The Dead Yard (11 page)

I toweled off, changed into a shirt and jeans. Kit was looking at my bookshelves. She ignored
the books, barely pretending to skim through them, but she couldn’t conceal how much she coveted
my CDs, which were cool English music, a year or two ahead of similar American trends. The covers
she found to be fascinating objects. I stared at her for a minute and she caught me looking. I
pretended to be checking out the weather behind her head.

"It’s raining," I said.

Kit hadn’t noticed. She peered out the window, nodded absently.

The apartment was small. Two tiny bedrooms, a living room that connected to a minute kitchen.
A sofa, a couple of deck chairs. No aircon but a bit of a breeze from the Atlantic out the
window.

"What are these like?" she asked finally, holding up a handful of the CDs.

"They’re good," I said.

"What type of music?"

"It’s a thing called Britpop, somewhere between pop and rock, I don’t think there’s really an
American equivalent. I suppose REM would be the closest thing," I said.

"I like REM," she said, her big eyes shadowed black, blinking slowly, seductively, without
meaning to be seductive.

The blue of cornflowers in a black orchid bouquet, you could say, if you were so inclined. And
I wasn’t. It wouldn’t do to get carried away.

"Who else do you like?" I asked, to break the silence.

"Nirvana, Pearl Jam, that kind of thing," she said.

"You might like Oasis," I said. "Take the CD with you. You can borrow it."

"Is that your favorite?" she asked.

"Nah, Radiohead is what’s happening at the moment," I said.

"Can I listen?" she asked.

I put on
OK Computer,
which had just been released that week. After only a few tracks
I could tell that Kit loved it. I was pleased. She’d already called me an old geezer once and I
wanted her to think I wasn’t completely unhip. I brought a couple of Sams from the fridge. We
drank, listened to a bit of the record, and watched the rain. Kit found herself edging towards me
on the rattan sofa, realized what she was doing, stopped herself, shifted away. She made an
obvious play of looking at her watch.

"Oh, we better head up to the bar," she said.

I pulled on a pair of socks and grabbed my Stanley boots. After Samantha’s foot stab, I found
that I felt safer in shoes with steel toe caps even despite the god-awful heat. Kit watched me
pull the boot on over my plastic left foot.

"What happened to your foot?" she asked. "I noticed when you were wearing that skirt that you
have a pro, pro, what’s it called?"

"Prosthesis," I said unself-consciously. I was used to it by now. I didn’t even think about it
anymore.

"
Prosthesis
. That’s a good word. What happened to you?" she asked, her face radiating
concern and curiosity.

I smiled at her.

"Motorcycle accident when I was nineteen. I was going way too fast, I fell off, the bike came
down on top of me, my left foot went into one of the wheels. It was my fault, I was speeding, the
road was slick, and no one else was involved," I said.

A nice wee invention with just a little bit of gore and not one-tenth as bad as the real
story, of horror piled upon horror down in the gothic badlands south of the border.

"Does it hurt?" Kit asked.

"Now, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"No, it doesn’t hurt."

"You moved pretty good down there on the beach, with your sword and all, I wouldn’t have known
otherwise."

"I can run on it too; I can pretty much do everything except swimming. I can’t get the hang of
swimming."

"You could just use your arms," Kit said helpfully.

"I know. It’s not that, it’s just, well, I don’t know what it is."

"I’ll take you swimming with me, you can use the surfboard to keep you afloat. It’ll be
easy."

"You surf?"

"Of course. You?"

"No."

"You can learn. I’ll teach you. We’ll get you over this swimming thing and I’ll teach you to
surf. Your foot might make it a little harder but I’m a good teacher and the break on Plum Island
is pretty easy."

I wanted to change the subject because I didn’t want the focus to be on me and my bloody
handicaps.

"You look nice," I said. "You did something to your hair."

She blushed again. She wasn’t used to compliments. The atmosphere of the Sons of Cuchulainn
was probably one of matey blokishness, and that pleased me too. It would give me an angle.

"Yeah, got it cut, less of a bob, more of a pageboy," she explained.

"I don’t know what that means, but it looks good," I said.

"I got rid of the hairspray, too. It was too 80s, too glam, too New Wave."

I nodded to show that I got her pop culture references.

"Too much of a fire hazard as well. One loose cigarette and you would have been up like
Michael Jackson."

She looked puzzled.

"What do you mean?

"Michael Jackson set his hair on fire during a Pepsi commercial. Remember?"

"That must have been before my time," she said, again making me feel like an old git. I was
too ticked off to think of a response.

"Anyway, Sean, I’m glad you’ve changed out of your centurion uniform, you look much better,"
she said.

"Thanks. But tell me again why precisely I have to dress up for your father?" I asked.

"Because, Sean, my father is, like, a very wealthy man who runs a construction company and can
get you a job which would not involve you having to wear a ridiculous costume and fight some
English dude for a pittance."

"How do you know it’s a pittance? And how do you know that I would want to work for your
da?"

"Simon said you were getting like six dollars an hour," she said.

"How much your da pay?"

"Twelve skilled, nine nonskilled. Really, like, twelve if you’re Irish, nine if you’re Mexican
or Portuguese," she said.

I looked at her to see if she was joking or being sarcastic, but apparently not. Her dad was
an institutionalized racist and she wasn’t that concerned about it.

"And it wouldn’t look good if I was to say, ’Dad, here’s this Irish guy you might want to
hire,’ and you come in looking like Julius Caesar," she said.

I stroked my chin, nodded.

"Kit. Why do you want to help me?" I asked.

"’Cos you tried to save my life, ’cos you’re Irish, ’cos you look like a total idiot in that
Roman getup. I wouldn’t wish your job on my worst enemy," she said.

"Not Romans, Greeks and Trojans," I said.

"What?"

"We were supposed to be Greeks and Trojans. You know, hence the bronze sword, rather than
iron; they really paid attention to detail."

Kit looked at me skeptically. Biting into her lip in a way that was completely captivating.
She had no idea what it was doing to me. I had no idea what she was doing to me and since she was
doing it so effectively I hadn’t even put up any defenses until it was too late. She was across
the moat and over the wall and I had left the keep doors open for her too.

"Well," she whispered huffily, "I didn’t know you were, like, so enthusiastic about it. If
this is what you want to do all summer, I won’t try to help."

"No, no, I’ll meet your da," I said, smiling as if I were making a concession.

"Good," she said, pleased with herself.

It was completely dark outside now and the rain was ending. Kit stood. She looked at me with a
little impatience.

"We should head up. Jackie will be wondering where I am. You don’t mind meeting everyone, do
you?"

"No, who’s everyone?"

"Touched, Sonia, Jackie."

"Touched is?"

"My dad’s old friend from Ireland."

"I take it that’s a nickname, right?"

"Yeah, supposedly because he’s crazy, but he seems ok to me."

"Sonia is your stepmom, right?"

"Yeah. My mom’s dead. Well, technically she was my adopted mom but you know what I mean," Kit
said.

"Yeah, you told me that. You said that your real mom is still alive somewhere?"

"That’s right."

"Do you ever—"

She put her hand up to cut me off.

I stopped speaking.

She closed her eyes and when she opened them she looked pissed off.

"Sean. There’s one ground rule with me. You can ask me anything, talk about anything, but just
don’t ask if I ever want to meet my real mom or dad someday. Everybody always asks that and it’s
really irritating. My dad is my dad and he’s a great man and as you saw yourself a brave man,
too. And my mom was my mom, too. And that’s it. I don’t know who my real mother or father were
and I don’t care. My real dad is Gerry. End of story."

Kit looked flustered. She’d said all this to stop me digging a potential hole for myself and,
if truth be told, I probably would have asked her if she’d ever considered looking for her "real"
mom or dad someday. Clearly, many people had made that gaffe in the past and she didn’t want me
to be one of them.

"He’d probably be a jerk anyway," Kit continued. "I always think of him as one of those idiots
who tries to do kung fu on the lions at the zoo or falls into a vat of molten chocolate or dies
from urinating on the third rail," she said with a laugh.

I laughed, but I found her examples of stupidity disturbing, not amusing. There was a hardness
in Kit that she got from her adoptive da.

"Ok, so who else is going to be there tonight?" I asked.

"Just Jackie. You know about him. He’s my boyfriend," she said, playing it straight.

"He’s still your boyfriend?" I asked innocently.

"Yeah."

"I thought I told you he wasn’t good enough for you."

"You’re wrong. Jackie is really nice and you’ll like him."

"Sure," I said, trying to sound disappointed but not obsessively disappointed so she didn’t
think I was a perv already in love with her or something. Hard to convey all that meaning in one
syllable, but I did my best.

"He’s a bit like you," Kit said almost defensively.

"Handsome, smart, funny, and brilliant, you mean?"

"No, he’s Irish, real Irish like my dad. He came over to South Boston about five or six years
ago."

"South Boston. Yes, I’ve heard about that place. North of the river is Cambridge, racially
tolerant, attractive, full of geniuses, and South Boston’s the counterweight."

"Who told you that?"

"What I heard."

"It’s not true. I have a lot of friends from South Boston and they’re smart and they’re not
bigots. At least not all of them."

"I stand corrected. Where’s he from in Ireland?"

"I think he said Sligo."

"Oh dear, well that I do know about, they’re all cow fuckers over there."

Kit punched me on the shoulder.

"Ok, that’s enough," she said, laughing.

I sat back on the sofa, edged my arm towards her, rubbed my lip. Considered a move right here
and now.

"Come on, dude, tie your shoes up," she said, interrupting my schemes.

"Ok. Well, look, one more track, the next one’s ’Karma Police,’ you’ll really like it," I
said.

"Karma Police" came on. Kit really liked it. She made me play it again. Not that surprising.
Many magazines would vote it the best track on the best album of the year. I was starting to get
nervous so I finished the Sam Adams and popped the last one in the six-pack, chilled, listened to
the track, and sat with Kit. These were the moments you lived for. A beautiful girl, good music,
good beer. As she watched the sun set, I studied her until I feared she would catch me at it
again, so I looked out the window too. The sun completely gone now and the sky amber and gold all
the way west into the Berkshires and Vermont. Oystercatchers and gulls on the bay. Kites down at
the headland and higher up a light plane skating along the coast, a white single-engined craft
with a trailer on the back of it that read "NH Fireworks Shack—Sail Sail Sail This Sunday." A bad
speller but a good pilot. He did a final spectacular dip over the beach and banked the plane
lazily towards the New Hampshire border.

We watched the plane until it was a mere speck in the opaque sky, lost in the pattern of
cirrus clouds and the regular plough lines of the high jet vapor trails. Its engines long gone in
the soporific drone of the fairground generators and the light booming of the water against the
seawall.

The music faded. Silence. I turned off the stereo. We looked at each other. We both knew what
was going to happen, but I had to ask.

"Why mention the boyfriend?" I asked.

"Just, like, so you know," she said.

"Is it serious?" I asked.

"As serious as you can get at my age," she said, grinning, and leaned over and kissed me on
the cheek to let me know that that was all it would ever be. Another thank-you for Boston. She
had her boy and I wasn’t him and she was just happy to see me.

But she wasn’t going to get away with that.

I took her face in my hands and kissed those soft pillowy lips and pulled her down beside me.
I ran my fingers down her back. Her skin was smooth and electric. She was gorgeous.

She put her arms around me and held me tight. I wanted her to touch me, I wanted her to hold
me. And I wanted to possess her.

We kissed and when she was out of breath and her mouth was opening and she caught herself
pushing her crotch onto my leg she froze, opened her eyes, and pulled on the hand brake. Stopped
herself. Moved back.

"I’m serious, I have a boyfriend," she whispered, like a mantra.

I didn’t say anything.

For once I was utterly speechless.

Kit stood.

"Come on, we really should go."

I nodded.

"We’ll go."

She must have remembered about my foot because it drew the mothering instinct out of her and
she gave me her hand and pulled me up from the sofa. She let go immediately I was up.

"Thanks," I said.

"You’re welcome."

And I looked at her. Drew in every essence of her. And oh my God. She was beautiful and
charming, and I knew, goddamnit, that because of her the mission was going to be much harder,
much more complicated, and ultimately much more dangerous.