Exclusive by Barbara Fischkin

Author:Barbara Fischkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780440335399
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

A waitress came. Drinking seemed to be my only option, so I ordered a gin and tonic. My mother asked for an apricot sour, which was what she drank at bar mitzvahs, weddings, and other shul events, except for Las Vegas Saturday Nite, which had been brazenly reinstated as “Take a Chance on Saturday Nite”—and at which no alcohol was served. The waitress grimaced at Danny Morrison, as if my mother was all his fault.

“You don't have apricot sours in Belfast?” my mother asked, amazed.

Morrison nodded toward the bartender. “Tell yer man to mix blackberry brandy with vodka.” He turned back to my mother. “Made from Israeli blackberries.”

I made a mental note to enlighten my mother about the IRA's ties to the PLO. They were also hooked up with Basque separatists, the worst of the Sandinistas, Fidel Castro, and everyone else in the world who had ever contemplated bombing as a civic duty.

“Every war should have a PR man like you,” I said coolly.

Morrison winked at me. “Every war should have a wee bottle of apricot brandy.” He reached into the lapel pocket of his tweed jacket, pulled out a matching cap, and held it open like a mock beggar. A pair of sunglasses with sky-blue lenses rested inside. He put them on, then nodded, as a fellow bus passenger might.

So it had been a Morrison, only not Van.

• •

Half an hour and two blackberry vodkas later, my mother swore that Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison were two of the nicest men she'd ever met.

“She liked the Irgun, too,” I informed them.

Mulvaney's blue eyes stayed calm. Lunchtime in Belfast and he was already drunk?

My mother now clucked over Project Children, Northern Ireland's answer to the Fresh Air Fund.

“I could take a wee Belfast girl,” she offered. Her Irish accent was dreadful. “For a summer of peace in Brooklyn.”

“Just keep the child away from Las Vegas Saturday Nite,” I said.

“Leave your mother alone,” Mulvaney said softly. “Everyone makes up for being a survivor in their own particular way.”

What, I wondered, had Belfast done to him?

The other thing that surprised me, although it shouldn't have, was that my mother was telling Danny Morrison that she had once saved her own life by hiding in a haystack.

Mulvaney leaned toward me. “Can you buy an ArmaLite with Israeli bonds?”

“Do not,” I warned him, “try to sweet-talk me.”

Suddenly, a hand landed on my shoulder. It was plump, female, and sported a thick bracelet with a large golden charm, an antique-looking insignia: hands, a heart, and a crown melded together.

A crown at the Felons Club?

“Hower yew?” A large woman in a yellowed Aran sweater, her wild hair dyed three shades of blond, bent down and smacked a wet kiss on my cheek. “I'm Suzie McBreeze, Jim Mulvenna's landlady.” So this was her. I'd heard, too, that she had a husband on the run and a rap sheet of her own.

Two more Aran-sweatered women accompanied her. One, small and mousy, greeted us with a giggle and sat. She probably killed people from behind the scenes.

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