When Irish Eyes Are Sparkling

by Tom Collins

  Afterwards, taking a breather in the lounge, I waited for my partner to chew me out for the mistakes I’d made while driving. He sat drinking coffee, looking irritated and thoughtful, but he didn’t say anything. The next few calls we got, he drove, instructing me all the time on how to get where, which I guess was reprimand enough.

  In the meantime, I watched him. He was the best EMT-P I’d ever seen. Fast and capable is the name of the game, but he was almost prescient. Someone would look perfectly fine, at least to me; but O’Shaughnessy would kneel, glance into her eyes and say, “We’re taking her to the hospital.” Sure enough, the minute the protesting woman was in and we were on our way, her vitals would start to drop. At the ER the doctor would take one look at the fading patient and say, “You got her here just in time.”

  That, I found myself thinking, is what I want to be able to do; I want to be able to save lives like that.

  Monday was a duplicate of Sunday except that O’Shaughnessy’s argument with Fiona had evidently gone badly. He came down on me like a ton of bricks. I hadn’t felt this uncertain and on edge since my first stint in an ambulance as an inexperienced student. It wasn’t the orders he yelled out at the scene that got to me, it was the tongue-lashing he gave me afterwards. Yes, we’d gotten the man’s heart started, but I should have been faster with the defibrillator. And why hadn’t I known the oxygen was needed before the woman fainted? I knew it wasn’t my fault. He was years ahead of me, and frustrated that I wasn’t yet able to see what he saw so clearly. I got that, but he still made my gut drop whenever I saw his look of displeasure. I didn’t want him to decide I wasn’t worth his time and get me transferred to someone else.

  As no one could work more than two days in a row, I had Tuesday off. I spent it Googling city maps and memorizing roads. I even took the subway to major intersections to get a good look at them.

  Wednesday, and O'Shaughnessy was still in a high dudgeon. I did my best, triple-checking the restocking of the rig, going over every inch after the cleaning crew disinfected it to catch missed areas. I even straightened the straps on the gurney in hopes of anticipating his needs. Still, those critical green eyes spotted the tiniest errors.

  “Damn it, Sutton! Get it right!”

  The other EMTs were giving O’Shaughnessy a wide berth, as if familiar with his boiling temper and the dispatchers glanced my way sympathetically. While lunching in the lounge, one of the mechanics finally gave me the story: O’Shaughnessy had an eight-year-old son that his ex-wife wanted to send to camp rather than to his father for the summer. The two were in a tug-of-war over it. I prayed they would work it out soon and in O’Shaughnessy’s favor, otherwise I was going to end up getting reamed by the man all summer long. For now, I called him “Sir,” kept all my objections and excuses behind my teeth, and did my job. It was the only thing I knew to do when faced with a problem I didn’t have a hope in hell of fixing. Stay calm, keep quiet and wait it out.

  By Thursday morning, however, I was ready to throw in the towel. That day O’Shaughnessy got things settled with his ex-wife. Evidently, the boy wanted to see his dad for the summer and had convinced his mother to give up the idea of camp. For the first time, I saw O’Shaughnessy in a good mood; he even hummed as we drove back from the hospital. At seven o’clock that night, our shift over and two free days ahead of us, O’Shaughnessy turned to me, those green eyes, for once, almost friendly, and said, “Do you like Irish food?”

  “Um…” Honestly, I couldn’t remember having eaten any Irish fare outside of corned beef. “Yes, sir.”

  “Come on then. We’ll take my car.”

  As I didn’t have a car there was no objecting to that. It wasn’t what I’d had in mind for the evening, but this was clearly an olive branch of sorts and as I wanted this man as my mentor for the rest of the year, there was no refusing it.

  “Yes, sir.” I trotted after him.

  “For fuck’s sake, call me Gabe.”

  When I can trust you not to rip my throat out, I thought.

  Twenty minutes later, O’Shaughnessy parked his metallic green, 1962 Plymouth Valiant (complete with whitewall tires no less!) at the curb in front of the Irish Eyes Pub. It was June and the sun was sinking below the horizon, leaving behind summer warmth like a cozy blanket. I smelled the fragrance of boxed flowers and heard the clink of glasses through the open windows. Inside were white-washed walls and dark oak beams, square tables, a stunning, polished brass and mahogany bar, and, along one wall, a large, cold, fireplace. The weekday supper crowd was light, most of them standing or seated at the bar having drinks. I followed O’Shaughnessy in, anxious now, because I didn’t know how to make friendly conversation with him.

  I was glancing about at the place when I came across and locked gazes with those eyes.

  I don’t admit to having a type. I’m an adventurer who will try any kind, so long as they’re male. There is one sort, however, that has a special spot in my heart and gonads: the beanstalk. Lanky, basketball player types. The young man behind the bar, though taller than me, wasn’t really tall enough for that, but he had that lean, long look to him I adored. Long arms, long body, long neck, complete with prominent Adam’s apple.

  He was drizzling honey from a jar into some sort of drink in a whiskey glass and I caught sight of him just as he captured a drip of it on a finger and slipped the golden droplet into his mouth. Oh, my God. My nuts tightened and fire flared up through my groin. A montage of desires flashed through my brain: him sucking honey off my finger, tongue caressing the sensitive fingerprint ridges; me sucking on his tongue, tasting the honey off it, dueling with it; both of us tasting each other’s sticky sweetness from the most sensitive tips of all.

  I swear I groaned aloud.

  All the while, I could feel his eyes on me, coy and playful, bright as those of a cat who’s spotted a very tasty mouse. They were also scarily familiar. In the back of my mind, I shook my head. He was probably straight and thinking of ways to mock me for my interest. Or, if he was a switch-hitter, he was likely the sort to suck a guy dry and leave him drained. A flirt, a cock-tease.

  Gabe had picked out a table, one he seemed to know and favor. I brought myself back to earth and hurried to join him. Menus were already there, held in one of those menu clips. I snagged one and used it to keep my focus away from those eyes. Gabe didn’t bother with the menu; instead he gazed around, as if making sure everything was in place, the same intense look he gave the back of the rig before we got rolling.

  “Lots of choices,” I murmured scanning the entrees, but inside I quailed. What the heck were bangers and champ? And I’d heard of shepherd’s pie but the description didn’t make it sound too appetizing.

  I was leaning toward the fish and chips when Gabe said, “Get what you like. It’s on me.”

  Oh. Shit. It’s wacked, I know. I can stay focused and cool in the middle of a four-car pile-up with people crying and screaming hysterically, but toss me into an unfamiliar social situation and I fall apart. This quiet evening was becoming my definition of a nightmare. Unknown place, unknown food, uncertain partner and I so rarely got treated to dinner that it completely threw me. If he was buying, what should I order? As always, I relied on my stepmother’s advice. The gospel of good manners according to Sandy. I could hear her voice in my head now, reminding me of what to do: “Don’t go for the cheapest thing on the menu, that insults the generosity of your host, but don’t go for what’s expensive either, as that’s just rude.”

  Okay. Scratch the cheap fish and chips, and avoid the expensive steak. Got it.

  A slender young waitress with pink and green hair, and the requisite nose and eyebrow studs came our way. When she passed us by instead of stepping up to our table, Gabe tensed.

  “Christ on a cracker,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “It looks like they’ve switched tables,” he sighed. He didn’t sound upset so much as resigned. Like a man going to a coffee house for a quiet cup of espresso only to fin
d it’s open mike night. “We’ve got my nephew.”

  He’d no sooner finished saying that when said nephew came up. I saw the black, half-apron, the green polo shirt with the embroidered logo, and I knew, even as my eyes went up and up that long body, up that neck with the Adam’s apple, up that beautiful jaw and mischievous mouth, lips still shiny from sucking on honey.

  The large eyes were as green as his uncle’s. Greener. And fixed on me with that same target-practice intensity.

  “Can I do ya?”

  *Liam*

  I stood there, anticipating the sound of his voice and marveling at how he managed to make steel-toed boots look sexy. I’d thought only Jill was capable of that, until now.

  “I feel like I could use some antioxidants,” he murmured. Goose bumps crawled over the insides of my thighs, making my knees wobble for a second. I wished I could sit down. “I’ll have some green tea, iced please.”

  The strangeness of his order counteracted the smooth warmth of his voice to a degree, kicking my brain into action.

  “Antioxidants…riiiiight….” I heard myself say. “I’m sorry, but we don’t carry that.” He finally looked up at me from the menu. I felt like I was sinking into two fiery pools of cognac.

  “See, most people who come in here are more oxidized than the Statue of Liberty,” I indicated Mister O’Brian with the eraser end of my pencil, “and they tend to prefer it that way.” I wrenched my eyes from his, only to end up contemplating his mouth. He had nice lips, perfect for kissing, and they glistened a little as if he’d just licked them.

  “How about a nice, creamy stout?” I suggested, swallowing hard and changing my focus again. His hair ought to be safe, I thought. I thought wrong. All I could see when I looked at his short, honey-red hair was my fingers clutching it as his moist lips wrapped around my now throbbing shaft.

  “Best in town, imported from Ireland!” I barreled on. His eyes crinkled at the corners and I knew that didn’t appeal. “No? Ok, how about Earl Grey? That’s as close as we've got to green tea, if you don’t count Long Island iced tea. Unless you’d like a nice glass of merlot? Plenty of antioxidants in that.” I was blathering and sweating and couldn’t stop myself. I felt sick and elated all at once.

  Uncle Gabe was resting his chin on his fist by now, a pose of impatience I was familiar with. “You could just point him to the drink menu,” he drolled. “Oh, wait. That’d make too much sense.”

  “Just water,” Honeyman put in, “And, um…” he looked over the menu one last time, “the salmon.”

  “Not the corned beef?” I asked, perplexed. “It’s the best in town. We pile it real high and drench it in this rich, sour-cream horseradish sauce—”

  “No thank you.” His smile was polite and, well, indulgent. “As a paramedic, I have to avoid heart attacks.” I gaped at him, speechless. “And I think if I’m going to get any sleep tonight, I’d better be kind to my stomach and avoid the hot stuff…like horseradish sauce.”

  “It’s not that hot,” I hastened to reassure him, “just really creamy with a bit of a bite.”

  He blinked at me.

  “Said he didn’t want it,” my uncle growled, making it clear I wasn’t doing my job right. Uncle Gabe had waited at Irish Eyes back in the Jurassic, and now felt it his duty to critique our performances.

  “Right, sorry,” I apologized, feeling like a doofus.

  Uncle Gabe sighed. “This,” he said to Honeyman, “is my nephew Liam. He’s usually less of a blithering idiot. Usually. Liam, this is my new partner, Oliver Sutton.”

  Oliver…Oh, Oliver…Yes, Oliver, yes…Don’t stop, Ollie, don’t stop, thundered around in my head like an erotic prayer. My stomach muscles contracted, my nuts tightened and what felt like a quart of precum dribbled into my shorts.

  “Grilled salmon…” My voice quivered in imitation of my stomach. I cleared my throat. “Oh, wait, I didn’t tell you about the Green Plate Special, did I?”

  Uncle Gabe scrubbed his face with his palms. “What is it?” he asked in a tone that said he’d given up all hope for my future in restaurant service.

  “Ummm….” I drew a blank.

  “Sometime before closing?” Uncle Gabe prompted. I started to panic until I remembered Erin could tell me.

  “I can find out, I can,” I promised, my voice too loud. I laid my left hand on Oliver’s right shoulder as if I though he would leave before I could get the information. The contact sent a sharp heat racing up my arm to tumble around inside my chest like shards of sunlight. I snatched my hand away and took a couple steps back. Turning to face the bar, I called out, “Erin! What’s the special?”

  “You ate it for dinner, Space Oddity,” he yelled back. He’d been using that nickname so long I didn’t usually notice, but it’d been a while and it seemed to fit more than ever today.

  “Oh, yeah, huh?” I mumbled, trying to remember what I’d eaten half an hour ago as I turned back to face my uncle and his gorgeous partner. I thought hard, knowing the information was in there. Rubbing my forehead, I closed my eyes, thinking if I couldn’t see Oliver he wouldn’t distract me so bad, but it only made it worse. The things he was doing behind my eyelids were not for public consumption.

  “Lamb!” I cried in triumph, making Oliver jump. “Grilled lamb chops with our homemade mint jelly on the side.”

  For the first time that evening, his expression opened and his eyes lit up.

  “That comes on a bed of herb roasted potatoes,” I went on, encouraged, “with ginger glazed, baby carrots.” I gave him a huge smile, feeling proud that I’d managed to retrieve the information.

  He looked back at the menu, as if still undecided.

  “That’s for me,” Uncle Gabe declared. “You should get it too,” he urged Oliver. “Another of my nephews, Erin, he’s the cook. Went to culinary school,” he added with a roll of the eyes at such snobbery, even though he was as proud as any of Erin’s accomplishments. “Knows how to grill a chop to perfection. Try’em. You won’t be sorry.”

  He raised an auburn eyebrow at me as if to say, “See, that’s how it’s done!” I flicked my eyes between the order pad and Oliver, trying to ignore my uncle.

  “Yes,” Oliver cleared his throat a little, “that sounds great. Make it two, please.”

  “How do you want your lamb?”

  “Medium, if you please.”

  “However you want it, is how I please,” I replied, giving him a crooked grin and trying not to sound too suggestive this time. “I’ll be right back with your beverages.”

  I trotted off behind the bar, pulling the order ticket from the pad as I went.

  “Wants to get to sleep tonight?” I snorted to myself. “Should have a beer then.”

  The guy was weird, no doubt, but he was too cute for words, and he had the most intense expression in his eyes all the time and it drew me in like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I realized I finally understood what people were talking about when they said someone has “animal magnetism.” Oliver had it in spades.

  “Two woolies. One charred, one bleating,” I called over the griddle on the other side of the pass through.

  “Oh, did Gabriel come in?” Aunt Rose asked from the back of the kitchen. Uncle Gabe was the only person any of us knew who preferred his lamb well done.

  “Sure did. With his new partner. Named Oliver,” I replied and turned to put their drinks together.

  I snorted again, “Antioxidants…” I shook my head. “Wants to get some sleep tonight? How about a steamin’ hot cup’a Liam? That would cure anyone’s insomnia,” I insisted to no one, grinning like an idiot.

  “A steaming cup of Liam?!” Erin bellowed, sounding incredulous. I jumped about a foot. I hadn’t known I was talking out loud, “Just gimme the ticket. Who needs a cure for insomnia?” all of which reverberated off all the stainless steel in the kitchen, which acted like an amplifier sending a muffled and distorted version out into the pub. When it bounced back to me from the wall behind Uncle Gabe a
nd Oliver’s table I heard, “Liam—just—the ticket—cure—insomnia—”

  “Shhhhh!” I hushed him, even putting a finger across my lips to get my point across, but it was too late. “Fuck a duck! Can’t you ever shut up?!” I whisper-yelled at him, mortified and wondering what everyone, Oliver in particular, had gotten out of Erin’s words. Heaving a sigh of resignation, I got to the business of filling their drink.

  I lifted two, pint glasses off the top of a short stack. One I filled from the fresh keg of Guinness stout we’d installed a little while ago. I took care to leave an inch of head. Any more or less and Uncle Gabe would lecture you about the purpose of a proper head, as if we all hadn’t had the same lecture from Granda a hundred times. I scraped the excess that rose over the lip off with the back of a butter knife kept next to the taps for that reason and wiped the side of the glass with a dry rag.

  Setting the beer on a tray, I turned to Oliver’s empty glass. Ice water was what he’d asked for. I shook my head. Looking over at him, I watched him look around the pub, taking it in. That wasn’t what he really wanted to drink, but maybe I could find a compromise. I caught myself pulling at my bottom lip while I was thinking, a habit I was trying to break, and made myself stop. I started rummaging through the bar fridges, looking for something that might fit the bill.

  Taking his glass over to the ice cooler, I shoved it down inside to cool it off. While it chilled I half-filled another glass with ice and topped that with water, just in case. That went onto the tray with Uncle Gabe’s beer. Pulling the chilled glass out half full, I poured cranberry juice over the ice. I took a minute to admire the pure, crystalline crimson of the tart juice, smiling at how pretty it looked with the ice swimming in it and wondered how I’d missed noticing it before.

  With the hope that Ollie liked cranberries, I lifted the tray, and carted it over to their table. They both eyed the red glass with suspicion, as I flicked out three cardboard coasters with the pub logo on them. They were wondering what it was and whom it was for, no doubt, and I relished teasing them by not relieving their anticipation. I was showing too many teeth, but I couldn’t help it. The thunder on my uncle’s face and the curiosity on Ollie’s fed my inner rogue. I was so bad I placed the third coaster between them to keep them wondering that much longer.