“You can’t say-”
“No wonder ye don’t know what end of you’s uppermost.”
“What?”
“Come on. Up and out, ye bedfast.”
“Ted. Sorry. No. I’m staying here.”
“Ye’re due in work, boy. Come on.”
“Ted. Look. I really can’t be bothered.”
“Can’t be bothered?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t be bothered to work?” said Ted, incredulous.
“That’s right.”
“If a man work not, then how shall he eat?”
“Yeah, all right, spare me the lecture,” said Israel.
“That’s not a lecture, ye fool, that’s the Bible. Now come on. Get yerself up and let’s go.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child, Ted.”
“If you act like a child, then I’ll talk to ye like a child.”
“Well, I would appreciate it if you could just moderate your language and talk to me in a calm and rational fashion.”
“Calm and rational?” said Ted. “Calm and rational? What do you want me to say? ‘Please come back, Israel’? ‘We all miss you on the mobile library’?”
“Well, that might-” began Israel.
“Of course we don’t miss ye on the mobile library. Ye blinkin’ eejit. Ye’ve got a job to do. And you’re expected to do it, like anyone else. And don’t expect me to be covering for ye, because I’m not. Linda Wei’ll hear about this before ye know it, and ye’ll be out on yer ear.”
“So?” said Israel.
“So? I’ll tell ye what’s so. I’m stepping outside here for a smoke, and ye’ve got five minutes to get out of yer stinking bed before I lose my temper.”
Ted walked outside.
And Israel readjusted himself on the bed, pulling the quilt back up around him, plucking David Lean’s Great Expectations from out under the covers-he wondered where that had got to. He’d joined an online DVD postal delivery service, which was very good-unlimited DVDs, no late fee, twelve pounds per month, delivered to the door of the farm-and he’d been steadily working his way through the British Film Institute’s Top 100 films. The Third Man, Brief Encounter, The 39 Steps, Kes, The Red Shoes. Often he’d fall asleep in the coop to black-and-white images and then wake up in the morning to the sound of the shipping forecast on the World Service. Alfred Hitchcock, Dirk Bogarde, “And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at 0520 today. There are warnings of gales in Rockall, Malin, Hebrides. The general synopsis: low Rockall 987, deepening rapidly, expected Fair Isle 964 by 0700 tomorrow.”
Sometimes he didn’t know where he was. Or what year it was. It was like he’d come adrift in his life.
He thought maybe he’d try ringing Gloria on his mobile again. He’d only rung a couple of times so far today. She hadn’t answered the phone to him since he’d arrived back in Tumdrum.
Straight to voicemail.
He’d try again later.
He picked up Infinite Jest again. Laid it back down. Started flicking through a month-old Guardian.
He scanned the job ads. He was seriously thinking about retraining. Administration. There were always jobs in administration. Israel knew he would make a great administrator. He just needed the right thing to administrate. How difficult could it be, being an administrator? “Israel Armstrong is The Administrator.” He could see it, in his mind’s eye. “When the going gets tough there are men who know how to take charge. Men who know how to make things happen. Men who know how to administrate.” He had many times cast the film adaptation of the book of his life-he imagined John Cusack playing him, or someone younger, maybe Owen Wilson, he would be fine, he had an intelligent face, and Harvey Keitel as Ted, maybe, and a nice little cameo for Steve Buscemi, although obviously he’d have to beef up a bit, and Salma Hayek would be perfect as Gloria…
The trouble was, though, he wasn’t in the film of the book of his life. He was in his life, in which he had split with his longtime girlfriend, Gloria, was living in a converted chicken coop, and was paid exactly fifteen thousand pounds a year as a mobile librarian on the northernmost coast of the north of the north of Northern Ireland. And he was nearly thirty. He had somehow become a shadow of himself, as though he were somewhere else and this thing-this body-was having experiences on his behalf. It was like his own life had become a series of ancient lantern slides, or an old video, or a shaky cine-show, or a snippet on YouTube, or a cinema trailer for a blockbusting main feature called Failure. He had no idea what he was doing here or what was the point or how he was feeling. All he knew was that sometimes, in the chicken coop, he’d wake in the night sobbing and sobbing, his chest heaving, and there were these black beetles all over the floor, and when he switched on the light the beetles froze, like they were holding their breath, waiting for something, their own destruction, or salvation, possibly, or the dark again, and that’s exactly what he felt like…
“Time up!” said Ted, bashing back through the door. “Not ready?”
“Look, Ted, I’m really not feeling the best this morning. Can we maybe reschedule?”
“Reschedule?”
“Yeah, look-”
“Reschedule?”
“Yeah. Just, if you could give me a couple of days maybe and I’ll get back to you.”
“Ye’ll get back to me?”
“Yeah. I just need a little time to take stock and-”
“Take stock!?”
“Yes.”
“Ach, Jesus. Fine.”
At which Ted walked over to the bed, bent down, locked his knees, and grabbed hold of the bed frame.
“I’ll tell ye what,” he huffed. “Take stock.” Huff. “Of.” Huff. “This!”
And he stood up, flinging the metal frame up as he stood.
Israel fell onto the floor, only the quilt protecting him from serious injury and a thousand cuts from the smashed wine bottles.
“What the hell are you doing, you madman!” screamed Israel, leaping up, flannelette pajama-clad, from the floor. “I could have broken my back!”
“Your back!” said Ted, straightening up. “Your back! I could have broken my blinkin’ back, ye eejit!”
“Yes, but-”
“Ahh!” said Ted painfully.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m not blinkin’ all right, ye eejit! Aahh!”
“Shall I get George, or-”
“No, ye shall not,” said Ted, drawing himself up stiffly to his not inconsiderable shaven-headed height. “What ye’ll do is get dressed in the van is what ye’ll do, or I’ll-”
“What?” said Israel.
“Ahh!” said Ted.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. Just, some of these joints haven’t been moved in a while, that’s all. Now. Where were we?”
“You were just-”
“Ach, aye. Yes. In the van, come on. Now.”
“Or?” said Israel.
“Or,” said Ted. “I’ll ring your mother.”
“No,” said Israel. “You wouldn’t.”
“Yes,” said Ted, hobbling toward the door. “I would.”
Israel’s mother had recently made a brief and disastrous visit to Tumdrum, where, as a loud, extravagant, wildly hand-gesturing, menopausal scarf-wearing, middle-aged north London Jew, she had made quite an impact on the local dour, largely Presbyterian, muttering community. She and Ted had formed an unnaturally close bond, and Ted had spent much time with her, taking her to visit Northern Ireland’s supposed tourist attractions-the place where the Titanic was built, for example, and the colorful sectarian murals of Belfast-leaving Israel to single-handedly man the mobile during the day and to sit up waiting for their return late in the evenings. They would return flushed and smelling suspiciously of cigarettes and drink. Israel’s mother had successfully managed to embarrass Israel the entire length and breadth of Tumdrum, including at an agonizing dinner at the Devines’, the farm where Israel stayed as a lodger, during which she had flirted outrageously with old Mr. Devine, and had spent all evening urging George to adopt a rigorous daily beauty routine.
“And I’ll tell ye what,” said Ted, gesturing toward the debris in the coop. “When she hears about all this auld nonsense she’ll be over on the next flight.”