When Love Comes to Town (8 page)

What a sad case
, he thought. What would he do if he ended up like that himself? Not a chance; he had his family, and anyway he’d probably end up marrying Becky. And they’d have two kids just like Danny and Annie. His step lightened. A thick carpet of pink and white cherry blossom petals lay on the pavement, cushioning his footsteps, giving the impression that he was walking on snow.

He smiled to himself as he remembered how he had inadvertently discovered where the gay bar was. It was after a rugby match in Castleknock and Dan, his brother-in-law, was driving him and two of his teammates home.

“Don’t ever go into that place there by mistake, lads,” Dan had said, laughing as he pointed at the drab-looking pub.

“Why not?” one of the lads in the backseat inquired innocently.

“It’s one of them funny pubs,” Dan had said in an effeminate voice, flapping his wrist limply. Neil had felt his face burning as he joined the others in forced laughter. Neil “Judas” Byrne.

The full moon peeped out from behind a cloud, pouring its eerie, silver light down upon the leafy neighborhood. So many times, he had taken this roundabout route home in the hope of a chance meeting, but so far, one fleeting glimpse through the frosted-glass front door was his only reward.

A dim light glowed upstairs. Maybe it was his beloved’s bedroom, Neil thought, stopping at the gate and concentrating. He would communicate by telepathy.
Thump-thump, thump-thump. Shut up, heart, you’ll waken the entire neighborhood. Right, if you’re there, Ian, give me a sign. Climb out of your bed, walk over to the window, open those curtains, and give us one of your angelic smiles. I wrote two poems for you last week. They’re tucked away in the bottom of my sock drawer.

Car headlights suddenly swept around the corner, causing Neil’s heart to flutter. The return of Sugar Daddy. Back for one last desperate attempt to win his heart. Neil quickly donned his baseball cap, dug his hands into his pockets, lowered his head, and strolled on. As the big car roared past him, the man and woman in it turned their heads to inspect him.
Aging rhyming couplets on Neighborhood Watch
, Neil thought, watching the car round the corner and speed off into the night.
Hah
. He laughed inwardly.
That’s what lay ahead for Gary and Trish and all the other couples
. Beady eyes glued to the blinds of their semi-D, on constant lookout for strangers stalking their neighborhood. He sneaked a parting glance at Ian’s house and clenched his fist in silent jubilation. The bedroom light had been switched off. At last, a sign. The telepathy had worked. They were definitely destined for each other.

His own house was in darkness when he eventually got home after one o’clock. Neil tucked into a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches, laced with mayonnaise. Then he gulped down the remainder of the milk and left the empty bottle back in the fridge, even though he had given his mum his solemn promise never to do this again. On his way to the TV room, he could already feel the first niggling traces of a hangover. Or maybe, he thought, it was the early signs of a brain hemorrhage.

Plonking himself down into an armchair, he flicked through all the late night channels. “Damn all on,” he muttered, letting his eyes drift to the rugby team photos hanging on the wall. Junior and Senior Cup winning teams with Neil standing at the back, on the extreme left, in both photos. Away from the glare of the limelight. They took pride of place over all the other family photos, including his parents’ wedding photo and the photos of his nephew and niece. Then he glanced at the video collection and Sugar’s deliberate little hook started to play on his mind. “I’ve some good videos you might be interested in seeing,” that was what he had said. Neil had pretended not to hear, considering it a bit pathetic. But Sugar knew what he was doing; he had more than likely planted this same seed with thousands of other young fellows, Neil reflected, knowing that few could resist the lure of that visual excitement.

Neil stood up and slipped one of the many family holiday videos into the video player. It was taken on a sun-soaked Donegal beach, where they used to rent a holiday home for three weeks every summer. Neil smiled as he recalled his dad’s futile attempts to get his offspring to perform for the camera. Holding on to his director’s cap (it always seemed to be windy), his face ruddy as he roared his instructions. “Where is Kate? Stop messing! I said walk, not run! Don’t look at the camera!”

The picture came on the screen. “Neil Byrne at five years of age, struggling against the Atlantic Ocean,” his dad’s wry commentary announced. Neil grinned when he saw himself as a five-year-old, squatting at the water’s edge in his swimming togs, happily building a sand castle. All of a sudden a freak wave broke over him and drenched him. Little Neil stood up, dripping wet, and started to bawl with shock. Then the picture jumped as his dad retreated from his youngest son, who had automatically run toward him for comfort. Paul and Joe were in the background, bony-ribbed nine- and eleven-year-olds dancing hysterical jigs of joy, cheering as their little brother decided to change direction, and his fast little legs ran toward their mum instead. She wrapped a big towel around him, snuggling him close to her while she shouted to her husband to turn the video off. Jackie, sitting alongside their mum, kept playing with her doll, ignoring the consternation all around her.

It was a family classic and the tape had gone patchy from being overplayed. Every aunt and uncle who came into the house had to see it. “Wait’ll your children see it,” his dad would say to Neil, chuckling heartily. And Neil would wave him off with a grin, wondering whether, if he ever had a son, he would know as little about him as his own dad. He pressed the fast-forward button and watched his speeded-up family whizzing around the beach, performing their part for the camera. He pressed the play button on a happier shot of himself, dribbling a football, with his two older brothers making exaggerated dives in the sand, pretending that they couldn’t get the ball off him. His mum was cheering him on. Neiley Nook, the baby of the family, kicked the ball into the goal with mounds of sand as goalposts. Grinning, he raised his two skinny arms in celebration and turned to face the camera. Neil pressed the freeze-frame button. That happy, carefree child was him. What if they could see their little boy now? What if they knew then what that little boy would want to do with that little body when he got bigger? Maybe it would’ve been better if the big wave had drowned him, then his memory would have been crystallized in all those innocent snapshots that adorned the mantelpiece.

Neil began to feel drowsy. Through the half-sleep, another holiday memory from the same summer forged its way into his thoughts.

“Daddy! Neil’s fallen into the water!” Kate roared.

The five-year-old Neil splashed and floundered. He had slipped off the pier in Portsalon. Paul and Joe were fishing at the end of the short pier, Kate and Jackie were listening to a guy playing the guitar, and his mum and dad were sunbathing on the pier wall.

“Swim, Neil! Swim!” came Kate’s shrill cry.

His dad plunged into the crystal-clear water and wrapped his arms around the drowning boy. He swam to the pier steps, and Neil thought he was going to suffocate from the hug he gave him. There were tears in his dad’s eyes as he held his bristly jaw against Neil’s face and whispered that he could never do without his Mister Happy. And all the way back to their holiday cottage, Neil was allowed to sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel.

“Neil.”

“Hmmm.” His mum shook him again. “Neil, wake up, there’s someone on the phone for you.”

Neil opened his eyes blearily. “Who?” he muttered sleepily.

“I don’t know…Some man,” his mum replied, picking his clothes up off the floor. Neil tensed. The events of the previous night came flooding back. Then he relaxed. It was more than likely another rugby club Alicadoo asking him to sign with their club for the forthcoming season.

“Should I get him to call back?” his mum asked, lingering by the bedroom door.

“Nah, I’ll get up.”

Neil jumped out of bed and grimaced when he saw his reflection in the mirror. He looked shattered. Maybe he was still drunk, he thought, as he ran down the stairs in his boxer shorts.

“Hello?” he answered the phone huskily.

“Good afternoon,” said a cheerful, businesslike voice.

“Afternoon,” Neil replied warily.

“Guess who?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know who this is?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“And, Gary, you told me that you were twenty.”

Neil froze.

“Know who it is now?” Sugar said with a little chuckle.

“Yeah,” Neil said, doing his best to sound unfriendly, wondering how the hell he had got his number.

“You dropped your ID card in my car.” The older man seemed to have read his thoughts. Neil sighed inwardly, conscious now that the kitchen door was open and his mum could hear every word.

“Could you mail it out to me, please?”

“Mail it? But I could drive out that way after work and meet you if you like,” Sugar suggested.

“What’s the last date for applying?” Neil asked.

“You can’t talk?” Sugar was obviously familiar with these situations.

“No, not really.”

“Okay, listen, you’ve got my number, give me a ring later.”

“Right.”

“All the best, Neil.”

“All the best.” Neil put the phone down, closed his eyes in anguish, and cursed himself for being so careless. He had visions of Sugar calling around to the house and asking his dad if he could take his son out on a date. Oh Jesus, why had he gone into town?

“Who was that, Neil?” his mum called.

“Just someone about some job I applied for,” he said, joining her in the kitchen.

“How did last night go?” His mum was making brown bread, her back turned to him.

“Fine,” he said, taking the carton of orange juice from the fridge.

“What time did you get home at?”

“Not too late, around one.”

“Put that in a glass!” his mum snapped without looking around.

Neil shook his head and smiled. “How d’you know I was drinking out of the carton?”

“I know what you’re like.”

You probably do too
, Neil thought.
You probably even suspect who that was on the phone
. Gulping his orange juice, he stared at his mum, in her floppy blue tracksuit and her white sneakers. What would she say if he told her where he had been the night before? Nothing, more than likely. She’d probably just wear her knees out praying to save his soul.

“And someone left an empty milk bottle in the fridge last night.”

“Must’ve been the fairies,” Neil said, unable to contain a self-mocking laugh.

His mum looked around at him. “Go and put some clothes on.”

“Is Jackie here?” Neil asked.

His mum snorted derisively. “I’ve missed the last bus home,” she said in what was supposed to be an imitation of Jackie. “I don’t know how Michelle puts up with her, imposing on her and her flatmate like that all the time,” she added with a sigh.

Neil furrowed his brow. Surely his mum didn’t really believe that Jackie stayed with Michelle. Of course not, it was just more of her hiding from the truth.

“What’s the job?” his mum asked.

“What?”

“The man on the phone.”

“Ah, it was just some office job Gary heard about,” Neil blustered, feeling his face redden.

The doorbell rang, saving him from more lies. He slipped into his sweats while his mum answered the door.

“Oh hello, Gary, hello, Trish.”

Neil cursed under his breath when he heard his mum bringing the two lovebirds into the hallway and telling them he wasn’t dressed yet.

“Nothing we haven’t seen already,” Gary replied, and Trish giggled.

“Neil!” his mum called, laughing.

Grinning, Neil went out into the hallway and greeted Gary and Trish with his best glad-to-see-you face.

“Oh, he’s made himself decent,” his mum said.

“No cheapo thrills for Trish in this house,” Neil said, wondering what the reaction would have been if he said no cheapo thrills for Gary.

“Where did you get to last night?” Gary said, and Neil glared at him, flashing his eyes toward his mum, who was lingering at the kitchen door. She smiled at Neil before she went back into the kitchen.

“You missed a great party at Tara’s,” Trish added.

“Ah, I was out of my brains,” Neil said, motioning the pair of them into the living room.

Gary and Trish gave him a blow-by-blow account of the late night party in Tara’s mansion. Who got off with whom. How many beers they drank. Who locked themselves in the parents’ bedroom with the waterbed for over an hour. How Mick Toner let off a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Who was smoking joints…Neil smiled as they described scenes he seemed to have experienced a million times, scenes he never felt part of. He wished he could tell Gary and Trish about his own night. Instead he told them he had puked his guts up and gone to Becky’s house to recover, aware that he was rapidly becoming one of Dublin’s most compulsive liars.

“Right, get your act together,” Gary said, standing up and rubbing his hands together, “we’re going to Brittas Bay.”

“Tom’s got his mum’s car,” Trish explained.

“MacDaniels after,” Gary added, again rubbing his hands together.

Neil hesitated.

“C’mon, you can’t say you’re studying.” Gary grabbed hold of Neil’s arm and dragged him toward the door.

“I’m wrecked,” Neil protested.

“We’re all wrecked,” Gary replied.

“There’s room for Becky as well, if she wants to come,” Trish added.

Neil thought quickly. “No, see, the thing is, we said we’d meet some friends of hers.”

“Ah, we’re not good enough for him anymore,” Gary joked, relinquishing his grip on Neil’s arm. But Neil could see his pal looked slightly peeved.
Give him a taste of how I felt for so long
, Neil thought, keeping his fake grin cemented onto his face.

Trish looked at her watch. “C’mon, Gary, we better hurry if we’re going.”

“Well, tell your new friends we were asking for them,” Gary said as a parting shot.