"No you're not"

Kilkenny, Ireland, 2007 —

He was impatient because I didn't have time for a pint; he was irritated — but I really was busy.

At that time I was buying any flight tickets via 3V, a temporary-Visa-number operation. They were legitimate, and a scam. They had various means of taking advantage of the fact that their customers didn't have a regular credit card.

You'd go to a shop with your registered card and buy a printed voucher, a temporary Visa® number.

I had to do that, but first I had to find the proper flight. Ryanair was usually the way to go, regionally. It was again in this case — Dublin-Eindhoven en route to Utrecht.

I had to go to the shop and buy a voucher when I knew the price of the flight, and then get back to my apartment as quickly as possible so that the price of the flight didn't change upward, making the voucher useless for this transaction. I met up with Justin down by Kyteler's Inn, and stopped for a moment. He wanted to go for a pint. I said I had to do some business, that I was going to Holland. "No you're not," he said.

Later, after I'd bought a ticket, Justin warned me not to "try anything" with Deb, an American friend I was going to visit in Utrecht.

It was the beginning of the end of the times that I would spend with Justin, ostensibly a friend of mine for 6 or 7 years.