Free Secret Isaac by Jerome Charyn Page A

with his pants unfurled. He was the kind of man who could kill Dermott Bride for having mistreated a hooker in New York. He wouldn’t bawl over a dead house on Eccles Street and shake his big fat ass. Moses had work to do. He was no better than Marsh when it came to chewing her tits. His orgasms seemed to rumble out of him like a bit of dry puke. But she forgave his pathetic courtship. Moses didn’t get his Nighttown out of any book. He was in love with a Forty-second Street whore.
    So she voyaged through the Shelbourne with a raincoat around her shoulders. Porters were carrying up trays of white coffee and toast. The Irish preferred to rise at six. “Would the madam like her breakfast in bed?”
    â€œThank you, no.”
    She might wake the dean, spreading marmalade on her toast. She crept back to Marsh’s room, dropped the raincoat on the floor. Marsh was clutching the blanket with his fists. This was the man who wore a shroud at her wedding, who broke a glass under his foot. She opened one fist with gentle pulls on his fingers, got under the covers, closed his fist again, and hugged him around the waist, her Poldy, her Leopold, her Bloohoohoom.

13
    I SAAC maundered in Dublin. He had nothing to do. He couldn’t isolate Dermott from his vassals. Killing the king had become pure whim. Little Dermott was safe in Dublin town. But Isaac wouldn’t go home. His students at John Jay would have to suffer without his lectures for a while. He began to follow Dermott’s narrow routes, in order to put himself inside the king’s head. So he ate at the Red Ruby on Merrion Row, an hour before Dermott was scheduled to arrive. Isaac had his lo mein, a spring roll, and Chinese chicken soup. He imagined Dermott at the table, with chopsticks and hot mustard, his vassals eating with forks. Wasn’t there another restaurant in Dublin that would have the boy? Did Dermott need that lo mein a block from the hotel? He had peculiar territories for a king.
    Isaac would duplicate Dermott’s walk in St. Stephen’s park, inhabit Dermott step by step. What did the king look at from his gazebo? The slow, meticulous paddling of the ducks? The way they poked their mouths into the water? Did he notice the scum, leaves, and bottles at the northern end of the pond? The thick green bowls of the trees? And did he stare up at the roofs of the Shelbourne from the park? The iron grilles, the great television aerial, the nude flagpole, dormer windows, the fine white molding, the four weather vanes? A few hundred yards in front of the Shelbourne. Is that where Dublin ended for Dermott Bride?
    Isaac had his room changed. The porters moved him to the front of the hotel. I want to see what Dermott sees . He would stare out his window at St. Stephen’s, at the houses near his corner of the park, with their pitched roofs, the traffic, the hills outside Dublin, and then go to the lounge. Funny people were sitting there. Rowdies with broken noses. They drank jars of Guinness and wore helmets that looked like housepainters’ hats, only these helmets came with chin straps. Isaac couldn’t understand why the porters didn’t throw them out. But the lounge seemed to be in awe of them. Men and women came over from the other tables to shake their hands. Isaac was dumbfounded until a porter told him that tomorrow was All-Ireland hurling day. These were the champions. Hurlers from Cork. What the fuck was hurling about? A game with sticks called hurleys and a leather puck. Ireland’s national sport. Sixty thousand would rush to the hills of Croke Park for the final game between Wexford and Cork. Rougher than football, the porter said. Break your mouth with one of those hurling sticks. Isaac wished he had a hurley in his hand to come at Dermott’s vassals. He’d win for Ireland and the United States. Use Dermott’s scalp for a puck. Roll that head in the grass. He’d be the master hurler, “man of