching for a bump.”

“I wasn't, really. I was convalescing. Coke doesn't go with convalescing; I needed my feelings, you know?”

“You don't anymore?”

“I'm sick of having feelings.”

She was joking, and he smiled as he should have, but he said, “Seriously though, Georgie. You're looking well, like. Don't fuck it up.”

“Oh my God. A dealer's telling me to stop doing drugs.”

“Dealing doesn't automatically make someone a cunt, is all.”

“Unlike whoring.”

The cocaine hadn't kicked in yet, of course, and the line she'd given herself was more a taster than a parade, but she had always found the ritual very encouraging of conversation.

“I don't know how judgemental they'd be,” she said. “Truthfully. Only the leader guy knows that I was on the game. The rest of them just think I'm a souse. But even if they knew and hated me, well, more to forgive, right?”

“I didn't mean you in particular,” he said. “It's just judgey bollocks all round, isn't it? That's the whole point.”

“That's not very fair,” she said.

He shrugged.

“They've been really decent to me. Free accommodation and all the veggies I can eat and all I have to do is renounce bikinis and not look bored when they're going on about Jesus.”

“And they've no ulterior motive?”

“
That's
the motive. Saving my soul. And let them think they're saving my soul, because in doing that they're saving me from being abused by bastards who think they have a right to rape me.”

He winced.

“It's true,” she said. “It's not as if Mr. Punter Man's bothered whether I enjoy it. And he can't be a nasty, angry prick to his girlfriend so he hires a woman to pound his cock into instead. So if some cooperative of Jesus freaks want to give me an extended holiday that's fine, and if they're only doing it to hook me into their prayer circle that's fine, let them; it has to be better than the alternative, doesn't it?”

He looked at her.

“But what if you don't think you've done anything wrong?”

“I have done something wrong. And I suppose I'd be directed to show Christian forgiveness to you for not knowing that because a: you're male and b: you're never going to be in a situation where you're made cannon fodder for the appetites of people better off than you.”

“All right,” he said. “All right. Leave it.”

He stood up, making, she thought, to leave, but instead of heading for the door he went the other way, towards the lectern and the keyboard and the stacks of unsullied Bibles.

“I know it's not like I should expect you to care,” she said.

“It's OK.”

“It's just, y'know, the Christians might be daft but they're trying to do the right thing.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“They might think short skirts are slutty but at least they've come up with an alternative.”

He picked up one of the books of sheet music.

“You wouldn't use a prostitute, would you?” she asked.

It was a funny thing to ask a kid, even if he was your dealer. She chased this grown-up disquiet with ugly reminiscence: the younger men, booked in groups to sate the gang-bang fantasies unearthed by porn habits that stretched from preteen curiosity right up to the stoked cruelty of adulthood; the ones who were never satisfied; the ones whose displeasure reverberated in slaps and misspelt jibes.

“I have a girlfriend.”

“That's not an answer.”

“It is,” he said. “I wouldn't because I have a girlfriend.”

“That doesn't stop your typical punter,” she said. “Girlfriends have nothing to do with it.”

“That's as may be,” he said. “I have a girlfriend. I'm not interested in anyone else.”

“How long have you been with her?”

“Year and a half.”

“Jesus.” And then a nasty thought, as she remembered their initial introduction. “It's not Tara Duane, is it?”

He looked like he'd come down Christmas morning to find a box of bees under the tree.

“What?”

“The night she gave me your number, she let on that there was history between you. Which is partly why I got some fright when you rocked up in your school
geansaí.
”

“That's sick.”

“She's not your sugar mammy, then?”

“That's fucking sick, Georgie.”

“I've seen weirder.”

He placed the sheet music book on the stand over the keys and said, “If I'd seen weirder I would have gouged my fucking eyes out.”

“So where did she get your number?”

“She's my dad's next-door-neighbour. Happy? Seriously, Georgie, you're giving me the gawks.”

“Weren't you her dealer?”

“Once upon a time. I've gotten picky with age.”

“Couldn't be too picky, if you're coming into Christian retreats to sell me coke.”

“Maybe I don't find you half as creepy, Georgie.”

“That's a compliment, is it?”

“Statement of fact. Even with your new cult.”

She started to protest, but he hushed her with the first few notes from the keyboard; startling, in that she didn't expect it, and certainly not from him. She didn't know what it was, except that it was played with fluidity and grace, and she gawped, and tried to shout over it, but he ignored her, and by the time he got to the end of the piece she was muted but good, yes, getting there, feeling good.

“Did you play that just to shut me up?”

“It's awful,” he said. “Lazy, simple bollocks. But it's the only instrumental in here.”

“You don't look like a musician.”

“You don't look like a God-botherer.”

He put the music book back where he had found it, and walked to the door, hands in his jeans pockets.

“What's your girlfriend's name?” Georgie asked.

For a moment he looked like he wasn't going to tell her. He narrowed his eyes, and considered her, and conceded. “Karine.”

“What's she like?”

“Stunning.”

“So what would she say if she knew you were doing coke in a Christian prayer hall with a prostitute?”

“I've done worse.”

“So she's a saint.”

“Higher up than that, I'd say.”

“So where do I get one of those?”

“You don't,” he said. “She's one of a kind.”

He stepped onto the path and hesitated. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Seriously.”

She gave him an awkward smile. “Don't buy prostitutes. Seriously. If I can't change any hearts in virtuous Christian chests than at least I can change yours.”

“I told you. Not going to happen.”

“Good. And Ryan?”

He looked back.

“You should probably avoid that Tara Duane, too.”

“Give me fucking strength. Anything else?”

“Go in peace?”

“Go and fuck off for yourself,” he said, and he was gone.

The day had gone without a hitch. She'd gotten to the city, she'd called a dealer who wasn't a bullying bastard to bring her blow she had both mind and money for, she'd helped her new friends conduct their Bible study without yap-yap-yapping her true colours into their Christian ears. And when she got back to the farm in the late evening, David was delighted to see her, and over tea and biscuits in the common room she demonstrated, by way of smiles and winks, that she had been successful in her quest, that their midnight feast could go ahead.

David crept to her room when the others were asleep and as she watched him snort a line in childish glee, the day's leftovers tangled in her head.

The rush in chopping up the lines, the unintended sacrilege of a hastily adapted base on which to do it. The thoughts that had come on considering her dealer's frame: that she'd been doing it wrong all those years on the street and in the back bedrooms of crumbling townhouses, that boyhood was a state on which to take pre-emptive revenge.

Then as David came over to lie beside her, murmuring tactile promises on her skin, she knew, suddenly, lucidly, that what she was doing was a curse. She was the succubus aiding his fall. He'd come here, wide-eyed and broken, to mine some life from the depths of his failure and she was bringing him coke and pretty falsehoods.

This community, this flaky citadel of do-gooders, had been poisoned by her presence. The meagre rules of William Tobin, smashed with pitiless zeal.
Respect your body;
here she was on her back again, for some man she hardly knew.
Respect your friends;
here she was, having brought cocaine into their cocoon.

“I need to get out of here,” she said to David, who shrugged it off as he spread her legs. “I don't belong here.”

“
Ssh,
baby; can't let them hear us.”

“Get off me,” she said, and then, “Get off me!”

She pushed him off and pulled on her dress as he spluttered disbelief, and ran through the deep shadows of a house she had just begun to know and out onto the yard, down the woodland path to the water, her feet bruised by the shingle, the hem of her ridiculous dress floating as the mud hindered her.

“Georgie!” David was behind her; she didn't turn to look. “What are you doing, Georgie? Jesus, you'll drown!”

No fear of that; the water, cold and still as the morning air, didn't have the depth to either baptise or kill her. So she stood up to her waist in it, and cried at the shadow shore opposite, for how could good intentions so easily dishonoured ever stand a chance of saving her?