It Makes a Good Sound by Tom Ryan

May 2010 It Makes a Good Sound

Read by Sean Patterson

At four o'clock, Reidy and I can think of nowhere else to go, so we skirt the ring road until we reach Luka's place.

I tell him we should go home. He agrees. Nevertheless, we walk in under the blue neon that loops out something too abstract for me to make sense of this late. I forget what the bar is called. I forget the last digit in the year. I sometimes forget Reidy's kids' names. Never mine, though I see them less often.

The bar is darker inside than out, day and night, and the furniture has survived so long it's hard to tell which of the four local beers was once stamped in white across the red slatted backs. We've drunk them all, on discount, sometimes on credit. We're tolerated. I guess we wash, and pay in more than five-cent increments. Luka is not from here, and this is his place by marriage. He has tried to make something of it – his wife's goulashy paintings, ceramics from the less-visited of the two ferry ports in Morocco, revival rockabilly on the blown stereo – but has succeeded only in making it bar of last resort. Once I asked what he most wanted to do and he said 'run a bar'. The whisky-branded mirrors have all blackened, the plumbing is unreliable and nobody uses the tight cubicle with the door that won't quite close. The good Dominican rum in the square bottle gathers dust. Business is perhaps not good. The bar stays open until six, six thirty, but never seems to fill or empty. Old men with dirty knees are first in and last out.

Luka's hair is slicked back, slightly thinning. He wears black. The last time he told me where he was from he reeled off -grads and –nicas until I lost the thread somewhere in Pannonia. We speak Spanish, though we both know his English is better than my Spanish. His Italian too; perhaps his French; certainly his German. He serves us ice-cold piss. He serves us Jameson's in sawn-off glasses.

I follow Reidy down to the foot of the L where the broken cigarette machine still fools newcomers with its faded cardboard Fortunas, and after some bar silence (Kraftwerk droning, the dog dispiritedly sniffing at our feet), he tells me not to worry about the 100 I owe him for another month or so. This is good. I don't have the 100 I owe him. I won't have the 100 I owe him in a month or so, but will have thought of a reason why by then. I toast us in good whiskey and bad beer and try to think of something neutral to say that we haven't yet been over. I see him most days and know more than I want to know. I know that he has a novel in a drawer, that he sometimes flosses until his gums bleed all day and that his kids can’t catch.

For now, we argue and he opens up. He is drunk, and I enjoy him less when he is drunk, which, I quickly calculate, makes less than none. I find myself watching his tea-striped teeth and the popping of sputter as he speaks. I look at his face and see how his features are stretched across the surface of his face so they are as wide as they are high. The space between his eyes is wider than the flare of his nose. As he fills me in on his marriage, again, I can't stop my eyes flicking up to focus on how he hides the creases in his forehead under a fringe brushed forward from so far back that it arches over against its natural nap. I think of peaty water on a slow exposure. Reidy's reedy voice. I watch him uncurl his fingers, curl back into a nervous clench. I catch up, and make the right noises when he tells me he thinks his daughter needs an operation.

I don’t know why I come out. I do. It beats drinking alone. There is, at the very least, something to look at, in three firm dimensions. Though not so much here. I count the women. Two. One pensioner. I duck down slightly to avoid her eye.

When the kid walks in, we know he's trouble. He doesn’t fit. White jacket. A white baseball cap. On the scrawny side, balancing on his inflatable shoes. He moves around asking for papers, making the rolling motion, gets nothing in words or deeds from the Rasputin man and lopes over to us. We don't have any fucking papers, in English, but Reidy pays him off with a real cigarette and lights it for him. I have my hand on my phone the whole time. We watch him back to the bar, where he smiles at everyone benevolently, like he's a village elder, or idiot.

The bare hubbub has eased down a further notch. We're waiting. I put him at 18. Maybe younger. They have old faces here. Reidy still talking. I'm not sure what he's saying, so I nod. It strikes me I'm risking agreeing to something, so I stop.

When the kid moves, he moves fast. He's into the drawer where the notes are kept and the change is lined up in slots. He gets about halfway back to the door before Luka has his arm around his neck. Drags him back. He's too rough. Pulls the boy around so his legs fly and he spins off balance in those bouncy trainers. He's wrapped up, screaming through his nose, which ends when his head hits the tiles under the bar. It's a wood-chopping sound, muffled. We pull Luka off the boy. Awkward. Luka's sweating. His hair has flopped over to one side, his cheek has scratches under his eye. Close to his eye.

We look at the boy out cold. All of us left. The younger woman (in the soft lighting this far down, not bad – 30ish, dark-eyed, slimmer than she seemed) touches his head and peers at her hand. No blood. Krafwerk still ticking on as we poke and prod and offer amateur opinion. He's warm, slumped. The dog at his side, shoved away. He's breathing. He has a pulse. Reidy suggests the recovery position, but we quickly establish we have no idea what this is. We prop the kid against the bar, and Luka cradles his head, waving away advice, suggestions, questions. An ambulance? No. A doctor? No. He's just out. Closed now. Closed. Insistent. Somehow we're co-opted, the two of us. Somehow we're locked in as Luka shuts up the outer cage, the inner glass doors. He switches language. Help me.

We say little. Just wait, and lift the dummy off the rum-sticky floor, drag him behind the bar and haul him rag-doll into the office chair. I wash his face with a bar-towel, soaked and wrung in the sink until the mustiness is mostly gone. I feel the back of his head, all around. Nothing out of the ordinary. No movement or lumps or bumps beyond the usual. We wait. Boredom sets in. Tenderly, we flick water at his eyes and tap him on the side of the head, whisper in his ear. Tenderly, we twist the skin on the back of his hand. Tenderly, we slap him on the cheek, open hand. It makes a good sound. We do it again and try not to smile. He's still out, but breathing regularly. He'll be ok, we tell each other. Luka pulls a bottle from the shelf, looks at the label, chooses another. He pours two glasses. Scotch. A blend. He's not a drinker. I don’t know what he is.

It smells of bleach back here. My drink untouched. We go through the kid's pockets and pat him down for ID: a few coins, some cigarettes, a touchscreen phone with a crack right across, turned off. Nothing more. I notice how small his hands are, and how cold. We don't know what to do. It's been what? five, ten minutes? I say maybe we should take him somewhere; let someone else. Luka holds up a hand. We'll wait. I don't want to be here. I'm looking at the bolted door when the kid stirs – jerks to, with his hands in front of his face. Looks at us with big kid eyes. Luka tells him take it easy. Luka rubs the back of his neck. Hands him the phone, ten for a taxi. It's ok. It's ok.

We leave him mopping when we walk the groggy boy to the corner where the taxis sometimes herd, down by the hostel with the flashing sign. He doesn’t look up; just mops, methodically. The two full whiskies are on the bar. The clock says quarter to five.

It Makes a Good Sound by Tom Ryan was read by Sean Patterson at the Liars' League Wine, Women & Song event at The Phoenix, Cavendish Sq., London on Tuesday 11 May at 2010.

 

Tom Ryan was born in London and now lives mostly in Seville, where he works as a writer, editor, journalist and musician. He's not nearly as busy as he sounds.  

Sean Patterson trained at RADA. He has appeared in the West End in Michael Frayn's Look Look and The Royal Baccarat Scandal. For the company aboard the QM2 he has appeared in Richard III, Great Expectations and Confusions. On TV Sean has appeared in London's Burning, The Bill, Peak Practice and Mosley.