Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

  “It’s glorious!” I said. “Thank you, Elsa. Thank you for this.”

  “They did a good job,” she said walking about and examining the paint job. “Nicely done. A few spots here and there, but life has a few spots, doesn’t it? Yes, yes, I’ll have to tell Bobby to compliment his crew. They turned this around quickly for me.”

  I couldn’t fill my eyes fast enough. True, it was merely a studio apartment, not very grand, with a kitchenette on one side and a pullout couch on the other. But it was a foothold in Ireland, a place to be in the country I had always wanted to visit. Joyce’s Shannon River ran past the apartment house, and central Limerick was a forty-minute walk along the quay beside the running water. Elsa had said the campus provided two pubs, and the buildings around me were filled with other scholars and teachers pursuing their own interests. If I were a plant, I decided, I had just been placed in the proper soil for me.

  “Not bad,” Elsa said, still doing her rounds, occasionally turning to me. “New curtains. Not very glamorous, I’m afraid, but they will keep the sun out when you need it out. In the cupboards, yes, here, you have pots and pans. All the basics. The one problem you may have is the grocery store. It’s a good walk away and you’ll have to carry things back. You can take a taxi, of course, but that’s a cost. I’m assuming your funds are not unlimited.”

  “They’re not,” I said, following her inspection, my mind clicking off mental notes of what I would need, what worked, what could be augmented. It was all here; I really didn’t need a thing more other than my books and perhaps a table in the library.

  “A bike might be a good purchase. Let me see what I can dig up in surplus. We might have a few around. And I have friends who have extra bikes from time to time. You can get to market easily and you can run into town on the quay with a bike. I recommend it.”

  “Thank you. It’s something I’ll try, for sure.”

  She grinned.

  “I love when you Yanks say for sure. It’s such an odd phrase. What does it mean, for sure? And I love your accent. I could listen to it all day.”

  “I could listen to your accent all day,” I said. “It’s a dream.”

  “Well, we’re matched, then. I am going to leave you alone so you can settle in. Austin will bring over your bags. Don’t mind him. He’s a little slow afoot, but he’s harmless and well-meaning. Now I’ll scoot. I’m sure you’re fatigued from your journey.”

  “I am a little bit.”

  “Most natural thing in the world. All right then, here’s your key. I’ll leave it here on the counter. Settle in. If you want a quick bite, try the pubs. You can get fish and chips there and take that as a starting point. I’ll be in touch, Kate.”

  “Thank you, Elsa.”

  She laughed at our formality, then she hugged me quickly and went down the stairs. I watched her leave. She swung her skirted leg over the lower crossbar and pedaled off, ringing her bike bell at a student she passed, her hand lifted in a wave that might have been to him or to me.

  * * *

  I scrubbed everything. My rational mind told me the apartment had just been painted, but I knew myself well enough to understand I would not sleep or rest comfortably until my hand had touched, and wiped clean, every surface in the apartment. Fortunately, it was a tiny space and I had it spic and span in a little over an hour. I flipped the mattress in the fold-out bed, then sat for a moment on the couch and looked around. The apartment had good light, I decided. It was comfortable and easy and practical and it was just what I needed. I imagined the heat worked satisfactorily and the water ran without a hitch. Everything considered, I felt more at home in a shorter time than I had expected.

  University of Limerick, I whispered to myself. A visiting scholar at the University of Limerick. Not bad.

  After that, I burned sage and wafted smoke at the four corners of the universe. Ridiculous, I knew, but it was something I had learned to do to sanctify a new home. An old hippie named Esmeralda had given me my first sage whisk. She had been the LNP hospice worker who had cared for my father over the last months of his life. She wore her hair in long gray braids and she dressed like an Arapaho from Haight-Ashbury, vintage 1971, but she had the kindest eyes I had ever seen before encountering Gran’s eyes. She had been filled with hippie lore, tinctures and vials of strange concoctions, bear grease and cat whiskers, for all I knew, and she had dosed my father with them to set his soul on its journey. I didn’t believe a bit of it, but I liked the ritual it lent to my father’s weary decline, a moment of bright hope in what we all knew was an inevitable parting. She used sage whisks whenever my mother was dependably gone for the day. She roamed around my father’s bed, chanting and blowing the smoke to the four corners of the world, and my father—when he still had strength—said it smelled like campfire smoke and peat fires, and he held her hand afterward and thanked her. I came to like it, too, and when I received the fellowship from the Brady Milsap Foundation, signifying that I could go to Ireland and study the Blasket narratives, Esmeralda sent me a sage whisk and a rock charm and told me to burn the sage on the first best night.

  So I performed my own little rite of welcoming. I cupped my hand around the smoke and blew it to the four compass points, carefully avoiding the blinking eye of the kitchen’s smoke alarm. When I had satisfied the corners of the universe, I washed the smoke toward me, accepting its purity, feeling a fraud as I did it, but also happy. The smoke made me think of my dad, the softness of his final days when he became nearly transparent, a gentle man going to a gentle place. Before he had entered his final coma, he had talked a great deal about the Blaskets, about his heart’s home, about the sound of water when it became no longer a sound, but a thought of its own, a reassurance that the sea was eternal and that it lived inside one as surely as it swept the beach clean each day.

  I had just finished when I heard a knock. It took me a moment to understand the sound came from my door. Immediately I doused whatever embers remained in the clump of sage, then I spent a moment fanning the air with the dustpan I had used to sweep up. I opened two windows and called that I was coming, but whether the person might hear me or not, I couldn’t say.

  “Just a second,” I called, glancing quickly in the bathroom mirror.

  I looked sweaty and warm and slapped together like a pile of leaves. But there was nothing I could do about it. I went down the stairs quickly, sure that my sage ritual had sent a security officer to my door. Or perhaps a concerned neighbor. Luckily, the door had one of those fish-eye peepholes, so I leaned to it and tried to prepare my story for whoever might be outside.

  It was Ozzie.

  Oh, fuck, I thought.

  To make it worse, he had a puppy in his arms. That wasn’t even fair. It looked to be a Golden Retriever puppy, which is, without question, about ten times too cute for its own good. Ozzie held the puppy casually in one arm. Twice, while I looked, it tried to reach up and lick his face. Of course dogs like him, I thought. Probably kids, too, and widows and retired veterans. He had that way.

  I considered not opening the door. I blew a little whistle of air out at my bottom lip. A half-dozen scenarios crossed my mind. Then, hardly knowing I was going to do it, I pulled open the door.

  “How did you find me?” I asked, too harshly, I realized, after the words had passed by my lips.

  “Hello, Kate,” he said.

  I reached out for the dog. I loved dogs. He handed me the puppy. I put my nose into the puppy’s fur. One of the top ten smells, I reckoned. I tucked its sweet little paws into my open palm. The puppy craned its neck and tried to kiss me.

  “That’s Gottfried,” Ozzie said, settling one hand on the puppy’s head. “I just took him on this morning.”

  “Gottfried is a horrible name for a dog. It sounds like he’s a flavor of ice cream.”

  “I didn’t name him. That’s what his guardians named him.”

  “It’s still a ridiculous name. How do you even call him? Here, Gotty?”

  “We haven�
��t gotten that far yet.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  I tried to calm myself. Why was I being so bitchy? Why wasn’t I happy to have one of the few people I knew in Ireland stop by to see me?

  Ozzie moved his hand softly on the dog’s head and tucked back its ear. I kept the puppy close. I was aware of him petting the dog while it rested next to my breasts. Weird. And it was doubly weird that I had that thought. Then again, it had been a long, long time since Abe, since anybody’s body had touched mine. I was probably hyperaware. I was also aware of Ozzie’s size and looks as he stood just outside my door. Milly would have told me to grab him by his Irish sweater and yank him inside.

  “I came to take you out,” Ozzie said. “And to introduce you to Gottfried.”

  “Don’t play that with me, okay? I’m not interested in a silly little do-si-do.”

  “I thought you might like to have a friend in a new city.”

  “You live in Dingle.”

  “I live in Ireland. It’s not so big, you know?”

  “I thought you fished for a living.”

  “I do fish for a living. But sometimes I like stepping off the boat for a minute. Are you going to insist on fighting every time we meet?”

  “I might. I haven’t decided.”

  “I’d rather not,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve given you cause to hate me yet, have I?”

  “Not yet. But why would you say yet if you don’t intend to give me cause?”

  “I think you may have a fever. I think you may have beriberi.”

  “What is beriberi, anyway?”

  “It’s what you have. I feel sorry for you with your bad case of beriberi.”

  Gottfried chose that moment to kiss me again and nearly wriggle free of my grip. Ozzie took him. He put the puppy down on the ground and the dog ran right into my apartment. Naturally. Ozzie shrugged. He grinned. I hated it, but I grinned back.

  And stepped aside to let him go after his dog.

  Gottfried struggled to climb the steps. His broad little bottom weighted him down and he had to heave mightily to make it from step to step. I closed the door. For a moment, we stood side by side, watching the puppy climb. Then Ozzie took me and pushed me back against the wall and kissed me deeply, so deeply that I thought I might collapse like a folding chair when he let me go. It was a damn good kiss. I brought my hands up onto his shoulders and he kept kissing me. The grin came with the kiss. I felt a year of temperance, of celibacy, of schoolmarm scholarliness, wash away in the imprint of his body against mine. I kissed him back and, nearly at the same time, pushed his shoulders away.

  “Get your dog,” I said when my mouth came free of his.

  “That’s why I came to Limerick, Kate Moreton. I came all this way to kiss you.”

  11

  I did not sleep with him. I wanted to, but I didn’t do it.

  It wasn’t easy, because a part of me said, why not? Another part said, don’t you dare. You don’t even know him. Yet another part of me thought: don’t give into this guy so he thinks he can have his way whenever he knocks on your door.

  Good, sane thoughts. Added to that was the knowledge that I looked like a charwoman and smelled like cleanser.

  We followed Gottfried up the stairs. I made Ozzie go up first because I didn’t want him staring at my ass if I climbed the stairs in front of him. That’s how crazy he had me. That’s how the kiss had shattered my resolve.

  We had a tense moment. We were both aware of the kiss. We were both aware of the dog sniffing the corners of the apartment. We were both aware of an enormous attraction that might have been my undoing if I had known him a tiny bit better. He was absurdly male standing in my tiny apartment. He filled it. He smelled like smoke and whiskey and wet wool and soap.

  “Nice apartment,” he said after an awkward silence.

  We watched Gottfried sniff at the place where the floor met the walls. He was too cute.

  “I like it,” I said.

  “I heard they take good care of people here. At the university, I mean.”

  “They’ve been very kind.”

  “Of course, the Irish like Americans. Not everyone does. I mean around the world. A lot of people find Americans arrogant and annoying.”

  “That’s what I’ve always heard.”

  “Does this conversation seem canned to you?”

  “How so?”

  “Like we are filling in space because we just kissed and we want to kiss again? Like we are avoiding that?”

  “You kissed me. I didn’t kiss you.”

  “You didn’t stop me.”

  “You’re a bit bigger than I am.”

  “Did I read you wrong?”

  I changed the subject.

  “I would offer you something to drink, but I don’t have anything at all in the place. I haven’t been to the market yet.”

  “I could take you to the market. That might be a friendly thing to do.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “No, I came here on a magic pony, Kate. Yes, I have a car. It’s not a great car, but it’s car. In fact, it’s a truck.”

  “What if I took a fast shower first? It’s been a long day.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll walk Gottfried. He probably needs a little time. You know the River Shannon runs right behind this place, don’t you? It’s a good place to walk a dog.”

  “Yes, I knew that.”

  “James Joyce and all that.”

  “You know the story. I’m glad.”

  He nodded. We both kept staring at Gottfried.

  “We probably have to have sex soon,” he said, his eyes straight ahead, “or we’ll be condemned to these stunted conversations forever.”

  “Do you think it’s stunted?”

  “Isn’t it? We’re watching a puppy because we’re afraid to look at each other.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “You probably have little self-control. I’d probably have to make us both wait. I’ll give you that gift.”

  “Does any woman ever go for this routine of yours?”

  “What routine?”

  “I don’t know. The show up with a puppy routine. The slightly wounded Irishman routine.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Kate.”

  “It would help to go to the grocery store.”

  “Okay, fair enough. I’ll leave now, but I’ll come back.”

  “Good.”

  “Gran says hello. She is quite taken by you.”

  “She’s a love.”

  “Seamus says I should marry you. He says a girl with red hair signifies good fortune.”

  “He does, does he?”

  He nodded. Then he scooped up Gottfried. He held him for me to pet for a second. Slowly, he bent past the dog’s body and kissed me again. I kissed him back. Like a husband going off to get bread, I thought. Like a wife taking a shower to get ready for a casual dinner on a Tuesday night in marriage-land.

  * * *

  I expected his truck to be messy, but it wasn’t. It was a red Ford F-150 and it was tidy and clean. I held Gottfried. He had started to get tired and he curled in my lap and rested. The earlier tension I had felt—we had felt—had dissipated. It probably had something to do with getting out of the apartment with a job to do. Ozzie narrated the roads to the market. As Elsa had said, it wasn’t far. We pulled into the parking lot in under five minutes.

  “Will Gottfried be okay in the truck?” I asked in the silence after he turned off the engine.

  “Should be. The better question is whether the truck will be okay. He’s got to learn to be by himself from time to time. He has to know he can count on me coming back.”

  “Are you going to keep him?”

  “I’d love to, but the kennel is full.”

  “You have a kennel?”

  “Not really. I take in dogs from time to time. But I’m not in a place to take care of a dog right now.”

  “How did you end up with Gottfried?”
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  “It’s a long story. Not a good story, I’m afraid. He’s kind of an orphan. Would you like to keep him?”

  “I can’t. Not in that apartment.”

  “I figured as much. Well, come on. Let’s get your groceries.”

  Gottfried whined when I put him on the seat and closed the door. He raised up and ran his paws against the window. Ozzie bent down and looked at him eye to eye. Gottfried didn’t get the message. He kept pawing at the window.

  I realized, as we entered the store, that shopping with a man you hardly knew was a surprisingly personal thing to do. Not only was the store new and the products unfamiliar, but he pushed the cart for me and moved behind me so that he saw anything I purchased. I decided in the first minute that this would be a short trip and that I would only get the basics. Some other day I could come back and fill out a full shopping list, but for now I loaded vegetables and fruit into the basket, paper towels and soap.

  “Are you a committed cook?” he asked.

  “I like to cook. I won’t kid you and say I’m very good.”

  “I like to cook, too. Would you like to get some things to cook for tonight? We can go out, of course, but it might be fun to stay in and cook together. Or I could cook and you could unpack. It would be my treat.”

  “I’d like that. Thank you. I’m not sure I have it in me to go out tonight.”

  “And I’ll pick out some wine for us. You like wine, don’t you?”

  “I like wine.”

  “Then it’s settled. Let me play chef for the night. That way we don’t have to leave Gottfried in the truck while we eat.”

  “Thank you. That sounds wonderful, actually.”