Chapter 10

The man was of substantial girth and mass.

She straddled him underneath her, gripping his hairy ears with her two gentle hands, pulling his face closer towards her large, looming breasts.

Ah Jaysus, said the man.

—You’ll pull the ears from me.

Off you.

—I’ll do more than that.

It was not her fault.

Her son had gargolyism, was doubly incontinent, completely unresponsive and uncontrollable.

Apart form that he was grand.

At least that is what the doctor thought.

—He is grand. He does not know his misfortune. He does not realise it.

She too had her problems. She drank too much. She could not face the reality of situation. That she was nothing. That she would die, never having been anything.

That fact (if one can call it that) that everybody was in the same boat, that they too would die, did not console her.

Nothing consoled her.

So she turned to violent sex as a way to appease the sense of reality impinging upon her consciousness.

She fucked everything.

Men, women, and children (though not the very young, as her taste was distinctly Victorian).

She fucked and killed. And killed and fucked. Both at once. Together. She often ejaculated to the sounds of her partners (victims?) suffocation. Or as the hands grips hers, in the vain attempt to remove them from her throat.

—Mona! Mona!

She cold not hear him.

Fucking Jesus. Fucking yes. Fucking Jesus. Yes. Oh my. Fucking. Jesus. Oh God. Fucking. Oh. My. Jesus. Cunt. And.

—Mona! Mona!

The peak of sexual sadism.

The man at the door had been standing there for some time.

She stopped and turned toward him, concealing her breasts as she rotated all the way around.

—He’s dead.

—I know. That doesn’t.

—Off course not.

The twisted face of her son appeared in her mind. He was only ten. Would he live for much longer? The lord only knew. No he didn’t.

—Put your clothes on. We’re going.

—Where?

She got up, off the bed, and let the knife fall to the floor.

—Away from this kip.

She put her clothes on, dressed silently.

—He wants to see me.

Out.

Away from here.

They crossed Dame Street together, hand in hand, waving at the approaching traffic.

Come on.

We’re late.

Hand in hand.

At the telephone booth, in front of the bookshop, on the corner of College Green and Grafton Street, they stopped.

—I need to ring him.

—Who?

—Mooney.

He stepped into the phone booth and closed the door behind him. Naturally. Does he want me, she thought. The cold made her nipples firm, hard to touch.

—Mooney.

The voice on the other end of the line was low.

—Yes.

—So you’re still there.

—I am indeed.

—It would take more than those fools.

—Of course.

—What are your plans?

—I have Mona with me.

—Mona?

He looked at her through the dirty window pane. Was it real? Was she really standing there?

He wiped the pane.

On the outside.

—The girl. The girl who. The girl who knows Farrell.

—Farrell?

Jesus. No wonder they want him dead. how could he have taken the money. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe he was a friend of Wagner. Or Burchill. Who knew why the Bossman wanted someone dead and not someone else dead.

It was a fucking mystery.

—Pat Farrell. From Maynooth.

—Farlo?

—That’s the one.

The lack of a metaphysical centre.

—Mac!

She was screaming at him.

He saw the ground open up before him and he saw himself swallow by it and he knew that he was gone but he knew this. It was as if the reality of his own consciousness had momentarily turned inside out, so that he could see himself dead, dead but still in the land of the living.

It was hard to explain.

—Mac.

When he looked again, he saw that her faced was pressed up again the pane of the phone box.

Mac, she said again.

—Yes.

—Where were you?

—I … I don’t know. I was.

—Where you bloody always are.

Mac looked at her, gazed up. He didn’t even realise he was on the ground, lying down, supine, stretched out.

— To think that this path has already been thread, that every thought has already been thought, that every thinker is a replica of another. We wonder around in hope that we are unique, but the opposite is true. We are not even nothing. We are less than that.

She looked at him long and hard and then hit him twice, for good effect.

—Mac!

—Mona.

—Who was that man on the bridge?

She still did not understand him.

—Who were you talking to?

—Mooney. He’s in Dalkey. The Bossman wants him. Dead.

—And are you going to give him to him?

—If I don’t, another will.

—Quinn?

—Of course.

—Get up to fuck.

She picked him up, by the hand, and dragged him up towards her.

Breasts.

—We’ll go out to Dalkey. Talk to Mooney.

—Of course. Do you not think we’re being watched?

—By who?

—Whom?

He looked around, vaguely, without study or concentration.

—By Fat. By thin. By Quinn. By.

—That doesn’t matter.

—He will look for me. When I don’t call him.

But it would be different now, his story would be different. If he didn’t go that way. If he choose to bring Mona with him. To him. Then he would kill her. And he had killed. Did he? Most likely.

The ground.

Look at it.

Mac looked at the ground. It did not move. How? He could not say.

The approaching bus, numbered 8 came towards them.

There were on Clare Street.

Georgian house everywhere.

—We could also reach Dalkey by taking the number 59 bus from Dun Laoghaire. We could stroll down Vico Road and see the spectacular views of Killiney Bay?

But he was not listening.

He was listening for the sound of his wife’s voice. What to do? What is a killer to do? Kill? Of course. But can he do anything else.

Of course.

But habit is a hard one to kick.

Especially for a killer.