Free Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other by Robert Mclaim Wilson Page A

Something for nothing. He needed the impossible. John Long was right. He was a fantasist. Something for nothing. Where could he find a dick who would give him that?

    In that rainy moment as he stepped over the cracked paving stone between and it struck him like some soundless klaxon. That last mental phrase burgeoned in his mind like some thermonuclear aftershock. He stopped stock still on Eureka Street and looked for stars he could not see. The clouds were low and the mist of rain was thick. Even where the land rose towards the West, nothing beyond the lit precincts of the city was the mountains had disappeared. Rain always made Belfast seem smaller, more itself. Rain always made Belfast look to Chuckie as though it was the last place left in the world.
    But now the rain washed and cooled the fever of his ecstatic face. He was transfigured, amazed. Afterwards it would always seem to him that he had been touched by something godly, something almost famous. Afterwards, it seemed that the whole strange evening had been the simple etheric precedent for this moment: the eavesdropping on his mother, their first conversation for ten years, his life-list. It was the indication that, before the day was through, his world would change for ever.
    For five minutes Chuckie stood thinkfully in the rain two doors down from his own. And in the shabby, damp, poorly lit theatre that was Eureka Street, the tangle of his thoughts untangled, smoothed themselves out like paper and Chuckie read there an idea so tremendous, so grand, that he felt like a bigger man already.

     

The way my head banged, when I opened the curtains that Monday morning, I knew it had just been the weekend.
    I remembered as I peed and made coffee, practically simultaneously. I'd spent the weekend in the Crown. I'd all but slept there. Slat, Chuckle, Donald Deasely and Septic Ted. I had been chugged naturally. Drunk was hardly the word. A few pints of Bass and I'd been telling eight-foot Protestants why I was a lapsed Catholic. Well, I don't really drink. So, when I really grief.
    Chuckie had been weird. He hadn't been there the whole time, which was weird enough in itself. Chuckie had never met a beer he didn't drink and his missing any of our carousing was unheard of. The sensation of being drunk without him was most uncustomary. He'd met some girl, he told us, some beautiful American. We laughed, naturally, but we were worried. There was a new light in Chuckle's face, a new angle to the way he carried that blunt head of his. I always hated it when my friends surprised nie. That wasn't what they were for.
    I thought about having a shower but pulled on my working clothes instead. I had forty minutes to get out of the house and coffee was more important than hygiene. I checked for mail (no mail) and let my cat in.

    Another wasted weekend. Nothing said worth saying; nothing done worth doing. I wanted to do other things. I wanted to see Mary and find out how reluctant she could be. I should have made my weekend a fruitful thing including her. But no. I pissed it away down the Crown.
    Even as I drank my coffee, I tried telling myself stories about it. I tried to remember and believe what fun it had all been. But it had been no fun. We had all hated it. Slat had practically wept with despair on the Sunday afternoon and even Septic Ted, not known for his delicacy or depth, had said that there had to be something else.
    So why had we done it? None of us had drunk that much for years. We hadn't been so childish, so objectionable, so male for years. Why? I don't know about the others but it was simple for me.
    It was because I knew Mary wouldn't call. It's because I didn't want to be there when the phone didn't ring.
    My cat was screaming at me. He was getting it was the way I'd had his balls cut off. He was trying out a series of new miaows and yowls on me. There were diphthongs, voice-throwing, operatic quavers. It was seven o'clock. Too early for this shit. I piled his dish