I said, “I’ll have to sneak you in backstage at the Gaiety and you can pull switches,” but Rosie didn’t laugh.

“God, yeah; imagine. This here is only a crap little rig; imagine what you could do with a real one, like in a big venue. If you were working for a good band that goes on tour, you’d get your hands on a different rig every couple of days . . .”

I said, “I’m not having you go off on tour with a bunch of rock stars. I don’t know what else you’d be getting your hands on.”

“You could come too. Be a roadie.”

“I like that. I’ll end up with enough muscles that even the Rolling Stones wouldn’t mess with my mot.” I flexed a bicep.

“Would you be into it?”

“Do I get to road test the groupies?”

“Dirtbird,” Rosie said cheerfully. “You do not. Not unless I get to ride the rock stars. Seriously, but: would you do it? Roadie, something like that?”

She was really asking; she wanted to know. “Yeah, I would. I’d do it in a heartbeat. It sounds like great crack: get to travel, hear good music, never get bored . . . It’s not like I’ll ever get the chance, though.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, come on. How many bands in Dublin can pay a roadie? You think these lads can?” I nodded at Lipstick On Mars, who didn’t look like they could afford their bus fare home, never mind support staff. “I guarantee you, their roadie is someone’s little brother shoving the drum kit into the back of someone’s da’s van.”

Rosie nodded. “I’d say lighting’s the same: only a few gigs going, and they’re going to people who’ve already got experience. There’s no course you can take, no apprenticeship, nothing like that—I checked.”

“No surprise there.”

“So say you were really into getting your foot in the door, right? No matter what it took. Where would you start?”

I shrugged. “Nowhere around here. London; maybe Liverpool. England, anyway. Find some band that could just about afford to feed you while you learned the trade, then work your way up.”

“That’s what I think, too.” Rosie sipped her wine and leaned back in the alcove, watching the band. Then she said, matter-of-fact, “Let’s go to England, so.”

For a second I thought I had heard wrong. I stared at her. When she didn’t blink I said, “Are you serious?”

“I am, yeah.”

“Jaysus,” I said. “Serious, now? No messing?”

“Serious as a heart attack. Why not?”

It felt like she had set light to a whole warehouse of fireworks inside me. The drummer’s big finishing riff tumbled through my bones like a great beautiful chain of explosions and I could hardly see straight. I said—it was all that came out—“Your da’d go through the roof.”