The Ninth Wife (12 page)

The bar is crowded and boisterous with red-faced twenty-somethings not at all interested in their environment outside pheromone range. They’re not listening to the lively music emanating from Rory’s fiddle and another man’s guitar up on the small stage. Bess sits at a dark table in the corner and tries to block out the bar din. It sounds like they’re playing a jig, the rhythm bouncing off the fiddle in cheery refrains. He’s having a good time up there. He holds the neck of the fiddle low and uses the full bow, end to end, rocking back and forth, tapping his foot. He cradles the other end of the fiddle in the crook of his neck affectionately, like he’s hugging a cat, and Bess imagines resting her head under his chin, his arms wrapped around her. He looks handsome in his black T-shirt, jeans, and black boots, his gray-flecked dark hair dangling seductively over one eye.

“Thanks very much,” he says at the tune’s end to the few who notice the sudden silence and clap. Bess claps the longest, which is when he sees her. She waves, he smiles, she blushes.

“Now if you’ll indulge us,” says Rory, leaning into his microphone while his partner frets his guitar. He has placed his fiddle behind him on a table and has his hands in his front pockets like a little boy who has gotten into trouble. Bess feels something like a craving for him, he’s so damn cute, and blushes again when, as she stares at his hands in his pockets, an image of unzipping his pants runs through her, brain to crotch and back again. “We’re going to do a well-known tune for you now by our boy Thomas Moore from the early part of the nineteenth century.” Bess feels like the only one listening. Rory continues: “ ’Twas a time when the people of Ireland were in the poorest of spirits, had lost the last glimpses of liberty and brotherhood in their fight against the British Empire, and this is a sad song indeed, but also a hopeful one, if you’re one to see things that way. You ready, Sean?”
Am
, says Sean with a strum of his strings. “Right, then,” says Rory, and clears his throat. “Here is ‘The Harp That Once.’ ” And he sings with his eyes shut, dark and heartfelt, his voice up the octave in cries of passion and down again at the end of each stanza to lay grounded in the doleful resting place of Irish history.

Bess is transported. The beauty and sadness of the song lift her out of the bar across an ocean to an echoing empty castle where flags are flapping on their poles and bodies in rags are crouched in corners and a bell tolls far away and sends a dove back to circle the cemetery’s dead and a cherub with his harp is too far away to touch. When the song ends and the voices of the philistine frat boys at the bar filter back into her consciousness, Bess realizes she has tears in her eyes for Millie and Irv and her parents long gone.

The next piece lifts her out of the darkness. She taps her toes in rhythm with the lively reel and sips the beer the waiter has brought over, compliments of the “act.”
The act?
The waiter gives a nod to Rory. Bess holds her glass up in a toast of thanks and Rory winks at her.

“Ready for a break, Sean?” asks Rory, as if reading her mind. She sees that Rory has pointed her out to Sean, who nods a hello to her, too. He whispers something to Rory. Rory laughs and rubs his eyes. “You know,” says Sean into the microphone, “we don’t always mean to pick on Mother England.”

“If it weren’t for England, we wouldn’t have our Irish rebel songs,” says Rory.

“There’s that,” says Sean. “But they also have their share of characters, wouldn’t you say, Rory? Take ol’ King Henry.”

“To King Henry,” yells the bartender, suddenly. Bess glances his way and sees his glass raised, his broad smile, his eyes to the stage aglow with what appears as an inside joke.

“Yes, take King Henry,” Rory says back to the bartender, shaking his head, grinning the way someone would who’s being teased. He cups his hand over the microphone and says something to Sean, who laughs and looks at Bess, and then begins to strum and sing.

The song about King Henry and his wives is lighthearted, and when it ends, others finally clap along with Bess, though she isn’t sure whether it’s for the King Henry antics or because Rory and Sean are stepping off the stage, as if it had been too much effort for the frat boys and barflies to clap after each song and instead had saved it up for the end.

“You made it,” says Rory as he sits opposite her.

Bess repositions herself to face him. “You’re really good.”

“Thanks. We usually get standing ovations, I don’t know what’s going on tonight.” Bess is learning to read the sparkle in his eyes when he’s joking.

“I threw my bra on stage, didn’t you see it?”

“That was you? I thought it was Sean’s—his always slips off his bosom when he hits a low C.”

Bess laughs. “Bosom?”

“Well, I can’t very well say
tits
in the presence of one who has them, can I?”

“Absolutely not. I’m leaving.”

“Please stay. I’m trying to make my first dates last more than three minutes and you’re my last hope.”

“Fine, but one more slip-up and these bosoms are out the door.”

“I promise,” he says, and winks. How sexy a wink is. All this talk of tits has her turned on, fully aware of the nerve endings of her nipples against fabric, the floating particles of air in her cleavage.

“So what were you guys laughing about?” Bess asks, looking at Sean at the bar.

“Nothing.” For a moment Rory looks down at the floor. “The boys get a bit soggy into the evening. So you found this place okay?”

“I’ve been here before. They have good potato soup and corned beef sandwiches.”

“That they do, though corned beef is an American thing, we never ate that in Ireland. The best is their soda bread. Perfection. The owner uses his grandmother’s recipe with real buttermilk and raisins, the crust is so hard it can make a man homesick.” Van Morrison bursts from a lit jukebox. A waitress carries a pungent waft of sauerkraut past them on a plate. “You hungry?”

“No, thanks,” she lied. She ate only a PowerBar and a chunk of cheddar cheese after karate; she is too butterfly-stomached to eat anything else. “That reminds me, I brought you something.” She reaches into her bag and retrieves an item wrapped in tin foil. She hadn’t planned on bringing him a piece of pie, thinking it might be too much on a first date, but she had leftovers that Millie insisted she take home and decided as she was running out the door that it was best to part with the calories. She hoped he would see it as a nice gesture.

“Ah! You read my mind. I’ve been craving this since I saw it at your party. It was a true work of art, that pie of yours.”

Bess blushes. “Thanks.”

He retrieves a fork and digs in, closing his eyes as he chews. “Pure heaven. Where did you learn to make such a masterpiece?”

“My mom taught me. She was amazing in the kitchen.”

“Was?”

“She passed away when I was in college.”

“I’m sorry.”

Bess takes a quick look around the bar, takes a deep breath. “So, do you get homesick?”

Rory leans back and wipes his chin. “For Ireland? No. I mean, sometimes sure. It’s not like I’ve made such a success of my life here.” He looks down at his glass. “I’ll tell you it’s mostly when I see Americans who fancy themselves Irish, the ones who barf up green beer every St. Paddy’s Day. And they look at me as if I’m just like them only more so.”

“I think I know what you mean. I hate when someone claims a heritage he knows little about out of some fake sense of pride or, I don’t know . . . to join the party. But then we’re talking about Irish Americans, and you have to admit not all of them are like that.”

“No?”

“What I mean is, the term Irish American has a different meaning than Irish. It’s easy to see the former as a dilution of the latter, but at some point the new group takes on its own shape so focusing solely on its derivation isn’t enough.”

Rory puts down his fork and leans back in his chair, flashing his dimpled, boyish grin.

“What?” says Bess, sheepishly.

“Tell me, Bess Gray, what do you do for a living?”

Bess tries to conjure up a clever answer, but that banter train has already derailed and fallen into the ravine of work-speak. “Sorry. I’m a folklorist.”

“That explains the decor of your apartment, which I loved, by the way. You travel a lot?”

“Some. But mostly I’ve collected stuff from artists here.”

“Your African masks are amazing, but I must say, you’re the first woman I’ve met with a banjo on her wall. I saw that and my heart did a little leap.” Rory flutters his hand over his heart.

Bess’s heart responds with a little leap of her own. “I loved that you took it down to play.”

“Do you play?”

“No. It was my dad’s. I remember him being really good actually.”

“Was? You lost your dad, too?”

Bess nods. “When I was eight. He died in a car crash.”

“I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

Rory’s gaze turns sympathetic. Bess takes a sip of her beer and looks away.

“So!” says Rory in a clear attempt to brighten the mood. “Let me ask you. I’ve been here for almost thirty years, nearly twice as long as I lived in Ireland. My friends back home make fun of my American ways. Would you call me an Irish American then?”

“Is your vomit green?”

“Yes. But I’m a bulimic on a strict grass diet.”

Bess’s laugh turns her sip of beer into a snort out her nose. Mortified, she reaches for the nearest napkin. “That was bad.”

“What, my bulimic reference or your very dainty spray of snot?” Rory finishes his beer and stops the waitress to order another.

Bess politely declines. She took an allergy pill today and doesn’t want to push it. “Identity is such a hard thing. Painful sometimes, for me anyway. I don’t know much about my family background. Maybe that’s why I do what I do.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No. Not even any aunts or uncles or cousins, that I know of anyway. I have my grandparents, and I love them dearly, they’re so good to me, but they adopted my mom and are pretty private about that. What about your family?”

“I have my dad and two sisters. My mother and brother have passed on. My brother I was quite close to. That was hard. I’ll tell you, I still think of all of them, of Ireland, as home, even though I don’t want to go back. I’m Irish through and through. I was practically born with a Guinness in my hand. I feel most comfortable in a pub. I follow soccer and boxing. I sing a mean ‘Danny Boy’ and I don’t go to church unless someone makes me. I’m a damn cliché, is what I am.”

“I feel like a cliché, too.”

“You? Yes, of course, there must be thousands of beautiful brown-haired folklorists in this country.”

He said I was beautiful
. “No, I mean . . .” and here Bess hesitates. “I’m a single thirty-something woman living in the city. It’s such a boring story by now.” She can’t look at him. How could she have said that to a near stranger on a first date when she won’t even bring this subject up with her closest friends? She is suddenly aware that under the table she is pulling a scab off her knee and now it will scar. She at least stops herself from saying what she’s thinking next: that the friend she most talks to is gay. (Where could Cricket be? she wonders. He’s not answering his cell phone. She should check up on Stella in Dogaritaville.)

“Are you saying you have a cat?”

“No, I’m allergic, but see? You know just the stereotype I’m talking about.”

Rory reaches out and brushes her forearm. “I understand. It’s not my choice to be alone, either.”

Bess looks at his fingers on her arm and shivers with desire. How did their conversation get so intense so quickly? “Let’s get out of here,” she says, and then cringes at the sound of it aloud.

“A girl after my own heart!” says Sean, bursting onto the scene with beer in hand. He grabs a chair and sidles up to their table. “I like my women to take charge, right, McMillan?” His smile at Bess is wide and mischievous. Bess blushes.

“Bess, this is Sean, the smoothest-talking scoundrel in the District.”

“Aw, go on. Don’t listen to him,” says Sean. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He extends his hand. When Bess offers hers, he holds on to it, massaging the back of her hand with his thumb. “Sweet Jesus, your skin’s like silk. McMillan, you old, pale, hairy son of a bitch, what’d you do to land such a dark-haired, young beauty?”

“I’m not sure,” says Rory.

“Darling, you’d be better off with someone like me, trust me. I’m richer, I’m better-looking, I’m much more talented, musically and otherwise, if you get my drift.”

They are both looking at Bess, and Bess, for her part, is feeling looked at, feeling desired, feeling pretty and sexy and almost unbearably desirous of Rory as she enjoys Sean’s caresses that are now along the inside of her wrist. She pulls her hand away when she realizes this and drinks her beer. “I’m enjoying your performance,” she says to Sean, though she says it with enough of a pause before the last word that Sean and Rory laugh.

“Okay, seriously,” says Sean. “Rory here is a simple guy. No, no,” he says as Rory tries to push him away, jokingly. “I’m telling you the truth. He likes a good beer, an exciting game, good music . . .”

“And a lovely woman to come home to,” says Rory, winking at Bess.

“Interesting,” says Bess. “Why not a woman to
share
the beer, the game, and the music
with
?” She’s surprised she said this aloud and feels a little burst of heat in her cheeks, but Rory’s grin widens into something different this time, something less impish and more tender.

“Oh, I like this woman,” says Sean. “I think she’s got your number, McMillan.”

“That she does,” says Rory.

R
ory finishes another short set, says his good-byes, and with his palm in the center of Bess’s back escorts her toward the door. “You look amazing, by the way,” he whispers into her ear as they wait for the bouncer to let them pass.

Bess smiles as if with her whole body. “Do you have a car?” she asks. He nods. “C’mon then. I want to show you something.”

She had brainstormed during his second set where they might go after he was done working. Someplace romantic and nearby, she thought. Throw illustrious, gothic, and D.C. into the mix and she had the perfect place: the grounds of the National Cathedral.