The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years (17 page)

I know what’s coming next. Of course it’s Emma Forbes who asks. She’s like, ‘Are you prepared to be flexible on the price?’ I’m like, ‘
I
am. Unfortunately, though, the market isn’t as generous as me. I have to remind you that I have two other clients to show around this afternoon.’ The two of them stand there humming and hawing, roysh, while I’m hitting them with things like, ‘optional full furniture fit-out package’, ‘rear-facing garden with sunny aspect’, and other bullshit, knowing damn well the saps aren’t going to get anything better than this. The goy’s like, ‘Okay, we’ll offer the asking price. What is it, W210,000?’ I’m there, ‘Excellent,’ showing them out. I go, ‘Now, unfortunately, there are two other clients coming this afternoon. It’s the highest offer I’m obliged to take, you understand that.’ They both nod, looking all mopey, roysh, like someone pissed on their
cornflakes
.

I actually don’t have anyone else coming to see the house, but I thought I’d let the fockers sweat. I wait around in my cor for about twenty minutes, let them get a good head stort on me, roysh, then I hit the strategic radial corridor back to Dublin.

During the summer, roysh, I was stringing along these two birds, we’re talking Becky and Iseult, and in the heat of the moment, roysh, I told both of them that I’d fallen in love with them, basically just trying to get my bit out of them. This is not actually unusual for me, roysh. I’ve been known to play five or six girls
together at the same time, hence the Little Richard nickname that’s mentioned on the back of one of the cubicle doors in the men’s in Annabel’s.

What made this one different, roysh, was the fact that Iseult and Becky were actually in the same class at school, we’re talking sixth-year Whores on the Shore here, and keeping them apart was basically a tightrope act, which I have to say I managed to perform pretty well, until the day they both asked me to the same debs.

The goys were giving me total slaggings, roysh, telling me I’m getting far too old for that whole lark, and I did say that last year’s Mount Anything debs would be my last – the chicken à la crème was the best-looking bird there – but I love, like, defying the odds, roysh, and the challenge of bringing two birds to the one debs, without them actually knowing about each other, was enough to persuade me out of retirement for one night only. Fionn turns around to me in the gaff one night and he goes, ‘Never been done before, Ross.’ I’m like, ‘Odds?’ He goes, ‘We’re talking 25 to 1.’ I’m like, ‘I’m up for the challenge.’

Day arrives, roysh, and I grab a hundred bills from the Drinklink, hit Blackrock, grab two orchids and two boxes of Leonidas chocolates, the medium-sized box, no point in going mental as I’ve been there and back with both of them. I get back to the gaff, roysh, and I phone up Iseult first and she’s like, ‘Of all the people I could be going with tonight, I’m
SO
glad it’s you, Ross. You have been
SO
good for me, especially when I didn’t get the points to do international commerce with German,’ and eventually, roysh, after I’ve finished borfing, she asks me to call up to her gaff – this huge pad in Glenageary – at, like, six o’clock because her parents are having, like, a cocktail porty beforehand,
which is music to my ears because Becky doesn’t want me to pick her up until eight, so I’ve got time to play with.

Iseult’s old pair are just like Iseult, saps basically, giving it the whole, ‘So, this is the young man Iseult has spent the
entire
summer talking about,’ bit, roysh, and Iseult’s like, ‘
OH MY! GOD!
Daddy, you are
SO
embarrassing me,’ and I’m there going, you can focking cut that out right now, because they’ve basically got me down as, like, future son-in-law material here. It’s all, like, bullshit talk for about half an hour, roysh, me knocking back Diet Cokes and losing the will to live.

Eventually, we head off and I drop Iseult off at the Shelbourne, roysh, then tell her I’ve forgotten to bring this
amazing
present I bought her (she’s like, ‘Oh, you are
SO
sweet’) and I hop back in the cor and peg it out to Becky’s gaff in Stillorgan. Oh my God, roysh, Becky’s old pair have invited half the focking world around for drinks, we’re talking aunts, uncles, neighbours, you name it. Her old man is a total dickhead, leading me around the sitting room, roysh, with his arm around my shoulder,
introducing
me to all his, I don’t know, business associates I suppose, going, ‘This is Ross, Rebecca’s boyfriend,’ which is news to me, though I say nothing. He goes, ‘Captained Castlerock the year they won the Cup, 1999 I think I’m right in saying.’

Her old dear, who was actually a bit of a yummy-mummy, spent the next, like, half an hour practically force-feeding me focking vol-au-vents before we finally escaped with a few words of treat-my-daughter-like-a-princess advice from the penis in the Pringle sweater. I’m like, ‘Your parents are really cool,’ as we get in the cor. She goes, ‘I’m
SO
glad you got on well with them.’

The trickiest part of the evening, roysh, was the meal, the big dilemma being who do I sit with. Basically what I did, roysh, was
I asked Iseult would she mind if I sat at another table, just for, like, the meal and shit. She goes, ‘Oh my God, you don’t want to be seen with me? Is it, like, the dress?’ I’m like, ‘No, no, I just want to have a chat with Hayser’ – this goy who was at school with me – ‘he’s pretty upset about not making the UCD team this season.’ She looks at me and then at Hayser, roysh, then she goes, ‘Oh my God, you are
SO
a good friend,’ and she gives me this, like, peck on the cheek, roysh, and I just fock off.

So there I am, roysh, sat at a table across the far side of the room, with Hayser on one side of me and Becky on the other, and I nearly choke on a garlic and cheese potato when Becky turns around to me at one stage and goes, ‘
OH MY! GOD!
Iseult Mooney must have come on her own. What a sad bitch.’ I’m basically there coughing and spluttering my guts up. I’m like, ‘Who’s Iseult Mooney?’ still trying to play it cool as a fish’s fart. She goes, ‘Oh, believe me, she is not someone you’d want to know.’ I’m like, ‘Well, I’m glad I’m here with you and not her,’ and she looks at me and goes, ‘Oh my God, this is turning out to be
SO
one of the best nights of my life.’

It was the perfect crime, roysh. After the meal, it was, like, twenty minutes with one, then the other, back and forth all night, the two birds thinking I was their date for the night, and I was sitting there, roysh,
storting
to let my guard down, pretty confident at that stage that I was even going to end up scoring the two of them at the end of the night, but then it just, like, totally came apart, and we’re talking
TOTALLY
here.

I completely forgot, roysh, but this bird, Aoibheann, let’s just say a very recent conquest who I might also have said the dreaded L-word to, she was there as well, roysh, and she ends up getting completely off her face, having a row with me over what a
bastard I am to women and then focking a vodka and Red Bull over me. Of course, Iseult and Becky arrive over at exactly the same time and they both want to know – ‘
OH MY! GOD!
OH MY! GOD!
OH MY! GOD!
’ – what’s going on. And that’s when they find out about, well, each other. Becky goes to Aoibheann, ‘That’s, like, my boyfriend,’ and Iseult turns around to Becky and she’s like, ‘
Hello
? You’re, like, delusional, girl.’

Aoibheann sort of, like, disappears, roysh, and the two birds are left there, like, screaming at each other. I’m not sure if they’ve, like, copped on what’s been going on here tonight, but it’s obvious they’ve been dying to get stuck into each other for a while. Becky tells Iseult that Iseult has
SO
had it in for her ever since she took her place on the hockey team, and Iseult tells Becky she’s a knob, always was and always will be. She goes, ‘You were always
SO
up Miss Pendleton’s orse.’ Becky tells Iseult she has an attitude problem – a
TOTAL
attitude problem, she goes – and, flattering as it is, roysh, to have two birds fighting over me, I decide then to get the fock out of there when no one is looking. I was just like, ‘Goodnight, Vienna.’

I’m in the
newsagents, roysh, the one around the corner from the old pair’s gaff, and the queue’s, like, out the focking door, and I’m just there flicking through the magazines, waiting for them all to clear out, but the owner, roysh, he’s blabbing away to some old dear about the euro and whether we’ll ever, like, get used to it, and I’m there thinking what a mutt Patsy Kensit is without make-up and that Patsy Palmer isn’t much better, with or without, when all of a sudden, roysh, I hear the goy go, ‘You know that magazine’s for women,’ which is when I realise, roysh, that the shop’s empty, at long focking last.

I head up to the counter, roysh, and the goy goes, ‘Oh it’s you, Ross. Didn’t recognise you there. It’s the baseball cap. You’re not wearing one today.’ Then he goes, ‘And Charles, how the hell is he?’ It never ceases to amaze me how easily taken in people are by that dickhead. I’m like, ‘My dad’s the same as ever,’ and I wonder whether he heard what I actually said because he storts breaking his shite laughing – we’re talking, like, really over the top laughing – and slapping the counter, and when he’s finished, roysh, he goes, ‘That’s him alright. That’s our Charles.’

I’m just staring at the goy, roysh, and eventually, when he
calms down, I’m like, ‘Do you sell
The Star
? It’s a newspaper.’ He goes, ‘I do, for my sins. It’s over there, bottom shelf, next to the manila envelopes and the shiny wrapping paper.’ I’m like, ‘How many copies do you get in?’ He’s like, ‘Em … ten, I think.’ I’m like, ‘You get in ten copies every day.’ He goes, ‘Well, it was very popular there during the summer. When the World Cup was on … what’s all this about, Ross?’ I’m like, ‘I want them. I mean I want to buy them. All of them. All ten.’ He looks at me, roysh, squinting his eyes, and he goes, ‘You’re not in some kind of
trouble
, are you? There’s not something in there you don’t want your mum and dad to read, is there?’

Before I can say no, roysh, he grabs a copy and lashes it out on the counter and he storts, like, opening pages at random and reading the headlines, going, ‘
JORDAN TO GIVE BIRTH ON THE INTERNET!
It wasn’t you, Ross, was it? You didn’t impregnate the buxom, attention-seeking glamour model, did you? Did you?’ Holy fock, I knew the goy was, like, weird, but I didn’t know how weird. I’m like, ‘
What
are you bullshitting on about?’ He goes, ‘
WEE WILLY WIMPY! POP IDOL OPENS HIS HEART ON SCHOOL BULLIES WHO MADE HIS LIFE HELL!
You didn’t, Ross? You didn’t steal lunch money from television’s monkey-faced warbler, maybe stick his head down the toilet? Oh, for the love of humanity.
“MAN WHO SAID S**T IN FRONT OF MY KIDS MADE ME MAD! I COULD HAVE PUNCHED HIM ON THE NOSE,” SAYS RONAN!
This is the one, isn’t it, Ross? You made nice guy Ronan lose his legendary cool by using the S-word in front of baby Jack. It’s no wonder you don’t want your parents reading this. Can you live with it, Ross? Can you live with yourself?’

I’m like, ‘Sorry, will you shut the fock up for a minute. It’s got nothing to do with any of that shit. I want to buy all your copies of
The Star
. Not just today.
Every
day. And I don’t want you ordering more. That’s the deal. You put the ten copies aside for me and anyone else asks you for it you tell them it’s sold out.’ I pull out a wad of notes and slap five euros down on the counter. I’m like, ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’ He goes, ‘Well there’d want to be. Sure, that wouldn’t even cover the cost of the papers.’ Focking Monopoly money. I slap a twenty down on top of it. I’m like, ‘There’s twenty-five euros in it for you, then. We’re talking every day here.’ He goes, ‘Fine.’

My phone beeps. Text message from Sorcha. She wants me to go out with her tonight for, like, something to eat and shit. She’s home from Australia for a week for the opening of her old dear’s new shop in the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre. She’s going back tomorrow and I still haven’t seen her. I’ll text her later. I’m like, ‘Do you also stock the
Herald
?’ He goes, ‘The Hedild? Yes, it’s an evening newspaper. We get about twenty of those in. Very popular.’ I’m like, ‘I’ll take them. All twenty. Same deal. You take the bundle in, you stick it under the counter, and if anyone asks, you tell them it’s sold out.’ He goes, ‘And do you want me to have all these papers delivered to the house?’ I’m like, ‘No, burn them. Do you have anywhere you can do that?’ He goes, ‘I’ve an old barrel in the yard out the back.’ I’m like, ‘There you are. And let’s call it a nice round fifty-five euros a day for the lot. And I don’t want to see either of those two newspapers selling in this shop again. Got it?’

He nods, roysh, and he’s like, ‘I’m with you now, Ross.’ I slap another thirty bills on the counter, roysh, and I go and gather up the bundle of Hedilds and tell him to get that fire storted. He
looks really sad. I’m like, ‘What’s your problem?’ He’s like, ‘I love the papers, Ross. It’s the scandal, you see. I love the scandal.’ I throw my eyes up to heaven, roysh, I’m basically too soft really, then I pull one of the papers out of the bundle and I hand it to him. I’m like, ‘Go on then, you can have one last read.’ He’s all delighted with himself. He, like, scans the front page, roysh, and he goes, ‘
LAWLOR’S CELLMATE SPEAKS
,’ and as I’m heading out the door, he calls me and when I turn around he goes, ‘Oh, Ross, you’re not Liam Lawlor, are you? Your father would be so disappointed.’

I get outside the shop, hop into the cor, and I ring the old man. I’m like, ‘You know some focking weirdos.’ He goes, ‘Hey, Kicker, how are you?’ I’m like, ‘Less of the focking old pal’s act. That goy in the shop near the gaff …’ He goes, ‘Frank? He’s a bit much at times, yes, but he means well. Anyway, listen to me, Ross, we’ve more important things to discuss. You should see what’s arrived next door.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘A caravan. A
caravan
, if you don’t mind.’ I’m like, ‘So? Maybe they’re
planning
to go away on holidays.’He goes, ‘We did not buy a house in Foxrock so we could end up living next to a bloody … HALTING SITE.’ I’m like, ‘Chill out, will you?’ He goes, ‘I will NOT chill out. And what about that little job I gave you. Two months I gave you to get them out. Two weeks have already gone and still no sign.’ I’m like, ‘What do you think I was doing at the newsagents?’ And there’s, like, silence on the other end for about ten seconds, like it’s slowly dawning on him. He goes, ‘Damn it, you’re up to something.’ I’m like, ‘You’re damn right I’m up to something. I’m smoking them out. Smoking them out.’

Michelle from Ulster Bank has noticed that I don’t have a
pension. She leaves a message on my mobile reminding me that the current State pension is basically only one hundred and thirteen euros a week, which isn’t a lot, she says, when you consider that the average industrial wage is, like, three hundred and eighty euros a week. She says that pensions offer substantial growth on your investment and are the only form of regular saving that offers you tax relief, blah blah focking blah.

Sorcha orders a raw salad and, like, a bottle of Evian – some things never change – then takes out her Marlboro Lights and puts them on the table. I’m there, ‘How’s knobhead?’ cracking on that I don’t know the goy’s name, roysh. She’s like, ‘You’re talking about Killian, I take it?’ I’m like, ‘
Whatever
. Where is he?’ She goes, ‘He’s in Australia. I know what you’re getting at, Ross, and you’re wrong. We
actually
have a very healthy relationship, if you must know.’ I’m like, ‘Meaning?’ She goes, ‘Meaning we both like our freedom. Meaning we don’t have to be full-on, twenty-four seven.’ Meaning Killian’s got another Sheila on the go by the sounds of it. I decide not to push it, though.

She changes the subject, asks me how Christian is. I’m like, ‘We’re back talking again after … well, you know.’ She’s like, ‘Are his mum and dad back together?’ and I go, ‘No, but … they didn’t break up over me, you know.’ She ignores this and tells me she’s sorry she didn’t get to see all the goys, but it was really only a flying visit and there was so much, like, family stuff to do. I ask her what time her flight is tomorrow, roysh, and she says ten o’clock and when I tell her, roysh, that I’d like to go to the airport to see her off, she goes, ‘Much as I’d
like
to buy that attractive piece of merchandise, somehow it doesn’t fit,’ which sounds
suspiciously
like another line from ‘Dawson’s Creek’, and she takes
off her scrunchy, slips it onto her wrist, shakes her hair free, puts it back in the scrunchy and then pulls a few strands free. Like I said, some things never change.

Her raw salad arrives. So does my yasai itameru. My phone rings when we’re, like, halfway through our food and it’s the old man, having an eppo as per focking usual. He’s like, ‘Ross, come quickly.
He’s
been here, Ross.’ I’m like, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Who’s
he
?’ He goes, ‘
Him
, Ross. Him next door. Called here about five minutes ago. Brazen as you like. With a ladder. “Couldn’t help but notice there’s a couple of slates missing off yisser roof,” he said. Trying to get money out of me. The gall of it! Oh, if I’d had my wits about me, of course, I’d have hit him with something hard, but my golf bag was just out of reach and, well, it’s the shock, you see. And he must have seen it in my face, because he said, “I told herself the day we won the lorro, money or no money, I’m carrying on working. You’d go off yisser head otherwise, Charlie.” He called me Charlie, Ross. CHARLIE!’ I’m like, ‘Hey, I need you focking calm. Stay with me here. What did you do next?’ He goes, ‘I slammed the door in his face.’ I’m like, ‘Good.’ He’s there, ‘And I’m just about to call the Gardaí.’ I’m like, ‘Do NOT call the feds. I mean it. I am handling the
situation
. I pulled off a focking masterstroke today. Another week and they’ll be gone, I’m telling you.’ I manage to talk him down and then I hang up.

There’s this old dear, roysh, suddenly standing over our table and she’s with, like, her daughter I presume, pretty tasty, nice boat race, Ashley Judd with blonde hair, and this complete
tosspot
who I reckon is her daughter’s boyfriend from the way they’re holding hands. Anyway, roysh, this old dear goes, at the top of her voice, ‘ARE YOU TWO GOING TO BE
FINISHED SOON?’ And Sorcha, roysh, who’s been, like,
chasing
this water chestnut around her plate with her fork for the past ten minutes, she looks up and she goes, ‘We are
trying
to have our lunch. Do you mind?’ And the three of them, roysh, they’re
totally
focking bulling it, but they don’t fock off, roysh, they just stand over us, thinking it’ll make us leave quicker.

Sorcha’s, like, trying to ignore them and she goes, ‘Where were we? You’re working for your dad now?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, just a one-off thing. I’m still working for JP’s old man, in the estate agents. But my old man asked me to do, em, a special project, you could call it.’ She goes, ‘Is it my imagination or are our horizons unexpectedly broadening?’ Her and that focking programme. I’m just like, ‘Yeah, Kool and the Gang.’ She goes, ‘So what
exactly
does this special project involve?’ I’m like, ‘Well, tomorrow morning I’m going to offer the goy in the off-licence two
hundred
bills to stop selling Linden Village and Dutch Gold.’ She goes, ‘Dutch what?’ I’m like, ‘Dutch Gold. It’s beer. Central
heating
for skangers.’ She’s about to light her cigarette, but stops when she hears this, the flame about an inch away from the end of it, and she’s there, ‘Why would you want to pay the local
off-licence
to stop selling it?’ I’m like, ‘Long story. Suffice it to say that the old pair have got some Tallafornian refugees living next door. And you could say their application for asylum has been
revoked
.’ I don’t know where that last bit came from, but I have to say, roysh, I’m pretty happy with it.

Sorcha’s not. She goes, ‘Oh my God, you are
such
a materialistic snob.’ I just, like, shrug my shoulders and I’m there, ‘How much did that shirt cost?’ She goes, ‘Oh, so you can’t wear Abercrombie
and
be concerned about those less fortunate than you, is that what you’re saying? Don’t go there, Ross. Do
not
go there.’