For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Do you know that one, son? That’s Einstein talking. He’s talking about dancing. About molecules dancing and about atoms dancing, atoms dancing blind, like me and Tommy, dancing with our ballys on. And I remembered that note. That blank note that had been left for me at the Europa, that note that might have saved my life. And I remembered making love to the same woman, the two of us, in the same hotel, in the same time, and the same place, even though it’s all so long ago now. What a feeling.

*

Okay, what about this one:

Paddy from Ireland goes for a job interview as a blacksmith at a farmyard in County Athlone.

Have you ever shoed a horse before? the smith says to him.

Sure, I have not, Paddy says, but I did tell a donkey to fuck off once.

*

The phone rings in the middle of night. This time I know what I have to do. What about you? I says to it, as soon as I pick it up. Then I sit there, and I wait. I sit there and wait for what seems like an eternity. Something is there, in silence, the whole time. I hear the milkboy out doing his rounds. The birds start to sing. And now it is the silence that is speaking, in the voice of my ex-lover.

Tommy turned up to a meeting with Davy that Control had arranged and told him that his wife was a whore. What? Tommy told him that and then he says: we’re to put your whore wife to work. Tommy says: we’re going to put her to work and that ways we’re going to use this bitch for the information.

Davy’s come home and he’s called me a whore, is what the silence says to me, in the voice of Kathy M. He says that from now on we are going to put it to some fucking use, it says. He says that from now on I would be wearing a device. He calls me a dirty fucking slut, a filthy cunt, a little cocksucking bitch, and he slaps me round the face.

I says to him, you’re a stupid fucking prick, it says, in the mocking voice of an ex-lover, don’t you know that whores strip off all their clothes? Where am I going to wear a fucking bug?

I’ll force that bug up your fucking arse, he says to me, if we get any more of this talk.

I’ll be taking it up the arse every night, I says to him, so that isn’t going to work.

This silence, turning me on.

You’re fucking enjoying this, aren’t you, he says to me (in a seductive voice, it says it, without speaking).