The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years (9 page)

He sits back in his chair then, lights his cigar and goes, ‘Ross, what do you know about the M50?’ I’m like, ‘Is it, like, a road?’ He goes, ‘Of a kind, yes. It’s a motorway.’ I’m there, ‘Where does it go?’ He’s like, ‘Who knows, Ross? Who knows?’ and he goes into a trance for a few seconds. I’m like, ‘Are you okay, Mr Conroy?’ He goes, ‘Oh sorry, Ross. The M50, yes. I don’t even think the focking thing’s finished yet. Doesn’t matter. Not from our POV anyway. The point is this: people think this motorway is the solution to all life’s problems, a superhighway to eternal happiness, if you like. No matter where you’re selling a house, kid, you tell ’em it’s close to the M50, offering convenient access to, I don’t know, the Pampas, Lake Victoria and the focking Hanging Gardens of Babylon … hey, I might put that into some of our prospectuses.’

I’m just, like, nodding, pretending I agree with the goy. I need the shekels. He’s like, ‘The other matter I need to discuss with you is this,’ and he hands me this photograph, roysh, and I’m there, ‘What the fock …’ He goes, ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ I’m like, ‘Y-
y-yeah.
’ He goes, ‘It’s called the Luas.’ I’m like, ‘It … looks like a spaceship.’ He’s there, ‘Well, we’ll probably all have spaceships by the time that thing sees the light of day. But mention it, Ross. “Convenient to Luas line.” No matter where the house is.

‘Amenities, too. People
love
amenities. Ham them up. Within walking distance of shops. And theatres. Bung that in.
Restaurants
. Of course they won’t be able to afford to eat in the
restaurants
when they’re mortgaged up to their town halls, but we deal in dreams here, Ross. People’s dreams. WHAT DO WE DEAL IN?’ and I automatically go, ‘People’s dreams,’ feeling like a total
knob-end, and we’re talking big-time total here.

He’s like, ‘Within walking distance. A key phrase, Ross. Within walking distance. Pretty soon you’ll find those words tripping off your tongue. I describe every house we sell as being within
walking
distance of the city centre. Donnybrook. Clontarf. Dun Laoghaire. Sold one in Balbriggan a couple of weeks ago. Within walking distance of O’Connell Street, I said. Have you ever heard of the Jarrow Marchers, Ross?’ I’m like, ‘Em … are they in the Super-12?’ He goes, ‘No, they were a group of workers who … did you do history at school?’ I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, but I was on the S.’ He goes, ‘Of course you were.’

He storts, like, rooting around in his drawer then, roysh, and he pulls out another picture and hands it to me and it’s of this gaff, roysh, a really shitty-looking place which he says is down some really dark alleyway off, like, Sheriff Street. And he goes, ‘A focking mugger’s paradise. Two bedrooms. No garden. Every piece of wood in the house crawling with worms. You’re looking for three hundred thou for this baby. Well?’ I’m like, ‘Em …’ He goes, ‘What do you say to me?’ I’m like, ‘It’s, em … it’s, em …’ He’s there, ‘Sell it to me, Ross. SELL IT TO ME!’ And I sort of, like, blurt out, ‘It’s an oasis in the heart of one of the city’s more mature areas.’ And he just, like, stares at me for ages, roysh, like he’s in total shock, then he gets up from his desk and storts, like, staring out the window. I’m like,
Hello
? What the fock is going down here? And it’s only then, roysh, that I cop the fact that he’s actually crying. He’s, like, bawling his focking eyes out. I’m there, ‘Hey, man, what’s wrong?’ and he turns around, roysh, and he’s got tears, like, streaming down his face and he goes, ‘I wish you were my son.’

People have basically been surprised at the state of the gaff me and Fionn are living in. There’s, like, no beer cans lying around the place, no, like, Chinese takeaway cartons, no funny smells and even the toilet is, like, flushable. The place is pretty much like a museum, roysh, not because of anything me and Fionn have done – who will ever forget the state of our gaff in Ocean City? – but because of Nicola, this Bulgarian bird who Fionn’s old dear pays to come and, like, clean up after us three days a week. She’s not the Mae West lookswise – a little bit David Duchovny except with a moustache – but you have to give it to her, roysh, she’s a dab hand with a duster and a cloth, and if I were an ordinary goy with simpler needs, I could see me and Nicola getting it on.

The only thing she won’t do, roysh, apart from electrolysis, is iron. We’ve tried to slip her a few extra shekels but it’s, like, no go, she will not do it. After three weeks in the gaff, roysh, every single piece of clothing that me and Fionn owned was basically dirty and we were in BT2 every second or third day, splashing out on new threads because we didn’t want to face washing and ironing the other ones. But one night, roysh, there we are watching some shite on the Discovery Channel about the
Kodiak
bear, with Fionn just, like, absorbing all of the information like a sponge, when all of a sudden, during an ad break, he turns around to me and goes, ‘We’re going to have to do something about that pile of clothes on the landing.’ I’m there, ‘What about it?’ He’s like, ‘Ross, there are EU food mountains that are worth less than our stockpile of designer threads. Must be ten grand’s worth of dirty clothes up there. And I can’t afford to buy any more.’ I’m like, ‘I am
SO
not asking my old dear to do it, if that’s what you’re getting at. Wouldn’t give that bitch the
pleasure.’ He goes, ‘No, but this solution does require courage nonetheless. I think you should go to see Daisy.’

Daisy, roysh, she’s this bird we both know from Lillies, a bit of a bowler if the truth be told, but she has the total hots for yours truly. She’s only human, I suppose. Anyway, roysh, Daisy’s a bit, like, mumsy, if you know what I mean, she’s basically looking for a goy to mother, and one night, roysh, there we were, sat in the
corner
of Lillies – her getting all, like, touchy-feely, me basically
keeping
her at bay with a ten-foot bargepole – and she mentioned that she knew how utterly useless goys were around the house, and if we ever needed anyone to come out and, like, cook or iron or
anything
like that, then we could give her a shout, not knowing of course that she was, like, talking herself into a little weekend job.

So I give her a bell, roysh, and she says she’d be
SO
happy to come around and do it for us. I’m like, ‘There’s quite a lot of it, Daisy. Don’t make any plans for Saturday or Sunday.’ She goes, ‘Well, in future I’ll come around every Saturday morning to do it. It won’t take any longer than a couple of hours a week, once you don’t let it pile up.’ There’ll be a payback for this, you can be sure of that. I’ll be expected to be with her now and I have to say, roysh, without being too dramatic here, I actually feel a bit dirty after I hang up the phone. I head outside to Fionn, roysh, who’s in the forecourt, looking under the bonnet of his cor – a black Peugeot 206, 1.1 litre, no alloys. He’s had trouble storting it lately. I tell him that Daisy’s coming out on Saturday morning and I told her to, like, get here early as well. Fionn goes, ‘Do you think she knows anything about carburettors?’

I actually thought that Erika was just being a bitch to Claire when she mentioned that she’d spent the weekend in Clonakilty at, like,
the hunt ball, which was amazing and –
OH MY! GOD!
–
SO
much better than last year. Everyone knows that she hates her, roysh, what with Claire getting caught one night telling some goy in Lillies that she was ‘originally from Dalkey’ even though she’s actually from Bray, and Erika hates people getting above their station. And then there was the time she, like, picketed the fur shop on Grafton Street with, like, Sorcha, during that whole Save The Animals phase they went through in, like, first year in college.

And Claire, roysh, she is
SO
going to go for the bait. I’m
basically
watching her, sipping her vodka and Smirnoff Ice and, like, pretending to be interested in some shite Christian’s spouting about George Lucas and his willingness to take even more risks with the second trilogy than he did with the first. But Erika’s blabbing on and on about all these, like, really rich goys she met down there, roysh, and Claire basically can’t control herself anymore.

She goes, ‘Don’t tell me you, like, killed an animal?’ and Erika sort of, like, looks her up and down, roysh, and goes, ‘The dogs actually do the killing, Dear,’ knowing full well that Claire hates it when she calls her that. I can see her face going red. It’s like she’s going to focking burst. And Erika goes, ‘It was a fox, if you must know. Or it was before the dogs tore it to pieces.’ Of course, Christian’s there still banging on about ‘the boundless creativity of not just Lucas but everyone who works at Skywalker Ranch,’ totally oblivious to what’s going down here, and we are talking
TOTALLY
here.

Claire’s not saying anything, roysh, just basically bulling quietly to herself. But Erika’s not going to let go. She’s like one of those dogs she was going on about, ripping the poor fox apart. She’s
there going, ‘Are you about to stort crying?’ and Claire goes, ‘No,’ but she’s lying, roysh, and Erika’s like, ‘Oh my God, you
are
. The tears are welling up in your eyes. That’s so sweet. Crying for dead Mister Fox.’

Fionn comes home from college, roysh, and he tells me about this coffee place in town, roysh, and when you gave your order they used to say, ‘Is that to take away?’ Now they say, ‘Is that to go?’ I’m like, ‘And your point is?’

I’m, like, texting JP the other day, roysh, trying to find out what the fock OFCH stands for before I try to sell this couple a gaff in Leixlip, and I end up missing a call, and it’s actually news to me, roysh, that you can’t, like, get through to me on the phone while I’m texting someone. Then again, roysh, it was the old pair who bought me this heap of shit so it shouldn’t be, like, a surprise or anything. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I check my messages and, speak of the devil, it’s Dickhead himself. I wondered how long it’d be before they came crawling back to me, begging me to come back home. Losers.

The message is like, ‘Hey, Ross, how ya doing, Kicker? Em … it’s your old dad here. Don’t like talking to these machines. Silly that, I know, in this age of … technology and so forth. Em … I was just ringing to see how you were doing, you know, whether you needed, em, any money or anything. I know your car
insurance
is due. Don’t worry about that. I’ll look after it. And any other money you need for clothes and so forth … well, em, I guess what I really wanted to say, Ross, is that we’re, em, that is your mother and I, we’re worried about you. That’s both of us,
we’re both worried. Basically thought you might have been in touch by now.