He still had his wife, of course—their supposed splitting up as told to him in the simworld had been contrived simply to account for Evelyn’s absence, since after her return to Boston nothing could have induced her to have anything further to do with the Oz project. But Corrigan could only think of her as a stranger from long ago.
He did go up to Boston to see her. And she found great changes in the person who, just a matter of a few weeks before, she had come to despise. The self-assuredness that had turned into arrogance, and the pride that had soured into conceit were no more; but neither were the blithe youth and roguishness that had captured her, with which they might have grown together. At the same time, she, to him, had become childlike. For with Corrigan, it had not been a matter of space for a few weeks. A chasm existed that no amount of sacrificial forbearance could hope to bridge. They mended the space for wounded feelings, confessed to some regrets, and promised that they would remain friends. Three days later, Evelyn filed the papers finalizing the arrangement.
By that time, the notices of impending lawsuits, corporate and private, were already flying between CLC, F & F, F & F’s clients, various members of the funding consortium, and dozens of involved individuals from all of them. Corrigan was advised that he had a solid case for millions. There was deceit with malicious intent, conspiracy to defraud, violation of patent rights, criminal abuse and neglect, willful and malicious misinformation and withholding of information, violation of just about every employment act, violation of contract, breach of rights, technical assault and abduction; in addition, a case charging the entirety of his collateral domestic and marital problems would be indefensible. Corrigan listened as the words echoed around him: force and counterforce; strengths and weaknesses; attack and defense; strategy and counterstrategy . . . And somehow, in spite of all his earlier passions, none of it seemed worth the real cost anymore. In the end, he just walked away.
* * *
The green slopes rising up to the mountains behind Ballygarven were splashed with purple patches of heather. On the neck of water beyond the town, a fishing boat trailing a cloud of screeching gulls chugged its way out past the headland toward the open sea.
Wearing jeans, sturdy boots, and an Aran sweater, Corrigan arrived on foot at the Cobh Hotel at a little after noon, having spent the morning on his own, walking on the cliffs, looking at the ocean, feeling the wind, and thinking. Brendan Maguire was already there at the bar with a pint of stout, talking to Rooney and a couple of the locals. Dermot Leavey was with him.
“Ah, here’s the American himself now,” Rooney said as Corrigan joined them. “A pint, Joe, is it?”
“A well-earned one, I’ll have you know. And enough of this `American,’ if you please. Can’t a man take a break to see somewhere else for a while without it following him around for the rest of his life?”
“Here, this one’s mine,” Maguire said, producing a five-pound note as Corrigan reached toward his pocket.
“So did you have a good wander around this morning?” Dermot asked.
“I saw a lot, anyway.”
“You’ll be joining Brendan and his crowd up at the Rectory, I’m told,” Rooney observed, holding a foaming glass under the tap.
“That’s the way it looks,” Corrigan said.
“Aren’t we after telling you the last time you were here that you’d get tired of all that paranoia and dashing around soon enough?” Rooney said.
Corrigan held up a hand in a what-can-I-say? gesture. “Well, here I am. I guess I’m learning how to be a self-unmade man.”
Rooney grinned as he set down the glass. “Oh, you remembered that, did you? Ah well, working up there with them professors and all only gets you halfway there, you understand. Next you have to go all the way and try your hand at tending a bar. You’d be astounded at some of the people you meet. It’s the only form of true philosophy left.”
“Is that a fact, now?” Corrigan smiled distantly to himself and left it at that.