The lemon, p.1
The Lemon, page 1
VIKING
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Copyright © 2022 by The Christmas, LLC
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library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Boyd, S. E., author.
Title: The lemon : a novel / S. E. Boyd.
Description: [New York] : Viking, [2022]
Identifiers: LCCN 2022012113 (print) | LCCN 2022012114 (ebook) |ISBN 9780593490440 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593490457 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Humorous fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3602.O9329 L46 2022 (print) | LCC PS3602.O9329 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220318
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012113
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012114
Cover design and illustration: Colin Webber
Cover image: (man) Bridgeman Images
book design by lucia bernard, adpated for ebook by molly jeszke
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_6.0_141688260_c0_r0
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: John Doe
Part I: The Man
Chapter 1: Charlie McCree
Chapter 2: Chef Paolo Cabrini
Chapter 3: Nia Greene
Chapter 4: Katie Horatio
Chapter 5: Vladimir “Lad” Benshvili
Chapter 6: Chef Patrick Whelan
Part II: The Machine
Chapter 7: Katie Horatio
Chapter 8: Chef Paolo Cabrini
Chapter 9: Chef Patrick Whelan
Chapter 10: Nia Greene
Chapter 11: Chef Paolo Cabrini
Chapter 12: Vladimir “Lad” Benshvili
Chapter 13: Charlie McCree
Chapter 14: Chef Paolo Cabrini
Chapter 15: Chef Patrick Whelan
Part III: Hell and Damnation
Chapter 16: Nia Greene
Chapter 17: Katie Horatio
Chapter 18: Charlie McCree
Chapter 19: Nia Greene
Chapter 20: Katie Horatio
Chapter 21: Chef Patrick Whelan
Chapter 22: Chef Paolo Cabrini
Part IV: Aftermath
Chapter 23: Vladimir “Lad” Benshvili
Chapter 24: Chef Patrick Whelan
Chapter 25: Charlie McCree
Chapter 26: Nia Greene
Chapter 27: Katie Horatio
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To Raoul’s,
Our own French Restaurant with the French Name
JOHN DOE
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND
Sunday, June 30, 2019, 8:44 p.m.
It started with the potted herring. The herring was from Ardglass, they pointed out. And there was potato apple bread from Armagh, eaten in the home of an ex-IRA bomb maker with one arm (“Not a top bomb maker,” joked a producer). Then a beef pasty supper with a former Ulster Defence Association man. Not to be confused with the former Ulster Freedom Fighters man with whom John Doe shared an Ulster fry, or the Real IRA man who’d given him a fifteens cake, and something called champ, which seemed like it was just mashed potatoes and onions, but one didn’t want to be rude.
Doe had also sat across from a former officer commanding of the Irish National Liberation Army and shared a vegetable roll, which, true to the backward logic of Northern Ireland, was basically a circular meat loaf that included very few vegetables. They’d done home visits in places like the Falls and the Shankill, in shitty little flats with big, beautiful sectarian murals. And once Doe had spoken with enough twitchy-eyed “ex”-militants to understand that the current state of politics in Northern Ireland was actually some sort of invisible-fence rodeo, likely to turn into Pamplona-style goring as soon as the bulls realized the fence wasn’t real, he started in on the restaurants and bars.
There was a conversation with the chef at Deanes at Queens over lamb rump, ham hock, brie fritters, and cockles, plus wheaten bread served with Abernethy Butter. A fancy meal and B-roll of the River Lagan at OX. John Long’s for fish and chips. Pints in a pub called Duke of York, which was blown up during the Troubles and rebuilt. And an interview with a locally born action-movie celebrity in one of the snugs inside the Crown Liquor Saloon, with its ornate stained glass and Italian woodworking.
At each stop, the makeup artist would make sure Doe was properly disheveled, and the sound guy would make sure his levels were excellent, and the first AD would run back through the outline and questions and possible conversation angles. The camera operators would make sure to get close-ups of the little details Doe liked—the places where you could see one mural had been painted on top of another, the contents of someone’s bookshelf, the stray dogs (wherever they were, Doe wanted to capture images of the dogs).
When the camera was on, Doe was gracious and generous and thoughtful and giving but unafraid to ask hard questions, ensuring they were delivered with respect and enough runway. He could go on like this for hours at a time, and the way they filmed, that’s what he did. But when the camera was off, Doe retreated back to a corner to smoke Raptor-brand cigarettes, which he had shipped in from Canada, with his PA and/or the director of photography, or to read, or to listen to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports with over-the-ear, noise-canceling headphones.
Once filming had wrapped, and he’d carefully extricated himself from committing to any sort of social engagement with the locally born action-movie celebrity, who’d kept asking all the women on set if they “liked to get wet,” Doe walked back to his hotel alone. He was recognized a few times, but mostly after the fact. One man wearing a red-and-white sweatshirt with George Best’s face stenciled on the back asked him for a selfie and he complied. He watched a teenage couple kiss with an impressive amount of tongue, and a freckled boy, who would later be identified as twelve, drive by in a luxury car, which would later be identified as stolen.
Doe got to his hotel at nine p.m. In the lobby, he saw a blonde woman wearing a Barbour Acorn waxed cotton jacket sketching something on a napkin and drinking a gin and tonic. As she got up, she made eye contact with Doe.
“John.”
“Lara.”
He watched her walk out the door, then texted his friend Paolo and told him to meet him at a local pub called the Christmas at ten thirty.
The hotel he was staying at was called bandit, intentionally lowercase, for whatever e. e. cummings–fetishizing reason the external marketing agency hired to help with the name had come up with. The hotel’s theme seemed to be loosely based on the idea that the lower part of Northern Ireland used to be known as Bandit Country, though clearly this external marketing agency failed to dig deeper into the meaning or they might’ve discovered that this was because the Armagh area had been a safe haven for the IRA. Either way, murals of County Armagh (created by local Catholic street artists!) adorned the walls, and the restaurant, Orchard (apparently Armagh is also known for orchards!), only used farm goods from Armagh.
The rooftop bar was made to look like an abandoned rural shed surrounded by a high hedge that contained the “secret” entrance to the bar. Inside, you sat on reclaimed tractor parts and ordered craft cocktails made by bartenders wearing aprons sewn by Armagh artisans. The cocktail names played off small towns in the county (the Darkley and Stormy, for example) and the list was woven through with straw. Doe was staying at bandit because bandit was new and “boutique,” and new, boutique hotels had the best suites, and it was well-known that John Doe loved himself a great hotel suite.
His suite at bandit was actually three separate rooms, each showcasing a different part of the same mural of Lough Neagh. There was a sitting room with a long, comfortable weathered leather couch, a library room filled with first editions from Northern Irish authors, a bedroom with a big blue leather headboard, and a bathroom featuring a claw-foot tub apparently reclaimed from a farmhouse once owned by the Earl of Shaftesbury.
Doe had reached a level of fame at which people assumed he needed things customized to his liking, and thus Doe made demands that things be customized to his liking. In his contract, it was stipulated that Doe needed a suite, and it was preferable that that suite had a California king–size bed (Doe liked to sleep across a bed with no pillow) and a bathtub (preferably claw-foot, though that wasn’t a deal breaker). He needed a box of Ecru #9 Embassy 96 lb. stationery cards with corresponding envelopes, alongside a Baronfig Squire rollerball pen, so he could write letters longhand, or at least entertain the romantic notion of writing letters longhand. And he needed a bowl of local citrus.
It was 9:09 p.m. when Doe got back to his room a nd found said bowl of artisanal citrus waiting for him. He was informed via a small handwritten card that the citrus, so rare in Ireland, was from a farm in Bannfoot, a small village in the townland of Derryinver, within, of course, County Armagh. After taking off his coat, he rolled up his sleeves and retrieved his knife bag. From it, he got out a cutting board and his R. Murphy Jackson Cannon bar knife. Created by a 150-year-old knife maker in Massachusetts, in collaboration with a Boston bartender Doe had worked for a long time ago, the bar knife was made from high-carbon stainless steel with a square tip to notch citrus and remove seeds. The handle was made of a durable tropical hardwood known as cocobolo. In total, Doe owned about a hundred of these knives, and he brought one with him wherever he went (though, much to the frustration of the network’s sponsorship wrangler, he refused to publicize this fact).
At 9:13 p.m., he picked up several lemons and placed them next to the cutting board. He took one, felt along its mottled skin, and, barely looking, placed it down on the board and chopped off the ends. Then, with a cut side facing down, he halved it, flipped each half onto its back like an upside-down turtle, and made a clean slice through the middle without cutting all the way to the rind. Then he flipped it back over, made five clean, even cuts all the way through each half, picked the lemon slices off the board with his knife, and moved them to the side.
Once he’d cut through six lemons, John Doe picked up the final slice and carried it with him into the closet in the front hall. In the closet, he found his old, weathered leather belt, looped it around his neck, popped the lemon slice in his mouth, and unbuttoned his pants.
When he stopped breathing, the clock on the bedside table next to a note from the manager regarding the origin of the locally bottled spring water said 9:26.
PART I
THE MAN
1.
CHARLIE McCREE
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND
Monday, July 1, 2019, 8:13 a.m.
Charles Ulysses McCree—aka Smilin’ Charlie McCree—whistled down the hall of the top floor of bandit in a long-shot bid to conceal the fact that he was barely holding himself together. The pathways connecting his brain to his arms and legs and feet and fingers had been disrupted. Some of his extremities ached, while others were numb. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Not that he could see, anyway. Before Charlie came to work this morning, he had dropped a mug of tea in his kitchen. One moment he was holding it, the next he was not, and fucked if he knew what had transpired in the interim. Perhaps he was dreaming; perhaps a sinkhole had opened in his brain. But while some existing neural pathways had been severed, new ones had formed. His hair hurt, for example. So did his fingernails. Dead things brought to life by a record-breaking two-day blitz upon the City of Belfast.
His eyes may have lost the ability to focus properly, but he was still able to discern the form of a housekeeper as she emerged from the dark fog of the hallway before him. Her name tag read “Kitty.” Presented with this information, Charlie attempted to pass himself off not only as a human being, but as a human being who sings.
“ ‘Oh Kitty, my darling, remember,’ ” he intoned. “ ‘That the doom will be mine if I stay.’ ”
“Fuck off with ya, Charlie,” she said, brushing past.
The weekend had been bloody sensational. The festivities started in the dark among the mannequins at the Filthy Quarter on Dublin Road, as they always did, because the decor allowed the lads to simulate intercourse with insensate objects, a cherished pastime. Having achieved a suitable level of intoxication, Charlie and his mates then set out to sup from every pub in the center of the city—the Garrick, White’s, McHugh’s, the Bullitt Hotel bar, the John Hewitt—moving haphazardly from one to the next, becoming louder and more damaged, bouncing off lorries and light poles and Proddies and Papes, mounting bold charges and beating craven retreats, and in time covering a significant swath of the city, like a robotic vacuum cleaner that generates mess instead of sucking it up.
Friday yielded to Saturday and, after an interlude of impromptu public sleep, Charlie and the lads hit the daylight like an enemy beachhead and fought well into the afternoon. As the hours passed and his mates began to show signs of wear, Charlie only gathered force. He was a hard man to keep pace with. Alcohol amplified his essential Charlie-ness and turned it into a matter of public concern. There was no hostility to it, however. Only joy. Only lust for living. At one point, Charlie acquired a bridal veil, presumably from a hen party in which he had temporarily embedded himself. This accoutrement, he was later informed, inspired him to attempt to kiss a police officer on the mouth while speaking in a womanly voice and to steal a multitude of orange parking cones, which the lads subsequently used as megaphones to inform the masses about the many arcane toilet procedures favored by Her Majesty, the queen.
By late afternoon on Saturday, time had slipped from its skein and morale ebbed. By nine p.m., most of Charlie’s mates had fallen away. Some had been decked, over women or for slights intended or unwitting. Others were sickened. One simply lost heart and skulked off. No matter: Charlie just replaced them with new friends. It was easy. When Charlie attained a certain state, he ceased to be a normal human trapped in body and status, limited by personal and moral inhibitions and the strictures of a class-based society. He became magnetic, magnificent. Charlie in his cups ascended to the rarified air. He became Prince Charlie of Belfast, friend to man and woman, leader in song, and the city lined up behind him.
And then came the hard light of Monday morning and Charlie did what any self-respecting man would do: he got up, pulled a strange bridal veil out of his pants, threw up, and went to work.
He had taken the job at bandit after his band, which fused Irish rebel music with ska, had been banished from most of the city’s clubs for what he was certain was a mix of political reasons and personal jealousies. As Charlie temporarily paused his ascension to global stardom, he, like so many others who dreamed of artistic immortality, turned to the hospitality business. But unlike some of his fellow artistes, Charlie loved it. He was a good talker, charming and presentable and not a bad-looking guy, all of which helped.
But he also had a hidden genius. Charlie could convey a sense of Belfast authenticity, while at the same time not laying it on so thick that the foreigners who stayed at bandit felt excluded or ill at ease. This was a delicate dance, to be certain. Success in hospitality in Belfast was the product of relentless calibration. The sort of rich foreign tourist who stayed at bandit wanted an authentic Belfast experience. But they preferred it come at a safe remove. They didn’t want to be made to feel guilty or uncomfortable while getting it. Charlie’s genius was in walking that line. He could tell hair-raising stories. Sure, sometimes he took factual liberties, but he was so engaging that no one ever questioned him. And no matter how dark the tale, Charlie always took care to end it on a grace note: people can behave in terrible ways, but goodness prevails with faith and good works, and the visitors who come to this place are brave, and their attention means a great deal to his people. Though we have suffered, he implied with his every utterance, fear not, we do not fancy ourselves superior to you.
His friend Seamus accused him of running some kind of rank, Troubles-themed minstrel show—and, sure, there was an element of performance to it—but Charlie wasn’t doing it out of cynicism. Perish the thought. He was the world’s greatest optimist. He just wanted to make people happy. He just wanted to connect. To enter their lives and live on in their memories. That’s why he loved performing music, after all. He could have been a hard man about dealing with these tourists as they walked around sticking their fingers in the wounds of his city, but his favored approach came as a great relief to his guests, particularly the Irish Americans, and for it they tipped him lavishly.
* * *
• • •
Charlie continued down the hallway, listing slightly, performing a quick check of his vital systems. In the seconds since being cursed by Kitty the housekeeper, something had gone wrong with his foot. It felt abraded, like the top of the inside of his shoe had been lined with sandpaper. Charlie couldn’t figure out what it was, but it hurt. Then it hit him: the tea. The scalding liquid must have landed on his foot. It had just taken a couple of hours for the signal to arrive at his brain, like a lorry through a checkpoint. Jesus fuck, he thought, I am the most bombed-out individual in the most bombed-out city in Ireland.
