Val’s growin a big fat mustachio. He got a role in some movie that’s gettin done here in St. John’s. Although they calls it a film around these parts. He looks like the last cop that picked me up. I tells him this and he just stares at me vacant, like I aint even in the room, like he does when there’s a crowd around. Fucker. I tells him I wants a part in this goddamn film too and he says it was cast ages ago and there was no auditions and it’s low budget anyhow. I says fuck, how are they gonna find the real stars if they sticks with the same crowd all the time and dont even hold no fuckin auditions? Val looks right through me like that again and I feels like clockin him one. He scratches at a sore spot on the inside of his nostril and it starts bleedin and he’s suddenly hoppin around the room lookin for a tissue and holding his neck out like a fuckin broody hen cause he’s afraid to get blood on the good white shirt that belongs to the film crowd. A horn blows out on the street and there’s a big white van down below. That must be his ride cause sure he lost his licence, yet again, last week. He’s bleedin all over the windowsill with this sudden shattered expression on his face. I hands him a roll of toilet paper and he stares hard at me for a second with this lost-puppy look, like he wants to say something real to me. And I s’pose I knows just how he fuckin feels alright, cause I needs to tuck meself away too, needs to go underground for a while before this old town breaks me all over again like it’s always tryna break him. The horn sounds from the street again and Val pulls away from the moment we coulda had, smiles and laughs with the tissue stuffed into his nose, asks me if I got smokes. Where I only got half a pack left, I says no. He slips me two twenties, tells me not to drink it, when we both knows fuckin well that’s the only reason he’s givin it to me.
Down at the Hatchet with me foot up. Mike Quinn behind the bar, which is odd where he owns the place. I asks him about it and he says he’s gettin a new bartender shortly, or rather an old bartender that quit months ago and now’s come crawlin back. Mike, right pleased with that. That Clyde Whelan cunt, who’s s’pose to be on the day shift, is workin on the same goddamn movie as Val, along with half a dozen other fuckers from around the bar. Background work, but still. Some fuck of a casting director came around the night before and chatted people up and got ’em to come in to the set. Fuck me then, the one night I aint out on the go and all hands gets offered paid work on a movie. And here I am thinkin about writin one. See if I misses either other night out.
I sits and swills back the beer and offers Mike twenty bucks to put on me tab. Tab cant be too high cause I’m takin it easy these days. He tells me it’s cleared off altogether, that the lovely Donna straightened it out the other night when we were leavin. That pisses me right the fuck off.
—You got a good little woman there Clayton. Hang on to her.
—She’s not my fuckin woman.
—Never say. That wasnt you then, in the stall with her the weekend?
I has a flash of me and Donna doin lines off the back of the toilet and then goin right at it against the stall door. Someone knockin and laughin and tellin us he can hook us up with a nice tidy apartment if we needs a bit more privacy. I s’pose that was Mike. He got all kinds of property. They says he pretty much owns the west end of Water Street.
Mike slops a dirty pint of Smithwick’s down in front of me.
—On the house Clayton. What are you doing for work these days?
—This and that.
I knows what he’s askin. I aint that fuckin foolish though. I sees the state of his bartenders. Take Keith, fella I knows from up the Shore: he works the Friday night shift these days, his eyes all dark and tired and sunk in and always stretchin his back and shit. I heard he cracked up a couple of years back and went wandering around doin all kinds of drugs and panhandling. His father had to go up to Halifax and get him off the streets cause he wouldnt leave his missus alone after she fucked off on ’im. Fellas like that makes me sick. All clingy and needy and pussy-whipped to the point where they cant think straight and goes off the fuckin head and winds up in jail or the mental. I just dont understand that shit. She musta been some good fuck, that’s all I can say. But then I s’pose you cant believe everything you hears, and he gets on nice enough behind the bar. Mike Quinn got ’im all straightened out now, apparently. Never say to look at him though. They says he’s on antidepressants and writin a book or some shit. He dont drink or nothing no more, but he’s all the time fried on weed. And he slipped me a couple of wicked painkillers for me foot last week. But he got this lofty smile-and-nod thing on the go for everyone too. And he dont hardly talk to me atall cause where we’re both from the Shore I s’pose. That suits me just fine, cause if I didnt have nothing to say to him in high school why should I pretend he’s me best buddy now?
But yeah, Mike Quinn owns the works. There’s another bar on the second floor called My Place, but everyone calls it the Closet cause it’s just a hangout for old displaced queers. And then there’s a scuzzy apartment on the top floor where everyone goes to buy and drink their booze after hours. Keith runs that little scam cause he lives there. He makes a good bit of money at it too, as far as I can tell. He picks up a few bottles and a few cases of beer at the liquor store and then he sells it for twice what you’d pay at the bar. And people buys it too, cause they cant get it nowhere else at that hour and they can go on in and sit down and drink at Keith’s place till seven o’clock in the morning if they like. And then there’s a couple of spots up around New Gower and the far end of Water Street that opens at first light. So you can drink all night and all day if you needs to. I found a pretty good system in Dublin like that. The regular pubs called last call at eleven and cleared out by twelve. Then, if you could handle the racket and the plastic yuppies with their soft leather jackets and Doc Martens, you could go on to the dance bars where it was last call at two and all hands out by three. On from there to the fancy wine bars and be out by five. After that you had one hour to decide whether or not you wanted to pack it all in and go home or hang around on the streets for the early bars that opened at six. There’d be a wobbly, fat lineup outside the early bars from half past five, fellas heavin up warm wine in the gutter, doin all they could to hold out for a fresh pint. I useta go to this one place called Slattery’s on the north end and they’d have the windows blacked out and the music on bust and all hands fallin around fightin. After a few minutes it was like you had the night back all over again. Twenty-four seven.
Mike Quinn owns a string of buildings up on the west end of Water Street, like I said. They says he started out in his mid-twenties with a used-furniture shop, that he’d cruise down around Placentia and Conception Bay on the weekends in his truck and load up on outport shit: stained-glass doors, tables, pressback chairs, crystal knobs from busted old cupboards, dressers and sideboards and the like. People thought he was cracked. All junk to the ones who owned it, but worth a fortune really, once they were fixed up. Mike’d pay prob’ly twenty bucks for a truckload and then sell a set of chairs for two hundred. Course, he did a fair bit of work too: scrape, stain, tinker and varnish. They says he sat in the back room of his cluttered little shop day and night, fried outta his head on the fumes, till he managed to put away enough money to buy the building next door. He got outta the furniture business then, and he just started slappin little rooms and apartments together, bangin up a wall here and there to meet the city’s regulations, then rentin ’em out to any old fuck-up that came along. And the more fucked up the better, cause they were less likely to complain that there was no fire escape or that the toilet was busted and the ceiling was cavin in or whatever. Mostly crowd on welfare and loons fresh outta the Pen and outpatients from the Waterford. And like I said, the more fucked up the better ’cause he liked to straighten people out by ownin ’em. He craves trouble, Mike do. If the rent is late he adds interest by the day till it costs the poor slobs too much to move out. If he wants people gone, he just boots the front door in and tells ’em to get the fuck out. If they aint home he just fucks their shit out on the road and then maybe smashes up a wall so he can claim damages. Sounds sleazy, but I reckon it’s smart business too. And of course I’m only goin by what I hears around town.
A few years back he bought the Awl and Hatchet, that’s the full name of the place. It was condemned at the time, so he got it for fuck-all-next-to-nothing, fixed it up. S’pose he wanted to branch out and own people in a different way: with tabs and jobs and shit like that. But that’s hardly fair, I mean maybe he was just lookin for a change. He cant be all money, all the time.
He was a big drinker himself back then too, so he knew what people wanted in a bar: cheap booze, dark corners and familiar faces. Location was fuckin crucial. The ground floor of the city, Duckworth or Water or maybe even Harbour Drive, was a given. That’s where the real drinkers flocked to. George Street was no good cause people only passed through, too fuckin transient. They just hops from one bar to the next, students and arseholes and ex-cons. Too much competition. And then no one around during the week. But with a little hovel like the Hatchet, people gets to hide out in the afternoons and at least the bartender knows what you’re drinkin and there’s no big meathead with a headset screamin in your face that you’re gonna get it punched in for no reason. Drippin testosterone George Street is. I cant stand even walkin past it on Water Street in the night. Always some arsehole lookin to impress some slut. That’s the way George Street works; she gets all done up, all sexy and provocative, and he thinks he’s gonna get his skin right away. He drinks to get his nerve up and suddenly finds himself too drunk to even carry on a sensible conversation. He spends all night tormenting the poor disgusted young one, who dont really want her skin anyways, who was just on the hunt for some dunce stunned enough to buy her booze all night. But then when she finally tells the prick to go fuck off, he’s still gotta impress his buddies, still gotta blow his load somehow. So what’s the manly thing to do to save face in a situation like that? He keeps his buddies good and close while he picks a racket with the fella least likely to know how to defend hisself. Some little guy, drunk and on his own.
At least you can see who you’re drinkin with at the Hatchet and get to know people so that when some hot dog comes in and fucks around you knows someone’s got your back.
Mike did it all the first year, never hired a soul, tended the bar and even mopped the floors seven days a week. Then he started up the open mic shit and there was none of that around at the time. Everything was karaoke back then. So when people found out they could just get up and sing and get a free beer besides, well fuck, they came out in droves. Free pool too, that was a stroke of genius. Pool tournament twice a week where any old fucker off the street could win a couple of hundred bucks or a bar tab. All hands started showin up on a regular basis. Good party music on the stereo. Fuck. A little goldmine. Val useta play the Hatchet too whenever he was in town. Mike’s got a picture hung behind the bar of the two of them raising their glasses to the camera. Val’s got a lot more hair and Mike’s got a lot less belly, but it’s them alright. Val’d never play this place now though.
Yeah, I useta go to George Street all the time when I first moved to Town, cause it was all I knew. But I got sick of the ignorance and the aggression and the posing. And I caused a bit of trouble. I’ll say I was tossed outta pretty much every bar on George Street, and if I wasnt, it was cause I just never got to ’em all. I stumbled into the Hatchet one night when me face was bleedin and some young one cleaned me up in the women’s toilet and then Mike gave me a beer and I just kept goin back. Mike treated me good from day one. I could do what I liked and there was lotsa women around who were up for it. I had the girlfriend back then though, so I had to be careful. She was livin up by the university with her Breezeway crowd and I was down on Mullock, like I said. I never had a phone in, so I never knew when she was gonna show up. That was usually whenever the fuck she pleased. One time she crawled in through me bathroom window and there I was with this young one from the Hatchet. We were just finished up and I’m sure you could smell it in the air. I hears a big racket comin from the bathroom, shit fallin on the floor and I just knew it was her by the smell of her bleedin heart and I figured this is it now, thank fuck, we’re finished. But she was all loaded drunk. I put her in her place quick enough and she never even remembered it the next day.
So yeah, I was what you’d call a regular at the Hatchet for about a year or so before I went away. Fuck, I knows I talks like I was gone for ten years but you know, considerin I never lived nowhere else other than the Shore and then a couple of years here in Town, six months in another country was a pretty big fuckin thing for me. I got out. And really, the Hatchet was the one thing I missed while I was gone. I looked for a spot like it all over Dublin, but there was nothing quite measured up. Couldnt really hide out in the same way. They didnt put up with much shit over there. But at the Hatchet you could dance on the tables and walk in and out with your beer and fight and bang your head off the bar and never get cut off and still be allowed in the next morning. Mike didnt give a fuck. And I’m sure lotsa fuckers wanted to break my fuckin nose when I first showed up on the scene, but where I was in the good books with Mike people just held back and got to know me and then found out I was the best kind. Cause I really am the best fuckin kind, you know.
But that’s the way at the Hatchet: if Mike likes you it’s a fine place to drink and be drunk. If he dont like you, and he’d hardly go outta his way to try and hide the fact, then you’d likely find you werent really in the right mood to drink that night or that the beer didnt go down quite as easy as it did at the Rose, that the bartender took too long, or that the cigarettes were cheaper at the Ship. You’d find some quick excuse to mosey on, put it that way.
—You still livin with Val, Clayton? How’s he getting on? He’s a good old friend you know.
Yes, I fuckin know. Mike’s always gotta remind me that him and Val are old friends, tells me yet again about the time he was involved in some sort of botched intervention to help get Val cleaned up, how Val huddled in the corner of the room and screamed and moaned like a savage for seven or eight hours, made a run at Mike with a hard-shelled guitar case, bawled and begged to be left alone, till finally everyone did. I never did ask Val about that, so it’s hard to know if it’s true or just some exaggerated account of something else that went down. People has a night on the beer or a couple of draws with Val and they’re suddenly old friends. I’ve never heard Val mention Mike.
—Val? Good, good. He’s off on tour soon.
—Oh yeah. And what about the other thing?
Mike taps the side of his nose with his chubby money-stained finger and I says to meself that the next person asks me about Valentine’s fuckin shit I’ll crack their fuckin skull open. Cause what about me? No one ever stops to wonder whether or not Clayton might be havin a hard time of it these days. No. I aint fuckin famous enough I s’pose.
But I got a few ideas.
Yes by the fuck, I got a few plans, just gotta tuck meself away somewhere and get to it.
Donna walks into the bar with some tall square-jawed fucker in a clean suit and she’s lookin back at him and giggling. He’s got his fingers like prongs on her bony hips and I just catches the tail end of what he’s sayin to her that’s makin her so fuckin giddy:
—But this is where it counts, Donna. If you’re talking about stamina…
Then she sees me tucked in the corner and for a split, blinded second there’s this shocked horror flickers across her face like she’s behind the wheel of a car and just now sees she’s in the wrong lane with a fuckin eighteen-wheeler comin right through the windshield. That’d be me, the transport truck. But she catches herself quick enough, seasoned player that she is, and slaps her two hands on the bar with this wide self-conscious grin and orders a round of Baileys shooters for me and her and the Jaw. She told me the other day that she likes me when I’m drinkin. See how they’re all so ready and eager to rake you over the coals? Mike raises his eyebrows at me, like I said something outta line, only cause I aint atall smilin back at her. Not at all.
—Hey there you. You know Jeremy?
And Jeremy the Jaw’s got his hand out and I’m shakin it while I’m downin the shot.
—Clay-ton! You’re supposed to wait for everybody.
—So where are you from Clayton?
And this is the Jaw with his neat-trimmed office-cubical beard askin me, Clayton goddamn Reid, where I’m from. His mobile phone goes off before I gets the chance to talk back, slice him down to size. He holds two fingers up to me face while he answers. I looks at Donna. She cocks her head sideways and smiles all intimate, like I’m s’pose to rush into her arms where I havent seen her in a few days, but I just tells Mike thanks and then I limps out the door into the blinding sun.
After a bit she comes after me. I knew she would. I wont stop or slow down for her, even though it kills me foot to motor along like this. Her high heels clickin an awkward rhythm behind me and when I comes to this rusty fire escape near that new shoe shop, I yanks it down and climbs up it cause I knows she cant come after me with them things on her feet. She stands down on the sidewalk, huggin ’er arms around herself and lookin up and down the street and only half laughin.
—Clayton? Clayton he’s from work. He’s my brother’s best friend.
Like I gives a fuck who or what she fucks.
One of the rungs on the fire escape is rusted right through and it gives way when I steps on it. Maybe it’s one of Mike’s properties. Me foot slips and I hears her yelp with the fright from down on the street. But I dont look down, I just keeps goin up, up and up till her voice is only a distant whine.
With the Baileys burnin in me chest I hauls meself onto the roof of the building. I lies down in the far corner and has a smoke lookin up at the sky. A shadow folds over me like a fuckin mortician’s blanket. And I s’pose that’s what it’ll take, eventually, to get meself a bit of peace and quiet. Donna shouts out to me for a bit, but when I finally looks out over the edge she’s gone and I feels a bit abandoned then, with the sun gone behind the clouds like that.