Just A Word From Him
An excerpt from a new project, titled Just A Word From Him, still being written. A good portion of the novel takes place in New York City.
2022. A rough-hewn Irish actor, Declan Finn, has just discovered he is in love with an American film producer named Caitlyn Conneely. Caitlyn is in New York City, to try to renew the affectionate relationship with Annie Fallon, a young journalist whom Caitlyn helped raise for some years when Annie was very young and Caitlyn was married to her father. Caitlyn has discovered that Annie is lost in love with Chris Feliz, a young American actor with whom Caitlyn had a disastrous affair a few years earlier. Caitlyn decides to keep that affair a secret from Annie. But when Annie discovers the truth, she suspects Caitlyn may still be in love with Chris, and is threatened by the possibility. Declan has been trying to negotiate a rapprochement between the two women, as has a friend of Annie’s, a New York stage actress named Lily Piñera.
____
When Declan Finn walked in Central Park, he felt he was in the most American of places. It was the languages there. English was often one of them, but by no means the only one. Indeed, he suspected he heard English just half the time during his usual strolls. Declan was no polyglot, but the other half of what he heard was a mix of the many hundreds of languages spoken in New York City on a regular basis. The one thing common to all of them was the delight that a passage through the park can bring. It’s fun there, for everyone. The vernal wonder of it in this noise-laden metropolis brings out good humor and even more talk. Although you cannot understand half of what you hear…At least I’ve got the English, he thought. Imagine what it would be, for Lord’s sake, if I spoke only Sea Dayak or somethin’!...almost none of the conversations sounds threatening. Indeed, they are notable for conviviality. Declan had occasionally witnessed an argument of some kind…a couple shoving their angered love at each other; quarrelsome back-and-forth between a gruff father and a surly teenaged son, their disrespect causing each equally to lose the battle; a crazy man shouting against the government from a park bench. But these were rarities. Instead, Declan enjoyed the park for the soulful wander it offers and the pleasure of its green at every turn…always away from the traffic-chaos that would attack the park from all sides if only it could.
From a newsstand down the street from Caitlyn’s hotel, he had bought a copy of the day’s Irish Times, intent as always on whatever Fintan O’Toole was writing, and taken the Madison Avenue bus to 106th Street. He was intent on his destination, a place he had found just a few days before.
He took a seat on one of the benches beneath the wisteria pergola in The Conservatory Garden. The wisteria themselves were just coming into bloom, so that the bench was shaded on this late Spring morning. The pergola had offered release to his heart the first time he had seen it, freeing him from his experience, moments before, of the Naumburg Bandshell. An architectural fright, it had reminded him of an egg cut in half, up on end, whose innards have been taken away by a large, sickened bird. Declan had walked past the bandshell as quickly as possible. The continuing walk out to 5th Avenue had done much to settle his aggravation, until finally he had stumbled upon the entrance to The Conservatory Garden itself.
He had spotted the wisteria pergola right away. The long, curved shelter and its shade had comforted him. This was better. This was kindness. And now on this day, it was where he could ponder the pleasures he had shared with Caitlyn two afternoons before, and those one night before. The heart’s surgings. The sweat. The sighs. Emotions unlike any, Declan thought, he or Caitlyn had ever experienced.
He passed by the Untermeyer Fountain, its surrounding green hedges, and the just coming-to-bloom flower gardens that, in later Spring and Summer, Declan knew, would make The Conservatory Garden a true marvel.
Maybe the two of us can work a way to be here for all that.
“Can we meet later?” he had said as he leaned over her bed to kiss her. Her reply, given with a less intense embrace than the ones she had given him the night before, had been gleeful. “I was about to ask you the same,” she had said.
Their embrace throughout the night…. He had never equated sleepless disturbance with so delicate a touch of lips. How could this have happened? he had asked himself as he closed the door and left. Declan wished for Caitlyn’s emotions. She had said she loved him. “It’s true, Declan.” “You’re kidding.” “No, I do!” The kiss…. Well, the kisses.
In The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole had written a column about his childhood memories of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and the cleric’s dictatorial anger with any Irish who would dispute him. Declan was grateful that the now long-dead prelate, heavily robed and mitred as he so often was, had not been sitting at the end of Caitlyn’s bed, looking on.
The wisteria’s light blue-purple was already full, despite it’s being just a few weeks into Spring. Declan lay the newspaper, folded, on the bench next to him, and looked the length of the pergola. The wisteria was everywhere overhead. The shadow with which it covered the entire long bench, on which Declan was the only visitor, carried little darkness. It brought him again to the memories that had filled him the last two days.
Previously, he had wanted to help Caitlyn’s negotiations with Annie as much as he could, out of what he had thought was his simple regard for Caitlyn’s interrupted wishes. He respected her sadness and the price she was paying for this Annie conflict. But now, and so quickly, her wishes had invaded him. Her touch, and the way her kiss had explored so much more than just his lips, his hurried breathing and her own heart’s strength…. Declan laid his open hand on the newspaper. Even The Irish Times felt delicate to his fingers, belying the conflicts, wars, and political pointlessness that filled it.
Declan had never much noticed wisteria before this day. He knew he had seen it in Ireland, in a park somewhere or decorating the façade of some 19th century country house. But this here was like a surge from the Atlantic itself, and Declan determined to bring Caitlyn here tomorrow or the next day, and certainly to wherever such wisteria could be found in Dublin.
He took up the paper again, shook it open to read some more, when he spotted someone he knew far below.
Lily Piñera walked with slow grace past the surging fountain, the water like a rising, wavering cloud. She was meandering, seemingly in wait for someone. Her eyes wandered about the flowers. Declan thought it would be nice to go down to the fountain to say hello. She stopped for a moment, and then continued walking. There was little intensity in her stroll. She was alone, but Declan knew that if there were others walking about, many of them would be taken by Lily’s presence, as always was the case. In a blue Spring dress, a rose-flowered silk scarf over her shoulders and tied before her, low heels and a small purse on a gold chain hanging from her right shoulder, she appeared thoughtful…pleased…expectant, looking now and then over a shoulder.
Chris Feliz appeared at the gate to the garden. The traffic behind him hurried down 5th Avenue. He spotted Lily, her back to him, and seemed to utter her name. When she turned and saw him, she went to him and kissed him, her hands caressing the back of his neck.
Declan laid the newspaper back onto the bench, in time to witness the second kiss.
“Terence Clarke: Recovering The Arts” columns are free of charge. Subscribe to them here. Or, if you wish, you can help us financially with a paid subscription at $5.00 per month or $50.00 per year. That, too, can be done here. It’s your call.
We will not share information about your subscription with anyone.