�I love your accent,� she giggled, leaning closer and giving him a clear view down her dress. Remembering a long-ago lesson in respecting women, he moved his eyes back to his lighter and idly flicked the flame up and down. �My sister used to date a guy from Scotland or London or something like that...maybe it was Australia,� she continued, signaling the bartender for another round. �Accents just drive us wild, I guess!� He chuckled weakly, not daring to reply to that.
She jiggled her nearly-empty glass and tossed her unnatural hair, clearly awed by her own sparkling conversation. �Do you have any siblings?�
His hands went still. Carefully, he set the lighter down on the bar and took another sip of his drink before answering. �I have a brother.�
�Oh yeah?� She smiled and bounced in her seat, flashing the bartender a big smile as he pushed their drinks across. �Thanks...are you two close?�
He needed many, many more drinks. �Used to be.� Close enough to bemoan the cruelty of a world that put them in two skins instead of one.
�What happened?� She sipped at her strawberry-raspberry-is-there-any-booze-in-there-anyway? concoction. He wondered if someone could start a foundation to teach tact to these bar-dwelling women of New York.
�We had a fight.� He finished the new drink in two swallows and waved for another.
�About what?�
The woman was all questions. He stared down into the empty glass and wondered what she�d do if he just got up and walked away. �The nature of evil. The nature of love. If the one could overcome the other.�
She blinked. �Oh.� For a moment, they both sat and stared at their glasses. �So...you don�t talk anymore?�
�Not in a year.� He reached for another cigarette.
�Do you know where he is?� She reached out and snatched one from the pack for herself.
�Texas,� Connor said immediately, firing up the lighter. He half-smiled at her startled look. �I see it,� he explained, making a vague cranking motion alongside his head. �In my dreams.�
�Oh.� She stared at him for a moment and slid back on her stool- almost imperceptibly, but not quite. He sighed and tossed some money down on the bar. Time to write the whole evening off, after this turn. �I�m sorry. I�m not good company tonight.�
�Oh, you know, it was fine, don�t worry about it� she said, giving him a big, bright, fake smile, her eyes already on the next man down the bar. He shook his head.
�Thanks for the drinks.�
***
Sometimes he thought about taking off after Murphy, tracking him down. How hard could it be to find a tattooed Irishman in Texas?
But pride kept him here in New York, where their paths had diverged. Pride and the memory of gunfire.
He lived in a closet-sized room in a bad neighborhood so he could hear it outside the window at night. Like a slum kid�s lullabye, the cursing and gunshots and car horns of the night. How could Murphy stand it in Texas, where Connor imagined it was silent and still and you could see the stars?
He remembered Murphy�s eyes, raw and cold with betrayal, staring into his own for a last long moment before he turned and walked away. Connor never wanted to see those eyes again. The eyes of his brother, yes, shining with love and devotion and energetic zest for living. But not the eyes of the man who walked away.
He let himself into his tiny room, hardly noticing that the lock had been broken again. What he had that was worth stealing, he never left there alone. He eased down onto the bare mattress in the center of the floor and pressed the heels of his hands tight against his eyes.
Saints and angels, even a year later it hurt like broken glass.
One wrong phrase. One word that went too far. Just one moment he�d give anything to take back.
One fractured piece of time. Loving eyes turned to ice and his brother walked away.
He willed himself to sleep, to dream, to drift over the country to Texas on invisible wings. He�d hover over where Murphy sat drinking in some other bar (one where you could smoke without breaking the law), talking to some other woman in a tight dress (maybe this one wearing cowboy boots but they were all the same). He�d dream himself there, cursing and shouting and begging Murphy to hear him- he knew his brother could, if he�d only listen.
Come back, he�d dream. Come back East.
I�m sorry. Come back to me.
But Murphy never answered, and Connor woke up each morning facedown in a pillow soaked with tears.
Feedback is like oxygen.
Return to the main page.