Free Starry-Eyed by Ted Michael Page B

Avenue; you’ll see what I mean. You’ll hear it too. The brogues are thicker than the head on a pint of Guinness, and contagious as a yawn. Listen to me, for fek’s sake. I talk like an American at school—I was born here after all,though my parents weren’t—but when I’m around this lot. . . .
    â€œâ€˜Danny Boy’! ‘Danny Boy’!”
    Like an under-rehearsed choir of drunken ghouls, they start moaning the tune in four different keys at once. Niall rolls his eyes and checks his iPhone. He’s a busy fellow, even in a pub with friends. Even on his birthday. The Kilcommons Irish Culture Institute never sleeps. Might you be interested in a step-dancing class? How about some Gaelic lessons? Is it your lifelong dream to learn to play the uilleann pipes? If so, Niall’s your man. He’s all incorporated and everything. If I ask him for a few bucks and he won’t give it, here’s his reply: “Sorry, love, but I’m a nonprofit organization.” You can’t imagine how often I’ve heard that one.
    The moaning’s over; now they’re all lighting their cigarettes. There’s no smoking allowed in New York City unless you’re hunkered in your own bath with the windows nailed shut, but we’re in the private party room at Kelly Ryan’s pub, and it’s Niall Kilcommons’s birthday, after all. Rules do not apply. Frankly it’s a relief to see people enjoying a smoke for a change, instead of standing huddled on the sidewalks in front of buildings, shoulders hunched in shame, eyes flitting about like murder suspects. I hear you can’t smoke in a pub in Ireland anymore, either. That’s a sure sign of the apocalypse, if ever there was one.
    â€œSomebody get Fiona the microphone, now. Come on, love. Sing a song for your da.”
    Yeah, Niall’s my da, but I call him Niall. If I said my da, most people wouldn’t understand who I meant. Fathering is not what he’s known for. But he is known, make no mistake. He’s famous in certain circles, among the barkeeps and bagpipers, the cops and the Catholic priests. He knows every fire chief in the five boroughs by his middle name. It’s not much of a feat of memory, mind you, as about ninety percent have got Patrick for a middle name. That’s another of Niall’s jokes. Every one a groaner. I only repeat them so you know what I’ve been up against my whole life.
    Niall’s vast reputation makes Evelyn and me famous too, on the rare occasions we’re all three together. Niall Kilcommons’s two gifted daughtersare we. I’m the teenaged singer, the sassy one with the big chest, and Evelyn’s the dancer and the looker. And a dental hygienist too, but Niall doesn’t mention that part. Twenty-six years of life as Niall’s daughter has blessed Evelyn with a sense of the practical, if only in self-defense. She was a brilliant dancer in her day, though. She used to win all the step-dancing contests, before she traded in her dancing slippers and beautiful costumes for her current wardrobe of powder-blue polyester jackets, boxy and unflattering, even on a tall, slim girl like Evelyn.
    If there’d been a third Kilcommons daughter, she’d have played the fiddle no doubt, or maybe the flute, but after I was born, my mum declined to bear any more talent for Niall’s unpaid employ. Instead she took up with a biker fellow with fearsome tattoos wrapped about both arms. His name is George and he’s swarthy. Of Greek extraction, and therefore statuesque (that’s a joke of my own making, but George is certainly well muscled in the classical style, not that I’ve noticed). He works construction and is a quiet type. By quiet I don’t mean shy, or mumbling, or weak. George is anything but weak. But he’s not a talker. He just gets up and does the thing. No preamble. No excuses. Can you imagine? The silence of George