The Irish Eyes Have It

Phoenix, 1987. Two eighteen-year-olds, thirty-two hundred dollars, and a 1965 Mustang with no heat. Joe and Tracy leave for Las Vegas to get married and never quite manage it. What they manage instead is Colorado Springs — an empty apartment, two blankets on the floor, a plug-in radio, and a winter neither of them was dressed for. Then Tracy makes a friend. Melanie is twenty-seven, works part-time at their apartment complex, acts with a local theater troupe, and quickly becomes part of their small new world. By February, Tracy is in Denver. Joe is alone in the apartment, calling a house where nobody puts her on the phone. When the knock finally comes, it isn’t Tracy. It’s Melanie — and she already knows something Joe doesn’t. The Irish Eyes Have It is a quiet, unsentimental novelette about first love, shifting loyalties, and the particular cruelty of being told the truth secondhand.