Without thinking, I reached over and took her free hand, the gesture so instinctual that I was holding her hand before I realized what I was doing. I forgot about Elmo, about kite tails and excess string. And she must have too. For a minute we were wrapped up in past places and painful memories. She gripped my hand, but didn’t continue speaking, obviously waiting for me to finish my story.
“We kicked around for more than five years. Just moving from one place to the next. We ended up here a few years ago and it finally felt like it was time to stay put. This was where we started our journey. And this is where it ended.”
“And you found yourself?”
“I’m always looking. But there just isn’t that much to me. I’m kind of a shallow fella.”
She giggled, and I slid my hand from hers, worried that I’d given the wrong impression. She let me go easily, but something flickered across her pretty face, and I wondered if I was being completely honest after all.
Henry came bellowing across the grass, trying to warn me, but it was too late. Millie must have felt the lack of tension in her string because she squeaked and tried to recover, pulling away from me, winding and unwinding, hoping to get lucky and save the situation.
“Mayday!” Henry yelled. Seconds later the kites fell in a tangled pile to the earth.
My inattention to the task at hand caught up with me, and the little red monster above our heads got tangled up in Millie’s tail and attacked from the air, swan diving downward, taking the pink kite down with him. I’d gotten too close, I’d gotten careless, and it cost us both.
(End of Cassette)
Moses
“WE WERE IN Ireland. Dublin,” I said, when Millie made no move to change cassettes. “Tag can sniff out a fight. It’s his secret power.” That and his ability to get laid. I kept the last bit to myself. She wouldn’t appreciate that ability, though I had a feeling Millie knew exactly who Tag was, warts and all. But maybe because she wasn’t distracted by the way other women looked at him, she seemed to be able to really see Tag, and it was interesting to me that she insisted on calling him by his given name instead of the name he used to charm his way through life.
“But this time it was an actual boxing match between two fighters that Tag had heard of and wanted to see fight. Andy Gorman and Tommy Boyle. Tag had actually had a run-in with Andy, believe it or not, when I painted a portrait for Andy’s mother. Andy’s father had passed away the year before, and his mom was pretty desperate to make a connection. Andy thought I was a charlatan—that’s what he called me—and he ran us off. Tag got mouthy in my defense, as usual, and Andy broke his nose. So when Tag told me he wanted to see this match, I wasn’t very excited about the idea.
“Andy won, though. And he won big. He knocked Boyle out in the first round. Apparently people weren’t very happy about that. Andy was supposed to win, but he was supposed to draw it out, keep it close. He owed some people some money. And when he didn’t do as he was told, they cornered him in an alley behind the venue and beat him up. Guess who went running right into the middle of the fight?”
Millie smiled, but it wobbled on the edges.
“He just had a nose for it. Someone was fighting, and Tag was always getting in the thick of it. Tag went running in there as if Andy were his best friend and not the guy who broke his nose a couple of weeks before. We had to leave Ireland. That’s how stupid it was. That’s how dangerous the people were that Tag had pissed off. But Tag doesn’t think about stuff like that. It isn’t important to him. He just saw five against one and went in, fists flying. He and Andy Gorman were fighting back to back, and I had to wade in there too. I was afraid Tag was going to get himself killed.
“Long story short? Andy Gorman and every other guy in that gym owes Tag. Everyone is loyal to him, but it’s only because he was loyal first, because he stuck his neck out for them. Not because they asked, but because they needed help. It kind of became Tag’s purpose. I saw him change, saw him decide to live, to fight, to embrace life. I watched him find himself.”
“And now he’s lost again,” Millie whispered.
“Something happened,” I argued.
“He’s saying goodbye, Moses. It feels like he’s writing his memoirs or something.”
Millie was right. It felt like a suicide note.
I FOUND SOMEONE to work at the bar part-time, and I started training Vince to manage. I still kept an eye out for Morg, but maybe he’d found a better situation. He baffled me. But it was his choice. I sent his check to the address I had on file and kept juggling. I trained for my fight four or five hours a day and was at the bar almost every night. And I kept walking Millie home.
She never wanted to drive. Neither did I. The nights were cold, but not too cold, and I looked forward to having her grab my arm, walk by my side, and talk to me. I made her laugh, and she made me laugh. She impressed me, and I didn’t have to try and impress her.
I liked her so much.
It was a weird sensation, genuinely liking a girl that much and not trying to get in her pants. I know that’s crude, but there’s a reason men are wired the way we are. There’s a reason women are put together the way they are. It’s just biology. Basic biology. But I wasn’t trying to sleep with Millie. I had no designs on Millie. I just liked her. And I pushed the rest of it away. I firmly ignored biology for the first time in my life.
I was relaxed with her. And I found myself continually telling her things that I didn’t comfortably share with anyone. One night, I pulled on a vest to walk her home instead of my jacket, and my white dress sleeves were rolled to my elbows, which was how I always tended bar. For the very first time, my forearms were bare to the touch for the walk home, and when Millie wrapped her hand around my arm she felt my scar.