Free On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland by Joseph Éamon Cummins

like so many others, no skill. The adrenaline was tingling now; it had always been this way, he thought, a drug in his veins. Could he ever not enjoy it?
    He could no longer afford a street mentality, he thought, it could lose him the freedom he’d won back. But failing with Lenny wasn’t going to happen; he wouldn’t let it. This was his time, a new life, new place, and no alternative he could imagine. The caution he’d heard from Paddy didn’t change a thing. And of Boxer Dunne he had no fear, but also no need to prove anything. Charles Quin, though, something about him felt threatening.
    It was past ten. He stretched out, sank into the bareness of the room, which took him back to the seventies, a world that was fascinating to him, when being poor, desiring nothing but pennies, had the feel of being rich, which he was. The flight from Los Angeles to New York, then New York to Dublin, had been long. But here he was, at last, back in Aranroe. Nineteen-ninety-four, twenty-eight years of age, breathing Irish country air, ecstatic that Lenny, though she wouldn’t know it till morning, was so close that his exhilaration might reach her. What was she doing, he wondered. Lying alone in her bed desiring Tony MacNeill? Feeling him next to her? Feeling for him what he was feeling for her? Tomorrow, he would not be dispossessed, stood up or scared off.
    * * *
    It was 10.30am, after a night of little sleep. His shaking hand gripped the receiver. Like a diviner’s rod his index finger sought each of the numbered holes in the chrome dial. He was calling, he explained, for Ms Leonora Quin; it was urgent and confidential. In that case, the receptionist responded, he should be dialling Miss Quin’s private number: 66038.
    He stared at the telephone. This was going to be different, he told himself, minder or no minder. Maybe now the pain was over and there was such a thing as luck, or God, after all.
    After aborting two attempts, he picked out 6-6-0-3-8.
    ‘Hello.’
    The voice! It came too fast, halted his breathing.
    ‘Hello, who is it? Hello.’
    It was a heart beating across darkness. And it broke his courage. No words came, not a syllable would breathe out of him.
    ‘Hello, hello. I can hear you breathing. Who is it?’
    All at once it tore through him, what he had gone through in the year since he’d heard that voice. Now he didn’t belong in her world. Eva’s words returned: double-killer, ex-con, gas pumper, car polisher, loser.
    ‘I’m still waiting. Are you going to talk to me?’
    The self he had re-invented, had believed in, was paralysed, a sham, hopes trapped in a heart that couldn’t speak.
    ‘Can’t wait forever. Hellooo-oo.’
    He smashed the receiver down. Fool, no fucking guts, he cursed. He deserved nothing. On the street he had it every time, could always perform. But her world was different: fancy, false, not for him. He dropped back onto the bed, fighting his thoughts. He’d held his own, he told himself, in the housing projects at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; in prison, every day up against scum; he’d learned well that you paid for guts, he had paid; the price for fear was always higher. Here, as Joel would tell him, he needed to defeat fear, not make excuses for failing. He sat up, dialled again: 6-6-0-3-8.
    ‘Tony?! Tony MacNeill? Is it you?’
    ‘Lenny. Hi, how are you? Hi.’
    ‘Tony! I felt it was you. I just felt it. Where are you? You’re not here, in Ireland?’
    ‘Just down the hill.’
    ‘Oh, my God. You serious? You can’t be.’
    ‘I am. Are you able to get away, today, I mean right now?’
    ‘Yes, yes. God, it’s so good to hear your voice. I can’t believe it. I really can’t. Where have you been, where? Twelve months.’
    ‘Twelve months,’ he repeated. But now it felt like he had looked into her eyes just yesterday, and in a sense, he had, in each of the yesterdays.
    ‘I did write to you,’ he said. ‘One note and five letters. But don’t think about that now. Can