The Last Little Blue Envelope

by Maureen Johnson

  It happened fast—a boom, a black cloud blowing out of the back of the car, and then a general feeling of looseness, like nothing was powering the car anymore and they were simply adrift. A free-flowing river of expletives came out of Keith’s mouth as he gripped the wheel, steering the car off the road, where it eventually slowed more and more and then hit a large rock and bounced to a halt.

  No one said anything for a moment. The lights remained on, but there was no sound from the engine.

  “I’m going to count slowly to ten,” Keith said. “I’m not entirely sure what that will accomplish, but it seems like the right thing to do.”

  Oliver was already getting out of the car and heading for the hood. When Ginny opened her door, she almost fell into a deep ditch that ran along the side, possibly to keep the sheep from wandering into the road. A few inches farther, and the car would have gone right into it. Ellis screeched as she made the same discovery.

  “Gin, careful!”

  “I see it.”

  They both made their way over to the other side of the car to climb out—Ginny sliding and Ellis crawling over the gear stick and slipping under the steering wheel. A few sheep wandered over to see what was going on, staring over the ditch at them. The car was belching a terrible, burning smell. Ginny stepped on something hard and sharp as she walked around behind the car. She reached down to touch it, and almost burned herself on a scorching-hot piece of something.

  “It looks like you’ve thrown a rod,” Oliver said. “I told you this car would never make it.”

  “Thrown a rod?”

  “Do you see the large metal rod sticking out of your engine? Don’t you know anything about cars?”

  “No, actually, I don’t.”

  “Maybe we can get it to a garage?” Ellis said.

  “That’s fatal,” Oliver said, shaking his head. He moved away from the smoking car, put up his umbrella, and lit a cigarette.

  Ginny looked up and down the stretch of road they had come to stop on. It wasn’t very promising. They were between a field and an even bigger field. The streetlights were fairly far apart. The predominant noise was the gentle mockery of the sheep. Baaaaaaaa. She pulled out her phone, but the signal was so weak as to be nonexistent.

  “Does anyone have a phone signal?” she asked.

  Phones were checked. No one did. She pulled out the paper map and walked over to the closest streetlight. It was difficult to manage her umbrella and the map at the same time, but she didn’t want to get back in the car while it was still steaming and hovering on the edge of the ditch.

  “I think we’re on the edge of the Curragh,” she said.

  “And what’s that?” Keith asked.

  “About twenty kilometers of open grazing land,” she said.

  “I don’t think we’re going to see the police anytime soon,” Oliver said. “I suggest we walk back to the pub we saw about five minutes ago.”

  “And leave my car?”

  “There’s nothing we can do for it standing here.”

  “That does look pretty bad,” Ellis said.

  Keith was experiencing what appeared to be an entire rainbow of emotions—laughing, swearing, back to laughing again, before bending over at the waist in defeat.

  “The battery still works,” Oliver said. “We can keep the lights on so no one will hit it. We walk back that way. We can’t stand here. That is not going to restart, and who knows when anyone will pass on this road. It’s New Year’s Eve.”

  “He’s right,” Ellis said, wiping the rain out of her eyes.

  After a few minutes, Keith scratched his head hard and nodded a few times.

  “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Let’s . . . fine.”

  The bags were removed from the car, including the bag that contained the final piece. It wasn’t pouring anymore, but it was still raining fairly steadily. The air itself was thick with a cool mist that got to all the places the rain couldn’t hit, soaking Ginny all the way to the skin. There was an earthy, smoky smell—somebody, somewhere around here was burning something to keep warm.

  The rain and the cold weren’t the real problems though—the problem was that the road had no shoulder at all. The walking choices were the road itself or the sliver of marshy grass that lined it. This was pitted and dotted with rocks, and it was so dark that it was very easy to slide right down into the ditch. So the road was the only real choice. But the road was entirely comprised of curves, and when the occasional car did come along, it would race at them blindly. They’d get about three seconds’ notice to dive for the side of the road, where they would slide and trip and almost fall into the ditch.

  So it took about half an hour to walk. The pub was fairly dark inside, illuminated by one yellow-shaded light. Three old men sat at the bar, all with their eyes glued to a rugby match on a television mounted on the wall. They all turned slowly to see who had joined them. The woman behind the bar greeted them all warmly, and there was considerable sympathy when they described their plight.

  “Sit down there,” she said, pointing at a table with a fistful of dishcloth. “Sit down there and have a drink. We’ll get Donal.”

  “Donal’s the man,” one of the others said.

  “He’ll sort you. Have a drink.”

  “You know what?” Keith said. “I think I will. I normally don’t, but I feel tonight it may be necessary.”

  The woman came over and switched on a light, illuminating their corner. A round of pints of something was ordered, as well as a few bags of crisps. Keith sat, quietly smiling and shaking his head.

  “I’m really sorry,” Ginny said, as the pints were set down in front of them.

  “It’s not your fault. It could have happened anywhere.”

  He drank the entire pint in three long gulps, then returned to the bar for another.

  “It really would have,” Ellis said quietly. “It’s good that it happened now. At least it died doing something useful.”

  A few minutes later, a plain white van pulled up to the pub. Keith pushed back the white lace curtain and stared at it.

  “Donal’s here!” the barmaid called.

  “Are we really about to get into this unmarked white van?” Keith said in a low voice. “Don’t they only sell these to child molesters?”

  “Exactly how much Crimestoppers do you watch?” Oliver asked.

  “You’re a div,” Keith replied, tipping a bag of crisps over his open mouth and letting all the fine particles fall in.

  Donal was a much younger guy—probably in his thirties—who didn’t look at all surprised that he had been summoned. He was dressed in some fancy rainproof gear, like all-weather athletes wear. It appeared that he had just been running a marathon in the rain on New Year’s Eve and heard the cry for help.

  “Donal can help you,” one of the men said. “He’s an engineer. He makes fridges.”

  “What’s happened?” he asked, accepting a whiskey that was handed to him.

  “They’ve had a problem. Their car is stranded up the road.”

  “Ah, well, we’ll fix it,” Donal said. He took only a sip of the whiskey before setting it down. “Come on, then.”

  “You won’t,” Oliver said, mostly to himself. “It’s a blown rod.”

  They all piled into the van, which was filled with all kinds of bungee cord and climbing gear. Keith pointed to this silently and drew his finger across his throat. The men from the bar followed in a smaller blue car and took their pints. It was like a little group vacation. They retraced their route, the van making easy time around the curves of the dark road. The car was now the object of interest for a large group of sheep who had perhaps mistaken it for a larger, metal sheep. The men with the pints stood back and Donal came forward and shone a light under the hood.

  “You’ve blown a rod,” he said in the same matter-of-fact tone Oliver had used earlier.

  “Which is . . . bad?” Keith asked.

  “You can’t fix that.”

  A small chorus of �
�no, no, no, you can’t, no.”

  “Best to leave it,” Donal said. “They’ll be no one around tonight to get it.”

  “Just . . . leave it?”

  “Nothing else to do. You’d best come back to the pub for the night.”

  “But we need to get to Dublin,” Ginny said.

  “You might be able to get the last bus. It’ll take you about two hours, though, at the rate they go.”

  Keith stepped forward and put his hand on the car.

  “I think I need to say a few words,” he said. “This car . . . well . . . to call her a car doesn’t do justice to her spirit, her sense of adventure. I will always remember the horrible clanging noise she made when I tried to start her. . . .”

  Under normal circumstances, Ginny would have been amused. But considering that she’d just seen where Aunt Peg’s ashes were . . . and that got no eulogy, no moment of silence from the group. . . . This irritated her. Keith didn’t know, of course. He couldn’t be blamed. Still . . .

  “. . . and though I know she were bound to fail her next MOT inspection and sent off to the scrapyard to be crushed into a cube, I feel she was taken from us too soon. You lived fast, my friend . . . well, not that fast, but fastish . . .”

  Oliver rolled his eyes and wandered toward the van. Their new Irish friends drank their beers and allowed Keith to go on as he liked.

  “. . . and if there is a car heaven, I know you’ll be there, leaking fluids all over the place. . . .”

  “Can we go?” Ginny asked.

  Keith looked a bit surprised that she was stopping his routine, but he nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, giving the car one final look.

  They got back into the van and were taken to a spot farther up the road. There wasn’t even a bus shelter or even a sidewalk—just a worn-away strip in the grass where people obviously walked along, and a single sign with some bus numbers and a loose, nonbinding promise that something that came here went to Dublin. They had been left with the instructions: “When the bus comes, get on.”

  So they waited. It was dark. Again, the only noise was the gentle call of the sheep. Ginny couldn’t see them, but they had to be all around. “This must be like speed dating for you!” Keith yelled, pointing at the cluster of sheep that followed their leader toward town. “Hard to choose, isn’t it?”

  Oliver tossed his lighter in his palm for a moment and shoved it in his pocket.

  “Sorry,” Ginny said, in a low voice.

  “What for?”

  “I wish he would stop.”

  “He won’t,” Oliver said.

  The bus arrived more or less when promised, and was packed with people. It was abundantly clear that this vehicle to Dublin on New Year’s Eve was the last-ditch party bus. Ginny didn’t see anyone drinking, but it was undoubtedly going on. Even the steam on the windows had a faintly boozy air. Noisemakers punctuated the chatter.

  Keith and Ellis got on first, and were shuffled to two seats in the back. Ginny and Oliver ended up in a pair of seats closer to the front.

  “Sorry, Gin,” Keith called. “Yell if you need us.”

  There was something spilled all over one of the seats. Ginny chose to believe it was beer. Oliver scooted Ginny aside, pulled a shirt from his bag, threw it over the spot, and took that seat.

  “Least I could do,” he said.

  She’d been upbeat until Keith’s eulogy. Now something else was settling in—something more appropriate to seeing where your aunt was laid to rest. She didn’t feel like talking. Luckily for her, as soon as the bus was in motion, there was a burst of drunken singing. Ginny didn’t know the song, but apparently everyone else on the bus did—and they sang it, and a hundred broken variations of it, all the way to Dublin. Ginny and Oliver shared a small pocket of quiet. Oliver didn’t disturb her, but she could see his reflection in the dark window. Every few minutes, he would glance over to look at her, to see how she was. They weren’t pressed together as closely as normal, but his shoulder bumped hers, then remained there. It was very subtle, and possibly even accidental, but it was enough.

  The Bells

  “We made friends,” Keith said in a very loud voice, as they were all shoved off the bus in Dublin.

  Indeed, a small crowd of people said good-bye to Keith and Ellis as they disembarked. Ellis was giving a good-bye hug to a girl wearing shiny gold tights, who then promptly walked into a bench.

  “You seem . . . better,” Ginny observed.

  “Oh, you know.” He threw a careless arm around her shoulder, a boozy smell on his breath. “It had to go sometime. A fitting end to a fine automobile.”

  “Dublin!” Ellis yelled, throwing up her arms. “Did you have a good trip? We had a good trip.”

  “See those people?” Keith said, leaning into Ginny and pointing at the girl in the gold tights and her friends. “They know where to go. We will follow them, and all will be well. Look how shiny they are.”

  “All will be well,” Ellis echoed. Then she burst out laughing.

  “And they gave us this!” He held up a bottle of what appeared to be champagne, probably very cheap champagne. He popped it open there and then, taking a long sip out of the spray of foam. It dripped down the front of his coat. Ellis handed them each large paper cups, which they had also acquired, and Keith poured them both liberal helpings. At the moment, he had no animosity toward Oliver.

  “Drink!” he commanded. “Or you will anger the good people of this nation.”

  The champagne was warm, and there was far too much of it sloshing around in a cup meant for water or beer. But it felt right. Ginny took a gulp, and Oliver did the same. She continued sipping from her cup as they headed out of the station and into the city.

  Dublin was heaving. Ginny had never seen so many people out on the street. Herds of people moved along. Everyone seemed to be going in the same direction, flowing like a river out of the depot. They walked down through several streets, until they hit a wide, main thoroughfare called O’Connells Street. They crossed a wide bridge over a river, which Ginny knew from her internetting was called the Liffey—the central artery of Dublin, much like the Thames in London or the Seine in Paris, or, come to think of it, the Hudson and the East River in New York. Water always played a role in these cities. Water moved people, moved things. Always flowing toward something else, something bigger . . .

  A man standing on the opposite side of the bridge was playing “Auld Lang Syne,” which was probably a pretty dangerous move in the freezing rain. Fireworks went off overhead—little pops and spurts that looked very amateur and unregulated, so they were close and low, illuminating and reflecting in the water. Ireland was a little magical. She was feeling better now. It was almost impossible not to get caught up in the spirit of things.

  The parade of people wound its way to Temple Bar. This was a street entirely filled with bars and the occasional gift shop where you could buy absolutely anything with an Irish flag on it, or top hats made of green felt covered in shamrocks. Someone dressed in a massive leprechaun costume stood on one of the corners, and people kept staggering at him to have their pictures taken. There were a few food stalls open, selling pizza and sloppy kebabs. Mostly, though, it was a street of pubs. Every pub seemed to have a line in front of it. It was hard to get down the street.

  “Our friends told us about a place where we can get in,” Keith called. “It’s this way . . . I think.”

  Ginny looked in her cup and was surprised to find that she had consumed all of its contents at some point.

  “I finished mine,” she said to Oliver. He held out his empty cup in reply. Ellis noticed this and turned around to give them a sloppy refill, half of the champagne ending up on the cobblestones.

  Keith pointed to a multistory pub, which looked like a very old shop, or maybe a small factory. It was painted a shiny black with various Irish words written on the sides in gold paint. Ginny could hear music coming from inside—fiddles and tambourines and drums. It looked like there wa
s no way possible they were going to get in. People were crushed up against the windows. It was a clown car of a bar.

  “You’re joking, right?” Oliver said.

  “So stay out here,” Keith said with a shrug. “Smoke your face off. We’re going in.”

  Oliver did just that, while Ginny, Keith, and Ellis started the long process of getting into the pub. They made it inside by remaining in constant motion—not pushing, exactly. Just moving with the ever-shifting throng. No one was still in Dublin tonight.

  “Right!” Ellis yelled. “I’m going for it! Who wants what?”

  “Guinness, of course,” Keith yelled back. “When in Rome.”

  Keith and Ginny pushed farther inside. Once you got in far enough, there were tiny pockets where you could stand. They found one of these on the landing of the stairs, just opposite the musicians’ platform. They got banged around a lot, but it provided a good view of the main floor and of the musicians.

  “If I start dancing, don’t try to stop me,” Keith said. “When the muse moves me, I have to shake it. You know that. I know that. I cannot resist a bodhrán. I am sure you, being American, cannot resist a bodhrán.”

  “What’s a . . .”

  “A bodhrán,” he said, pointing up at the wide drum one of the musicians was holding and playing feverishly. “Come on. You knew that. You’re Irish. All Americans are Irish.”

  “You aren’t going to stop with that, are you?” she asked.

  He smiled widely and shook his head.

  The band kicked into an even faster song—a flurry of Irish fiddle. The drummer was working away on his handheld drum like a madman.

  “I see you looking at that bodhrán player. You’re obsessed with him. You’re in love with him.”

  “I am,” she said solemnly. “That’s why I came back.”

  “Why did you cut your hair?” he asked. “The old style was cute, but this is better. I like how fringy it is. Fringy, fringy.”

  He reached over and batted the tips of her hair. The hair touching set off a slightly more intense reaction, an all-over body melt. Her eyes felt like they were swimming in their sockets.