“Oh Joe it’s beautiful!” Lucy exclaims her eyes alight upon the crumbling brown paint spattered stoop. The stairs trailed off into the sidewalk with little yellow flowers poking out desperately from the cracks. There is a colorful glass door window stained and glinting from the late afternoon sun touching it.

Lucy climbs the steps and shoots a smile back at Joe, still on the sidewalk his flat canvas hat in one hand and a brown leather satchel in his other. Inside is the paperwork recently signed and a copper key for the little apartment on Eldridge and Rivington, a stone’s throw from the Bowery. His chest tightens remembering all the documents, all the words and clauses but yet the gleeful laugh and sparkle in her eyes was all the remedy his fast beating heart required to settle.

The last few months have been a whirlwind of possibility, of change, of chaotic tranquility, and passion. This woman, curvy and dark-haired, smart as a whip and gentle as the breezes off the Boyne, has thoroughly captured his heart and his every thought. From the moment she’d bewitched him at the bar on Battery. Their late-night walk turned into a coffee the next day at Winkler’s on 2nd. Then a show at the Palace Theatre and drinks the next night at Maxwell’s. And a lazy Sunday by the East River sipping cold beer and eating chicken salad sandwiches she had brought in a wicker basket. It was the most natural thing in the world, this loving her.

He found himself hurrying through his work at the paper just to meet her at Sid’s where they talked and spun tales of their plans and dreams. She talked very little of herself before saying only that she’d come here from Wisconsin with her parents when she was ten and that they’d since passed away. She did not seem overly anxious to share any more details and he was loath to push her. He also noticed her voice was at times clipped in a way he found odd, as if she were enunciating her words carefully to cover a tone? An accent? He was not entirely certain. She was very interested in his home back in Kildare and laughed to hear about the annual sheep gathering and subsequent auctions and parties. Her eyes became wistful when he talked of the vast green meadows and flowering trees. The fields of rich earth and farms dotting the hills and copses.

She talked to him about books. She had a small collection in her room at the boarding house on the Upper Eastside, the Barbizon Hotel for Women on East 63rd. She’d been on her own for a few years. First in a small room near Grove Street then staying with an old woman named Bathilda with whom she said her mother had ben acquainted. After her parents had passed on she was invited by Bathilda to rent a room in her boarding house and there she’d been ever since. So she says.

Collecting books, spending her money on talkies and working as an assistant seamstress at a little shop on 3rd Avenue called Sig Klein’s Fat Men’s Shop run by Mr. Klein. She had been collecting books for a few years now and liked to thumb through them often and mark pages she found particularly moving.

Bobby soon noticed a change in Joe and cornered him mercilessly in the hallway a month ago to cajole him into a trip to the races that weekend at Belmont Park on Long Island. There were prep races, not the big stakes, but money nonetheless.

 They’d both gotten jobs as errand boys and couriers with the New York Daily Mirror and managed soon after arrival in the harbor to secure lodgings above a cigar shop on 85th street. It was all in who you knew and who knew who you knew. Bobby’s uncle Colm back in Dublin had a contact in the city and had given Bobby a letter of introduction landing both Bobby and Joe a never ceasing stream of good fortune. Clean, private lodgings, a promising job – what more could a couple of gurriers from Kildare ask for?

The night Joe met Lucy on Battery he had just come from a long back breaking stint at the paper couriering meet and greets and samplers from 4th all the way down to Little Italy. He was well beaten and about to imbibe when the gorgeous young woman at the bar had caught his every attention.

“Joe weel you not come and put money down on Alice’s Folly? I hear she’s got 10/1 odds boyo!”

Joe smiled distractedly, “Aw Bobby didn’t you lose last month’s rent on a real winner??”

“Now now Joe. It was a sure thing. That is until she dropped a shoe in the last turn. Who coulda predicted such rubbish? Aye, not I that’s who.”

Joe grabbed his coat and plopped his tweed flat top onto his head. “Not this weekend Bobby chap. Do bet sensibly this time though!”

Bobby’s eyes narrowed and he casually hiked his immaculate two-tone Oxfords across the threshold of the paper’s lobby. “Where ya off to on this fine evening brother?”

Joe smiled. “Just headed to Esposito’s for some sausages and capicollo is all, do ya mind?”

Bobby shook his head his shaggy wheat colored hair bouncing off his blue untucked shirt collar. “Oh no, not this time. I got someone for you to meet boyo. You remember that hot little redheaded number Lizzie from the Pines last weekend?”

Bobby had gone to an underground club by the harbor last weekend to share his winnings on what Joe could only imagine was a brutal boxing match down by the river. Joe had gone only has far as Canal street before begging out with a pounding headache. Before he’d gone a beautiful redhead in a spinning polka dot dress and tilted red hat had approached Bobby her very red lips enveloping all those within the vicinity with a playful smile which curled into a snarl as she laid eyes on Bobby.

“Oye Bobby McNeely! You got a lotta nerve…..Oh, who’s your alluring friend?”

“This my lovely Lizzie is Joseph Patrick Finnegan of the County Kildare Finnegan’s I’m sure you’ve heard of them?” Bobby removed his newsboy and dipped a low bow to Lizzie his eyes traveling down then up again upon those long legs.

Lizzie smiled alarmingly bright and winked at Joe who still had one foot on the step to cross and meet his own lovely lady Lucy at Sid’s as soon as he could untangle himself from Bobby.

“Hello Joe, so nice to make your acquaintance. Will you be joining us this fine evening?” She smiled lightly placing a slender pale cream hand on Bobby’s arm.

“Ah, sorry lass. I’ve got a date with a bottle of cheap Bordeaux and a book dull as it may seem.” Joe smiled, winked, and strode across the street just ahead of the 9 o’clock trolley and turning the corner by the very bike shop he and Bobby had taken refuge under on their first day in New York – he was gone.

Joe nodded absentmindedly remembering the meeting.

Bobby continued after slamming the cracked newspaper door just as Herb, the post’s own PI was poised to knock. “Well she’s got a friend. And this friend has, and trust me I know, a pair of legs that’ll knock your hat back and a pair of…..”

“Bobby!” Joe interrupted, both ignoring the incessant pounding on the door by Herb, “Not tonight eh.”

Bobby tossed an annoyed look over his shoulder at the vague silhouette of Herb visible through the frosted plate glass. The pounding continued. He knew Joe was hiding something. A dame no doubt though why Bobby had no clue. Joe had been furtive yet distracted for a few weeks now. Coming and going with a secret urgency .

“What’s up Joe? You gotta a girl down on…….?” He paused and lower said, “A guy? A bookie?”

Joe rolled his eyes and glanced at the large brass clock hanging over the picture window leading to the copy room. There was no getting out this time. He’d wanted to keep her a secret, his secret, a little longer. The very moon that set blazing upon his heart and his plans. But Bobby was his brother and was not going to let up. Bobby was also a ladies man of the worst sort for he was in no way ashamed of his approach. 

“Alright Bobby you crazed mutt, let it go. I met a girl alreet?” Joe sighed heavily and waited for the barrage of jokes and knowing lusty winks.

Bobby was something of a libertine and had left Ireland with a trail of broken hearts while Joe had simply been too quiet and circumspect to do much more than smile. He had held hands and kissed Malvoreen Mcintyre once but the experience had made him all the more cautious since she had attempted to slide her long fingers down his trousers and the slight brush was enough to cause Joe to jump upwards spilling Malvoreen unceremoniously onto the hay strewn about in the old Mcintyre barn. Bobby had split his work pants and cried tears of mirth laughing uproariously when Joe had mistakenly shared his reservations about Malvoreen’s illicit attempt to beguile him.

So it was with reluctance that Joe shared with Bobby the details of his affair with Lucy, if affair was even the most accurate term. Thus far the pair had spent much of their time together talking and exchanging amusing stories of their day to day encounters. There had been a couple times Lucy’s caramel skinned hand had lay gently on Joe’s arm as she laughed at some story he’d told her about the goings on at the Mirror. It was so instinctive, her hand on his arm and her head on his shoulder that the lightness in his head gave way to a spreading warmth all through his body.

Then one night he had cupped her heart-shaped face in his hands and kissed her plump lips bruising them in their sweetness. Her liquid eyes had gotten so dark then and he’d had to step away swathing the both of them in pale gold light from the porchlight on the worn stoop the smell of the water from the river wafting up the street.

Next Chapter: Lyllian, 2001, Seattle