Eat Your Heart Out (9 page)

And everything that she said, well, I just thought she was the most specialest and smartest person I'd ever met, and I just couldn't believe that such an amazing bird was wanting to talk to me as much as I was wanting to talk to her.

Finally, when we were almost right outside the bar, I asked her where she grew up and I found out she only grew up about five minutes from where I did, both on the outskirts of Derry city. It was a fucken' desolate slum to end all slums, but my perfect angel came from there too. It was crazy to say that flowers grow outta dirt, but it rang true with my Kate.

“It's too bad we only met now,” I told her. I remember really wishing that I'd known her my whole life, thinking that maybe my whole life would've been different had I known her for all of it.

“I'm just happy we met at all.” With that, she was through the door, and I was left standing on the sidewalk, heart beating through my chest.

I remember the
concert was fucken' fantastic. The guy sounded like Van Morrison, mixed with Mick Jagger, with a bit of otherworldliness. He sang his own songs, which were very wild and almost crazy, like, and then he did covers of everyone's favourites, so it was like the perfect mix of new and old. The whole bar was up dancing by the end. I never heard of that guy again, though. Sometimes ya make it, sometimes ya don't, I guess.

I met a lot of Kate's mates that night. They were all well nice girls, very smart, and you could tell different (better!) than the crowd I ran with.

I felt this strange desire ta be better like them and forget everythin'
in my own life, but it was fleeting, like. Maybe that was the thinkin' part startin' ta come back.

But anyway, all her mates really looked up ta her, and I could tell she was the unofficial leader, not because she wanted to be but because it was just so natural ta her.

I remember your man the singer started singing “Crazy Love” by Van, and the way he sang it, it almost had this rebellious and strong edge, like the way real, crazy love is. It's not sappy, or soft, it's scary as fuck and totally rebellious because you are going out on a scary fucken' whim and saying fuck it to everything in your head and only listening to what yer heart is telling you. If that ain't rebellious, I dunno wha is.

But when he started “Crazy Love,” Kate grabbed my hand, and it was the first time and I remember thinking that it felt so perfect that I wanted to take glue and attach her to me forever. But she held my hand through the whole song, and squeezed it extra tight near the end, and after that, I can't remember a time that we were together when we weren't somehow connected. I never let go of her hand that night. I couldn't never look at her without wanting so bad to be touching her.

On that night, I felt free and weightless for the first time in as long as I could remember. I was happy, and nothing seemed to matter except right then.

Kate stirred somethin
so fucken' powerful in me that after I'd met her I found it near impossible to think o' anything else. Which wasn't how I planned it, like, but once I had it, I sure as fuck didn't wanna change it.

Before I met Kate, I had a crap job and a crap life. After, I still had a crap job but it didn't matter anymore because now I had a great life. An unbelievably great life! Soon we spent every minute together. I'd visit her at work as much as I could. We'd eat sandwiches together for near every meal. We'd lay together on the wood floor because her back hurt after servin' for so many hours and she would talk to me about how she didn't want to just get married and have twelve Catholic children like her ma had, like her ma's ma had. She wanted more. She was the first person I'd met that I never got sick of.

I thought long and hard about what made Kate so well different from everyone else. It was like she was a soul from the future, transported into the wrong time, which was lucky for me but extremely unlucky for her. She had a certain consciousness to her that not many people here had. She could see all the bullshit. Most people just stood idly by for it, blinded by having seen no other way, and the others, like me, were responsible for it. You could really divide the lot of us into two worlds, like. But Kate, nah, like I said, she was from the other world. Tha older world, tha smarter world, tha world that felt a sickening pity for it all. She was above us. She was above me, and why she loved me I can'y tell you. World's biggest mystery.

Far more mysterious than Niagara fucken' Falls, believe me.

Very little is mysterious to me anymore. Up here, it's like you only got the same ten records to play all the time, and let me tell ya, even if they're great records, you are left bustin' for a radio station. Even a shite one because the great thrill in life is mystery. The mystery of not knowin' what's coming next, even if it is shite.

There are some perks to being up here, like. I get ta meet famous people. I met Elvis. I met John Lennon. I met Jesus, he's got gross hair in person. But ya know what they all said?

“I wish I wasn't fuckin' dead.” Even
they
got regrets.

I got one big regret. Well, that's lies. There are lots, like, but there's one part that I continually think about regretfully, probably because it's the only part that could have been avoided.

I don't remember
when we first said I love you. Far too pissed.

It was a Saturday night, and we had come home after a night out, where naturally I drank me face off. It was a class wee night with all her mates, right before Christmas. Christmas is real nice in Belfast, everything all done up honouring the Father's son, the few days' ceasefire and all that. But there was this real sad feeling underneath everything, which I can only think caused all me drinkin'.

A week earlier, fifteen Catholics, including two wee kids and two women, were killed by a bomb at this place called McGurk's Bar. At tha point it was by far the greatest loss of life that we'd ever seen, on either side. From the second I opened me eyes I felt the sick, angry, violent feeling and it vibrated all through me. When I was with Kate, I pushed it away, of course. But I knew there was going to be a retaliation, and I just couldn't believe they'd killed that many. (I didn't find out until I was up here that they were meant to take this
IRA
place called Gem's, but they picked McGurk's on the drive over because it was an easier target. Lazy, gutless fucks.)

When we got into my apartment it was flipping Baltic, like. The heat in that shithole was never workin', which was flaming ridiculous considering Belfast's winters are a damp, cruel mistress. Anyway, Kate got into the apartment and she wouldn't take her coat off even though it was fucken' covered in snow.

“Baby, I'm flamin' cold,” she kept saying.

“I know, darlin'. Here, come into bed with me. I'll warm ya,” and then I winked at her.

“Nah, it's too cold to take my coat off. Come and hug me.”

“Yer coat is fucken' soaked. I'm not comin' to hug you, I'll be drenched.”

“Fine,” she said and then she did this fake pout she used to do that she thought was hilarious. So she'd be trying to do a frown-y face while laughing her wee ass off, which actually was a funny sight. So a'course, I started laughin' too.

“Ya know you leave me no choice,” she told me while laughin' like a wild woman, half drunk and half just mad as a hatter as she was.

“No choice but to what?”

“You know,” and then she started bopping around a bit.

“NAH!” I hollered.

“Yes!” And then she started doing what she called the “Hug Me!” dance, which she did whenever she wanted a hug and I couldn't give her one, like when I was busy, or already snug in bed or drainin' me python, or some other time when reasonable people didn't hug. And she did this dance wherever her heart pleased! She wasn't bothered if a million people could see her.

Luckily, that night it was just me.

Eventually, after I was done pissing myself laughing, I got up to hug her, half because I was worried she's wreck the place or kill herself. Only when she was tight in my arms did she stop the “Hug Me!” dance, so wranglin' her into position was a challenge, let me tell ya.

This is where I cut in and out. I remember telling her I loved her, but I didn't remember how it came up, which she found hysterical the next day.

“I tricked ye inta sayin' it! That's how!”

“Wha? Ye tricked me?” I asked.

“Ya were bustin' ta say it.”

“Well, yer right I was.”

And I was busting to say it from the moment I met her. So even if she was tricking me, I know I was thinking it at that very moment.

“That's better,” she said.

“Oh yeah? I'm soaking now. Yer mad, so ya are.”

“And you love it.”

“I do,” I said, feelin' the faggot-y nervousness in my voice.

“Ya do what?”

And then I knew for sure what she was getting it. I had no choice but ta be honest.

“Love you. I do love you.”

“Ya do?” she said, surprisedlike, but also she looked so happy, and she smiled her gorgeous smile so wide. I just thought, How did I get lucky enough to make a bird like her so happy?

“I do,” I said again.

“I love you too,” she said, and then I could tell she meant it because she had a different look in her violet eyes than I'd seen before and I could tell that we'd gone to a deeper level than we were a second previous, and I knew that this was a moment I wanted to hold on to for as long as I humanly could.

After that she dragged me to the bed, and I remember thinking I'd never felt closer to God than I did when we were making love.

As I fell asleep, I held her. The world felt so slow. I told myself, “Don't let this go.”

“Don't let this go,” I whispered out loud, to prove to myself that everything I was feeling was real. The small words hung in the air, a reminder that I finally had something worth holding on to.

Her.

The memories aren't
all perfect, though, like. She was always perfect, like, or pretty close, maybe too moany some days, but mainly perfect. I wasn't perfect. And sometimes lyin' ta her got tricky.

I remember I was pickin' her up from work one day, and I had been asked ta beat a man within an inch of his life the night before. Naturally, I did because tha's what ya did. I was proud of it then. The higher-ups liked my good work coz I had done wha they asked me.

It was like I became a different person when I was doin' that job. I had me “office” self and me real self when I was with her. The two never intersected, and sometimes I'm surprised at my ability to have two such different people within me.

Anyway, I was pickin' her up, and she noticed that me knuckles were bloodied.

“Wha happen'd there?” she asked.

“Ah, nothin',” I said.

“Tell me. Now.”

“Ah, it was nothin'. Just got into a wee fight last night with a prick. Tha's all.”

“Where were ya?”

“Jus tha wee place I took ya last week,” I told her, thinkin' on my feet.

“Ya told me you were with yer mate Charlie at his.”

“Yeah, well, we started at his and then we dandered way over there.”

She didn't say nothin' after that, but she looked at me like I was the biggest liar she'd ever met. But in my mind, I was doing her a favour.

If ya think that being involved tore me up while we were together, you're wrong. I couldn't picture a life without it, even with my beautiful bird in it. I couldn't really just up and quit now, could I? Nah. While we were together I just kept doin' whatever they asked me, with no real thought. Small tasks, mainly like. I carried on, happy as hell, unchanged.

It's only now I ponder if I could have stopped.

I came home
one night to her lying on the floor of my apartment, wailing.

“What's wrong?”

She moved, startled to see me, like she hadn't heard me dander in. She was lost in something bad and she looked at me like she wanted out of it, like I had to help her. I asked what was wrong again.

“They took Charlotte's husband, Camren.”

Charlotte was her best mate. Her man was a provo, like me. I didn't know him much but to say hello. I had a sinking feeling in my gut. He wasn't the first man I'd known to be taken and definitely not the last.

“Who took him? Why?” I was playing dumb and I don't know why.

“Some Brit soldiers. Charlotte's been screaming since they raided the house, no one can calm her down. He is in jail, they'll probably kill him. She's got a wee baby inside her.”

I never seen her more scared. I stayed silent then. I could feel the tension building in the air, and I knew what was coming. That's how connected we were. I could telepathically feel what she was raring to say to me.

“You're going to do this to me too.”

“Nah, nah. They won't. They'd have no reason.”

“Sean, they're taking all of you's. Ye need to get out. I can't have them take you too.” I think even she knew that wasn't possible.

She turned her head away from me, lying flat on her back. Mad, like. I didn't know wha ta say. I was worried. Worried because now that she knew it was dangerous for her, and worried she'd leave me.

“They take you, I'll be alone. Then how much stronger are we? Women left without men? He's going to die in there, Sean. They're going to kill us all.”

“Yer wrong.”

You know that thinking part? It was well back at this point. The thinking part that I had aborted was kicking and screaming its way around my brain again.

“Kate, this is how it is. I can't stand by and do nothin'. I got no other choice.”

I remember feeling so utterly gutted at this point. I felt so fucked. Like Romeo and Juliet or other star-crossed lovers that were just fucked from the get-go but it wasn't really their faults.