"Well, Rizla's half Mohawk—"
"Of course. I forget to count guys," said Síle with a self-mocking grin. "So, one thing troubles me: You know you say there've been no serious girlfriends—"
Jude shrugged. "It tends to start hot but dwindle into friendship, if anything. I don't think I'm scared of committing—"
"Clearly not! Your job, your hick village..."
"I'm pragmatic, I guess," Jude told her. "If it's not the big thing, I don't see the point in pretending it is." A pause. "And it's never been the big thing, till now."
Síle's eyes were dark orange.
"Uh-oh, is that too much, on a first date?"
For answer, Síle climbed on top of her and put her tongue behind Jude's earlobe. Things got sweaty and noisy again, and Jude forgot how much she'd been wanting a cigarette. At one point she felt sudden wet on the side of her neck, and had the crazy thought that she'd burst a blood vessel. But then Síle's face lifted, and it was blotted with tears. "What is it?" said Jude, appalled. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Síle sobbed. She licked her own salt water off Jude's collarbone. "Did you never have anyone weep all over you in bed?"
Jude shook her head.
"Young pup." Síle collapsed onto her back, her hair like a black vine spreading across Jude's chest. "So how do you like it, the big thing?" she asked after a minute.
"I wouldn't say I like it," said Jude. "It's like being Belgium."
"Belgium?" repeated Síle, shrilly.
"Wasn't Belgium always getting overrun by invading armies?"
"Ah. Ever the history buff."
"My life isn't my own anymore," said Jude, mock-belligerent.
"'Post-contact,' as you say in the trade." Síle giggled. "Don't blame me."
"I do. You and poor George L. Jackson."
Síle went up on one elbow. "I lit a candle for him the other day, in a Gothic church in Vienna."
"I'll always associate you with death now. In a good way," Jude added, when Síle made a face. "Memento mori, and all that. Did you know, they used to draw a skull at the bottom of a tankard, so when you'd drained it you'd be reminded you were going to die someday?"
"I can't see that catching on at Ikea."
"So whenever I think of how we met, I'm reminded to seize the day."
"Or the Irishwoman."
"Exactly." Jude worked her hands around Síle's waist and tightened like a snake.
"You realize this is doomed?" said Síle in an indecently hopeful voice.
"What, you mean the living five thousand kilometres apart?"
"Oh dear, that sounds even worse than three thousand miles."
"I thought Ireland was metric."
"Well, in theory, but we still talk in miles and pints," Síle explained. "But yes, the distance, and also the little matter of fourteen years..."
"That shouldn't matter," said Jude. "People are always telling me I've got an old head on young shoulders."
Síle grinned. "It's two generations, musically and demographically: I'm a tail-end Boomer and you're Gen Y."
"I'd like to say in my defense that I can play 'Scarborough Fair.' Couldn't we just pretend I was born in the sixties?"
"Play it on what?"
"Guitar," said Jude. "What could be more sixties than that?" Síle let out an exasperated breath. "How could you not have mentioned that you play the guitar?"
"I'm not that good."
"You're good enough to play 'Scarborough Fair,' which makes it a big fat lie of omission." She reached for Jude's fingertips and rubbed them. "Calluses; of course, I should have guessed," she said under her breath.
"Sorry, did they—"
"I like them," Síle told her, grinning. "So what else don't I know about you?"
"A quarter-century's worth, at least."
Much later, when Síle was in the shower, Jude let her head dangle off the mattress. Her whole body felt swollen, sodden. She was woozy; she was high as a kite. She had a little headache, from nicotine withdrawal, she supposed. (Gwen had suggested patches, but Jude preferred to do this kind of thing on her own.) She rolled onto her stomach and looked under the bed. There were dust balls, and a pencil, and a pair of delicate high-heeled suede shoes with tide marks on them.
Downstairs, she dabbed the worst of the stains off with desalting fluid. She had carried the shoes halfway up the staircase when Síle appeared at the top in a towel.
"C'mere, gorgeous," said Síle, descending.
Jude shook her head, backing down. "Bad luck to cross on the stairs."
"Not another one!"
"You can call it superstition, or you can call it sense."
"And there I was thinking you just couldn't take your eyes off me."
"That too," said Jude, finding and kissing Síle's dark nipples one after the other.
Síle put on a brown suede skirt, a silk sweater, and an angora shrug—a word Jude had never learned till today, and couldn't imagine using in conversation. From the Aladdin's cave of her suitcase she took out a quantity of gold jewelry; on anyone else, it might have looked too much. Feeling Jude's eyes on her, she said, "Nomads always wear their wealth. Do you even own any jewelry? I've never met anyone who wears fewer items. Shirt, jeans, knickers..."
Jude looked down at herself. "Belt, socks ... That's about all I need."
"You'd definitely lose at strip poker." Síle examined the Swiss Army knife hanging from a belt loop. "Did you know the average buyer loses theirs in three days?"
She laughed. "I got mine from my uncle Frank for my eighth birthday."
The next kiss lasted long enough that Jude thought she might fall down.
"Feed me!" Síle roared in her ear like a bear.
They had the Hungryman's Breakfast at the Garage, where Jude introduced Síle to Lynda the waitress, Johan the dentist, and Marcy the town's travel agent and desktop publisher—"had to diversify when her bakery went bust," Jude muttered in Síle's ear. Lucian and Hugo from the Old Station Guesthouse had their ferret Daphne on a harness and wanted to know how Síle was enjoying "Her Majesty's Dominion."
"Glad to see you're not the only queer in town," she murmured to Jude across the table. "All this hand-shaking and inquiries after health and happiness, it's so Old World! It must take half the day to get down the street. In Dublin we mostly just nod and mutter 'howarya.' Oh look, a pious papist," she commented as a pregnant girl pushed into the café wearing an Our Lady Peace T-shirt over a bulging sweatshirt.
"Actually that's a band," Jude told her, amused. More loudly: "Hey Tasmin. Síle, this is my friend Gwen's niece..." When the girl had gone out with her coffee and doughnuts, Jude added: "Unemployed, bulimic, and due in July. Her parents are going out of their minds."
At the next table, farmers were debating whether late feeds helped avoid night lambing: Síle was agog.
Jude paid at the counter. "All righty, see you later," said tiny, wrinkled Mrs. Leung.
"That's one idiom I find charming," Síle remarked when they were out the door. "The way it implies everybody's going to get together again before the afternoon's over. She's from China?"
"Hong Kong."
"I remember that feeling of being the only ethnics in town," said Síle with a little shudder. "You couldn't so much as pick your nose in case the neighbours jumped to the conclusion that all you people pick your noses."
She walked sexily, Jude thought, even in an old pair of Rachel Turner's snow boots that had somehow escaped the purge. Síle O'Shaughnessy's here on Main Street, she told herself, incredulous, right here, right now.
The snowdrifts were translucent with sunlight at the edges, and gutters and eaves dripped musically. "This was the Petersons' surgery, before they retired," said Jude, stopping at a two-story limestone house; "when Dad's furniture business collapsed, they took Mom on as their receptionist, even though she had no experience. After school I used to read in the waiting room."
"I can just picture you, swinging your little legs," said Síle. "Dungarees?"
br />
"Always."
She took Síle into the museum's office first. "Archivists have this principle called respect des fonds," she told her from the top of a set of rickety library steps, "meaning you should respect something's provenance—where it's from."
Síle's forehead crinkled. "Such as?"
"Here, for instance." Jude climbed down with a carton and unwound the string. "Miss Anabella Gurd's journal. This is one of my favourite holdings."
"Wow," murmured Síle, bending over the brittle pages.
"See this clipping about the craze for crinolines?" It had been pasted in carelessly; the paper rippled. "Provenance means you don't rip it out and stick it in a file marked Fashion. You leave it here, because it tells us that Miss Gurd of Ireland, Ontario, was worrying about her underwear on 13 December 1857."
"Context is all," suggested Síle.
"Exactly!"
Outside the schoolhouse, Jude wrestled with the padlock. "The first time I saw inside was when me and some boys broke in, in grade seven. It was totally derelict and smelled like death."
"Well it's gorgeous, now," said Síle, stepping in and craning up at the polished beams and the blown-up photos on the whitewashed walls, letting her fingers trail along the back of a desk. "'The area where you stand was a million acres of trackless wilderness probably first inhabited by the Fluted Point People (95008200 C.E.),'" she read aloud from a wall panel. "C.E.?"
"P.C. speak for B.C."
She examined farm tools and kitchenware, clothes hung on invisible threads from the rafters. "I was afraid there might be sinister mannequins."
"Ugh! The bane of small museums. No, I prefer real things. Like—can you guess what this is?" Jude held up an iron pincer.
"An instrument of torture?"
She grinned. "Catholic! It's a nipper, for breaking bits of sugar off a cone. But listen, I can't give you the full tour or we'll waste your last day." Ever since they'd left the house, she'd heard the hours ticking away.
She drove them out to a conservation area near Stratford. Leaving Ireland, they passed a filthy red pickup, and Síle asked, "What's that about?"
"What?"
"You nodded at them, and lifted two fingers off the wheel."
Jude hadn't even noticed. "Oh, it's the local wave."
"What if they're not local, what if you don't recognize the car?"
"Then we scowl murderously," said Jude, straight-faced.
She scanned the white-blotted fields as if with an outsider's eye: What would Síle be seeing? They passed orchards of low, twisted apple trees, tense with the anticipation of blossom, and tall houses with stately porches, sheltered by stands of cedars, that seemed to disdain any connection with the soil. A gap-toothed barn disintegrating in a riot of silvery gray; a big red one with a roof that read CROWLEY FARM CELEBRATING 150 YEARS, and another that said, unusually, VAN HOPPER AND DAUGHTER.
"It's so flat," Síle commented. "No wonder they had to use unimaginative names like 13 Mile Road or—" she craned to read the next small sign—"Line 28!"
"This road we're on, a hero of mine, Colonel Van Egmond, built it through the bush, all the way to Lake Huron," Jude told her. "He talked families into setting up inns so travelers could get their beef tallow and crust coffee, and he brought all the settlers' complaints back to his bosses."
"Bet they didn't promote him."
"Afraid not: He joined the 1837 Rebellion and died in jail." She slid her right hand into Síle's waterfall of hair and held on.
They passed a silo with a red and white candy-striped cap on it. "Check out the giant condom," murmured Síle, reading Jude's mind. She kept exclaiming over the Irish names on the map: Dungannon, Birr, Mount Carmel, Clandeboye, Listowel, Donegal, Newry, Ballymote...
"Well, that's homesick immigrants for you," said Jude. "There's also Zurich, Hanover, Heidelberg..."
But what entertained Síle the most, oddly, were the roadside signs. Apparently in her country, stores and churches didn't display folksy sayings in ill-spaced letters. "Why, is it not legal?" asked Jude.
"I just don't think it would occur to the cynical Irish. We put up billboards to sell things, but we don't offer advice on life. I mean, look at that..." She scrabbled for her gizmo as they passed one that warned A FEW LOOSE WORDS CAN LEAD TO A FEW LOOSE TEETH.
"Are you collecting them?"
Síle nodded, tapping the tiny keyboard. "I'll e-mail a list to all my friends."
"They'll think Canada's dumb," said Jude, childish.
"No no. Every country has its peculiarities."
Síle's head spun as they passed a bone-white church whose sign read GOD LOVES YOU WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. "Scary!" The next one offered SUN WORSHIP IIAM ALL WELL COME. "They must mean Sunday Worship," she said, typing fast, "unless they all get—what was your phrase, butt-naked?"
"Buck-naked," Jude supplied, grinning.
"—and sing hallelujah to the returning sun. Solar cults would make sense, in these long winters."
"Look, outside that peach market, that's a funny one," said Jude: NOSTALGIA AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE.
"Peaches? Let's get some." said Síle, twisting in her seat.
"Come back in August."
"Oh of course, they'd be local."
"You're such a global citizen, you don't know where or when you are," Jude mocked her.
In the parking lot of the conservation area, Síle got out in her ladylike way, feet together. Jude noticed that the snow was tinged with blue: broken glass scattered in ermine. She went first, the sled under her arm; she stepped into the cracked foot holes of earlier walkers or waded through fresh powder, sometimes skidding. It was too bright to see clearly, but there was a drift of fog in the distance; it confused the eyes. She turned and Síle grinned back at her, shiny-faced.
"It's hard to be elegant in the snow, isn't it?" said Síle. "All you can do is stomp along like a three-year-old. And my nose keeps dripping, and I can hardly hear you through all these hoods and scarves. The air feels fantastic, though. The snowfields! When I was a kid, that's what I used to call it up in the sky, after the plane pierces the clouds and it's all dazzling white."
Jude took a narrow path through the woodland. Snow scrunched underfoot.
"There's nothing like being away from other human beings, out in the middle of nowhere, is there?" asked Síle. "I'd usually have my headphones on, when I'm walking; it's odd not to have a soundtrack. It's so utterly quiet."
Jude wanted to laugh.
"Is that a robin? Oh no, of course, American robins are much bigger. I mean Canadian robins. I believe they're insanely territorial, or little Irish robins are, anyway."
Jude waited till Síle caught up with her, then clapped her glove gently over the woman's mouth.
"What?" said Síle, muffled.
"Shh for a minute."
"What were we born with tongues for, if not to talk?"
"There's kissing, for one." Jude showed her what she meant. A crow let out a hoarse croak.
After half a minute Síle stepped back, defiant. "At school I used to win public speaking contests; you'd be given a word—fashion, say, or apples—and you'd have to discuss it for five minutes without repeating yourself."
"That explains a lot," said Jude, laughing.
She'd forgotten how enlivening the cold could feel, nipping her on the inside of her wrists, the scruff of her neck. They emerged near a small pond, its white edge fringed with orange reeds. Jude stared at the drift of snow on the gray-green ice and wondered if it was a thin layer, after the recent thaw, or still solid all the way down.
A gloved hand slid into Jude's pocket. "Are you missing the fags?"
Jude let out her breath. "Since you mention it—I'd empty my bank account for one."
"Oh, my love." The endearment startled Jude, but it sounded oddly natural. "How much is that?"
"Actually, only about $75," Jude admitted.
Síle laughed. "And our phone bills can't be helping."
"B
est money I've ever spent. Besides, giving up the smokes is going to save me big bucks."
"Was it really all about my visit?" Síle asked coyly. "All you had to do was smoke on the porch for two days."
Jude shrugged. "I'd always meant to give them up before I was twenty-five, so I'm late already. And Mom would approve; she always called it 'your filthy habit.'" Taken off guard, she was blinded by tears.
"Careful, your eyes might freeze over," whispered Síle, pulling off one glove to wipe Jude's face with the heel of her hand. "I'm sure she'd be chuffed. Is chuffed," she corrected herself, "looking down on you, hoping you'll live to be a hundred."
Jude buried her face in the dark cloud of hair sliding out of Síle's hood. "Time to toboggan," she announced.
When they got home, Jude opened the garage to show Síle her bike.
"Ooh," said Síle, crouching to peer at the sleek coils of the pipes, "I bet this cost five times what your car did."
"Just about. She's a 1979 Triumph: the year I was born." Jude stroked the icy paintwork. "My uncle Frank customized her, rode her every day from May to October, till his arthritis got so bad he moved down to Florida, near Dad, and left this baby with me. You're just a few weeks too early for a ride," she added regretfully.
"Next time," said Síle, and Jude's pulse thumped with delight.
Jude heated up some parsnip gratin, making the kitchen fragrant with onions and sage. "Oh, did you want to listen to the news?"
Síle shook her head lazily. "Not this weekend. You notice I haven't even checked my messages?"
"I hadn't. But now that you mention it, I'm impressed."
"Well, if you can go cold turkey, so can I..."
"I still can't quite believe any of this is real."
"I can," said Síle, her hands decisive on Jude's hips, pulling her close. "You're no figment: I've never met anyone so here and now."
In bed, it got dark without them noticing. They were shattered and sore and the sheet was pleated with wrinkles. Jude found a little notch in the knuckle of Síle's index finger. "Aha!" she said, "now I'd know you anywhere."