But Mickey Quinn denied it, shaking his head, if you can believe there's a bar in any of the five boroughs that he hasn't been to. Perhaps a friend friend or relative on her side (few as they were) who knew something about the Bronx, or maybe Mickey Quinn, who had his territory up here. All of them speculating: perhaps the undertaker had suggested the place, or someone from the cemetery. All of them in their church clothes giving a formal air to the gray day and the ragged border of city trees and wet weeds. How in the world she ever found this place was a mystery despite the question being asked again and again as Billy's friends and family filed in-the women in high heels walking on tiptoe down the sloping path the men holding their wives' arms and umbrellas that had already been well soaked at the side of the grave. Or, lacking dialogue by John Millington Synge the set of a rural Irish play. The others parked up along the drive, first along one side, then the other the members of the funeral party walking in their fourth procession of the day (the first had been out of the church the second and third in and out of the graveyard), down the wet and rutted path to the little restaurant that, lacking only draught Guinness and a peat fire might have been a pub in rural Ireland. There was an apron of dirt and gravel in front of the building, potholed, and on the day of the funeral filled with puddles, and the first ten cars parked here, including the black limousine Maeve had ridden in. The place was at the end of a sloping driveway that started out as macadam but quickly diminished to dirt and gravel.

Pitchers of beer and of iced tea would be placed along the table at intervals and the bar left open-it being a regular business day-for anyone who wanted a drink. SOMEWHERE IN THE BRONX, only twenty minutes or so from the cemetery, Maeve found a small bar-and-grill in a wooded alcove set well off the street that was willing to serve the funeral party of forty-seven medium-rare roast beef and boiled potatoes and green beans amandine, with fruit salad to begin and vanilla ice cream to go with the coffee. To be published in December, 1997 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.

Excerpt from Charming Billy by Alice McDermott.

Charming billy book