Running Back (New York Leopards 2)

“And drunks. Come on.”

I nodded, and then watched as he started away. I tilted my head back. In Ecuador, you could see the stars almost every night, scattered across the domed sky, but here everything was just a grayed out blackish-blur. I heard a sigh and found Mike back before me. He took my hand and tugged, so I obediently followed him. “Natalie. Look at me. Where do you live?”

I laughed. Who knew? In my parents’ house. At Cam’s. In the field. At Kilkarten. I wanted to live at Kilkarten. “Who cares?”

“I’m not taking you to my place,” he warned.

I barely managed a wave of scorn. “Like I’d want you to. No, I will sleep on the streets! I will wander the knolls of Central Park, beneath the stony stone-eyed poets—”

“And pickpockets? Or murderers?” He stretched one hand behind my back and lifted me up. Then we were moving, and then we were in a taxi.

The city blurred past in a streak of lights and colors. I think he tried to take my purse at one point but I yanked it back and buried it under me because only thieves took purses. The cab turned and here came Lincoln Center, bright and open, banners falling down the side of high white walls. People walked about in the carefully chic and cultured uniform of New York. We sped through the restaurants of Hell’s Kitchen, then that knot of congestion from Times Square to Penn Station. Out here on Tenth Ave, everything looked more industrial and rundown, and you got hints of the Javits center off to the right, the giant convention center that looked toward Jersey. Horses clomped along beside us, pulling their elaborate carts as they headed home for the night. I fell asleep watching a feather bob above a Clydesdale’s head.

I woke when the cab drew to a stop. When I opened my eyes, Mike’s face blurred above me, his hair shining even in the dim light. “You have pretty hair.” I reached up and ran my fingers through a curl. “Like fire.”

He blinked. “Thanks.”

My eyes closed again. “My mother has beautiful hair. She’s beautiful. Like a doll. I was always a bad doll.”

He didn’t answer, and so I peeled open a lid to see him. He frowned at me, a deep furrow etched along his brow.

My gaze dropped and I realized he was ransacking my purse. “What are you doing?”

The furrow vanished as he laughed. He held up his hands. “Relax. I was just finding your license so I could give the driver your address.”

“Oh. Right.” I leaned forward and told the driver myself.

Mike handed my purse back and put his hand on his door. “Well, then. See you.”

I caught his free hand and he stilled. “Have you ever been to Ireland?”

“No.”

“Me neither.” I sighed. “And I know it’s not magic.” I turned my head so I could see into his warm brown eyes. “I’m not crazy. Not Ireland or Ecuador or Greece. But I can pretend they are, see? At least for the weeks leading up and the first weeks there and then I can always go somewhere else, and who’s to know it wasn’t magic...”

Empathy flickered in his eyes. “I think you should go home now. He disentangled from my grip. “Goodnight, Natalie.”

And he was gone.

Chapter Five

Two weeks later, I descended into Shannon International Airport in the pale morning light. I relaxed as soon as we left the plane, as soon as the flood of Americans dispersed and the accents started to be tinged with what was, stateside, referred to as an Irish brogue. I was finally in Ireland.

Linguistically—the fourth branch of American anthropology, as delineated by Franz Boas who Had Opinions—Ireland was all torn up. There was no one Irish English accent, no “brogue” stretching from one end of the island to the other. In Ulster, they spoke similarly to the Scots, while suburban Dublin could sound almost American, and Dublin working class was non-rhotic, dropping their “r” just like in Boston. And the accent of County Cork, where we were heading, was supposed to be unusually musical.

In any case, Cosmo just rated Irish the hottest accent for the third year in a row.

I grabbed my bag and coffee and a bus south. The driver loaded my luggage into storage and smiled broadly. “Looking for your roots?”

I didn’t mind playing tourist when I was a tourist. I’d tramped around the Vatican in sneakers, and carried my camera in one hand and map in the other as I walked through Prague. But if I worked or lived somewhere, I wanted to blend in enough that people stopped me for directions. “No. I’m here to—study.”

The driver didn’t pause in throwing my luggage into the storage. “That so?”

“I guess.”

The ride to Dundoran was long and meandering but I didn’t mind, since the landscape absorbed my attention. Ireland was green; green like Oz, like emeralds and soda bottles and moss. A dozen shades of green, and to my eyes, parched by the yellow straw grasses of the Andes and the cement towers of New York, it was bliss. I leaned my forehead against the window, charting the rolling fields dotted with sheep. Sheep. I loved sheep.

I loved llamas more, but you couldn’t have everything.