CHARACTERS
DADDY – 60s
SONNY – 20s – late 30s

DADDY sits at table. Cell phone in front of him and a drink. He is casually checking the phone. SONNY comes in. He looks around. Then he saunters/swaggers over showing off, He pats DADDY down for weapons and sits down at the table.

SONNY: Well hello dare Daddy. Long time no see. (NOTE He can probably look around while waiting for reply)

DADDY does not look up. DADDY says nothing.

SONNY: (cntd) Hello dare Daddy I said.

DADDY: Don’t fucken hello Daddy me.

SONNY: (in a mock scolding voice) Temper temper!!

DADDY: I would not call this here a temper.

SONNY: Temper fugit!

DADDY: It’s tempis fugit dummy – Latin. Time flies. (beat) Except around you!

SONNY: Now Daddy don’t be like that. SONNY nods at the cell phone. Waiting for a call to say your shipment is landed I suppose?

DADDY shrugs. Casually checks phone.

SONNY: It may not happen!

DADDY: You happened. That’s bad enough.

SONNY: Now now!!

DADDY: You are a suppurating wound on the criminal body.

SONNY: Jesus – will you listen to him suppursomething.

DADDY: Suppurating!

SONNY: looks up word on phone. Suppurating – (reading) – OK I got it (beat) Well – you are an educator at large. That Open University degree in Mountjoy worked out.

DADDY: I would not call 10 years inside “worked out”. (beat) Look up ‘fuck off’ while you are at it.

SONNY: DADDY DADDY – such hostility! Anyway I have bad news for you. You won’t be getting a call about the latest shipment into Rossaveal.

DADDY: (not bothered) Yeah?

SONNY: We are hijacking your truck. Haven’t heard from my boys in a while so I guess your boat is behind schedule.

DADDY: I always factor in possible mishaps – weather, Gardai, customs, mermaids, giant squid.

SONNY: Always a jokester!

DADDY: Easy to be a jokester compared to you, the quip less boy wonder.

SONNY: Well, I will have the last laugh anyway. (points at DADDY) You ARE over. I’m the next big thing. You will stand on the bridge over Lough Atalia, [ATHAWL-YA] a broken reed of a man and people will say he used to be the one. Not now though, his son runs things.

DADDY: You couldn’t run diarrhea out of your arse if you had dysentery.

SONNY: That smarts DADDY.

DADDY: Unlike yourself! You are a throwback. A sniveling rat. A dipsomaniac cur.

SONNY: (looking up dictionary on phone) Dipso.. Whatever. Well, I’m afraid there’s been a change of plan with that truck of yo…

DADDY: Sure a truck is a truck. Fuck a truck. Am I there in the truck? Am I on the quay side avoiding miserable squalls and customs patrols? Am I crying my eyes out like a scalded baby? NO! That is your domain. I’m here in Crowe’s Bar where I started drinking in the 60s. When I wore gear that was all shiny and new. When I was all shiny and new. When the high summers of the sixties made me great. When I met your mother, who carried a blade for her Blade. And a Luger in her bag. For me. The King of Galway.

SONNY: The 60s are far away now, Daddy.

DADDY: Not so far SONNY boy.

SONNY: My name’s Jack in case you forgot.

DADDY: I try to forget. We named you after my uncle Jack. He won a Military Cross in the Great War. His torso was puckered for ever-after. He had more bullets wounds than Bonnie and Clyde. He walked around with limps in both legs so they cancelled each other out and he could walk straight. He didn’t even hold a grudge against the Germans. He liked their high spec belt-fed machine guns.

SONNY: Another family nut-job.

DADDY: You are the opposite. As soon as you get picked up by the Guards you were spewing your guts out. A speculative police trawl that was minor. That sent you into a major league spiral. Your mother didn’t carry a Luger and burnished steel in her tote bag for me so the likes of you could undo us all in one fell swoop. MCs and Lugers and Sheffield Steel should have steeled your backbone. Instead you turn out to be a supine serpent.

SONNY: Supine serpent – great allitesomething.

DADDY: Alliteration.

SONNY: You are a literary edge school.

DADDY: Hedge. A fucken Hedge School! Galway is a literary epicenter in case you never noticed. Nora Barnacle’s boyfriend waited for her all night in the heavy rain rushing in from the Atlantic. Died he did from consumption. And then Joyce was consumed by her and consumed by the English language that he cut to pieces with a literary blade and forged it into something beautiful and dangerous.

SONNY: Jesus – you have a thing about blades.

DADDY: I have a thing about blood-tainted rats.

SONNY: When you got out of jail you should have called it quits Daddy.

DADDY: The only downside about being out is knowing you’re still slithering around somewhere in the long grass.

SONNY: (checking phone, not paying attention) Hah? What? Grass? You mean heroin right?

DADDY: Can you only follow conversations in cop shops, spilling your guts onto the floor like a baby projectile-vomiting tainted formula across a room? Do you think your boys will help you? They are slothful. They have camel faces. They look like thick fuckers. They smell like the underbelly of slow moving tugs. They are not thugs. I’m a thug. A literary thug. A wise-cracking thug. A mensa-minded thug. I have no clue where you came from. You are a throwback, a spew-back, a rotten yellow-back. Your mother would die if you hadn’t killed her already.

SONNY: You are all talk.

DADDY: In the Talk of the Town I was a doorman. Me and Chick Gillen. Chick could knock you into the middle of next week. We worked every Sunday. The rest of the week I robbed houses, cars, shops, factories. We punched Culchies from Tuam out of their shoes when they started arguing. Everything slowed down for me when a fight started. It was like a blue light went through me. I could hear everything – I could see everything. I could see myself from above. In slow motion I could see Culchies going for razors. I could hit them before they even knew about it. I can still hear the song that bands were playing during fights. I can see every guy I hit. I can see their eyes waver in fear. Their irises contract. And feel the cool fine heft of steel knuckle dusters finding their mark. And hear girls crying fearful in the dark. I can smell the fear. And smell the spilt lemonade and the sweet sweat of women running away shrieking and see crowds leaning over the balcony to see what was happening and the band playing louder to distract the dancers.

SONNY: Jesus – it sounds like Love Story. I’ll be crying soon. Does gesture of crying with hand to raised to eyes as if a child crying.

DADDY: You usually are.

SONNY: (lowers his hand) Anyway back to business. So no call I see from your boys in Rossaveal Daddy. You should join the 21st century and upgrade that phone. It is dented and scratched. Like Uncle Jack! (laughs at his own joke). Did you bleed on it as well. You might have Parkinson’s. (SONNY does palsy shake of hands) Next stop the old folks criminal home. Look at this phone all shiny and new.

DADDY: I used that already.

SONNY: What?

DADDY: All shiny and new! I suppose you have to steal everything?

SONNY: Sure it is flattery if you look at it that way. Last chance to cry before I call my boys.

DADDY: Call away.

SONNY: Okay get ready Daddy. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1

SONNY hits quick dial. The hesitant jerking motion of the clock’s hands on the wall is audible. The battered mobile on the table in front of DADDY rings sharply. The ringtone is DADDY COOL. SONNY looks uncomprehendingly at the phone on the table and back at his own.

SONNY: Oh Fuck.

DADDY: Exactly!

DADDY pulls a knife from inside jacket and lunges at SONNY.

SONNY screams his lungs out.

DADDY COOL music comes up