“Sure, you come back and see us,” the clerk said, as if to show there were no hard feelings.
“Of course,” I said, and on some level I really meant it. I would love to return here one day. Not just this bookstore, butDublin in general—I’d love to do the audio tour at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and buy tickets to the Book of Kells and browse around this shop until I found the perfect edition as a memento of the trip. And when I pictured myself doing all that…
Well, I wanted it to be on a day exactly like today. Chilly but sunny with a brief bit of rain, Eamonn walking at my side, pointing out landmarks or telling me which way to turn. But that felt impossible in every way.
“Even though you’re a Liverpool man,” Eamonn said, reaching out to shake the clerk’s hand. “I don’t understand it, but I can respect it.”
That got a generous laugh out of the clerk. “The heart wants what it wants,” he said, shaking Eamonn’s hand but giving me a wink.
Eamonn glanced over at me, biting the inside of his cheek in a way that made that dimple pop out again. “That it does.”
I gave the folklore books one last glance as we left the store, and we were still standing on the sidewalk outside the shop when we heard the lock engage from the inside. Without a clock, I didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was lower in the sky over the river.
“I feel bad that we closed it down and didn’t buy anything,” I said. “I hate being the last person at a restaurant, when you know everyone is dying to go home. It makes me so anxious.”
“I’ll buy extra the next time I’m in,” Eamonn assured me. “Promise.”
I believed him, and not just because I already knew that he liked books. Eamonn struck me as someone who took pride in being true to his word, in doing the right thing.
“What were y’all talking about?”
“Y’all,” Eamonn repeated, and now I could see why he’d gotten such a kick out of me trying to pull offgrand. I didn’t think I had much of an accent—Florida was weird that way, Southern in some respects and a mix of other cultures at the same time—but every once in a while it came out. “Liverpool football, mostly. He said he takes the ferry over to see a match with his mates every year. He’s a fierce fan.”
“Interesting. Is he from there or something?” I didn’t know how sports allegiances worked in Ireland, but I generally assumed that most people supported their hometown teams.
“That was the most interesting part, actually,” Eamonn said, then gestured toward the white cast-iron bridge we’d walked over on. “Did you want to—we’re still in the busiest part of the city, so we could—but there are loads of pubs nearby, so—”
“I’m starving,” I said. “I would love to eat, if you’re ready.”
Amazing how things had changed, in such a short time, because I still felt those pinpricks of anxiety about whether that had been what he was getting at, whether I was being presumptuous, whether I had any moral high ground turning down a book when I was still expecting him to buy me dinner. But now those worries didn’t last as long. It felt like they couldn’t, when there was a sunset and a river and the promise of food.
Eighteen
The sky really did lookso beautiful over the water that we stopped for a minute on the Ha’penny Bridge that crossed the Liffey, just admiring the view. The water was half black with shadow, half illuminated by a streak of reflected sun. I thought of that painting again,The Liffey Swim. I looked over to the side street, trying to figure out the perspective of where that might’ve been painted from.
“What made his Liverpool fandom so interesting?” I asked, picking up the thread of our conversation before we’d decided to head to dinner.
Eamonn had been looking at me, and there was a moment where I didn’t know if he’d heard the question or remembered what we’d been talking about until his eyes lit up.
“It was his father,” he said. “He was a big Liverpool fan—he remembers his da coming home from the big one in ’76, or maybe it was ’77, with a scarf and a program and a huge wreathof flowers, like what horses get for a race. And now that his da’s gone he still has it all—the scarf and the program and even some dried flowers, although I have to think he didn’t keep the whole bleedin’ wreath.”
It was a narrow bridge, and a wave of people were coming through, so we kept walking to not be in anyone’s way. When we reached the other side we split off to separate from most of the crowd.
I liked that the clerk was sentimental enough to have kept some dried flowers as a way to remember his dad, that day. I’d never been a huge sports person myself, but I’d always liked that they seemed to bring out emotions even in people who sometimes didn’t let themselves feel them any other way. The fact that Eamonn had gently teased the man for being a Liverpool fan made me think he must have some allegiance to a team himself, and I was about to ask when he spoke again.
“Sio’s over in London now,” he said. “It probably wouldn’t be that hard to visit—I think I could, since it’s the U.K. I never tried it because I thought, what does she need some dryshite over there for, when she’s buildin’ a life.”
The casual way he’d dropped the nameSio, it made it sound like someone I was supposed to already know, and I thought I’d put it together. “Sio is your sister? Siobhán?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Last time I saw her, she’d dyed her hair bright red—it was already reddish, but this was like a crayon out of a box—and was wearing this wild outfit, polka dots mixed with some other pattern and this bandanna thing around her neck. She’s always been quirky that way, since we were kids. You’d like her—she’s an artist like you.”
I couldn’t deny the prickle of pleasure his words gave me. That he’d referred to me so easily as an artist, as though that were a crucial part of my identity instead of something I hadn’t done in years.
And I loved the idea that he thought I’d like his sister, that he’d formed enough of an impression of me to believe that.
“When was that?” I asked. “The last time you saw her.”
“My niece’s baptism, couple of years ago. Kathleen has two girls. I do see them all for things of that sort, I try to go even if I don’t know if they want me there.”
