Sorcha's a bit Scoobious about getting back together, but if the old pair can do it . . .
SO THE NIGHT storts with the worst first date I've had probably this year. From the second we porked the cor, Asia was in my ear about her Miu Mius hurting her feet, banging on at me as if it was, like, me who a) designed them, and b) forced them onto her feet tonight at gunpoint.
Then, roysh, when we get to Ron Blacks, she'd arrangd to - accidentally on purpose - bump into these two married friends of hers, Vanessa and Brian, who turned out to be your typical southside Double Income, Zero Orgasm career couple.
They both work in securitisation, so you can imagine the conversation. There's, like, a huge grey cloud over our heads as Vanessa tells us that things are going to get so much worse and Brian says that this recession is going to be the 1980s multiplied by, like, a hundred.
You do the math.
It's the kind of talk that's liable to put a man off his Stoli and Krug. So who could blame me for what I did next - dropped Asia like a three-foot putt. Told her I was hitting the can, then hit the road instead.
Ten minutes later, I'm driving through Donnybrook, thinking I should have listened to Oisinn's advice: no good can ever come of dating a bird named after a continent.
When I get back to Foxrock, the driveway, not to mention the road outside, is full of cors - all '08 of course. Put the key in the door and realise immediately that there's, like, a porty in full swing. The place is jammers.
I meet him in the hall with a glass of cuvee in his hand - hear him before I see him, of course. "Here he comes - dying to read O'Gara's book, no doubt. See if he agrees with me - that the World Cup would have been an entirely different story had Eddie simply swallowed his pride and taken you to France as a back-up number ten," which I don't even bother responding to.
Instead, I go, "What's the occasion? Are the clinic giving the old dear her money back for that tri-plane rhydectomy that went wrong?"
I look at her coming out of the kitchen - that face wouldn't look out of place in the window of Caviston's.
"No, no," he goes, "that one's going all the way to the High Court. No, this little bunfight is for Hennessy - he's retiring, you know."
I'm like, "Retiring? I thought he was being struck off?"
"Well," he goes, "he's decided to give up his solicitor's pracising certificate before it ever gets that far. He's seventy-five, you know! Not that he's about to start resting on his proverbials . . ."
It's at that point, roysh, that Hennessy suddenly, I don't know, materialises beside him and gives me a wink, big Cohiba sticking out of his face. The old man puts his orm around his shoulder. "He's going back to where it all started, Ross - all those many years ago . . ."
Hennessy nods and goes: "Personal injuries!"
To fill you in on the background, roysh, after being released from jail in the early 1970s, Hennessy studied law, then set up one of Ireland's first legal practices specialising in public liability cases, called Go On, Claim. He eventually sold, like, seventy percent of the company when he and my old man went into business, bribing county councillors to rezone land. Now, apparently the company have asked him to come back to front their new ad campaign on daytime TV.
"Give him the spiel," the old man goes, and of course Hennessy doesn't need a second invitation. He's like, "Have you had an accident any time in the past decade? You may be suffering from a lucrative, debilitating injury . . ."
I just turn my back on them and head for the kitchen, thinking, I'm starving here - and she's bound to have put on an amazing spread, the trout.
I push the door, and it's hord to explain, roysh, but my eyes are immediately drawn, not to the asiano and cranberry pinwheels, or even the smoked chicken and pecan miniature crostinis, but to what I suddenly realise, in that instant, is the most beautiful girl I've ever laid eyes on.
I'd have to ask Hennessy but I think I'm still technically married to her.
I'm there, "Sorcha - you look . . . amazing."
She smiles and tells me it's a structured Roland Mourt sheath with a bracelet by Mouawad and I nod, like I know what it all means. She goes, "You look well too - how was your date?"
I shrug. "Disaster - same as last night. And the night before. I'll tell you this, being suddenly single in your late twenties is like shopping for a turkey at four o'clock on Christmas Eve - all that's left out there is damaged birds."
It's at that exact moment that my mobile rings - it's taken Asia an hour and a half to realise that I'm not in the toilet at all. I don't answer. I just ask Sorcha if she fancies heading outside for some, like, air.
I don't ever remember her looking so well and I'm suddenly wondering what it would take to get back in there.
We go out and sit down on the swing bench, roysh, where we used to have all our great chats back in the day. "Maybe I've come to the realisation," I go, "that what I've been looking is something that I had, right here, all along," and I hate myself for sounding like a movie trailer for something with Patrick Dempsey and maybe Debra Messing in it.
Sorcha's there, "We can't go back, Ross - not after everything that's happened."
I'm like, "Why not? I'd have said the same about my old pair - and now look at them, practically a couple again. Sick and all as it seems."
She stares into space. Doesn't say yes. Doesn't say no. Just says that she's going to be getting exclusive Laila Azhar and Alish Levine lines into the shop next week. And when I put my hand on her knee, it's a good ten seconds before she swats it away.
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