“Hello my friend,” said Eddie in a Kerry accent. “How can I be of assistance, mang?”
“I need food,” I said, feeling the weakness now, not just from the absence of eating, but from the memory of the Italian saucy bread and the amount of time that had stretched between it and whatever came next.
I hadn’t realised where the sound of the radio had entered my consciousness, but I found myself in a pawn shop, seemingly having walked the seven blocks from 47th & Vine. Eddie Guerrero stood behind the vitrine. A sign on the glass read: “DON’T LEAN ON THE SERKAPHAGUS”.
I could hear the Corrs on the radio we are so young now we are so young so young now thinking how Asian they sounded and noticing how Asian a couple of them actually looked if you what wat I mean. For Irish broads I mean.
I wandered the streets of Port Renault looking for a place that served anything resembling nourishment, but every doorway seemed to lead back to the same room with a different wallpaper. A waiter in a perfectly pressed green uniform kept apologising and telling me the kitchen was “almost ready”.
I took the Guy Fieri to Roscoff and then rode the Jamie Lee Curtis all the way to Port Renault. By the time I arrived, there was nowhere to get food and I was starving, having not eaten since the upside-down Italian saucy bread we chowed down on at that place on 47th & Vine.
As I sat beside the Seine, it finally struck me that I was in Paris, France. Less than eighteen hours earlier, I’d been in Farnaught, County Mayo, where it was magic mushroom season. The distance between those two moments felt impossible.