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“Your mum.” He shook his head. “Loveliest figure of a girl in three counties. All of them after her, but of course she was out of their league. A class above, she was, she with her family seat, the house in Sligo—the Finlays: not exactly an aristocratic family, you understand, but one who had been around long enough to have the land, the respect, and the money, so they might as well have been. She wasn’t Lady Daphne but she looked the part. And it wasn’t going to be a ruddy rag-and-bone man from the streets of Dublin who stole her heart, now was it?” He shook his head, a smile playing about his lips. He paused, a dramatic beat. “Or so we all thought.” He cast his head back, eyes rolling away into the past as he recalled another time. “Miss Finlay and a friend of hers have a fancy one night to go to the fights. All dressed up they are, stick out by a mile, ‘cause these aren’t no big time championship numbers. This is club fighting, a bit of the down and dirty, lads working their way up, maybe, or maybe they’re never gonna get no better and instead they’ll just look like Pat here for the rest of their lives. Maybe Miss Finlay and her friend figure they’ll get a bit of the rough, but from a safe distance. And who’s on the card that night?” He looked around, eyebrows raised, an expectant schoolmaster. 

Mickey, the young boy, spoke up. “Benty.”

“Right you are, my boy. Bantamweight, she sees O’Reilly pulverize whatever poor sod was up against him on the card that night and Miss Finlay, begging your pardon Mr. Reilly, finds she has a taste for blood. She can’t help herself, she has to find out who this savage little sod is. So she goes to the back and introduces herself.” He stopped and leaned back in his chair, the slow creak a gradual exclamation to his tale. The room was dead silent.

Pat Coolihan cleared his throat. “She can’t’ve asked him to stop right away. We all know what he went on to do.”

“Hang on.” Another young man, nicknamed Silk, spoke up. Ian didn’t know his real name. He was a middleweight, bigger than most of the rest, a shy black youth who trained with Sean while his regular trainer recovered from a stroke. “What happened? When she went back to speak with him?” Ian had hardly ever heard him say a word. Now he thought he knew why. His speech was educated, middle class. It stood out in this working class environment, as Ian’s did.

“No one knows that for sure except one person, maybe two. They’re both in this room, as it happens. The other two people who could say for certain have passed.” Everyone looked around. Mostly at Ian. 

“My parents didn’t tell me much about their courtship. I knew they met at a fight. I always thought…” it was hard to revise a history that had been one way in his head for so long. In fact, he questioned this version of theirs. “My father saw my mother in the crowd, after he won, and…and he gestured to her, got her attention. And so she went back. He invited her from the ring.” He said it with the conviction he felt. 

He couldn’t imagine his mother making the first move; watching a brutal fight, a series of fights, and then, somehow…choosing one of the men, and going to the back, to…pick him up? 

Kelly shrugged. “I’ll not argue with family lore. But there’s another here who witnessed the whole thing.”

Ian turned in shock, remembering that Sean Gallagher had been in his father’s time, and from a few things he’d dropped, might have known his father well. And it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask him questions, to interrogate him about his father, his mother, their relationship; a whole series of questions about his early life that this man must have been privy to. 

“Why dig this all up now?” Sean's face was dour. 

“We’re telling stories, reliving old times, for pity’s sake. No harm in it, if Reilly here don’t object.”

Ian felt trapped. If he objected to whatever Sean might say, it made it look like he was afraid his mother had somehow been in the wrong. Even if it were true, who cared if she’d picked him up? She hadn’t picked well, but she couldn’t have known that. 

Ian shrugged. “It was all years ago anyway.”

Sean shifted on his seat and rolled one shoulder as if it ached. “She saw him that night, ‘tis true. He was on that night, slugging through like there weren’t nothing in front of him. Could have put a freight train there he would have slugged through it, that night. It was his breakout fight, as Hubbard was well ranked above him, supposed to be slumming for him. Put a stop to him all right. And that’s the night she comes. If it hadn’t been for her we could of gone to England, the States, we could of gone further than anyone knew. You was impressed with how far he got? That was a quarter, a quarter of what he had in him. All Ireland was nothing.”

Sean fell silent as they all tasted his bitterness, such a contrast to his usual cheer. 

“She didn’t mind the fighting at first. That was how she’d met him after all,” Sean continued. “But the bigger it got, the riskier it got. That’s the way’t goes, you knows it from the start.” His shoulders slumped. “So they gets married. Fine. He keeps fighting. And his chance comes and he’s ready and the championship is there for the taking and it’s his. And then they find she’s in the club. And Daph don’t like it so much anymore that he’s risking his health. So she figures a way to make him stop, knowing his nature. If God sends them a boy, he has to stop. If it’s a girl, he can go on. Them days, course he wanted the boy and it’s her way to make him want the girl.”

Everyone looked at Ian. 

Ian stared at Sean, who looked at him now with such vitriol that Ian dropped his eyes, shocked and unnerved by the story. It was a part of his parents’ past he’d never been privy to. And it might explain…so many things. 

“See you tomorrow,” he muttered to the silent assemblage, who regarded him now with a mixed bag of expressions which he didn’t want to see or decipher. Without grabbing his gear he was out the door and on his way home, to think about what this meant; what his whole life had been built on up to this point: a lie, an untold truth that changed everything.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I
AN
’
S
TIME
ALONE
at home had become a sustained, unbearable note in the wrong key. He couldn’t take it any longer. He had to get to them. The rags on this side of the pond had the story of their defection by now; no telling what crap they were tossing around in the snake pit over there. It was ten times worse in the U.K., always was. They had so many more papers competing for the spoils. It was uglier, meaner, that much more competitive. And they paid good money to people willing to talk. He had to get over there and see what the situation was for himself. If possible, get Jane and Tam back here, or at least away from the quicksand their reputations were sinking into in London. 

He had to take care of one bit of business before he left. The
Babe Running Elk Show
. It had been arranged for months. It was going to be taped at an open air theater and then shown a couple of weeks later, timed for the opening of his film
Lunacy
. Since the talk show would be filmed in Cincinnati, it would make things easier to pack for London and fly from Cincinnati to New York and to London from there. 

There wasn’t any way to prepare for a talk show, he’d found. It wasn’t on his list of favorite things to do. It didn’t have the fun of live theater, since it wasn’t a creative performance in pursuit of character and story. He was there as himself, or rather “Ian Reilly,” whoever the hell that was. The host had lots of rein to make it easy or hard. He liked Babe so he hoped for the best. What he hated most on the publicity trail was getting into habitual trains of repeating himself in interviews. While the theory was that different groups of people would hear each interview or show, he could imagine some subgroup seeing all of his press and television and thinking he was a talking head, wound up to repeat one or two paragraphs on command. In that case they might easily come to the conclusion that he wasn’t all that bright. Therefore he was endlessly in pursuit of the original response to the same questions, which were asked, by different interviewers, with absurdly slight variations, over and over again. Truly original questions he prized like the great gems they were, and lingered over his answers.

Going out on stage, when his name was called, he felt the wave hit him. It was like walking into a wall. The smell, the heat, the desire of women reached out to him, an intangible aura that extended past the crowd, beyond the barriers to caress him as he plunged into view. He flinched. The roar crescendoed, rising to a meaningless cacophony of white noise, pierced by screams. With a nod and a wave, he walked downstage slowly, where Babe was standing. God. Why had he signed on for this? All he could see was an ocean of people. Their screams unsettled him, but this was a national television show, which must have decent security, so he tuned it out, zoning in on Babe. Just like a play.

 Finally he was by Babe’s side. She gave him a brief hug, a comforting thing from her short, pleasingly round frame. He kissed her on both cheeks, still in European mode. Once he was up close, he could see she was nervous, too. She was wearing a lot of makeup. He studied her as she began to address the crowd. Up close, the areas of color, light and dark on her face highlighted its diamond symmetry. He took her hand and squeezed it. Holding a microphone in her left hand, she spoke to the crowd about
Lunacy
, which most of the audience had seen in a special screening the night before. The audience yelled itself hoarse screaming back responses to this. What they were saying Ian couldn’t fathom. 

She got close to his ear and murmured, “Why don’t we sit down? Maybe they’ll stop yelling.” 

For some reason her whispering in his ear got a huge reaction. Babe stopped what she was saying, not that she could be heard at that point anyway, and they walked back to the platform where they were to sit. When they turned upstage he saw why the crowd had roared when he whispered to her; there was an enormous Jumbotron screen twenty feet high behind them with their faces blown up, so everyone could see right up their noses. Great. 

They sat down. He got miked with a little lavaliere on his coat collar. Then it took two or three minutes for everybody to settle down enough to hear them speak.

Babe started another introduction in her resonant voice. “We’re so glad to have Ian Reilly here today. The film
Lunacy
comes out next Friday. Our lucky audience got to see the film last night. (Roar from the crowd.) Did you like it? (Applause.) It’s great, isn’t it? Well, Ian’s here today to talk about his films, his co-stars, his upcoming projects, and to share what life is like back on the farm with his family.” (Roar of enthusiasm.)

“Let’s talk about
Lunacy
first. (Loud applause.) Our audience seemed to enjoy it.” Babe specialized in the droll aside.

He observed her in a kind of trance, feeling like he was cut off from what was going on, in a bubble. She was good at what she did, he thought as she recited seamlessly from her cue cards.

“
Lunacy
is about Roderick Capassis, an adventurer hired by the Czar to hunt wolves in Russia in the seventeen hundreds. He’s an outsider, a foreigner to the Russian court, and is tolerated for his ability to kill the wolves that the countrymen have come to fear. But there’s a twist to this film that you won’t believe. (Screams.) Let’s watch a clip. Anything you want to say about this scene, Ian?”

“It was cold. (Laughter.) No. Ah, this part was shot in the Czech Republic. It was beautiful. Very stark in the winter. It was eerie at night, where we were.”

Babe smiled her transforming smile, that always made him smile, too, and took over: “Okay.
Lunacy
.”

The audience watched the scene on the big screen. Babe and Ian chatted about the volatility of the crowd as they watched the monitor. She said they weren’t normally so loud, but she’d only done two shows in an open amphitheater before, and the other audiences had been more staid. 

“Hey, this is good, right? We want them enthusiastic.” As she said this earnestly, her brown eyes wide, he made a mock-terrified face. She smiled and patted his arm. Who felt more like animals? He and Babe, caught up on the stage like an exhibit, or the anonymous mass of people literally below them? The crowd was a strange monster, moving restlessly at moments, quiet and agreeable at others. The scene ended to a flurry of applause. Their little tête-à-tête over, Babe snapped back to her hosting duties.

“Ian, let me tell you what I
really
want to know.”

“Okay.” Only the faintest of veils let down over his eyes.

“What was it like to work with the wolves?”

“Oh. Humbling. Jade Lekowski was the trainer, and she had these cross-bred wolf dogs. They looked like wolves but had enough dog to be trained. I have to say this is not a good idea. They don’t make pets. When they looked right at you, you could see the wildness. You could be playing with them one minute, then another, they’d look right through you and I’d be like, am I in trouble here? Then there were real wolf packs that were filmed for some of the long distance shots, by helicopter and special crews.” He kept on talking through the waves of noise, crowd reaction, and flutter that poured over parts of his speech. Babe nodded, though her eyes wandered for parts of it. She was keeping track of various cues. He didn’t take it personally. 

“You run a lot during this film. Did you have to get in shape for this?”

“Um…yeah. A bit. I’m not that fond of all the running.” 

“Well, you looked good.” (Huge scream from crowd.) He glanced at the monitors placed to the side and saw they were showing shots of him running half-naked. He’d forgotten that part of the film.

“It’s what I get the big bucks for.” As soon as he said it, he wanted it back. He meant for the running, not for looking good, but that’s what it sounded like. 

“Oh, yeah, honey.” Babe flashed her lovely smile at him again. “So what’s up next for you, Ian? What do we have to look forward to?”

He struggled past his embarrassment. “I’m very excited about the next one coming down the pike. It’s called
Odysseus
, and, as you might guess, it’s
The Odyssey
, only they’re calling it
Odysseus
, because in Hollywood you have to change the title. Otherwise you’re not allowed to get funding.”