Entwined - SF5 (31 page)

"He was," Ryan agreed softly. "He was everything I’d like to be."

"I assume you had trouble with Father Pender," Jamie said, continuing to lightly rub Ryan’s belly, and smiling when Ryan nuzzled even closer.

"I sure as heck did," she said with a very short laugh. "He finally gave in when I said I would stand on the steps at the entrance of the church and sing it a capella when they were bringing in the casket."

"Would you have really done that?" Jamie could easily picture her lover pulling a modern-day Martin Luther style protest as an adult, but she had a hard time envisioning a child taking a stand like that.

Ryan was quiet for a moment, finally pulling away from Jamie’s snug embrace to sit up enough to look her in the eyes. "I would have climbed up in the bell tower if I’d had to, Jamie. There was not a person on this earth that could have stopped me."

Jamie blinked slowly, the fire and determination in Ryan’s gaze so strong that it was almost hard to look at. "I’m so proud of you." Her hoarse whisper was accompanied by a few tears, which Ryan kissed away. They held each other tight for a long while, until Jamie reminded her partner of something. "We had a deal that you would try to remember the happy memories of Michael too, Ryan. Wanna give it a try now?"

Sniffling a little, Ryan rolled onto her back, slipping her arm around Jamie, and cuddling her against her chest once again. "Okay. I mentioned earlier that Aunt Maeve let me read his instructions about the funeral?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"Well, that was just one tiny bit of the volumes of writing he did." Ryan chuckled a little as she revealed, "He had diaries, journals, notebooks full of poems, essays on topics that interested him, a few short stories, and a good start on a novel that was really fascinating."

"Gosh, I didn’t realize that he was a writer."

"Oh yeah. I have some of his stuff here. I’ll show it to you sometime. Anyway, the funny thing was that there were two notebooks that Aunt Maeve didn’t show me until just a couple of years ago. They were both labeled, "Mam, for the sake of your sanity do not read these! Give them to Bryant, or Ryan when she’s old enough to drink."

"What?" Jamie was completely puzzled by this warning, and she waited with rapt attention for Ryan to reveal the reason for it.

"One book was all of his poems that dealt with sex, and the other was essays and short pieces about his sexual experiences."

"Were they really risqué?" Jamie had a feeling that Maeve would be fairly easy to shock, so she reasoned that the material might not be too scandalous.

"Wow!" Ryan fanned herself dramatically. "Bryant, Michael’s lover, couldn’t read any of his stuff for years. He couldn’t even stand to have it in his apartment, so Aunt Maeve kept it all. Not long after I turned 21, she gave me the notebooks. All I can say is, that boy loved sex more than I do!"

"Really? That’s hard to believe."

"Indeed!" Ryan’s eyes were wide, and her head nodded slowly. "I’d show it to you, but you’re still too young!"

"Oh, Ryan," she laughed as she slapped her thigh, "you’re exaggerating!"

"I most certainly am not," she insisted, jumping out of bed to go to her bookshelf. Grasping a cloth bound journal, she flipped through the pages until she got to the one she was seeking. She crossed back to the bed and presented the open book to Jamie, watching with delight as her green eyes grew rounder and her mouth gaped dramatically.

Wordlessly, she handed the book back, shaking her head roughly, as if to dislodge the images that the poem had left in her brain. "Well, he certainly had the ability to get his point across in just a few words," she mumbled, a deep pink flush creeping up her cheeks. She cocked her head just a bit and asked, "Is that even possible? I mean…jeez!"

"I have no idea," Ryan laughed. "And since neither of us has one, we’ll never know!"

Much to Ryan’s relief, her father did not commit mayhem against the parish priest. In fact, he agreed that he would wait a few days to talk to the man, although he declared that he would have to go to another parish for Mass on Sunday, since it was obviously sinful to wish ill to the priest celebrating the service.

Things were fairly calm on Saturday except for the low-level of anxiety that Ryan had built up about the little excursion that she had Jamie were going to undertake that evening. After their dinner with Catherine, Jamie had called her father to apologize, and he immediately insisted they join him for a Giants game on Saturday. Remarkably, Jim suggested that they invite Conor also, which surprised the holy heck out of Ryan, but she was pleased that he was thoughtful enough to include a member of her family.

Even though she was pleased that Jim had made the offer, Ryan was still quite worried about what the evening would bring, and as they made their way to the stadium, her anxiety revealed itself when Conor seemed intent on driving her mad.

Ryan glanced into the rear-view mirror, a wry smirk covering her face. "Conor, if you don’t put your seatbelt on and stop bouncing around back there, I’m not going to let you play with your new best friend." Conor was sitting in the back seat of the Lexus, and Ryan had already warned him three times.

"The Lexus is supposed to be so safe, I figured I didn’t need it," he reasoned, continuing to bounce. "I can’t help it if I’m excited, Ryan. It’s not every day I get to go to the ball game with somebody who owns all of my favorite cars. If we get to be buds, he might invite me down to hang with him some time."

As Ryan pulled up to a stop sign she turned around and stared at Conor in amazement. "It’s not a date, Dude. Chill!" Turning back to the road, she rolled her eyes, muttering to herself under her breath.

"It’s okay, Conor," Jamie said, in her best placating voice. "He’s the one who asked us to invite you. I think you have a real chance with him." She was taunting him mercilessly, but he was so invested in making a good impression that he didn’t even notice.

"Do I look okay?" he asked in all seriousness. "I mean, I don’t want to look like a culchie or anything."

Remembering that the term meant "country bumpkin," Jamie surveyed his look and was quick to reassure him. "You look adorable, Conor. You’ll fit in just fine." He was wearing a sage green brushed cotton shirt, tucked into crisply pressed khaki’s, with a muted yellow cable-knit sweater lying beside him on the seat. The earth tones were very flattering to his dark complexion, and Jamie mused that even though her mother would be more impressed than her father, Conor would clearly pass muster.

"He’s already married, Conor," Ryan added.

"I don’t want to marry him," Conor scoffed, wriggling around in the back seat so that he could check his hair in the rear-view mirror. "I just want him to like me, so he invites me to hang around with him some time." Satisfied that his hair was just so, he sank back into the leather seating and checked his watch. "You did understand that we’re supposed to be there at seven o’clock, didn’t you, Ryan?"

"Yes, Conor," she replied testily. "We’ve got 20 minutes, so you just sit tight and check your lip gloss."

After pulling up into valet parking, the tall siblings got out and stretched a bit, with Jamie smiling at them both for indulging in their chronic habit. "This is probably our last time to see the Giants at the ‘Stick," Ryan mused, thinking of the many games she had attended with her brothers throughout the years.

"Yeah," he nodded somberly. "I think PacBell Park is a good idea, but I’m really gonna miss this old place." The Giants were scheduled to move to a new facility just south of Market for the 2000 season, and even though the park was reported to be well designed and was quite conveniently located, both siblings hated to say goodbye to an old friend.

"I’m not sorry to see them move," Jamie disagreed. "I’ve been frozen stiff out here in July! The ‘Stick’ is a ridiculously cold and windy place to put a baseball field. I still don’t know why they chose this site." The park sat at the tip of Hunter’s Point, and was exposed to an always brisk wind blowing off the bay. Once the sun went down it could be downright nasty, even in the middle of summer.

They had not had time to stop by Jim’s office and get the tickets, so they were forced to wait in a long will-call line to retrieve them. The line moved quickly, but Conor was still nervous about being late. To distract him, Ryan recalled, "Hey, remember the night we got the Croix de Candlestick?"

"You got one of those?" Jamie gaped in amazement. During a particularly bad period for the Giants, the team management decided to capitalize on the cold, windy conditions in their marketing campaign. To that end, they instituted the Croix de Candlestick pin, given to everyone that stayed until the end of an extra-inning game.

"We sure did," Ryan laughed. "It was kinda raining, and colder than all get-out. If I recall correctly, there were less than 50 people here at the end."

"Da was fit to be tied when we got home," Conor laughed. "The game lasted until about one a.m., and when we got home we were practically frozen stiff! To this day he fails to understand why we were so damned happy to have a little piece of metal to commemorate being frost-bitten!"

Much to Jamie’s surprise, when they settled into their seats Conor displayed none of the nervousness that had been so evident earlier. The younger man displayed his most confident side, speaking very knowledgably about the Giants, the new ballpark, and every other topic that came up. He was clearly entertaining Jim, and Jamie began to regret the fact that they had invited him. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her father to know and like all of the O’Flaherty’s–she did. She just wished that he could warm up to Ryan before he was charmed by her brother.

Uncharacteristically, Ryan was quite low-key through the evening. Jamie realized that this was her way of playing it safe, but she also knew that her father would not come to know Ryan if she remained this reserved around him.

By the third inning, Jim finally gave in to Conor’s repeated offers to buy him a beer or a hot dog, and the siblings left to stand in line. Jamie moved back to sit next to her father in the box, and since she knew she would be grilled later she casually asked, "Are you having a good time, Daddy?"

"Sure am," he smiled. "I’m always happy to be with you, Jamie."

Sharing his smile, she followed up on Conor’s earlier wish. "You should think about inviting Conor down to hang out in your garage some time. I think he’d really like it." Thinking about it during the game, she realized that having Conor break the ice for the O’Flaherty clan wasn’t such a bad idea. He and Ryan were quite a lot alike, and she reasoned that if her father grew to like him, Ryan might seem more palatable as well.

He furrowed his brow a bit and cocked his head. "Would he really? Why would a young guy like that want to hang out with me? I’d think he’d be out with some good-looking woman every chance he got."

"Oh, he does that too," Jamie assured him, "but he’s crazy for cars. Would you be averse to having him?"

"No! Of course not. I like Conor a lot. He’s really my kind of guy, Jamie. I’ll definitely do that."

She wanted to say, ‘Ryan and Conor are almost exactly alike, and if you like one, you’ll like the other,’ but she thought that her father would not appreciate those same attributes in Ryan at this point, so she held her tongue.

"I ahh…I had something I wanted to discuss with you, Jamie, but ahh…I wanted to do it in private," Jim said as he looked around at their neighbors.

"No one is listening to us, Daddy. Go ahead."

Casting another glance over his shoulder, he leaned in a little closer and said, "I got a very interesting phone call from John Podesta yesterday."

Jamie’s eyebrows popped up, recognizing the name of President Clinton’s chief of staff. "What did he want?"

Now Jim’s eyes lit up and he looked positively giddy. "He wants to know if I’d be interested in filling the remainder of the term for Senator Somers." The very senior senator from California had recently died after a lengthy illness, and speculation about his successor ran rampant. It was most common to offer the position to the wife of the deceased senator, but Jamie knew that the senator was a widower.

"Daddy!" she gasped. "Why…how…are you interested?"

"Yes, I think I am," he said, still unable to contain his excitement. "It would only be for a year or so, which makes it more attractive."

She sat in rather stunned silence for a moment until her civics lessons came back to her and she asked, "I thought the governor appointed people to fill positions like that."

"Oh, he does, but the White House is helping Gov. Davis come up with a list of names. He would make the final choice, but I think Washington has a pretty big say in who gets the nod."

"Would you have to run for office?"

"No, no, that I’d have no interest in. This is an appointed post. When the term was over, I’d come back home and return to the firm."

"Wow," Jamie said, still stunned by this development. "Why would you want to do this, Daddy?"

"Contacts, Honey," he said as if he couldn’t believe she would ask such a question. "I’d make very valuable contacts in that position. Lobbyists, big business…you name it."

I guess the public service thing is a thing of the past
, she mused. "What do you think your chances are, if you decide to try for this?"