Field of Blood

“I’m the Man” dropped down the record player spindle as Paddy sat down next to Sean on the bed. She didn’t want to lose him. She wanted to make a great, reckless, beautiful gesture to bind them together so that he couldn’t slip out of her life while her attention was elsewhere.

They sat on her bed and kissed softly. She put her hand on his chest, pressing lightly, urging him to lie back.

“No, Paddy,” he murmured. “Your folks might come in.”

She smiled as she kissed him and pressed again, catching him off balance, toppling him back a little.

“No,” he said sharply, slapping her hand away, bouncing back to vertical.

He started kissing her again, not expecting her to mind being so bluntly corrected. But she did mind. Hiding her a

“Don’t,” he said, letting her continue. “Don’t.”

He was very hard, she could feel it through his trousers, and she liked that she could do that to him. Groaning, Sean yanked her hand away and crab-walked his legs around the edge of the bed away from her. He was panting. She reached out for his arm but he slapped her away.

“No.”

He was bent over and she didn’t really know why. She didn’t understand the geography of men’s genitals. She’d seen a cross section in a biology textbook. The teacher refused to teach the module on religious grounds because it contained information about contraception. She told them which page of the textbook it was on, as if they needed to be told, and gave them an hour to read through it in silence. Paddy knew that everything was arranged differently when men weren’t naked, cut in half and perfectly side-on.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“I might not be able to stop myself.”

“Do you have to stop yourself?” He didn’t answer. “Maybe I can’t stop myself either.”

He smirked and went back to nursing himself. “We agreed to wait. What if your mum came in?”

Paddy reached out to him, sliding her hand over his thigh. “I don’t want to wait,” she blurted.

Sean looked at her and snorted a laugh, bending over his lap again.

“I don’t want to wait, Sean.”

He was shocked. He sat up, staying on the other end of the bed, and looked at her. “Well, I do. I want it to be special when we get married. I want to know it’s the first time for both of us.”

Shame, as pernicious and sticky as napalm, rippled through her. She should want to wait. She shouldn’t want to touch him, shouldn’t want any of it, because she was a girl. Her virginity would never be hers to give, only his to take.

Sensing her resentment, Sean reached across to her forearm, pulling her over the bed towards him. He held her tightly by her shoulders in a restraint position, pi

“I know.”

“And you’re a little sexpot,” he said, trying to be kind about the transgression. “What are you?”

“I’m a sexpot,” she said miserably.

He heard the fury in her voice, saw her pinched face, and knew it wasn’t okay. Slipping his hand around the back of her neck, he pressed her face into his chest so he didn’t have to look at her anymore.

“No,” he said firmly. “You’re a little sexpot.”

ELEVEN . TWO LADY WRESTLERS

I

She was covered in a gentle sweat of sheer terror. They would never, ever forgive her. Sean, her dad, everyone- they’d think Paddy had sold the story. They’d never believe it wasn’t her.

Paddy stared out the train window at the dark morning, a copy of the Daily News limp in her lap. She looked at the paper again. TWO ARRESTED FOR BABY BRIAN. The headlines were huge, an old layout trick to cover up a lack of printable copy, but it was the insert at the bottom of the article that pained her. It was a first-person account of life in Child A’s family, about the shame and shock and grief of the extended Irish Catholic family who had abandoned the boy. The piece was overwritten, punched out in short, conversational sentences. To an unfamiliar reader the bad grammar would have seemed like a heavy-handed, hokey touch, but Paddy recognized them as habitual conversational mistakes of Heather’s, left in by the subs to make it sound like the authentic voice of a greenhorn Catholic, the sort that might have evil monsters for kin. She read through the rest of the paper to keep her eyes busy. Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s new defense secretary, was saying he would use a neutron bomb in Western Europe if necessary for American security. Paddy looked out the window at the white world and wondered whether Caspar might do her a favor and press the button before home time.

II

Dub couldn’t believe it when Paddy offered to dish out the new edition to all the departments. No one ever volunteered to do anything, and handing out the papers was a boring, messy job that stained hands black and ruined clothes. Paddy couldn’t sit still any longer. She carried twice as many papers as usual, getting her heart rate up as she carried them up and down the stairs, trying to tire herself out.

She was tired but wired, still bristling with nervous energy, when she came back into the newsroom and saw Heather sitting on the edge of a desk, dressed smartly in a white blouse and red skirt.

Paddy stopped in the doorway, astonished at her gall. She had at least expected Heather to stay out of the office today. She watched her smile along with some news guys, coyly rolling an elastic band between two fingers, and realized that she had come into the office to capitalize on her coup. She didn’t give a shit what Paddy thought of her.

Aware that a small, square body was standing in the doorway, being jostled by people coming in and out, Heather looked up and blushed when she saw who it was, raising a hand in greeting until she saw Paddy’s face. She tried to smile, showing all her marvelous teeth, but Paddy didn’t flinch. Heather muttered an excuse and slid off the desk, standing up and walking towards the back stairs.

Paddy found her shrill voice filling the entire newsroom. “You.” Heather froze. Paddy thumbed over her shoulder. “Out.”

Heather stood still for a moment. A hush fell over the mesmerized men. They looked from Heather to Paddy and back again. Someone tittered. Sensing that she had the support of the audience, Heather crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one leg.

“Do you want to talk here?” Paddy was shouting. “Will I tell them what you did?”

Heather shifted her weight nervously to the other leg. There were few crimes that could not be forgiven in the News. Stealing a colleague’s wallet from their jacket was bad, sleeping with their wife wasn’t good either, but using someone else’s story was unforgivable. Everyone appreciated the threat of losing a good story.

Heather uncrossed her arms, dropping them awkwardly to her sides, where they twitched and hung still. She turned and walked reluctantly over to Paddy, who held the door open and followed her out onto the landing and pointed her across the lift lobby and into the ladies’ loo. Back in the newsroom a huge falsetto whoop was followed by a gale of derisory laughter.

Heather began her defense before the toilet door had even banged shut. “I knew you weren’t going to use the story. You told me you couldn’t. I didn’t see any harm since you weren’t going to.” She lit a cigarette and offered the packet to Paddy.