by Megyn Ward
No easy task.
Dan flipped the tap and righted the pint in his hand before slamming it onto the bar. “I don’t mean that pasty-faced git and we both know it,” he growled, grabbing another glass to repeat the process. “What’s he doing here?”
It was a valid question. The Black Irish was the only place in the neighborhood Thad Jacobs wouldn’t walk into like he owned it. The only place he wasn’t welcome. When Quinn came into the Irish, he came alone. “I couldn’t say—” she said, pulling a couple of shot glasses off the rack before tipping a speed pourer of Patron over them. “Thad’s business stopped being any of mine a long time ago.”
Dan was listening but he wasn’t buying. There was only one reason Thad Jacobs would dare show his face in her uncle’s bar and it wasn’t for a game of darts. Pint filled, he set it down to start another. “Whatever he wants, he ain’t gettin’ it,” he said, his tone full of sharp edges. “You hear me, Maevie? He ain’t gettin’ it.”
They both knew that was a lie but it made her uncle feel better to say it, so instead of answering she just shrugged, popping the tops on a couple of Coronas and handing them across the bar along with the tequila shots. “That’ll be thirty bucks.”
The guy in front of her reached into to his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash as big as her fist. “You’re Maeve McKinnon, aren’t you?” he said, peeling off a fifty before handing one of the beers to his buddy. Like most of the rich, good-looking guys that blew through here looking for her, they looked alike. Too much hair product. Obvious spray-tan addiction. Expensive jeans that were similar in cut and color. The only difference between them that she could see was that the one trying to chat her up wore a pink polo shirt while the other wore a Yankees cap. They even wore matching Puka shell necklaces.
How cute.
Dan flipped the tap again and rolled his eyes. “I’ll let you get to it, then,” he said, lifting the tray of pints. “Go easy on him will, ya?”
Easy? When it came to entitled assholes, there was no such thing.
Even though she wasn’t in the mood to play, as soon as Dan left with his tray, she gave Spray Tan a sugary smile. “Uh, oh—someone watches the Travel Channel,” she said in a conspiratorial tone that had Yankees Cap nearly spewing his Patron all over the bar.
Spray Tan didn’t find her nearly as amusing. “You wanna play or not, Sugar-tits?” he said, holding up the fifty before sliding it across the bar, cutting her a nasty
smirk.
The slur narrowed her eyes. Old habits dying hard, she looked across the room, instantly finding Thad. He had his hand wrapped around a half-drained pint, shoulders dipped in a casual slouch against the worn red vinyl of the booth, talking and smiling while Quinn ran point on a couple of college girls. But that casual slouch was a lie—one he told very well. The second her gaze found him, he turned toward her, his eyes locking onto to her mouth while he raised his pint to his own and took a swallow.
Yeah, she knew why he was here but she couldn’t do fuck all about it. Not until he decided to make his move. Until then, she had bills to pay.
She dropped her gaze to the bar, focusing on the money between them for a moment before raising it again. “Bring it on, Spray Tan.”
2
IT WAS A FAVORITE local pastime at The Black Irish. She was a bucket-list scratch off for visiting Midwesterners. A side-show freak, like that girl in Sri Lanka with the arm sticking out of her ass. A ten-minute Travel Channel segment squeezed between The Old North Church and Boston Brewery.
Things to do in Boston:
1) The Freedom Trail
2) Stump Maeve
3) Drink beer
Stump Maeve. Three questions, anything from pop trivia to ancient history. If she answered wrong even once, you got your bar tab wiped clean. When you lost, you paid double. Those were the stakes. Usually. The problem was this guy wasn’t usual. This one didn’t want his tab cleared.
He wanted a kiss.
They’d been at it for nearly an hour now. He kept losing
and every time he’d peel more bills off his wad. Whatdya say,
Sugar-tits—double or nothing?
Every time he called her sugar-tits she wanted to punch him in the throat. “You’re 0-2 this round, Spray Tan,” she said, mentally focused on the fat stack of bills sitting on the stretch of wood between them. “Last question—better make it a good one.”
Moving down the bar, she filled a rocks glass with ice and gave it a measured pour of well whiskey before building a round of Back and Tans for Shannon, their cocktail waitress. She didn’t have time to wait while Spray Tan and Yankees Cap scrolled through their iPhones, looking for a question she couldn’t answer. It was Saturday night and the Celtics were in the play-offs which meant the place was packed beyond capacity. If the Fire Marshal decided to make a stop, they were screwed.
“Maevie, love—have a heart,” her Uncle Dan said under his breath, leaning against the bar beside her. She automatically scanned the crowd for Thad. Her uncle hadn’t mentioned him since he walked in but that didn’t mean much. Dan’d been pacing him all night—the cop in him keeping tabs on what he’d deemed trouble.
Thad and Quinn were loitering around the pool table with the co-eds they’d managed to wrangle. He was still watching. Still nursing the same pint of Harp’s he’d ordered when he sat down. She looked at her uncle, at his weathered face and bright blue eyes, and couldn’t help but smile. He was the best man she’d ever known, the closest thing to a father she’d ever had, and she felt herself
bend a bit.
“I have a heart, Uncle Dan,” she said, shooting him a quick smirk. “It’s black as pitch, hard as a rock and I can’t find it half the time but—” She thumped her knuckles against her chest. “It’s in here somewhere.”
“I’m being serious, Maevie. The boy’s completely bolloxed,” he said while he built a Guinness. “Give him a peck and call him a cab.”
She rolled her eyes. “The boy is a complete douchebag,” she said, nodding her head toward the stack of cash. “That’s more than I make in a month and my electric is due.”
“Maeve...”
“And my rent.”
Her uncle arched a bushy eyebrow at her. “You own the building.”
She shrugged. “I pay rent, same as everyone else who lives there.”
Now his brows slammed down, low over his gaze. “Brannagh Maeve McKinnon…”
It was their middle name that made most people squirm. For Maeve it was her first. The name Brannagh had been hung around her neck like a millstone by her dear, sweet father—just before he disappeared. She’d spent the last 25 years of her life trying to shed it.
She looked at her Uncle Dan, intent on telling him she’d do as she pleased, which was a mistake because she went from bending to breaking in the blink of one twinkly blue eye. She sighed, equal parts amused and annoyed. “Okay, okay—”
Finished scrawling the question on the back of an OTB slip, Spray Tan dropped it on top of the pile of money. “Listen to grandpa, Sugar-tits,” he shouted even though she was less than three feet away. He’d been getting progressively louder, drawing hard-edged glares from some of the locals every time he opened his mouth. “Just give me a peck and send me on my way... or we can just skip to the bonus round so you can suck my dick.”
“What did you say?” Dan snarled at him. Under normal circumstances, he was an affable guy, easy to take and hard to rile. He also ran the only establishment in Southie even Quinn Murphy wouldn’t dare start a fight in.
“It’s okay, Uncle Dan.” she said, placing a hand on his arm while using the other to relieve him of the yard of Guinness he was strangling in his beefy fist. When he looked down at her, she smiled up at him. “I got it.”
“Make it quick and quiet,” he said, aiming a smile over her head so black, she practically smelled sulfur. “I don’t want any trouble.”
Quick she could guarantee. Quiet was something else altogether.
Leaning against the bar, she read the question Spray Tan scrawled out and dropped on top of the pile of money.
What day was June 23rd, 1635?
Every once in a while, players tried to get tricky. Tried to outsmart her, thinking there had to be a limit to what she knew, just beyond the parameters of the game. It never worked quite the way they expected it to. Thing was, if there was a limit to what she knew, she hadn’t
found it yet. They’d tested her in the sixth grade, thought maybe she was some sort of Einstein. Turned out she wasn’t a genius.
She was a savant.
It’d happened when she was nine, after a hard slip on the ice during a winter game of street hockey took her to the emergency room. Her brain swollen, she’d spent nearly two weeks in a medically induced coma. The doctors had warned her mother that brain damage was likely. That she might even be paralyzed. She woke up twelve days later and asked for a drink of water. Five days after that she left the baffled doctors behind and went home.
It started with calendrical calculations. If you told her the date and year, she could tell you the day it fell on. A neat trick, but not particularly useful. Languages came easy. So easy she could speak seventeen of them by the time she graduated high school. The official count these days was twenty-three, but the real number was more than twice that. A girl had to have her secrets.
The remembering started later, nearly a year after her accident. Things started getting stuck in her brain. Information. Snippets of overheard conversations. What she had for breakfast her first day of junior high. Useless bits of trivia. It all got stuck in her head and wouldn’t shake loose. Facts and gossip. Significant and banal. It didn’t matter because she remembered all of it. Every single word.
And that was just the beginning of what she could do.
She looked up from the piece of paper to find him
watching her, a smug look plastered all over his face. Standing on the toes of her boots, she closed the distance between them. She put her face close, running her fingertip along his jaw, urging him closer. His eyes dipped to her mouth and he smiled. Must’ve thought he won.
Fat fucking chance.
“June twenty-third, 1635 was a...” She winked at his friend in the Yankees cap. “Saturday.” She leaned back, dropped her feet flat on the floor and took the stack of cash with her, tapping the edge of the bills on the flat surface of the bar as she went.
Spray Tan glared at her. “Is she right?”
“Hold on… wait—” Yankees Cap scrolled through the app on his iPhone. “Holy shit.” He looked up at her. “She’s right.”
She pocketed the wad cash while Spray Tan reached for his wad. “No more.” She shook her head. “I’m done for the night. Why don’t you and your friend have one on me, okay?” she said, slapping a couple of glasses on the bar before pouring them each a finger of Jameson. They were already blasted but she was hoping the free drink would pacify Spray Tan’s ego.
Yankees Cap downed his shot, shooting her an astonished smile. “How the fuck do you do that?”
Her standard answer was Irish girl magic followed up with a sassy wink but before she could open her mouth, Spray Tan’s hand lashed out and clamped around her wrist, knocking over the shot of whiskey she’d offered him. “She’s some sort of retard, that’s how,” he said
loudly, still glaring at her. “I heard all about you. And not from the Travel Channel.”
Shit.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, trying to quiet her clawing brain. It never worked when she was angry. “You want to let go of me,” she said, her tone pitched low and even. “You want to let go of me and leave. Right now.”
His grip loosened and for a moment she thought it would work. That he’d do exactly as she said. Then his hand re-tightened, the force of it nearly pulling her off her feet. “Not until I get what I paid for.”
Okay. Plan B.
“Look around, Dorothy,” she said, turning her wrist inside his grip to distract him from the fact that her other hand was doing a slow crawl toward her back pocket. “You and Toto—you’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Spray Tan tightened his grip, jerked her hard enough to slam her ribs against the bar. “You think I give a fuck about some—” The rest of his words where choked off as he was yanked back, the collar of his designer shirt nearly ripped off as he was jerked off his stool.
The crowd around the bar took a giant step back, watching Spray Tan bounce off the scarred, hardwood floor. He made a noise when he hit that sounded like, “fuckin’ Irish pig,” that closed the crowd in fast. Thad stood over him, fists held loose and ready, the slight curve of his mouth so cold it frosted her nape.
“He ain’t Irish—” Quinn detached himself from the crowd, sidling up to Yankees Cap while he unscrewed the
coupling on a two-piece pool cue. Even from across the room she could see the feral gleam in his eye. “He’s a Jew, you Puka-shell-wearing piece of shit.” The cue came apart in his hand and he tossed the thinner half aside, in favor the heavier, weighted end. He aimed a look toward the bar, a silent question on his face. He was asking permission and she looked up at her Uncle Dan just in time to watch him grant it with a hard jerk of his chin. Quinn grinned like he’d just been given the keys to the kingdom.
Holy Mary, Mother of God…
“Half Jew,” Thad said, gaze aimed at the guy at his feet. “Or so my mother likes to tell me.”
“You don’t know who you’re messin’ with, asshole,” Spray Tan said, shooting a glare around the bar before landing it on Tad.
“Is that so?” Thad said, his frosty smile going brittle around its edges. “Why don’t stand up and show me?”
Because drunk isn’t always the same thing and stupid, Spray Tan stayed put.
“Lookie here, Thad—they got matching necklaces.” Quinn grinned and flicked a finger over the string of shells around Yankees Cap’s neck. “Ain’t that sweet?”
“It’s fucking adorable,” he said without looking.
Quinn laughed. Before the sound died, his hand whipped out and snagged the bill of his hat and yanked it off Yankees Cap’s head. Quinn looked at it and shook his head. “You’re the one that’s gotta be retarded, wearin’ this shit around here.” He hawked a gobber into it before slapping it back on Yankees Cap’s head. The locals
cheered while the tourists started edging toward the nearest exit. Things were about to get a little too colorful.
“Stop them,” she hissed at her uncle, but he ignored her. “Uncle Dan—”
“He put hands on you,” he said, his usually handsome face settled into a collection of features that were decidedly unpleasant. “He deserves what’s comin, Maevie.”
No one deserved what was about to go down. Not even a couple of foul-mouthed Yankees fans.
Hands planted on the bar, she scrambled over it, landing in the middle of the surrounding crowd. “That’s enough, Quinn,” she said.
“No, it really ain’t.” He drilled his finger into Yankees Cap’s chest, daring him to man up. The poor guy looked like he wanted to cry, ropy tendrils of Quinn’s snot creeping down his cheek. “No one takes a run at you and walks, Maeve,” Quinn said, leaning into Yankees Cap, a disgusted smirk dug deep into his face. He lifted the cue, wedging it under his prey’s quivering chin, forcing him to look him in the eye. “Not ever.”
Yeah, no one but you. Instead of tugging on that long, scary thread she turned toward Thad and pled her case. “Do your job,” she hissed at him, doing her level best to forget how long it’d been since she’d spoken to him directly.
Thad was still standing over Spray Tan, jaw clenched so tight she could practically hear his teeth crack. “Sorry, Maeve,” he said without looking at her. “Keeping Quinn from killing some jack-off Yankees fan isn’t on my to-do
list tonight.”
“I’m calling the cops.” Yankees Cap jerked back, trying to fumble his iPhone out of his pocket.
“Cops? You want a cop?” Quin
n’s smirk widening into a grin, fitting the cue under his arm. “Why didn’t you say so? You can borrow one of mine.” He fit his fingers into his mouth and gave a short, shrill whistle. Two men peeled away from the crowd, beer in hand, brass front and center.
Things were about to get ugly. “Damn it, Quinn—I said enough.” She shoved past him and glared up at Yankees Cap. The kid was suddenly stone sober and scared shitless. “Had enough color yet?”
Even though she was sure he had no idea what she was talking about, he nodded like his life depended on it. “Take your buddy, get the hell out of my bar and don’t ever come back.”
Yankees Cap nodded some more, taking a sliding step to the left, skirting the perimeter of the grumbling crowd, trying to get his friend and get the hell out. When he got to Spray Tan, his progress was stalled. “Move, Thad,” she said. “Just let them go.” When he didn’t budge, she put a hand on Thad’s chest and pushed, creating enough space to allow herself to slip in between them. Yankees Cap swooped in and hauled Spray Tan off the floor and out the door.
Her palm was still pressed against Thad’s chest. Beneath it, his heart thumped like a kick drum. She dropped her hand and looked away. The crowd kept grumbling, louder and louder. Thad and Quinn were the
least of Spray Tan and Yankee Cap’s worries. Them she could handle. It was the other couple hundred people crammed into the place she wasn’t so sure about. It’d be a mid-sized miracle if they made it off the block in one piece. There was only one thing that would keep this crowd occupied long enough for give them the chance to catch a cab and get the hell out of Southie.
