Sanctuary by Ken Bruen

telling an old lady, ‘You bring the books in, I’ll look after you.’
    You could tell she didn’t give a toss about the books, but Vinny looking after her . . . he had the gift and the thing is, he meant it.
    She floated out of the shop.
    I said, ‘You never lost it.’
    He turned. Took him a moment, then, ‘Jack! I thought you’d left us, gone to America?’
    I went with the familiar. ‘Ah, you can’t get rid of a bad thing.’
    He nodded, a hundred things going on in that mind of his. ‘So they keep telling
me
. You up for a coffee?’
    I was.
    We headed for Quay Street, Vinny expertly sidestepping every
Howyah?
    Can you spare us a few euro?
    You owe me a pint
    You owe me a moment
    You look great.
    The usual music of a Galway street. He responded to all with affection, never once giving offence, even stopping to put some notes in a busker’s cap. The guy shouted, ‘I’ll buy you a pint later, Vinny.’
    He smiled, said to me, ‘And that will be the day.’
    I envied him, the way he could manoeuvre all this street life and still be loved. Me, I’d have been getting the hurley to half of them.
    We went into Café du Journal. How Irish is that? It was packed, but he found a table amid the chaos, said, ‘This will do grand.’
    And before you could blink, the waitress, a gorgeous non-national, had put an expresso, a slice of Danish and – get this – a folded copy of
The Irish Times
in front of him. She said, ‘I’ll be back for friend’s order.’
    He gave that smile that is the reason you get that kind of treatment.
    Me, I get barred.
    I mention meeting Vinny and this whole brief encounter as it was such an oasis of
normalcy
in my out-of-control life.
    What is it they say? A trainwreck waiting to happen. Fuck, I was already flattened by the train and waiting for the express to finish me off.
    I asked him, pun intended, I suppose, ‘Vinny, you ever get . . . you know . . . derailed?’
    He put aside the paper and considered my question. One of the things I loved about him, he never took a query lightly. He sipped at his expresso, then said, ‘I watch the signals.’
    Does it get any deeper?
    And yet stays within the Irish male boundaries of never being too serious, least on the surface.
    The waitress returned, again all smiles for Vinny, and asked what I would like. I said a latte would be just great.
    Moving on from our moment of seriousness, I said, ‘I need to order some books, mate.’
    He beamed. ‘Music to my ears. The usual blend of crime, poetry and philosophy?’
    I said that would do the job and we chatted about nothing and everything, staying light, staying Irish.
    He told me he’d been to a concert by Philip Fogarty and Anna Lardi in Saint Nicholas’s Church and I feigned horror. ‘A Protestant Church? You’re fucked.’
    He laughed, a real deep-down-in-the-stomach, heart-warming one. ‘Well, I had me rosary beads with me.’
    I smiled, a strange feeling, said, ‘Naw, you’re screwed.’
    We’d finished the coffee. Time to go.
    Outside, he warded off the usual well-wishers and I said, ‘So the concert, you heathen, was it good?’
    He gave a few euro to a wino. ‘It was brilliant. That Philip, he sure can work the crowd, and Anna . . . poetry in song.’ Then he added, ‘If I say ’twas a guilty pleasure, will I earn back some points from the man above?’
    I acted like I was thinking about it, then said, ‘Actually makes it worse. Better climb Croagh Patrick.’
    â€˜Barefoot?’
    â€˜Is there any other way?’
    He laughed again and was gone.
    The pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in Mayo every year and it’s a steep rocky haul. The rescue services always have to airlift some poor bastard who’s had a heart attack, or suffered dehydration, and on top of the mountain is