I could’ve stopped at any one of the pieces to look at them more, but Eamonn was moving and I didn’t want to slow us down. When we rounded a corner, there was the “something else” he’d wanted to show me. A bronze statue of a woman pushing a cart topped with baskets that a few other tourists were already gathered around, taking pictures.
“The famous Molly Malone,” Eamonn said, gesturingtoward the statue. “It’s a cliché, but you have to pay her a visit if you’re in Dublin. I don’t think they let you leave the country otherwise.”
“What’s she famous for?” Besides apparently having huge knockers. The brass of the top swells of her breasts, bursting out from above her low-cut dress, was worn down to a light sheen from so many people touching it. Even in the minute we’d been standing there, I’d already seen one family take turns posing for a picture with their hands on her. I felt weirdly protective of Molly Malone, like it wasn’t fair that she had to stand here for all eternity and get manhandled like that.
“Ah, you know the song,” Eamonn said. “Everyone knows it.In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty…”
He spoke the words rather than sang them, and trailed off after that one line, like he didn’t want to quote any more. I wondered if he was remembering earlier in the park, when he’d called me pretty. I certainly hadn’t forgotten it.
“She was a fishmonger,” he said. “Some stories put her as a part-time prostitute, as well, but that seems like it might’ve been…”
“Misogyny?” I guessed.
“Right, exactly. As far as I know, I think she’s semihistorical, semilegendary. The gist of the song is that she goes through town with her wheelbarrow of cockles and mussels, just like her mother and father before her, and then she dies young of a fever and her ghost still pushes the wheelbarrow around.”
“So she was pretty, she worked, she died? That’s it?”
“And then she’s a ghost,” Eamonn said. “Which is good craic.”
I didn’t want to ask him to explain every bit of slang, so I tried to figure that one based on context. “If I come back as a ghost and am still answering phones, help me cross over,” I said.
Eamonn laughed. “Fair enough.”
The thought had occurred to me—it was possible this wasn’t a dream or a fairy dimension or even good old-fashioned human trafficking, but some form of the afterlife. I had hit my head pretty hard, but notthathard, surely? I didn’t feel dead. If anything, I felt more alive than ever. I really didn’t think that was it, but it was hard to keep the fear from creeping into my mind, before I had to quickly shove it away. The whole point of coming out to see Molly Malone had been to lighten the mood, so I didn’t want to bring it back down.
“Why are people always feeling her up?” I asked. “Is that a thing?”
“Some people think it’s good luck, I guess,” Eamonn said. “You know, when people rub Buddha statues and the like. And then in this case,whereyou’re rubbing…”
He gave me a smile that was somehow half wicked, half embarrassed, like he was inviting me to be complicit in the salaciousness but apologizing for it at the same time.
I looked over at the statue again, taking in all the details—the folds of her dress, the weave in the baskets, the way her face was forever staring directly at you, looking more serious than the song and her alliterative name and the tourists touchingher might suggest. She’d be fun to paint. Getting at the metallic shine of the brass, the matte places on her chest from where hands had touched, not only her skin but the top fold of her dress, blending from the darkest black in the shadows all the way up to the almost pure white highlight of those well-loved spots.
“Have you ever done it?” I asked. “Be honest.”
“Hand over heart,” he said, and literally placed his hand over his chest, right where his heart would be. “No, I haven’t. But I’ll not judge if you want to. Go ahead, if you need the luck.”
I was more tempted to put my hand over his when it really came down to it, or to touch his chest through his soft sweater the same way he had, see if I could feel his heart beating.
I’d left too long before responding or acting, I realized only when his hand finally dropped away. Instead, I’d just been staring at him, which probably made me look strange.
“It feels like assault somehow,” I said, trying to recover. “Even though it’s a statue. And now I’ve thought about it for too long—it would’ve been different if I’d just gone over there and put my hands on her. But now I’ve spent all this time noticing how shiny the brass is there, the detail in the valley between her boobs, the way her dress dipsjustlow enough that she seems seconds away from a nip slip. I feel like I’ve made it weird.”
“Okay,” Eamonn said with an exaggeratedyikesexpression. “You have definitely made it weird. Now you’ll get stopped at the airport if youdotouch her. Come on, you shouldn’t even be looking at her in a public street.”
He pinched the sleeve of my jacket—hisjacket—between his fingertips, like he was going to lead me away, but he didn’t actually give any sort of tug. It felt like his fingers stayed there for a second longer than they had to, when it was only a playful gesture, but then he dropped his hand again.
“How does the song go?” I asked, hoping any breathlessness in my voice could be attributed to the cold. “Maybe I wouldn’t objectify Molly if I heard her song first.”
“I told you her whole story,” he said, “including the ghost part, and that didn’t stop ya.”
“Sing it for me.”
He gave a little laugh, rubbing the top of his head. “Jaysus, no. I don’t sing.”
“Please?”
He looked at me, the corner of his lower lip tucked under his teeth. “Okay,” he said. “But you owe me.”
