After a moment, she reconsiders her reaction and her features soften. A smile brightens her face. “That’s very gallant of you. In fact, me hanging out with grungy musicians pretty much all my life has meant no one has ever really taken me on a proper date.”
The fact that I’ve never once taken a woman out on a proper date doesn’t stop me from saying, “That’s a sin, isn’t it?”
She laughs, and it comes out girlish, charmed. And it makes me want to wow her. Maybe this could be something real.
We split up with the agreement that I’ll return for her at seven o’clock. First thing I do is get my hair cut and have a shave. The barber transforms me from Scooby Doo’s mate Shaggy into a poor man’s Christian Bale. That’s an improvement, by the way.
Next, Roscoe and I head home for a bit of internet research. I struggle to think of what people do on a date. Typing in the search engine, “where to go for a night out in Dublin” brings me a million suggestions for pubs. Again, with the drink. Jesus, is that all people do?
I sit back and try to think. What’s it supposed to be about? Getting to know each other, right? Well, what do I already know about Jules? She’s a burned-out singer. She’s a feminist. She’s some sort of artist. That sparks an idea and I type again into the search engine.
After several misses, I find the right option. There’s an art gallery in Temple Bar offering a talk this very evening. A visiting artist named Cassandra McMackin is speaking about the portrayal of women in art from the second world war to the present. Not exactly something I’d rush to on my own, but it sounds perfect for Jules. That and a spot of dinner afterward has got to be the makings of a proper date.
I’ve got just enough time to take a shower and dress before I have to be back at Jules’. My normal gear doesn’t seem up to snuff for the evening, so I help myself to Shay’s closet. I used to be a lot skinnier than him, but my healthy ways have seen me fill out my frame to good effect. I’ve even acquired some toned muscles thanks to all my wanderings with Roscoe. I’m definitely the taller of the two of us brothers, but I manage to find something of Shay’s that works: new black jeans I fold at the cuffs to disguise that they’re a bit too short, a black silk long sleeve shirt, and a three-quarters length dark gray tailored coat that fits just right. The coat is lightweight and has black accents on the collar and lapels. I check the tag and see it’s Tom Ford. It would be too big on Shay, but damn if it doesn’t work perfectly for me.
Surveying myself in the mirror, I’m impressed as fuck. Doesn’t take much to get me looking good.
Roscoe and I make a quick stop at a Marks & Spencer on the way over to pick up flowers. I grab yellow daisies because they’re a happy color. No need to get as serious as red roses.
At Jules’ house, my attempt to get Roscoe to hold the flowers between his jaws as a cute gesture fails and I’m left gripping the slobber coated plastic wrapping.
The effort Jules has made to pretty herself up doesn’t go lost on me when she opens the door. She’s done her hair, and it’s the first time I’ve seen her wear makeup, let alone a dress. The teal strapless dress hugs her body and goes well with her tattoos. The stuff she did her blue eyes with makes them pop. And I’m tempted to suck the plum color lipstick right off her. She’s gorgeous and I tell her so.
“You’re looking transformed yourself,” she says. “It’s good.”
I nod my thanks and offer her the flowers. “Sorry, the wrapping is a bit dodgy. Roscoe had a chew.”
She gingerly takes the flowers and tells me to come in so she can put them in water before we go. Because she has the covered patio and Roscoe and Molly get on so well, we’d already planned to leave the dogs at her place. Once they’re settled, Jules grabs her purse and a wrap and we’re off.
“Are we really driving in this?” she asks as I open the passenger door of the Porsche for her.
“It’s the only ride I’ve got,” I tell her. “It’ll be fine.”
When I’m on my side, I look over at her and see she’s sunk into the bucket seat and eyeing all the gadgetry of the panels.
“Don’t worry,” I say, “it’s just a car.”
“A very expensive car.”
I start the engine and look over at her.
“I came across all the tabloid stories about Shay’s extravagant purchase when I was trying to see where he lived,” she explains.
“Good thing I know how to drive it, then isn’t it?” I don’t want to go back into that whole thing of her researching Shay and the guys. It was too stalker-ish at the time. Talking more about what else she learned would only add to that feeling.
“Let’s see what you can do,” she says with a wink and I gladly drive on.
18
“You did an amazing job of appearing interested.”
I laugh and shake my head. We’ve moved on from the art gallery to a highly regarded Tapas place not far from St. Stephens Green.
“I actually was interested,” I say. “I mean some of it went over my head, but there was definitely stuff that kept my attention.”
Jules leans back against the red pillow of her banquette seat and eyes me for a moment. We’re tucked into the corner of the restaurant, next to the front window and under the chalkboard with handwritten specials. The lights are low and with just one small candle between us, it feels comfortably intimate. The awkwardness of us doing things arse over tea kettle by fucking first and dating second has eased off a bit.
“Well, you did good with that choice,” she says.
I hold up my glass of Cava Brut. We got a bottle on recommendation from the waiter and are sipping it along with our first round of tapas: plump Malaga olives, Manchego cheese with honey, and deceptively simple bread with bits of tomato and olive oil that is delicious,
“Cheers to that,” I tell her. I’ve justified the wine by the fact that it’s with dinner. And it’s to be enjoyed, not just a numbing agent. So far, so good on that front. We’re both running at the same speed, it seems, as Jules has been nursing her glass the same way I have.
We clink glasses and share a moment in each other’s gaze before taking a drink. She’s a beauty and I tell her so.
“You’re actually pretty good at this dating thing,” she says.
I hope she’s right. I realize I want desperately for something good to come out of this, to push this into something different and stable. This evening feels like the right start.
I suppose we’re to make some get-to-know-you talk, so I say, “You grew up Northside, yeah? How was that?”
She laughs, but this time without any offense. “It was all right. Made me tough, I suppose. That and the fact that I’ve got two older brothers who loved to torture me.”
“How so?”
“Ah, they’d tickle me until I was crying. They’d make up elaborate stories of how I was adopted and that our parents were going to give me back to the orphanage any day. They’d hide my favorite things—dolls when I was little, makeup when I was older. They’d do everything they could to scare away boys who liked me.”
“The bastards,” I say playfully. “I’ll fight ‘em for you.”
“They were just being boys. No real harm. But I think they helped motivate me to spend time in my room with music on, singing right along with Liz Phair, and Fiona Apple, and Dolores of The Cranberries.”
“How did making a real go of it come about?”
Even though she shrugs, her eyes light up. The memory of her early days seems to play in her mind for a moment. I let her get lost in it, content to watch her.
“It was a brief, bright moment,” she finally says. “The music scene was hot in Dublin and your brother’s band was leading the charge. I saw them play at The Basement. It’s this dodgy little club that made a habit of opening up the mics to would-be musicians like them. And like myself. I got up the nerve one night to play acoustic guitar and sing. Caught the notice of the man who would become my manager. Things moved quickly, as we all went en masse to London to seek
out record deals. That’s actually where I met—”
She stops herself from saying Gavin’s name.
“Anyway, it was the life for a while. I did countless shows all over Europe, made an album, and got enough of a following to be able to keep at it. It lasted for a quite a few years. Girls like me, with an earnest girl power bent, did well for a time. And then the pop shite of groups like the Pussycat Dolls, spouting their sexualized bullshit, took over. It was good while it lasted, but I had no desire to conform to that crap to keep my name known. I opted out rather than play a game where the rules were made to set up ninety-nine percent of people to fail. Make that ninety-nine percent of women. Blokes like Rogue did just fine. And so, here I am.”
There’s bitterness in her voice. And regret. But she is trying to act dismissive of it all, so I let the subject drop. Before I can come up with some amusing remark to lighten things up, our waitress comes loaded down with more to eat.
We’ve got sautéed lamb sweetbreads, an oxtail casserole, and a squid ink seafood and black rice dish, along with potatoes and red bell peppers. The food presents a time of refuge for us both as we drop talk of Jules’ music career and instead take turns sampling each dish and trading our assessment of them. It feels ridiculously pedestrian, like we’re an old married couple who after being together forever have nothing left to talk about except for the day’s big meal.
And then Jules changes all that by asking, “What made you start heroin?”
19
It’s like the proverbial record scratch that dramatically halts all conversation. I lose my appetite and sit back in my chair. We were just talking about Jules and what made her who she is. I had instigated the conversation by asking her about where she grew up, a rather good way to try to understand someone.
She started her own attempt to know me by asking about drugs. For fuck’s sake, is that all I am? Is heroin the sum of my parts to anyone else looking at me?
Or is it that Jules is still hoping that I’ll be her guide down that path and all this other stuff has been for show?
“I had a shitty childhood, Jules,” I tell her with the hope that will end this. To emphasize the point, I drain my wine glass in three gulps and refill it.
“A lot of people did.”
“Your point?”
“Just it doesn’t always have to go the way it went for you. What was the difference?”
“My therapist’s name is Ms. Patterson. Why don’t you look her up and have a wee chat about it all if you’re so bothered?”
“Don’t get so defensive,” she says softly, leaning toward me. “You have to have thought about this.”
Of course, I have. I’ve thought about it far more than I want to say. I’ve wondered why I went that route when Shay was able to live a basically normal life. We both had the same loser parents and god-awful upbringing, but he was able to get through life without the constant negativity in his head dragging him down. He never needed any escape other than music. He ended up with a lovely woman, Jessica, who I’m sure he’ll marry and have kids with. I am over the moon that it turned out that way for him. Honest to god, I am. But I do wonder: Why not me?
“I never learned a trade,” I say. “Not until I got on tour with my brother and started learning the ins and outs of stage lighting. I mostly do the grunt work, but I’ve picked up a lot along the way. It’s fascinating to see what small adjustments can do for the mood of a show. I’m going to focus on the more technical aspects once they go back out on the road again.”
Jules just stares at me. My attempt to change the subject falls flat. But I don’t care. If being with her means I have to speak to her like I do Ms. Patterson, complete with all the soul-searching and self-analysis, then I’ll be on my merry way. It’s far too exhausting doing that with the person being paid to listen, I don’t want to do it with the person I’m fucking.
“We about done here?” I ask. I look about for the waiter, despite the fact that half our food has gone untouched.
“You don’t want me in your head,” she says, as if such a thing is a curiosity.
Looking back at her, I tell her with as much honesty as I can bear, “I want you to separate me from the heroin. When I told you about that I didn’t think it’d become this fascination for you. I didn’t think it’d be this thing you use to poke and prod me with. I’m doing my best to be fucking done with the stuff. I don’t want to talk about it at every turn.”
There’s a long moment where we watch each other without saying a thing. I’m hoping my expression gets across that I need her to leave this issue alone. Her expression tells me she’s weighing whether she can do just that.
Finally, she responds. First, by leaning forward and reaching under the table to touch my knee. In that position, her breasts are pressed together and further exposed in the strapless top of her dress. Her skin is pale and the memory of how soft her nipples feel right before they harden, has me breathing a little faster. Her fingers trail up my inner thigh as far as she can go.
“Give me a two-minute head start,” she says, “then meet me in the loo.”
Back to sex being our true connection. What man would say no to that?
Certainly not me.
20
Except for when she’s got her women’s empowerment painting projects, Jules and I play a bit of house together in the next few days. I stay over at her place in the evenings, and it’s easy company. I chalk up our date as a fruitless endeavor. It wasn’t the start to the good, stable relationship I had the audacity to attempt because Jules can’t see me as anything more than the heroin addict I’ve always been, no matter how hard I want to leave that version of me behind. Maybe that’s my fault because I don’t want to share with her how it all started for me. But maybe it’s her fault because she doesn’t want to take the time to see what else I am.
In any case, we’ve slipped right into the thing I was hoping to avoid. We don’t further confront the fact that this connection is born out of something dark and lonely in ourselves. We just medicate it with each other’s bodies and companionship. I find it hard to see anything really negative about it. At least I’m not doing H.
But the fact that I say nothing to Shay about her when we speak is revealing in itself. I don’t want him to know I’ve even met Jules, let alone sought out—and disregarded—Gavin’s advice about her. Keeping it a secret is a bad idea. It’s how things start to slide downhill. At least in my experience it is. I’ve gone this route before. At first it feels inconsequential. A minor detail that no one else needs to know about. It quickly escalates to rationalizations that can jeopardize everything, like convincing yourself you really do know, this time, how to handle heroin.
To balance things out, I vow to tell Ms. Patterson all about it at our Monday session. When we began together, it was with twice-a-week sessions on Mondays and Thursdays, with the plan that we’d cut back to just once per week, but I quickly began to look forward to our time together so much that I’d watch the clock in between appointments. But this time, it feels like an age has passed since I’ve even thought of Ms. Patterson. Last Thursday’s session was when I thought she might be jealous about Jules, when I taunted her a bit over it. And she didn’t like it.
In what seems to be a direct response to that, she’s buttoned up today. Literally. She’s wearing a high collared black blouse that has small buttons up the middle along with black trousers. No more pencil skirts for me, I guess.
She doesn’t laugh when I ask her who died. Instead, she places her notepad in her lap and has her pen poised to jot notes.
This promises to yield very little fun. Where is the woman who clearly liked me despite my fuckups? The one who joked with me even after I interrupted her dinner date with her girlfriends?
I decide we need to get back to that favorable dynamic.
“I may have a new client for you,” I say. “Give you one guess who it might be. And one clue: he’s very recently been in the tabloids—both times for having h
is trousers down around his ankles.”
“Let’s talk about you and not Martin Whelan,” she replies without humor.
“You have to admit, it’s a wee bit funny, these things he’s gotten himself into back to back.”
I had seen the tabloid news of Martin’s latest foray—this time with a groupie right here in Dublin—just yesterday when I was out early in the morning to walk Roscoe. We went past a newsstand and the front-page story was hard to miss. I snatched up a copy and devoured it along with breakfast back at the house.
“I called Shay straightaway,” I say. “Woke the kid there in the States but had to be sure he knew the trouble his mate was getting himself into. Even if it was also a laugh.”
Ms. Patterson hasn’t budged. She’s still a block of ice. Like frozen water, she’s contracted into herself to form a solid, impenetrable mass. I’m at a loss for how to get through and back to our old relationship. I panic at the thought that this is how relationship will be now.
“Fuck, what is this?” I ask. “Are you angry with me?”
This startles her, and her posture loosens the tiniest bit. A crack in the ice.
“No, Daniel. I am not angry with you,” she says. “I’m just eager to get on track and talk about you. Martin Whelan’s troubles are his own and shouldn’t take up time we could be working on you.”
“Got it.” I pause. “But you did catch the part of how well hung our man is, yeah? That’s what you call a silver fucking lining. What a thing to publicize.”
Her defrost is now well underway as she raises her hand to her mouth to try to hide a smile. I feel like the weight of the world has lifted from my shoulders. Besides Shay, there’s no one more than Ms. Patterson that I want to please.
“So, I guess I’m in a relationship,” I say, getting to the admission I’d promised myself I’d make. “With Jules, the Northersider woman from the park.”
A moment passes as she takes this in. “I see. And what does a ‘relationship’ mean for you?”
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