As Wednesdays go, this was a busy one. I had a doctor’s appointment, followed by my first-ever pedicure. “You’ll love it,” my friend said. She insisted on treating me while she had a manicure. “How does it feel?” she asked. “It tickles,” I said. But having endured the nail file, I felt like I was walking on clouds afterwards. She made ham and cheese sandwiches, and later that evening we saw Small Things Like These starring Cillian Murphy at the Savoy on O’Connell Street.
Although I preferred the novella by Claire Keegan, the story about a Magdalene laundry in a small Irish town in 1980s Ireland was a chilling reminder of the price we pay for silence and inaction, and how bad actors, in all guises, walk among us. We must be vigilant. Sometimes we see them coming, sometimes we don’t, and sometimes we simply pretend we don’t see them. I am grateful for how far we have come and, yes, I know how much further we need to go.
It’s too easy to sound like a politician giving a stump speech, heavy on imperiousness, light on solutions. So I didn’t give my hot take. My friend and I needed time to process the film, so we said goodbye on the corner of Abbey Street.
As I walked along Trinity Street to catch my bus, a friendly face caught my attention, waving from across the street. I wasn’t sure who it was, as it was getting dark, but I didn’t want him to think I was rude, so I crossed over.
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“How are you?” the gentleman, tall and beaming, said.
“I’m good,” I replied. “And you?”
“Not bad,” he said. “I’m just coming from dinner. I’m here until Friday.”
“I’m only here for a month. How do we know each other again?” I said. Awkward, I know.
“I did work on your house,” he said. “I’m an electrician. Steve.”
“Oh, right. Nice to see you.”
Coincidences are nice: they make the world feel smaller. It’s reassuring when you’re dashing through the darkness
He did look sort of familiar now. It was more than 15 years ago, and I was impressed, maybe even flattered, that he remembered. I miss Dublin 8. Like me, Steve said he too had moved to New York, so we had that in common, and upon his return he had moved to Athlone. He said I did a great job on the house, but it was really the contractor and his team who did a great job. How did he come to be working on my house, in that case?
“Through John,” Steve said.
“Oh, did he know Barry, the contractor?”
“Yes,” Steve said, “He was a friend of Barry’s.”
There were so many people coming and going during that time, but it was a lifetime ago. I asked Steve what he was doing in Dublin. He had an appointment at St Vincent’s Hospital, he said, a procedure on his prostate. A lot of information, but when two men of a certain age meet on the street, I guess it doesn’t seem like such a stretch. He was now coming from a restaurant and heading back to his hotel on Wexford Street.
“Do you have to fast at midnight?” I asked.
“I just have to be there in the morning,” he replied.
I wondered whether I had missed my bus. This was long for a stop-and-chat. I thought about wrapping it up. But coincidences are nice: they make the world feel smaller. It’s reassuring when you’re dashing through the darkness. I see them as the stitching on the fabric of life, a reminder that, despite all the ups and downs, the good and bad times, you are exactly where you are supposed to be at this moment in time.
“I left my credit card in Athlone,” Steve laughed.
“How did you pay for your meal?”
“I had to explain to the restaurant,” he said.
“Don’t you have Apple Pay?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Or Revolut?”
“No, I don’t have that either.”
This guy was pretty analogue for an electrician.
“Could you spot me some cash?” he asked.
“Oh, sure.”
“Where will you be on Friday? I could meet you.”
“I don’t think I’ll be in town,” I said.
“I’ll give you my number and we can arrange it.”
This was starting to sound like a lot of work. It would be easier to give him the 40 quid in my pocket as a goodwill gesture – like bread on the water, it would come back to me in some guise. This was the point I glanced at his clothes. Why did it matter that he was well dressed? But it did. I had €40 in my pocket. I could give him that. Or give him 20 so he could get a cab to the hospital in the morning. I took the 40 out. I may have caught him glancing at it.
He wouldn’t take it without giving me his number. “086…”
“Good luck at the hospital tomorrow,” I said.
As soon as he walked away, I knew that Steve was as familiar to me as any smiling face – and as any stranger. I dialled the number and heard “this number is not in service”. I knew it and I didn’t know it. I was disturbed by the sheer depth, chutzpah and menace of his pretence. He was giving an Olivier Award-winning performance as an old acquaintance, a smiling spectre from my past, someone I knew once upon a time. I just gave 40 quid to a total stranger.
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I called my cinema friend. “Boundaries, Quentin, boundaries,” she said. The streets of Dublin are like a video game: we walk past bad actors all the time, we’re just not always aware of it. After more than 10 years in New York, nothing like this had ever happened to me. He was nice. He liked me. He seemed happy to see me. Yes, I could hear my own reasoning. It wasn’t pretty. “You have enough people that like you,” my friend said. “Why do you feel the need to be liked?”
That wasn’t the only reason. A part of me must have sensed I was being scammed, but I suspended all disbelief. He was the “thimblerig” trickster with the three foam cups and a banknote hidden under one: in this scenario, however, all cups hid fake three-dollar bills: one represented our fictitious acquaintanceship, another his lost credit card and the third his hospital appointment. Each cup was a distraction, moving around so quickly that I didn’t focus long enough to adequately process any of them.
I didn’t want to be unkind or ungenerous and, if I’m honest, I didn’t want to be seen to be unkind or ungenerous either
Fake emergency scams are not new, but this one had a novel spin: the audacious ruse that we somehow had met. It just takes one sleight of hand to make an age-old trick appear new. That’s how you turn a boiled egg into an omelette. I’ve long known about similar fake-emergency scams, but they’re usually heavy on amateur dramatics: a “tourist” sitting on the curb, crying because her bag and passport were stolen. Mine was different: Trying to “remember” how we met was an appealing mystery. Humans, after all, are designed to make connections.
Other hallmarks of traditional scams were present: time pressure – I had to make up my mind about giving him money during a brief stop-and-chat – and the gentle pressure to be a Good Samaritan and to take his number and “meet up” again. I didn’t want to be unkind or ungenerous and, if I’m honest, I didn’t want to be seen to be unkind or ungenerous either. I didn’t feel so generous after the fact. It’s horrible being duped. “Dishonest people need to eat too,” a friend said. He had a point.
A few days later, I had tapas with an old college friend, and I had an emotional hangover from being conned. “I feel like an idiot,” I said. But she shared her own story, which happened 10 years ago. A woman knocked on her door and, when she opened it, the stranger brushed past her. She was wearing a uniform from a well-known supermarket and had a name tag. “It made me think she was a real person,” my friend said.
This woman needed baby formula. “She knew that as a woman I would empathise,” my friend said. Did she believe her? Sort of, for a moment, maybe. Ultimately, my friend wanted her to leave, and giving her €80 was one way to do that, but, like me, my friend subscribed to the emotional truth in the moment – if not the actual truth, after the fact. As soon as the woman was gone, as soon as it was over, like me, she too knew she had been scammed.
“He’ll never have a day’s luck with that €40,” a Dublin pal told me. Maybe, maybe not. Con artists prey on our weaknesses. With the foam cups, there is smoke and mirrors, namely the promise of money. So what did I want? The chance to be Mr Nice Guy and win brownie points? But to what end? A “good person” review on Yelp? Was I so easily susceptible to flattery and the illusion of friendship? It’s easy to get lost in a conman’s smoke, but the mirrors are harder to gaze into, especially when there’s another familiar, smiling face staring back.
