“I’m not gonna say anything when Rushborough’s there,” Cal says. “He’s smarter’n Johnny; he might manage to talk his way out. But I bet you a hundred bucks Rushborough’s gonna leave after a couple of drinks, to give Johnny and the guys some space to gloat about how good they fooled him. That’s where I come in.”
“Still,” Lena says. “Watch him, after. I don’t like him.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “Me neither.”
He wants to tell Lena that these days he feels like he can’t find Trey, that for three nights running he’s had nightmares where she disappeared somewhere on the mountainside, that he wishes he had bought her a phone and put a tracker app on it so he could spend his days just sitting still and watching her bright dot go about its business. Instead he says, “I gotta go shower and eat something. We’re heading down to Seán’s at six.”
Lena looks at him. Then she comes over to him, cups her hand around the back of his neck, and kisses him full and strong on the mouth. It feels like a baton-pass, or like she’s sending him into battle.
“Right,” she says, straightening up. “I’ll leave you to it, so.”
“Thanks,” Cal says. The smell of her is in his nose, clean and sunny as drying hay. “For talking to Mrs. Duggan.”
“That woman’s a feckin’ nightmare,” Lena says. “If I was Noreen I’da poisoned her tea years ago.” She puts a finger and thumb in her mouth and whistles for her dogs, who abandon their war with the scarecrow and head across the field in long, happy bounds. “Let me know how you get on,” she says.
“Will do,” Cal says. He doesn’t watch her to her car. He’s already picking up the glasses and heading into the house, thinking about the right words to use when the time comes.
It’s early enough that Seán Óg’s is mostly empty, just a few old guys eating toasted sandwiches and bitching at the racing on the TV; most of the Friday crowd are still at home digesting their dinners, laying the proper groundwork for the serious drinking ahead. Daylight still slants in at the windows, in long rays turned solid by the lazy hang of dust motes. Only the alcove is full and raucous. The guys are scrubbed and combed, buttoned into good shirts; their faces and necks are reddened in odd spots, from the sun off the river. Rushborough is holding court in the middle of it all, spread wide on a banquette telling some story with sweeping arm gestures, and getting all the laughs he could want. On the table among the pints and the beer mats, mottled rich red and green and yellow by the drops of colored sunlight through the stained glass, is the little bottle of gold dust.
“Sorry I’m late,” Cal says to the alcove in general, pulling up a stool and finding space for his pint on the table. He took his time getting ready. He feels no urge to spend any longer with Rushborough and Johnny than he needs to.
“I was as well,” P.J. tells him. P.J., like Bobby, has a tendency to confide in Cal, possibly because Cal lacks the long familiarity to give them shit. “Listening to music, I was. I was all stirred up when I got in; couldn’t sit still. I tried to sit down to my tay, and wasn’t I up and down like a hoor’s knickers, forgetting the fork and then the milk and then the red sauce. When I do be like that, the only thing that’ll set me straight is a bitta music.”
Clearly the music only partly did its job. This is a very long speech for P.J. “What’d you listen to?” Cal asks. P.J. sings to his sheep sometimes, mostly folk songs.
“Mario Lanza,” P.J. says. “He’s great for settling the aul’ spirits. When I’m the other way, when I can’t get outa the bed, I’d listen to this English young one called Adele. She’d put enough heart in you for anything.”
“What the hell were you all stirred up for?” Mart inquires with interest, glancing across at Rushborough to make sure his voice is low enough. “Sure, you knew what was in there all along.”
“I know,” P.J. says humbly. “But ’twas some day, all the same.”
“We don’t get many like this,” Mart concedes.
