Free All the Old Haunts by Chris Lynch Page A

done. Done with me, anyway. She was fumbling around in her raggedy bag, looking for the lighter again, shaking, cigarette clinging to her lips, tears emptying into her bag while she cried, cried, cried, cried.
    I slid my hand flat across the splintery table, reaching for her, for her to take it. She slapped it. I left it there. She found the lighter, looked up at me. I wasn’t going anywhere. She slapped my hand harder.
    Westport, County Mayo. Westport House, this great old Georgian mansionlike thing surrounded by hills and gardens and its own pond with cute paddleboats, and inside, world-famous artworks and things you were definitely not supposed to touch but that were right there so of course somebody like me was going to touch them. I was always touching things I wasn’t supposed to be touching.
    “I’m just after tellin’ ya …” Cait said when I had once again slid up behind her as she studied an oil painting of dogs about to shred a fox. I had my hands around her waist. She scolded me. I liked it. She did not move away, and she did not make me stop.
    Down in the basement of wonderful Westport House, home of generations of folks with style and class and money and nice woodwork, they had installed a collection of stupid geegaws like the faucet that ran backward and a how-sexy-are-you machine that probably would have made the previous owners puke. As we stood there, side by side, unable to step any further into the place, Cait turned to me. “You may now proceed to take the mick,” she said.
    Which would have been perfect, and right up my alley. Only I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop looking at her, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.
    This was my sweaters-and-poteen money. It wasn’t even mine. I was supposed to bring back sweaters and poteen for the boys. We even had a sweaters-and-poteen night arranged, first Saturday night after Labor Day. The boys were going to kick my ass when I got home. Unless I told them the story of how I got myself into this fix. Then they’d pat my back instead.
    The boys were going to kick my ass when I got home.
    My job was transportation and accommodation. Cait had already done the heavy sweating of making the clinic appointments. The pamphlet actually even had a section at the back with information on the most convenient and cheap places to stay in the area of the clinic, so that was what I was to work from.
    “Right. And where did you hear about us then?”
    I stammered, stumbled, leafed through the booklet that I had been so happy to close once I heard the man say that yes he did have vacancies.
    When he couldn’t wait any longer he worked it out himself. “You’re calling from the Republic then, are ya?”
    I nodded, sighed. He had heard this response before.
    “Right, so what times are you scheduled for at the clinic, and when does your plane come in? We’ll meet you. We’ll take you around. We’ll get you sorted.”
    Knock. I wanted to go to Knock, and see the famous crying statue of Mary. Cait, suspicious of my motives of wanting to make Mary cry, wouldn’t do it. She took me to the coast at Sligo where instead we saw sleek little bobbing black heads of seals. They popped up, here, there, silently big-eyed watching us. Bloop, back under the dark water. We would walk a ways, through cow fields that reached almost right down to the sea. After a minute the seals reappeared, watching us. Following us. We hopped a small wire fence, Cait first, then me. I got mildly electrocuted. Cait laughed. Electrified cattle fence. The seals popped their heads up to see. I could not believe there was nobody there but us and the seals. Nobody.
    There were probably about a zillion people at Knock.
    Liverpool. Birthplace of the Beatles. That was what I knew about Liverpool. That was what everybody everywhere knew about Liverpool. Birthplace of the Beatles.
    The man, Martin, picked us up at the airport like he said. Cait and I hadn’t spoken during the whole flight, and we still