Here Are the Young Men (27 page)

The night after the party, he lay in bed with a faint smile on his face, reliving his still-fresh memories of Jen, Jen, Jennifer. That
lovely
red hair, those pale and bouncing tits; how she had giggled and murmured as he'd laid her out on the bed, her eyes half-closed; how she'd grown confused and scared but he had whispered shhh, it would all be okay, whilst sliding off her knickers, and then he'd laughed and she'd laughed too and from that point on she was eager, pliant, his. Languidly he pulled himself off, stroke after stroke, until he came across his belly, feeling it trickle over his knuckles. A cool night breeze from the skylight caressed his skin, drying his come to a delicate crust. Moments later, Kearney was asleep.

       

He went back into town a few times to look for the tramp. He wasn't there, where he always was. There were only shadows, and rubbish blowing down the lane like dead leaves in a world after nature, and a whiff of piss in the empty space where the tramp used to sit.

Each day he carefully scanned all the papers in the newsagents, looking for stories of a dead wino. But there was nothing; that, he knew, was because nobody really gave a fuck. It was like the tramp had disappeared, silently fading from existence down a litter-strewn lane.

Kearney didn't hear from Matthew after the party. He didn't expect to. Obviously he was hurt, angry, betrayed. But boredom was boredom, and both of them needed someone to smoke and drink with, and none of the other lads were around.

Kearney waited until Tuesday, then called him.

‘Alright Matthew.'

‘Alright Kearney.'

‘…'

‘So what are you up to?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Fair enough.'

‘…'

Kearney
sighed: Matthew was playing hard to get. He couldn't be bothered humouring him and decided to cut the crap. ‘Are you pissed off with me cos I shagged Jen?'

‘…'

‘I take that as a yes.'

‘…'

Kearney made his voice sound aggrieved. ‘Fuck's sake, Matthew, she was the one who was all over me. Anyway, it's only a fuckin shag, man. Yis had broken up, hadn't yis? Jesus, get over it, will ye?'

‘Yeah well. Ye could have waited a while.'

‘What, half an hour more? Three days? How long? It was a party. I was pissed, she came on to me and we had a screw. Jesus, Matthew. Get over it, would ye. Don't be a hypocrite. Or have ye forgotten about the time I walked in on you and Rachel, in me own fuckin house? At least you and Jen had broken up when I did it. Fuck's sake. I won't be doin it again, anyway.'

‘Yeah, whatever, man.'

‘What are ye up to today?'

‘Fuck all. Watchin telly.'

‘Me ma's in work. I've got a half-ounce here that I bought off Bowser.'

A pause. ‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah. Ye comin around for a smoke?'

‘I dunno.' Another pause. ‘I was goin to stay here and watch a film.'

‘Stall it. I've got the new
Kill-Tech
game, I borrowed it off Decko Byrne.'

‘Is it any good?'

‘Yeah, it's deadly. Stall it.'

A final, longer pause.

Then: ‘Right, I'll be around in a while.'

Kearney hung up.

39
|
Matthew

We sat in the dimness of Kearney's room, the shutter pulled, his shit techno like a coma-pulse on the stereo.

Already we were on the third joint. I lay back into the beanbag, half closing my eyes. It was a weird feeling, being stoned off your head in the middle of the afternoon. There was no way back, you had to deal with it for the rest of the day. I would have to sit there and eat dinner with my ma and da later that evening, tense with concentration, trying hard not to look stoned.

Through the haze of smoke I studied the strips of paper sellotaped randomly across the bedroom walls. It was the same sentence, over and over: ‘
You will never defeat us, because you love life and we love death
.'

The quote came from some Al-Qaeda warrior. Kearney had talked about getting it done as a tattoo that ran up his bicep, with
death
on the neck, but he couldn't afford it. We played
Kill-Tech: Obliteration
for a while, not talking much. Kearney was already an expert. The triangular hover-fighter responded deftly to every flick
of
his thumbs and fingers: launching missiles through narrow cracks, obliterating command posts, incinerating enemy personnel. I flew clumsily, bouncing off walls, narrowly avoiding collisions with huge, floating Battlehulks as Kearney pursued me – toyed with me – above an elegant future city.

After some time I flung down my joypad and said: ‘Fuck this, let's play something else.'

He didn't respond at first, still fused with the game, the screen. ‘Hah?' he eventually said, turning around. I had stood up and walked to the window, pulling aside the curtain and looking out over grey suburban nothing. You could see the girls' school across the road. Kearney had boasted before of how he liked to wank while looking out at the girls, even though it was a primary school and the oldest of them no more than eleven or twelve. I didn't know if he was making it up.

Kearney changed the techno CD for one that sounded exactly the same, then started rolling another joint.

‘Guess what?' he said as he twisted the end of the finished spliff.

‘What?'

‘Can ye keep a secret?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Don't just say “yeah”. Can ye seriously keep a secret? If I tell ye this, ye can't tell anyone, okay?'

‘What is it? Yeah, okay.'

I took the spliff from Kearney, getting curious.

He paused for dramatic effect. ‘I killed someone,' he said.

Stoned, I burst into laughter. ‘Fuck off,' I said, ashing out the window. ‘Don't give me that bollocks. Ye didn't kill anyone. Who did ye kill?'

‘Seriously, I did, I killed someone.' He grinned, dispelling any notion that he was offering a confession.

‘Okay, who did ye kill, then?' I said, making it obvious I was only humouring him.

‘
I murdered this old wino in town. Have ye ever seen the oul lad who sits in that lane in Temple Bar, just off Dame Street? Ye know, the one in behind the Hot Chick?'

‘Oh yeah.' I pictured the laneway, but not the tramp.

‘The oul lad in there, do ye know him? He's always in the same spot, total wino, like.'

‘Yeah, I think I know the one ye mean,' I said, stoned and lazy, to hurry things along. Town was full of alcos and tramps. How was I to know which one Kearney was on about?

‘Well, go into town then, and go down the lane to his place, ye know that doorway he always sits in. And tell me what ye find there. I'll tell you what ye'll find: fuck all.'

‘Yeah, deadly,' I said. I wasn't in the mood to indulge Kearney – the image of him riding an eager Jen kept intruding on my mind, more so as my stone deepened. I wanted to butcher him. I decided that I'd fuck Kearney up. I didn't know how, but I would do it. Meanwhile, I said, ‘Fair play to ye, ye killed him. How did ye do it, then?'

‘Ye don't believe me. But I did. I poisoned his drink. He's not there any more. I've been in to check a few times. The fucker's dead.'

He sounded triumphant. I began to consider that, just possibly, he wasn't making it up. ‘Wait, so tell me: you're sayin ye went into town and put poison in this guy's drink, and now he's dead?'

‘No, I brought the drink in meself, with the poison already in it. Rat poison. I gave him a few cans first, to get his trust and make sure his judgment was cloudy, then I gave him the poisoned bottle of wine. Not that I had to do that: the fucker would've drunk a carton of AIDS piss if I'd told him there was a shot of whiskey mixed in.'

‘And then he died?'

‘I'm fairly sure he did, yeah. I didn't stick around to see it happen, it would've been too dodgy. But he was gone the next day.'

I said nothing. I puffed on the joint and watched him. ‘Jesus,' I said, experimentally.

Kearney laughed. ‘Now don't say a fuckin thing, okay?'

I
kept looking at him. Suddenly I felt way too stoned.

‘I mean it. Don't say a word. Jesus, it was some rush, though. Nobody's goin to give a fuck. Who cares if some old wino is off the streets? People would be delighted if someone wiped out all the alcos and junkies and all the rest of them.'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well I do know. At the very least, nobody gives a fuck. So I'm goin to do it again. I'm goin to kill a junkie.'

I stared, amazed that this was the conversation we were having. I tried to read Kearney's face for signs of a joke. I could decipher nothing. I said, ‘Are ye serious, Kearney?'

‘Yeah. I'm serious.'

Abruptly, I shook my head. I exhaled smoke, waved a hand and said, ‘Cop on, Kearney. You're talkin bollocks. Ye didn't kill anyone. But leave it before ye really do go off and do something stupid.'

The words sounded unnatural in my mouth, like they only belonged on telly or in films.

‘It's a buzz like ye wouldn't believe,' said Kearney. ‘I'm telling ye. Ye don't have to believe me. I'm goin to kill a junkie scumbag. They're better off dead. They
are
dead.
Dawn of the Dead
, it's like, when ye see them in town. I'm doin it in a few days, after I get the plan sorted out. Stall it in with me.'

I shook my head. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Why not? Ye don't have to do anything, just come along for the craic. Look, let me just show ye how easy it is. We don't actually have to do anything. If ye think it's goin too far, I'll stop and that'll be that. It'll be more of a recon mission, just to show ye. Alright?'

I wanted to say something, say no, but I couldn't bring myself to speak. What was this magnetism Kearney had, this weird new power? I felt like I should go along with it, even if only to impress him. For some reason, that was important now. But also there was the excitement, the wanting to see how far it could go, how deranged it could get.

While
I was wavering, Kearney said again, ‘Stall it. I'm tellin ye, it's only a bit of a buzz. Ye don't have to do anything. We don't actually have to, like, execute him. We can go right to the very edge and stop there, if ye want to stop there. I just want to show ye what it's like. I'm tellin ye, the buzz is like nothing ye've done before.'

We were silent for a few moments. Then I said, ‘Alright. Fair enough. I'll stall it in. Just to see. I know you're talkin rubbish, though.'

Satisfied, Kearney turned back to
Kill-Tech: Obliteration
, picking up the joypad from the carpet. I looked out the window again, over at the darkening red-brick walls and fences of the girls' school, and the rows of houses and chimneys behind it, sullen and identical.

40
|
Rez

Problems with Reality: Rez is on Drugs and they're Messing with his Head!

In his rare moments of lucidity, Rez saw that the medication the doctors had put him on, the way it affected his outlook, was yet another falsity, an airbrush job on the true face of things.

He liked how the drugs made him feel, though: warm, satisfied, oblivious. This must be what it's like to be a junkie or a cow, he thought dozily, sitting at home bathed in the amiable glow of the TV, his mother hovering ever-near, watching him even when it seemed she wasn't. Or it was as if he was enlightened, like the Buddhist monks he read about, as if he had attained a state of pure acceptance of the world. The medication made everything benign, friendly; it rendered all the razor-blade thoughts that cut into Rez's in-growing brain soft as butter. In fact, he didn't think very much on the medication at all. He was content to sit there in the softly lit living room, passively hearing the anxious whispers and murmurs of his parents, sister and brother.

Days
passed. Rez convalesced, if that was what you could call his state of drug-zapped torpor. Nourishing meals were prepared for him at regular hours. Films were rented, books bought and a PlayStation 2 borrowed from one of Michael's friends, all for Rez's amusement. I should have done this sooner, he told himself during one of the intervals of clarity that briefly appeared, only to be swallowed up again by the dreamy water-world of Xanax and diazepam, annulling all sardonic thought, all humour in general. The medicated world was a humourless one, like a totalitarian state. But Rez didn't mind; he accepted everything. Everybody's happy nowadays, he thought wryly, when he was capable of wryness and bothered enough to think.

Nothing happened. Time flowed on, the great lazy river. This, too, was fine with Rez, who, medication notwithstanding, remained convinced that the causes of his despair were fundamental and insurmountable. He kept this conviction to himself.

‘You're not goin to do it again,' his mother said.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. A bowl of barely touched cream-of-vegetable soup steamed its heat away between Rez's elbows. Rez didn't know if he was being asked a question or given an order.

She repeated, ‘You're not goin to try it again.'

Rez decided it was a question. ‘No,' he answered; even such a succinct response cost him tremendous effort. He wanted to be extricated from this conversation, planted back down in front of the Enlightenment Box, left alone to bask in its stupid radiance.

His mother was silent, looking probingly at him. He noted that there were lines around her eyes. Crow's feet – he recalled that that was the name for them: the results of age and decay and therefore not Rez's fault. She was in her pale-green dressing gown, makeup washed off. She seemed withered with anguish, helpless and perplexed. That was how she seemed. Rez was not taken in.