When Irish Eyes Are Sparkling

by Tom Collins

  Shadowy men wandered by, large belt buckles gleaming, lit cigarettes glowing. They circled, shark-like, past the trash bins and barred back windows, seeking victims. I instinctively pressed my back up against a cold wall and gave off a “not interested,” vibe.

  One hulking bear who’d been approaching shrugged and turned away.

  A part of me watched him go with regret, and I could almost hear my libido saying, “So long as you’re here, why not?” Why not indeed? I could fantasize I was with Liam; relieve the burning urge that was still in me. That awful urge to lose control and do what I liked, whatever I liked.

  The carnal half of me was behind the idea, but for once, my brain didn’t stop working. In fact, to my surprise, it challenged the beast. One problem, it said. It wouldn’t be Liam.

  No, I thought, and was shocked to find the heat inside me cooling down, the pacing animal settling. For nearly a month now I’d had Liam as my lover. My generous, curious, impulsive, boyish lover and he’d spoilt me. A stranger and my pathetic imagination couldn’t possibly replace him.

  “Liam. Liam,” I murmured. “What am I going to do without you?” I felt a rising panic, and more inner reproaches. Yeah. Think about yourself, Oliver. You’re good at that.

  Another man passed me by, longhaired and bearded, smelling like he hadn’t bathed in a while. He nodded, but kept on walking when I didn’t nod back. I couldn’t stay here; this was crazy. I started to move, pulling out my phone as I did so. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I had to at least find out how Liam was.

  I’m sure he’s peachy keen, Oliver! I thought to myself. No matter. I didn’t care if he told me his uncles and cousins were on their way to lynch me—hell, I’d help them string up the noose—I had to check on him. My hands were shaking so badly I barely managed to punch in the number.

  The phone rang, and rang, and rang as I nervously walked. I came upon two men in a doorway, trousers down and going at it. I turned and walked back the way I’d come. I got Liam’s voice mail.

  “Liam,” I said, quickly, not sure if I felt relieved or miserable that he hadn’t answered. “Please don’t erase this. You don’t have to listen to it now, in fact you probably won’t want to listen to it for a long time, but don’t…please…let me…I’m sorry.”

  I sank my head into my hand, still pacing. I was shaking and so was my voice. “I’ve never done anything so awful to anyone. Forcing myself on you that way…”

  My throat knotted up. “I’ve n-no excuse. I just-I—”

  A youngish man appeared out of the shadows. “Hey, have you got a light?” he asked, waving his cigarette and leering suggestively. I shook my head violently and walked a few steps away from him.

  My time was running out, and what was there to say? Don’t hate me? Forgive me? Weapons at dawn, your choice?

  “I…messed up…”

  “You sure?” The youngish fellow was back at my shoulder again with his cold cigarette. I turned, angrily.

  “No,” I hissed, even as my internal alarm went off. Cruising requires good instincts and if I hadn’t been so preoccupied, I would have sensed the wrongness sooner. Now I did, like bells ringing in my head.

  His friend, who’d been creeping up behind me, kicked me in the knee.

  “AH!” I went down with a cry, the phone flying, breaking to pieces. Fuck! The two men attacked, I surged up best I could on my good leg, determined not to let them win. I got one in the stomach and blocked the other. Two more punches. They weren’t prepared for that, and I thought they’d run.

  That’s when the third one appeared, slamming two fists into my back. I lost all breath with the bruising pain. Cigarette Boy made it worse by kicking me in the nuts. My vision went black and I crumpled, holding to my screaming balls and fighting the agonizing, throwing up sensation.

  “Fucking fag,” I heard one snarl. Shit.

  Finding my breath, I started screaming for help. A booted toe caught me in the mouth, trying to shut me up; I tasted blood. I covered my head and curled up to protect my organs. They kicked, shouting epithets. I lost the ability to breathe, bones jarring, body throbbing, my mind played a strange trick.

  Damn it, Sutton! I heard Gabe shout—I was sure it was Gabe—and in my mind, it was his boot that got me in the head, making it ring. Can’t you get it right? I told you not to hurt my nephew!

  Barbarian! Liam said in the icy voice I’d heard him use tonight, and his heel got me in the ribs, sending me into a world of hurt.

  It was inevitable whom I’d imagine, in that haze of pain and oxygen deprivation, as the third assailant: You were such a mistake, snorted my father, and as he had when I was a kid, kicked me right in the ass.

  I was curled in a ball of agony now, smelling the hot asphalt of that dark, narrow street. I heard racing footsteps, angry shouts from what I hoped was a rescue. The kicking stopped; I felt my wallet jerked out of my pocket and my watch from my wrist.

  Sick and woozy, I huddled on the ground. Hands touched me, and I cowered, but they were the good guys.

  “It’s okay—” A deep voice; it might be the bear.

  “Hang on—” the unwashed guy. Kindly, but he still reeked.

  “Call emergency—” I heard someone else say. No, I winced, no, that’s where I work. I don’t want them to find me here, like this—

  I blinked open my eyes, even as the world started to fade. I saw a pool of blood glimmering in the faint streetlight. Gotta clean that up, I thought.

  Then I blacked out.

  *Liam*

  Brendan’s hand came out of nowhere to hold my forehead. I braced myself against him and the tree trunk as a last wave of nausea wracked my body. We weren’t telepathic, as I’d said to Oliver, but we could sometimes feel it when the other needed us. I wiped my foul tasting mouth with the back of my hand, breathing hard and shaking. I’d never been through so many powerful emotions in so short a time and it was clear my stomach couldn’t take the strain. With the support of Brendan and the tree trunk, I came jerkily to my feet.

  “What happened?” he asked, mystified as to how I’d gotten into this condition.

  I shook my head, unable to verbalize what I didn’t understand myself.

  “What did he do to you?” he demanded.

  I heard the first stirrings of rage in his voice and knew I had to derail it somehow. I could stand Brendan hating Oliver no more than I could bear Oliver hating Brendan. I loved them both and needed them both and couldn’t abide them despising one another.

  “No, Bren,” I croaked through a throat made raw by acid. “It wasn’t his fault. It was me. It’s my fault, I…I pushed him too far and he—I don’t know…but it wasn’t his fault. Please, don’t hate him!”

  I lay my head on his shoulder and let myself cry out all the confusion and pain that I’d been hanging onto for the past week. Jillian quietly insinuated herself in with us, welcome as always. She was even more in the dark than Brendan was, but didn’t ask. She saw the need for comfort and gave it with effortless grace. I held onto both of them, letting the warmth of their love sooth me.

  After I calmed down, they held me steady as we went around back to the service entrance and took me into the employee bathroom. The three of us got me cleaned up, wiping the dust off my clothes and skin, washing away the tracks left by tears. Brendan thought I should go home, but wasn’t about to let me leave alone.

  “I’ll go tell them the rest of the show is off,” he said.

  “No, you will not!” I told him. “You three have been waiting for this night for weeks now and you’re not cutting it short just because me and Oliver had a fight.”

  “Liam, this wasn’t just some fight! Have you seen yourself? You never had a fight with a girl that ended with you—” He didn’t have the words to express the state he’d found me in, so he gestured to my person as explanation enough. “There’s no one else to take you home.”

  He was more freaked out about it than I was.

  “I’m not a baby, Bren
. I don’t need to be taken home. I have a shift to finish. I can’t leave Aunt Rose in the lurch just because I’m having personal problems.” How pathetic must I be for Bren to think I was incapable of taking care of myself and making my own decisions? “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t mean I stop wanting to take care of you.” He was sullen, and rightfully so. I apologized by laying my head on his shoulder and pulling his to mine. We stood like that, arms around each other, until I knew that he knew that I hadn’t meant it like it sounded.

  Jill did some kind of magic with her cosmetics bag that covered up the blotchy puffiness around my eyes and I almost looked normal. I went back out ahead of them so it wouldn’t seem weird to the customers. I heard Oliver’s ring tone coming from my locker as I passed it, but couldn’t deal with it right then. I had to concentrate on serving food and drinks. There was some shifting in the crowd as they noticed my return and some good-natured ribbing, but their attention drifted away from me as soon as the music started again.

  The band finished their last set to cheers and applause, followed by a crush of compliments from friends and family members. I was just grateful that the pub was empting out some. Going home was still in the distance, but only a couple hours more now. Home. Back home with Erin and Jill and Bren. Not back to Oliver.

  It occurred to me I would have to go to his place and get my things. That was too depressing to think about, as was the thought of giving him back his key.

  On stage, the band had conscripted some friends to help them haul away the instruments. I saw Brendan talking with Erin, my cousin glancing my way with a worried, troubled look. Erin was the third Musketeer and Bren and I shared almost as much with him as we did each other. I saw his lips tighten, whitening around the edges, and knew he was working up a big-brother complex. I was grateful Molly was too busy to notice. She and Erin had been known to team up and take vengeance on anyone giving the younger cousins trouble.

  “You managing?” Jill asked me as she put away the microphones in their foam-lined boxes.

  “Yeah,” I murmured, clearing up more beer glasses. There seemed to be no end to them tonight. “Would you do me a favor and catch Gram before she leaves? Let her know I won’t be able to make it tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” she went off and I felt relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with that. I couldn’t bear answering questions right now, and Gram would listen to Jill, rather than worriedly grilling her, as she might do me.

  Brendan and Erin were taking apart the stage now, and I was feeling steady again, if numb, when Uncle Gabe pushed through the front door. I wondered whom it was he was scanning the place for just as his gaze landed on me and stopped dead. I delivered the drinks on my tray as he made his way through the press to my side.

  He grabbed my arm, pulled me close, and put his mouth next to my ear, “You need to come with me. Oliver’s in the emergency room.”

  Chapter Ten

  *Oliver*

  Light flashing into my eyes.

  “Pupils equal and responsive,” came a woman’s voice.

  I didn’t recognize it. My body was secured, my head cushioned and braced, but I felt the shift, the weaving movement of speeding along in a rig. The siren blared outside. The air within climate controlled. An oxygen mask was fitted over my nose and mouth. The elastic tugged at my hair.

  The penlight went away as I moaned and tried to blink. A gentle hand stopped pulling at my eyelid and lightly touched my arm. “You’re on your way to the hospital,” a blond woman said. She was wearing the all-too familiar blue of a Rapid Response uniform, which made me feel weird. What was I doing on the gurney in the back of the rig? And who was this?

  I tried to move. Sharp pain nearly blacked me out again. Oh. Oh, yeah, and here I’d thought the evening couldn’t get any worse.

  “He looks familiar.” That was one of the two men. He was peering in through the short, narrow door that connected the front seats to the back. “Ever seen him before?”

  “No,” said the woman.

  “How can you tell?” asked the driver. Which meant my face must be pretty battered. He must have spun the wheel, as I felt us turn. The female EMT, seated and belted in on the bench, kept a hand on me, checking my pulse. Good job.

  Fuck. I was beginning to feel how hurt I was. And scared. I tried to ignore both by gazing about the rig. It wasn’t the one Gabe and I drove; I knew that one better than my own apartment, every scratch and tiny anomaly. Pretty comfortable back here, actually. I felt cradled and padded. There were cold packs to ease swelling on the back of my head, and a thick bandage across my forehead. That wound would have bled like hell.

  I wonder what route we’re taking? County Hospital is closest. Given the hour and Friday night traffic…I tried to work out the map in my mind even as I felt the tell-tale turn and slowing up to the ER entrance. The siren was shut off.

  The ER. The EMTs hadn’t known me. Maybe I’d get lucky and no one at the ER would either.

  The rig came to a stop, the two up front leaping out and coming around. The back doors were thrown open and I was jerked out, the gurney’s wheels down. Out from the bright, cool rig into the warm night, the sound of voices and traffic, the still-flashing lights of the ambulance. My trio rolled me carefully, but there was enough painful jostle and bump that I began to fade out again. A blink back awake. Fluorescent lights, that hospital smell, the sound of rubber soled shoes on linoleum racing up to me.

  The EMTs started to report on my condition to whatever emergency nurse or doctor had arrived, then stopped as someone cried out.

  “My God, Oliver!” A petite woman peered at me. Heart-shaped face, Mid-Eastern complexion, inky hair in a cute pageboy. Her dark eyes were both sharp and concerned.

  Shit. Doctor Vera Lieberman. It would be. She was new to County’s ER, but she might as well have been running it given the way she ordered us EMTs around. She and Gabe tended to clash, both of them having razor-edged tongues and stubborn tempers from Hell. Vera, however, was the product of the Romeo-and-Juliet marriage of a Jewish American equal-rights attorney dad and an Arab-American social worker mom; she knew how to sink her teeth into an argument. When she and Gabe traded barbs it was often Gabe who limped away, licking his wounds.

  Her warrior-princess attitude combined with that hourglass figure had made her the object of a lot of speculation at the barn. A few guys admitted to fantasizing about her in khaki with a gun.

  Hetero men could be so weird.

  I liked her, and I had to admit I felt a certain, gleeful satisfaction every time she took my partner down a peg. I, myself, felt no fear of her at all, but then, she was always sweet as honey to me. On the one side, I knew I was going to be in very good hands. On the other side, there was no way what had happened to me was going to stay a secret. It’d been a vain hope at best.

  “What happened?” she demanded of the trio and had them cringing, as if they’d put me in this condition.

  They exchanged fearful looks. Clearly the doctor knew me, and they weren’t sure she’d like the answer.

  “He was in the Westmore district, East of Little ‘Frisco,” one of them blurted, and I felt a wave of shame as I saw Vera’s eyes widen. Everyone in the ER knew what that meant, what went on there.

  “Victim of a hate crime from the look of it,” the driver finished up, as if to absolve me and shield them from Vera’s wrath.

  “Multiple contusions—” the woman started up again, trying to get back to business.

  “Yes, yes,” Vera was impatient. “This man’s one of your EMTs, seven-to-seven shift,” she told them and I heard a surprised gasp. I winced.

  No, Vera, please, I thought, but she relentlessly went on.

  “Heard of ‘S.O.S.’? He’s Sutton. Get word to his partner.”

  “Shit—”

  One of the men stayed behind to call the barn. The rest pushed the gurney, with Vera running beside. Lights blinked overhead. “You’re going to be okay, Ol
iver,” Vera said, eyes determined and fierce. They got me to a room and, with surprising gentleness, transferred me onto a rolling bed. Pain shot through me nonetheless, making the world go in and out of focus.

  “You know Gabe’s going to grill me on how I treated you,” Vera said, while taking her turn searing my pupils with her flashing penlight, “and I’ll be damned if I give that Irish Wolfhound the satisfaction of catching me out, so you better believe we’ll be checking every square inch of you. There’s not a single thing he’ll be able to complain about.”

  She grinned at me. “Think of how miserable that’ll make him!”

  Her efforts to keep my spirits up worked and I smiled, but inside I was still quailing. Now that I’d been recognized there was no going back. Everyone in my life was about to know one of my dirtiest little secrets, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive that.

  Liam would know. Maybe, I couldn’t help thinking, maybe he should. Maybe he should know that I’d gotten what was coming to me.

  Even as I started to load myself down with those guilty weights, the world decided to fade away again. I embraced the darkness.

  When I came to, I was in a bed. The oxygen mask was gone and so were my clothes; I had on a hospital gown. The damage I’d taken was even more evident now. It was hard to draw in a breath; I kept feeling a sharp tinge on my right side with each inhale. It was impossible to bend my left knee. My lip and jaw felt huge and heavy, and there seemed to be a lump the size of Montana on the back of my head.

  Vera was there, filling out the eternal paperwork. My mouth was bone dry and sticky. I tried to lick my lips, but my tongue just would not move.

  “Here.” Vera had noticed me stirring. She gave me a couple of lemon swabs to suck on. They cooled my mouth and cut through the awful fuzzy taste.

  “I know this is cold comfort,” she said, hugging the clipboard, “but you were lucky. You may feel like those ribs are broken, but they’re not even cracked, just badly bruised. Contusions over about sixty percent of your body, a nasty cut on the forehead, which just got four stitches. A split lip and a swollen jaw, but you didn’t lose any teeth, and while that sore knee is going to have you limping for a bit, you will be able to play basketball again before summer’s out. What I’m most worried about is the hematoma on the back of your head.”