Reckless Years Read online

  I hold him as close as I possibly can.

  Then we’re having sex again, this time with even more intensity. Suddenly I want to stop. “Kieran, if we do this, I’ll be too vulnerable. I’ll be sad when it’s time for me to leave.”

  “Then we won’t. Jaysus, I don’t want to do anything to make you sad.”

  I’ve been dying of thirst in the desert and Kieran is a pool of cool water.

  We whisper together again. I tell him that leaving Josh was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I tell him how my mother was so depressed when I was growing up she hardly got out of bed for a year. There are things I don’t tell him, but I tell him more than I’ve told anybody since my early days with Josh.

  Kieran holds me close, and we wonder at the miracle of having found one another—just on a dance floor.

  The early morning light is already streaming in through the French doors when we fall asleep, our limbs entangled, our faces pressed together, our lips just barely touching.

  In the shower the next morning, Kieran asks if he can wash my hair. It makes me feel shy. I don’t think anyone but my mother has ever washed my hair except at the hairdresser. I have that feeling again of being a child—but a loved and well-kept one. We’re in the shower for ages, and neither of us can stop laughing, although neither of us is saying anything particularly funny.

  Kieran dries me off with one of the Westin’s enormous white towels. We’re looking at each other in the bathroom mirror, both of us with huge smiles. “My God, your eyes,” he says, bringing his face down next to mine. “And your smile. You have the most beautiful smile, girl. Do you know that?”

  Kieran rubs the towel over my head, tousling my hair. Then he stops and gently brushes a few loose strands back from my face, peering at me in the mirror. “This image,” he says, “of your eyes shining at me—this is an image I’ll have with me for a long time, I think.”

  He is beaming at me like he loves me.

  Kieran has tickets to a soccer game and while we get dressed, I lobby to be taken along.

  “No tickets, girl,” he says.

  “Then don’t go,” I say.

  “Can’t do that, chick.”

  I pout.

  “Do you see me pouting here?” I say.

  “I do, girl. It suits you. You have a beautiful pout, like a princess.”

  On the way to breakfast, we run into Bob the drummer. I’m so flustered to be caught with wet hair in the company of a strange Irishman who also has wet hair, and so worried what my brother will say if this gets back to him, that I forget Kieran’s name.

  “This is, um, ah . . .” I say. But his name will not come to me. Bob the drummer looks at me expectantly but the name of the man with whom I’ve been up all night having sex has escaped my mind entirely. Finally, mercifully, Bob excuses himself.

  “Jeez, thanks a lot,” Kieran says to me when we walk on. But he’s not really mad. In fact, in another block he’s nearly doubled over laughing.

  “Oh, shut up, you,” I say.

  We eat at a little shop in an open market in a Victorian glass-covered atrium. All the tables are full so we sit at a bar that runs along one side of the room. Kieran knows the guy behind the counter. The guy behind the counter brings us mugs of coffee, on the house.

  “Cheers, mate,” Kieran says.

  We each take a stool, our knees touching. Kieran orders an Irish breakfast, which turns out to be ham, sausage, eggs, and fried mushrooms. I have the banana pancakes.

  “I’m still pouting here,” I say.

  “I see that, princess.”

  “I don’t really approve of this whole running off to soccer games while I’m in town,” I say.

  “Don’t you?” He kisses me and then picks up a copy of the Irish Times lying on the bar.

  I begin to brood.

  “Kieran?”

  “Yes?” He lifts his eyes over the top of the paper.

  “I’m feeling serious,” I say.

  “Why’s that, girl?”

  I push the pancakes around on my plate.

  “This whole thing, it’s just been so . . .” But I really don’t know what it is I want to say.

  Kieran puts down the paper. He keeps eating, but he’s looking right at me, and I can tell I have his attention. His manner is so gentle, so patient, that I find myself thinking how lucky his kids are.

  “This whole thing,” I say. “I mean, meeting you so randomly, then last night. Then tomorrow, boom, I’ll be gone. I just don’t know what to make of it.”

  “This isn’t random,” Kieran says.

  I’m not sure what he means so I don’t say anything.

  “Don’t you see?” Kieran says. “God put us on that dance floor so we’d meet each other—so we could give each other a helping hand in these black times.”

  The words “helping hand” offend me a little bit. Don’t you mean so we could fall madly and hopelessly in love? But I’m intrigued by the rest of it. God. There He is again.

  Kieran continues. “Don’t you see? What happened last night—that’s not just a physical thing. That’s a spiritual thing.”

  I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, you are the most wonderful man I’ve ever met in my life. And then, spiritual, what does that even mean? What is he talking about? And then, maybe spiritual is the golden light.

  “Okay,” I say. “But tomorrow I’m just gone. What does that mean?”

  Kieran is firm, although not in the least worked up.

  “We’ll see each other again,” he says, and bobs his head in an affirmative nod.

  I prop my face in my hands, look up into his beautiful eyes.

  “What are we going to do?” I say. “Meet on an island in the middle of the Atlantic?” I lean forward and kiss him. “Wanna do that?” I say. “Wanna meet me on an island somewhere?”

  “If I have to, yes,” Kieran says. He drinks from his cup of tea.

  “Kieran, I feel sad,” I say. He takes my hand and squeezes it.

  “That’s okay,” he says. “You can feel sad.”

  And we sit like that, Kieran skimming the paper, me feeling sad, holding hands in a state of silent companionship.

  We’re running around Grafton Street before Kieran has to go off to his soccer game. I’ve decided I want a zip-up Liverpool soccer jersey as a souvenir.

  We spend an hour running in and out of sporting-goods shops with Kieran’s friends texting him the whole time and him muttering, “Patience, lads, patience. I’m on my way.” But he keeps not being on his way. Finally, he says, “I have to go. I’ll be dead if I don’t get there with the tickets, girl.” And then, after kissing me for a long time on one of the windy side streets off Grafton, “Dear God, you’re hard to say good-bye to.”

  “You’ll be at the show tonight, right?” I say.

  “I’ll be there,” he says.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise, girl.”

  When the show starts at eight, Kieran isn’t there.

  I keep hold of myself until nine, and then I borrow a friend of Cecilia’s cell phone and call him. No answer.

  At nine thirty I have waves of humiliation crashing over me because I told Cecilia he was coming and she keeps wondering aloud what could have happened to him.

  At ten I’m fighting back tears. I’m trying to pretend this isn’t happening.

  Around ten thirty Cecilia stops asking where he is.

  By eleven: You’re so stupid, Heather. You’re so fucking stupid.

  When the show ends, I try to run away. I don’t want anyone to look at me. Before Cecilia and her friend are even out of their seats, I’m halfway up the aisle and out of our section. Then I hear Cecilia’s friend calling out to me. “There’s someone on the phone for you,” he’s saying.

  I run back down the stairs and grab it out of his hand.

  It’s Kieran.

  I’m debating whether to pretend I don’t care or let him have it.

  “Where are you?” he says.
/>   “Where am I?” I say. “Where are you?”

  “I’m not sure,” he says, sounding a little confused. “By some escalators. In the lobby, maybe?”

  I shove the phone back at Cecilia’s friend, run through the balcony and out the double doors that lead to the escalators. When I see him, just standing there, looking all around him, I find that I have to run as fast as I possibly can and throw myself into his arms.

  “Shhhh,” he says. “I’m here, girl. I’m here.”

  Billy the tour manager accidentally put Kieran in the seat that would have been next to mine except it was all the way across the auditorium on the other balcony.

  Oh, Universe, I think. Thank you. Thank you.

  I ride back to the Westin with Kieran. I have my arms around his neck and he is leaning over to kiss me anytime he dares take his eyes off the road and probably a few times when he shouldn’t. I feel like I’m in The Year of Living Dangerously, which I must have watched twenty-five times as a young teenager. I’m thinking of the scene where Sigourney Weaver finally runs off with Mel Gibson past curfew and they smash through a checkpoint in Indonesia. Bullets fly but they don’t care, because Sigourney Weaver has slid herself right beside Mel and is kissing him all over his face and neck while he grins and closes his eyes and tries to kiss her back without running them off the road. They have completely given in to the weight of an enormous and unexpected passion. This is what it feels like driving back to the Westin, though admittedly without the bullets.

  “So what’s the scoop, kids? You guys boyfriend and girlfriend?” It’s Richie the trumpet player in a loose Hawaiian shirt. We’re at the bar in the basement of the Westin and I’m introducing Kieran around to the guys in the band. “He sure is good-looking, Heather,” Richie says, pointing at Kieran. “Hold on, is this the reason you’re in Dublin, or is this a just-met situation? What’s the story, Kieran? You coming to New York or what?”

  Kieran and I look at each other and then the floor.

  “No problem, I got it,” Richie says. He gives me a bear hug and shakes Kieran’s hand. “Enjoy. God bless.”

  Seth comes in and the three of us have a drink together. Seth invites us out to dinner with Cecilia and the rest of the band, but we stay because we want to be alone. Kieran makes me promise I will say the words “I don’t love you anymore” to Josh. He says it’s the best thing I can do. It feels wonderful to promise him something.

  “Kieran, my black-haired beauty.”

  We’re lying together on my big bed.

  “I love you calling me that,” Kieran whispers.

  I kiss his ear. “I want to tell you something,” I say. “But I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”

  The thing I want to tell Kieran has to with this Rilke poem I was thinking about while he was at his soccer game. The poem says something to the effect that life is a string of pearls. The idea is that the pearls are precious moments collected throughout your lifetime that will be with you on your deathbed—only, trust me, Rilke says it a lot more poetically. I was thinking about this poem, and what the Flaming Lips guy said, and all these perfect moments I’ve been having lately. I was imagining telling my girlfriends about Kieran and how they were going to pepper me with questions: Are you going to see him again? What’s next? What now? Thinking about this was making me feel kind of infuriated, like, why can’t a beautiful lightning-strike of intimacy and joy be enough? Why do I have to dump the whole crushing weight of the future on it? I’ll never see Kieran again. I know that. But maybe that’s okay. That’s what I’ve been thinking while Kieran was at his soccer game. And when I thought it, when I let go of him in my mind, I felt buoyed up into the atmosphere and filled with joy.

  Anyway, the only way I can make sense of these feelings, which I know all of my friends will say is crazy, is to think about Rilke’s pearls.

  “Kieran,” I say. My voice sounds tinny in my own ears, quivering slightly. I’m looking at the headboard rather than him. “I don’t think things have to go on forever to have meaning.”

  Kieran props himself up on his elbows and looks down at me, even as I continue staring at the headboard. “Okay,” he says. He sounds trepidatious, like he’s steeling himself for something painful.

  I steel myself to say, for once, what I really want to say. I tell him about the pearls. Then I say, “I don’t actually think it matters if we see each other again. But the guy at the show was right. Right now, at this exact moment, I love you.”

  There’s a second where it’s as if Kieran and I are frozen, and then I feel what seems like a sob from Kieran’s chest. The arm that was holding him up collapses. He’s got the back of my head in the palm of his hand, crushing me against him. “I never in a million years would have found the words,” he’s whispering. “I feel the same, Heather. I feel exactly the same.” Well, then, say it back, I think. But only for a second, because he’s holding me so tightly and whispering over and over in my ear: “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Kieran has to go. He and his ex-wife have a deal that neither of them will spend the night away from the house as long as they’re still living under the same roof. She was at her mother’s with the kids last night, which is why he was able to stay with me—timing he took as another sign from God. I took it as a sign that he’s way too concerned what his stupid ex-wife thinks. I hold my hands behind my back so I won’t be tempted to grab him and beg him to stay. He stands at the door for what seems like ages, rubbing his face with his hands and looking neither handsome nor unhandsome, but just like a man who’s been running on no sleep and is at the end of his tether. His face is pained. He keeps saying, “I don’t want to say good-bye to you.” So I’m brave for both of us. I open the door and say, “Good-bye, Kieran.” And finally he says, “I will be talking to you very soon, girl,” and he slips away.

  When Les the percussionist leaps behind the bar and starts serving drinks, Seth figures it’s as good a time as any to get going.

  I’ve joined Seth et al at a pub called O’Donoghue’s on the edge of St Stephen’s Green. There’s a sign over the front door with a fiddle on it and “Guinness” written out in gold letters, as if announcing a secret entranceway to good times.

  The guys in the band are playing and singing with the regulars. Everyone in the place is dancing. Fans are snapping pictures with their cell phones; the regulars are singing with their mouths wide open and their eyes shut tight. The bartenders—two middle-aged men in collared shirts and ties—are standing on stools behind the bar and waving their arms in the air.

  When one of the regulars, a man who looks to be easily eighty years old, stands up and sings “Dirty Old Town” with John the fiddle player accompanying him and everyone in the whole place joining in on the chorus, I have the feeling that I didn’t know my heart could hold so much joy. Seth and I are sitting at the bar downing pints that the bartenders insist on sending us. Seth is keeping time with his hand on his knee, and I’m just thinking, I’ve never been so happy my whole life as in Dublin.

  We head out around 2:30 a.m. for Chinese food. We walk along the edge of St Stephen’s Green, our steps echoing on the cobblestones, the faintest rain coming down on us, more like mist than rain at all. Keith the mandolin player is with us. Seth and Cecilia have their arms around each other.

  “You should see my sister’s suite,” Seth says to Keith the mandolin player over broccoli with garlic sauce and hot-and-sour soup. “It’s far nicer than anything the rest of us have.”

  Seth’s gotten a big kick out of the George Bernard Shaw Suite, which fills me with pride, as if I’d gotten the suite through some merit of my own.

  Keith says, “I can’t believe the tour is ending tomorrow. I’m going to need a therapist when I get home. How do we go back to real life?”

  I think, poor guy, he doesn’t understand.

  “This is real life,” I say.

  Keith turns and stares at me like I’m either crazy or stupid. “I’m not kidding here,” he says. “This
is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

  I want to share my wisdom with him. “Nothing lasts, you know, but it’s okay that it doesn’t.”

  Keith glares at me.

  “Maybe Dublin’s not a city,” I say. “Maybe it’s a state of mind.”

  We leave the restaurant at almost four in the morning. The streets are empty.

  Seth says, “You glad you came, Heath?”

  He’s on one side of me, and Cecilia is on the other. Keith, who apparently I’ve alienated very badly, is trailing behind us.

  “Seth, you have no idea,” I say.

  I invite Seth and Cecilia up to the George Bernard Shaw Suite for a drink.

  Seth bobs his head. “Now you’re talking,” he says.

  Up in the suite, I pour the Jameson and Seth lights the fire. The wood crackles and the walls glow with the reflected flames.

  An hour later, Seth is telling us about visiting the Alhambra in Granada. I’m thinking, love. Love. LOVE. I had no idea there was so much love in the world. Then I realize I’m going to miss my plane. As I’m running around scrambling to get my stuff together, I’m filled with such feelings of hope like I don’t remember since probably the day I got married.

  Friday, November 24, 2006

  On the flight from Dublin to Shannon, where I have a stopover, I’m stuck beside a couple who is bickering, viciously, in long-term-relationship shorthand. I don’t know the meaning of the little bits they throw at each other, but they sure do. His mouth twitches. Hers tightens. Relationships are like life, I think. The end is inevitable, built into the essence of the thing itself. I’m glad I’ll never see Kieran again, I think, because I couldn’t bear the day when I looked over and realized I hated him.

  Pride in my good judgment sustains me all the way to Shannon.