Ordinary Decent Criminals. Lionel Shriver

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      “And you,” said Farrell, “never made an original move in your life.”

      “No such thing as an original move. That’s your vanity, and your ignorance is vanity. It trips you, too. I always watched the larger game. You got too caught up in your flourishes, your flashy attacks. You wanted to impress me. It was the ruin of you.”

      “Fischer and Kasparov were both victorious.”

      “Aye, and where’s Fischer now? Crawled off in a hole.”

      “Why did he quit?” asked the girl.

      “Couldn’t keep it up!” cried MacBride.

      “No,” said Farrell. “He was disgusted. Sick to death.”

      “Och, for you to fasten on to your man Kasparov and that, it’s hubris of the first order. At least those lads had a clue. You, Farrell, just lit out. Never quite thought it through. You’re impulsive, man.”

      “Yes,” said Farrell. “And you’re a bore.”

      “O’Phelan, you never have seen the difference between a hero and a fool.”

      “In my experience,” the American ventured, “just as many cautious people get run over by buses as careless.”

      Farrell smiled.

      As the trio trailed from the bar, the usual questions tumbled in: Where was she from in—, How long had she been—, How long was she planning—, Sure isn’t her name—? Ten years of this conversation, how rarely she gave straight answers anymore.

      “Esther Ingrid,” she explained a bit through her teeth. “Little brother. It stuck.” The shorthand was getting so clipped it was incoherent.

      “So what do you do in the States?” asked Farrell.

      “What I do everywhere,” she leveled. “Leave.”

      “Does that pay?”

      “Often.”

      “Yes,” he agreed with a collusive smile. “Handsomely.”

      Both men were placated when she mentioned Belfast.

      “And how might we look you up, now?” the lusty man inquired.

      Estrin sighed, and glanced from one to the other. She had grown up with brothers on either side, and still attracted men in twos; the last cut was tense. And, she reminded herself, how frequently she had failed to keep Maybe we’ll run into each other sometime poised on the tip of her tongue, letting a few digits trip off instead, because it’s easier to give people what they want from you. But Estrin paid for laziness later, with the rude thud on her front door, a total stranger with flowers and expectations smoothing the tattered receipt where she’d scribbled an address only to get rid of the man. Don’t say anything dorky: it was a new discipline. So she was about to toss off, “Put a note in a bottle and throw it in the North Channel,” when some flicker in Farrell’s eye seemed to catch her in her very thought, as if he knew she was pressed for her number often and saw these scenes purely as something to wriggle out of. My dear, read his expression, don’t switch on automatic, you might as well resign. Well enough, you’re harassed by plenty prats, and good luck to you turfing them aside. But look harder now. You can’t sell us all downriver, and you like men—it comes off you like a smell. You look wildly young to me, but you’re no nun—you’ve that shine in your eyes as if you’re always getting a joke no one’s told yet.

      “The Green Door, Whiterock Road.” Estrin flipped her club between them like a coin to beggars, turning to avoid their scuffle for the toss.

      “Looks as if you’re white this time,” said MacBride to Farrell good-naturedly. “With that address.”

      “I thought you were so successful these territorial niceties didn’t faze you anymore.”

      “Successful, not mental, kid. For all that leather, I’d not slop into the Green Door. Think of the laundrette bills to get out the smell.”

      “Laundrette? Mortuary.”

      Farrell never liked to win anything by luck, though he preferred luck to losing; his eyes followed his new chip. He’d no intention to cash in. The option was sweeter than any dreary discreet evening. Still, as he watched the small woman work on the thick gloves and dive into the red helmet with, he thought, a certain snail-like relief, Farrell had an unresolved sensation he hadn’t felt in long enough that he didn’t recognize what it was. The girl knew they were watching and hurried, switching the engine and failing to warm it long enough; the bike lurched and stalled. Feeling this wasn’t a woman easily rattled, Farrell noted her fluster with satisfaction.

      Finally the big red motorcycle pelted away; wind whipped the Union Jack down the road as she passed, the red, white, and blue curbside clouding with exhaust.

      Their tour guide rasped up the drive toward MacBride. He was running, his face red with anticipation, as if he’d found the MP’s umbrella and was savoring how obliged MacBride would feel at the trouble taken to return it. But the guide’s hands were empty, and MacBride had his umbrella, and his hat.

      “Your honor!” the little man panted. “Have you heard, sir? The radio—”

      “Calm down, boyo, what’s that?”

      The guide gathered himself and pronounced, “Enniskillen.”

      It was a test. Enniskillen? A small town. Prod, a wee orange bud in the otherwise deadly green slime of Fermanagh, choked on all sides, a lone flower in a pond gone to algae—or this was the image that sprang to MacBride’s mind. Otherwise unremarkable; a fair concentration of security-force families, that was all.

      However, the Bushmills tour guide did not say the name of Enniskillen like a small town, as no one in Northern Ireland would for years to come. Because Enniskillen was no longer a pit stop for lunch on your way to Galway, a Bally-Nowhere to be from. No, Enniskillen had been elevated beyond a dot on the map. Enniskillen was an atrocity.

      The guide detailed the news grandly, taking his time. In the midst of Remembrance Day services, a bomb had gone off by the town cenotaph and blown out a gable wall. Nine, ten people dead, maybe more. Civilians every one. A bollocks. And injuries galore …

      “Why, Angus,” Farrell noted. “If it isn’t a mistake.”

      “Bleeding cretins,” MacBride puffed. “Freaking Provo barbarians—”

      “Come on,” Farrell prodded. “Use scum. I know you save it for special occasions, but sure this counts as one.”

      There was much commiseration and head-shaking. They were both relieved when the guide was gone. All that indignation was exhausting.

      Angus dropped the twisted brow when the guide turned the corner.

      “Does it ever strike you,” asked Farrell lightly, “that the Provisionals are quaint? Really. The Iranians blow three hundred air passengers with a briefcase. At current levels of technology, massacre by the dozen expresses considerable restraint.”

      “Grand,” СКАЧАТЬ