Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“And you don’t count Puerto Rico, because it’s still part of America,” I said with a grin.

“Yes, I suppose it is, isn’t it. What is it? It’s not a state, is it?”

“It’s a colony,” I said.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said dismissively.

“It is,” I insisted.

“No, I don’t think we have any colonies,” she said dreamily, her mind clearly on something else.

“You do, and Puerto Rico’s one of them, you got it from Spain, I think,” I said.

She bit her finger and looked at me.

“You know, Alex, when we first went out campaigning in Englewood, that night of the fire, the first time we’d talked really, apart from the interview, I was very impressed with that thing you said.”

“To the policeman?”

“No, when we talked to that dreadful woman. You said that thing about African Americans.”

“I honestly don’t remember what you’re talking about,” I said.

“You said that African Americans had invented jazz and blues and rock and done lots of things,” she said.

“Oh, I stole that from somewhere, I’m sure, it’s hardly an original thought,” I said.

“Yes, but clearly you have the sentiment, don’t you? You believe that. I mean, well, you know what I mean,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, laughing, and looked at her legs crossing themselves, her hand fixing her dress.

“No, of course not, I’m not saying it very well. In fact, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just mean that you, you have real empathy. Does that make sense?”

I examined her. What was she doing? What did she mean by that? Was she complimenting me by an unspoken comparison to someone else? Was she really talking about me, or talking about herself? Maybe in a roundabout way she was trying to tell me something about Charles. Charles is not like this. He is not like you and me. Charles is cold, single-minded. Charles is a—

“Is it because you grew up in Northern Ireland, was it very hard living there with all the bombings and everything?” Amber asked softly, dripping the words out with precision, brushing the hair from her face. That accent of hers always throwing me. Not New Jersey, not the South, not Boston. A gentle echo of Charles’s patrician tones. Slightly affected. She took another drink of his whisky.

“Not that hard, you just got on with things, you got used to being searched going into stores, that kind of thing, people are very adaptable,” I said.

“Did you see any of that bad stuff?”

“Not really,” I lied.

“You didn’t see anything?” she asked, her lips closing into a pout.

“Once when I was a kid they blew up our local toy shop and we got discounted train sets and Lego. They were all fire-damaged, but it was mostly the packaging. Really, it was actually a good thing.”

“Oh, my goodness, they blew up your toy shop? Why would they blow up a toy shop?”

“I don’t know,” I said, studying the reaction on her face, which was sympathetic. Upset for me.

“I bet you saw a lot more than you’re saying,” she said, smiling.

“No, not much.”

“I bet you’re just being brave and stoic like in the play,” she said, scratching at the skin under her gold watch. Taking it off.

“Honestly, it wasn’t that bad,” I said.

“No. I know all about it. That’s why you’re here illegally. That’s why you lied to the police, because you don’t have a green card. I don’t mind. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I know how difficult it must be. I read the papers. Ireland. It’s awful over there.”

“Well, it can be hard,” I agreed.

“It’s what the play was all about. And what a story, huh? Incredible,” she said.

“Yes, I forgot that it was set in Donegal. Donegal is very beautiful. Stark, there’s still some Gaeltachts out there, villages where they still speak Gaelic,” I said.

“Do you speak any Gaelic?”

“No. Well, a little.”

“Go on.”

“An labhraíonn éinne anseo Gaelige?”

“What does that mean?”

“Is there anyone here who really speaks Gaelic?”

“Did you learn that in the Gaeltacht?”

“No, I went to a Protestant school. The Protestant schools teach Latin, the Catholic schools teach Gaelic, I just picked some of the language up from a book. I’m pretty good at languages. The one thing I am good at.”

“Tell me more about yourself,” she said.

“You know everything, you saw my résumé.”

“We both know that was closer to fiction than truth, right?” she said, again with a smile.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“You know, despite his many travels, Charles is hopeless at languages, most Americans are, you know. I have Spanish, though,” she said.

“That’s cool, it’s always good to know a language.”

“I think I’d like to learn Irish, it sounds beautiful.”

“It can be pretty guttural. It’s not beautiful like Italian.”

“Ireland’s nice, though? Donegal, you say, is lovely.”

“It’s really nice, you’ve got the Atlantic Ocean, big, empty beaches, the Blue Stack Mountains, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory on Station Island.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a pilgrimage site, you can wipe away your sins if you go there on a pilgrimage, you walk around the island barefoot and when you’re done you’re free of sin. Seamus Heaney wrote a very famous poem about it.”

“Did you go there?”

“What makes you think I have any sins?” I asked.

She laughed at this. A big sincere laugh. And it wasn’t that funny. She took a sip of the whisky and then another and then she grabbed my glass.

I touched her hand.

She looked at me.

And, oh God, I wanted to kiss her, I wanted to hold her, I wanted to be with her. I wanted her to tell me everything. I knew it would be all right. I wanted her and I wanted to have sex with Charles’s beautiful wife while he was out of town. To punish him.

“Maybe I should go,” I thought and said.

“Oh, don’t go, I was just about to try a different whisky, another glass won’t do me any harm, and I can’t drink alone,” she said.

She poured us both some Laphroaig. The conversation failed. She crossed her legs. Her skirt hiked up a little.

“So, no, I never went to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, it’s only for Catholics, really,” I said.

She looked at me, inspected me. She seemed to make a decision, poured herself some more whisky, added ice, knocked it back. But then said nothing, sat back down on the sofa. And asked dreamily:

“Is Belfast close to Donegal?”

“Geographically close, you know, less than a hundred miles, but the roads are quite bad, so it takes about three hours to get there.”

“And you never went to Carrickfergus, even though it’s only about five miles from Belfast, I checked that on the map.”

I studied her again. Nothing betrayed on her face. No subtlety, no fear, no repression of hidden emotion. Normal.

“No, like I said, I’ve never been to Carrickfergus,” I answered as carefully as if I were a bomb disposal expert, cutting the blue wire, not the red one.

I waited for her to bring up Victoria Patawasti. Was she about to crack? Was she suddenly going to tell me everything because I was a compatriot of the dead girl? Was all this Irish stuff getting to her, filling her with guilt about what she knew? Her lips did not quiver, her eye was steady. No, she wasn’t going to blurt out anything like that, instead she surprised me by saying something quite different:

“I suppose you know you’re very handsome, too skinny, maybe, but very handsome. Tall, dark, and handsome, in fact.”

“How do I reply to that?” I asked, embarrassed despite myself.