Page 7 of The Circle

CHAPTER THREE

I love Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The vocal group. Once hired them to play a private birthday party for Christine. Her sixteenth. She had recently purchased the pretty yellow sundress that she wore every single day, the one she got while we were in the Cook Islands. The one she bought from the old woman selling them to tourists outside the fishing club. The one that she said made her feel as though the sun was always shining.

She adored that dress.

I did too. It reminded me of home. Not ‘home’ in the sense of where I lived with my parents as a child. The house I grew up in did not feel sunny at all. But ‘home’ in the sense of my homeland. South Africa. It is a beautiful, magical place. It truly is. Certainly it is not without its well-documented horrors. No place is.

But strip away what we—fokken humans with our agendas and attitudes and misguided intentions—have done around the globe and the planet itself is goddamn mystical, man. And nowhere I’ve ever been is more mysterious and filled with wonder than where I come from. It is the cradle of civilization and you can smell it in the soil.

So, on her sixteenth birthday, with Christine so enamored of her new dress and me so enamored of her and Danny and the life we were building together… I wanted to find a way to bring all the places I called home into being in the same moment in time, in the same space in the universe.

So I spent half a million dollars to fly in Ladysmith Black Mambazo and have them play a private concert for the three of us. A good sweet sixteen, I like to think.

The brief mental detour to that moment comes, funnily enough, by way of me doing what I try to do in situations like these: Calculate what happens next.

I am not the world’s greatest chess player. I have no illusions about that. I’m no grandmaster. My blood runs too hot. And, usually, my hot-running blood flows straight to my cock and winds up destroying any hope of what we might call “good decision-making.”

But in situations like this one—life or death, where it’s necessary to think three moves ahead—I put my mind in the place it needs to be. In the moment after the moment that everyone else is focused on.

And with the stakes as high as they are here, I’ve put a lot of thought into what the likely outcome is going to need to be.

So, it’s ironic that I remember Christine’s sixteenth birthday now. But it happens because the song ‘Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover,’ by Paul Simon, is playing in my mind. And, of course, it’s Paul Simon who brought Ladysmith Black Mambazo to the attention of the entire world and elevated their price tag for a private concert on the Cook Islands to half a million dollars.

The song is playing as I survey the situation we find ourselves in and calculate the best way to extricate ourselves out of it that doesn’t involve being shot to death, chopped up in little pieces, and thrown in the Belfast Lough. It helps sometimes. Music having charms to sooth the savage beast and that.

You just slip out the back, Jack.

“I’ll ask ye once more and then I’ll stop asking!” bellows the majestic Declan Lynch in all his Erin go Bragh-ish grandeur. “Who. The Feck. Are ye?”

Make a new plan, Stan.

I hazard a brief look at Danny, who’s holding his shotgun on two laaities who are so very obviously related to the thundering Hercules on the catwalk that it’s evident the Lynches maintain a close family business and aren’t keen on outsiders poking their noses in. Especially outsiders with guns and bad intentions. I respect that.

Danny raises an eyebrow at me in a way that suggests he’s saying, Please don’t do anything to make this worse than it is.

And perhaps it’s because we’re in Ireland, but the thing that immediately springs to mind in silent response is a quote from that famous Irish ballad: Ah, Danny boy, I love you so. I can feel myself grin even though I don’t mean to. I think I may shrug a bit as well before turning my attention up to the catwalk.

“Technically, you’ve only asked two questions once each, my friend. What do we cock-shiting bastards think we’re doing, and who are we? That’s not the same thing as asking one question and then asking it once more. So.”

You don’t need to be coy, Roy.

Danny’s expression changes from hopefulness to dead-eyed exhaustion. Declan Lynch cocks the hammers on his impressive-looking handguns. Old-school is my bru. I like it.

“Listen here, you feckin’ cunts. The only reason my lads aren’t picking up tiny pieces of your brains off the floor right now is because I don’t like killing people when I don’t know why I’m doing it. So. To be very clear: I’ll ask once more. Who are ye? And what are ye doing here?”

Danny shouts out before I can respond. “We don’t want any trouble!”

(Oh, for fok’s sake, Danny.)

You just listen to me.

“Ye don’t? Well, then, you’re sure as feck going about things the wrong way!”

“We’re just looking for Brasil!”

The mighty king in the sky above us betrays himself for just the slightest of moments, squinting to focus on who’s shouting up to him. It shows his age. And when he stops squinting and realizes who’s down below, his Irish eyes are most definitely not smiling. “Fortnight? Danny Fortnight? That you? Feck are you doing, boyo?”

Hop on the bus, Gus.