They walked through Glasgow, arm in arm, along the lazy Clyde which hadn’t impressed either of them – they had been expecting something more in the way of a mountain stream but this, they supposed, was what impressed the English that drove up North because it was a half more rapid and wild than the lazy English marshes and lakes and they came upon a brightly-lit, nice-looking cafe just as the sun had hit the rolling Scottish horizon and the buildings in the distance became dull like lead pikes and they would have green tea for Siobhan and whiskey for Mike.
“Now in this cafe you have to sound more Irish,” said Mike as he pinched Siobhan’s right shoulder in the only place where her right shoulder had any flesh.
“Ouch!” she said, “that actually hurt!” She stuck her tongue out and looked away as Mike reached for the cafe door.
“Hurt your pale little Irish skin,” he said with a smile into her ear, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.
“Yes, my pale little Irish skin, but I think it would have hurt any skin. And why shouldn’t you have to sound more American?”
She looked a little hurt Mike could tell because she hadn’t looked back at him when she said this and so Mike smiled more to show he was just being playful. And the stones on the pavement were beginning to pick up a sheen of street light out of the indirect haze and it did smell a little bit like mountains.
“No,” he said, “that won’t do. The more American I sound the more trouble I get into. More American would mean Texan, and they don’t like Texans any more than I do. But you should try to sound as Irish as possible, you know, or else they’ll think you’re American. You know how it is. And nothing’s worse than a pair of traveling Americans.”
“Okay,” she said, finally brightening up because she got the joke and Mike felt his muscles relax a little around his neck as he opened the door finally, “I’ll try to fit Dublin into my order.” She said Dublin with a strong accent, the ‘u’ sound nice and deep. “You just don’t be such a fucking cunt,” she said with a cute smile that lit her whole face up and squeezed him back on his shoulder as they walked into the cafe and went past the glass tables to the corner where she would want to sit, and Mike thought great, I’ll feel great, at least tonight.
“And I don’t get what would be so bad about being two Americans,” she said after they brought her the tea. The lights had gone down and some French jazz had picked up and the cafe smelled like black crusty Scottish bread with a touch of whiskey. The jazz and the soft Scottish and the hissing of the espresso machine was a relaxing background and Mike reflected on how much prettier she looked when she smiled. “After all, we’re not fat and you can’t go two minutes without saying something that sounds tremendously intelligent.”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” said Mike and he was looking hard at the whiskey on the rocks. He was looking hard at it because he couldn’t very well tell them to bring it back like he had ordered because you couldn’t be that American, not once you left the airport, so he drank it down.
“You’re always going to tell me things later,” she said and took a long drink of tea herself and looking long down the winding Glasgow streets towards the main square in between glances at his empty glass and her eyes were so goddamn lovely it made him really want another drink. “That can get boring, you know, only knowing things in the future.”
Mike was feeling fine and the whiskey was bringing a neat burn to his stomach and he was enjoying looking at Siobhan and the glass felt cool against his fingers.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously.”
“Nothing.”
He sat back while she leaned in over her tea and looked again outside and followed a few couples walking through the streetlight down towards the river and the pavement was now very bright in the wet summer air and you could see the reflections of the streetlights off the stone almost as clearly as the streetlights themselves.
“It’s July and I’m in Glasgow and I’m in love,” she finally said and looked at him.
“With whom?”
“Stop messing,” she said and rolled her eyes.
“My sweet little pale Irishwoman.”
“My big stupid Yank.”
“Would you like another whiskey?” asked the waitress, a chubby, dark girl as Siobhan stuck her tongue out to Mike but this time playfully.
“Yes ma’am,” he drawled and Siobhan rolled her eyes again.
Mike toyed with his napkin a little and Siobhan reached for his hand.
“You’re so quiet tonight,” she said.
“You know, it’s all just hard, right now.”
“Excuse me,” came a voice over Siobhan’s shoulder. It was heavily accented, French, with a Scottish edge and Siobhan had noticed the girls sitting there but Mike hadn’t yet so he didn’t realize who was talking to them at first. The first thing he noticed was the concentration of pretty faces, the lack of thick thighs, and only third was that it had been one of these faces that had addressed them.
“You are not from Glasgow, no?”
Siobhan turned a little but not enough to face the French girls, she was still looking at Mike but turned enough to give the girls a corner of her face when Mike would answer because she knew it would be Mike who would answer. The three girls were cute and young and their cheeks were flushed with wine and coffee. Two were dark, almost as dark as the waitress, and had many bracelets and rings and earrings and the third had shocking red hair that was cut short to frame her face that was brushed with light freckles and very full lips.
“Easy enough to tell?” said Mike right as the waitress brought his whiskey which, of course, had ice in it. He laughed a comfortable laugh.
“Yes,” answered the red-head matter-of-factly, as if she was receiving a correct answer in a classroom, and then turned back to one of the darker girls who had said something quietly and she responded with something that sounded quite aggressive and emotional, even for French, and then stood up, her eyes flashing ever so slightly. “You mind?” she asked, pointing to the chair between Mike and Siobhan.
“Not at all,” said Mike and Siobhan was still looking at him with her tea-cup up against her face.
“Thank you, merci,” she said as she walked over to their table, looking back once and narrowing her eyes at the two girls who adjusted their chairs to face the other corner of the cafe. Now Mike could only see the glossy sheen of their dark hair and the occasional hand with bracelets and rings rise and fall emotionally.
“Sorry, I hope we didn’t...” started Mike.
“No, no, is nothing at all.” She looked at Siobhan and pursed her lips. “I am Julie.” The smile she gave Siobhan was broad and cautious and she handled her lips like she knew everyone was looking at them.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Mike,” said Mike and just then the waitress brought Julie a giant blue cocktail with a cherry, a lime, a red straw and an umbrella.
“You know it was the Americans who invent the cocktail?” said Julie and she pursed her lips around the straw and looked up at Mike.
“Oh?” said Siobhan.
“Yes. I read your Fitzgerald. In translation, of course.”
“Well, we’re not Americans,” said Mike just as he noticed his whiskey was getting diluted. The water left a weird mark in the liquid, and it would taste too cold.
“Oh?” said Julie, dipping her index finger in her blue cocktail. Her neck was strong, and she sat straight and alert, like she was ready at any moment to spring up. Her tone didn’t sound surprised or engaged so Mike had to act fast to save the moment.
“No. She’s from Dublin. I’m the only American.”
“Oh, I see. Is hard for me sometimes, the accents.”
“But you knew we weren’t from Glasgow.”
“Yes.” And she took another drink, this time looking outside and Mike wondered if she would get up and go back to the two dark French girls who, from their body movement, seemed to be in an argument over Julie because they kept looking over at her. Siobhan was checking her phone with her pursed lips and there was something about that look that brought the tension back into Mike’s shoulders. “Yes, I know you are not Glasgow, but because how you act.”
“Really, and how exactly we do act?” Mike said, realizing the moment was saved and things would be easy now and he reached for his drink to mark the moment.
“You act, like you walk into the cafe for the night. The one night. But here, everybody knows each other.”
“Just for the night,” said Siobhan, not looking up from her phone.
“You are on holiday – or vacation?” asked Julie, looking from him to her.
“You might say we’re both heading home,” said Mike as he motioned to the waitress over Julie’s shoulder. ‘But there’s no way to motion for no ice,’ was one of his thoughts at the moment. And he was sure he knew who was texting Siobhan but he couldn’t mention it, not now and not later.
“And is home Dublin or America? Or les highlands?”
“Mike actually lives in Shanghai,” said Siobhan, looking up from the phone and setting it on the table by the sugar, looking softly at Julie and meeting her eyes for the first time but without committing her expression to any particular attitude, just looking, “I’m going back to Dublin.”
“Oh, then this is sad occasion? I should leave then, because,” said Julie and her body did take the form of preparing for movement. Her perch was shaky and she could be on the other side of town in a minute, her posture said.
“No, please stay,” he said.
“Yes, do,” said Siobhan, looking over at him.
“So where are you on the way home from?”
“We both lived in London for a year, studying – university and tutors and the Thames and things like that,” said Siobhan.
“Siobhan was on a year abroad, I was just doing some graduate work.”
There was a pause at the table while Julie looked outside and Mike almost said what he was doing work in but then remembered what Siobhan had said earlier so he kept quiet and let the silence manifest itself and let himself hear the jazz again. “And what are you up to?” asked Mike, feeling very American.
“What am I up to?” said Julie, smiling and taking another drink. A touch of the blue cocktail mingled with the perfume reached Mike and he took a deep, silent breath of it in and tried to look a little bored.
“Yes,” said Siobhan, looking back at her phone.
And they drank for another hour and even discovered that Siobhan and Julie knew someone in common who was studying at Polytechnique and had lived with someone in Lyons who knew someone from Munich and while they were talking about him or her Mike looked down the Glasgow street and watched the figures coming in and out of bars and boutiques, and then he looked over his shoulder with his whiskey in his right hand to give authority to the gesture.
‘Because what had Siobhan been looking at?’ he wondered to himself and realized he was on his fifth whiskey and also realized that Siobhan was no longer bored but also that Julie might be but he could never tell with French especially the nervous kind because they could be bored out of their skulls but still look like they were going to jump you any second and then he wondered why the fuck he should care if Julie was bored or if Siobhan couldn’t get along with her and he sank back in his seat and looked up through a little wash of haze and the room seemed darker. Fifth or sixth whiskey?
“... just never calls, even when I don’t call him for three days and that is always supposed to work for the men,” Julie was saying.
“No, but you can’t ever generalize with things like that,” said Siobhan after a long, protesting drink of the blue cocktail Julie had talked her into ordering.
“What’s wrong?” Siobhan asked Mike an hour later as the two of them were leaning against the railing of a bridge over the Clyde a mile up from the cafe. It seemed much later to him, and he looked at his watch a second time.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he answered, and stared hard at the gleaming water and it reminded him vaguely of some of the rivers back home, but it still seemed slow and didn’t have any of the rocks rolling out of the surface that he associated with a mountain river and the smell wasn’t the same and the air was still moist.
“Are you drunk?” she asked tipsily, probably to soften the question, thought Mike. And she reached up to rub his shoulder and for a second he could feel her fingers and he could tell how cold they were because they were stiff and because she was always cold.
Mike, to his surprise, found himself shrugging off her hand.
“I just feel... irritated.”
“I wish I could help,” said Siobhan, still kindly. She gently returned her hand to the railing.
Mike didn’t answer for a few minutes and in the meantime Siobhan looked straight on at the river, too, and then back at the flashing lights of downtown Glasgow in the near distance and the sounds of cars or small drinking parties would waft out to them every once in a while and deaden against the sound of flowing water.
“I just wish I could help you. I think I could.” She was still looking forward and didn’t turn when she added, “I love you, Mike.”
And the sounds were washing over Mike, the sounds of this river and the rivers at home and the noise of the streets in London and the throbbing in your ears when you’re walking back home with Siobhan after a club and you’re laughing and walking slowly.
“London was great,” said Siobhan after another few minutes, watching his eyes and then the water. “I guess we’ll never have it again. At least how it was this summer. And I can’t believe it’s...” but she didn’t finish the thought because they had agreed not to talk about it any more.
And he looked over at her and she looked at him during the long silence that followed. What a stupid expression on my face, he thought, what a stupid moment that I try to keep forever and leaned in and kissed Siobhan and her lips reacted like they’d been waiting for it, they were hurried and a little shaking. ‘And you barely noticed that she was trembling.’ And he kissed her harder and put her hands against his bare stomach and they were cold.
Half an hour later they were walking back to the hotel and the stone streets glittered and most of the cafes were closed with their heavy wood chairs up on tables and they would only hear the occasional murmur from a bar. Siobhan had her right hand on Mike’s right hip and Mike’s hand was on Siobhan’s lower back and they both knew they would make love straightaway in the hotel room probably still half clothed with the lights off and he felt so lonely and hated making love feeling so lonely so he tried to focus on his lust because that could carry him through, too, and he probably wouldn’t even remember this moment afterwards. That made his shoulders tighten the tightest they had been that night.
“I got Julie’s email,” said Siobhan.
“Let’s just not talk about Julie, okay?”
“What’s wrong? Babe? Mike?”
And they walked on and Mike let go of her and walked with his hands in his pockets and hated the face he must be making and would have done anything to get rid of it because it embarrassed him and he tried to think of anything but Siobhan, of the Shanghainese girls and their skinny little bodies in their jeans and tank-tops and that brothel his friend had told him about he had promised himself he would force himself to try.
“This hurts like hell,” she finally said, as they turned down the alley that led to their hotel and he suddenly stopped and she looked at him hopefully and gently and knew that she would keep looking at him hopefully and understanding even though he hoped she would yell at him, raise her voice, tell him she was fucking pissed off and how could he leave like this and that she would never forget how he had treated her this last night and did she really mean so little to him but she didn’t. Mike opened his mouth to say something but stopped short. He could hear a street saxophonist somewhere up and off, and, putting his hand into Siobhan’s and squeezing it, he thought about how there would never be another London, but also never another Glasgow, either. And he hoped Siobhan would never guess how small and lonely he felt at that moment, about to kiss each other, his hand curled around hers.
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