Montauk Pioneer - March 27, 2009 - Falling In Love At The Parade

Listening to the bagpipes play, Leem couldn't help but think of Orla back home in Ireland. Working in Montauk, repairing diesels on commercial fishing boats was better money than back home but boy did he miss Orla. He had always had the keen eye for Orla who felt the same for Leem, but when the opportunity to make some easy money came his way, off Leem was for Montauk.

He had now been in Montauk six years, without ever going back once. The letters that he wrote Orla weekly stopped being answered so he guessed his lovely lass had just moved on. During the St. Patty's Day parade in Montauk he was watched the floats, the crowds, and looked up to the sky and again, for some reason, thoughts of Orla's wild freckled smile entered his head. Her red hair, blue eyes and the cutest body he still had ever seen, came back to him as if she were standing there right in front of him. He could see the vision of her married with little red headed children.

Leem loved Montauk for all the right reasons. The simple lifestyle of unpretentious, hard working people going about their business without asking too many questions was for him. He could slip into bars like Salivars or Liars without feeling unwelcome. He lived in a small home down by Navy Road, still paying month to month after six years with not a single change to the rooms since the day he moved into the furnished Cape Cod like cottage. He drank his Guinness Drought in cans, preferring the taste to the American bottled version, which just didn't seem as smooth as the cans. Approaching 35 years of age, Leem was now one of the most sought after mechanics on the whole East End of Long Island. Every week Leem would send his widowed mother an $850 money order from the Suffolk County bank in Montauk, always smiling, thinking of the times she would scold him about tinkering with engines and not doing his homework. A grim thought of Sister Helen Edwards, the terror of the grammar school, always disciplining him came to mind.

But luckily on a float in front of him a wife of a co-worker in the parade waved, so he stopped his daydreaming. Ah but Orla, why did she stop writing?

As the parade ended, Leem was not one to hang about, but for some reason he drifted with some friends to the Memory Motel to hoist a few cold ones. A handsome Irishman with dark features never had trouble with the ladies, except trouble getting them to understand he was not interested in long term relationships; long term, to Leem, was a weekend. Over in the corner, talking fast and loudly was a face Leem seemed to know from his home village in Ireland, or so he thought. The woman, when she saw Leem, locked her eyes onto him, seeming to know him too. Leem took another sip of his beer and then looked at her again and said, "Ruthie McCarthy?" She stopped talking and looked across at Leem and said, "Leem Reilly is that you calling out my name?"

And just like that two childhood friends from Ireland reunited in Montauk. Ruthie had only been in New York a year, so she was full of gossip of home. Finally she just blurted out how Orla O'Connell had just had twins just before Ruthie left for New York. She said she'd bet they will be good looking boys like their dad, but they sure did have the red hair of their mom.

So there it was, Orla had married Sean O'Connell. Leem laughed. He liked Sean, thought highly of him, and knew Orla would be okay. It was like a huge weight had been lifted from his back. He then focused in on Ruthie McCarthy's eyes and hers did likewise. It seemed to be Ruthie's first trip to Montauk. She had caught the train from the city for the parade with friends who had worked at Gosman's a few years back. Now she was staring into Leem Reilly's eyes like she was watching the universe form and it seemed he was having the same reaction. Slowly they made it back to the cottage, yapping about home and looking at the western sky over Block Island Sound and Gardiner's Bay, the twinkle of the stars seemed to stir some deep emotions of a small Irish village they now both seemed to miss.