Week
twenty-two
"Mike!"
Sam sounds panicked, and he can hear cars bustling by on the other end of the
phone.
"Yeah,
Sam."
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"Okay,
tell me what's going on. Where are you?"
"I'll
text the address. Just get here fast."
"Should
I bring Fi?"
"No!
Just get here."
A
second later an address is on his phone, and he's sprinting to the car, while
tucking a gun under his belt. He doesn't know the address, but the GPS takes
care of that. It's non-descript part of town, a mix of shops and small businesses.
Sam and Jesse aren't even supposed to be on a job right now. The wedding is
tomorrow. They're supposed to be out with Sean tonight.
What
the hell could be happening? God, did someone recognize Sean? He's on half a
dozen government watch lists.
He's
driving like a maniac, white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. He skids to a
stop in front of Jesse, Sam, and Sean, and they're all grinning at him like
dopes.
He pries
his fingers off the steering wheel, forcing his heart to stop pounding,
recognizing that this cannot be bad.
"So,
what's this emergency?" he says through gritted teeth as he gets out of
the Charger.
Jesse
grins even wider. "Can't have a bachelor party without the groom."
"Come
on, Mikey, it's not like we can let you get married tomorrow without a proper
send off."
"Let
him breathe, lads. He's just had a bit of a scare. He made it here in nine
minutes; that's some awfully fast drivin'."
It
occurs to him that as he was sprinting out of the house, Fi didn't ask him any
questions or offer back up.
"Fi
knows about this?"
Sam
smiles again. "Of course. And I don't even want to think about what she's
doing with your mom tonight. Our instructions were to show you a good time, and
make sure you got to the wedding on time and fairly sober tomorrow."
Sam
hands him a beer, seemingly conjured from nowhere.
Sean
looks down the street and sees headlights coming toward them. "And the
drunken debauchery begins."
A limo
stops in front of them. Sean opens the door and Sam and Jesse shove Mike,
shaking his head, inside.
*********************
The
dress actually was white. But Fi likes
white dresses, so the fact she'd pick one for her wedding wasn't exactly a
shock to anyone involved.
The
suit wasn't black. Michael doesn't have a black suit anymore, and his charcoal
one was last worn to Nate's funeral. Michael
didn't want to put on his charcoal suit, either. It reminded him of funerals, and this
wasn't a funeral sort of day. So the groom wore dove gray.
He's
surprised by how much he misses Nate today. When he found out Nate was married,
he hadn't felt any sense of loss from not being there for that. Mostly he'd
just felt a sense of exasperation that Nate had made yet another bad choice.
But
today he feels the lack of Nate very sharply, and the sense that he should be
here, with Sam and Jesse, has a powerful grounding effect.
Michael's
not nervous. This is the right thing, at the right time, and so no, there are
no jitters, no sense of a door slamming shut on something, or a desire to flee.
There's calm, and joy, and anticipation, because he is looking forward to
seeing Fi, and sorrow, because there should be another man standing next to
him, a man who will never be here again, and that loss can't be glossed over.
He
guesses that means today is a fitting microcosm of all of life. Joy, pain,
excitement, and as he stands there waiting, a bit of boredom. He guesses that's
appropriate for a rite designed to celebrate two lives becoming one.
They
weren't actually in the church, though they are in the garden behind it. He
waits underneath the trees, sunlight dappling about and a warm breeze
whispering through the flowers. Sam and Jesse are with him, and a tiny
collection of friends sit on a few stone benches beside them. Michael thinks
about all the ways this could have happened, and decides that here, with a few
of their friends, and the family they've built since coming to Miami, is
exactly how it should be.
Fiona
walks in with his mom and her brother escorting her, and the half-dozen friends
stand up for her. He thinks about how beautiful she is. How the dress seems to
slip and shift along luscious curves, and her hair cascades down her shoulders
and back. It's not a terribly original thought for a groom, but it's deeply
sincere.
He
thinks about how, though he was engaged before, that Fi is the only woman he
ever imagined standing in front of a priest saying the, 'Til death do us part,' to.
Fi
joins him, holds his hands, and the priest begins to speak.
They
didn't write their own vows, because what words could possibly hold up to the
actions of their past? They are bound by death, blood, fire, love, and now, a
new life. That's all there, and always will be, and no words can sum that up,
tie it in a tidy bow, or give it completion or meaning.
So Michael
parrots the priest's words; words worn old by thousands of repetitions, and
made new by the addition of his voice and Fi's. He slips the ring on her finger
as she does his, motions, like the words, older than either of them, yet new
because this is the first, only, time either of them has done it. And the kiss
that follows is not new, even if it is their first kiss as husband and wife,
but it is tender, and filled with history and respect, and love, and a promise
of a future that will go on for as long as both of them draw breath.
*************************
Fi and
Mike are dancing. So are Sam and Elsa. Ricky's dancing with his wife. Even Barry
has a girlfriend.
Jesse's
at the bar, a scotch neat in front of him, and no girl anywhere nearby.
Sean
Glenanne sits next to him. "You look like a man who could use a
drink."
Jesse
holds up his still three quarters filled glass.
"Not
a drink then. So, what's wrong?"
"Trying
to remember what," he gestures with his glass to Mike and Fi, and the way
Mike has one hand cupped around Fi's face, the other on her belly, as they sway
to the music, "that felt like."
"Been
a while since you've had a girlfriend?"
"That's
putting it mildly. I had a friend I was working with, thinking I might ask her
out, but she got re-assigned and shot that to hell."
"Reassigned?
You can travel, what's the problem?"
"To
Pakistan."
"That's
a problem."
"Yeah.
What about you? A Mrs. Glenanne at home?"
"Only
my mum. This line of work, not too many women around."
"I
get that. We used to joke about women in CIFA being ghosts, sure everyone knows
someone who's seen one, but they're never around."
"Where
I'm from, the women almost never get involved. Mostly they stay on the edges,
providing some support and blind eyes when needed. I wonder sometimes, what
would have happened to Fi if Claire had lived. I wonder if she would have ended
up like my mum and all the other IRA girlfriends, married at seventeen or
twenty, with a pile of kids by the time they hit middle age."
"I
have a hard time imagining Fi like that."
"Now-a-days,
I do, too. But before, she was our Fiona, and it was our job to keep the
footballers and hooligans away."
"And
after?"
Sean
shook his head. "Pat and I met this bloke at a bar. He was from Kilkenny
and had a rep for safe cracking and demolition. We took him to meet her,
because she was better than either of us at that, and she'd tell us if he was
as good as he said he was."
"Was
he?"
"Apparently. Sixteen years later, he's my brother-in-law."
"Does
that mean you failed or succeeded when it came to looking out for your
sister?"
Sean
smiles. "Buggered if I know. They look happy, don't they?"
"Yeah,
they do."
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