Page 10 of Experiments in Offline Dating

“Now, this little boy here is very handsome.” Jackie squeezed in with yet another suitor. We’d only been in the pub for about six milliseconds. “And he likes American TV shows, don’t you, Declan?”

“I do.” Not a little boy at all, but a man around thirty. He nodded with a shy smile to the carpet.

“Plus, he’s such a snappy dresser,” Jackie added. I looked down. He wore a neon blue shirt made of some stretchy synthetic material, and those skintight jeans with the big white bleach stains on them. There was so much gel in his hair that if the need arose, he could have been flipped over and used as a weapon.

“Now, he looks a fair bit like Brad Pitt, wouldn’t ye say?” I had to cough to cover a laugh, and the barman handed me a glass of water. If there was anyone on the planet who looked less like Brad Pitt, I’d have liked to meet him. But I put my hand out.

“Hi, Declan. I’m Mira. Nice to meet you.” I’m getting the hang of this.

“Will she be dancing, Jackie?” said a fourth man I hadn’t yet been introduced to. This one looked to be older still, and was a slim whip of a man, probably a good twelve inches shorter than me.

“Ah, well, you’d have to ask her yourself, Dermot. But give the girl a chance to drink her pint first.”

I laughed, not knowing what to say. Jackie raised his Guinness, so I did the same. “Slainte,” he said. I tried to repeat it, and we all clinked pints before I tipped my glass and the most deliciously velvety Guinness I’d ever tasted flooded through all the anxious corners of my mind.

“Will you have a dance with me now?”

“Oh! Um. I really don’t know how.”

“I’ll show ye. ’Tis easy.”

“I—”

“First dance, first chance,” said Jackie with a wink, but I didn’t know what the hell it meant.

I took a moment to think through my response. “Umm . . . I’m really sorry, Dermot, but I just got in from a flight, and I’m just not quite ready to dance yet. Maybe tomorrow. Can I buy you a drink as a consolation prize?” That was very polite. Good job, Maya.

“No. I don’t drink.” And he was off, every bit as quickly as he’d arrived. Hilarious! These men do not give a flying goddamn! Zero subtlety. Like me.

It was kinda refreshing, actually.

Jackie and I made our way back outside. It was, I’ll be honest, nothing at all like what I had initially expected. It wasn’t electronic dance music with people gyrating, and nor was it traditional Irish music with people set dancing to fiddles and accordions. CDs, rather than live musicians, pumped out crackly songs through some very large speakers in a mix of what seemed to be either something like polka or something that they called “country western” but was more like what you might expect to hear in a 1950s Texan diner with the cheese factor cranked up to eleven.

More couples than I could count were swinging each other around, while the crowd of onlookers sipped their drinks and tapped their toes. Most of the dancers were about my parents’ age, but God, they were good! I had no idea what kind of dancing this was, but it was complicated and they were like clockwork—well-oiled dancing machines who had probably been doing this together for fifty-some-odd years. It was utterly charming.

“Are they really singletons, Jackie? Or couples? They look like they’ve been dancing together forever.”

“Ah, most of these people here are couples who come back every year for the dancing. Perhaps they met here a long time ago, or maybe they’ve just come to town for the craic and the memories. But of course there are some single people too—that couple there, and those, look like they’re dancing for the first time. It’s the perfect way to find out if you like someone. You’ll see, Maya. It’s the easiest thing in the world. You’ll be kicking up your heels before Sunday.”

“Will I?” I grimaced nervously.

“You’d better be, or I’ll lose a bet and ten euro to that scoundrel over there.” I laughed and took another sip. It sounded like Jackie was the scoundrel. I liked him.

“Right then.” He held out a plastic to-go cup. “Can you pour your pint in there, Maya? We’ve got to hurry up the road a little to the Matchmaker Pub. The show’s about to start.”

The Guinness was starting to work its magic, and I had almost forgotten that I wanted to leave and get some good jet-lag sleep.

“Oh. Fun. Are we going to watch a show?”

“I am! I signed you up for the Blind Date Game.”

I froze. My blood turned to ice. And then I died right there in the square, and the happy couples waltzed over my freshly dead body.

Chapter 3 An Experiment in Time Travel with Frozen Bananas

What in the deep-fried fuck?

I ran to catch up with him.