The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years (13 page)

Christian picks up on the jealousy in my voice. He goes, ‘So what happened to you? You were in the game for a couple of nights and then you, like, dropped out.’ I’m like, ‘Well, it’s not really me, is it?’ He hands me a beer and goes, ‘Don’t give me that shit, Ross. It’s
TOTALLY
you. You’d the Hotel Capri and the Playa del Sol apartments on the scoreboard before the rest of us had the tops off our suntan lotion. You were like a dog out of the traps.’ I’m like, ‘I know.’ He goes, ‘So, what happened?’ I take a long slug out of the can. I’m like, ‘Christian, this is something I don’t want you to tell the goys, roysh?’ He goes, ‘I’m the best friend you’ve got, young Skywalker.’ I’m like, ‘You remember that bird I pulled in the Hawaiian Tosca that night?’ He goes, ‘The one with the dreadlocks?’ I’m like, ‘No, the second night. The one with the big hoopy earrings.’ He goes, ‘What about her?’ I’m like, ‘Well, we went back to her apartment, roysh, in Playa del Sol and … well, this is going to sound weird, roysh, but it felt, I don’t know, wrong or something.’ He goes, ‘Wrong?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. For the first time in my entire life, I couldn’t … well, you know …’ He nods. He’s like, ‘I know alroysh. Been there. I was that Stormtrooper.’ I’m like, ‘Well, she basically threw me out of the apartment.’ He’s like, ‘Just because you couldn’t get a John Stalker?’ I’m there, ‘It wasn’t that. I, em … I let another girl’s name slip.’ He goes, ‘Sorcha?’ I nod. He’s like, ‘While you were …’ I’m like, ‘No, no. It was in my
sleep. I was saying her name in my sleep apparently. Don’t know why, she wasn’t even in my focking dream.’

He goes, ‘You’ve still got it bad for the girl?’ and I’m like, ‘I didn’t realise how bad, Christian.’ He goes, ‘What are you going to do?’ I’m like, ‘What can I do? She’s in Australia. It’s practically the other side of the world. And I don’t even know if she’s still with that tool of a boyfriend of hers.’ He goes, ‘You must be totally bummed out.’ I’m like, ‘
TOTALLY
. By the way, my
congratulations
.’ He goes, ‘For?’ I’m like, ‘Lauren. You haven’t done the dirt on her.’ He goes, ‘I really like her, Ross.’ I’m like, ‘You must. We’re in focking Playa del Ingles, Christian. It’s, like, Shag City, Arizona. I mean, if you don’t get your Nat King Cole here, customs give you a hug on the way home. And you’ve stayed faithful. You must love her.’

He goes, ‘There’s only one girl I ever loved.’ I expect him to say Princess focking Leia or someone from
Star Wars
,
Chewbacca
the Wookie or something, but this is one of those rare nights when Christian is on planet Earth. He goes, ‘Hazel.’ I’m like, ‘Hazel? From Mount Anville? Holy shit, Christian, you went out with her when you were, like, sixteen.’ He goes, ‘Fifteen.’ I’m like, ‘You were only with her for, like, three months?’ He goes, ‘Two.’ I’m there, ‘Didn’t you break it off with her, though?’ He goes, ‘I caught her looking at another goy one day. No, it wasn’t that she looked at another goy, it was the
way
she looked at him. See, she’d never looked at me like that before. And I knew she never would. And when you catch your bird looking at
somebody
the way she looked at him, well, there was no way it was ever going to be the same again.’

I don’t know why, but I think this bloke he’s talking about might have been me.

The goys suddenly arrive back, roysh, and JP’s telling Oisinn all about the gaff he ended up in last night, going, ‘It was a
low-rise
, bungalow-style setting, with ocean frontage and an extensive range of in-house amenities, surrounded by subtropical foliage. Rooms both modern and tasteful, with twenty-four-hour room service available …’

Oisinn sees me and Christian sitting at the table having a beer. He’s like, ‘What are you two faggots talking about?’

Spanish beer is basically piss.

We’re on the lash all afternoon, roysh, down by the pool and after, like, six or seven pints, my focking back teeth are floating, so I hit the jacks, the one in the bor, and there’s basically two urinals, roysh. Decker’s at one, jarred off his head judging by the way he’s holding onto the wall with his free hand. Then there’s the one beside it. There’s also two traps with, like, proper toilets in them, but the floor in trap one is covered in piss and I’m wearing, like, flip-flops, and I happen to know the one in trap two is a knob-chopper and you have to hold the seat up with your hand while you take a slash. So I’ve no choice but to head for the urinal beside Decker. I don’t think he recognises me. He goes, ‘Alright, bud? Enjoyin’ de holiday, are ye?’ He definitely doesn’t recognise me. He goes, ‘Tell ye sometin, for de furst time in me bleedin’ life, I’m glad dee brought dat euro in …’ I try to piss as quickly as I can, roysh, to get away from him, but it’s no good. I’ve got a focking gallon of Ken in me. Decker seems to have stopped going, but he’s, like, kept his position and decides to tell me his focking life story.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with it. Except the last bit. He’s only really in the Canaries, he says, because his claim has just come through. Eighteen grand, he tells me. He’s there, ‘Says I to the wife, “It’s not gonna be like me redundancy money. We’re gonna spend dis properly. We’re goin on de holiday of a lifetime. Get yisser cases packed.” Dat’s how we ended up comin’. Eddie’s me brudder-in-law, he’s Sandra’s brudder. Says I to herself, “I’m takin’ de four of us off on de holiday of a lifetime.” Sure it’s better dan pissin’ it up again de wall, isn’t it?’

You wouldn’t be able to tell, roysh, but Oisinn’s been going out with this bird for, like, a month. Hailey’s her name. Not the Mae West lookswise, but a stunner by his standards. She was a real golden goal effort. He pulled her right at the end of the night, roysh, the time of the evening when you’re basically cruising bus stops and focking Abrakebabras to score. Anyway, roysh, he books this holiday with us a couple of months back and, like, didn’t have the balls to tell her he was going. So, like, three or four days before we’re due to leave, roysh, he sort of, like, engineers this row with her over something that is, like, totally trivial. So he tells her he needs some space, some time to himself and suggests a two-week trial separation, roysh, just so he can, like, get his head together and shit. Now, roysh, at the very end of the holiday, his conscience is at him, judging by the way he’s buying up, like, half the focking duty free shop in the shopping centre down by the beach. He’s bought her, like, earrings and a ring, a new Discman, two T-shirts and a new camera, roysh, and then he hits the perfume section and he just stops all of a sudden and goes, ‘Take in those beautiful aromas, goys. We’re talking Lancôme, we’re talking Elizabeth Arden, we’re talking Thierry
Mugler, we’re talking Jean-Paul Gaultier. If that’s not enough to get the old olfactory senses going, I don’t know what is.’ What a weirdo. To him, this place is a brothel.

The last night, roysh, we all end up in The Irish Jockey. I wanted to go to the Hawaiian Tosca again, but I lost the vote. JP’s still on his take-the-piss-out-of-creamers buzz, Oisinn loves watching him in action and Christian basically doesn’t give a shit where we end up. As for Fionn, roysh, his two Spanish honeys went home this morning and he votes for The Irish Jockey basically just to piss me off.

JP storts, like, straight away. The second he’s in the door, roysh, he shouts, ‘THE POVERTY TRAP!’ and all the skangers stort, like, cheering and shouting it back. ‘THE POVERTY TRAP! THE POVERTY TRAP!’ There’s a band playing,
‘My heart is in Ireland, that’s where I long to be. Her hills and her valleys, are calling to me
.’ This bloke, roysh, the kind of goy you wouldn’t make eye contact with if you caught him staring at you on O’Connell Street at ten o’clock on a Friday night, he comes over, roysh, and he’s like, ‘Storee?’ And JP’s, like, really focking
hamming
it up with the accent again, going, ‘Oh, I say. Hello there, Kellyer.’ Oisinn is, like, breaking his shite laughing in his face, but the goy’s too focking thick to cop it. JP, like, patronises him for a few minutes, then offloads him on me, telling him that I’m a huge Dublin football fan.

He turns to me and he’s like, ‘Whaddya tink of da way Tommy Carr was treated?’ I’m pretty sure that Tommy Carr used to be, like, the manager of Dublin. I wonder to myself, is Kellyer a fan or not? My life could depend on the answer I give him. I decide to, like, bluff it. I’m there, ‘That’s, like, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar
question. It’s the one we all want answered.’ He seems to be happy with this because he drops the subject. He goes, ‘Furst ting I do when I get off da plane is I’m goin’ straight inta town and gettin’ chips wi’ curry sauce. Have ye had da curry sauce over here? Fookin brutal, man. Brutal. Sure steak and chips is all I’ve eaten since I got here, ask any of da lads.’ Then, roysh,
completely
out of the blue, for no reason at all, he tells me that his brother is in the IRA, and that if I ever want anyone shot to give him a shout and it’s sorted. ‘
Though born here in this land, my heart is in Ireland. The land of the old folk, is calling to me
.’
I manage to attract Fionn’s attention, roysh, and I tell him what Kellyer said to me and he just laughs. He goes, ‘Focking hell, you’re white as a ghost. Ross, the IRA is a covert terrorist army, organised around a system of cells to maintain secrecy. If he told you his brother’s in the IRA then the chances are he’s not. Come on, it’s your round.’

Everyone’s shouting, ‘THE POVERTY TRAP!’ JP’s up at the bor. He’s still wearing the football shirt that he’s had on since the first night we arrived, but he’s drinking large brandies and
smoking
cigars and shouting, ‘AFFLUENCE! AFFLUENCE!’ really ripping the piss now. Then everyone storts shouting, ‘AFFLUENCE!’ JP storts telling this other skanger – Anto from Ballyfermot – that he’s going to get a tattoo before he goes home tomorrow, roysh, and Anto suggests a skull painted in the colours of the Irish flag – ‘green, whoy and yelli’ – with barbed wire on it. And JP goes, ‘And explosions in the background. I simply must have explosions in the background.’
‘
And it’s off to Dubbalin in the green (fuck the Queen), where the bayonets glisten in the sun (fuck the hun
) …’ Fionn is chatting up this Spanish barmaid. He’s like, ‘
Olá, que tal
?’ I hear Christian telling Oisinn that it’s just like
the Mos Eiseley cantina and then they both shout, ‘THE POVERTY TRAP!’ and I am
SO
focking scared.