Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other by Robert Mclaim Wilson

he made his pitch.

    He told Long about his plans of setting himself up in business, about his plans for getting sponsorship, government grants, all kinds of funny money. While keeping the specifics unspecific, he waxed about his dreams of networks of companies, each servicing the others, of monopolies, empires. He talked blithely about sums of money he could barely count. He grew hot and indiscreet, and as the talk got bigger, his voice got smaller. Eventually, it just dried away and he fell silent.
    Long chewed on his cigar with an air of spurious concentration and sighed with unfaked satisfaction. Chuckie knew that the local mogul was enjoying this. It was nice to be able to patronize the past, to prove to yourself that you'd really left the place you came from. Long swept his feet from the desk and leant forward, theatrically dynamic. His eyes narrowed with pleasure.'I won't lend you any money.'
    Chuckie tried to say that he hadn't asked but Long waved his objections away. He spat in the wastepaper basket. `No money but I'll offer you some advice. How does that grab you?'
    `Not very nicely.'
    Long ignored him. He extinguished his cigar and looked through the glass partition at the goods that lay neat in his warehouse. It looked as though he liked the view. He turned his eyes on Chuckie, almost emotional. `You're just a wee ballocks from Eureka Street, son. But I started out the same way. I worked hard and now I've got everything you want. And do you know what? It was easy. I never had much to do with women, bar tarts'
    Chuckie was careful not to flinch. He knew that Long was too dim to realize exactly what he'd said, though Chuckie silently damned his mother for making the mistake of this man.
    Long stood, concluding the interview and lending effect to his pause.'Do you wanna know what the recipe for success is?' `What?'

    `No women. I started off thinking that the recipe for success was work now, fuck later, and then I thought it was fuck now, work later, but then I worked out that it was, of
    He left the pause there like a weary schoolteacher, waiting for young Lurgan to rhyme it off by rote.
    'What?' said Chuckie.
    `Work now, work later. Don't bother fucking at all.'
    He smiled the smile of a seer.
    The rain had eased to the grey slant typical of Irish funerals. Chuckle, neither sugar nor salt, knew he would not melt but he felt keenly the humiliation of the walk back to the bus station, especially when John Long's Mercedes passed him. The two short greeting blasts of the horn had a satiric lilt that wounded him.
    In the hour it took to get to the bus station he had stoked his anger and grief so that the eventual retribution to be visited upon unlong John had become a visceral component of his dreams of wealth. He had had two options, two plans for raising the initial sums so necessary to the commencement of his capitalist career.
    The first plan had been to ask Long for the money.
    The second plan had been to think of another plan.
    He broke his second last fiver in paying his bus fare back to the city. He hoped his dole would arrive the next day. But as the bus moved out of the station and Chuckie looked around at his damp fellow passengers, who had started to steam slightly from the heat of the vehicle, his mood lifted inexplicably. Despite the multiple humiliations and grievances of his present life, he knew that he could spend a warm forty minutes with his head against the window thinking of the American girl.
    He planned to call her tonight and his thoughts were nerveless as he wondered what he would say. He wiped some steam from the window and settled his arms on the shelf of his belly. Already he drew comfort from the thinking of her. Again, his plans seemed more plausible. Having her in his life would definitely be an expensive business. He would definitely have her in his life. Ergo, somehow, he would definitely have the money.

    He loved her name. Max. He was very glad that she was American. He wasn't