by Jess Howe

Created on: March 08, 2009

She had beautiful eyes - the green, misty kind they call Irish Eyes - and a lovely form to her body. Voluptuous, they'd call it. I called it sexy.

"I'll take it," I said. Impulse buying, and we could barely afford it, but hadn't I gotten money from that last commission, enough to get us food and this? "You're lovely," I told her.

Home is a small apartment on Forth Street near the Abercrombe where my grandfather used to be butler. Working for the rich has never been odd to us; it's the rules here, or so I was always taught. The only difference is women can work too now.

But, we're poor and I'd rather us be closer to the middle class - that's where they say the action is. I'd like to get my wife Flora silk stockings and more than one necklace, and I'd like a plasma television so we can watch football together instead of just the little scrunchy thing. And I'd like a bigger place. At least we pay the rent on time, not like poor people in the movies. I'd just rather be in a situation where my girl doesn't need to hang her laundry in the house on a rack or on a line between buildings.

"Hullo, Mr McCreedy," said Old Mrs Doniver as I came up the steps. She'd been out smoking again; I could smell it on her. "Flowers for your Flora? That's nice of you, but extravagant." She's pretty opinionated about everything. I just muttered something and went in. It was my night to make dinner.

I put my new little lady on the counter in the kitchen. "I'd put you in our biggest window, the living room one," I told her, "but I don't want you stolen. You're here for luck. Never met one with such eyes that didn't have it. And we need it. Please, St. Brigid, this is for you, for us."

After that things changed fast for us. I got a promotion at my job in the factory downtown where they made the jewelry I used to sell, and became a manager. So now I spent all day barking at people to fire stuff correctly and how to weld, were they sure they knew how, the idiots? That's how you have to talk if you're manager, I heard. And Flora got to be manager too, but in a different way: she got pregnant!

We moved to a new place, uptown, where we could have a bigger apartment, and then we had enough to get a house in Dublin. Flora made sure to put my little acquisition in the window, then, and get her dusted each day even if I did it too. "Thank you, you are wonderful," she'd say to her. "You have lovely eyes; they've looked into the soul of the world and seen we're worthy of better, I guess." Irish Eyes, I'd

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