A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen
- Автор: Бруен Кен
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Busted Flush Press
- ISBN: 978-0-9767157-2-6
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen». Краткое содержание книги:
“Bill, would you like to get right to it? This is like forty questions and I hate all the answers.”
“Ford, I like you. You’re weird for an Irishman, you’re quiet and funny but I worry for you. Take me, I’m a big drinker. I drink and I do other things. Now, you. You drink and you drink and you fall over every time I see you.”
Ford was raging. A deep surge of bile threatened to blast upwards.
“Well, Bill, where I grew up you suspected people who didn’t drink. Some of the old Hollywood actresses said, ‘Never trust a man who doesn’t drink.’ They could trust me. I kept hearing about role reversal on TV. Is that what we’ve got here? You’re the social worker and I’m the big guy with the market stall, oh yea, and a drink problem, right?”
Bill tried to interrupt. He’d never heard Ford say so much. Neither had Ford. The look on Ford’s face was chilling.
“Shut-up! You want honesty, then shut the hell up.”
“I have a drink problem, it’s my problem. You have a problem with that, it’s your bloody problem. But, see, already your talk has helped. See these drinks — see! Who the hell needs them!
He was far too Irish to sweep them to the floor. He stood and swept out.
Ford liked to read about Paris in the Thirties, all the heavy-weights floating around dripping literature. The lost generation, how unutterably romantic. It tickled him to think that in fact a garage mechanic had coined the phrase. Gertrude Stein claimed it like the slick old bat she was. Personally, Ford felt he belonged to “the faded generation.” “Wow, how did you get those dreams so faded?” “Stone wash... then hung them out to dry.”
He read about Paris now to block out the scene in Camden Town. It didn’t work. Whether Hemingway wrote one true sentence or Alice B. Tok told the truth in her woeful biography, who cared?
Crossing to his one cupboard, he rummaged there. Out came a bottle of Pernod, unopened, the seal intact. A present from Vikki after one of her Parisian jaunts. “Open that on a special occasion,” she said. Her eyes had been as soft then as if the whole world had benefited from a belt or two of Pernod. He put Waylon Jennings on the turntable. The bottle he placed on the table before him. Hands clasped, as if in prayer, he sat watching it. Waylon sang.
Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast that at his happiest time with Hedley, they’d been in an oak cabin surrounded by wood. They hadn’t touched or knocked on it, and how Hemingway rued that omission! Ford was damned if he’d touch wood either. The question was straightforward: “Was this, or was it not, the special occasion?”
Come Thursday night, Ford replayed his scene with a client at work. A middle aged travel agent was developing a taste for drink. Pressure from his wife led him to seek help or, as she said, “She’d travel.” The initial interview had gone like this. Tom, the travel agent, was extremely nervy.
“Do you worry about your drinking?” Ford asked.
“No!”
“Ever?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should,” said Ford with the air of solemn experience.
He fixed Camden Town squarely in his sights, then continued.
“Tom — May I call you Tom? OK, Tommy. I like you, you’re offbeat for a travel agent. You’re quiet and, probably, funny. I worry for you, Lots of people drink, am I right, Tommy? Just nod your head. They drink and do other things. But you Tommy, you drink and you drink, and you fall down.”
“I beg your pardon? I never fell down in my life,” Tommy blubbered. “Never!”
“Ah Tommy, you look like a faller to me. No, no, no, Tommy, just nod. It’s best at the beginning if you don’t interrupt.”
To Ford’s amazement, Tommy took all of this for the mandatory two hours. Ford would have walloped the living daylights out of himself. Especially the “Tommy” touch. Phew! Perhaps travel agents were immune to abuse. Afterwards, in Neville’s office he’d been introduced to Tom’s wife. A harridan, as the dramatists said.
“Thomas has gone outside to the motor,” she said, eyeballing Ford.
“That’s nice,” said Ford. He was damned if he’d say on word about the interview. He stared right back and thought, “Yea, motormouth!” After she’d left, Neville went into a long spiel about apples in the bud and other timely metaphors, down home Suffolk wisdom by the kilo. “Any impressions to share, old chap?”
“Yea, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s no wonder he drinks.”
All of this would fill Neville’s report. Ford didn’t really see a huge future for himself in this field. Whoops! Depression’s knocking on wood.
Ford scanned the evening paper. One eye on the bar. An American student was browbeating the bartender.
“Lemme tell yah, buddy, the English don’t know shit for sports.”
Ford didn’t think the bartender was likely to be his friend. The American had a sweatshirt proclaiming “Cleveland 11.” Ford hadn’t really heard a whole lot about the first. He loved to hear them mangle and do absolute gymnastics with English. They had some choice expressions, apart from Muttah, which they prefixed to every conceivable kind of sexual activity and then flung the lot at you. He never ceased to wonder at “shit for brains”. What construction, and this was an insult! Their predilection for the mammary gland was truly breathtaking. Ford smiled at his own pun. See, it’s contagious, he thought.
“This country sucks,” said Cleveland.
The barman was now most definitely not his buddy. Of all the names for newspapers, Ford liked this best, The Cleveland Plain Dealer. A man’s paper, you felt. No floss, just the news, nothing fake or fancy. Calls ’em as we get ’em. Jack Webb would have bought it in his Dragnet fashion. He returned to his own paper. The Dow Jones index was down again. Ford knew two things about it. It went up. It went down. Pure simplicity!
Yet, you said in a reasonably crestfallen tone to somebody, “The Dow is down!”
Bingo, next time around, they were asking for financial advice. Worse, you were tempted to give it. He looked at the TV. Oh, gloried-be, The Rockford Files. Better than The Sweeney repeats. Forget the drink. Run for home, re-heat the chili and relish. Bliss indeed! What mortal could ask for more (maybe Barney Miller). His cup runneth over. As he prepared to depart, he heard what sounded like a very vindictive rain out there. The lash-you-into-the-face type. The notion arose: was he over emphasising the joy of the evening ahead... just a tad overstating.
The barman roared. “All right you, I’ve had it, time to sling your ’ook.” He leaped the bar and showed Cleveland to the door. Plain enough! Sling your hook. The English had a few beauts of their own.
Phew, Ford was sure glad it was Saturday. No putting the world to social rights today. He uttered a silent prayer that Tom the travel agent wasn’t like death warmed over. With that wife, he speculated on how it could be otherwise. The phone shrieked putting the heart cross-ways in him. It had that shrill insistent yak which went “answer me and answer me fast.” Implicit in that was the sly promise “but you’ll be sorry.” Most times Ford answered the phone, he regretted it. “Here goes,” and reflexively his fingers crossed.
“Yea.”
“Ford?” Dalton roared. He had the Irish habit of bellowing at phones. Loudness abetted comprehension.
“And good morning to you.”
“Ford, have you been drinking already? Or is there a woman there? Hey, put a knot in it.”
“More of it,” said Ford.
“Listen, you know what a dip is, do you?”