'He smiles at me. He's a handsome focker as well. The girls always said he was Argentina's version of me'
JESUS TARADELLA IS holding court in Kiely’s of Donnybrook Town. “So hin my head,” he goes, “I know that to wheen Olympic gold medal, I must jump clear round. Very last fence – Erika, you rememeber zees, because you watch eet on television – Azara’s Fox, she clips ze top rail wiz her back hooves. I hear eet rettle. I ham sure I hear eet fall. I sink, ‘Ze gold medal – eet is surely go to Ricardo Bettega now.’ But zen I hear ze roar of ze crowd. Hand I look over my shoulder like zees . . .”
Everyone’s, like, glued to the story. We’re talking Sorcha. We’re talking Erika. We’re talking Chloe, Sophie and Amie with an ie. Even the goys are wearing expressions that say, basically, fair focks. And it gets to me. I admit it. Him being the centre of attention. Telling tales of his sporting glory. Even the fact that he looks pretty ripped under that bottle green, classic fit, Ralph airtex.
“Do you ever wonder,” I just blurt out, “how much of it was down to you and how much of it was down to the horse?”
And, of course, the looks I end up getting. I suddenly feel like Josef Fritzl at a family reunion.
“I’m just saying,” I try to go, “that it must cross your mind from time to time. If the horse had jumped like a donkey, you’d have won squat. But it didn’t. It jumped well. And I’m saying fair focks – don’t get me wrong. But there must always be a part of you that thinks, ‘This medal really belongs to the horse. And I’ve possibly stolen his limelight.’ You don’t get that in rugby, to be fair.”
He smiles at me. He’s a handsome focker as well. The girls always said he was Argentina’s version of me.
“Yes,” he goes. “Eet eez on my mind hall ze time. When I ham seeting een my private jet, I ham sink, ‘I should not be here. Zees plane belong to my horse.’ When I ham haff dinner wiz kings and queens and presidents, I ham sink, ‘Eet should be ze horse seeting here – not me.’ Hand hall ze time, also I sink, ‘I weesh I was Russ O’Carroll. He wheen some leetle rogbay metches in school. But hat least he can say, “Eez nussing to do weeth any horse”.’ ”
Everyone laughs. Including Chloe and Sophie, who – I could point out – chased me around like two dogs after a meat truck when I captained the S at Castlerock.
And that’s not the end of it either. Because 10 minutes later, Sorcha ends up pulling me to one side and going, “Oh! My God! What is wrong with you?”
I just shrug. “I just thought his story lacked perspective,” I go. “Or prospective. Whatever the actual word is.”
She stares at me for a long time. “Why are you being so hostile to him?”
“What’s he even doing here, Sorcha?”
“He’s an old friend of Erika’s.”
“An old boyfriend, you mean. Who suddenly turns up – with his Olympic focking medal stories – just as she’s about to walk up the aisle with Fionn.”
She rolls her eyes. “Fionn knows they’re just friends, Ross – of course, he’s a lot more mature than you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m mature.”
“Ross, you smirk whenever I tell you I’m getting a facial.”
I try to fight it. But then I feel the corners of my mouth rise until I can’t any more? “Okay,” I go, “point accepted. I’m immature. But there’s another thing you’d have to admit about me, Sorcha, and that’s that I’m a player. A serious player. And one player always recognises another.”
“You’re judging people by your standards, in other words.”
“Exactly. He’s come here for Erika. I’m the only one who’s so far wise to him.”
She gives me the disappointed look that I remember all too well from our short-lived marriage. Then she hits the Josh Ritter.
I wander back over to where the whole gang are standing around. It’s at that exact moment that I see it. Out of the corner of my eye. Resting on the table, with no one even minding it. It’s Erika’s iPhone. I know it from the blood-red case. And an idea pops into my head, which seems, at the time, one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.
I have a sneaky look around – like I would have for the referee before giving someone a dead leg back in the day. No one’s watching. I go into her contacts and delete my name and number. Then I find his name – which is horder than you might think. It turns out she knows, like, four people called Jesus. I suppose she has always moved in pretty high circles. So I go into his details and I change his number to, like, my number? Then I put it back on the table.
He loves being the centre of attention, by the way. He’s banging on now about the time some dude called Muammar Gadafy flew him to, like, Libya to teach one of his kids to ride a horse. Chloe thinks this is, “Oh! My God!” even though she couldn’t find Libya on a map if was a different colour to every other country and had the word LIBYA flashing on it in focking neon. Nor could I, of course. But I’m not the one pretending to have ever heard of it.
Suddenly, I feel an orm around my shoulder. It’s actually Fionn. “Come on,” he goes. “Chillax, as you might say yourself.”
“I don’t like the dude,” I go.
He nods. “I don’t like him either. But he’s Erika’s friend.”
“Hey,” I go, “I’m just trying to be an amazing best man here.”
And – fair focks to him – he goes, “You already are,” which is a great boost for my confidence.
And later on, when I get back home, I end up proving it. I lie in bed, staring at my phone, thinking long and hord about what I’m going to write – what message I’m going to send to my sister from this great friend of hers who’s supposedly so plutonic.
In the end, I write, “Erika, I ham steel in love with you,” – the Argentinian accent obviously a clever ploy to hide the fact that it’s me. I send it to her. There’s no, like, instant reply back? But in the middle of night, I’m woken by the sound of my phone beeping on the old bedside locker.
I check it and – lo and behold – it’s a text from, like, Erika. And even though I half-knew what it was going to say, it still comes as, like, a serious shock to me.
It’s like, “I love you too Jesus – what are we going to do?”
rossocarrollkelly.ie, twitter.com/rossock