“Ceilidgh,” she corrected me with a smile. “It’s an Irish dance.”
“Ah, right… Ceilidgh,” I replied.
“You’ll want to put on a clean shirt,” she stated.
I leaned down and sniffed my armpits and Daisy prodded playfully at one of my pectoral muscles.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with the way you smell, but I’ll have a hard time not jumping you if you don’t get something on that smells more like detergent… and don’t be putting on any more of that cologne either. I’ve been squeezing my thighs together since the first time I hugged you.”
A wide smile spread on my lips and I shook my head as she shoved herself away from me. For a moment I figured the dilemma she mentioned was real.
“Ten minutes, Jamie no later… and you’ll be needing another name to throw everyone off the scent, no pun intended. How does Barney sound?”
“Fucking awful,” I remarked and chuckled.
“Ah, Barney it is then. With those looks I’ll need all the help I can get to fight off competition, so anything that detracts from that smoking hot body and those fuck-me-now eyes is a winner.”
“Daisy, you need to stop with the compliments or I’ll be getting the idea you’ve got designs on me.”
“Designs? You’re fecking Gucci, Prada, and Louis V all rolled into one.”
“They’re the designers, not designs,” I replied.
“Whatever. If you were wearing them, they’d look great on my bedroom floor. Come, you’ve only got five minutes now.”
Once again, Daisy didn’t hang around, and left me scrambling to make myself presentable as Barney, the glass collector.
Grabbing a cotton t-shirt from my bag, I turned on the shower and spent all of three minutes washing the grime of my journey away. It had to have been one of the quickest changes in my history as I stood eyeing myself in the mirror, dressed in a navy-blue t-shirt and my only fresh pair of jeans.
Once I had combed my wet hair back from my face I emptied the pockets of my other jeans and found my phone, but without a charger I was sunk unless I could find someone to lend me theirs.
No-one appeared to use the new smartphone my assistant had bought for me and I wished I’d stuck with the two major companies that were universal. Tossing my phone on the nightstand, I made a mental note to ask Daisy to use her internet and turned on my heel to head down to the bar.
“Can I borrow the internet and a tablet or something?”
Daisy spun, took one look at me and quickly shoved me back into the small room behind the bar.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said in an urgent bossy tone. “No way are you walking around my bar with your wet hair and your shiny clean face. You look like sin personified and you’ll be a magnet for the women. I have a hairdryer somewhere,” she informed me, ignoring my original question.
“Aw you want to keep me for yourself?” I replied as I teased her.
“Damn straight. I’m not having women hitting on you all night otherwise I may get barred from my own pub for fighting.”
“Fighting? Like strip to the waist fighting, or mud wrestling? Oh wait, a paddling pool full of jello?”
“Not funny, you have no idea the effect you have on women, Jamie Fontaine.”
“Tsk… Barney,” I said, correcting her with the stupid name she had chosen.
“Whatever. Let me get that hairdryer for you,” she offered as she shrugged her shoulders.
“Terry. Pleased to meet you. Funny you never mentioned your pen-friend was coming,” the auburn-haired bartender said, first to me, then to Daisy.
“Well now, that’s why you’re the bartender and I’m the manager. You never listen, do you?” she lied and winked at me when he looked the other way.
“Barney, you say? I’d have remembered a shite name like that.”
“Barney is not a shite name; my uncle was called Barney and that’s where Barney got his name. I’ll have you know he was a decorated war hero, Uncle Barney. Isn’t that right, Barney?”
She’d said Barney that many times I almost lost the plot, wondered if we were related by some of what she’d said, but when she prompted me I jumped in to support her.
“Correct,” I replied in case I said more and put my foot in my mouth.
"Barney is my pen-friend from Canada. Don’t you remember me telling you about him? He’s a lumberjack.”
At five feet ten and a hundred and eighty-five pounds I’d have made a terrible lumberjack, but it amused me greatly when I heard Terry agree.
“Oh yeah, I remember now. Jesus me memory is going.” I guessed he went along with her story for a quiet life and Daisy gave him a look of disdain like she believed what she’d said herself.
“Where do you want me?” I asked trying to change the subject and distract them away from talking about me.
“Everywhere,” Daisy replied, then caught herself in her flirtatious comment. “I mean you’ll just float around the bar picking up glasses, and no talking to the women mind… you’re not being paid to crack on to the customers.”
A look of sarcasm passed between us because we both knew I wasn’t being paid for the work. I cast my eyes around the bar and there were only two couples in one corner, an old guy in a flat cap reading a newspaper, and three old dudes in their eighties with the customary green top hats with shamrocks on the front.
I got this.
Little did I know from the sedate appearance within the bar it was only the calm before the storm.
Placing the empty pint glasses on the bar counter, I turned when I heard the hustle and bustle as a group of ten, pretty, dolled-up females entered the bar. The commotion and level of conversation changed the dreary atmosphere immediately and it became clear from the get go they all knew Daisy well.
In the five minutes that followed they each complimented and praised each other on how they looked then ordered an array of exotic cocktail drinks.
“Feck me, who’s the hottie?” A small redheaded pixie-like girl asked Daisy.
“Her old pen-friend Barney,” Terry interjected.
“A pen-friend? Like you write snail mail and shit?”
Daisy shot her a glare. “Letter writing is a dying art, and as that’s how we began our friendship we chose to continue. We’re…close,” she snapped.
“Still… he’s only a pen-friend, right?” the small redhead insisted
“And he’s gay,” Daisy added when the woman devoured me with her eyes.
“Am not,” I replied quickly, and the small redhead smiled seductively in my direction.
“I'm Lianne. Now, if I’m not mistaken, our Daisy here doesn’t want us to get close to you. Any particular reason for that?”
I glanced to Daisy and the murderous look on her face was a picture. Staring into the eyes of a grizzly bear would have felt less threatening. Even though I hardly knew her, I’d seen the same pissed off, borderline, about-to-commit-murder in a woman’s eyes enough times to know where she was heading.
“I’m afraid I’m taken.” I gave Lianne a sad smile like I was sorry about that and saw Daisy exhale in a forced huff like she’d almost run out of oxygen.