“You feel like an outsider,” Ria would tell him when they got home after one of those soirees, “because you act like an outsider. You wouldn’t feel nearly so uncomfortable if you took the time to get to know them.”
Being the truth, it was hard to respond to. No one had ever made him feel out of place. In fact, they often went out of their way to make him feel welcome. But the problem was he did feel like an outsider. They were all such creative people, where he was lucky to be able to put together a window display that looked even halfway decent, never mind innovative. And if that wasn’t intimidating enough, not only was it quickly apparent that they had wide-ranging interests—from the arts and literature, through the sciences, history, mythology, and current affairs—they were also able to discuss those same eclectic subjects with obvious ease and informed knowledge.
All he could enthuse about was music. He wasn’t as badly introverted as Titus or Adam, but when he was among such outgoing people as this crowd, he usually felt as woefully lacking in the social graces as he knew his employees to be. It wasn’t something that was very easy to explain to someone else, especially since it was so hard to admit it even to himself.
Ria never seemed to have the patience to listen through his stumbling attempts to articulate how her friends made him feel intimidated. Nor did she have much sympathy.
“If you want to be better informed about more things,” she’d say, “get your nose out of those music magazines you’re always reading and broaden your horizons a little more.”
“I need to read those for my work,” he’d explain.
“I know. Nobody’s putting you down or thinks you’re stupid. Can’t you tell that they like you?”
But I feel stupid, he’d want to say.
He’d often wondered what it was that she saw in him. It hadn’t been like that at first. When they first met, she’d been as scruffy as he still was, always happier in jeans and a T-shirt as opposed to what she had to wear to the office. She’d loved music, too—all sorts, in those days. But she’d changed—“I’ve grown, Hunter,” was how she put it—and he hadn’t. Or couldn’t. Or, perhaps more truthfully, he didn’t want to.
Music had become an intrinsic part of his life from the day he bought his first Dave Clark Five single. It wasn’t a matter of performing himself—though that had been an ambition at one point—but simply to be involved with the music industry. To discover new sounds before anyone else did. To follow bands through their various lineups and solo efforts. He loved the buzz of getting a first listen to the new releases when the sales reps dropped off their promotional material. He loved introducing people to music they might never otherwise have tried.
But that was a kid’s life, so far as Ria was concerned. Not a viable career for an adult.
She kept getting promotions, rising from a clerical position into management, dressing better, taking more care in her appearance, not simply at work, but at home as well. She took up painting with courses at the Newford School of Art, which was where she’d fallen in with Jilly and her crowd. She started talking about marriage and buying a home and starting a family. She was the one who’d talked him into buying the record store. “I thought the responsibility would be good for you,” she’d said when the store became yet one more point of contention.
“It might have been,” he’d told her, “if you’d cared about it as much as I do.”
“You’re not getting the point.”
Only Hunter had. He just hadn’t known what to do with it. They’d fallen into such a rut of bad habits and arguments that it wasn’t until she left that he’d realized how much he still cared for her. But by then it was too late.
He almost hadn’t come to the show tonight. Knowing that Jilly and the rest of them would be here tonight, he’d half-expected to see Ria as well. But of course Celtic music wasn’t her thing anymore. If it ever had been. If it hadn’t simply been one of those instances where one professed delight with a potential partner’s tastes because everything had a rosy shine to it when a relationship began.
He didn’t know what he’d have said to her if she had come tonight. They hadn’t talked in weeks now. After she’d moved out he’d called her a couple of times at her parents’ place where she’d been staying. Later, when she’d gotten a place of her own, leaving instructions with her parents that he wasn’t to have her new phone number, he tried her at the office, but he only did that once because it was all too apparent there was nothing left to say.
“Get on with your life, Hunter,” she’d told him that day. “That’s all we can do now. Just get on with our lives.”
What life? Hunter had wanted to ask her, because without her, there suddenly didn’t seem to be any. But he’d only said goodbye and hung up. Took the Christmas present he’d bought her and stuck it away on a shelf in the back room of the store.
Leaning against the wall by the front door of the community center, he found himself thinking about all of that now. Maybe everything hadn’t ended when Ria walked out the door. He just had to put some meaning back into his life, some import that didn’t depend on anyone else for its worth. Easier said than done, he knew, but at least it was something to shoot for. And it sure beat the idea of wallowing in self-pity as he’d been doing for the past few weeks.
Donal and Ellie and a few of the others were going out to a coffee shop, now that the cleanup was done. When Miki asked if he was coming, he decided he might as well tag along. Not because Miki was going, because something might work out between them. And not even because of Ellie, who was gorgeous and smart and seemed to like him; he’d been in her company for most of the evening now and found that he’d quite enjoyed being there. He was going along with them for himself.
So he was waiting for the last of the musicians’ gear to be packed away, errant scarves and jackets, parkas and snow boots to be tracked down, final swallows of beer to be finished before the cans went into the recycling bins in the kitchen.
Dancing tonight, he’d used more muscles than he remembered having. It had been a long time since he’d let himself relax enough to become one of what Jilly called the “mad, ballyhooing bohos” that she claimed the band needed to carry the music up to new heights. Polkas were obviously the general favorites—not the German beer garden variety, but the Irish ones that seemed to require twice the energy and steps of a reel. Or at least they did with this crew. Tomorrow he’d definitely be feeling each and every one of those unused muscles. He knew, because he could already feel them aching. He appreciated this moment to catch his breath, to be alone for a few moments before he was plunged back into the pleasant maelstrom of their infectious camaraderie. When the door opened beside him, he barely registered the man who stepped through until he stood directly in front of him.
It was one of Donal’s hard men.
Up close like this, Hunter decided the appellation was a good one. The man had intense eyes, cold and dark, and a slit of a mouth that one could easily imagine had never attempted a smile. His suit smelled of old cigarette smoke and something else Hunter couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t until much later that he remembered the last time he’d experienced that odor. It had been at the zoo. A musky, wild dog scent that had hung around the wolves’ enclosure.
“An dealbhóir,” the man said. His voice was thickly accented. “The sculptor.”
The only sculptor here was Ellie, Hunter thought.
“What about her?” he asked.
“She’s not for you,” the man said, his dark gaze boring into Hunter. “Do you understand?”