Harboil: Part I.

The thing is: the sliver of shadow between the drainpipe and the stone cladding will always contains a gent with some news.

The thing is: the edge of a glass coffee table is enough. A torque necklace. A milling wheel. A fence post. All of this will do.

There are men smoking on the putting greens of golf courses at night, huddled around the pin, shovel hats askance, cupping their hands, scuffing their loafers on the slickened grass. Fag ends still smouldering in the eleventh hole when, across town, a Russian-Irish man has his testicles Niblick’d, divots of flesh on Highway 322, the 19th fairway, the road the police don’t believe in, out beyond the pylons, past the trams with their pirouetting arms, pantographs spitting sparks, beyond the scrubland of fly tipping, the abandoned getaway cars, to where the light above Harboil is something believable, something possible: burnt orange as if the whole city had been pulled from a fire.

Highway 322 falls away gradually, takes a dogleg to the right behind the tall spruces, to where the sand in the ditch heaves and coughs, bunkers breathing their last. A spade shushes in to the rough, well-composted ground. Tonight it is Boris “The Migraine” Bernal, relieved of the curse of sexual desire, bleeding from between his legs, screaming like a snagged hedge trimmer.

They massaged his temples with a girder vice. They safety pinned his eyelids back and took close ups with a press-grade camera and flash.

Hacking away in the long grass, the men in shovel hats huff the soil over their heads, dig a hole just deep enough to give the vultures a hint, roll Boris in, cover his head and body in silt.

At this point, someone must make a joke – it doesn’t have to be good.

“Dumb fucking Migraine – he always wanted to live in a dark hole in the dark fucking ground.”

~

II. Boris “The Migraine” Bernal

Something’s built a nest in the roof of my skull, some bone collector. I can’t so much see as feel the light trying to eke through the shutters – the idea of light.

There’s the sound of my boys playing poker in the next room: each flop a kick drum, each fold a crash, the timpani roll of a card deck being straightened against the edge of the table.

Human contact creates false sympathies. To most people, I am just a voice heard through a keyhole.

I have my best thoughts when the only sound is the dull gurning of the air-con. The smell from the restaurant coming up through the vents. The chef’s burning the jus. The asparagus is lilting. The rats that live behind the kitchen walls: I smell them before I hear them.

Last week, for instance, I told my boys: there is a soux-chef in the kitchen who is sweating too much.

My boys go downstairs, through the restaurant, into the kitchen, sniffing at aprons.

The new guy – Amon – is transparent, they said, sweating in halos around each armpit. They threw him into the meat locker where he steamed like dry ice.

Amon, it transpired, was a talented toxicologist. A glass vial of strychnine tucked away suppository-style. My boys are very thorough.

Amon was going to wait ‘til we were all together for a family dinner, and then season our beetroot soup.

We turned Amon into dumplings. You don’t need good meat for dumplings. Anything will do.

My boys bring me women from the bar beneath the railway bridge. I got good-looking Polish boys. Wonderful noses. For me, it doesn’t matter whether the girl’s pretty or not. The main thing is that she’s clean. Most of the girls round here will go to their knees just to fill the parking meter. That’s fine, but I can smell a hooker across state lines – the dust, the sadness, the rose water.

~

Patrich, my eldest, softens her up for me, if she needs a little encouraging. A glass of burnt bourbon and a few whispered words. He makes her take her shoes off. My boys have learnt to control the volume of their voices. Kris turns the lights down in the parlour.

My boys inherited their dicks from me so it’s no surprise these girls can’t tell the difference. After she's dealt with me, I tell my boys they can do what they want with her.

I lie back in my seat with my dick drying in the air. I loll in my chair. Sleep falls across me like a shovel of dirt.