Chapter Nine
Nine
We drove another ten minutes or so, circling various streets until Eamonn deemed us sufficiently close to everything, or at least until he saw available street parking and decided to take it.
The spot was tight enough that I would’ve kept driving, but Eamonn expertly angled his small car into the space, bracing his hand behind my headrest as he straightened the car while backing in.
For a second our eyes caught, and it felt like I’d witnessed him doing something almost too intimate.
It reminded me of a time I’d looked out of my school bus window and seen a man at a stoplight, checking himself in the rearview mirror while he combed his hair.
I’d been flooded with such tenderness for that man I still remembered it, even all these years later.
“You’re very good at parking,” I said, just to break the silence.
“I do a lot of it,” Eamonn said. Which made sense, given his job, and made me feel a little silly for having commented on it at all.
It was such a bright day, filled with sunshine.
We walked alongside strips of shops, a canal with one of those dining cruise boats floating on it.
As we got into what looked like more densely populated areas, there were any number of restaurants and pubs, people coming in and out of them.
I had no idea which one Eamonn was leading us to as we walked along the street.
Between the narrowness of the path and the people, I had to stay behind him instead of at his side, and he would periodically glance over his shoulder to check that I was keeping up before we got to a wider lane with more room.
On the corner was a restaurant painted in vibrant green and yellow, balloons in the colors of the Irish flag twisted all around the top. There were shamrocks printed on the green balloons, and I smiled when I saw them.
“I almost forgot it’s Saint Patrick’s Day on Monday.”
Eamonn followed my gaze. “Oh, we don’t forget. But some of that’s up year-round. The more touristy the place, the more it’s always Paddy’s Day.”
The fact that we were passing all these perfectly good places to eat told me that he had a specific one in mind, and eventually we stopped in front of a small place nestled in a row of connected buildings.
A red-and-white-striped awning hung over the entrance, half covering a patio for outdoor dining that was currently occupied by one lone customer.
It was still a little chilly to eat outside, despite the sunshine, but there was a vintage motorcycle parked next to the patio that I just knew belonged to that man, who probably wanted to keep an eye on it while he ate.
Eamonn gave it a glance as we walked up to the restaurant, then looked at the man, and for a minute I thought he’d say something friendly like Nice bike or What year is that?
But he didn’t. Instead he just held the front door open for me as we went inside.
Apparently this pub was famous for having been mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses, but to his credit, Eamonn didn’t blink an eye when I said I’d never read it.
“Nothing against Joyce or anything,” I said when we’d been shown to a cozy booth in the back. “I just never got to that one. Is it good?”
“It’s…” he started to say, tilting his head from one side to the other in an ambivalent gesture, flipping the menu over to glance at the back before returning it to the table. I waited for the end of that sentence, but he seemed to have no intention of finishing his thought.
“If you voluntarily read Ulysses there’s somethin’ wrong with ya,” our waiter said as he came up behind us to take our order.
He looked college-aged, with two small gold hoops in his ears and a name tag that said Joe.
He also seemed to realize that it was probably a bad idea to insult the book that had put his workplace on the map, and quickly added, “It’s obviously a classic for a reason, though.
If you want the full experience, get the gorgonzola sandwich on brown bread. ”
We ordered water to start, and the waiter left to give us more time with the menus, although I could tell he was itching to apologize for the James Joyce comment again before he went.
Eamonn wasn’t bothering to look at the menu anymore, and I already knew I’d copy whatever he ended up ordering.
It seemed like the polite thing to do since he was paying for the meal.
“You said your power went out?” I asked to make conversation. I was curious about a lot of things about this man who’d just become my companion around a new city, and that seemed like a safe enough place to start.
“This morning,” he said. “No idea what the problem is. Nothin’ wrong with the breaker that I could see, lights are on down the street.”
The timing of it made me wonder if it was connected to me somehow, to my arrival. Maybe that was megalomaniacal, to assume that I could have that kind of effect on electrical currents. But maybe it wasn’t that outrageous, given everything else.
“Do you need to get back there?” I said. “I didn’t mean to take up your whole day.”
“Nah.”
When Joe returned, he set our drinks in front of us. “I just had to read Finnegans Wake in school,” he confessed, as if it would help explain his anti-Joyce sentiments.
It seemed to for Eamonn, or at least he felt some pity for the kid who was clearly still spiraling over his one comment. “Scarred you for life, did it?” Eamonn said. “I will take the gorgonzola, actually. You’ve sold it.”
Joe looked relieved, and when he glanced over at me, I said I’d have the same.
This place did feel romantic to me. I doubted that was why Eamonn had picked it—I didn’t even know if he’d noticed the ambience.
But the booth was comfortable and snug, with red seats upholstered in the kind of velvety patterned fabric you might find in a nice train car.
There was warm golden light from the fixture above, and then a soft red glow from a small lamp at the table.
It made me smile a little, thinking how strange it was that less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been sitting across a table from his brother, doing practically the same thing albeit in a very different context.
“What?”
I bit the corner of my mouth, shaking my head. “No, nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking…your brother is kind of obsessed with Diet Coke. He knows all about the formulations and the marketing plan and everything. Why is that?”
Eamonn let out a short breath that came close to a laugh, but without the humor. “I haven’t the slightest,” he said. “I didn’t know that about him. We’re not close.”
“Well, he moved so far away, and so long ago,” I said. “It makes sense that you’d be closer with your sisters.”
Eamonn ran his thumb along his lower lip, looking toward where our server had gone like he was already impatient for our food to come.
His bottom teeth were a little crooked, two of them overlapping a bit, and I liked that detail about him.
I turned my attention to the painting next to our table by the time Eamonn looked back over at me, not wanting to be caught staring.
It was of a man and a woman up on a hill, overlooking rolling green grass and a path lined with houses.
The woman was sitting at the edge, gazing out over the view, while the man seemed to be walking toward the viewer, away from the woman.
He was rendered with more detail—the buttons on his coat, his face, even a flower pinned to his lapel.
Their body language looked serene, like they were enjoying an afternoon stroll together.
Surely he wasn’t actually going to leave her on that hill.
He was just walking away for a moment because something caught his attention, maybe something he’d call the woman over to see, too.
Or maybe he’d check it out and then go sit beside her on the grass, telling her all about whatever had caught his eye.
The way the shadows were painted on her profile, it almost seemed like her head was turned his way, until you looked again and saw that it wasn’t.
When I glanced back, Eamonn was openly studying me, and he didn’t bother hiding it.
Suddenly I was too warm, still wearing his jacket, and I shrugged it off.
Eamonn watched me like he was tracking the chain of custody of a beloved clothing item, so I made a show of setting it neatly beside me, not wanting him to think I wouldn’t take care of it.
“What brought you to Ireland again?” he asked. The again was a conversational garnish, a bit of politeness on his part, since we both knew I’d never given a definitive reason in the first place.
Clearly, he didn’t buy my blow-off answer about generally loving to travel. “I’m doing some research.”
The words had just popped out of my mouth, because they’d sounded good in my head.
Research was a perfect catch-all excuse to be in a foreign country, I figured, but the problem was that it also directly contradicted what I’d said before, about wanting to take each day as it came.
And of course it brought up follow-up questions, ones like…
“What kind of research?”
I didn’t even know the name of the place where I’d woken up, much less what it might be famous for or why I would’ve been doing any research there.
But I could improvise. It wasn’t like he was going to ask for my full bibliography, especially if it was something he wasn’t particularly interested in or didn’t know much about. But then what if he did?
“Fairies,” I said. “I’m doing this art project. With fairies.”
The way I’d said it, it almost sounded like I thought fairies were real. Which, if you’d asked me yesterday versus today…I mean, who knew.
“Fairies,” he said, his mouth twisting a little. “Like leprechauns? Rainbows with pots of gold at the end of them?”
Okay, I knew it had sounded ridiculous. It had just been the first thing that came to my mind. “More like traditional Irish folklore.”
“James Stephens, Lady Gregory, that kind of thing?”