Here Are the Young Men (28 page)

Rez thought, No doubt she thinks she's worried about me.

Rez thought, No doubt she believes that she really cares about me.

Rez
knew better. He knew she was merely playing the part of someone who loved another person. It was a decent performance, he conceded, probably enough to move someone who bought into all that shit, someone more naive than him. It didn't touch Rez. Love was not something that existed any more. Love was the dodo or the velociraptor or the Mayan civilization.

His mother was crying now, sobbing and shaking her head, not knowing what to say. A fluttering something – pity, anguish – arose from inside Rez and floated for a moment in the space between them. It was faint, tremulous and delicate, and lasted only for a moment; then Rez snuffed out the sentiment and denied it had ever been there.

With the flicker of feeling eliminated, the null state resumed. Rez was stable again.

It was his pride that had rebelled: if his feelings weren't his own, Rez didn't want them. This left him very little indeed. It left him nothing but pain. Rez had once seen a piece of anarchist street art: a stark, scratchy drawing of a morose little girl against a blackened, polluted cityscape. The girl had looked into Rez's eyes, her predicament given eloquence in a question scrawled at the bottom of the picture: ‘If I Cleaned Away All the Filth, Would There Be Anything Left?'

Rez could relate.

He repeated to his mother that he wouldn't do it again. Then he planted himself in front of the telly and thought about nothing.

41
|
Matthew

I called around to Kearney's at eleven o'clock that Thursday morning, as he had instructed. It was yet another moody, overcast day, the last of July. It felt like the sun hadn't been out in months. Jen had started trying to call me again, since the party at Grace's, but there was no way I would so much as talk to her now. It was wrecked forever. Cocker had called me as well but I ignored him too. I decided I had no real friends. I might just save up for a while and go away, travel or live abroad or something, maybe drink myself to death in Mexico, like some French novel that Rez would read – I would cut this whole crowd out of my life. But first I wanted to see if this shit that Kearney said was true. Kearney was the worst of the lot, but at least he wasn't a hypocrite.

When I reached his house, Kearney opened the door before I rang and met me with an eager grin.

‘Ready to go?' he said with a clap of the hands, like we were setting off on a camping trip.

All the way into town, Kearney was in high spirits. He chattered
away
about games, porno, telly, drugs and drug dealers we both knew. I considered that maybe it was the excitement of what we were about to do that had him so worked up, and I grew uneasy. Over the past couple of days, I had more or less convinced myself that this was all just one of Kearney's fantasies, entertaining but unreal, and I was going along with it as a kind of joke. Now, I wasn't so sure.

We got off the bus and walked across O'Connell Bridge to the north side of the river, turning on to the Liffey walkway and heading towards Liberty Hall. This was the part of town where junkies usually congregated the most. And sure enough, here they were. Scagged out of it in broad daylight, in dirty shell suits and baseball caps, the junkies clustered and whined. They smoked cigarettes, snarled and hissed amongst themselves, insulted passers-by who didn't give them money. The women were doglike, ravaged things, teeth all crooked or not there at all. The men were nicotine-coloured skeletons with sunken eyes, dried up and lustreless. Maybe Kearney was right: everyone would be secretly delighted if the junkies, winos and knackers were wiped out.

‘These are no good,' said Kearney, gesturing towards the clustered junkies. ‘They're all together, we'd only get noticed. We have to find one that's on its own.'

We smoked cigarettes as we walked on, getting off the board-walk and crossing the street, heading down a foul-smelling laneway leading through to Abbey Street. There were a few winos in pairs but no junkies. We came to Abbey Street, sidetracked up O'Connell Street and turned in again, on to Talbot Street. A pair of gypsy types played a flute and fiddle by the James Joyce statue, with tourists and the idle clustered around to watch.

‘I'd kill every busker in Dublin as well if I had the chance,' muttered Kearney as we passed.

We turned down a quieter street, more rundown and away from the mid-week shoppers. A group of maybe twenty chattering Spanish teenagers approached. They passed us by and the street was
all
but empty. Graffitied shutters lined one side, bracketed by shady passages and doorways. On the other side a high metal fence closed off an area of overgrown wasteland, with the rubble of a collapsed wall half hidden among the weeds and grass.

Up ahead, staggering along towards us, was the wiry, scruffy figure of what I immediately recognized to be a junkie, on his own. I could feel the excitement coming off Kearney, whose pace quickened as he said, ‘Here we go. This is our man.'

The junkie slumped against the fence several times as we approached. He didn't look up till we were standing right in front of him. For a moment I thought it was the junkie who had insulted us back on the night of the Primal Scream gig. But it was just some other anonymous smackhead.

‘Hello there,' said Kearney.

The junkie gazed at us with smacked-out indifference. He mumbled something and tried to walk on. Kearney put up his hand and stopped him.

‘Hang on a minute,' he said.

The junkie looked up again, managing a frown, wondering what the hell we wanted of him. He looked youngish, in his twenties or thirties, it was hard to tell. His face had the yellow sheen they always had, his colourless hair and sallow skin merging into one coating of greasy lifelessness.

‘Wha?' he said.

‘Wha?' Kearney aped, as if he couldn't disguise his loathing, or wasn't bothered to.

I stood slightly behind Kearney, to his side. He was staring at the junkie in what looked like concentration, not saying anything.

I looked around. An old man was crossing the road further down, and behind him was a mother with an old-fashioned shopping trolley, cursing at her young daughter in a heavy inner-city accent. The sight of the people reassured me: Kearney had no plan – unless he was willing to murder someone in broad daylight and spend the
next
forty years in prison, there was no way he was going to kill this junkie, who was now whining at us.

‘Spare us some change for a hostel, lads. I swear I've been robbed, me bird robbed all me stuff and me money. Lads, a hostel, I swear.' He whined with the shrill accent of all the city's junkies.

Kearney's voice seemed to gush with sympathy: ‘Aw I'm really sorry, pal, but we don't have any change. I gave me last five euro to a homeless fella around the corner. If I did have money I'd absolutely give it to ye, no doubt about it. I'd love to help ye, I really would, I know what it's like.'

Confused, but thinking he had probably found a true sap, some bleeding heart who would believe anything, the junkie pushed his luck.

‘Yer a star, bud, yer a fuckin genuine man. Listen bud, I'm really in a bad way, I swear man, it's cos of me bird. I'm broke I am, I have a baby to feed and everythin, but how can I if I haven't got any money? I swear to ye I amn't a scabby cunt, I hate to have to ask ye this pal, but will ye go and get some money for me out of the bank machine? I swear bud, you'd be really doin me a big favour. God bless ye bud.'

Kearney rubbed his chin as if seriously considering the junkie's request. I said nothing.

‘I'd love to help ye like that, but I'm sorry to say it's just impossible,' said Kearney. ‘I've only got twenty quid in there and I really need it cos I promised I'd give it to the blind mongo babies in Africa. Ye know what I mean?'

The junkie dropped the pretence of interest and was about to step between us and stagger on down the street, but Kearney held him back with his hand again and said, ‘Hold on, there's no rush now, bud.' His voice had lost the false, schmaltzy compassion; it was cold and serious. ‘I can't give ye money, but I have something else for ye.'

The junkie waited suspiciously, and I looked on as Kearney pulled down the zip on his leather jacket and reached into the inside
pocket.
He looked up and down the street before taking his hand out, then spoke in a low, urgent voice: ‘Look. I found this in me brother's room. I don't want him messin with this stuff. I don't mind what other people do with their lives, but he's only a kid, basically, and he's too young to be foolin with this crap. I was goin to throw it in the bin, but I feel bad that I can't give ye any money, and I reckon ye like this stuff. Do ye? Or am I totally wrong? I don't mean to be makin assumptions, like, ye just looked like the kind of man who likes this stuff.'

The junkie's face was lit up with reverence. He seemed to have stopped breathing, entranced by what was in Kearney's hand. It was a small plastic bag with about two grammes of light-brown powder in it. I had never seen heroin before and wouldn't have been sure if it really was that. But the junkie's expression confirmed it.

His hand darted out for the package, but Kearney withdrew it easily in time.

‘Hold yer horses, boss,' he said. ‘Are ye sure ye want this? Don't ye know that it's fuckin yer life up?'

The junkie whined and moaned, reduced to a pathetic state, like a child crying for sweets.

‘Do ye hear me? I asked ye are ye sure you want it. This shite will fuckin kill ye.'

Realizing an answer was necessary to get to the smack, the junkie mustered his attention enough to look into Kearney's eyes and whine: ‘Ah man, don't worry about it, bud, give me that gear and that'll be the last of the stuff I'll ever touch. I just want to have a little bit, man, ye know what I mean. It's been a shite day … me bird … normally I wouldn't take it off ye but me bird, I was robbed … ah man just give us the gear will ye.'

‘I'll give it to ye if you want it. Are ye sure, then?'

‘Yeah bud.'

‘Fair enough. There ye go.' Kearney handed the incredulous junkie the bag. I watched it change hands.

‘
Off ye go and enjoy it, now!' he called as the junkie hurried away in the opposite direction, hand clamped around the package, newly energized.

Kearney started to cackle, watching the scampering addict turn off the quiet street.

‘What the fuck was that?' I said. It was like I'd broken out of a trance.

‘Relax, man.'

‘What was in the bag?'

‘What do ye think was in it? Gear. Smack. Think I'm a liar?'

‘Where did you get heroin from?'

He shrugged, turning to give me his attention for the first time. ‘I got it. Doesn't matter where. Ask me no secrets and I'll tell ye no lies.'

‘Is it poisonous? Is he goin to die?'

He giggled. ‘Affirmative. Yes. That's correct, Matthew.'

‘Jesus!' I put my hands to my head, started pacing up and down.

‘Ah, give it a rest, would ye. Give over the bleedin melodrama. Ye knew what we were goin to do.'

‘What
you
were goin to do. But no, I didn't know ye were goin to give him poisoned fuckin heroin.'

He was serious now, his voice hardened: ‘No Matthew, not just me –
we
. You knew what we were doin.
You
said you were up for it. Are ye denyin it now?'

‘No. Yeah. I
am
denyin it. I thought ye were havin a laugh. I didn't believe ye.'

‘Well ye can believe me now. But think, what are ye goin to do about it? Cos ye know, I've got ye recorded at home, saying ye were up for killin a junkie with me. So yer fucked.'

I looked at him, standing there, not smiling, watching me. I started to panic.

‘Oh Jesus, Kearney, what the fuck? Give it a rest, stop yer messin. I didn't say that, I didn't mean it. Leave it out, will ye?'

‘
It's not too late to help him, ye know. If you want to, ye can run after him and try and find him and tell him –'

I didn't hear the rest of the sentence: I had already started running, fast as I could, through the alleys past Talbot Street, looking for a solitary junkie among the afternoon crowds in the city centre.

       

Two hours later I sat on the bus home, on my own.

Rain pelted down on the city. I looked out the window; the faces I saw were sinister; the laughter all sounded wrong, full of menace and mockery. It all sounded like Kearney's laughter.

I hadn't found the junkie. I had looked and looked but he was gone, vanished.

I couldn't eat my dinner that evening. I heard my ma whisper something to my da in the sitting room behind me. He lowered his
Evening Herald
to watch me through the door, while I sat in silence at the kitchen table.

He came in and shut the door behind him. Then he sat down, folded his arms on the table and said, ‘Tell me straight, Matthew. Have you been takin drugs?'

42
|
Kearney

The buzz was extreme, even better the second time. All that night he couldn't sleep, his mind fizzing with ideas and visions. The next morning, frazzled and jerky but still ecstatic, he decided to go back in for another shot. He sensed that his discipline was slipping and he had to rein it in or he'd be undone. But then he thought, Fuck it. He bounded down into the basement to reef up another helping of rat poison, and took the bus into town.

It was a grey morning. Deciding he should probably chop and change the locations to avoid any kind of pattern forming, Kearney let his legs take him through the dull weekday murmur of the city centre, along Harcourt Street, all the way to the canal. There, he stepped down to the quiet, grassy bank and walked alongside the water. And, soon enough, he came upon what he was after: another wizened, babbling old drunk, slouched on a bench by the archway of a bridge. Kearney gulped on the Red Bull he'd bought to keep himself perky, and approached. This would be easy as fuck, just like the first time. And this time he was going to take a souvenier.