The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappuccino Years (18 page)

All of a sudden, roysh, I notice that the old biddy who was
trying
to get us to leave has collared one of the waitresses, roysh, and she’s going, ‘I mean, could they not move to that table over there? They could share with that couple. We need three seats, you see.’ But the waitress, roysh, she hasn’t a focking clue what your one is talking about and then Sorcha makes a big deal of ordering, I don’t know, a grande orange mocha-chip frappuccino or some shite, with extra chocolate as well, and the old bitch, roysh, she throws her eyes up to heaven and then hops it before I have to tell her to.

Sorcha goes, ‘That’s one thing I can’t get used to. Ireland has changed
SO
much.’ I’m like, ‘You’ve only been away eight months,’ and she goes, ‘Will you share a bowl of chunky dairy peach ice cream with me?’ and I know the thing’ll come, roysh, and she’ll basically horse the lot. That’s birds for you. They don’t want to share the ice cream. They want to share the guilt. I’m like, ‘Okay.’ She orders, roysh, then she goes, ‘Dublin especially has
SO
changed. Totally. Everyone is, like,
SO
rude. Nobody cares about other people anymore, it’s all, like, money, money, money.’ I remind her that Philipa was saying the same thing six months ago. Philipa as in Shut Sellafield. Philipa as in Save the focking Dolphins. The last time I saw her she was working in some morkeshing firm, blabbing on about consumer
recognition
, aural spillover and the glamour-sex-excitement curve. You’d need a focking degree in bullshit to understand her. When I say this, roysh, Sorcha suddenly looks all sad. She goes, ‘I used to love that Labi Siffre song, ‘Something Inside so Strong’.’ I reach across the table, roysh, grab her hand and I go, ‘I remember, Sorcha. It was one of the main reasons you joined Amnesty.’ She goes, ‘I come home, I turn on the television and
it’s on an ad for a bank.’ I tell her I’ve missed her. She ignores me, pulls her hand away and says that Philipa is a sap who always had an attitude problem. Then she storts looking around to see what’s keeping her coffee. She looks great.

I meet Faye in Dun Laoghaire and she has, like, a bag with her and I ask her whether she’s been to the gym. She goes, ‘Just for a sauna. And a sunbed. Did you hear about Amy?’ I’m there, ‘Em, about her joining Riverview?’ And she stares through me and goes, ‘That girl is
such
a sad case.’

For the past three weeks, I’ve been seeing this bird called Eimear, roysh, well-stacked, nice boat race, but basically thicker than the queue outside a northside post office on family allowance day. Which doesn’t matter to me, of course. To me, it’s only a bit of fun. The problem is that she’s, like, totally fallen head-over-heels for me, the sappy bitch. I haven’t mentioned it yet, roysh, but Eimear has a boyfriend, which seems to be a problem to her. I couldn’t give a fock. To me, roysh, birds with boyfriends are the best kind of birds to be with. Playing off the big striker, we call it. He takes all the knocks, the elbows and the rough treatment, while you do all the scoring. The last few weeks, roysh, I’ve been like that Robbie Keane. Without the jewellery, though. And the Tallaght accent.

Eimear and Michael – that’s the boyfriend, roysh, or Big Quinny, as the goys christened him – they live in this gaff down near Dun Laoghaire Dorsh station, a bit of a hovel if the truth be told, but pretty much what you’d expect for, like, students. I don’t really listen to her that much, roysh, but he’s doing, like,
veterinary science in Trinity, which takes serious brains, and she’s doing, like, commerce in UCD, which doesn’t.

But it’s obviously not brains she’s after, roysh, because last Friday she, like, texts me to tell me that Michael’s in Wexford for the weekend, I don’t know, shoving his arm up cow’s orses or whatever it is vets do, and she’s like,
WOOD U LIKE 2 COME 4 DNNER?
and you know me, I’m like,
Hello
? Is the bear a Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Lash on my black DKNY shirt and my Hugo Boss jeans, quick splash of
Gio Acqua Di
, and the next thing I know I’m in her sitting room, taking in the smell of some chickeny thing she’s cooking while flicking through her CD collection for one bad enough to Petty Pilfer. She’s giving it, ‘Oh my God, I am such a bad cook. I’m, like, SO embarrassed.’ As it turns out, of course, she’s not. The nosebag is amazing and when we’ve finished eating, roysh, we – as Fionn says – retire to the drawing room for the preliminaries.

She’s another one of those birds who love that whole
oh-romance-me
thing, roysh, which is why I agreed to sit with her through the whole of
Sleepless in Seattle
, which is basically the biggest pile of shite ever to be made into a film. By the time it’s over, roysh, I’m totally gagging for it, but she wants to put on
Dirty Dancing
. I’m like, ‘I’m, em, a bit tired … Eimear.’ I nearly called her Orla. I’m like, ‘I think I’ll turn in.’ She goes, ‘Nobody puts Baby in the corner,’ which I think is a line from
Dirty Dancing
, then she storts breaking her shite laughing, which is when I realise she’s either drunker or thicker than I thought.

We head through to the bedroom, all lava lamps and three-bar electric heaters, which is pretty much what you’d expect from a girl you met in Club M. I whip the threads off, roysh, but by the
time I get into the scratcher, roysh, she’s out for the count and snoring her focking head off, so I climb into the sack, as clumsy as I can, to try to, like, wake her up, but it’s no go, and now I know I shouldn’t have let her open that second bottle of wine.

I’m in a bit of a Pauline Fowler at this stage, but you don’t score as many birds as I have in my life, roysh, without learning a trick or six. I already knew my next move. Okay, I’m lying there, wide awake and basically dying for it, roysh, and she’s lying there, out to the world and basically not dying for it, so I grab her by the shoulders, roysh, and I stort, like, shaking her, and just as she’s waking up, roysh, I’m there going, ‘It’s okay, Eimear … ssshh … calm down … it’s okay, you just had a bad dream.’

Of course, she wakes up and she’s totally clueless. She’s like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I’m like, ‘You were having a nightmare.’ She’s there, ‘Was I?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s all it was, a bad dream.’ Of course, in her half-asleep state, roysh, she’s convinced now that she
was
having a nightmare and she storts, like, crying, which is when I offer her a comforting hug and, well, I don’t need to draw you a map of where we’re going next.

Or rather, where we
should
have been going next. There’s me and Eimear about to get jiggy, roysh, when all of a sudden I hear the door of the flat open and Eimear’s like, ‘That’s Michael. Are you ready for this?’ I’m like, ‘I thought you said he was in
Wexford
.’ She goes, ‘Ross, we have to stop all this sneaking around. He needs to know.’ There’s no time for me to, like, argue and shit. In he comes and asks that stupid question I’ve heard so many times before: ‘What’s going on here?’ The state of him, he’s a total bogger, I mean, who dressed him – Stevie Wonder? Eimear goes, ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Michael. But … we love each other.’ I’m like, Whoah, horsey. Who said
anything 
about … This goy, Michael, he goes, ‘What’s your name?’ I’m like, ‘What’s it to you?’ He’s there, ‘Well, you’ve eaten all my food, drunk all my wine and now you’re sleeping with my
girlfriend
in my bed. I’m just curious.’ Good comeback, I have to give him that. I’m like, ‘The name’s Ross.’

He goes, ‘Outside. Now.’ Eimear’s there, ‘Please, no
fighting
,’ I’m like, as
if
. He’s only a little goy, roysh, and I’m pretty confident of decking the focker. I hop out of bed and I see him clock my pecs. It turns out, roysh, he doesn’t want to fight. It’s really weird, roysh, but we go into the kitchen and he tells me to sit at the table, then he pours, like, two large glasses of whiskey. He takes a sip of his and goes, ‘Did you know that Eimear hates Christmas?’ I’m like, ‘What’s that got to do with the price of cabbage?’ He goes, ‘She hates Christmas and she’s allergic to milk and she can’t swim. And she loves pigs and she cries when she hears Karen Carpenter sing ‘Solitaire’. And she’s a diabetic and she wants to be a concert pianist and she once dyed her hair blonde and it turned bright orange. And her mum died when she was three.’ This is, like, weird shit. He’s like, ‘And
you
don’t know anything about her, do you?’ I’m just like, ‘No.’ He goes, ‘And you say you love her?’ I’m there, ‘Fock, no,
she
said that, not me.’

And suddenly, she’s at the door of the kitchen, roysh, and she’s like, ‘Ross?’ And I just knock back the whiskey in one go and I get up from the table, and she’s there going, ‘Ross? Ross, this isn’t fair.’ I stop and I look at her and I’m like, ‘Nor is
Samantha
Mumba’s orse.’ It’s a JP line – one of his better ones – and I tell them I’ll let myself out.

I hear them crying, talking, trying to put what they had back together, as I sneak into the sitting room on my way out the door,
roysh, and grab the Phil Collins
Buster
soundtrack that will be my little souvenir of one majorly focked-up night.

‘I’ve been watching ‘Fair City’ for ten years,’ Fionn goes, while cleaning his glasses on his shirt. ‘It’s supposed to be a slice of authentic north Dublin life. Yet in all that time I’ve never seen anyone being held up with a syringe. Explain that.’ I’m like, ‘I can’t. Come on, Fionn, you can watch the omnibus. We’re heading out.’ I was
so
gagging to go on the rip, roysh, just to, like, celebrate making my twenty-fifth house sale that morning. It turned out basically to be a piece of piss. Even got out to the gaff half an hour late, roysh, traffic was the usual focking mare, and the goy and the bird are waiting outside in the rain, her looking at her watch and, like, throwing her eyes up to heaven, roysh, to try to make me feel bad. She’s like, ‘About time, too.’ And before I can say a word, roysh, she goes, ‘Now, talk to us like we’re children. Sell us the house, but spare us the bloody jargon, okay?’

I’m like, ‘Hey, Kool and the Gang,’ roysh, and then I stort, like, showing them around, basically just spouting bullshit. I’m there, ‘This little baby is the last word in top-end, high-spec houses. It’s far more than just a location, you might almost say it’s a new way of living. It affords generous living space, having been substantially extended over recent years, sometimes with planning permission. Generous electrical specification in every room, concrete driveway, a high-quality fit-out kitchen. It’s got SFCH, WC, GDP, ESP and TV3 …’

The bird, roysh, a real nosy bitch, she goes, ‘Does it have DG?’ I’m like, ‘D-what?’ And she throws her eyes up to heaven again and goes, ‘DG! Double glazing! The house is on a main road, I
imagine it’s very noisy.’ I’m there, ‘Extensive public road
frontage
is one of the features that makes this house so desirable. Some might consider the noise a downside, so all of the windows are, em, DG-able. But can I just encourage you to take a
helicopter
view of the situation. House price inflation may have reduced the affordability of houses in the city, but Ballyboden, sorry Dundrum, is proof that there’s still room in the city for the more discerning buyer. Sales activity in this area means you can expect excellent capital appreciation.’