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“Jesus, I wasn’t always famous, Donna. I know how to hire a car,” I replied, indignant that she’d think me that incapable. Donna eyed me for a long moment then nodded, looking relieved again.
As we headed across the concourse toward the car rental, she hugged me tightly and launched into another argument about my safety like she was my mother.
Once I had managed to reassure her, she turned on her heel and hurriedly weaved her way through the crowd toward the departure gate.
As soon as we’d been told about the change, Donna had quickly arranged her onward flight from Dublin to London, instead of from Belfast. When she knew of my arrangements for Paddy’s wedding she had seized the opportunity to visit her best friend since college, in London.
There was no way I had wanted to drag her around with me for the weekend when I had some serious socializing to do.
After watching her go, I tugged my baseball cap over my eyes, scanned the concourse again, and headed toward a row of car rental desks.
I was surprised when I saw no lines of travelers waiting, indeed it had looked deserted over in that section of the busy airport compared to everywhere else. It felt odd there wasn’t a queue given it was the weekend.
A solitary guy who appeared to be manning all the different rental desks came toward me as I approached the counter. He informed me the whole fleet of cars had already been hired out.
“How could you not know its St. Patrick’s Day this weekend? Surely you must have been aware?”
I was. I just hadn’t realized the world and its dog would have descended on Dublin for it.
“I’m afraid the whole of the fleet is out, and we’ve nothing coming back until Monday at the earliest.”
I stared for a second and wondered how I would get myself to Belfast with no car.
“Alright, can you tell me where I can get a chauffeured car please?”
“We've none of them either. All booked out. Like I said—”
“It’s St. Patrick’s Day this weekend. Gotcha,” I finished as I tried to keep my temper.
I glanced around, figuring I must have at least had a little good fortune as I hadn’t been recognized by anyone yet, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before that luck ran out. With that in mind, I had to find somewhere else to be other than the public expanse of a busy airport.
“Train station?”
“To?”
“Belfast?”
The attendant drew in a deep breath and I knew there was going to be more bad news. I needed to cut a break.
"Ah well, you see… most of the seats would have been booked… that is if the trains were running that far. They’re not. Snow you see… the Brits have got buckets of the stuff up there in Northern Ireland. No trains are reaching as far as the border. Frozen points on the tracks—even if it isn’t due to snow. Strange to have the snow this late in the year,” he mused almost to himself.
My brain went numb for a second because I was stuck in a country I hadn’t intended to be in. Luckily, they had let me in, thanks to the special relationship America has with Ireland. A visa waiver had helped with that and the immigration officer was a fan of my band, DistRoyed.
Normally I was a resourceful kind of guy, but the St. Patrick’s holiday had me beat. “Alright point me to the nearest taxi rank.”
“To be sure,” he said, which I think meant 'of course'. “Take that escalator down to the ground floor, make your way to the second set of doors—not the first as that’ll take you to the buses going to the center of town. You won’t want to be doing that this evening because it’ll be heaving with all kinds of people out trying to get merry.”
I stared at him again because he was fueling me with all this extra information I hadn’t asked for. Something told me that theme was going to continue until I reached Paddy in Belfast.
The trip was already tainted when my travel plans were thwarted, and to be told there wasn’t much I could do about it made a bad situation worse. I felt more than a little vulnerable being there without back up. All it would have taken was for some heckler who hated our band to decide to take me on because his girlfriend had the hots for me and I knew I’d be toast.
I was in a strange country, with no transport and no one to assist me. It had been a long time since I’d been in this position.
Following the car rental guy’s directions, I entered a long queue outside the airport doors. For almost forty minutes I stood in line waiting for my turn, and during that time there were more than a few double takes, but after a while they made me smile because I could see what they thought: That guy at the cab rank looks like Jamie Fontaine from DistRoyed.
Eventually—after what felt like an age—it was my turn and I slung my carry-on in the back before sliding into the front seat of the cab.
“Belfast, please,” I said with some relief.
