Shadow Season (10 page)

“But even so, what you’re really angry about is that you couldn’t pull any strings.”

“Hell yes,” Duchess admits. She swings her arms and the sugary scent rolls out from beneath the heavy odor of sweat. “Ought to be good for something, putting my time in like this. Asked Judith if she could make an exception and she made an ugly face like I’d just farted in church.”

“She wouldn’t mind church-farting nearly as much. St. Val’s is all she has. She wants all of us to play by every rule.”

“Except herself. I wonder what school regulation says she’s supposed to drink on the job and get her head stuck in the shitter with her nasty old-lady bloomers down her ankles?”

“We’re always the exceptions to our own rules.”

He doesn’t have to tell her that. She knows it, maybe better than him, and for a second he wonders if she’s going to say so. She gulps a deep breath and lets it swirl
around inside her, and then lets it out a brooding exhalation that flips his front curls.

The doors open and several chattering girls enter. Duchess stands, pushes her chair in, turns to the kitchen, and gets ready to start serving dinner.

“Why aren’t you home with your babies, Duchess?” he asks.

“My children can take care of themselves. It’s these intelligent ones here who did so well on their entrance exams that would be licking tree bark without me.”

MURPHY SITS AND SAYS, “I’M PARCHED!
Slainte!
”

That means he’s raising his eggnog for a Christmas cheers. Distracted, Finn fumbles for his glass and nearly tips it.

Murph’s hand knocks Finn’s aside, like swatting a child reaching for matches. It’s something the Irishman knows he should never do, but he does it a lot anyway, the prick. Finn swats back and grabs his glass.

“Och, you bastard,” Murph says. “No need to be so lively. I just didn’t want to see you ruin your lovely meal of lamb.”

“And I haven’t,” Finn tells him.

“You need some mint jelly on it now.”

“No, I really don’t.”

This has to do with them being the two alpha males on campus. There’s a curious sort of tension between them even when the rest of the faculty and staff are at the school. The big dogs always have to bark at each other. It reminds Finn of the kind of shit that used to go down between him and Ray.

“Heathen, you’re no connoisseur,” Murph says. “You just don’t know how to eat.”

“So Duchess keeps telling me.”

‘A fine woman there, cooks like me ma, with genuine skill and love. You can taste it in each bite.”

Tonight there’s honey-baked ham and lamb, and Finn’s never tasted it cooked better in his life. There’s a lot of laughter in the dining hall, assigned to the five or six tables being used. Even with only a handful of students left on campus, they’ve broken into their little cliques and subsets.

The emptiness of the large room causes a little snap in the distance that isn’t quite an echo. Finn turns his chin to it, sensitive to the noise. It sounds like somebody back there clapping his hands.

Judith is still in her office. She’s always late because she wants everyone seated before she arrives. It allows her to control who she sits with, who she impresses herself on. That’s a minor but important bit of her sovereignty. Usually she’ll sit across from Murphy, on an angle so she doesn’t have to look into his eyes but will still be part of the conversation. Judith feels so powerless over her emotions that these small affectations of authority take on a much greater meaning.

Finn understands completely. Egos are delicate. Inconsequential achievements are sometimes the only ones you get.

Murph has a bad shoulder that clicks when he turns his head. He’s looking around now, taking notice of the girls, listening in, just like Finn is. Snatches of conversation tumble through the air.

Jesse Ellison is discussing Vonnegut a little too loudly with Lea Grant and Caitlin Jones, probably hoping Finn will hear. Knowing that he will. Suzy and Sally Smyth are quietly snorting with obscene laughter.

Maybe they really have spiked the eggnog, or managed to talk Murphy into doing it for them. Jesse gets nothing out of the other girls and starts invoking Violet’s name, trying to involve her, but Vi says little in response. Finn tries not to dwell on Vi but his thoughts have been so jumpy lately that he’s almost glad to have her to focus him for the moment.

Violet Treato isn’t listening to Jesse but responds with appropriate noises of interest to keep Jesse chattering. Vi’s presence is strong enough that it keeps drawing Finn in, making him shift his eyes. It’s the one time he’s glad for the shades. He thinks, In a lifetime of mistakes, she’s only about halfway up the list, but she might be the one to finally bring me down. He still can’t shake the feeling he got from touching her. His fingers tremble slightly as if they can still sense her wetness and heat.

Murphy leans in. He smells of shaving lather and whiskey. He’s been working nonstop maintaining the walkways in the storm. To keep himself warm he’s knocked back a pint or two from his flask. A significant breach of regulations, but what isn’t around here? Murph’s vitality is always apparent, he’s forever on the move. Even drunk in his apartment, he flutters about grabbing different CDs, listening to one or two songs on each, then tossing them aside and finding others. His musical knowledge is impressive. He tries to educate Finn but Finn doesn’t like music as much as others might think. He finds it cloying and overpowering. He prefers to hear what’s around him, the adornments of background noise.

“Has any more trouble found you lately?” Murph asks.

He says it with just enough wry amusement to make it seem that he knows about Harley Moon in Finn’s house. It snaps Finn’s chin up and makes him wonder if Murph had seen him out there stumbling around in the snow, holding an unconscious girl in his arms, and let him just continue pitching about.

Finn does one of his blind-guy tricks, takes off his glasses and stares hard, studying Murph.

“And what’s that look for?” Murphy asks, a bit shaken. Finn’s glad and digs on the feeling of being top dog again, if only for the moment.

“What look?”

“You angry that I’ve had a wee nip of Jay?”

“Not at all.”

“You say that but there’s a bit of the lash in your tongue.”

“Just don’t share with the young wans.”

“I’d never.”

“No?”

“Hell, they can get their own.”

The girls have discussed Murphy and called him everything from cute to hot to sexified and sweet ass and douche bag. They like his Irish accent. Everyone likes his Irish accent. The accent alone is probably what’s driven Judith halfway out of her head with desire for him.

When Finn sees Murphy he sees Ray. It makes him a little anxious and sometimes confuses him, but he can’t shake it. Slim hips but assertive frame, lips always tilted in a grin, hair black and curling down across the feverish eyes. The whores working the Upper East Side used to call Ray a sweet ass too. Murph has the same
compelling self-confidence that Ray had. A graceful strength and the strength of grace.

Murph’s neck clicks. He’s looking out the window. “In Galway it’s the rain that never ceases. It’s endless and seeps into everything. The earth, the rock, even the people. Only the dead care for it. The dead and me ma, but she hated anything lively.”

Finn’s heard Murph curse his mother during drunken midnight bouts. The austere woman drove his father to suicide, he claimed, by her relentless mean-spirited need to crush all learning and humor beneath her heel in the name of pragmatism. She found music, literature, sports, fine food, and good clothes to be a waste of money and time, and in direct violation of God’s will.

Mean as a dyke nun surrounded by altar boys, Murph has said, and she’d chase after him with a hurling stick made of ash if he ever missed a Sunday at church. The priests would watch him walking funny down the streets of the city, knowing he was nothing but a mass of bruises and welts. They’d clap him on the back with a hard hand and say, Your mother is a fine, loving, devoted, and high-minded woman.

At first Murph would only nod. When he was older, setting his sights on getting the hell out of Ireland, he’d respond, She murdered my da with the help of you and your like.

“What do you mean the dead care for it?” Finn asks.

“In Galway, we accompany our dead, and our dead travel with us. The funeral procession, we follow behind it, walking through the old city. But the dead are warm in their coffins, they can finally enjoy the weather. Me,
I’m still not wrung out. In Galway it’s the rain, and here it’s the snow. You can feel it just the same, all the time, even in the middle of summer. The snow well hidden, but always in attendance.” He lets loose with a self-effacing laugh and says, “Shite. And the wind of Galway. It hangs inside the ancient rock, and when you hit the face of an alleyway, the wind tears through you like a harridan swooping down. More than one tinker’s blown into the river. On days with no breeze, it’s waiting. I would come out of my flat and know it was there, calling my name.”

“Christ,” Finn says, “are you Irish Catholics always like this, or is it only when you get near the sweet baby Jesus’ birthday?”

“Always. It’s in the blood, and we can’t run from it, try as we might. It’s our lot in life, that wind and rain and stone. It’ll always be with me, I carry it wherever I am.”

“You’re a fucking laugh riot, Murph.”

“That I can be.”

Finn knows a little something about carrying your history with you, but Murph’s eating his meal now and seems to be done with this track of conversation. He grunts and croons with enjoyment as he chews and swallows. He’s hell with the condiments and spices. Finn likes to listen to Murph digging in with such verve. It reminds him of the way he used to eat Dani’s meals.

Murphy knocks back a large glass of milk and says, “Where’s Judith? She’s missing out on this fine meal, and I’ll wager she likes mint jelly.”

“Twenty says not.”

“You’re on. I can use the cash.”

Again with the jelly. Finn understands that he and
Murphy have nothing really interesting to say to each other. But still, there’s a need to shove and tug at the texture of their personalities. He sees Ray grinning at him, looking around at the girls, easing back in his seat, gracefully.

Finn’s worried about Harley Moon. He’s concerned that Vi is giving him sidelong glances, perhaps growing to hate him as time goes by. He’s alarmed that Roz still isn’t back and wonders what was so important she had to head into the blizzard again. He wishes he could sneak a couple of swigs from Murph’s flask.

“I’d best get back to the shoveling.”

“How bad is it out?”

“Growing worse by the very minute. Don’t be wandering off back to your cottage. Have someone walk you, I don’t need your carcass thawing out come April and ruining my hard-fought landscape.”

Finn raises his glass.
“Slainte!”

“There’s a good lad. It’s like you were born a son of Michael Collins or Saint Patty himself.”

As Murphy stands and turns, Finn sees Ray standing and turning, dressed in his blues, stepping away from his locker. Taped to the inside of the locker door is a letter from a nine-year-old boy written in pencil on a sheet of loose-leaf paper. The kid’s scrawl is enormous and angled to the left. In the note he thanks Ray for saving his and his mother’s lives during a bodega holdup. Ray broke regs again and marched inside and popped the perp in the chest while Finn called for backup.

Murphy zips up his coat and makes a decision to single Vi Treato out and tell her how lovely she looks with
her cheeks glowing such a wild rosy red. Vi says thank you. Murph owns the room as he saunters off.

Suzy Smyth, still too boisterous and loud, comments on Murphy’s packed drawers and several of the other girls giggle softly, aware of Finn.

Before Finn takes two bites of the lamb, Judith sidles up to the table. She asks the girls if they like the lamb and they all respond favorably. She sits across from Finn in Murph’s seat, knowing it’s Murph’s seat, still feeling his heat. Finn tries not to think about her underwear. Her
bloomers
, as Duchess put it. Christ, he tries not to think about her so bent out of shape that she needs to drink herself into an oblivion that ends with her passed out on a bathroom floor with her face in the toilet. A discussion starts up around him over something he doesn’t give a shit about.

The snowblower growls distantly.

Murphy isn’t just a talker, he likes to listen. He asks Finn a lot of questions about his years as a cop. Once, while they were both listening to the cruel strains of some Irish punk band, Murph passed the Jameson and whispered, So open your heart and tell me … do you miss it, brother?