Story of my life, really.
My rollaway bumped rhythmically behind me over the stones. Glancing automatically to my left, I stepped off the sidewalk and into the path of a bus. Tram.Shit.
Metal squealed. Hot wind gusted on my cheek. I jerked back, tripping over the curb, breaking the wheel on my suitcase.
I stood shaking on the sidewalk as the passengers debarked.
“You all right, dear?”
“Yeah. I...” A yellow caution sign across the road swam in my vision:féach gach treo. look both ways.I pulled myself together. “Yeah, thank you. I’m fine.”
To prove it, I walked another block.
A bridge spanned the river ahead. I dragged my bag toward it,drawn by the sun sparkling on the water.The weary traveler left the path, following the dancing light over the water, and was lost forever in the mists as the will-o’-the-wisp disappeared in a burst of goblin laughter...
I shook my head to clear it. The woman at the desk said the writing center was at the edge of campus. I just had to keep walking.
But when I reached the other side, it was clear I’d gone too far. The street was lined with shops—a hair salon, a dry cleaners, a kebab house advertising pizzas and falafel. On the corner, between a metal shutter scrawled with graffiti and a sign for lottery tickets, was a blue-painted storefront with a neonopensign.clery’s newsagents.
I went in to ask directions.
The bell jangled cheerfully as I opened the door. The broken wheel of my bag scraped the tile floor. Embarrassed, I picked it up.
The inside was a jumble of cheap plastic toys and bright candy wrappers, shelves crowded with packaged convenience foods, crates of fresh produce and buckets of flowers with prices scrawled on handwritten signs. Newspapers with foreign headlines were displayed by the register. A tall steel rolling shelf, stacked with loaves of bread, occupied one corner near the front of the shop.
“What can I get you?” asked the man behind the counter, closing his book.
I couldn’t read the title. I jerked my gaze back to his face.
He quirked an eyebrow. “Coffee?”
I swallowed, suddenly parched with longing. “Do you have tea?”
“You’re in Ireland,” he said. “You can always have tea. Or Guinness or whiskey.”
He was tall and skinny, dressed in black jeans and a rumpled gray T-shirt, his hair tied back from a narrow face. His long jaw was covered in stubble, like an incognito movie star or a dissolute poet after a three-day binge.
“Tea would be great. Chai? To go,” I said.
“Masala chai?” He had a lovely voice, a lilt running over the deeper tones like water over rocks.He was a songwriter. Single, of course. He performed at night in indie clubs, taking inspiration from the strangers he encountered at his day job, and he wrote a song based on me that became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic and Gray heard it and...
Okay, so being someone else’s muse hadn’t worked out so well for me.
“Excuse me?”
“Spiced tea,” he said patiently. “Do you want milk?”
“Yeah. Um. Maybe a little sugar?” I set down my bag to pay, counting out the unfamiliar currency before curling my hands gratefully around the fragrant cup. “Thank you.”
“You’re American.”
“I guess the accent gives me away,” I said ruefully.
Humor creased his face. “That, and the boots.”
“What? Oh.” I glanced down at my cowboy boots, a going-away present from Toni. “I suppose those would be a clue.”
“And the suitcase.”
