Niall Sweeney’s fingers danced across his ebony fingerboard. The tip of his bow stirred the air over his shoulder, tracing impossible geometric patterns as a joyous noise rose in volume and energy. It was ten o’clock on a Wednesday night. Sweeney, crammed into the back of the Bag of Nails with four other frenzied musicians, was making sure at least one San Francisco Irish bar rocked to the rafters.
Sweeney was, in fact, barely conscious of the other four musicians, locked together in feverish melodic purpose. He was elsewhere. The closed eyes and beatific smile raising one side of his sandy mustache signalled that he’d given himself over totally to the music.
And the music was playing him now rather than the other way around. Happily, he let it roll, imagining himself off in some transcendent Joycean Dublin, fiddling his heart out with a drunken band of Irish angels.
"Yo, Sweeney!" shouted a voice into the musical maelstrom. "Play that thing!"
He opened one eye and remembered where he was. To his left, Marjorie McAulliffe was wrapped so tight around her banjo her face was invisible, her curly black hair bouncing like an unclipped poodle. Next to her Rod Hesse had an uncharacteristic grin plastered across his face, his right hand a blur over the soundhole of his guitar. Across the messy table and behind a garish red accordion, Roxanne the hippie seemed to be gazing distractedly off into space, though her fingers never missed a note of the looping melody. Joey Lloyd, a skinny, young flute player sitting to his right, leaned toward Sweeney staring straight at him as the tune ate its own tail and took off once more for good measure.
Beyond the musical circle, attentive bystanders, drinkers, loungers, and slouchers were eating it up—clapping and hooting from the end of the bar to the litter of steel kegs lining the opposite wall. A slim young Irish step-dancer in jeans and a purple leotard off to one side of the band was sending scatter-gun bursts of percussion accompaniment their way. Sexy as all get-out.
Sweeney stared at the dancing girl and drove the reel a little harder. His bow swooped into the downbeats like an osprey on a salmon. It was great to have a dancer in the place for a change. This one looked only just old enough to be in the Bag, but Sweeney had seen her before once or twice. She was certainly worth watching—lithe body, huge eyes, streaks of shocking pink dye decorating the tips of her brown hair in places, and what had to be fifteen years experience at Irish step-dancing. She’d been at it now for a solid half an hour, egging the musicians on to longer and more ambitious medleys.
No harm in watching, Sweeney reminded himself. Besides, Rosie isn’t even here tonight.
Three times through The Cup of Tea Marjorie, Rod, and Roxanne all glanced up at Sweeney for the next tune change. Sweeney nodded that he had one and launched into Beare Island, a devilish reel at the speed they’d cranked up to. Somebody off toward the bar let out a whoop.
Sweeney let his eyes drift around the room as his muscles played the tune from memory. He noted a couple of drunks chattering at the bar, leering at the dancer and elbowing each other in the ribs. Ah yes, he mused. Some things would never change.
Sweeney closed his eyes again and dug even deeper into the last reel. Carrying them all with it, the music cascaded back to earth like a meteor shower. The band gave the final note a flourish as a hailstorm of applause clattered in from all sides.
Sweeney savored the moment. The reels had taken him far away from the cluttered old San Francisco bar, far from home, from Rosie, from his ordinary world. The new job had failed to gnaw at his stomach lining for over an hour. And that took some doing, considering how many programming design hours he was putting in in that noisy, unfinished office across the hall from Rex’s noisy and odd-smelling testing lab. He decompressed happily, letting the sounds and smells of the hot, grungy drinking hole gradually reoccupy his senses.
Rosie gone for a week. The thought unexpectedly invaded Sweeney’s happy musings, accompanied by a distinctly blue pang. Hell, thought Sweeney. What’s it gonna be like rattling around the house without her?
