The Boxer's Dreams of Love Page 7

  Tiredness and much more. Not the kind of place he had planned on staying in. Before. Before. Too much, money, hope, the kind of break undeserved for the sins he’d committed. Like it had all been a mistake, like a bank putting too much money in your account and then realizing the mistake and taking it all back. Cruel but fair. He’d had a glimpse, that was all, a glimpse not of heaven but a chance to escape from hell for a little while. For both of them. Maybe, if he could find her and even then. What had he expected? That he could assault a woman, almost kill her and then be paid for the privilege? Told, here, take all these riches and escape unpunished. Still he intended to find out. Manny, Manny fucking Redmond. From the first he should have known. Eddie thinking he was following, and all the time he was being led.

  The fair Frankie? He couldn’t believe it. Why give it to him, go through all that, only to take it away? Frankie only had to order Eddie to leave and that would have been enough. No sense in giving the money only to steal it back like a common thief. No sense, no fairness, no Frankie, he didn’t believe, he’d find out, wouldn’t get anything back but that wasn’t the point. Manny Redmond beating Eddie, now, catching him off guard, disobeying the rules, no fairness there at all.

  The sun went behind the clouds, thank God, easing his suffering. The café was practically empty now, all the workers at work, leaving the tables to people like him. Like him. Tourists, drifters, dreamers.

  In Princes park, parked on a bench, buffeted by a cold wind, Eddie was feeling better, thinking more clearly. He’d been here before, lower than now, poorer, alone. He wasn’t alone, not really, he had someone to find, that should take precedence over everything. She couldn’t be too hard to find. He tried to remember if she’d mentioned where they’d be. Somewhere small no doubt. He could ring or text her but he wanted to surprise her, turn up in the audience, in the dressing room afterwards, watch the smile break out on her face. That’s what he hoped at least. Maybe he still had more to pay for the sin though. Losing the money wasn’t enough. He would find her. But he had something to do first.

  Manny Redmond. Eddie made a call, one led to another, voices on the other end that he hadn’t heard in years. Each expressing disbelief that the other was still alive. Small talk, talk about the rosy golden years of old. Then on to other things, Manny, trying to ask in as casual a way as possible. Any idea where he is? No, but I might know someone who does. One call leading to another, same stories, memories floating like dead leaves around his feet.

  Derek Derek. Yeah, he worked for Manny alright. And Manny, who was he working for? That took a little more work. The calls became shorter, less friendly. Why do you want to know? Where are you anyway, Eddie? Dead ends. Not sure where to go next. He went to see a movie in the afternoon, killing a couple of hours, didn’t want to go drinking, not like yesterday. He didn’t have the money anyway. Sat in the dark, thinking, hardly seeing the movie, hearing it alright, it was screaming at him. When it was finally over he exited to metal sheet rain and everyone in a hurry, trying to get home, get to a bar, get out of the rain. He should look for her. He’d lie down for a couple of hours first, then get something to eat, line his stomach.

  He checked the sheets again before he lay down. No sign of any bugs, they might have been just in his head. When he woke it was almost 10.30 and he cursed himself for losing so much time. Now that he had to do it he had no idea where to start. The landlady gave him slanted looks as he headed out so late in the slanted rain. He still hadn’t eaten, couldn’t start drinking without something inside. And he had to find her, that was why he came here.

  If she was still here. And even if she was— The message came when he was in the Chinese, eating too much, feeling ill already, wine on top of that. The answer to a question he knew he shouldn’t have asked in the first place. It was a name, a name he didn’t recognize. Stephen Zinny. What sort of a name was that? Maybe the sender had spelled it wrongly because what sort of a name was that? But that wasn’t the end of it, wasn’t what made Eddie’s stomach lurch away from hunger like a frightened animal. After the name, the unknown name from the unknown sender was a few more words. Cautionary was the least of how you’d describe them. Please don’t try make contact with this man. Words that, of course, made unwise men like Eddie do that very thing.

  Eddie paid his bill and ventured out into the sleeting rain, slippery, sleazy streets feeling more alone than he could ever remember. And then his phone rang. He looked down at the number, blurred by the rain, but even through that he could tell it was no number at all. He looked, no hurry to answer, people pushing past anxious for shelter for drink for whatever comfort they could find on this blurry night. Something made him turn the call off. He sheltered under the canopy of the Pleasance Theatre, black inside now, doors closed, show long over, what had been on he wondered. Saw a poster of a bowler-hatted man sprinkling gold dust. Waits? Tom Waits? The phone rang again, private and persistent. He could see it clearly this time. People ran past him in the rain, almost as if they also knew who was making the call and they had no to desire be around when it was answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Eddie Brogan?’ An accent, slight but there, Irish Dublin lilt, he wondered about people who soaked up accents with such ease, prostitutes of the mind, gave their lingual identities away to the lowest bidder, any bidder at all. This one was possibly South African at the heart of it.

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘Doesn’t the fuck matter who I am. It’s who you are that matters, to me. You are what matters to me at the moment, all that fucking matters.’

  ‘Stephen Zinny is it? What kind of a fucking name is that?’ Eddie spat the man’s own favourite curse back at him, regretting it instantly. There was quite a pause at the other end. No doubt incredulity. Had Eddie just won the lottery for his own funeral? He could hear breathing, whispers with others, possibly. Tracing the call? No, Jesus, what do you think this is, your own dark thriller? When you ain’t got nothing you got nothing to lose. That was Dylan or something. So plough on, Eddie, if you’re dead you’re dead can’t kill you twice. Still no reply from the other end. So Eddie filled in the gap himself.

  ‘You stole my money, Mr Zinny. Am I pronouncing your name right? I mean what kind of fucking name is that? You know who gave me that money?’ Eddie was reluctant to mention the Fair Frankie. ‘He gave me that money, I did as he said, left the country. You stole it from me. Why? Just tell me that.’

  Breathing, breath, slow, holding back huge depths of anger. Eddie knew that if the man was in front of him now he’d stab Eddie in the heart then rip it out of his chest. What a show what a performance greatest thing Edinburgh would ever had ever seen even after all the dark deep sins that had been perpetrated. Even Tom Waits would blanch at writing about a character as hard as Zinny. Zinny. What kind of fucking name is that?

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell you, Mr Brogan. I’ll tell you why indeed. And one day I’ll show you. You still in Edinburgh. I imagine you are. I imagine you can’t afford to go any further. As far I can see you have two choices. Stay there and get some fucking nothing of a job or go back to Dublin and resume your pitiful life doing the only thing you appear qualified to do. Standing on a door, looking hard, just a circus animal, tame though, all the appearance of some wild thing but no fight left inside. Sorry, Eddie, you wanted to know why, why I did what I did, why I’m going to do what it is I’m going to do. Eddie, you still there? Dead? Thought you’d at least put up a fight. Oh no, that’s not you anymore is it? No fight left in you, is there? Unless it’s little drunken kids or—’ Was that his voice breaking?

  ‘Or defenceless women,’ Zinny continued.

  Or women.

  ‘What?’ asked Eddie, confused, trying to get back in the focus of this conservation with a man he didn’t know, a man who was threatening to kill, was going to kill him. He had to listen, find out why. He looked at his watch because he knew there was something else he was supposed to do that night. The reason he had come here.

 
; ‘She’s lying in a hospital bed. There’s tubes down her throat, wires, machines, machine’s only thing keeping her alive. Brogan, you listening?’

  ‘Yes. I still don’t understand.’

  ‘She’s in a fucking coma, aren’t you listening? Beaten, brain fucking bashed in by a fucking maniac. All there for everyone to see. I was in the building at the time, can you believe that? Yards away, I was counting money. The screen was on, I wasn’t looking, wasn’t listening. Do you understand now?’

  Yes, no, he did, didn’t.

  ‘I – I still don’t know who you are. Please.’ He did know, trying not to admit it to himself, believe it.

  ‘Sarah—’ the man on the other end said. And that’s all he said because then he started crying.

  Eddie could almost see the man’s tears fall from the phone onto the glistening ground at his feet.

  Sarah? Scarred, scared, waiting in the doorway looking towards the door, waiting for what?

  ‘Sarah?’ was all Eddie could say.

  Eddie looked at Tom Waits on the poster, heard the Waitsian rain behind as he heard the story of a motherless child, wayward, lost, addictive, spending her nights with daddy at work, in the clubs and bars, ingesting, digesting all of what was on offer. Sarah Zinny.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Pathetic, that’s how he sounded to himself. The night was speeding by and he hadn’t even started his search. Seemed everything was trying to stop him getting there, to wherever she was. If she was there at all.

  ‘You ask that question after what you did to her?’

  ‘But—’ Eddie was reluctant to mention the name but he had no choice. ‘Frankie told me otherwise. Told she was at home, was okay, no need for hospital. I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. She’s lying in a hospital bed, soon to be lying in the ground. Only a matter of how long I decide to keep her alive. Alive.’ The very word brought his voice to breaking point again.

  ‘I’m— sorry. I didn’t know.’

  The rain had stopped. He moved out from under the canopy thinking that if he moved it would somehow break the bad spell of this call, would give him some greater strength. Maybe he could convince the man, the father, that it had all been a terrible accident, a misunderstanding.

  ‘You’ve been making calls, trying to find out, haven’t you Eddie?’ Back in control himself now Mr Zinny. ‘Well, you’ve found me. You don’t sound too pleased.’

  ‘You think I would have gone to all that effort if I had known who you were, what I had done? I wanted to know who stole my money. I did what Frankie told me. Paid for my sins.’

  ‘Paid for your sins? You got paid for your sins. An assassin, a killer that’s what you are.’

  ‘No. I’m—’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m nothing.’

  ‘First true thing you’ve said in your whole wasted life.’

  Eddie was back on Rose Street, back in the chaos and drunken pools, skipping through the debris, listening for the sounds, for the plaintive voice, the beauty, the rose among the thorns.

  ‘What do you want, Mr Zinny? You have the money. Not even really my money, was it? So what more do you want of me?’

  Eddie listened, filtered through the sounds of the street, he listened, felt the blade behind the eyes. Ended the call. Found himself back where he had started his journey the night before. He had come here before, to find her, his first night here, he had drunk, pissed the night, the time away. Still no sight nor sound.

  Couldn’t hear her voice. Maybe he wasn’t really listening.

  CHAPTER 13

  Something’s wrong with Edie

  Listen. Neither palace nor Paladium. No princes just paupers, shuffling in their seats, she heard the crackle of a microphone, Scotty or one of the others setting up. Lipstick laid horizontal ruby across lips of dry nervous calm. She shivered, shuddered, ghosts ran across her spirit, adrenalin running through her body. She fixed her dress again, again, they knocked on her door, said five minutes. Her heart beat right out of her chest, she wished it was an hour ago wished it was yesterday, she mouthed the first lines of the song, her voice wouldn’t come, it was gone, oh God, it had escaped somehow, out the door, up the steep stairs, past everybody unnoticed and was out in the street, running.

  Always the same.

  Listen. She managed to stand up, looked in the mirror, what little of her there was. She always managed to see her sister, her sister the way she was on her prom night, dressed up, an adult, beautiful, sensual, sultry prey for every man who came across her that night. Except she didn’t have a sister, never had a—

  She managed to open the dressing room door. The noise assaulted her senses, heightened the narrow cylindrical corridor where her dress rubbed against the pipes as she made her way to the stage. To the fight, the fright, the night.

  She nearly tripped, just a small step up. There was a ripple and then a wave of applause, screams, hollers, must have been for someone else she thought. She could reach out her hand and touch them, all of them, they could whisper in her ear they were that close. Never so scared, never this excited, she looked back at Scotty, Rob, all of them, they smiled, beamed at her. It was fantastic. The beat was a heartbeat. No thought, she rolled from one song to another, they followed her, came with her, they shouted out requests and she took them on the wing without missing a vein of rhythm. Jesus. No break, no time, a sip or two of water, the walls were sweating, it was heaving, bleeding.

  Let it bleed. Let the music bleed. Cut it open and watch it flow to the floor, over the stage, over the edge to the ground to the front row.

  Way past their time. No matter if they were drunk, shouting, so what, they wanted more, Edie looked at the others, they all nodded, they weren’t sure what was happening, but so what, whatever it is let it carry on. Let… it… bleed. The manager stood at the side, in a turquoise dinner suit that he probably wore to bed. He waved the hand with three gold rings and motioned them to carry on.

  Let… it…

  Bleed.

  Blood. She felt it rushing to her head. Head feeling light. Disconnected from her body. The room was now a furnace. Down here near the core of the earth. The room was now falling on its side. No, please God not again. She tried to focus on something. She gripped the microphone, tried to grip the words but they dripped from her mouth. She turned to the others, for help for understanding. For a moment they didn’t see her, how could they, they were moving so fast so far ahead, lost inside it where every band wants to be. She stared, pleaded as the walls twisted and turned, as the floor heaved like it was the ocean. It was Rob who noticed first, that she wasn’t singing, they had left her somewhere far behind. He looked at Scotty, then had to shout above the din.

  They let the music shudder to a clumsy finish. Stared, frowned, she turned away, the room was growing quiet, it was turning in slow circles. She let go of the microphone and swayed to some internal rhythm.

  There was someone behind her, touching her, she looked into Rob’s face. He motioned with his finger, running it underneath his nose. She smiled, what? She looked once again at the others and then her eyes fell to the floor following the drips of blood raining down on the worn stage. She put a hand to her face, to her nose, saw it, wiped it in her dress, it spread like fire, plummeted from her body, rushing for release escape freedom. She got to her knees, put her head down on the floor, felt sudden utter cold, dreamed, saw a flash strobe light pierce her brain. Closed her eyes and still it came. She tried to stand, arms lifting, helping her. As she stood on her feet nausea like a tidal wave swept over her. Whispers, shouts some laughter even, chairs scraping on the dirty floor, movement, they were leaving, from the corner of her eye she glimpsed the room almost empty and she let herself fall fall softly, sirens in her head… moving, floating across the ground… ascending…

  The whale siren sound screamed inside her and she wished it away. It was – it had been the best hadn’t it? Rob? Scotty? – It was the best we�
�ve ever—

  Quiet.

  She couldn’t hear a thing but she could see everything. They carried her up the stairs like a treasure unearthed from the deep. Moving up to the sound, sounds, the siren wail (whale) the strangers’ faces, spectators at the feast, moving aside letting her past.

  Nearly there. Feet from the ambulance, she turned her head, looked down the angled wet black street where life continued unabated, whole adventures, lives spurned and driven onwards by desires and hungers. Her face on the edge of her temporary bed, blood dripped once more, out onto the cracked soaked concrete.

  Edie was placed in the safe illumination of the ambulance, wrapped, masked, heated, comforted, her mind her body eased by those whose job it was to do such things. Rob was also beside her, silent, not knowing what to do and so he did nothing, afraid even to take her hand.

  The others stood on the path, watched her leave, wondered if she’d come back, each thinking their own selfish hidden thoughts, some financial, some erotic, things that might never be said, regretted now in the dark drizzle outside the club where they’d just given the performance of their lives.

  But something of her remained behind. Blood. Eternal, external, the drops ran with the rain on the downward path, trickling, sliding over the edge down rutted rotten steps, down an ancient laneway that curved unnatural devil paths down, down… down past thrown debris bottles, rats hidden, insects crawling, discarded remains unwanted thrown, fallen. Red ran on and on through obstacles dark, unwilling, drips dripped, some of the blood got lost along the way. But some struggled on, their pace slowing, near the end, on the final step, teetering, hovering over until it met another’s blood.