The only thing in Jamie Doyle’s flat that is organized and pristine and essentially not an unholy mess, is his video collection—and most specifically, his Star Trek tapes. I hand him the cassette, its cardboard sleeve a bit worn—from frequent viewing over the years, I suppose.
Checking first to be sure I’ve brought him the video he wanted, Jamie fires up his VCR and side by side, champagne glasses still in hand, we watch a 1967 episode titled “Metamorphosis.” As far as I can follow it amid the pseudo-sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, the plot opens with the rescue by the crew of the Enterprise of a humanoid named Nancy Hedford, but centers on a space pioneer named Zefram Cochrane, originally from Alpha Centauri, who has been marooned on another planet. Apparently he’s been kept alive and eternally young for something like 150 years through the good offices of an alien he calls the “Companion.” Spock, who discovers that the Companion is partly an electrical something-or-other, plans to short-circuit it, which doesn’t entirely please Cochrane (I guess because he’d likely die if the Companion gets fritzed).
Mumbo-jumbo, mumbo-jumbo, and more mumbo-jumbo, lots of polyester and intensely serious exclamations, and we eventually learn that the Companion is a female who’s in love with Cochrane. The idea that some alien has the hots for him repulses Cochrane, which causes our girl Nancy (who’s been suffering from some sort of fever) to remark that she finds it strange that Cochrane runs from love while she herself has never had the chance to be loved. Okay, Jamie, I get it.
So the Companion inhabits (and thereby cures) Nancy’s body so she can be with her beloved Cochrane, but she can’t leave her own planet without dying, and in the end, he opts to stay there with her.
“Well?” Jamie says, switching off the TV.
I lean over and kiss him softly on the lips. “It hasn’t made me a Star Trek convert. I’m afraid I’m missing the gene.”
He holds me and kisses me deeply. I don’t object.
“I’m sorry I still don’t ‘get’ the allure, although I’d like to be able to for your sake. Don’t you know that there are certain subjects best avoided in the interest of polite conversation: politics, religion, sex, and Star Trek?”
“And here I’ve been thinking it was the sex topic that always got me in trouble,” he murmurs teasingly. I start to get up, but he tugs at my tunic. “Do you have to go, now, Tess? Stay a little longer, will yiz? Just for a bit. I want to feel ya fall asleep in my arms.”
August 15—in the airport
They make you get to the gate so early for these international flights. Good thing I bought a lot of Irish whiskey fudge at the duty-free shop. Stuffing my face with candy is a pleasurable way to kill time, but so much for the idea of saving the fudge for a nosh on the flight.
Jamie saw me safely back to Boynton’s around one or two in the morning. We shared more silence than conversation, but we didn’t make love; just held each other for a while. Making love would have opened up the biggest can of worms at the worst possible time to do so. After admitting that I wasn’t able to fully reciprocate his feelings, how could I possibly give myself to him, and then leave the country a few hours later? That’s pretty rude. And I long ago outgrew the “If it feels good, do it” philosophy of my late teens and early twenties.
Whoops—they’re announcing boarding…
As I shove my journal into my carry-on I hear the P.A. system announce “Will Mr. James Francis Doyle please report to gate nine. James Francis Doyle, report to gate nine. Your flight is boarding.”
I hunt for my documents and shoulder my purse, then get on line with the rest of the passengers bound for JFK. This flight isn’t as crowded as my outbound one; fewer families with children. Hopeful signs for catching some sleep, though I’ll arrive in New York shortly before bedtime in that time zone.
“James Francis Doyle, please report to—”
“I’m here! Hold yer horses, I’m here! I’ve got a full fifteen minutes before ya shut the doors.”
And I freeze upon hearing the familiar voice, immobilized until a breathless Jamie, backpack slung over one shoulder, and wheeling a wobbly duffel, reaches my side. He turns to the man standing behind me. “Mind if I cut in? I’m with her.”
“Jamie! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hoping to be able to stay with yiz for a few days before I can find a place of me own. It’s crazy sudden, I know, but I’m in love with ya, Tess, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life not doin’ anything about it.”
I must look totally sandbagged; and as the line snakes through the jetway, he’s explaining to me that I won’t be living with an alien. By virtue of his birth in New York, he’s technically an American citizen although he carries an Irish passport. He’s got his birth certificate in his backpack; he’s even got a Social Security card. “As soon as her daughter married a man who was Irish born, me ma’s ma was a fanatic about making sure her future grandkids would still be Americans. So Niall and I got Social Security numbers when we were still in nappies.” Legally able to work, therefore, he assures me, “I won’t be a borden atall.”
A weeklong, whirlwind fairy tale has swiftly become a stark reality. Sure I could say, “No, you can’t stay with me,” but that feels cruel. I can relegate him to my living room couch. But ohh, what a lot to deal with all of a sudden. On every front. Jamie’s appearance leaves me with no breathing room to get over my relationship with David on my own turf, with all the old memories and ghosts of our time together haunting me almost everywhere I go.
Be careful what you wish for, I ruminate dolefully. In front of witnesses—Imogen and Venus—you said you wanted a chivalrous man to do anything in the world for you, to declare his love for you and swear that he can’t live without you. Well, you got him. Now what are you going to do about it?
Seventeen
August 23
Jamie has been here a week, with scant progress toward finding his own place to live. Sure he circled the ads in the Village Voice and let his fingers do the walking on the Internet, even checked out a few of the listings, but in this market the early bird gets the worm, and Jamie’s apartment hunting efforts could only be described as distinctly lackluster.
Boy, were Venus and Imogen surprised when they asked if I brought back any souvenirs and I introduced them to my temporary roommate. Venus is convinced he’ll never move out because “deep down, ‘the Empath’ knows you don’t really want him to do it.” Imogen is certain that no man who is so wildly in love (or at least completely infatuated) with a woman that he ditches everything to follow her across the Atlantic just to be with her, is really such a slob. She thinks it’s an act—one he’ll clean up in a twinkling once I accept his sloppiness as part and parcel of the otherwise wonderful guy that is Jamie Doyle. “It’s like Beauty needing to tell the Beast she loves him before he can become the handsome Prince again. Do I know relationships, or do I know relationships?” She also asked me if he knows anyone who can put together an authentic Irish band for the bar and bat mitzvahs. If so, she might be able to convince the twins to agree on a Riverdance theme.
And I’m looking at starting all over again on two fronts. I’ve never been in this position before. I haven’t a clue what the current rules of engagement are regarding dating. Is that what Jamie and I are planning to do? Hard to “date” the man you’re living with, even if you barely know him. I have no idea how to do that. Not only that, although I’m not sure I’d say I’m still in love with David, I’m still not over him. It hasn’t even been a month, and although meeting Jamie in Dublin provided a highly enjoyable distraction, it sort of sucked up my healing time. Now I’m feeling like I need to set the clock back to where I was before we met so I can heal alone. That’s also hard to do when there seem to be errant sox everywhere: under the couch, on the bathroom floor, next to the TV—and I found one in the toaster oven yesterday. Don’t know what that was about! Not to mention the occasional empty beer bottle, the dishes that found their way to the sink but not into the dishwasher, take-out
cartons on the coffee table, and—most egregious, of course—the toilet seat left up.
And how am I supposed to focus on front #2—my employment situation—with all of this clutter around me? I refuse to clean up his messes. I’m not his maid. And every time I ask him to pick up after himself, he gets terribly apologetic, but nothing really changes. I can’t deal with it; it’s driving me nuts. I suppose I should be thankful that he doesn’t smoke. I have to begin a job search at forty years old; I’m as out of the interview loop as I am from the dating loop. This morning I went downstairs to my home office to send out another résumé but first had to remove a slice of cold pizza from atop my printer, where Jamie had balanced the box.
He’s living out of two duffel bags, one of which is the size of Staten Island, and the only thing he’s unpacked is his collection of Star Trek videos.
This past week, every time I’ve gotten up the gumption to really confront this Irish Oscar Madison, he’d surprise me and melt my pissed-off heart by doing something sweet, like bringing me flowers, or offering to cook dinner.
He has a job interview himself today. Or maybe that should really read “Himself has a job interview today.” I hope he packed some Irish luck in one of those duffels.
“You are looking at a gainfully employed man!” Jamie announces, as he enters my apartment.
I slide my chair away from the computer and rush over to give him a hug. “Why do you smell like horse?”
“It’s better than fish, don’t you think? I’ll be drivin’ a carriage through Central Park, just as Liam does in Dublin. Not a bad way to make a living atall. Work outdoors, meet new people every torty minutes or so—at least that’s what I’ve been telling meself since none of the pubs I applied to need a bartender at the moment. And apparently I’ll need to take some sort of official test to become licensed to get people drunk before anyone’ll offer me the job.”
I love his accent. Jamie Doyle could say just about anything to me and it would sound like music. And I love the way his “TH’s” disappear sometimes (like “trew” for “through”) and his “I’s” and “U’s” become “O’s”—like “torty” or “gorl” instead of “thirty” and “girl” or “torn” instead of “turn.”
“Ya think I’m adorable, don’t yiz?” he says, reading my mind as he kisses me.
“I do. A pig—but adorable.”
He grins. “It’s me corse.” Taking my hands in his, he asks, “So, how was your day, dear?”
“Well, I have one job offer on the table, though of course I’m expected to perform it pro bono, since it’s for family. Imogen asked me to help plan her kids’ bar and bat mitzvahs. ‘Since you’re not doing anything with yourself these days,’ she said to me. I’d say, ‘Can you believe her nerve?’ but if you know Imogen, it’s not hard to believe at all. As far as a job I might actually accept goes, I’m speaking with some people on Thursday about doing some speechwriting—which may go hand in hand with a bit of image consulting—for New York’s junior senator. Soften her image a bit without another Betty Crocker volte-face. Go for that earnest note, instead of the more strident pitch.”
“Good luck.”
“So much of politics is image. Public perception. Voters need to cast a politician in a role so that they can better understand the package, and the trick is to beat them to it. Cast yourself as a nurturer, for example—a mom, so that when you speak out loudly about an issue, or criticize governmental or institutional failures and those whose presence represents them, or raise a call to action, you’re a mother bear protecting her cubs, not a harpie.”
“What would you be if you were running for office yourself?”
“What?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve thought about it, Tessa Goldsmith Craig. I, for one, don’t think you’re a harpie. Nor are you the mother bear. So who are you?” He goes to the fridge for a beer. “Want one? I think we should celebrate my new job.” He pours a Guinness into a glass, muttering, “This is a completely different animal from the real thing, ya know. Just for your information. Drinking this in New York instead of a pulled pint in Dublin is like getting a turkey borger when you ordered a porter house. You didn’t answer my question, Tess.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.” I take a sip of his beer and make an icky-face. “Tastes like sweat socks. There’s a bottle of crème de cassis in the liquor cabinet: right-hand door, top shelf. This could use a shot.”
“My question.”
“You can be pushy sometimes, you know? Okay, I’m a nanny. That’s the role I’d cast myself in. For argument’s sake let’s accept the model that the government is the parent and the people are its children, each responsible to the other in certain ways—we pay our fair share of taxes—or should—and in return the government takes care of certain things: roads, schools, defense, et cetera. I’m not a mom in real life, so I’m not comfortable shoehorning myself into that parallel. As a servant of the people and as a member of our government, I’m not the mama bear and maybe that wasn’t the best analogy for me to have used a minute ago when I was talking about the senator. Being the metaphorical stand-in for a mother or father may give a government representative too much authority in certain respects, especially when you start tackling privacy issues. No one wants their mom to have the right to read their diary or for their dad to be able to beat the shit out of them for finding copies of Playboy under the bed—especially when the father himself reads the magazine. But as a nanny, I’m in loco parentis of the children who are on my watch. I’m the nurturer when it’s appropriate and the disciplinarian when it’s necessary. And I go home every night after helping to tuck them into bed, safe and warm. Okay, I’m hopping off my soapbox. Let’s go out and celebrate your new job. Though in your case, Mister Ed, I think a shower might be in order first.”
“Right you are, Mary Poppins!”
Ten minutes later, torso still glistening, hair dripping on my parquet, Jamie pads into the living room, a brown towel tied about his waist. “Didja just call me a talking horse?” he demands.
“It was a joke. I was going for the horse-man thing. Bad analogy. Sorry. Heartily.”
“Do I smell any better now?”
“‘Manly, yes, but I like it too.’” I was so embarrassed when he first got here; for an Irishman to discover the brand of soap I happen to use was such a cliché. Actually, Jamie smells like…like someone I want to make love with right this minute; clean, yes; but his own scent subtly insinuates itself, delivering a potent dose of sensuality.
And I allow my body, though clothed, to dry his with my heat, pressing myself against him, letting my hands explore his soft, thick hair, his neck and shoulder blades, his strong back, arriving finally on the globes of his ass. “You’ve got a great butt for a forty-year-old,” I murmur, drawing him closer to me, close enough so that I know he’s enjoying himself immensely, or immensely enough to inform me that Jamie did not inherit the “Irish curse.”
“You do, too,” he replies, cupping my tush through my jeans.
“Pilates. Where’d you get yours?”
“Soccer.”
“Ahh. You know, the point of that game was completely lost on me when the players started wearing longer shorts.”
“Now I just lorned something about yiz, Tessa Goldsmith Craig. You’re a wolf.”
“In chic clothing,” I add, confessing my sin. “But what sets female wolves apart from their male counterparts in the pack is that we’re turned on by more than the individual elements of a good body. For us, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
“You think men who appreciate the finer attributes of a woman’s body don’t care about her mind, her thoughts and opinions, her wit and wisdom, whether she’s going to grab her porse and her house keys so we can head over to our local?”
Chuckling, I shake my head in mock amusement. “Clown.”
The Pot o’Gold is a bit down at heel, but it’s managed to stay in business for something like sixty years, steadfastly,
even stubbornly, holding its ground while all around it, the last couple of decades of gentrification have transformed Amsterdam Avenue from a dicey strip riddled with drug dealers on the local side streets to a homey neighborhood where you can still find the occasional bodega nestled among the restaurants serving buffalo burgers and artisanal jams. Its fans cite its no-frills ambience as proof of authenticity, at least as an Irish-American watering hole. Its detractors call it a dump.
Both camps have a point. The Pot o’Gold is unapologetically unatmospheric, a faded map of Ireland commanding pride of place on a wall the color of tobacco-stained fingers, a relic of the original paint job (probably once a clean and bright shade of cream) performed during the Eisenhower administration, or perhaps even farther back, to the post WWII days of Bill O’Dwyer’s mayoral administration. It’s steadily been losing customers, though. The place was hopping, even when I moved into the neighborhood several years ago. But now the clientele seems to consist of the regulars, some of whom start their drinking when the bar opens at 10 A.M., and those who have stumbled in, more or less accidentally, looking for something quaint, or a culturally appropriate place to spend St. Patrick’s Day. Lately the owner has tried to prop up business by offering a free-delivery take-out version of their menu. But take-out fish and chips, as I’d reminded David a few weeks ago, just doesn’t hold up.
As far as I can tell, Jamie likes this place, having discovered it the day after he arrived—well, on my recommendation, actually. He can sit and enjoy a pint in a pub that hasn’t been yuppified to death or turned into a Disney version of an Irish pub. It’s not immune from his criticism, though. According to Jamie, the bartender is putting too much of a head on the Guinness and is taking too little time to fill the glass. The fish and chips are pathetically lacking in taste (“These are freeze-dried from some tord-party supplier, not made fresh from scratch; no offense to who’s back there, but you’ve got to have a countryman in the kitchen”). The tartar sauce obviously comes from a jar, the corned beef has been on a steam table all day and is as dry as a mother superior’s blankety-blank, and where’s the music? Why, he wants to know, does the dusty juke box seem to have been filled by someone who thinks the Pot o’Gold is an Italian restaurant?
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