Reluctantly Charmed (4 page)

Most of the stories I’d heard about fairies involved large quantities of whiskey. They were stories about fairies playing tricks on farmers, moving gates in fields and stealing cows’ milk. They were superstitious folklore, and they belonged to an older, backward Ireland.

Nevertheless, on my way to work the next morning I stopped at Tesco’s and bought a plant—something yellow. I slid a saucer underneath it on my desk and positioned it as far away from the
death rays of my computer as I could. And I whistled to it.
Job done
, I thought happily. Now I just had to publish the letter and first Step somehow.

After a small amount of consideration, I posted them online. I say that nonchalantly with a flick of my hair and a cool exhale of a cigarette, as if I just randomly threw the words toward a computer and nestled back into a cloud of cushions. It didn’t happen like that at all; it was much more contrived.

Matthew and I were in AlJo’s when he had the eureka moment. I wonder now if I led that conversation, steered it, but I’ve never been a great manipulator, so I doubt it. I’m an indecisive follower, the type of person who orders the same tuna, tomato, and lettuce sandwich as the person in front of them in the deli queue, even though I don’t like tuna. It seems like the easy option at the time, but thirty minutes later, when I’m picking the tuna off the bread, I’m riddled with remorse.

We always went to AlJo’s for lunch. Your feet got stuck on the linoleum, month-old crumbs festered in corners, and the coffee was bitter and too hot. Al or Jo acted like his coffee shop was a front for an Italian money-laundering operation, his eyes shifting uneasily to the back kitchen every time the door opened, as if Fat Tony and Knuckles were sitting there sucking on raw meat and respecting the family. You learned to ignore the handprint that came welded onto the white bread sandwiches and not think about Al or Jo’s dirty fingernails.

“Stick the letter up on Jim’s site.” I promise that’s what Matthew said. I remember because I scalded my mouth with hot tea when I heard Jim’s name mentioned. I still have a tiny scar on my top lip as evidence. “Not Red Horizon, that other crowd he was with, Space Monkeys. I did their website. It’s still live but nobody visits it.”

I breathed in deep and tried to look casual.

“You could take over the site if you want, or just put up a separate page. Whatever you fancy. Or you could just start a blog. That’s publishing.”

“I’ve never done a blog. It might be difficult,” I said, immediately making up an excuse, trying anything to be closer to Jim. “Would he know?” I asked, hoping for both a positive and a negative response.

“No, it’s four years old, but I can run it by him just in case.”

I tried to look like I was mulling the question over before enthusiastically nodding like a bobbleheaded dog in a car window.

Jim was Matthew’s friend. They’d gone to school together and, in true Dublin style, had never managed to lose each other. Schoolfriends are always right around the corner in Dublin, winking at you from every pub you walk into, along with your college friends, your first kiss, and your worst one-night stand. A million people live here, but it’s a ridiculously small town. I think if anyone ever carried out a survey, Dublin would unanimously be the worst place in the world to have an affair. People tend to stick to their own turf, so generations of families get knitted together and entwined in one another’s lives. So if your wife or husband doesn’t spot you jumping into a navy car and heading down a back road in the middle of the night to conduct your affair, your mother’s friend from school has a daughter whose husband will.

I’d first met Jim about a year earlier. Matthew and I had gone for a postwork drink in a decrepit little bar near the agency with a heavy patterned carpet and couches with springs that poked into your bum. We were on Heineken number two, giving out about blockbuster movies (they have no heart—me; they don’t need a heart, they have action—Matthew) when Jim walked in—no,
swaggered, he swaggered in. With shoulders that filled the door, dark, curly hair that skimmed his T-shirt collar, and a four-step entrance: enter, breathe, survey the room, and pause to be appreciated. He spotted Matthew and without waiting for an invite pulled up a chair and ordered a whiskey.

When Jim talks to you, you’re the only person in the room. He zones in and looks right into you. When he asks, “How are you?” he says it earnestly, like he really cares. When he goes to the bar to buy a round of drinks, he puts his hand on your shoulder and insists you stay for another one. He nods hello to the barman and the barflies, and returns to the table with their stories. Strangers talk to him, open up to him. He has an easy manner, he’s relaxed and charming. It’s almost impossible not to fall under his spell. It helps that he’s devastatingly handsome, with long, heavy black eyelashes that always look wet, like he just got out of the shower, and dark eyes, dark hair, and a thin white scar running across his chin that he got falling off his bike when he was a kid.

The first time I met him I was mesmerized. Within twenty minutes of his arrival our table of three had grown to six as people gravitated toward him, and by the end of the night the barman had found an old guitar, put it in Jim’s lap, and the entire pub was demanding that he sing. He didn’t need any persuading. Jim is the lead singer in a band called Red Horizon. A lot of guys in Dublin are in bands, chasing U2’s shadow, but not all of them can sing like Jim, gravelly and with so much soul it leaves a dusting of goose bumps on your skin. When you develop an infatuation for someone, you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. It doesn’t need to be a good reason—in the long run, always being the center of attention is the kind of thing that would drive you insane, but in the haze of infatuation it’s just the thing that you’ve been searching for
all these years. When we said good-bye that night, Jim squeezed his arms around my shoulders and locked me in. “Matthew’s so lucky to have a friend like you.”

I was hooked. I started fishing. Over the next few weeks I pestered Matthew about him. Where did he drink? Kehoe’s. Did he have a girlfriend? Matthew didn’t know. (How could he not know?!) Where did he live? Rathmines. My friends started to get annoyed when my suggestion for every Saturday night was (surprise, surprise) Kehoe’s or maybe dinner in a cute little restaurant in Rathmines. They’d roll their eyes and tell me to give up the ghost. “If he’s interested, he’ll find you,” was my best friend Fiona’s wise advice as she sucked on a cigarette outside McSorley’s Pub in Ranelagh, half a mile from Rathmines. “And I’m sick of drinking in the suburbs. I’m all in favor of you getting together with this guy, but it’s like a fecking treasure hunt every week. Just e-mail him. Why don’t you ask him out?”

She was right, but I was nervous. He might say no. So, instead of taking the direct approach that might have saved a lot of time, effort, and irritated friends, I joined the Red Horizon e-mail list, and went to see them play. I took Lily with me, my other best friend, a hopeless romantic who, like me, thought that maybe Jim was just a bit shy. He wasn’t. When the gig was over and we were hanging at the bar watching as the venue emptied out, he came over and planted a giant kiss on my cheek. “It’s so good to see you, I can’t believe you came. It’s so great for us to have support.” Blushing, I told him how great the band was and what a great singer he was. He looked straight at me and smiled, then invited Lily and me to the pub next door for a drink. We skipped in, Lily whispering in my ear, “You are so in there. He’s gorgeous!”

We had a lock-in in the pub—doors shut, lights off outside,
and full secret party raging illegally inside. A lock-in is probably the most exciting thing that can happen to an Irish person. It’s a guaranteed singsong, and heavy drinking until six in the morning. There were tequila slammers with slices of orange, because the bar had run out of lemon, cocktails, pints, singing, a bottle of red wine at one point, and definitely a rum and Coke. They were celebrating; Red Horizon had just been signed to support some Swedish rock band on their tour in Sweden. They were leaving three days later.

The whole night Jim sat pressed up against me, his thigh rubbing mine, his arm draped behind me on the couch, his hand occasionally skimming my knee. I knew things were looking good, so when he turned to me and said, “Maybe we should go and get some coffee in my flat?” I wasn’t remotely surprised. I knew what was coming. There was no coffee. There were clothes frantically cast off and scattered on his bedroom floor. There was kissing much sweeter than I’d expected, and there was the gentle swirl of his fingertips that I melted into in seconds.

I woke before him the next morning on the far side of the bed, duvet up to my neck, my brain seized by a cloudy hangover, a million thoughts trickling through. I’d slept with Jim on the first date. I know, I know, not always the smartest move if a girl really likes a guy. But I had met him before, so technically it wasn’t a one-night stand. Was it? Of course it was, what was I thinking? Should I wake him up? Should I get up and put on one of his shirts and go cook breakfast and pretend that I’m in
Sex and the City
and I do this kind of thing all the time? Should I tell him I don’t normally do this kind of thing? Should I tell him I like him? I should probably wait for him to tell me first. Oh God, what if he didn’t like me? What if this was all a mistake?

Just as I was thinking about chocolate, he stirred, brushed
his hair out of his half-open eyes, and smiled slowly. “Morning. What are you doing over there?”

I crossed the bed in a nanosecond, and he snuggled into me, twirled my hair, and kissed my neck. We chatted about music, or at least he did—I was very busy concentrating on the fact that I was in bed with a gorgeous man. I nodded and occasionally said words like
electronic, downloads,
and
Arctic Monkeys
, and worried about the remnants of last night’s makeup on my cheeks. I pretended I didn’t have a hangover and heard myself laugh slightly hysterically at a joke he told. I was very proud that I didn’t make any declarations out loud. I was confident I could play hard to get if you took away the sleeping together bit. I grinned like an idiot when we walked to the bus stop, my hand wrapped up in his, aware of how we might have looked to any passersby—just a normal couple who had fallen out of bed after a great night on the town. Happy. He was handsome, and she was a bit bedraggled but looked like she might scrub up well. At the bus stop he put my number into his phone. “I’ll call you, babe, yeah. You’re beautiful.”

I stared at my phone for three days, and it was working, because I checked repeatedly. He was going to Sweden, like I knew he would, and he was going without me, like I hoped he wouldn’t. Which was silly, I knew it was silly, but when you’re staring at your phone for three days, your mind starts to wander, or at least mine does. I couldn’t help but think that maybe he’d call and get me over for a weekend, or a week, or a month. I could take leave from work and go on tour forever. Told you it was silly.

Fiona told me to turn off my phone. “He might not call. He’s in a band. You had groupie sex. He’s gone to Sweden. Don’t beat yourself up over this.”

But it was more than groupie sex, I knew it was. A week later
there was a text message: “Sweden rocks. Hope you’re good, babe.” And that’s how it played out, a text here and there, mainly about Sweden rocking. And then nothing, and then three months later I heard he was back in Dublin and had a Swedish girlfriend. I never saw her, but in my head she was an uber-female, six foot, tanned, leggy, blond. She was Swedish—are they ever anything else?

That was a year ago. I’ve banged into him a couple of times, Dublin being Dublin, and he’s hugged me tight and asked me how I am. And I’ve felt weak and stung every time.

But I’m not pining for him. I haven’t spent the last year pathetically looking at my phone or thinking of him constantly. But for me, he is
that
guy. The one who pops up now and again. The one who flashes back. The one I’ve tried to forget about but found his smile tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. The one what I’ve embarrassingly googled a lot, and facebooked, and when I hear his name spoken I still blush. He’s the one whom I can’t help wondering about. He’s my
what if
guy, and I can’t shake him.

And then Matthew had this great idea to stick the letter and the Steps on spacemonkeys.com and, true to form, I agreed to go along with it.

As I said, Space Monkeys were Jim’s band before Red Horizon—Celtic rock meets R’n’B. Seriously. They were terrible. Even Jim, with his charisma and sex appeal, couldn’t save songs from lyrics like “I want to make love to you to the beat of the bodhran drum.” Their website was a couple of pages, neon-colored, with flowers and a hippy-dippy theme. Matthew took one look at my puzzled face and tried to explain that the band had requested those colors and they were nothing to do with him or his web-design abilities. He was right about the lack of visitors: the last entry had been four years ago.
Blondie18: OMG Jim you are sex on legs.

And so on a Tuesday afternoon in the first week of May,
Matthew and I posted the letter and the first Step online. I stood behind, peering over his shoulder, doing backseat typing.

“My granddad talked about the fairies.” Matthew smiled back at me. “He was from a farm in Galway. He died years ago, but I remember he used to always leave a bit of milk in the end of a glass for the fairies, and he’d never finish his food, he’d leave a few bits. He said you had to keep them happy.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Looks like they were easily pleased with just a few leftovers.”

“Yeah, I dunno.
Some of that stuff is kind of nice. Thinking that there’s something else out there, that maybe it isn’t just this.”

“Do you believe it?” I asked cautiously, and as the words slipped out of my mouth I knew I was unsure as to which way I wanted him to respond.

“In fairies?”

Slowly I nodded and bit my lip apprehensively.

“Don’t look so worried.” He laughed at me. “I dunno, a lot of it is kids’ stuff now. The tooth fairy, leprechauns.” He shook his head. “But it didn’t start off like that. It used to be adults who were talking to fairies, like my grandfather.”