number about a man on death row, and maybe I should have taken that as a warning. There was a TV on in one part of the bar with an old movie playing silently without anyone watching because they all knew the story. The Godfather, I think it was. Al Pacino lying to his sister about having her husband killed.
There I was, being pulled out the back door of the pub to a small grotto which had been erected for smokers. Sharon called it a pagoda. We sat down and instead of smoking she took out a small sachet of pills, wrapped in silver foil. She took one herself and offered me one as well, but I didn’t need it.
She got up and started dancing to an imaginary techno beat which was far more energetic than the pop ballads coming from inside. She seemed not to be aware of me. Then she came over to kiss me, grabbing the back of my neck and rushing her tongue right into my mouth like a jeep. The other hand reached for my balls.
‘Show us your prick,’ she demanded.
I delayed long enough until she got impatient and searched for my zip. I was totally out of my depth and couldn’t tell if it was more of a rescue than an interference when her father suddenly appeared with two of his friends standing next to him.
‘Sharon,’ he roared. ‘Get in here.’
‘Ah fuck off, Da.’
He came over towards us while the other two remained at the door in case they were needed. Sharon had a screaming argument with her father at that point, with me as the main focus. She claimed she was old enough and entitled to screw anyone she liked and that this was not ‘Holy, Catholic Ireland’ any more with people placing an armed guard on their own daughters.
‘You’ve got a six-month-old baby, Sharon,’ he said.
‘Look, it’s OK,’ I interrupted, beginning to edge away towards the pub door. What I wanted most was for everyone to go back inside and enjoy the music again and be friends. But it wasn’t up to me to make a move.
‘You fucking stay where you are, you Polish cunt.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Sharon said.
‘He’s only a knacker and a sponger.’
The electrician threw a punch which sent me right out of the grotto, into a line of bins. Before the full panic set in, I had time to get offended. I wanted to tell him that I have never been to Poland in my life, but my nationality was hardly the issue here. The mistake suited me in many ways because I didn’t really want people to know I was from Serbia. I picked myself up and looked around to see where I should run to.
But by then it was already over. Sharon was walking away with her father and the two other men, like a team of escorts leading a pop star in through the back door of an arena. She must have been thrilled to be rescued like that. From inside, I heard the sound of applause and whistling and people cheering and the band starting up a number by the Gypsy Kings.
That’s when I got the phone call from Kevin. It couldn’t have come at a better time and we agreed to meet in a bar across the street, well away from the electrician and his daughter. It felt a bit sneaky, doing a bunk on my work mates, but I didn’t want to drag Kevin into any of this trouble.
He arrived with Helen and they immediately looked at me with some concern.
‘Are you all right?’
There was a bit of blood on my shirt and they kept asking me what happened. I played it down and told them I had simply miscalculated the situation in the bar. I had no idea that Sharon had a six-month-old baby or that her father was her chaperon for the night, not to mention the other two bodyguards.
‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in a place like that,’ Kevin said.
‘The lads at work brought me there,’ I said.
‘Trust me,’ he said.
They were no friends, he assured me. A true friend was somebody who would put his hand in the fire for you. He explained what was more likely to happen and what it meant when somebody got burst. Briefly, it meant losing teeth. It meant footprints on your face.
He handed me the money for the materials and bought a round of drinks. He got quite drunk and told great stories which made Helen laugh out loud. Me as well. I liked him. I liked them both together, because they gave me this great feeling of being at home.
There we were, later that same night, Kevin and Helen and myself. The three of us walking together. Him in the middle with one arm around her and the other around me. Our feet shooting forward in unison. A strange animal with six feet and three laughing faces, two parts male and one part female. Once we reached the car and broke up, each of us stumbled away in a different direction. We lost the balance we had as a unit and had to regain our stability as individuals. He leaned into her, pushing her back against the side of the car to kiss her, but she shrugged him off, saying she was going to concentrate on getting home first. He fell away with his hands against the bonnet in a worshipping gesture. She laughed as she searched for the keys in her bag. She got into the car and turned on the engine while he sank down on to his knees, speaking to one of the headlights. His face lit up white. His eyes shut. Grinning. She shouted at him to get in, and then he cast an enormous shadow into the street as he stood up again.
‘Look, I can get a taxi,’ I said.
There were plenty of empty taxis heading back into the city centre.
‘Hang on, I’m bursting,’ he said.
His back was turned, hunched over as though he was counting out some money. Beyond him, the shutters of some shops, sprayed with graffiti. Then he spun around laughing and began to piss against the side of her car.
‘You bastard,’ she shouted.
I stood back on the pavement trying to pretend I was not part of this. I was embarrassed for her because he started pissing right across the bonnet. She was calling him a fucking animal, but I was not sure if she was really that angry and whether it might all be nothing more than a bit of fun in front of me. She must have known that he would pay to wash the car. He would even try and convince her later that it was an expression of affection. It was his trademark way of doing things in great waves of raging love and generosity. And maybe this was what she liked so much about him, his explosiveness, his talent for surprise. One day they would settle down and get married. Then all this madness would have to come to an end.
He began pissing right across the windscreen at her. She cursed again, but that only seemed to encourage him. She put on the windscreen wipers and sprayed two jets of soapy water in a counterattack, spreading the mixture of soap and piss across the glass.
Then I wondered if she was crying because she just backed down and remained silent, looking away into the street because this was not a very good sign for the future.
Was he consecrating her car or desecrating it? Quite possible that he would not be doing this without me present to witness this balancing act between them. They seemed to be appealing to me like a referee.
But who was I to judge?
Hard for me to know where the boundary lay between a joke and an insult. It was only a bit of a laugh, I kept telling
