“I know,” I replied.
“Charles doesn’t want me to go, thinks I’ll put him off,” she said, smiling.
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Anyway, it’s the same night a touring company of Dancing at Lughnasa is coming to Denver and I hardly ever get to go to the theater. Robert can’t go. It’s a big hit and it’s about Ireland. I thought, I mean, I wondered if you wouldn’t mind escorting me. I don’t want to go alone. I have two tickets. And I thought, because it was about Ireland, you’d be interested.”
“Of course,” I said, stunned.
“Thanks,” she said, and left the room without another word.
I shuddered. Hot and cold. She had me jumping through hoops. Intentionally or not.
To compound it, she didn’t come into the office at all for the next few days. In fact, I didn’t see her again until I met her outside the theater in a rented tuxedo. I was there twenty minutes early. She was late. A limo dropped her off.
She looked incredible in a slightly risqué, low-cut black dress and heels. She had had her hair done, too, pulled back and pleated and curled over on itself. Perfumed, bedecked with pearls over an impressive cleavage, she could have been going to the bloody Oscars or just a dinner party next door. My dinner jacket was old and too long in the sleeves and judging from the other patrons I was woefully overdressed.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she said.
“Not at all,” I replied.
“I’m glad to get out, I’d be worried about Charles all evening,” she said.
“Sure.”
“You’re not nervous, are you?”
“I’m not nervous. Why would I be nervous?”
“Don’t you get nervous for the performers? Hoping they’ll hit their lines and their marks?”
I shook my head. We went into the show.
The audience said “Ssshhh” as the lights went down.
The actors. The play. Amber’s bare arm next to mine. I hardly paid the story any attention at all. The only thing I noticed were the worst Irish accents I’d heard outside of an Irish Spring commercial. It went on for a long time.
The audience liked it, though, and there were four curtain calls. Amber clapped with the best of them.
We filed outside.
Amber wanted to walk home. She was very happy and it was a gorgeous night.
We walked south along Sixteenth and despite the play, despite the lovely evening, despite the champagne cocktails at intermission, Amber was talking about Charles.
“You can imagine how excited he was, he won’t be on television or anything like that, but it’s a real honor to be asked to speak, bigwigs are going to be there, Robert Dornan, Alexander Haig, he’s on the bill right after Newt Gingrich.”
“Great.”
“Charles, naturally, is diametrically the opposite. He represents the moderate wing, you know. He called me this afternoon, very excited. Of course, he’s been to Aspen a million times, but he’s not a natural public speaker.”
“Maybe you should have gone with him,” I said.
“He thinks it will be worse if I’m in the audience, better in front of a bunch of strangers, he says.”
“I don’t see Charles as the nervous type,” I said.
“Oh, you see, that’s where you’re wrong, Alexander, he’s extremely shy, he’s very much like Robert in that respect. He’s quite introverted. In many ways, it’s all a front, his whole persona. He does it to get the best out of people. Really, he’s very sensitive, shy. ’Course, you must keep that to yourself.”
“Of course I will,” I said indignantly.
We talked a little about the play and the neighborhood. On Pennsylvania Street, she pointed out the fancy nursing home where her mother stayed. A big, white, modern, soulless building.
“Charles pays for everything,” she whispered reverentially.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“He flew her in from Knoxville. It’s one of the finest homes in the state, she gets the best of care, it’s so sad,” she said, her voice breaking a little.
“It is,” I agreed. “Alzheimer’s is the cruelest way to go.”
“I can barely bring myself to visit, once a week is about all I can manage,” she said, overcome by sadness.
That topic had killed the conversation, and we walked in silence the rest of the way to her front door.
I wished her a good night.
“Oh, come up for a quick drink,” she said, slurring her words slightly and frowning a little at herself. Tipsy from the walk and the aftereffects of champagne, I assumed. She tapped in her security code, the cast-iron gate swung open; I followed her inside.
“What a night,” she said.
“Aye.”
“I wish Charles could have been there, it’s always the way, isn’t it, everything always happens at the same time,” she said.
“Yeah, life is like that,” I agreed.
“Do you want a drink?” she asked.
I didn’t, but I said, “Anything.”
“Charles has a collection of single malts, I don’t know a thing about whisky, would you like one?” she asked.
“I suppose in Tennessee you were all drinking bourbon?” I asked.
“What?”
“You know, because you’re next to Kentucky, Jack Daniel’s, that kind of thing,” I said.
“Yeah, well, we weren’t big drinkers in my family. My father, well, he was a recovering alcoholic, you know, we didn’t really allow it in the house…. Anyway, it doesn’t bother me, do you want a whisky?”
“Ok.”
If she wasn’t accustomed to alcohol, that explained how she could be tipsy. But why mention this out of the blue? Christ, maybe she was in a confessional mood. What else did she want to talk about? Maybe more about shy, introverted Charles? I would have to go softly-softly.
“Do you want anything in it? Ice or water?” she asked.
“No, nothing, thank you.”
She brought me a glass, smiled innocently, happily.
I chastened myself. No, she hardly seemed to be breaking under the strain of angst about a double murder. Maybe I was overanalyzing everything. You’re not supposed to do that, you’re supposed to get the information first, then collate it, and then think about it. Not leap to conclusions on inadequate facts. I relaxed, sniffed the whisky glass. Peaty. I took a sip: peaty with a seaweed tinge and a sugary harshness. From Islay or Jura.
“How is it?” she asked.
I noticed that she hadn’t poured one for herself.
“It’s good, it’s from the Inner Hebrides, you can tell because of the peaty aftertaste.”
She removed her pearls and put them on a sideboard. She kicked her shoes off and sat on the leather reclining chair next to the sofa. She really was extraordinary looking. Beautiful in a way that Irish girls aren’t. Healthy, sunny, fresh. She was the whole of America. Her big wide smile, her golden hair, her long legs. Even more attractive now that the thoughts of her poor mother had exposed her a little to me.
Her fingers tapped on the leather arm of the chair.
I got up, poured her a glass of whisky to see if she would drink it.
She sniffed it and took a big sip.
“Oh, Alex, that was a lovely play, Ireland sounds very romantic. Charles went there when he traveled around the world.”
“Yeah, he told me, he went to Dublin,” I said.
“Oh, yes, of course, he went everywhere. I’ve never even left America, if you don’t count Puerto Rico,” she said wistfully.
“And you don’t count Puerto Rico, because it’s still part of America,” I said with a grin.
“Yes, I suppose it is, isn’t it. What is it? It’s not a state, is it?”
“It’s a colony,” I said.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said dismissively.
“It is,” I insisted.
“No, I don’t think we have any colonies,” she said dreamily, her mind clea
rly on something else.
“You do, and Puerto Rico’s one of them, you got it from Spain, I think,” I said.
She bit her finger and looked at me.
“You know, Alex, when we first went out campaigning in Englewood, that night of the fire, the first time we’d talked really, apart from the interview, I was very impressed with that thing you said.”
“To the policeman?”
“No, when we talked to that dreadful woman. You said that thing about African Americans.”
“I honestly don’t remember what you’re talking about,” I said.
“You said that African Americans had invented jazz and blues and rock and done lots of things,” she said.
“Oh, I stole that from somewhere, I’m sure, it’s hardly an original thought,” I said.
“Yes, but clearly you have the sentiment, don’t you? You believe that. I mean, well, you know what I mean,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” I said, laughing, and looked at her legs crossing themselves, her hand fixing her dress.
“No, of course not, I’m not saying it very well. In fact, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just mean that you, you have real empathy. Does that make sense?”
I examined her. What was she doing? What did she mean by that? Was she complimenting me by an unspoken comparison to someone else? Was she really talking about me, or talking about herself? Maybe in a roundabout way she was trying to tell me something about Charles. Charles is not like this. He is not like you and me. Charles is cold, single-minded. Charles is a—
“Is it because you grew up in Northern Ireland, was it very hard living there with all the bombings and everything?” Amber asked softly, dripping the words out with precision, brushing the hair from her face. That accent of hers always throwing me. Not New Jersey, not the South, not Boston. A gentle echo of Charles’s patrician tones. Slightly affected. She took another drink of his whisky.
“Not that hard, you just got on with things, you got used to being searched going into stores, that kind of thing, people are very adaptable,” I said.
“Did you see any of that bad stuff?”
“Not really,” I lied.
“You didn’t see anything?” she asked, her lips closing into a pout.
“Once when I was a kid they blew up our local toy shop and we got discounted train sets and Lego. They were all fire-damaged, but it was mostly the packaging. Really, it was actually a good thing.”
“Oh, my goodness, they blew up your toy shop? Why would they blow up a toy shop?”
“I don’t know,” I said, studying the reaction on her face, which was sympathetic. Upset for me.
“I bet you saw a lot more than you’re saying,” she said, smiling.
“No, not much.”
“I bet you’re just being brave and stoic like in the play,” she said, scratching at the skin under her gold watch. Taking it off.
“Honestly, it wasn’t that bad,” I said.
“No. I know all about it. That’s why you’re here illegally. That’s why you lied to the police, because you don’t have a green card. I don’t mind. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I know how difficult it must be. I read the papers. Ireland. It’s awful over there.”
“Well, it can be hard,” I agreed.
“It’s what the play was all about. And what a story, huh? Incredible,” she said.
“Yes, I forgot that it was set in Donegal. Donegal is very beautiful. Stark, there’s still some Gaeltachts out there, villages where they still speak Gaelic,” I said.
“Do you speak any Gaelic?”
“No. Well, a little.”
“Go on.”
“An labhraíonn éinne anseo Gaelige?”
“What does that mean?”
“Is there anyone here who really speaks Gaelic?”
“Did you learn that in the Gaeltacht?”
“No, I went to a Protestant school. The Protestant schools teach Latin, the Catholic schools teach Gaelic, I just picked some of the language up from a book. I’m pretty good at languages. The one thing I am good at.”
“Tell me more about yourself,” she said.
“You know everything, you saw my résumé.”
“We both know that was closer to fiction than truth, right?” she said, again with a smile.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“You know, despite his many travels, Charles is hopeless at languages, most Americans are, you know. I have Spanish, though,” she said.
“That’s cool, it’s always good to know a language.”
“I think I’d like to learn Irish, it sounds beautiful.”
“It can be pretty guttural. It’s not beautiful like Italian.”
“Ireland’s nice, though? Donegal, you say, is lovely.”
“It’s really nice, you’ve got the Atlantic Ocean, big, empty beaches, the Blue Stack Mountains, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory on Station Island.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a pilgrimage site, you can wipe away your sins if you go there on a pilgrimage, you walk around the island barefoot and when you’re done you’re free of sin. Seamus Heaney wrote a very famous poem about it.”
“Did you go there?”
“What makes you think I have any sins?” I asked.
She laughed at this. A big sincere laugh. And it wasn’t that funny. She took a sip of the whisky and then another and then she grabbed my glass.
I touched her hand.
She looked at me.
And, oh God, I wanted to kiss her, I wanted to hold her, I wanted to be with her. I wanted her to tell me everything. I knew it would be all right. I wanted her and I wanted to have sex with Charles’s beautiful wife while he was out of town. To punish him.
“Maybe I should go,” I thought and said.
“Oh, don’t go, I was just about to try a different whisky, another glass won’t do me any harm, and I can’t drink alone,” she said.
She poured us both some Laphroaig. The conversation failed. She crossed her legs. Her skirt hiked up a little.
“So, no, I never went to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, it’s only for Catholics, really,” I said.
She looked at me, inspected me. She seemed to make a decision, poured herself some more whisky, added ice, knocked it back. But then said nothing, sat back down on the sofa. And asked dreamily:
“Is Belfast close to Donegal?”
“Geographically close, you know, less than a hundred miles, but the roads are quite bad, so it takes about three hours to get there.”
“And you never went to Carrickfergus, even though it’s only about five miles from Belfast, I checked that on the map.”
I studied her again. Nothing betrayed on her face. No subtlety, no fear, no repression of hidden emotion. Normal.
“No, like I said, I’ve never been to Carrickfergus,” I answered as carefully as if I were a bomb disposal expert, cutting the blue wire, not the red one.
I waited for her to bring up Victoria Patawasti. Was she about to crack? Was she suddenly going to tell me everything because I was a compatriot of the dead girl? Was all this Irish stuff getting to her, filling her with guilt about what she knew? Her lips did not quiver, her eye was steady. No, she wasn’t going to blurt out anything like that, instead she surprised me by saying something quite different:
“I suppose you know you’re very handsome, too skinny, maybe, but very handsome. Tall, dark, and handsome, in fact.”
“How do I reply to that?” I asked, embarrassed despite myself.
“You say thanks for the compliment and then you compliment me. It’s basic civility,” she said.
“Ok. But I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this because you asked me to give you a compliment, I’m saying this because it’s perfectly true. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life. I’m not good at saying things, but you don’t just look beautiful, you have that rare thing that gets said too much, and I’m sort of regretting saying it right now, but the
thing called inner beauty, too. You have it. It’s a purity of spirit, I can just tell that you are both lovely and good. Since I saw you first, I’ve felt bewitched, it’s like that stanza from Yeats, ‘It had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair, who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone and kiss her lips and take her hands…. And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.’”
“That’s incredible,” she gasped, genuinely touched.
I knew half a dozen Yeats poems, all memorized to impress a different girl in a different world. But it had done the trick and I knew I had to deflate the moment, so I finished off the whisky, gave her my best winning smile, and said:
“Yeah, Amber, maybe I’m cynical, but it’s true that when you’ve got an Irish accent and you’re trying to impress a woman and as long as she’s not Irish or a hard-bitten professor of literature then Yeats will generally do the trick. ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ is by far the most popular choice, but I like ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus,’ it’s got that great last line, the chicks love it.”
She looked at me for a second, fury on her face, and then I saw that it was mock fury and then she started to laugh and laugh. Laugh so much tears were running down her face. Relief? A huge pent-up flood of emotions suddenly let loose? I was going to ask if she was ok, but before I could, she was standing up and she was reaching out her hand to mine, and I gave her my hand and she pulled me to my feet and kissed me. Hard, passionate, angry kisses. Her mouth was hungry with desire. She was drowning, she was suffocating, she was dying, she was living again through me.
I carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. I pulled her dress down on one shoulder and kissed her arm and the top of her breast. There was a scar on the shoulder, a tiny imperfection in all that beauty. It made her more desirable, not less.
She wriggled out of the dress and undid her bra and ripped off my jacket and shirt. And still having my wits about me, I dimmed the lights, to hide the track marks. She looked up from the bed.
“I need you, Alexander, I need you, now, tonight,” she moaned.
Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) Page 24