The Ginger Man - By J. P. Donleavy & Jay McInerney Page 0,2

of yours"

"Too late. This was the night before the wedding. I even refused a drink for strategy. However, he waited a good five minutes after the butler left before pleading poverty"

O'Keefe spins holding the chicken by the leg.

"See, he's shrewd. Saved himself two hundred and fifty nicker notes. If you had been on your toes you could have told him you had Marion up the pole and with a birth imminent you needed a little nest egg. Now look at you. All you need to do now is flunk your law exams and bingo."

"I'm all right, Kenneth. Little money and everything's all right. Got a house, wife, daughter."

"You mean you pay rent for a house. Stop paying rent, no house."

"Let me pour you another drink, Kenneth. I think you need it."

O'Keefe filling a bowl with bread crumbs. Night outside and the boom of the sea. Angelus bells. Pause that refreshes.

"This, Dangerfield, is your blood for which your family will starve and which will finally send you all to the poor house. Should have played it cozy and married strictly for cash. Come in drunk, have a quick one and whoops, another mouth to feed. You'll be eating spaghetti as I had to as a kid till it comes out of your eyes or else you'll have to take your English wife and English kids and screw back to America."

The chicken, trussed, was laid reverently in the pan. O'Keefe with a smack of the lips pushed it in the oven.

"When that's ready, Dangerfield, we'll have chicken £ la Balscaddoon. You know, this is a pretty spooky house when it gets dark. But I don't hear anything yet except the sea."

"Wait."

"Well, ghosts won't bother me on a full stomach and certainly never if I had a full sex life. Do you know, at Harvard I finally got Constance Kelly in my power. There was a girl who strung me along for two years till I found out what a fraud American womanhood was and I squeezed her right under my thumb. But I can't figure it out. I never could get it. She'd do anything but let me in. Holding out for wealth on Beacon Hill, I would have married her but she didn't want to get stuck at the bottom of the social ladder with me. One of her own kind. Jesus, she's right But do you know what I'm going to do? When I go back to the States when I'm fat with dough, wearing my Saville Row suits, with black briar, M.G. and my man driving, I'm going to turn on my English accent full blast Full up to some suburban house where she's married a mick, turned down by all the old Bostonians, and leave my man at the wheel I'll walk up the front path knocking the kid's toys out of the way with my walking stick and give the door a few impatient raps. She comes out A smudge of flour on her cheek and the reek of boiled cabbage coming from the kitchen. I look at her with shocked surprise. I recover slowly and then in my best accent, delivered with devastating resonance, I say Constance ... you've turned out... just as I thought you would. Then I spin on my heel, give her a good look at my tailoring, knock another toy aside with my cane and roar away"

Dangerfield swinging back in the green rocking chair with a wiggle of joy, head shaking in a hundred yesses. O'Keefe striding the red tiles of the kitchen floor, waving a fork, his one live eye glistening in his head, a mad mick for sure. Perhaps he'll slip on one of the toys and break an arse bone.

"And Constance's mother hated my guts. Thought I'd suck her down socially. Would open all the letters I'd write to her daughter, and I'd sit in Widener Library thinking up the dirtiest stuff I could imagine, I think the old slut loved them. Used to make me laugh thinking she'd read them and then have to burn them. Jesus, I repel women, damn it Even this winter down in Connemara visiting the old folks, my cousin, who looked like a cow's arse wouldn't even come across. I'd wait for her to go out and get the milk at night and go with her. At the end of the field I'd try to nudge her into the ditch. I'd get her all breathless and saying she'd do anything if I'd take