by L E Franks
Opening the tap for the IPA, I released another cascade of amber in a controlled flood, spilling it into the bottom of the next vessel, watching it as a swirling gold eddy sent bubbles in a crazy spin to the surface.
Keeping half an eye on my work, I let the frothy wave build on its own, guiding it more from muscle memory developed from years tending bar rather than conscious thought, my mind mimicking the chaotic rush of ale before me.
Despite everything, I wanted to give FatBoy a fair chance. And I would, if the sexual tension didn’t kill me first. But to do that, I needed a distraction, and a bar full of rugged Irishmen wasn’t helping.
I was already running the risk that I wouldn’t make it to my first break with clean shorts—because when the tip of Corwyn’s sharp, pink tongue snuck out to clear the creamy stout off his upper lip, I felt a shiver run like a wave across my scalp. And it hadn’t stopped there. A twist in my gut erupted, feeling somewhat akin to guilt.
I needed something to drive this devil off my shoulder and eject the visuals running in a loop through my head.
Flipping the tap closed as the foam kissed the rim of the pitcher, I tried for boring chitchat, carefully avoiding Corwyn’s blue eyes as I reached for the next empty pitcher to fill.
“So… you guys look a little beat up for football… or is it rugby?”
I might have asked if they were planning on flying to the moon on dancing ponies dressed in tutus. The ponies, not the players.
Hilarity rose around me like the crescendo from a middle school orchestra struggling through their first Beethoven: discordant, squeaking at odd intervals, but played with relentless enthusiasm. It drew them to my end of the bar, the team’s laughter drowning out the gym bunnies and the suits on the prowl, Simone’s demands for service, and the clatter of the busboys. They jostled each other, elbowing ribs, circling back to slap Corwyn’s back or grace me with a smirk.
I was tempted to touch my face to make sure I didn’t have anything hanging out of my nose or stuck between my teeth.
Finally, one of the older guys worked his way up front, wedging between bodies to clear a path through the rabble. Throwing a heavy arm over Corwyn, he let out a piercing whistle.
“Weesht! Shut the fuck up, you shites!” His volume, falling somewhere between a growl and a bellow, dampened their mirth—somewhat—but it was a hand the size of a softball catcher’s mitt thumping down on my bar that made both the team and my glasses jump.
“We’re most of us, come from the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championships… leastwise the good ’uns—” He broke off to sneer at someone hidden behind Corwyn, who piped in.
“We’re in our off-season, doing an exhibition tour of North America before play begins again. Some of us volunteered, some of us were volunteered.” There was a number of grunts at that, and I turned back when two sausage-link-sized fingers tapped the bar in front of me to get my attention. A twenty floated over and the man waited for me to read his mind.
“Another ale?” He wasn’t one of mine—and by the furrowed brow, I’d missed it by a mile. I guessed again. “Guinness?” I started my pull on his nod, and it was the second time in a week that I wished for unilateral brow movement to telegraph my disdain.
Nicely, of course—the hand he now laid on the bar was a broken landscape of flesh and bone, his knuckles, red and swollen like he’d used them to pound apart rocks all his life.
Corwyn leaned in to introduce us, his grin at capturing my attention reflected in the flash of his blue eyes. I felt a low burn in my chest, reminding me that the phone in my pocket had remained deathly silent since the start of my shift.
“This is Liam. He’s our number one—our goalie!” It was said with pride, and to a man, those clustered together reached for him, hooting and patting Liam’s shoulder or tousling his thick black hair until finally he’d had enough team spirit. Growling, he swiped at them with his paw, and they began to disperse back to their abandoned glasses and pitchers.
I let the stout settle along with my heart and picked up the thread of our conversation. “So what makes you one of the ‘good ’uns’?” I didn’t try for the accent, just mimicking his inflection, and given my fluency in snark in at least five languages, I nailed it.
“Well…” Liam paused without acknowledging my prowess, instead sweeping a cool dark glance across his teammates. I slid him his pint after topping it off, and he took a deep draught before continuing, “You’d have to actually be an All-Ireland Senior Hurling Champion. And if you were…”
Rory, the team’s youngster, popped up from somewhere to get closer, obviously mesmerized by the mountain holding court across from me.
I tried not to roll my eyes.
The pause lingered just a beat or two too long—apparently Liam was one for the dramatics. “You’d be wearing one of these!” He finished with a flourish, his brogue rich with inflection. Lifting one giant hand in the air, Liam twisted it until the halogen spots of the bar caught the diamond facets in the heavy gold ring, shooting tiny licks of rainbow fire across the room.
The team roared. Well, Rory roared, and I had a feeling this wasn’t a first for them. Corwyn just winked at me as if letting me in on the joke. Which he did.
“We all got medals—the winners. His uncle’s a jeweler in Cork, made it for him on the cheap. He likes his flash, that one.” He winked and took another long drink from his glass.
I reached for a clean towel and settled back to polish some glasses—we were getting low. If letting him prattle on would keep me occupied and thoughts of Corwyn far away, then I was happy to learn all about hurling… and how much Liam loved himself.
* * * * *
They’d been going at it for about an hour. Liam and Rory spilling endless facts about their beloved game and Corwyn interjecting with a word, or to cut through the miasma growing in the wake of their lecture. It was confusing. It sounded like someone had taken every sport I’d ever heard of, dumped them into a burlap sack, and shook it to hell. The first five sports that tumbled out won.
I tried my theory out on them.
I should have taken my break instead.
“So… it’s like a cross between field hockey and lacrosse… You have those hockey stick thingies…”
“A Hurley,” Corwyn provided helpfully. He reached under his barstool to drag out something that looked like a canoe paddle with a large bite out of the blade end. Sort of.
“Ya get hit with one of these, it’ll give ya a dead leg for sure,” added one of the fullbacks whose name escaped me in this sea of Irish swamping my bar.
“Dead leg?” I asked, working through my third rack of pint glasses. My second bartender had shown up, so I only had to pull draughts for the pack of hurlers arrayed before me. I was starting to enjoy myself.
“S’no big—wack it wi’ your fist a couple a times and you’re good ta go,” Rory nodded, and I got the impression it was like having your leg fall asleep.
“But you can carry the ball like in lacrosse…” I was trying to get this straight in my head.
“Sliotar,” Liam replied, working his way through a fourth Guinness.
“Which is like a baseball that you throw or carry but only a few steps like basketball?”
Corwyn snorted. “Now you’re makin’ fun. But you’re not far off. You can carry the sliotar for four steps in yer hand, but beyond that, you need to be bouncing it on the face of your hurley. That little point on the end—” Corwyn pointed to the edge with the bite missing. “Ya use that to scoop the sliotar off the turf, onto the face.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Ya run like the wind and pass to your forward if you can—if you can’t, you toss the sliotar in the air with the hurley, then smack the hell out of it downfield toward the goal.” Liam was becoming more pleasant with each sip.
“Right. Like baseball.”
Liam scoffed at me and delivered a freshly signed sliotar into my hand. I hoped he didn’t expect me to apply it to his tab.
>
For all that they were protesting, its resemblance to an American baseball was actually fairly accurate—close in both size and weight, just falling short of both measurements.
“You can also hit it with your open hand to pass.” Someone reached for the sliotar to demonstrate their technique, but I jerked it back to safety.
I looked at it again, considering. “So like handball.”
“No. You can kick it, as well as strike it on the ground—you just want to get it into the net for a goal for three, or through the uprights for a single point.”
“Like soccer!”
Liam had pulled out his phone to show me a diagram of the field. And it looked like a damn soccer field to me, except the net was tucked underneath what looked like a typical NFL goalpost. When I pointed that out, Liam corrected me.
“Football.”
“Pardon?” I watched him tuck away his phone and drain his glass with a gesture that screamed disappointment in an errant child.
“Its proper name is ‘football’—” The old Liam seemed primed to make a spectacular comeback.
“I donna why you Yanks insist on calling it soccer. You’re the only ones in the whole wide world who does…” Rory interrupted, color high. He hadn’t moved far and had drained more than his first pint, wedged silently next to Corwyn until now.
“And then you replace it with a game for poofs!” Rory spat.
His comment eliciting a sharp slap to the back of his head, rocking him forward so his nose kissed the oak.
His yelp rang through the chatter. “I was just going to—”
I glanced up from topping off the latest pitcher and caught Corwyn’s hand tangling in Rory’s red locks, dragging him close enough so that I could hear them over the rumbling of the bar.
“Mind yer tongue, boy-o. Yer lucky we don’t send you home to yer mam. Now go have your drink somewhere else, and let the men talk.”
Pushing the boy away, Corwyn turned back to me. “I’m sorry, he’s just a little—”
“Fuck, Corwyn.” Rory shoved back. “We’re not on the field. You’re not captain here. Keep your feckin’ hands to yourself. Shite, I was just trying to say that American football is a game for siss—”
“Mouth.” Corwyn’s tone was hard and flat. “And you better believe that until you’re back home, tied to your mother’s apron strings, I’m your Captain everywhere! You’re representin’ your team, your sport, and your country—and I won’t have a homophobic little shite like you cause trouble first day.”
He called over his shoulder. “Mickey, come get your brother before I put him out meself—for good!”
Apparently Rory didn’t get his wounds from being an innocent bystander. As soon as Corwyn turned away, he lunged, grabbing the front of his captain’s shirt as another mass of muscle shoved his way through the crowd.
I startled at the sight.
If the brothers were balloons, they’d be identical in nearly every aspect except one: Mickey looked like they’d forgotten to fill him completely with air.
Everything about him was just a little smaller than Rory: his build a little slimmer, his face a tad narrower… even his hair was a paler shade of red when compared to the thick mess his very big little brother was sporting. Though none of that hid the danger Mickey telegraphed as he laid a gentle hand over the top of Rory’s fingers, untangling them from their grip on Corwyn.
“What’s the problem, Cor?” Mickey’s voice was like dragging old pipe over a gravel road.
One of my regulars caught my eye, and I reluctantly left my post. By the time I’d returned from pouring him a shot of tequila, the pleasantries were over and the shouting between the brothers was underway.
“—don’t try! You’re not my brother here, we’re equal.” Rory was a sea of red, his fury pulsing along with the cords in his neck.
“Ya shite. Ma’d be sooo proud if she could see ya now, Rore. I told you to shut yer gob and keep your opinions to yerself!”
“Fuck you, Mick! You have no righ—”
“I have every right! The minute you start mouthin’ off, you prove everyone correct.”
“That’s shite and you know it, Mick. You don’t say any different at home, I—”
I lost track of the argument, despite my best efforts. Frankly, the English disappeared beneath heated Irish brogues sprinkled with Gaelic and whatever internal familial shorthand they had.
Corwyn jumped in to separate the brothers, grabbing Rory’s shoulder. Fast as a snake strike from the underbrush, Mickey turned his ire on him, yanking the hand away from his little brother.
“Fuck you, Corwyn,” Mickey growled. “This farce of an exhibition tour isn’t a real team and yer not my captain. You’re just playin’ at it for the big bosses, and yer doing a shite job!”
The last was emphasized with a hard shove that sent Corwyn backward into the bar, his elbow knocking over an empty pint glass. I made a grab for it, catching it just as it tumbled over the edge, and as I looked up, I saw Corwyn’s face go from stern to furious and the blue of his eyes turn arctic as he lunged to his feet.
“Mick—” Liam warned, matching growl for growl. He stood, towering over them, his brow dark with anger. The other men circling loosely around the four, egging them on—I was quickly losing control of my bar.
“Hey, Corwyn? Mickey? Chill. No one cares about a little smack talk—you just need to cool…” I trailed off and felt the danger spike as they ignored me. For the first time, I wished Corwyn’s eyes were on me so I could at least get him to disengage.
I searched the room vainly, hoping to catch a glimpse of FatBoy—if he was anywhere close, he’d be appearing to calm the room. Much more of this and Blake would be drawn from his office like Dracula rising from the dead. Nobody needed his ham-fisted efforts playing peacemaker, certainly not before the sunset.
Their friendly jocularity was turning into something more intense—sides were being taken, and it felt like the cracks between old rivalries were breaking through the loosely plastered façade of national team unity. A choppy wave of physical jostling started around the edges, and the men pressed closer to be heard over the din. At the heart was Corwyn and Rory’s brother Mickey.
Family.
Rory was nipping at both their heels like a terrier, frantically trying to intimidate anything larger than himself.
It was seconds from going ass over teakettle.
Shit.
I needed FatBoy.
Glancing at my watch, I realized without me along for the drive he had no reason to hurry back, and the fact that he hadn’t anyway twisted something in my gut.
I tried again, this time yelling to be heard above the din. “Settle down!!!”
* * * * *
I’d been a bartender a lot longer than I’d known FatBoy, and in much seedier places than Frisson: places that kept sawdust on the floor to help soak up the blood, vomit, and spilled beer left in the wake of a typical weekend.
When I was bartending at twenty-one, I was smaller, less muscled than the clientele. It was harder to intimidate the drunks with my physical presence, and the places I worked didn’t employ beefy bouncers to keep the peace, so I developed numerous strategies to head off the worst of the altercations. Having the sheriff close you down at midnight just when the wallets had finally been pried wide open was akin to flushing half a week’s wages away, so I adapted.
Bar defense is a skill set, not unlike proverbial bicycle riding, which you just don’t forget. So when I hopped up on my bar and hosed down a bunch of angry Irishmen with water, it felt like just another rowdy Saturday night on the outskirts of town.
And just like that, silence fell.
Thirty faces stared at me in shock, and in the void, you could hear wet gasps and the sound of water making fat splats as it hit the floor.
Rory stood shuddering in front of me. He was soaked, looking like a large wet rat with his hair plastered to his head, making the point of his nose and chin more pronounced. While
still wet, Corwyn had managed to avoid the same full body drenching as Rory—either he was lucky or he had the reflexes of a Formula One driver and had used Liam as a shield to avoid the bulk of the deluge. Fortunately for them, all the high-tech athletic gear they were wearing already seemed to be doing its job, wicking away most of the liquid. They’d dry fast.
Maybe I’d send them outside to run laps around the parking lot.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Juan standing in wait, a mop in his left hand and Louisville slugger in his right. I guess Juan had worked in the same kind of bars I had.
Our chef Marco had joined him, standing at his shoulder, arms crossed over a nine-inch omelet pan. I wasn’t sure if he had plans on feeding the rabble to death or using their carcasses in the night’s specials, but he seemed particularly amused by the proceedings.
I glared, the water nozzle still clutched in my hand, and addressed them.
“Are you all done being assholes, or do you need to be run through the rinse cycle one more time? I’m assuming this isn’t what y’all meant by an exhibition, but maybe I’m wrong and this is how you normally behave at home…”
Juan moved in with the mop and a large stack of clean bar towels, tossing them to the men who dispersed to tables and stools, drying themselves off out of the line of fire as I waited for my apology. It looked like I might get one from each and every one of them. With their sheepish shuffling and lowered eyes, they resembled a group of chastised children rather than the aggressive angry men they’d been channeling a minute before.
As cute as some of them were, they either needed to settle down and go back to drinking peaceably or get the hell out of my bar. I wasn’t paid enough to babysit.
Corwyn alone was willing to look me in the eye, or at least in the direction of them as I stood above him actively ignoring the water droplets clinging to his bangs and dripping onto his cheeks and how they made me think of showers and naked wet skin…
