Coming Home for Christmas

by Patricia Scanlan

  ‘Are ya OK there, Alison?’ he said in his broad, rich brogue.

  ‘I thought it might be JJ. I was just going to ask might he be able to stick a curtain rail up for me? Do you think he’d mind?’ she ventured, uncharacteristically hesitant.

  ‘Yerra not at all, girl. Show me where you want it and I’ll sthick it up for you.’ His accent reminded her so much of home she felt a pang of homesickness.

  ‘It was just here over the arch, to close up the bedroom bit,’ she explained, leading him into the studio. He studied the archway and reached up and gave it a tap.

  ‘Hmmm, thought it might be plasterboard, but it’s fairly solid,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘You get the pole you want and I’ll do that for ye no problem.’

  ‘Thanks a million and please charge me the going rate,’ she said hastily.

  ‘Arrah that won’t take ten seconds, woman, would ye whist about the going rate.’ He laughed, showing a flash of white teeth through his beard.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to take advantage. You don’t know me,’ she demurred.

  ‘If I wasn’t happily married, you could take advantage of me any time,’ he slagged as he made his way down her narrow hall. ‘Here’s my card. Let me know when ye have the pole and I’ll sort it for ye.’ He handed her a cream business card. ‘See ye.’ And then he was gone, pounding down the stairs until the front door closed and there was silence.

  ‘Fintan McManus, Builder’s Providers’, she read, with an address in Queens. And a cell and landline number. She’d get the pole tomorrow, it would give her something to do, she decided, yawning. She was really tired all of a sudden. It was late in the afternoon, the snow was whispering down past her window and the leaden sky was darkening the apartment. She yawned again. Usually she was full of energy, but this lassitude, this weariness, had happened several times in the past few weeks, since the shock of being made unemployed.

  One of her friends, Stella, who was a psychotherapist, had told her it was normal under the circumstances. ‘Losing your job is a bereavement of sorts. Your whole psyche is in upheaval. You’re traumatized. Your sleep patterns are gone to pot. The mind and body need to adjust and accept this new and unaccustomed situation, so when the tiredness comes, give in to it and rest, it’s not laziness, Alison,’ Stella had insisted when Alison had assured her she wouldn’t be caught dead taking a nap in the afternoon.

  Today, though, she was just going to work through her guilt and lie down and flick through a magazine for ten minutes. She’d slept so badly the previous night in the strange bed and unfamiliar environment, it was no wonder she was tired. She kicked off her shoes and curled on top of the bed, pulled a soft Tommy Hilfiger throw over her, and began to flick through Vanity Fair, her favourite magazine. The studio was lovely and warm, the lamplight casting soft shadows on the walls and, outside, the snow fell steadily and unrelentingly, blanketing the city. The noise of the traffic was gently muffled, and she fell fast asleep.

  A knocking on the door woke her, and she shot up, dazed and disorientated. The clock on her bedside locker showed it was after seven. She’d been asleep for more than three hours. She jumped off the bed, ran her fingers through her hair, hurried out to the door and unlocked the various locks.

  ‘Did I wake you up?’ JJ stood there with a cream curtain pole in one hand and a tool kit in the other. ‘Oopps! Sorry – maybe you have someone with you? Fintan told me about your curtain-pole conversation, and I was passing a hardware store on the way home and stopped and got this. It will go with the colour we painted all the apartments in, if your friend hasn’t redecorated,’ he said briskly. ‘But listen, I can come back another time.’ He turned to go.

  ‘No, no, there’s no one here. I fell asleep for a few minutes, didn’t sleep so good in a strange bed last night, and Melora didn’t change the colours.’ She stifled a yawn, stepping back to let him in. She was mortified at having been caught snoozing.

  ‘The same fate probably awaits me tonight,’ JJ said. ‘Although I do have my own bed with me. But the creaks and rattles in the building and the noise outside will be different to what I’m used to. It’s always like that at first when you move.’

  ‘That’s exactly it. And I had a doorman before as well. It’s that extra bit of security that you get used to. Did you live in an apartment too?’ she asked as he followed her in.

  ‘Nope. I had a house in Rockaway, and I’ve sold it to buy the place I was telling you about.’

  ‘A house! You will find it a bit different then,’ Alison remarked. ‘Are you married? Do you have kids?’

  ‘Was married. No kids,’ he said succinctly.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. Was married . . . Did that mean he was divorced? she wondered.

  ‘Right, where do you want this? Is it OK for you?’ He was all business-like.

  ‘It’s fine, fine. Thanks so much for going to so much trouble.’ She wished she’d had a chance to brush her hair. She knew she must look a sight. ‘I was just going to hang a curtain here,’ she said, flustered, as she led him through the alcove, aware of the tossed blanket and pillows and the magazine face down on the bed. How lazy he must think her. It was so unfair. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d fallen asleep on the bed on a weekday. And why was she so bothered anyway about what he might think? What was wrong with her?

  ‘This won’t take a jiffy. Can I stand on one of your kitchen chairs, or are they delicate little things?’ JJ asked.

  ‘I’m not in the posh apartment like you. I don’t have kitchen chairs. My kitchen’s just a little galley,’ she reminded him, throwing her eyes up to heaven as she regained some equilibrium.

  ‘Sorry, forgot you were slumming it,’ he teased.

  ‘How about the ottoman at the end of the bed?’ she suggested.

  ‘Grand job.’ He bent down and untied his shoes. He had lovely thick hair, Alison noted, and he was very broad-shouldered. Even in his stocking feet he was over six feet tall. He was wearing a light-blue shirt tucked into his jeans and had a lean, easy grace about him as he slid the ottoman over to the arch and stood up on it.

  ‘If you just hold these for me, I’d be obliged,’ he said, handing her some screws and rawl plugs. He took a slim, fold-up wooden ruler from his hip pocket and made a quick measurement.

  Nice ass, Alison thought, as he stretched to the left a little. He made two discreet pencil marks, then got down and picked up his drill. ‘Just a little bit of – dust is that OK?’

  ‘No probs.’

  Five minutes later, her curtain pole hung neatly across the top of the arch and he was packing away his drill. ‘Ummm, how much do I owe you, JJ?’ Alison inserted a note of firm authority in her voice. Fintan might have offered to do the job for nothing, but JJ had gone and bought the curtain pole as well.

  ‘Have you eaten yet?’ He glanced up at her as he tied his shoelaces.

  ‘Er . . . no,’ she replied, wondering what had that to do with the cost of buying and putting up a curtain pole.

  ‘Right, me neither. How about ordering in a Chinese, there’s a really good one a few blocks down that we used when we were working on this place. You can pay for dinner,’ he suggested casually. ‘I have a bottle of Bin 555 upstairs.’

  ‘Well . . . well, sure if that’s what you want.’ She was completely thrown.

  ‘It would be kinda neighbourly. I don’t know any of the other inmates and I wouldn’t have to eat on my own here the first night, and it might help you get over your “paying for the job” fixation!’ he said easily.

  Alison laughed. ‘Melora said the people here are nice enough, except for some old bag on the second floor who’s a bit nosy.’

  ‘Ah yes, that would be the redoubtable Mrs Wadeski, who has already taken me to task about the noise I was making arranging my furniture. A formidable woman indeed, and with a moustache that would put a bristle brush to shame.’ He grinned.

  ‘God, you’re awful,’ Alison snorted, laughing.

  ‘So how about I put t
his stuff away, get the number of the Oriental Orchid for you, bring down the wine, and we order dinner. The house-special chow mein is particularly good.’

  ‘OK. I haven’t been bossed around this much since I left home,’ she retorted, feeling she should make some sort of a stand.

  ‘It’s good for ya, Dunwoody. Stick on the kettle while we’re waiting, I’d murder a cuppa.’

  ‘OK, Connelly, I’ll let you away with it this once,’ she warned as he finished tying his laces and stood up.

  ‘Leave the teabag in the mug for me, I don’t want wishy-washy tea’ was his parting shot as he left with his tool kit.

  Alison stood under the arch shaking her head. Her life had taken on a peculiarly surreal quality. This time yesterday she was surrounded by boxes in a building where she knew no one, in a strange part of town and feeling absolutely isolated and alone. And in the space of twelve hours, her little studio was cosy and comfortable, if somewhat bursting at the seams, and she was hungry and going to have a meal with a tall, good-humoured Irishman who bossed her around like nobody’s business – and she’d had a long afternoon nap to boot. It was one of the strangest days she’d had since she’d come to New York, but for the first time since she lost her job the terrifying flutters of panic and apprehension she’d been experiencing had faded somewhat.

  She ran a brush through her hair, squirted on some 212, slipped into her loafers, straightened the bed and went out to the kitchen to organize plates, glasses and cutlery. The kitchen had a small counter that doubled as a worktop and two stools sat against it. They could eat there or in on the sofa, side by side. She decided to set places at the counter. Side by side on the sofa was too intimate with a relative stranger, although she had to admit JJ was very easy company and she felt relaxed with him for some odd reason. Probably because she was a bit vulnerable at the moment and it was nice to be with someone from home, she decided. She boiled the kettle, stuck a teabag in the mug and filled it with water.

  His sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the door made her smile. JJ wasn’t a doorbell man, it seemed. ‘Here’s the menu, see what you want. I’m having the spring rolls and the house-special chow mein.’ Her guest handed her the menu. ‘Give me a corkscrew and I’ll open the wine to let it breathe while you’re making your mind up.’

  ‘How high exactly would you like me to jump?’ she said tartly, and he laughed.

  ‘Don’t mind me, my dear woman. I had three older sisters and I had to stand up for myself. Old habits die hard.’

  ‘Is that right? So you’re spoilt rotten then,’ Alison observed. ‘Do you still want the tea if you’re having wine?’

  ‘If it’s no trouble,’ he said with pretended docility. ‘I love the tay, as they say at home.’

  ‘Oh God, I’ve no sugar,’ she suddenly remembered.

  ‘I brought my own,’ he said smugly, handing her a bag. ‘You might as well keep it here in case I pop in for the odd cuppa!’ He put three heaped spoonfuls into the mug.

  ‘Hey! That’s way too much.’ She was shocked.

  ‘But lovely sweet tay.’ He grinned, pouring in some milk and taking a slug. ‘There’s nothing in the world to beat a decent cup of tea. Hurry on and pick something – the stomach’s falling out of me.’

  He opened the wine as she perused the menu; she decided on some prawn toast and the shredded duck. ‘You order and give your number and then you’ll be on their computer,’ he advised, sitting on the stool across from her, long legs stretched out in front of him.

  ‘I don’t intend staying here for long,’ she retorted. ‘I want my apartment back and I want a job.’

  ‘What’s for you won’t pass you by,’ he said calmly.

  ‘My mother says that to me and my sister all the time.’ Alison smiled at the old saying as she picked up the phone to call in the order.

  Two hours, a Chinese takeaway and half a bottle of red wine later, she was sprawled on one end of the sofa, with JJ at the other end, and they were both yawning their heads off.

  ‘God, woman, you’re contagious. Stop yawning, for heaven’s sake. I’m going to my bed, I’ve to be up at six.’ He hauled himself up off the sofa and stood looking down at her. ‘Very nice evening, neighbour.’

  ‘Enjoyed it myself,’ she reciprocated, standing up to let him out.

  ‘Good luck on the job-hunting front,’ he said as he stood at the door.

  ‘Fingers crossed. Sleep well in your new gaff.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ He smiled. ‘Goodnight, Dunwoody.’

  ‘Goodnight, Connelly, and thanks,’ she said warmly.

  ‘See ya around,’ he said, and then he was loping down the landing and taking the stairs two at a time. Alison closed the door and put on the three locks. She’d really enjoyed her evening, she mused as she carried their dishes to the sink and put the takeaway cartons in the refuse bin. They’d chatted, mostly about home, and the time had gone by so fast she couldn’t believe it was almost eleven. She heard the front door opening downstairs, and a door on the ground floor opening a few minutes later. The tenant above her had had a bath and the water was gurgling down the pipes. Last night she’d been tense and agitated when she got into bed. Tonight was different, and it wasn’t just the wine, she reflected as she switched off the lights in the kitchen and sitting room, swiftly undressed, pulled on her PJs, slid into bed and heaved the duvet up over her ears. Tonight she was more relaxed because she knew JJ was upstairs, and it was nice to have someone she knew in the building. She’d made a new friend today. Someone she felt very comfortable with. Why had his marriage broken up? she wondered. Had he done the dirty on his wife, or had his wife done the dirty on him? He seemed a very decent bloke, the type of man her mother would like. Alison smiled in the dark. Esther hadn’t been too taken with Jonathan when she’d met him for the first time on her last visit.

  ‘He takes a lot of care over his appearance, doesn’t he?’ she’d remarked when Jonathan had apologized for keeping them late for drinks because his manicurist had been running late.

  Somehow or other, Alison couldn’t imagine JJ Connelly going to a manicurist, although she’d noted that his nails were cut short and were very clean. No, she decided, there was nothing of the metrosexual about her neighbour upstairs. He was a real, solid, down-to-earth man with a great sense of humour and a tasty ass in his blue jeans. And handy to have around, which was more than could ever be said for her non-exclusive boyfriend, who wouldn’t know one end of a hammer from another, she thought in amusement, wondering why he hadn’t phoned.

  Five minutes later, she was fast asleep, and she slept so well she never even heard the front door downstairs close at six the following morning, as a tall, lean, blue-eyed man glanced up at her window with a hint of a smile before getting into his jeep and heading off to work.

  Chapter 7

  ‘It’s an eggbox!’ Jonathan Bailey gazed around studio 1A, a mixture of dismay and disdain darkening his fine-boned, thin, angular face.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ Alison exclaimed defensively.

  ‘I’ve been in bigger hotel rooms!’ he scoffed, peering into the tiny kitchen. ‘God, look at the size of your fridge, you wouldn’t fit half a dozen bottles of champers in there.’

  ‘Oh, give it a rest, Jon,’ Alison said wearily. ‘I know it’s small, but it’s all I can afford – I’m jobless, remember. No nice fat salary coming in.’

  It was the day before she was due to fly home, and her boyfriend had arrived back from LA looking tanned and rested. He was going to bring her to dinner in Tsar Ivan’s, one of her favourite Russian restaurants, and then they were going clubbing in Recession, a new hip club on the Upper East Side. He had a Town Car waiting outside. He was dressed in a grey Armani suit with a ruby-red shirt open at the neck. A real LA playboy outfit, she reflected as she slipped on a black cashmere coat that had cost an arm and a leg and picked up a cream-silk hand-painted scarf to wrap around her neck. She was wearing cream Jimmy Choos and carried a cream diamanté-studded clutch
. Her hair was piled up on her head, with loose tendrils falling around her face, and her make-up was impeccably applied, the dark, smoky eyeliner emphasizing her wide green eyes. A familiar rat-a-tat-tat at the door made her jump.

  ‘Hey, Dunwoody, open up,’ a deep voice called.

  Jonathan looked around, startled. ‘Who the hell is that?’

  ‘My upstairs neighbour,’ Alison murmured, amused at the look of shock on his face.

  ‘Bit loud, isn’t he?’ he remarked, as Alison moved past him to open the door.

  ‘Fry-up in 3B, including Clonakilty pudding and Superquinn sausages. Are you interested?’ JJ asked, thumbs hooked in his jean pockets. His eyes slid slowly down over her as he took in her appearance. ‘Going out?’ he enquired, glancing over her shoulder to where Jonathan was standing, frowning.

  ‘Ah yeah. JJ, this is my boyfriend, Jonathan Bailey. Jonathan, this is one of my neighbours, JJ Connelly.’

  ‘Hello, pleased to meet you,’ Jonathan said with polite disinterest.

  ‘Likewise,’ JJ said, gripping the other man’s outstretched hand in a firm handshake. ‘One of the lads I work with came back from Ireland this morning with enough rashers, sausages and puddings to feed the state. Frankie and Fintan are upstairs, and we thought you might fancy a bite to eat with us,’ he explained.

  ‘We’re going out to dinner,’ Jonathan drawled.

  ‘So I see. Just a thought, Alison. Enjoy your evening.’

  ‘It’s a pity, I wouldn’t have minded a few Superquinn sausages,’ she said regretfully. ‘I haven’t had them in yonks. I’m always afraid to bring stuff like that back in case I get caught.’

  ‘Ways and means,’ JJ said lightly.

  ‘Well, thanks for thinking of me, and enjoy it and tell the lads to enjoy it too,’ she said, thinking she wouldn’t have minded going upstairs for a fry-up with the gang.

  ‘Any time. Enjoy your evening. Good to meet you.’ He eyeballed Jonathan, who looked taken aback at the flinty stare.

  ‘We should go. The car’s outside, and our reservations are for seven thirty. The maître d’s got us a table as a favour, this place is booked up weeks in advance,’ Jonathan said loftily.