Jesus. A lot more, old man. I’m just not sure how to get it.
I’m at Twenty-fifth Street now and it’s one o’clock. I’m out of beer and almost home, but I’m not ready to turn in. Too much nervous energy in me, thinking about tomorrow. Also, the roomies might still be up, and sober I don’t have the heart to face them. All lines of communication have been down since they found the beer cans in their underwear. Talk about a couple that missed the humor boat.
If I hustle I can still make Aisling Chara’s second set at Finn O’Shea’s. What the hell. I have the bucks to spare since I got paid today and I’m not betting my usual ball game. I considered it, but I’ll need cash on hand for incidentals tomorrow, and anyway I’ll get all the excitement I can handle at Gino’s.
At Twenty-first Street I turn onto Second Avenue and get a lift from the sound of music coming out the front door of Finn’s. Kennedy greets me at the entrance.
“You’re late, Tom. How’d the bet go?”
I give him the thumbs-up.
“There’s a lad!”
Hell, it’s just a white lie, and it’ll keep the waitress coming around.
Once inside, I feel better. The band is into their second set and into it big. The four of them have quit the stage and are snaking their way through the packed crowd, playing as they go. The little guy with the big electric cello climbs onto the wooden bar and plays fast and hard as the singer launches into “A Pint for the Lads Back Home.” I squeeze through the crowd into a spot near the back, wedging myself between a big balding guy and a woman of about thirty. Before I can look around for the waitress she’s there with a pint.
“I was afraid we wouldn’t see you tonight,” she says.
“No chance of that. I’ve waited all week to take a pint from you.”
Her fingers graze mine as she hands it over with a shy smile. I’ve only ever seen her in jeans, but tonight she wears a black skirt with white tights underneath. Damn, she is a dish.
“How was the first set?” I ask.
“Oh, good, I guess. I’ve heard them enough now that it starts to sound the same.”
That accent. I’d pay fifty bucks to listen to her read the phone book. She pats my arm.
“I must get on, Tom. A lot of thirsty ones tonight. I’ll be round with your pints.”
She turns to go, then turns back, just in time to see my eyes go to her ass.
“By the way, my name’s Samantha. I never got round to telling you last time.”
She glides away.
I’ll be damned. If she weren’t so hot and I weren’t aching so bad for it, I’d swear she was flirting with me. I give my head a good shake and turn back to the band. Plenty of time to dream when your head hits the pillow, Tom.
Aisling Chara eases into a slow Irish sing-along and the crowd sways back and forth and raises their voices to join in. Someday I’ll have to trace back my family tree. I’d lay a C-note it ends in Ireland somewhere. When that tin whistle starts up, and those pipes, and I have a pint in my hand … it’s the closest I get to a feeling of home.
Not that the folks here would ever have me. They’re a tight crew, these Irish. I’ve come to know a few of the regulars here. They’re friendly, sure, but to a point. That’s the thing about the Irish. You may know all the songs, same as they do, and you might really feel them, even, but there’s no buying your way into this group. You can only be born into it. If you aren’t, they let you go so far but no farther. If you are, though, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been in the country ten years or ten minutes, you find your way to a place like Finn’s and you have a home. A set of people who talk to you, and listen, who keep an ear open for work, if you’re looking, and slide you a Guinness if you’re not. Must be nice.
Tonight I’m happy to drink my pint and hear the music, but the guy next to me wants to talk, and packed in as I am, there’s no getting away. “Harv,” he says, sticking out a fat hand. Harv is backing into his forties but fancies himself a young man, and his talk is of women and sex. To hear him tell it, he’s getting more now than he ever did. He knows why, too.
“Kid,” he says, pulling out a fat wallet, “no matter what they tell you, it’s the size of this thing that counts. Nobody with any money goes back to Jersey with a hard-on. You hit this town Friday with a couple hundred, maybe score a little something to keep the evening going, put up with a movie, dinner, some talk, I’m telling you, you can’t miss. Damn, I wish I was an economist. I’d come up with a formula and make a million.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with insurance. He’s been in it fifteen years and picked up a few things along the way. “Travel. You got to knock around a bit when you’re young. Meet enough people and you learn what makes ’em tick, and pretty soon you’re wearing ’em on your wrist.” Harv’s riding a hot streak and thinks I should stick with him (“Always hunt with a buddy”), but soon he’s cornered the blonde on the other side of him and starts telling her about the army.
I’m free about thirty seconds before Maggie, on my right, starts in on me, telling me the problem with men these days is that none of us knows how to be chivalrous anymore. Either we’re cavemen, or too scared of offending them to hold the door. Now she’s all for equality, don’t get her wrong, but she wouldn’t mind being treated like a lady once in a while.
When I see a break in the crowd I go for it, and I manage to make it across to the other side of the room. No sooner do I stake out a new spot when Samantha’s there again with a fresh pint.
“Jesus, you’re fast,” I tell her.
“Maybe I’m keeping my eye on you.”
“Why would you do that?”
She smiles and floats away.
The band breaks into an instrumental that sets the whole place in motion. There isn’t the room to dance, so we all move at the knees. Kennedy flashes the lights on and off and the floor starts to shake from the weight of us. The sweat’s on me now from the heat and the pace of the music, which builds and builds until it’s just a question of whether the strings will snap before we do. The cello player is in a fever, playing high, then higher, then higher still, until finally with a last flourish he brings the bow slashing down on the strings and ends it. There’s a second of dead silence and then we all go nuts.
They segue smoothly into a cover of the Pogues’ “Dirty Old Town” and I stop moving. Christ. Just the song I needed to hear.
They do a good version, though you really need the harp at the start leading you into it. If those first few notes don’t get you, there isn’t a lick of Irish in your bones.
I look down at the floor. I didn’t know what Irish music was until Lisa heard “Dirty Old Town” at the school radio station and brought the album to my room. For a month the Pogues were all we listened to. We got hooked on the writing of the front man, Shane MacGowan. At last a guy who wrote something besides love songs. He wrote tough and funny songs about drinking, about the horses, about politics, drinking, being Irish, drinking, girls, and drinking again. And he sang them all in that great voice, a voice without polish but with grit and accent.
They were our band. Lisa had some clout with the concert committee and lobbied hard to bring them to campus. What a show they could have put on in the little gym. By then, though, Shane was full off round the bend. He had a soft spot for the hard stuff, and toward the end was missing shows, passing out on stage, the works. The concert committee declared them a bad risk, said the budget was too tight to gamble on the likes of MacGowan. So come March we all filed into the gym and sat on our hands through Bonnie Raitt.
Lisa and I weren’t to be stopped that easy, though. We hitched down to the city for Saint Patrick’s Day and caught the Pogues at the Palladium. Shane was a sight. On his last legs, swaying at the edge of the stage with a bottle of JD, trying to sing “A Pair of Brown Eyes” while a prop man kept him up and held a sheet with the lyrics. I knew the words better than Shane did.
Christ, the band was tight, though. They broke into “Fiesta” an
d the place exploded, spinning and slamming in a mad Irish dance. Lisa and I were swept up in it, she laughing and twirling and me keeping us from getting killed. Shielding her, bouncing off the other maniacs. And when they broke from that into “Dirty Old Town,” the song these guys are doing now, well, you haven’t seen a crowd until you’ve seen one sing “Dirty Old Town” with Shane MacGowan on Saint Paddy’s day. Even the folks who weren’t Irish thought they were. I thought the roof was going to come down on us, and didn’t care if it did.
I don’t play the Pogues much these days. I can’t listen to them without thinking of Lisa. That’s the problem with having a band with your girl—you lose the girl and the band becomes a killer. All their songs start cutting you in two.
Jesus, it would be nice to see Lisa tonight. Sometimes I can almost smell her perfume. She never used much. Just a touch, and she smelled so good anyway, it drove me crazy.
Samantha’s back with another pint, even though I’m not half done with the last one. She sure is easy to look at.
“You’ll have to slow the pace,” I tell her. “I’m not much of a drinker tonight.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean I’m walking myself home.” She leaves the pint by my arm and turns off.
What was that? I turn back to her but she slips into the crowd. I look around to see if anyone else noticed, but everyone’s watching the band as they break into a cover of “Sooner or Later.” The press of the crowd rocks me back and forth, but I can’t keep my eyes off Samantha, back at the bar now, or my mind off what I think she said. A few minutes later she’s back with a final pint. She hands it to me and I touch her shoulder as she turns away.
“Say, am I hearing things, or did you ask me to walk you home?”
She raises her eyes to mine. “If you’re interested.”
“I’m interested.”
“Good. I’ll be off in thirty minutes. Wait for me up the street a block. Liam would have a fit if he saw us leave.”
She smiles and walks off.
I take my time with my last pint. I’m going to need the kick it’s giving me. The band wraps up the set and comes down into the crowd for a few drinks with their fans. I finish my pint and walk out of Finn’s and up to the corner. Around me, happy drunks pile into cabs or cross into the diner for a late bite. I duck into a deli for some Certs and try to keep down my excitement. I see Samantha come out the door and head up the block toward me. Pretty as she looked in Finn’s, she looks even sweeter on the street, shivering a little and rubbing her arms.
All you knee-benders who drone on about abstinence, I got a job for you. Show me a Psalm that can match the kick of this—walking a treat back to her place, six pints in you, a decent shot of getting across. You do that, then we’ll talk faith. You folks don’t know what you’re missing.
Samantha lives just a block away. A small one-bedroom she shares with another Finn’s waitress, Eileen. But Eileen isn’t home now, she tells me, and won’t be anytime tonight. Would I like to come up and see the place?
I’m through the first line of defense. Most times I get stopped right here. Once past the doorman, the odds swing way over to my side. You don’t invite a guy up to your place at two in the morning if he doesn’t have a chance to stay. If I’m a Vegas bookie, I’m laying 5–3 on Reasons.
At the elevator Samantha turns her eyes on me. I’d only seen them in the dark bar, and in the light of the hallway the clear blue is stunning.
“I’ve been in this country a year, Tom. You’re the first man to see this apartment.”
“Why me?”
“There’s something about you I like. And anyway …” she bites her lip. “It’s time.”
I know when to stop talking. In the elevator I put a hand on her and she turns into my kiss. She stiffens and melts in the same motion and comes up onto me as I back her into the wall. Over my shoulder she jabs at the floor button. Feeling me through our clothes, she looks hard at me, her eyes bright, her breathing soft and fast.
“Be sweet, Tom. Go easy. I’m a good Catholic girl.”
Not for long.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I WAKE to a fight in the kitchen.
Seems Molly sent Mike for low-fat bagels and he came back with regular. “Aw, come on, honey—just this once couldn’t hurt.” I hear the door close behind him. Must have been a hell of a look.
That’s right, I’m at home. Six hours ago I was set to put an end to my longest drought since I first drank from the big well. This morning I’m still bone-dry, and the way it played out makes me either man of the year or the biggest sap in town. You tell me.
At Samantha’s floor I was for hitting the emergency button and finishing what we started. She nixed that idea sweetly though, so I let her down, aching the way a guy does when he stops halfway home. She was barely hanging in there herself, her face flushed, her hands unsteady with the keys. At her door she kept smoothing her skirt and looking up at me. I could see she was new to this.
Once inside she kissed me, then turned out of my arms and took me by the hand to the living room. In a hot whisper she said, “I’ll be in the second room down the hall, Tom. Wait ten minutes, then come.”
You want to talk about a woody—I almost had to ice myself down. It’s been six months since I’ve been laid right and four since I had any at all. I can’t watch a girl step out of a cab without breaking into a sweat. And there I was, nine minutes away. I walked to the kitchen. I couldn’t find any beer, so I walked to the living room again and stood looking out the window. A boxer in his corner before round one, so mad to get started I could barely wait for the bell.
After a few more minutes I stepped into the hallway. Samantha’s blouse lay on the floor, five feet from her door. Her skirt lay two feet from it, her tights a foot away, and her bra hung on the knob. I felt the soft cotton with my fingers. I put my head on the door a second, said a word of thanks, and opened her up.
Convince me heaven looks half that good and I’ll come back to the fold. Samantha lay on her quilt wearing just a blindfold, her wrists resting above her head, a white silk scarf tied round each one. Jesus and then some. I’ve always been pretty straight up and down in the sack, but this I could go for. I walked to the bed and looked down at her pale Irish skin, so beautiful in the dark. I looped the scarves gently around the headboard and pulled them tight, and the sounds she made as I did almost set me off then and there. I sat on the bed and ran a hand down her leg.
“Say something in Gaelic,” I said. She murmured a few dreamy words and I knew this first session would be a quick one and would have to start right away. I took everything off and climbed aboard. Putting my lips to her hair, I began the slow route down, breathing easy, sliding myself just over the top of her. Jesus, girls are soft, aren’t they? If they knew what they do to us, times like those, we’d have a new order in place in a hurry and not so much as a whimper from us slaves. As I moved down her smooth belly, Samantha started rolling her hips and surging softly against the ties. Ten more seconds of that and it wouldn’t matter if I was in or not. Time to close the deal.
And then it happened. Over her breathing I could just hear the radio, and as I moved up to ease into her, “Into the Mystic” came on. “Into the Mystic” is a song Lisa and I first heard on her little radio as we went at it one night on a blanket under the stars, and ever after it is the song one of us would put on when we wanted a go.
Hearing it last night set something off in me. I tried to fight it. I looked at the cool silk across Samantha’s eyes and felt her bracing beneath me. I’d waited too damn long for this, and I was too close. I arched back to knock it home, but just as I did my knocker gave out on me. All of a sudden he wasn’t up for knocking. Believe me, that’s never happened before.
I had to ease off her, while she gasped, “Please, please, right now.” I answered by running my hands over her again. She thought I’d pulled back from the brink to tease her, and as I trailed my fingers down her belly and toward the heart of her she g
ave a moan like I don’t ever expect to hear again. Old woody was back now, too, and raring for a second go at it, but I stayed where I was, and even as I slipped my fingers just inside her I had it out with myself.
Samantha was in heat but I could think of Lisa and nothing else. In that strange room, set to pop a girl I hardly knew, it all came back to me. The shine in Lisa’s eyes when she looked at me, the calm that would come over us in the middle of it, the way her hands trusted my shoulders. I saw it all again, and with the pictures came the feeling, the one that speared me last Friday when I walked her home—that I need her. For those few seconds last night the past and future collapsed in on me and I saw with total clarity. Saw Lisa and me, not just the way we’d been but the way we could be again. I saw that we could have it all back—all of it. The songs we shared, the way we fit together so perfect.
But it wouldn’t be free. I had to earn it, and there was only one way to do that. I had to be true to Lisa now the way I was when we went together. Nothing less.
Christ Almighty, I still don’t know how I made it out of there. Guys aren’t built for that kind of exit. I rose from the bed and dressed quietly, watching her tremble and buck on the quilt. “Tom,” she whispered, breathing fast. “I’m here,” I said. Then I walked to the bed and freed one of her hands. “Please,” she whispered but I put my fist in my mouth and bit hard into it until I was out the door, down the steps, out her building and into the street. I ran all the way home.
I WALK TO THE KITCHEN and say good morning to Molly. “Good morning,” she says coldly from behind a book. What’s up with her? I wonder. She’s been a witch with a capital B for days. My guess is all that Kafka’s catching up with her. That stuff works on your mood, and for two weeks now she’s gone straight from one book to the next.
In freshman English I had a prof who liked to assign us the depressives. Thirty straight days of rain and nothing on the reading list but Kafka and Hardy. By mid-term break the whole class wanted to do themselves in. In Molly’s case, you factor in her naturally grim disposition, and look out.
Balling the Jack Page 12