Free When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon Page A

the window, open those curtains, and give us one of your angelic smiles. I wrote two poems for you last week. They’re tucked away in the bottom of my sock drawer.
    Car headlights suddenly swept around the corner, causing Neil’s heart to flutter. The return of Sugar Daddy. Back for one last desperate attempt to win his heart. Neil quickly donned his baseball cap, dug his hands into his pockets, lowered his head, and strolled on. As the big car roared past him, the man and woman in it turned their heads to inspect him. Aging rhyming couplets on Neighborhood Watch , Neil thought, watching the car round the corner and speed off into the night. Hah . He laughed inwardly. That’s what lay ahead for Gary and Trish and all the other couples . Beady eyes glued to the blinds of their semi-D, on constant lookout for strangers stalking their neighborhood. He sneaked a parting glance at Ian’s house and clenched his fist in silent jubilation. The bedroom light had been switched off. At last, a sign. The telepathy had worked. They were definitely destined for each other.
    His own house was in darkness when he eventually got home after one o’clock. Neil tucked into a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches, laced with mayonnaise. Then he gulped down the remainder of the milk and left the empty bottle back in the fridge, even though he had given his mum his solemn promise never to do this again. On his way to the TV room, he could already feel the first niggling traces of a hangover. Or maybe, he thought, it was the early signs of a brain hemorrhage.
    Plonking himself down into an armchair, he flicked through all the late night channels. “Damn all on,” he muttered, letting his eyes drift to the rugby team photos hanging on the wall. Junior and Senior Cup winning teams with Neil standing at the back, on the extreme left, in both photos. Away from the glare of the limelight. They took pride of place over all the other family photos, including his parents’ wedding photo and the photos of his nephew and niece. Then he glanced at the video collection and Sugar’s deliberate little hook started to play on his mind. “I’ve some good videos you might be interested in seeing,” that was what he had said. Neil had pretended not to hear, considering it a bit pathetic. But Sugar knew what he was doing; he had more than likely planted this same seed with thousands of other young fellows, Neil reflected, knowing that few could resist the lure of that visual excitement.
    Neil stood up and slipped one of the many family holiday videos into the video player. It was taken on a sun-soaked Donegal beach, where they used to rent a holiday home for three weeks every summer. Neil smiled as he recalled his dad’s futile attempts to get his offspring to perform for the camera. Holding on to his director’s cap (it always seemed to be windy), his face ruddy as he roared his instructions. “Where is Kate? Stop messing! I said walk, not run! Don’t look at the camera!”
    The picture came on the screen. “Neil Byrne at five years of age, struggling against the Atlantic Ocean,” his dad’s wry commentary announced. Neil grinned when he saw himself as a five-year-old, squatting at the water’s edge in his swimming togs, happily building a sand castle. All of a sudden a freak wave broke over him and drenched him. Little Neil stood up, dripping wet, and started to bawl with shock. Then the picture jumped as his dad retreated from his youngest son, who had automatically run toward him for comfort. Paul and Joe were in the background, bony-ribbed nine- and eleven-year-olds dancing hysterical jigs of joy, cheering as their little brother decided to change direction, and his fast little legs ran toward their mum instead. She wrapped a big towel around him, snuggling him close to her while she shouted to her husband to turn the video off. Jackie, sitting alongside their mum, kept playing with her doll, ignoring the consternation all around her.
    It was a