He was called Brendan Carthy. He was 45 and he was already dying anyway. This tourist in New York, this Irishman was dressed in a light blue linen suit with an open-necked pale blue, cheese-cloth shirt. He was wearing brown sandals, no socks, no shame. His blue eyes were weeping although he didn’t feel sad. He was a lovely man, everybody said so. The gunman wanted to take his wallet. 

No time had passed.

Most passers-by were frozen into the scene. No longer passing by, their inaction now part of the action.

Someone called the police. The NYPD. Those boys.

Other people felt for their handguns, realised this isn’t fucking Texas, this is New York fucking City motherfucker, we’re civilized people. Let go of their fat pistol butts, and just looked on.

Two police cars arrived. New cars that weren’t messed in memories and the smell of bleach. 

One young person in the crowd began a slow handclap that didn’t catch on.

Brendan, the Irishman, closed his eyes, which released Jimmy, the addict, who squeezed the trigger and fired. He’s never so much fired a gun in anger let alone killed another human being. A second later he was demolished by police gunfire from three young officers with the same experience. Jimmy went down smiling in no pain.

I started to pass-by again, took a photograph and continued my walk to meet my good friend Dr Neil O’Neil in a favourite bar. 

I told him what I’d seen. He shrugged and ordered two beers bottled and two vodka highballs.

“It’s a big city. Shit like that happens in big cities. It is what it is.”

That was Dr Neil O’Neil all over. He took things in his stride. He compartmentalised and prioritised. He was a stoic or a sociopath, depending on your own pretensions.

“You Knew I Was A Scorpion” tattooed on this right thigh. 

“When You Hitched a Ride”, was on his left.

On this chest he had ‘Shit Happens. It Is What It Is’ in white text on a black bar.

He had a garish peace mandala on his back.

I was never quite sure what it was he did for his money but he was tremendously great fun. For the most part.

We were close for a few years. He would spend his money freely on all the things that you, sensible as you are, have been warned about and heeded. One day, he disappeared. Presumed dead. Assassinated or fell off a dock or choked to death on a sandwich or his parachute failed. That was decades ago.

So, when I got out of prison for a crime that many people said I probably didn’t even commit, Dr Neil O’Neil was the last person on my mind. My hateful Aunt Bernadette and my sweet Julianna – a love of my life –  were at the top of my list.

But shit happens.