It was the big-bellied barman with that stupid fat-headed grin who had christened him that. Tossing asides to the gallery, and they releasing tomato-faced laughs and scattering asthmatic hacks over their pints. Tall, thin and gentrified, Richard Keane Jr. has a sharp look. His brown and grey suit and cardigan have the odour of an old book-shelf. He is a taut and elegant old man. An exquisite, drawling drunk. He overheard them on his careful journey back up from the simple water closet.

– Jesus the state o’ that!

– The voice on him!

– "At ease, chaps!!"

– Some nose!

– Ah, he’s a face like a bleedin’ scissors!!
Smart-mouth publican collecting glasses. Wife-fed, cud-chewing simpleton. Ironed shirt tucked well into his trousers, humming,

– Oh the shark, boys, has such teeth…
Keane returned to the bar, stood erect, and cleared his throat like a headmaster. He condescended to the publican’s face and when he did, the publican breathed in antique urine. Keane barked something with a broad grin, knocked twice on the oak, and took his leave of the men, dust dancing in the doorway on the late morning sunbeams. The man behind the bar had been called a cunt many times before. But never quite like that.

And of course there was the scar on his head, so visible. That was a while ago. Keane had been lovely and dull with the guts of a bottle, one sweet evening, a good few Mays back now. Dozing like a gentleman on the green there, shaded from the flickering sun by breeze-blown branches. Then a presence, and a local representative from the Fitzgibbon Street Intravenous Drug-using Bastards Community sidles up, Richard still snoozing like a baby, and makes a most incisive argument across his crown, uniting the greying wisps of his garland. Up he gets like an old bull after a matador! Stumbling and bleeding all over the grass. The junky scarpered though, laughing manically and chewing the cooling twilight, eyes flashing in ecstasy.

It would be the city’s final hurt. He found an old craft knife soon enough after. The doctor had asked why didn’t he use the alcohol to disinfect the wound while he was walking to the hospital. Apparently Pakis aren’t big men for whiskey. For these last years now he has criss-crossed the city with his mind trimmed and his hand on his blade, a great black overcoat keeping him damage-proof and sequestered.

By lunch-time the sun had crawled back under the blankets, as if faintly ashamed of its dawning. The sky had evened out into a mucky grey, of the same warming damp as the playing field. Richard felt himself sodden and mournful and demure in a mournful, poor little pocket of Dublin. There was a mulchy newspaper at his feet. Thursday, March 20th. The Taoiseach had made a speech about the social capital, wherever that was. There was a smattering of boys playing football off to the left of the bench. They had a net they had been trying to attach to a set of bruised and worn goalposts. Tearing away countless old and used tissues of brown tape, looking for a dry patch of metal. One night long gone, in the doorway of the Four Courts, he had looked on distantly while a young girl touched and tapped on her arm for a vein that would take, sobbing pitifully with the agony and need.

The winter had been sharp and bitter, but a thaw was in progress. The tree above the bench groaned with melting snow, and the banks of the path at his feet creaked with a steady downstream trickle of new, brown ice water. White, giant, spray-painted scrawl on the side of a green, prefabricated shed off to his right, almost obscured by the curve of the trees, seemingly stuck in the muddied tarmac.

He muttered the words as he struggled to make them out, stenciled red-on-white on a little sign. From out of sight he felt a presence and he shivered and shoved his hand deeper into his pocket. A blue and navy uniform, creaseless.

– Ah Guard it’s yourself!
He snapped upright and took on a haughty accent,

– Approach the bench please, officer!
The laughter burst out of him and he jerked his hand to his mouth like a schoolboy, trying to cram his unexpected mirth back in.

– You’ve a few on you, have you?
Frowning, unimpressed, crew-cut, rural Garda Síochána.
Keane was puzzled, but smiling,

– I don’t…I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, son…Sorry, Guard…

– I’d say you have you know… Have you?
He struggled through the syntax of his own thoughts.

– Have I…Are you…trying to ask…I mean, does a couple of pints constitute...? I’ve a question for you myself as a matter-of-fact, Guard. I’m curious now; having your big, thick, oak-tree fist shoved up a cow’s arse for breakfast every day - now, did that effect one’s performance on the written exam? Or do you use your writing hand for that?

– Have you an occupation?

– I’m a full-time analyst, Guard.

– Right… Are you acquainted with these boys?

– "Acquainted!" Would you get up the yard now Mick, acquainted… Indeed I am, Guard. They’re my sons…

– Alright move, go on. You can’t be here.
The officer approached vaguely but Keane bent forward and rooted himself to the spot with spread legs, gesticulating as he made his fervent point, looking variously at the ground and the big uniformed figure, relishing the fray.

– Bunreacht na hÉireann Guard, right…

– Go on get out of it!

– Ah did they not have that on the test? Listen, Article 40, right…

– Maybe you’d understand better if I wrote it down for you - move on

– Wrote it down! Ah for the sake of Fuck, I can see it now - big frown on you, and the tongue hanging out the side of your mouth. Or have you even the thumbs for writing? But pardon me, on what grounds?

– For the safety and well-being of this community. Now, I won’t ask you again…

– Ask me again, please!

– Right!

Keane hopped up sharply, in hysterics, as the officer approached with intent. He turned and walked quickly away, un-pursued. All this sudden movement had re-awoken his bladder though, and there wasn’t a pub for ages that would take him now, not in that state. He walked on up the path a bit...

He paused for a few moments, mouthing the words over to himself. He removed his hands from his coat pockets.

– Bollocks, he spat, and began to unfasten his trousers.

It was around dinner time when he got back into town. Hazy, declining sunshine. There had been some concert or other on Dame Street and they were removing the barriers. He felt vaguely conflicted about his next steps but headed into a book shop there on the corner. A thin young man in brownish cords and a grey t-shirt was sitting at a cash register by the window. He gave Keane a sort of familiar look, hearing the bell, and returned to his little book. Keane browsed slowly and absent-mindedly, his coat disturbing piles of books on the floor. This was the bookshop’s heartbeat; doorbell, shuffling feet, and a settling silence. Little breaths, and the whispers of turning pages. He cleared his throat, tearing through the thin film of silence that the warm, musty space had accrued in the few moments since he had entered.

– What happened?

– What?

– Outside…
The tall young man was assured and impatient, looking variously at the page and the elderly figure before him.

– Oh, there was a concert…and a rally.
Keane leaned against the wall, facing the window behind his interlocutor. He folded his arms with a certain satisfaction, and inquired facetiously,

– And what was the occasion?
With taut, terse enunciation, the young one replied,

– It was a group of non-nationals.

– Aliens.

– What?

– Aliens.

– They were inward migrants, yes.

– Yeah, aliens.
The young man closed his book, looked up, and smiled, revealing the line of his jaw.

– And the millions of Irish aliens…
Keane interrupted him with rapid-fire laughter. He closed his hand around the knife in his pocket, eyes flashing a bit now, his face forming a leer of perverse anticipation and enjoyment. The two drew closer together in the heat of their discourse.

– Millions of Irish alien emigrants, right, dispersed all over the world. Now you tell me…

– Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s not quite the same though, is it?

– But it is the same. What’s the difference then?

– It’s not the same…

– What? How?

– Right - famine. Poverty…

– Famine and poverty? Afghanistan!
The silent, astonished browsers saw the two - noses, chins almost touching. Eyeball-to-eyeball now. So close to one another as to be almost indiscernible.

– Coffin ships!

– Coffin ships? The war in Iraq!

– No.

– No what?

– Not the same.

– What do you mean…? Look, there’s no difference. What are we talking about? Poor…

– No they’re not the same, son…

– Poor. Hungry. Needy…

– No!

– Desperate. Injured. Outcasts…!

– Bastard!
The bell rang and the door slammed shut, and the last two syllables broke apart and showered over the room like an exploded firework. The thin young man elegantly picked back up his book, sighing and muttering quietly,

– Never again…Prick.