“I’d not want to be responsible for ruinin’ a girl for marriage,” he’d tell her.
“Oooh,” Annie moaned on one of these occasions, “it’s buckos like you that give Irish chivalry a bad name!”
She couldn’t help feeling there was something peculiar about Brian’s sex pattern. But then there were a few other things about Brian that also seemed strange. Hung up on him as she was, Annie still had to admit that to herself.
For instance, there were those peculiar long absences of his whenever they went out anywhere. Whether it was to a movie, or a dance, or a night club, or just the neighborhood bar, Annie could be sure that at some time during the evening Brian would excuse himself to go to the men’s room and that he’d be gone for at least a half-hour, and sometimes for over an hour. After a while, she began to doubt that he really was going to the men’s room, so one night she followed him without his seeing her, just to make sure.
He went just where he said he was going, all right. And he stayed just as long as he’d stayed on previous occasions. Annie decided he must have some stomach condition that delicacy kept him from telling her about, and she stopped wondering about these absences.
Later, after she found out the truth about Brian, she understood what must really have been keeping him in the John so long all those times. The truth was something that knocked her over the night of Paddy Donegal’s wake. That was the night that Annie first saw Brian for what he really was. She kept loving him after that, but it was with the knowledge of just who and what it was that she loved. Yes, it was a real turning point in their relationship, and in Annie’s life itself, that night, that night the Irish gathered to pay their last respects to Paddy Donegal.
It. was a real old-fashioned Irish wake, with the whiskey flowing free and the women howling loud and the men feeling the joy of still being alive even if poor old Paddy was stretched out so fine, so splendid, so rosy-cheeked in his coffin. Everybody had liked Paddy, and many was the wake he himself had livened up with a sad song whiskeyed into a joyful jig. That’s the way he would have wanted it for himself, some tears, some laughs, lots of good Irish brew, the songs getting livelier ’til the feet got to tapping, and a grand old time had by all. That’s the way he would have wanted it, and that’s the way it was.
Annie and Bryan walked in around the middle of it. A hot July night it was, and the undertaker had taken the precaution of packing some ice around the bier. By the time they got there, the mourners were taking the ice from Paddy’s bier and putting it in their own beer. Nobody objected, the feeling being that Paddy would have understood and approved. Annie sipped at a glass of beer someone handed her while Brian took several fast gulps from the bottles of whiskey being passed around. After a while Annie went into the kitchen to pay her respects to the widow. When she came out, Brian was nowhere to be seen.
By that time all the mourners had moved out of the parlor where the casket had been placed and spread out over the dining room where the vittles were arranged and the living room where a fiddler had struck up a tune. Annie wandered through the throng, but she couldn’t find Brian anywhere. It got later and later, and still she couldn’t locate him.
It must have been close to three in the morning when she was attracted to a commotion in the doorway to the parlor where Paddy had been laid out. Drifting over there, Annie saw that the hubbub had stemmed from the fact that someone had noticed that the lid of the coffin had been closed. This was definitely counter to tradition, and now several of the men were staring at it, genuflecting, and discussing it among themselves. Inside the parlor, the overhead lights had been turned out, the only illumination now came from a candle at either end of the closed casket, and there was an eerie feeling about the shadowy scene. This, Annie realized, was why none of them were pressing closer to investigate the closing of the coffin.
Drink had revived old superstitions and made them timid. But Annie had downed only the one beer, and so she felt sober and clear-headed compared to the rest of them. Pooh-poohing to-herself at their superstitious rumblings, she entered the parlor.
Annie shouldn’t have been so daring. It resulted in the scare of a lifetime for her. She walked straight over to the table on which the coffin was resting, and when she reached it she loosed a scream of terror that sent the others scattering back from the parlor doorway. There, behind the coffin on the table, stretched out so close to it that Annie, didn’t see it until she was standing right over it, was the grinning corpse itself!
Annie froze, her scream still echoing in her ears. Then she regained control of her limbs and fled after the others. By then some of them had gotten back their own control and started back into the parlor to see what had made her scream. Annie again reversed herself and fell in behind them. She was right there a few moments later, with a clear view when they raised the lid on the oversized coffin so that the corpse might be returned to its proper resting place. She was right there to join in the outraged gasp as the eyes of them all fell on what was inside the coffin.
Brian Hennanigan was there. He wasn’t alone. There was another young man of around his age wedged into the velvet-lined casket with him. They were lying spoon-fashion, the trousers of both of them pushed down around their ankles. And they were too drunk to stop what they were doing—or, rather, what Brian was doing to the other lad—-even when the cold draft swept over them when the coffin lid was raised.
And that was how Annie Fitz-Manley found out what Brian really was. That was the moment when everything fell into place. That was the moment she would never be able to forget as long as she lived. . .
“But how awful for you!” Penny exclaimed when Annie finished her story.
“Yes, it was. But the worst thing was that even that couldn’t make me stop loving Brian. No matter what he did, what he was, I just couldn’t help myself. I went right on feeling the same way about him. And I still do.”
“Do you think he’ll ever change? Ever want you as a woman?” Penny asked.
“No. I don’t kid myself about that any more. He is what he is.” Annie sighed. Then, abruptly, her manner changed and she became more like her usual bubbly self again. “How’s that for a problem for Lovelights, hey?” she asked Penny. “What sort of advice does the editor have to cope with that particular problem? Dear ‘Young Girl Who’s Ape Qver Queer . . .’ Come on, what would you say after that, Penny?”
“I don’t know,” Penny admitted. “I’d have to think about it.”
“Well, you do that. You think about it while I go inside and get out of my girdle and into something more comfortable.” Annie vanished into the bedroom.
Penny did think about it, but she hadn’t come up with any solutions when Annie reappeared. She forgot about it momentarily as she took in the altered appearance of the young Irish girl.
Annie had brushed out her long red hair and tied it back with a simple green ribbon. She had changed into a black negligee. The negligee was shimmery and semi-transparent. Also, it was low cut on top and unbuttoned down the skirt so that the material parted. The result was that much of Annie’s petite and voluptuous body rippled in and out of view as she moved.
Penny had never before realized what a sexy little thing Annie really was. Now, the high thrust of the breasts with the scarlet nipples playing hide-and-seek with the black bodice, the ample hips thrusting out from the small waist, the firm, globular buttocks jiggling, the flushed pink of baby fat at the thighs — all the allure of the compact colleen struck Penny as though she were seeing Annie for the first time. And even as she was appreciating it, Penny was wondering to herself why Annie had gone to the trouble of arranging herself so seductively.