The Emerald Lie (7 page)

His mother, in the distance, always distant and whispering gently,

… Park, darling, never forget the beauty of language, and his father at the long dinner table, pieces of bird hanging from his mouth, shouting,

… If you can’t speak properly, you should lie with the carcasses. Then flash-forward to Kosovo; a nominal mission with the UN; and moving down a street, snipers taking off the stragglers, fear in his mouth, and the medic saying,

… We need morphine.

On a small table near his DIY kit, a bottle of gin (Beefeater), a bucket (silver) of ice, and a neatly thin-sliced lemon stood in readiness. A large hand-painted sign warned,

… Do not drink.

Park poured a large Galway crystal tumbler of gin with ice and lemon, drank slowly but with deep appreciation. His mouth was so dry from the procedure.

Whoa …

… He’s drinking? Did the sign not say …?

Of course he drank, he’s bat-shit crazy.

Park felt the gin course through his system like wildfire and this set off in his head the epic sea battle in
Game of Thrones
, where wildfire is used to destroy the attacking fleet. He bit down, could feel the flames, then physically shook himself as he tried to rearrange what personality remained after the voltage.

He had but a very vague idea of who he was or even where he was. But this was part of the rush, the whole
Stranger in a Strange Land
gig. He had showered, clothed, and generally readied himself before he shocked the shit out of his head.

Now he stood before a full-length mirror and marveled at the nigh-on total stranger who peered back. He said,

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name.”

A wave of dizziness washed over him and he tottered to a chair, thinking,

“Whoosh, this is a blast, whatever the fuck it is.”

Interestingly, he cursed only when his mind was at half-mast.

Park dressed in the Anglo fashion, as if clothes were an afterthought and really should be left to servants. He wore a pair of heavy tan cords, a shirt actually made in Jermyn Street, brogues made in Milan, and a heavy waistcoat made on the Aran Islands. He was about to reach for his wax coat when

… the doorbell rang.

I opened the door to a wild welcome from the pup; he did that singsong howl, his whole body straight and his head back. It signaled total happiness. A concept almost totally alien to me though I was around long enough to recognize it. I fixed him his dinner and he fixed his gaze on me, lest I leave in mid-chow. He wouldn’t eat if I left the room.

While he ate, I watched David Foster Wallace’s
This Is Water
on YouTube. Not sure what it did for me but it got my mind kick-started. The Davids in my viewing life:

David Mamet

David Simon

David Chase

David Milch.

The last I shared a wild streak of drugs, booze, and insanity with.

A knock on the door: my neighbor whom I now addressed as Doc. He seemed to go for it. He came in, rubbed the pup behind the ears, and took a seat. He was carrying a bright-colored box, said,

“I know you pretty much don’t get science fiction.”

True.

I said,

“I have a hard enough time with plain old reality.”

He nodded, then,

“You rate

Breaking Bad

The Wire

Justified

Mad Men

The Sopranos

As among the finest writing today. Am I right?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I think
The Wire
is the great American novel.”

He smiled at that.

He handed over the box, said,

“Give this a shot.”

I read the title,
Battlestar Galactica
, all twenty-five discs! Went,

“Lord, I’d need another lifetime to commit to this.”

As I laid it aside, he said,

“It’s got Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell.”

I was thinking,

“… Maybe look it up online, then wing that I watched it.”

Doc gave one last boost,

“Some critics regard it as maybe the best TV ever made.”

I’d take this as science fiction, said,

“And they say
The Big Bang Theory
is funny.”

He conceded, asked,

“Any progress in your case, the girl who was murdered?”

I shook my head, my lack of anything on this was embarrassing. I said,

“I’m at that point where I have nothing to go on.”

He moved to go, said,

“Treat it a little like life.”

“How does that work?”

Very sly smile, then,

“Like an infinite jest.”

Park stood frozen as the doorbell shrilled again. After his ECT, he would usually wander around the garden in a semi-relaxed daze. Dealing with the world was never on the list. Took him a moment to even recognize what the ring was. Then he moved slowly to answer.

Two

Students.

Collecting for Rag Week.

Boy and girl.

They let the girl do the spiel. She began,

“Dreadfully sorry to inconvenience you, sir, but we are collecting for Rag Week.”

She giggled.

“Even though Rag Week is no longer officially recognized, we like to organize some charity events for the homeless.”

The boy was smirking, stared amused at the silent Park. He thought,

“Old fellah is out of it.”

Park focused on the girl, said,

“I very much doubt you are.”

She looked at the boy, like,
hello
, did she miss, like, something? Park’s mind wandered for a moment amid a jungle of vowels, then he re-clicked, said,

“Dreadfully. You said you are dreadfully sorry but that is just simply misuse of an adjective. And …”

He had to think for a moment, then,

“There is really no call for that.”

The girl was going to give some cheek but then went,

“Anyways, you want to give a donation to help the homeless?”

Park debated punching her in the face but it would require more energy that he could expend. He said,

“How could you possibly care for the homeless when you don’t care for the rudiments of language?”

Slammed the door in her face.

The girl, named Kiera, one of the generation who had left Irish names like

Mary

Siobhan

Maura

Back with the notion of Mass on a Sunday,

Looked back at Park’s house, something tickling at the edge of her consciousness.

The boy, whose interest ranged no further than
The Big Bang Theory
, was, in his mind, a surfer dude/stoner on some beach in

Daytona.

Like he knew Daytona from a hole in his Red Bulled brain. Kiera said,

“Dude, something off back there.”

The boy went,

“Duh.”

She racked her brain for something she’d been hearing around the town, had a moment, then said to the boy,

“He seemed a bit hung up on language.”

The boy was already trying to decide on thick or thin crust from Domino’s.

She reached the answer, said,

“Holy shite, the grammar guy.”

She took out her phone, checked a number, waited, then said,

“I need to talk to a detective about the dude who’s been offing people.”

The young Guard thought she was speaking to an American but was clued enough to shout for Ridge, said,

“You need to take this.”

I was listening to Jimmy Norman. He had just received his master’s in business and continued to do his radio show.

Impressive.

Ebola was increasingly on a par with the generated paranoia, so any flight from West Africa was close to being shot down. The only light humor in this was Sarah Palin urging Obama to invade Ebola.

The pup was avoiding me as he strongly suspected it was wash day. His own paranoia at play. The local news featured a serious fire on Dockland and loss of life was feared. I wasn’t paying full attention. Had been reading David Foster Wallace’s first novel,

The Broom of the System

And had to smile at his own dismissal of it as

… in many ways it was a

Fuck-off

Enterprise.

You had to love a guy who said that.

I was having breakfast in the GBC, the neon nightmare.

Two fried eggs

Fat heartaches sausages

Fried tomatoes (at the green café)

Fried mushrooms

Black pudding

Kidding about the last one

Pot of scalding tea.

You can’t, just can’t, have coffee with a fry-up.

Halfway through this feast, a shadow fell over me. Looked up.

Emily.

Pissed, in the American sense, launched,

“What did I tell you, eh? Follow my lead, what was not to understand about that?”

I put my fork down. It’s impolite to point with it, never mind sticking it in her fucking eyes. I said, quietly,

“F-u-c-k off.”

Worked.

She went docile, said,

“If I could just sit a moment.”

She reached into her bag, took out an e-cig, and I spotted a book, part of the title, about grammar, by

Sally Wallace.

WTF?

Sally Wallace, mother of David Foster?

No way.

I went,

“Why are you reading about grammar?”

She was still staring at the remnants of my breakfast in a sort of fascinated horror. She said,

“If we’re going to catch the Grammarian we need to know about motivation.”

Jesus.

I asked,

“The fuck is with the
we
?”

Her eyes took on that hard hue, she hissed,

“You owe me, buster.”

Ah, fuck, she was just plain flat-out nuts but she wasn’t finished, said,

“Bedsides, I’m writing a mystery novel.”

Well, why not, if every literary hack was taking time out from the
serious vocation of literature and slumming in genre
, she would be just one more opportunist. I said,

“Crime.”

“Excuse me?”

In that sharp edgy interrogatory tone we’d imported from American sitcoms. I said,

“This is Europe, we call the genre
crime.
”

Would she concede, would she fuck?

Said,

“The mystery is why the hell I’m bothering to tell you, fellah.”

Whack-o.

Easing up, I tried,

“You got a title?”

Big satisfied smile.