He hoped Maureen would be as quiet. She radiated tension. He tried to guess the cause, between her glares at her sister and a guitar player in the band, and the way she bared her teeth at him in a parody of a smile.
Touchy. She made him think of sweating dynamite.
The fiddle finished a run, was answered by the penny whistle and the rattling thud of a bass bodhrán. The group seemed competent enough. With a little more practice, they could move out of the basements and get some real crowds. They still had some rough edges here and there, but what they really needed was a different singer. His voice was good enough, but the accent was pure Downeast Maine. Each time he stepped up to the mike, he spoiled the illusion of a Dublin pub.
"Grá mo chroí mó cruiscín,
"Sliante geal mo mhuarnin,
"Grá mo chroí mó cruiscín lán, lán, lán,
"Grá mo chroí mó cruiscín lán."
The music lilted along, innocent enough if you didn't understand enough Gaelic to know it was a man singing a love-song to his jug. Brian guessed that covered at least nine out of ten in the audience. He didn't know about Maureen, or that peculiar twin image of her she claimed was her older sister.
He spent the next verse studying the two of them. They made a living case study in how actresses turned chameleon in different roles: no single detail of one differed from the other, but the sum made two totally distinct people. It all lay in their body language.
Jo confirmed his snap judgement that Maureen could be beautiful if she tried. Clothes hung differently on Jo's body, even though they were close to duplicates of Maureen's casual sweater and jeans. The red curls of Jo's hair perfectly framed her face, and whatever make-up she used merely accented those startling green eyes, so deep you could drown in them. Her blend of perfume and natural smell said "sex" to any male nose, human or otherwise, within ten paces.
Her stance, whether moving, standing, or sitting still, said "I am desirable. Look at me." Whether she knew of her blood or not, she definitely was certain of her power.
And every time Maureen caught Brian staring, her face drew even tighter.
Brian swore under his breath. He was much more interested in Maureen than Jo, but that message wasn't sinking in. Besides, Jo was also wearing a sign that read, "This seat is taken." She liked being admired, but she'd found the man she wanted. Maureen couldn't seem to read the signals.
What Maureen seemed to be certain of was her anger. Brian sensed they were actors reading from different scripts. Was her move last night a "go away closer" and he misread it? Not bloody likely; she'd looked physically ill. Was there something between her and her sister and that guitarist?
Dé hAoine finished "Cruiscín Lán" with a flourish and swapped instruments during the applause that followed. Instead of plunging straight into the next number, the lead stepped up and waved at a corner of the cellar.
"We've got something extra for you tonight. Adam Lester's in the audience, and we twisted his arm to sit in for one number. Many of you know him more as a blues-man, but he can make magic out of anything. He gave us the honor of backing him on a couple of cuts of his latest album. If you'll forgive the crass commercialism, I'd suggest you buy it. We need the money."
With the blues reference, Brian expected something along the lines of a big man as black as midnight and showing chain-gang scars on his wrists. He blinked when a skinny white stood up and strode forward, leaving a heavyset black woman behind at his table. The man wore dark sunglasses even in the murk of The Cave. Was he blind? Couldn't be, he moved through the crowd too confidently.
The new guitarist borrowed an instrument from Jo's boyfriend and ran a few exploratory riffs up and down the neck, then nodded at the fiddle. He set a beat by tapping his toe and launched a stream of notes, fingerpicking and sliding with a grace beyond belief.
The fiddle chased him and pounced, and then the two instruments rolled around like a pair of kittens playing with a catnip mouse. A flute joined in, and the ball of fur turned into a rambunctious reel, one Brian had never heard before. And then the deep booming of the drum nipped one of them on the tail, and it leaped up and turned a backflip before diving back into the music.
Music as play. Music alive.
Brian glanced across the table and read peace and joy on Maureen's face, a transformation as brilliant as afternoon sun through the windows of Chartres cathedral. God, thought Brian. If the music means this much to her, I'm not just going to buy the record, I'm going to buy her a system to play it on and a house to keep the system in.
The beat increased, and the instrumental runs leaped and swirled to impossible speeds and complexities. Brian's mind buzzed just following it all. Playing? He couldn't imagine it. The skill was beyond comprehension.
Don't think. Don't analyze. Music is. Beauty is. Just be.
He flowed with the music, following it as it capered through the green grass of the rolling limestone plains of Ireland. He could smell peat on the wind, and the distant tang of the sea. How long it lasted, he would never know. The Little People came out and danced, and he danced with them, danced with their music, and lost all sense of time.
The music faded out of the sunlight, deeper into the shadows of the Irish
