Hanrahan looked at the table.
"You want a beer, William?" asked Nestor Briggs, leaning toward him. "A beer ain't drinking."
Hanrahan nodded and Ramona drifted toward the bar.
"Reminds me of an old Irish story," Hanrahan said, looking around the familiar room, the photographs of dead cops on die wall, the autographed photograph of Jim McMahon on the wall over the jukebox, and the other autographed photo of old Bill Nicholson over die bar, complete with the old Cubs uniform and a loopy grin.
"It seems that Doyle Murphy left the town of Galway when he was a poor boy of seventeen determined to make his fortune in Australia and return to Galway in triumph. The years passed and Doyle worked his way up from dock hand to shore boss to union steward to labor to minister of labor and the boards of four major shipping companies. He was rich and, hi the right circles in Sydney and Perth, famous."
"A success story," said Nestor, rubbing his sweating bald brow. "Here's to him."
Nestor raised his glass of Scotch and melted rocks and toasted Doyle Murphy of Galway.
"More to the story," Hanrahan said as the pause between jukebox records was filled with Applegate at the next table bellowing, "… and I say he was holding two full Ks if he had an ounce." Then Elvis, familiar, sad, belted, "It's now or never."
"Doyle took the boat home and then a train, and on a summer's night almost fifty years after he had left Galway," said Hanrahan, nodding to Ramona, who had returned to place a full, cool stein before him, "he stepped off the train, set down his suitcase, and looked down the platform, where an old man was moving slowly toward him. When the old man was half a dozen feet from Doyle, Doyle recognized him as his boyhood friend Conan Frazier. 'Doyle,' says Conan, 'is mat you?' 'It is,' said Doyle, standing tall in his handmade silk suit. 'Well,' said Conan, 'I see you got your suitcase. Where are you off to then?' "
Nestor Briggs took his drink from his lips and looked puzzled. Hanrahan looked down at his beer and put his big hands around it.
"I think I'm back in Galway," he said.
"I heard you were riding the wagon, William," Briggs said.
"Well… I tell you, Nestor, it's hard to go home to an empty house. It's hard to be a saint. It's hard to lie to yourself and not believe your lies."
"… our love won't wait," Elvis belted.
"I know," said Briggs, shoving an almost empty blue bowl of nachos in front of Hanrahan. "Truth is," he went on, lowering his voice and biting his lower lip, "I live right around the corner, you know, and the only thing waiting up for me is my dog. You know why I'm whispering? You a Catholic?"
"Yeah," said Hanrahan.
"I hate the fucking dog, hate him," Nestor Briggs confessed. "I pretend I like him and maybe some ways I do, but he's old and he farts and I have to walk him and feed him and be home with him. When my wife died I figured I needed companionship. Everyone thought I should have a dog. Old Nestor should have a dog. So I got a dog. Now I hate to go home and take care of him. You want a dog?"
"You make it sound tempting, Nestor my friend, but I'm going to have to control my boyish urge and say no thanks."
"Ever change your mind, you know where to find me. I throw in his bed, blanket, all the dog food I've got stored. He has his shots. He… shit, who'm I kiddin'. I couldn't give nun away. I'd feel…"
Nestor didn't know how he'd feel. He finished his drink, sucked his teeth, and looked at the empty glass. Then he stood up.
"I'm going home," he said, fumbling for his wallet.
"Want me to walk you?" asked Hanrahan.
"On our first date?" Nestor said with a slurred laugh. "Never."
"I'll cover the drink," said Hanrahan. "Me and Doyle Murphy."
"Doyle…? The guy from Galway? Whatever happened to him?" asked Briggs, looking up at Bill Nicholson over the bar.
"He went back to Australia," said Hanrahan, rising. He fished a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it on the table. "I'm walking you home, first date or no, and I promise not to kiss you or get in your jockey shorts."
Nestor Briggs shrugged and allowed himself to be led toward the door.
"Hanrahan," Applegate shouted. "You're Irish. You'll know this one. When you get Briggs home, come back and we'll settle this."
Johnny Cash was walking the line with his eyes wide open. The stein of Coors on tap bubbled on the table, untouched, as the doors of the Blue Parrot closed behind Hanrahan and the weaving Nestor Briggs.
The rain had slowed to near mist.
Somewhere nearby a lonely dog was waiting.
When Mothers Dream
"You know, Gregor," Wanda Skutnik said to her son as she sat in her favorite chair and tried to talk over Jenny Jones. "Those things on the things."
She held out her hand and moved it about as if she had developed a regional palsy.
"I don't know, Ma," George said.
"Oh," Wanda said in exasperation, trying to find the right words. "The ones my sister gave me when she came in… nineteen and eighty-two."
"The coasters? Little round things with flowers on them?"
Wanda nodded, relieved.
"You gave them to Mr. and Mrs. Karawan for Christmas, before I went back… Look, Ma, I want to talk about Seattle again."
"I know," Wanda said, sitting up, eyes not leaving the television screen, where Jenny was arguing with a fat, bearded man who had a wife and a mistress who used to be a man.
"Look, Ma."
She held up her hand. "I know what I was trying to think of before the little round things. A mouse."
"Ma, we don't have any mice."
"Not the animals," she said, shaking her head at her son's denseness. "The ones on the typewriters with the screens."
"You mean the mouse on the computer?" asked George.
"Yes," she said, relieved. "If you have more than one mouse, is it mouses or mice?"
"Why would anyone have more?"
"If you sold them you would have more," she said patiently. "If you were the person at the computer store who sold them and you had to order more."
"I don't know," said George. "I don't know what you'd call them."
George Patniks was defeated.
He hadn't slept well last night Dreams, fears, and shadows. He had gotten up a little after four, taken a shower, gotten on some reasonably clean sweats, and gone back to the painting. By a few minutes before eight, when he heard his mother's feet shuffling across the floor above him, George finished the painting. He stepped back and examined it, waiting for the release he wanted.
The woman was vivid now, her face pleading with horror, and the robed figure above her, knife in hand, was looking out of the canvas as if he had discovered the painter. Harvey Rozier's face was as vivid as his wife's. The white-white of the kitchen hi the painting contrasted with the deep pool of dark blood on the terrazzo floor. Things were reflected hi the blood, dark, grinning things only suggested by light and shadow. And in the midst of the blood sat George's toolbox, mundane, out of place, inappropriate for the horror depicted.
It was probably the best work George Patniks had ever done, but he'd never be able to show it. He didn't want to show it. He wanted to take the image from his memory and banish it to the canvas.
Should he have jumped out and gone for Rozier, tried to save the woman? He had been surprised, hypnotized, as if watching a horror movie suddenly thrown up on his ceiling hi the middle of the night. Even if he had jumped out, George had reasoned as he looked at his painting, the woman was nearly dead already, wasn't she? And the floor was covered with blood. George would have slipped and Rozier would have been all over him. George shuddered. That picture was clear and sudden. He hoped he didn't have to paint it. Wait, Rozier had a knife and Rozier was in better shape and outweighed George. George had done all he could do. He had saved himself.