already thick, the couples and cruisers mingling with the last of the shoppers and sightseers. Everyone wore heavy coats with hats and mufflers. People looked thick and bulky, like shrubbery wrapped and tied for winter.
The portion of Crescent above Ste-Catherine is the Anglo “Street of Dreams,” lined on both sides with singles bars and trendy restaurants. The Hard Rock Cafe. Thursdays. Sir Winston Churchill’s. In summer, the balconies are filled with spectators sipping drinks and watching the dance of romance below. In winter, the action moves inside.
Few but the Hurley’s regulars frequent Crescent below Ste-Catherine. Except on St. Patrick’s Day. When we arrived, the line from the entrance stretched up the steps and halfway to the corner.
“Oh hell, Harry. I don’t want to stand out here freezing my butt.” I didn’t want to mention Ryan’s offer.
“Don’t you know anyone who works here?”
“I’m not a regular.”
We joined the queue and stood in silence, shifting our feet to keep warm. The movement reminded me of the nuns at Lac Memphremagog, which made me think of the unfinished Nicolet report. And the ledgers on my bedside table. And the report on the dead babies. And the classes I had to teach in Charlotte next week. And a paper I planned to present at the Physical Anthropology meeting. I felt my face grow numb from the cold. How did I let Harry talk me into these things?
There is little patron exodus from pubs at 10 P.M. After fifteen minutes we’d advanced about two feet.
“I feel like one of those flash-frozen deserts,” said Harry. “Are you sure you don’t know someone inside?”
“Ryan did say I could use his name if there was a wait.” My egalitarian principles were being sorely tested by encroaching hypothermia.
“Big sister, what are you thinking?” Harry had no qualms about exploiting any available advantage.
She shot up the sidewalk and disappeared into the head of the line. Moments later I saw her at a side door, flanked by a particularly large representative of the Irish National Football Club. They were both gesturing to me. Avoiding eye contact with those remaining in line, I scurried down the steps and slipped inside.
I followed Harry and her guardian through the labyrinth of rooms that make up Hurley’s Irish Pub. Every chair, ledge, table, bar stool, and square inch of floor was filled with green-clad patrons. Signs and mirrors advertised Bass, Guinness, and Kilkenny Cream Ale. The place smelled of beer, and the smoke was thick enough to rest your elbows on.
We wormed our way along stone walls, between tables, leather armchairs, and kegs, and eventually around an oak and brass bar. The sound level exceeded that permitted on airport runways.
As we rounded the main bar I could see Ryan seated on a tall wooden stool outside a back room. He had his back to a brick wall, one heel hooked on the stool’s bottom rung. The other leg stretched across the seats of two empty stools to his right. His head was framed by a square opening in the brick bordered with carved green wood.
Through the opening I could see a trio playing fiddle, flute, and mandolin. Tables ringed the room’s perimeter, and five dancers cavorted in an impossibly small space in the middle. Three women did passable jigs, but the young men just hopped from foot to foot, sloshing beer on anything within a five-foot radius. No one seemed to care.
Harry hugged the footballer, and he melted back into the crowd. I wondered how Ryan had managed to keep two stools free. And why. I couldn’t decide whether his confidence annoyed or pleased me.
“Well, bless my heart,” said Ryan when he spotted us. “Glad you could make it, podnas. Sit down and rest a spell.” He had to yell to be heard.
Ryan hooked his free foot around one of the empty stools, pulled it out, and patted the cushion. Without hesitation Harry slipped off her jacket, draped it across the seat, and settled herself.
“On one condition,” I yelled back.
He raised his eyebrows and focused the blues on me.
“Lose the wrangler routine.”
“That’s about as kind as gravel in peanut butter.” Ryan spoke so loud the veins stood out in his neck.
“I mean it, Ryan.” I’d never be able to keep up this volume.
“O.K. O.K. Sit down.”
I moved toward the end stool.
“And I’ll buy you a soda pop, ma’am.”
Harry hooted.
I felt my mouth open, then Ryan was up and unzipping my jacket. He laid it on the stool and I sat.
Ryan flagged a waitress, ordered Guinness for himself and a Diet Coke for me. Again, I felt pique. Was I
He looked at Harry.
“I’ll have the same.”
“Diet Coke?”
“No. The other.”
The waitress disappeared.
“What about the purification?” I bellowed in Harry’s ear.
“What?”
