It's bad enough that Cillian is boasting about being third in the fantasy rugby competition, but he also wants his new favourite courier to risk everything on the mean streets.
Might as well tell you now because it'll be all over town soon enough - I am currently 126th out of 137 in the Pricewaterhouse Six Nations fantasy rugby competition. Ahead of me, it pains me to tell you, are 21 women, eight Poles, three Chinese, two Indians and a blind goy - none of whom would know a rugby ball if they focking sat on one.
See, this is what happens when you play games with auditors. Someone comes up with a system and it gets sent around in, like, a group mail? You take a player's weight, multiply it by his shoe size, then divide it by whatever you had for your lunch.
To be honest, I didn't even read it. Systems? I actually laughed. Then I picked Iain Balshaw and Andy Gomarsall. Who's laughing now? Not me or Brian Ashton.
It hasn't gone unnoticed either. "Aw, that's embarrassing," Cillian goes the other morning, pretending he's looking at the table for the first time. "I know nothing about rugby and I'm third!"
Of course I don't even respond - wouldn't give him the pleasure. Instead, I've got, like, a legal pad in front of me and I'm trying to decide in what order I'd do the TV3 Xposé team. Now that's a real fantasy league.
"Is this you?" Cillian goes, knowing damn well that it is.
I'm like, "Sorry?"
"Near the bottom," he goes. "Ross, underscore, the, underscore, legend . . ." loving the sound of his own voice. "I thought you knew a thing or two about rugby? Didn't you coach at one stage?"
"It's still early in the competition," I go, looking up from my work.
He's there, "You're right. Touch of beginner's luck in my case, I think. I'm sure you'll come thundering up the table after this weekend's games." He really is a tool.
He suddenly produces an envelope. "Now, can you deliver a document for me?" This is his new thing. Happens two or three times a week now. He's found out about my secret fear of anything north of Elverys on Suffolk Street. It's not enough that I have to work on the actual northside - he likes the idea of me out there, on the mean streets, broken glass under the old Mezlans.
There's always a document that can't be sent by e-mail or by courier and has to be handed over in person on some hellhole of a street - and of course he won't give me the petty cash for an Andy McNab.
I'm like, "Where?" pretty much dreading his answer.
Camden Street. Jesus.
Like Eddie O'Sullivan, though, I've just got to suck it up for now, knowing that I'll end up having the last laugh.
"I'll, er, just finish what I'm doing here," I go, not wanting to look like I'm snapping to attention or anything?
"No, in your own time," he goes. "Finish whatever you're doing first," and then he stops at the door of his office and goes, "I'd put Karen Koster ahead of Lorraine Keane, though. But you know me - I've a thing for blondes . . ." I let it go.
Camden Street is basically a little bit of Capel Street that snapped off and somehow worked its way south. But they're no strangers to my ugly mug out there.
Me and the goys used to play a game called Bedsit Bingo, where you'd have, like, a cord with the names of all the famous student ghettolands on it - Botanic Road, Grosvenor Square, Clarinda Pork, Harcourt Terrace. Then, over the course of a month in Rio's, Tramco and Coppers, you had to score someone from each of the addresses on your cord, taking a photograph of the inevitable wardrobe that opens out as a cooker for, like, corroboration.
I've tiptoed out of more bedsits on Camden Street than your average junkie.
I check the map, roysh, and choose a route that takes me over Tara Street bridge, through College Green and up Grafton Street, where I can at least breathe properly.
At the top of Grafton Street, I hear a voice I'd know anywhere shout, "Rosser, you benny!" and my hort does the usual leap.
It's Ro. He's outside the main gate of Stephen's Green - get this - sitting on top of one of those horse-drawn carriages.
I go over and give him the big serious parent act, but inside I'm cracking up laughing.
"Okay, one or two questions," I go. "Firstly, why aren't you at school?"
He's like, "Day off - senior cup."
"Okay, secondly - what the fock?"
He nods at the horse. "Beauty, isn't she? It's me new line, man."
"New line?"
"I've a quarter share in her. Me, Nudger, Rabbit and Gull."
I'm like, "Rabbit? I thought he was in jail." "Nah - he got JLoed."
"JLoed, as in?"
"Juvenile let off. Where you headed?"
"Camden Street."
"Hop on," he goes.
I actually laugh. "You're off your cake if you think I'm getting on that thing . . ."
"Come on, Rosser, you're like an ould wan," he goes and I end up doing what he tells me.
"Fooken one-way system has me heart broken," he goes, raising his hand to thank a taxi driver who lets him change lanes.
"Why a horse and carriage?" I go.
He's like, "Better than pissing it up again' the wall," and I'm there thinking, well, I did ask. He asks me if I've been to see the old man and I tell him not since Chrimbo. I've been up to my Davinas with work and for the next few weekends it's going to be mostly rugby.
"He'd love a visit," he goes. "He's a bit down. Time of year. He's thinking about being in Paris . . ." That'd be him all right - pulling at the old hort strings.
"Ah, he was telling me unbelievable stories about him and that fella Hennessy, going over every couple of year. He's some fooken man, isn't he?"
I'm there, "Here, watch out for the Luas. Yeah, I suppose he is."
"You'd have to feel for sorry him but. Watching the match in that place . . ."
"Ro," I go, taking the hint. "I'll go and see him next week," which seems to please him. I ask him how Blathin is and he says she's good - well, mustard, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.
"Er, don't tell her about this but," he goes. "That's if you run into her."
I'm like, "It's not criminal, is it? I thought you went straight."
"I did," he goes. "I've a surprise planned for her - Valentine's Day." And I look at my son - holding the reins of a horse, face like the Artful Dodger and a cigarette stuck between his lips - and, like a million other people stuck working for people they hate, I realise what it is that gets me out of bed in these February mornings.
Find out more about Ross's world at www.rossocarrollkelly.ie