Just took the hand and found it warm (was that a sign of a cold-heart?). She introduced herself as "Justice," even though she never used her given name as a rule, and never corrected anyone who assumed "Just" was short for "Justine." All Devlin did was tilt his head and say, "Justice? You're a long way from home."
"Tell me about it," Just said, and he did. For the next several months.
*
Molinder has occupied Just's living room with his current project. Apparently the "space" has "good light." Scattered around the low tables and chairs are dozens of white Styrofoam clamshells he has been picking from the trash behind the McDonald's on O'Connell, located sacrilegiously (he says) only two doors down from the GPO. He brings them back on the train in garbage bags and hoses them off in the narrow alley beside the flat house, but whenever she is home Just thinks she can still detect a faint whiff of dead pickle under the smell of acrylic paint.
Maybe a hundred of the shells are painted, stacked behind the sofa in a riotous expanse of every color. No two alike. Some are a uniform orange or green, some are done in delicate patterns of overlapping blue lines, like unearthed Celtic artifacts. Some, Molinder has botched and thrown away in the kitchen. There was one he hadn't finished, only started really. The shell was sketched in pencil barely hard enough to dimple the Styrofoam. It was a picture, or just a shape, of a child in bulky clothing. Hints of landscape behind - a rocky shore, flat tranquil lines of still water. Or maybe that's not what it was going to be at all, Just doesn't know and never asked. But the unfinished image is resting snug in a drawer in her desk back at the office. She rescued it from the garbage, but hasn't looked at it since.
*
Dev would absolutely cringe to hear someone call his home a cottage. He'll call it his "place" or his "pad," but cottage would just make him nauseas. To Just, though, that is precisely what it looks like.
It is a small whitewashed square just like you'd see in a tourist brochure, except the roof is brickwork instead of thatch. It rests in the sleepy dip between two gentle hills, appearing so suddenly in the pastoral countryside that Just locks up her brakes before turning into the drive. She has done the exact same thing many times before, though not recently. They run TV commercials for that sort of thing on local Irish stations: "Beware of Loose Chippings!" That means gravel roads, Just has come to realize. Just like "pissed" means drunk, and "ride" means something else entirely.
After a blinding skid, Just pulls sedately up the driveway, and parks next to a familiar cobalt-grey Citroen. Dev swears by the Citroen, long and loud. The car is diesel, and has hydraulic pumps that raise the carriage, for traversing washed out roads, or whatever. It is a French car built like a German tank, perfectly suited to Ireland. Molinder could probably see some symbolism or extended metaphor in that, but to Dev it's just a car.
Just exits her company Dodge Omni, and heads towards the front door, walking, not thinking. Even this far off the beaten path in County Wicklow, Dev has apparently not heard her coming, but that is not surprising. From the open-shuddered windows of the cottage a song is blaring via stereo CD. Old Album. The Talking Heads. Just can't recall the name of the song, but she likes it. It's the one with the line:
I changed my hairstyle, so many times now, I don't know what I look like.
Coming up the loose chippings driveway, Just sees Dev pass before an open window. The day is just Ireland-overcast enough to make the inside of the dwelling visible, and there he goes, swaying past a window with a beer bottle in one hand, wearing cut-off jeans and a Carolina Panthers T-shirt Just is surprised to see here, in the Olde World. The T is sleeveless, and Just catches a free view of the triple tattoo she had to work to see the first time, on Dev’s right shoulder. Pound sign, dollar sign, franc sign.
"Dev!" She barks, and he comes swishing back to window view looking curiously down the drive, still doing a hip-sway-thing in time with the Heads. He sees her, and stops moving with no less suddenness than if he'd banged a knee into one of the ancient stone walls running the lines of his property.
*
A month ago she couldn't tell him anything, so she decided to tell him nothing. Made sense at the time.
What could she have said? Sorry, Dev, but you are entirely too much the raging capitalist that I could have hooked up with in school back in Manhattan, Kansas. If I'd been looking for that - which I wasn't- which I am still not - even now...oh, the hell with it. See, there's this other guy. His name is Molinder. No, I don't know if that is first or last or whatever, don't know if it even matters, cuz see, he's an Artist, and so is above all these petty questions like who is actually paying for the rent. He's your archetypal Irish Rover, a genius poet living off the land, and besides that, with those sharp features and fiery red hair, he's like, just, a picture. He doesn't have a bad haircut and big-ass ears, or any other worldly concerns. But he has the soul of the land within him and he can sing Tristan and Isolde in Gaelic, and so really, he has to be the guy I was looking for all along, right?
She couldn't say that, so she regurgitated some American spiel about productivity and cost potentials, couched in more personal terms that amounted to the same thing. Dev, to his credit, had nodded throughout and finally departed in good grace without once crying "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" Just had admired his withdrawal, and seen a certain nobility in Dev's acceptance of defeat, which another month with Molinder had made suspect. Molinder has a thing about the Irish giving up too easy.
*
The inside of Dev's house pretty much destroys any lingering "cottage" romance. The kitchen is Sharp and Frigidare: Microwave, electric stove, upright fridge with an ice-maker in the front. All in black and white, which goes with the parquet floor. The living room is sunken, with a massive Sony Trinitron raised on a step just about tall enough to qualify as an altar. It of course has access to every channel in the Free World, could probably pick up gameshows from Mars. That is, after all, Dev's bailiwick: He sells Dish-TV throughout the land of Joyce.
"I'm surprised to see you," Dev admits. He is sitting now on the edge of the ever dormant fireplace. He has gestured at the couch or the plush chairs in the room, but Just remains standing. Over his shoulder, Just can just see the active screen of a computer game back in his "study." From her glancing view, it looks like the South is winning the American Civil War. There are rebel flags covering all of Illinois, half of Indiana and Ohio. Just assumes that Dev has been playing the Reb side: He is good at those games, and besides that - he has a deep fondness for the underdog, small concession to genetics.
Dev clears his throat.
"Sorry," Just brings her eyes back to him. He is calm and mostly still, with only one raised eyebrow and a repetitive tap against the beer bottle in his hands betraying his curiosity. Just recognizes the color of the bottle's label. Red, White and Blue. Budweiser. Just still stands in front of him, thinking that if the windows had shades pulled, or if it was darker outside, the inside of Dev's house could just as easily be in New York or San Francisco or El Paso or Topeka.
"Can I get you something?" Dev asks. He has the attention span of someone whose TV gets a million channels, and he's starting to twitch.
"No, no," Just says, "I just..." She peters out into silence for a moment, then adds, "I don't know what the hell I'm doing here."
Dev raises both eyebrows. "Here, in the world?" he asks. "Or just here, in my living room?"
"Here in Ireland," Just says. She's surprised to hear herself say it, but strangely, Dev just clucks, "Oh!" and nods familiarly.
"So you're finally sick of our drizzling little bump in the water, are you? Oh sure, that'll happen." He turns to the window, to the endless green stretching away, and takes a pull from his American beer. "Make's a nice picture, true, but you wouldn't want to live here...."
"Dev," Just interrupts and rushes on before she can think better of it. "I sold out Sanctum to the Waffle People."
*
Had it not been Topeka, but a summery day in the Se
rengeti, Sid the Lion might have troubled to rise and tear into a few of the intruders. Jumped the moat and the fence, gutted the squealing youngsters, and left their innards to dry in the sun. But it was Topeka, and Sid had been where he was long enough to come to terms with the limits of his new powers. He sat in the shade and did nothing. Nothing but maybe vaguely hope that everyone would just leave him alone. Just had nightmares about him for weeks. Maybe years. Maybe to this day.
*
She explains it in detail to Dev, even though it's clear he's not following it entirely. He isn't the only purveyor of TV dishes in Ireland though, and he understands generally about undercutting the competition's prices, can see the inevitable results of Just giving the Belgians the inside line on any bid Sanctum makes in Ireland. He doesn't follow the specifics of how the animal pharmaceutics biz works internationally, but understands finally that Just has been helping to drive the Yank company back across the sea.
"That's pretty extreme," he comments at the end of Just's presentation. "Couldn't you have just quit and gone home?" He has finished his beer and the empty bottle is standing on his deep carpeting between his feet.
"I'm not a quitter," Just says. Molinder would appreciate that. Dev just shakes his head, settles back against the bricks of the fireplace. He sits there for almost a minute before glancing back to Just, still standing in the middle of the room.
"Look, am I supposed to say something about this? Do something?" he asks.
"I don't know," Just says. "I just wanted to tell somebody."
"And so you have." Dev looks away from her again, fidgets on his seat. "Christ, girl," he finally says in exasperation. "If it's absolution you're looking for, you'd do better in a church. I..." Dev holds up his hands, helplessly. Just is familiar with the gesture. "I'm a TV salesman. I can't help you."
"I never thought you could." Just says.
They just look at each other for several minutes before she leaves.
*
She reaches a decision on the road home. Changes her mind when she hits the parking lot at Sandymount, then changes it again as she walks up the stairs to the apartment, feeling heavy, feeling bloated by indecision.
It is already dark outside, and Just doesn't expect Molinder to be there, supposes he's out at his reading or whatever. But when she opens the door he is the first thing she sees, sitting in a chair head down on the kitchen table. He is wearing only slippers and a painter's white coverall, dotted all over with multi-colored specks. It is not very late but he is out solid, snoring faintly. An empty tumbler is on the table in front of him.
Just has no idea what to do with him and pads quietly around, into the living room.
And there it is.
If she has been waiting for a sign, must not this be it? The thing takes her breath away, literally paralyzes her in the doorway. It stands about five feet but looks taller, looks like it towers over the furniture shoved to the sides of the room, leaving it to dominate the center. It is vaguely humanoid in shape though it has four "legs," and is made entirely of McDonalds clamshells, glued together judging by the thick smell that fills the room despite the open windows.
Each of the shells is painted with minute care, but all together they form a riot of greens and oranges and blues and shapes that seem to crawl as the saltwater breeze tries to coax the heavy air out of the room, gently pushing at the thing's arms and lolling heads. A million indecipherable symbols swim before Just's eyes, and it is all too much.
She reels back into the kitchen, back pushing the swinging door hard into the wall with a crash that startles Molinder at the table. He grunts and raises his head, and Just clamps both hands over her mouth before she screams.
Molinder blinks around, then sees her. "Och, 'ullo there." He stretches his legs under the table and his arms in front of him. His fingers are stained with forty shades of paint, and he frowns at two digits that are apparently glued together. He shrugs and settles back against his chair. Her chair, Just corrects herself, though with the alien presence in the next room, ownership seems less and less like a matter of bills paid.
"You saw the piece," Molinder nods with a faint smile. "I got up this morning, started sort of pushing things about, and it all just came together. Happens that way, sometimes." Molinder raises a stained hand before him and writes in the air with two green fingers. "I'm thinking of calling it, 'Justice in Ireland'," he says grandly.
Just is still frozen against the wall, though her knees almost buckle before she recalls that Molinder is still under the impression that her given name is 'Justine.'
Molinder has spots of paint on his face too, along with his hands and clothes. He's a mess to the Nth, and looks happier than she's ever seen him. "So what did you think?" he asks earnestly. His eyes are greener than anything Just has seen on the road or in her living room today.
Just feels her hands tighten over her mouth, clamping on like they'll never let go. Like rigor mortis is setting in. Despite that, she can feel a response bubbling up from inside her, something that she is going to have to say. She doesn't think it is going to be about the piece though. It may be about the Waffle-People, or it may be about the child she is carrying, whose father is either a mad artist or a TV salesman. Either way, Just doubts that she will have to repeat it for Molinder to hear. If her hands will let it out at all.
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