“Whatever. Did you make the plane reservations yet?” I sit up in bed and take a look around the room. Clothes are piled up all over the place, and I’m still mostly dressed. Erin looks like she’s already showered, and she’s even wearing make-up. What the hell. Does she not feel the effects of alcohol the next day or what? Is that an Irish thing or a bar-owner thing?
I get a look at her expression in the mirror and decide maybe it’s a heartache thing. She was too sad over Michaél to really get into our celebration last night. Maybe that’s why I drank enough for the both of us, because I’m such a good friend.
“I did make the arrangements, actually. We leave tomorrow, eight in the morning out of Dublin, which means we need to leave here…” She rolls her eyes to the ceiling as she does her calculations.
I finish her sentence for her. “…At the crack of my butt dawn tomorrow morning.”
“Precisely.” She stands and puts her brush down. “Come on then. Time for brekky. You can fluff your hair after.”
I reach down and grab the pants that are on the floor. The rest of my clothing is already on, so once I’m zipped, I’m ready to go. I don’t even bother looking in the mirror, knowing it’s a train wreck that will take at least an hour to fix. I don’t trust my empty stomach to last that long; I need to put some toast in there or something to soak up whatever nastiness is rolling around before I get sick again.
I think I’ll be glad to leave the booze of Ireland behind. It was great and all, but I seem to have a problem controlling my intake. Something about this place makes me lose my good sense. It’s the reason why I keep debating whether I should contact Donal or not. Of course I shouldn’t, but I think about doing it several times a day anyway. It’s a good thing I temporarily lost track of my phone last night, or I for sure would have drunk-texted him. Surely someone in the bar would have had his number, and given the state I was in, I wouldn’t have been shy about hunting that person down and hounding them for the information.
I shuffle out of the room behind Erin, holding onto the handrail as I descend the stairs. The house is moving a little.
“Ah, there ye are, girlies. And how was your evenin’? Good, was it?” She puts a pot of tea on the table and I haven’t even sat down completely before I’m reaching for it. Tea, get in my belly.
“It was all right,” Erin says unenthusiastically.
“Just all right? I heard from Aednat who heard from Muirgheal that ye were having more than just an all right kind of evenin’.” She’s barely holding in her smile. “Word is ye’re quite the talented dancers.”
Erin sighs. “Ridlee doesn’t remember everything she did last night, so I wasn’t going to tell her.”
I drop the knife I was about to use to spread some jam on my toast and look first at Erin and then at Mrs. O’Grady. “What are you talking about? What did Agnag and Mergool say?”
“Oh my. It’s not Agnag. It’s Aednat. And Muirgheal, not …what did ye say? Morgor? What’s that? The Lord of the Rings?”
“Whatever.” I’m sure I should be embarrassed right now, but I want to know how embarrassed I should be. “What did I do?”
Mrs. O’Grady trades looks with Erin.
Erin puts up her hands. “You have to tell her now, Mrs. O. Cat’s out of the bag.”
The old woman comes over and pats me on the shoulder. “Never ye mind, deary. No one will remember a thing a few days from now.”
Erin has toast in her face as she mumbles her commentary. “I’m not so sure about that.”
I kick her under the table. “Tell me.”
“Ow!” She tries to act mad, but she’s laughing as she bends over to rub her shin. “You just did a little jig.”
“I thought you said it was a reel.” I’m scowling at her.
“It is when I do it. But when you do on a table, it’s definitely a jig.”
“With your fingers hooked in yer belt,”adds Mrs. O’Grady. “Looking like a right leprechaun.” She nods once, smiling like she’s proud.
I lower my head to my hand as I rest my elbow on the table. “Thank God we’re leaving tomorrow.”
“We still have to go into town to sign the papers,” Erin says, happily munching away on her toast. “And give over the check.”
I sigh and look up, ready to jam my toast again. What’s done is done. I can’t erase what I did last night, I can only hope most of the people in the bar were half as drunk as I was. “We’re wiring the money to his account, but you’re right, we do need to go to the office and have you sign the papers. We can go anytime, he said.”
“How about now?” Erin says, standing up.
“You go ahead,” I say, standing after taking one bite of my toast. My stomach is telling me that’s all it can handle right now anyway. “I’ll join you after I fix my face.”
“Ye may want to see to yer hair as well, dear,” says Mrs. O’Grady in her really helpful voice. “Ye don’t want to unwittingly put the heart across anyone.”
“Across who? What?”
Erin pulls my sleeve. “It’s an Irish expression. It basically means you need to fix your ‘do. Hurry up. I’ll wait for ya.”
I run up the stairs, trying to ignore my sloshing stomach. When I get in front of the mirror I understand exactly what that quaint Irish expression means. My hair is ugly enough to give someone a heart attack. A quick shower and copious amounts of conditioner take care of that problem in a jiffy. Twenty minutes later my hair is blown out and I have eyeliner and mascara on, along with a fresh outfit. A blazer tops off the look with a short scarf that will hopefully hide the blotchy marks on my neck. God knows where those came from.
Erin looks at her watch as I come down the stairs. “That has to be some kind of record. Twenty minutes?” She leans in close and inhales. “You even used soap.”
“And perfume,” I say sarcastically. “Come on.” I go right past her and out the door. “Time’s a wastin’.” I’m not all that excited about getting weird looks from any villagers who might have witnessed my dance routine last night. I just want to get this over with and go home.
I drive because the Bambino seems to prefer me to Erin. It starts right up and soon we’re buzzing down the street.
“Watch out!” Erin shouts, reminding me that I need to be on the other side of the road.
“I know,” I say, trying to talk myself out of the heart attack I almost had. “I was going over there eventually.”
“Tell that to the guy in the lorry who just shit his knickers,” she says, a little out of breath. She’s sunk down into her seat, and I catch her checking the efficacy of her seatbelt several times.
The car goes silent for a while, but I’m not going to be the first one to talk. Erin’s touchy about this business deal since Michaél is on the other side of the table, and I don’t want to upset the balance we’ve found.
“What if he’s there when we go?” Erin says in a small voice.
“Who? Michaél?”
“Yeah.”
“He won’t be. I talked to O’Mooney. He said he didn’t expect him in there until after four in the afternoon.”
“Oh.” She pauses a few seconds. “But what if he’s wrong?”
I sigh loudly. “Then you either choose not to go in until later, or I can get the papers and you can sign them in the car, or you can confront him and confess that it’s your bar. He’s going to find out anyway, you know. Your name is on the papers.”
“But if he doesn’t come until four, he won’t know until then.”
“Probably. Unless O’Mooney gave him copies of the papers ahead of time. He might have done that.”
Erin looks at her phone. “I don’t think he did. Michaél hasn’t said a word about it.”
“Has he texted you at all?” I glance over to see her screen, but she has it angled away from me.
“Actually, no.” She looks at me, clearly stressed. “Do you think it’s because he knows? Is he mad? Maybe I should call him and explain.”
I grab her phone and drop it into the pocket of my door. “No. No calls. No texts. No confessions. We do this deal and we leave.”