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Back at the Crane Bar.
The last time he’d been here his world had just turned upside down, and he’d been burying his friends faster than he could count them. And then he’d been sitting here, nursing a pint and listening to bright young Kate practice with her band. What voice she had. Galway Bay might not have been the best mood music, all things told, but he’d stayed on until it was over and had grasped her hands in his, and had smiled as much he was able and had wished her well. He’d promised to see her around, but he hadn’t believed that it would be true.
Yet here he stood, realizing dimly that the reflection he saw in the brass and bottles of the bar would fit a dictionary definition of seedy.
Gone to seed.
He didn’t want to think too hard on that, thank you very much. Turning away from his reflection he glanced at the yellow package peaking out from under his coat in the corner booth. What a soft fool.
It was for Kate. A nothing gift, he told himself. An afterthought. A way to reopen what was at best a warm acquaintance.
Right.
That’s why he’d tracked it down in London months before he knew he’d be back in Galway. Why he’d held it on the seat next to him on the bus as the miles pulled him back and the muscles in his neck began to clench.
So it wouldn’t get bent. That was all.
Sure.
Not so that there’d be a reason to hope for a friendly face at the end of the line. For someone to be glad to see him. For something in that blasted city to be unbroken.
Soft fool.
It was an odd dance he was doing with her. Or, more accurately, with his feelings for her. She’d had little enough to do with it so far. Soft fool.
Guarda Noonan.
Kate.
Which was it? The guards stood at the heart of their relationship. A reason to call, a place for help nobody else would provide, a hand-up for her ego, of that he was sure; and a language that allowed him to navigate the less straightforward aspects of their friendship. It’s warmth and sudden depth. Christ, he barely knew her.
But Bob Dylan was theirs, and theirs alone. Not linked to a case, not awkwardly wrapped up with the guards, not linked to Galway, not tinged with failure and drink and all the rest of it. It was something he hoped they shared in some small, unremarkable way that seemed, suddenly as he caught sight of her, to mean everything.
Sweet christ she looked good. And he made fun of that. Had to. Had to keep it light, had to keep a little space between Kate Noonan and what he was starting to feel about her. Because it was crazy. It was impossible. He was ... too old. He was, if he was being honest, too used up. Too tired. It couldn’t work. It shouldn’t.
But he liked how she made him feel. He liked that she made him feel. And if it required that he open himself up to a sweet slow ache in places he thought were dead? Well, that was quite ok.
Noonan. She gives as good as she gets, he thinks with pride as she tosses his jibe back at him. Smiling at her through wisecracks about his age. A bit close to the bone perhaps, but damn it was fine to see her.
As she rips through the wrapping paper, he tries to diminish the gift. To back away a bit from what it might mean ... what it does mean, to him at least. Was the wrapping a bit much, he wonders? Should he just have left it in the plastic bag?
What he’s saying, as he babbles about the album’s significance, and what he hopes she hears, is “God it’s good to see you. I missed you, and I’m surprised by that because I didn’t think I’d miss a thing about this place. I’ve thought of you. You’re a good thing, Kate Noonan. Thank you.”
And he supposes, in hindsight, that he was thinking about all of that a bit more than the moment at hand when he’d gone for her lips instinctively as she’d tried to kiss his cheek.
So. Back to the guards then, and to files filled up with details of violence and pain. The dead were less complicated.