by Trisha Telep
“Bad luck,” Sullivan’s mom—her real name was Dolores—said. “Or worse. Probably worse.”
Definitely more intriguing than terrifying. There is a fairly recent slip jig I know—it’s a pretty tight slip jig, from the fifties—that was supposedly given to the musician by the ... I can’t say it. I still can’t say it. Anyway, he said he didn’t write it. He said it was given to him. And I have to admit, I was attracted to that idea. I mean, sublime music handed over by supernatural creatures? You don’t have to be a punk Irish god to appreciate the coolness of that.
But Dolores Sullivan, platinum blond businesswoman of the future, doesn’t believe in any of that stuff, now. There are no bowls of milk or upside-down horseshoes over her doors or open scissors hanging from strings. There is just Patrick Sullivan II, who is not the nicest of people. He doesn’t curse or throw things or hit, but he does drink, a lot. And he also ... broods, I guess. Dolores calls them his “dark moods.” Sullivan calls them “being a lazy asshole.” I can see how both interpretations are correct.
When he’s brooding, P.J. has two tendencies: he remains for hours in the frayed ivory wingback chair in the living room, and he says nasty, true things. Once I came over to get Sullivan so we could go cruise the streets by the college to eyeball hot undergrads, and as we left, his father told Sullivan that he’d been an accident. That he and his mother never meant to have a baby so many years after his older brothers, and that if P.J. had known back then that he’d be supporting a kid when he was sixty he would’ve wrapped the cord around Sullivan’s neck when Sullivan came out.
It’s a pretty terrible thing to say, looking back on it.
But his father said it in that joking way that guys do, so that you can’t be sure if they’re just trying to be funny. We both knew that he wasn’t trying to be funny. But because he said it that way, I couldn’t get properly defensive on Sullivan’s behalf.
Sullivan never got angry, either, no matter what P.J. said, whether he said that Sullivan had a monkey’s face or that he was destined for prison. Sullivan would just get glib and high-strung. I kind of liked him, actually, when he was keyed up like that, because when he was, he got really funny and very, very good when we played music, but it wasn’t a good idea to let him drive. Because when he was like that he drove too fast and too far, and once, we ended up near Philly with a tenner in my pocket and a quarter tank of gas, and we both had to dig under the seats for change to have enough gas to get back. And we laughed like crazy people and busted illegally through one toll booth because we didn’t have the change, and Sullivan was wild and high as a kite and never said a thing about his father. And I didn’t say anything, either, because I didn’t want to ruin his mood with that crap.
So we were the wild, brilliant punk gods of Alexandria, and we never said anything about Sullivan’s family. I didn’t want anything to change.
(I know, okay? I know.)
***
Sullivan kept getting better. He was a genius on that fiddle, man. At school, he played it as a violin, and he did the shock-and-awe thing with dead Europeans like Vivaldi when he was supposed to, but if you wanted to lose yourself, you asked him for a reel.
God, he was good.
I used to be jealous of his fiddle. When we were nine, I broke Sullivan’s arm with a baseball bat from his brother’s room. He’d been practicing his fiddle all summer, and I had come over to confront him about it, and we’d fought. I hadn’t meant to break his arm.
I’d meant to break his hand.
Sullivan told his parents that we’d been wrestling and that he’d fallen on the headboard of his bed. His father called him a clumsy little bastard. I didn’t argue. Later, I drew a picture of Cú Chulainn on Sullivan’s cast, and he told me that I owed him a broken bone, someday. I knew it was true.
This is the way that Cú Chulainn got his name: when he was young, he killed the guard dog of Culain out of self defense, and Culain got all snively and sad over the brute’s death, so Cú Chulainn promised to guard his castle in the place of the dog. So he changed his name and became the hound of Culain.
After I broke his arm, I told Sullivan that we ought to change our names, like Cú Chulainn changed his name after killing the hound. Sullivan said he was going to be just Sullivan, no Patrick. I said I was going to be Bryant, after my favorite guitarist’s last name. We spat and swore on it.
***
Usually it is me that goes looking for Sullivan. I’m not saying he never comes over to my house before we head out to make trouble, but I know I’m the needy one. Plus Dolores makes killer peanut butter cookies (my mom’s allergic to peanuts, which should be a felony) and there’s always the chance that I can pinch some when I drive over. But one sticky summer evening, as I am cleaning the garage (even punk gods have chores) and my kid brothers are kicking ball and riding their bikes in the street because Mom told them not to, I hear their joyous cry:
“Sulllllivan!”
And there he is, striding down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, striding fast in that way that tells me that tonight he will be playing like the devil. His fiddle case is strapped over his shoulder. I leave the lawn mower orphaned in the middle of the garage and come out to meet him. My kid brothers are riding their bikes around him in circles.
“Hi,” I say, wiping my greasy hands on my pants. I smell like rocket fuel.
Sullivan’s eyes have a hooded look. He stands there, hands still stuffed in his pockets, and he says, in a dangerous way, “Let’s go to Mullen’s.”
Let me tell you something about Mullen’s. It’s a pub, the sort of pub that is legendary, that hosts sessions every Thursday night. A session, or a seisún, if you want to be all Irish and snobby about it, is basically a pissing contest for Irish musicians. Okay, it’s not really. A real session is supposed to be about a bunch of Irish traditional musicians jamming together, playing common tunes and having a great time. But the session at Mullen’s, which is the best in D.C., isn’t like that. It’s about who can play the fastest and who can sing the highest and who can say you play like cow shit in Irish. It’s an elitist club for Irish music geeks, and both of us want desperately to be in it, just to say we are.
“Ha,” I say, even though it is clear from the way Sullivan is just standing there, oblivious to the bikes circling him, that he isn’t joking.
A year and a half ago, before I had my full license, my dad had driven us to Mullen’s when we heard they had a rocking session. We’d been to a couple of lousy ones at other pubs, all old drunk men squeezing accordions and singing “Danny Boy,” so we were psyched to find a good one. Once we got there, though, and found the session in the back of the pub, we hadn’t even gotten to take out our instruments. Lesley Nolan, the bastard fiddle player who leads the session, paused between tunes to chew out a concertina player who missed the B part on “The Apples in Winter,” telling him to get out of the pub before he embarrassed himself. Then he noticed us standing there, hopeful with our instrument cases, and he snarled at us, “the session’s closed to new players.”
We’d popped back in a few times since then, lingering at the door to listen, but it was the same old regulars, whipping along with such proficiency between sets that they had all played so often that the seams between tunes were invisible. The only time we saw anyone new was when they let in that new bodhrán player, but I heard he played for a pro band back in Chicago, so he didn’t have to prove anything.
But for us, Mullen’s stayed out of reach. We were relegated to open mic nights and college bars. Bookstores, cafés, sidewalks, train stations. We were good, good, good, but we never even got the chance to show what we had at Mullen’s. Even watching the musicians of the Mullen’s session talk and laugh together, conversation for no one else in the pub, rubbed my hairs the wrong way. They could all screw their traditional selves, that’s what I thought. Pompous Mullen’s and their club. The lot of them and a bus token would get you a ride.
Now, standing i
n my driveway, Sullivan says, “It’s time.” He jerks his chin up and I see that his eyes are wild and intense. To not play with him tonight, somewhere, would be a crime. I can talk him out of Mullen’s on the way.
“I’ll get Cú Chulainn,” I reply.
***
At first, it is not Them. It is She.
She is beautiful. When I first saw her, I thought she was too old for Sullivan, though when I looked again, I couldn’t say why I thought that. She makes my chest feel strange—when I first met her, I thought, so this is what heartsick means. She made me feel ... wanting. Not like wanting a specific person or thing. It was that I wanted everything, anything that I couldn’t have, everything out of reach.
With the benefit of crystal-clear hindsight, I think I knew, right off, that she was no ordinary girl.
What I definitely knew was this: when I saw the way she looked at Sullivan, that first night, the ground beneath our friendship felt suddenly fragile. It was the first time I considered the idea that our ascendancy to punk god status might not be as inevitable as I had thought.
And I saw him look back, his eyebrow quirked, thinking.
She scared me for so many reasons.
***
So here we are at Mullen’s, because I couldn’t talk Sullivan out of it, and we’re heading back through the building towards the session, because Sullivan is high on his mood and can’t be talked out of it. The pub is full of cigarette smoke and the scent of a decade’s worth of spilled beer. It is hot as the Dominican Republic outside the pub and several degrees warmer than that inside. I’m already sweating. We do the perp walk past the bar, and the heads turn to watch us, expressions curious at best or sardonic at worst. We’re young and unfamiliar, and we’re carrying instrument cases. Last year, I ducked my head and stared at the floor as I walked past the bar stools, but this year is different. We are different now, Sullivan and I. I stare back at the onlookers and Sullivan gives one of them the finger.
As we approach the back room, I can pick out the tune of the reel they’re playing—“The Hare in the Heather”—and it’s clipping along nicely. Maybe a little too fast to be really sexy, but hey, that’s how some people roll. Last year, this was the bit where we’d come in and hung at the side of the room, waiting for a pause between tunes to ask Lesley if we could sit down.
This time, Sullivan has already pulled his case in front of him and partially unzipped it by the time he strides into the back room, like it’s a weapon case and he’s a Mafia hitman about to pull out his Tommy gun and waste everyone. In a way that’s true. His fiddle is a weapon. He draws it out in the space of a breath. Half of the session players have their backs to him, unaware of our presence, and the other half hesitate slightly when they see him. But they don’t stop. It would take more than us to stop a set in midplay.
Sullivan draws his bow across his strings and it wails a long, slow note from a high, high E down to the E that begins the measure they are playing. It’s a battle cry, that note. He rips into “The Hare in the Heather” with them. He doesn’t wait for permission. He doesn’t move from his place just inside the door. He just hauls ass on his fiddle, it singing loud and sweet and fast, rolls falling from his finger like a bird calling to the heavens.
I sure as hell am not leaving him there on his own, so out comes Cú Chulainn—no time to really tune, though the B string could afford to come up a bit—and then I am half-strumming, half-fingerpicking my way along with him. The strings sound watery and clear under my pick. All of us playing together sounds like something you’d buy off a rack. It sounds like nostalgia made flesh.
At the end of the reel, everyone else stops playing and Lesley drops his fiddle from his shoulder. He gives Sullivan a look which clearly means okay, now stop, you pissing usurper, I’m going to kill you, but Sullivan doesn’t stop playing. He charges into another reel, and I follow him, counterpoint my swagger to his sweetness, and then let his fiddle chastise my guitar into submission. We two are louder than all the other session players combined. We fill the room. We fill the pub. Sullivan is sawing away so hard that there are loose hairs floating from his bow. I am sneaking a bit of sly tuning in between riffs, my hand snaking up to twist a peg to brighten my B string. Sullivan buys me time with some dirty bowing—the bow goes scuff, scuff, scuff on his fiddle like someone laughing in time with the music. People have come in to stand behind him in the doorway to listen. It is wild and brilliant, everything that the fever in his eyes had promised before.
We come to the end of the set—Sullivan doesn’t have to tell me we’re done, I know it, because we’ve jammed together so often that his fiddle and my guitar are nearly one instrument—and we stop.
Lesley Nolan looks at Sullivan and I. He’s a square, gray-haired man, sharp corners and deep set eyes. Beside him the bodhrán player is surrounded by a cloud of smoke from a cigarette that dangled from his lips even while he was playing the drum. There’s a long pause, during which the accordion player takes a mouthful of beer. We can all hear him swallow.
“Sit down,” Lesley says.
Sullivan says, “what?” although he knows perfectly well what Lesley said.
“Sit down,” Lesley says again. And to the others, “make some room for them.”
The others shift and push around on the chairs and the corner booth. The table in front of them is a mess of full and half-full beer glasses; the glasses are jostled together, impossible to tell whose is whose. There are hands shaken, names exchanged (I remember none of them), we are brought sodas by a waitress who doesn’t ask to see our licenses.
“Patrick Sullivan,” Lesley says, as if trying it out.
Sullivan says, “Just Sullivan. And this is Bryant. Black.”
“And you want to play some tunes,” Lesley says.
“That’s all we want,” Sullivan says.
Something draws my attention to the doorway, then, and that’s when I see her for the first time. She’s standing at the threshold, and like I said, the first idea I get of her is that she is a lot older than she really looks. I only watch her for a moment—her hair is light, light gold and her eyes are the color of my father’s blue work shirts, and she is beautiful in a way that hurts. She’s so out of place that it is unsettling. Or dis—discomfiting? Is that a word? Sullivan uses forty-point words like that and I try to remember to use them to make them my own. Anyway, I feel discomfited, if it is a word, with her standing there and Sullivan looking at her. Then someone says, “Bryant?” and the next time I think to look, she’s long gone.
***
Sullivan calls me that night, at four-oh-seven in the morning. The phone doesn’t wake my parents since it only rings in my room. I have held my good grades ransom and one of the concessions my parents had to agree to was a personal phone line. (My father said, “ I thought I only had to worry about multiple phone lines if I had girly girl daughters” ).
Sullivan’s voice is hushed and it’s clear he’s come down from his musical high of earlier. “You sleeping?”
“Never,” I reply. “You?”
Sullivan thinks this over. “That was something, wasn’t it, at Mullen’s.”
“Something? That was nothing,” I say. “They had it coming a long time. You could play circles round Lesley Nolan.”
“Ha,” Sullivan says, but I can tell he’s pleased. He is silent again, but I don’t hang up. Hours we’ve spent like this, on the phone in the short hours of the night, a dozen words exchanged over the course of a few hours. Sometimes it’s just enough to know you’re not alone with your thoughts.
Still, I have no deep thoughts to keep me awake and so sleep pulls at me. I am halfway dreaming, halfway to Mullen’s pub again in my head, when Sullivan says, “I asked a girl for her number.”
I open my eyes and watch the lights from a passing car stripe across my bedroom ceiling; it’s still hot and the windows are open and I can hear the engine become louder and then softer. “Come again?” I say, because I am not sure if he’s really sp
oken or if it was a Sullivan in my dream.