T hey had found a place for themselves along the railing above the entry stairs, with a clear view of the screen, and he hoped Niamh would be satisfied. Already, with the crowd swelling and pushing against them as it surged back inside following halftime, she was turning to look past his shoulder as if they might find a better spot.

“It’s the best we can do love,” he assured her, before burrowing through the green and white cotton to kiss her neck. He smelled her, a taint of sweat, a freshness from the rain too. She turned back to face the match and adjusted the scarf to sit higher on her shoulders. He tried to whisper into her ear, but was trumped by a man elbowing him in the ribs, cursing “for feck’s sake” as he forced himself past.

Michael gave the man room then took a drink, searching with his other hand for the flesh of Niamh’s back. He found it between the “Roy Keane” of her half-jersey and the beltline of her trousers. He was pleased she did not move away. Shouts of “Come on Ireland!” and “That’s better Ireland!” had returned. Above the rough terrain of heads, the players were set against a sea of grass, lining up single file along the far sideline for a throw-in. Michael felt as sure as his heart beat that Ireland would equalize soon. They must. The numbers hung in his head: train tickets €44, taxis €38, last night’s room a mad splurge of €195, dinner another €60, the scarf and jerseys €100, and there was still to come lunch, dinner, and the rest of the drinks. It added up so fast. In 24 hours, the weekend would cost him nearly two weeks’ salary, never mind the wager.

He fought off the thought and reminded himself of what had already been gained. She’d been so pleased when he’d announced the plan the night before. They couldn’t miss seeing it in special fashion, he insisted. The match had prompted such liveliness. “Everyone has to choose a side,” he would goad her, “and everyone from Cork has to choose Keane’s.” Her cheeks would redden, the pitch of her voice would rise, and her eyes would fill with the old heat. “Was the squad not better off without Keane?” he’d ask to keep the passions going. “Hasn’t McCarthy saved his job by taking the very squad he’s gutted to the quarterfinal?” Sometimes as they calmed themselves, both of them flushed, she would let him touch her. Her acceptance seemed to catch even her off guard. There was no doubt the Keane-McCarthy row, splashed across every newspaper, ricocheting through every pub, had turned to luck in its own way. To lose the child eleven weeks in after two years of trying only to find the procedure their only chance had been unfair. The parting was impossible to forget. It was a scar.

Arrangements had been made, and on Holy Thursday, they had stood with Father Karl at Renvyle Cemetery as the child, a boy as it turned out, was let go. Father Karl had read the scripture while Michael felt Niamh’s hand turn clammy in his, and then the moment was over and her voice was damp and clotted, mumbling, “This can’t be.” He had found himself kneeling in the dirt over the boy. Denis, they’d called him. It was the first Easter weekend in years they’d attended each day’s Mass, a little trade off, a little prayer for a little mercy, a little humility for a little consolation. The April light had been pure and gorgeous, sharp and gleaming as a blade.

Seven long, terrible weeks later, had come the disruption at Saipan. It was a new subject, and Michael tried to imagine it was answered prayers. Anything was better than the tears and silence. “Keane had never wanted to be in Saipan,” he joked. “McCarthy was right to send him home.” “Your Cork star shouldn’t be permitted to return if he begged.” Occasionally he went too far, and the debate wound itself into rage and curses. Not during their six years had he heard her speak like that. But he could live with it. He could live with it for long time if it kept the death from her eyes. When she had finally gotten through to challenge a caller to the Gerry Ryan show who had defended McCarthy, he had been listening to the program while delivering a Hyundai, and Gerry concluded as if surprised, “There’s a Cork girl with a tongue in her mouth.” His own Niamh, drawing a comment from Gerry Ryan.

At night the memories were worst. The helpless choke of her denial. The thought of what the boy, any child, might have become. His own handprints in the dirt. The doctor’s analogy was stupid and unforgivable. “Like a weak offense,” he had said. “The sperm can’t get through the egg’s coating like it should,” he’d explained, looking Michael in the eye, as if the facts were not enough. “Like a shot that can’t cross the goal,” he’d said. He’d actually uttered the words. Ashamed by the doctor’s pity, Michael turned away, only to find the poster of a man’s body, skinless, the musculature corded, twisted salmon flesh. The room smelled dead, of formaldehyde or some other poison. Like a shot. Michael’s guts still burned to think of it. He remembered the doctor’s framed diploma, and seeing his own reflection faintly in the glass. IVF-ICSI, the doctor had called it. It was a curse’s sound. But the doctor had said it was like a vaccine. They would put his sperm inside a needle, and shoot it into Niamh’s eggs. Outside the office, before he could even hope to change the subject, she had said it would be a miracle. She had said it the moment they got into the car, the scent of barley rising from the silver kegs along the curb in front of the pub next to the medical building giving a taint of rot to the air. She couldn’t wait to say it. He could not reply. It would take forever to save that much. But had they any choice? You can trade for anything, he knew. You found yourself wanting, and you put something on the line. Maybe it would take forever to save for it, but maybe they were due a piece of luck. Once he even tossed out the thought, as if on a whim. He got what he had expected.

“Don’t even joke about it Michael Thomas Brennan,” she had answered, his full name a manner of shutting the door.

Only the promise of the match had altered the state of things. How could he not capitalize? The doctor had given them a 50 percent chance. It was not bad at all. He wanted her back. He wanted his luck back. And why not let it unfold in Dublin? Dublin was as good a place as any. Besides, she could use the distraction. It was no wonder it had taken little to convince her to go. When they’d gotten there, she had even led the way to North Great George’s Street, as if enthused, her sister having reached them on Niamh’s mobile phone.

“Just a coincidence,” she’d explained, “Lee’s being in Dublin too,” as if having to justify her enthusiasm, as if Michael would not gladly support it, no matter what he thought of the sister, even if it meant missing a bit of the match. The sister had been a lump as usual, but the detour was needed, an alteration in the patch of unfortunate turns the plans had somehow brought. The train had been so crowded by the time it reached Athenry Station that he had had to stand for the entire three-hour trip, Niamh sunken into a seat he’d fashioned from their duffle bag. The line at the snack bar was so long there was no hope of getting a beer. It didn’t help that, forced to settle in the linkage-space between cars, they had been surrounded by Spaniards, students from NUI-Galway he figured, their conversation a barrage he could not understand. At Heuston, they had waited at the taxi rank for 20 minutes. He watched the chuffing buses and lorries load and unload along the street and saw a city bursting with energy, with life, and nearly tasted it, nearly touched it with the simple reaching out of a hand. Mercedes Benz’s, Volvo’s, BMW’s, and Alfa Romeo’s, cars he admired, flowed past by the dozens right in front of him, full of people on their way. Then the cab got caught in traffic along the quays. The Liffey itself seemed to move faster than them. It didn’t help to have to listen to the radio announcers stress how capable Spain’s strikers were of outplaying Ireland. The curses fell again from Niamh’s mouth. Even the cabbie muttered, “Jaysus missus.”

Michael had been nudged in the ribs. Above her shoulder, Niamh was holding up her empty glass, the sucked sliver of lemon sitting at the dry bottom. Michael finished his Guinness and took it from her. It was brutal to pull his attention from the match. Ireland was running them off the pitch. The equalizer would surely come.

Glancing sideways to keep watching, he passed faces painted in stripes of white and green, heads capped off in drooping cotton top hats or polyester Viking helmets fashioned in shades of the tricolors. In every hand sat a pint or a glass. Nearly every shirt was the same as his and Niamh’s. Someone had made a fortune on them, he knew. “Ireland,” the jerseys stated in block letters, or “World Cup 2002” alongside the Eircom, World Cup, and Umbro logos. It was Celtic pride, modern Ireland on the edge of history, the whole city like this place, about to explode. Here and there between the heads he could see a few oversized Styrofoam hands with index fingers raised in a declaration, and in his very lungs feel the fire in the room, how much everyone wanted to be seen as the best, the unequivocal best. People leaned into mobile phones, trying to shout above the noise. Cigarette smoke hung in the air like a haze. All I want, he thought, is one break.

Arriving at the bar, he waited to catch the barman’s eye. Eleven to five, Paddy Power’s had promised. The cost of the procedure sat at the back of his mind like a stone. €5,800. His father would have said he was due, and he was right. “Fifty percent probability,” the doctor had predicted. He had maxxed out the second MasterCard, not that Niamh needed to know it. The girl at Paddy Power’s had been pretty, her dyed-black hair striking against the pale flesh. She had seemed to care when she’d asked, “You’re sure, are you?” He fancied the black paint of her fingernails as lucky pips on dice. He knew if he won, the chance he’d taken would not matter.

By the time he ordered another pair of drinks, he had figured the room held at least 800 people, watching like their lives depended on it. Keane’s departure had unified the lads, Michael had concluded. After the upset of the Germans, the prospects seemed legitimate. The equalizer was only taking its time coming, he insisted to himself. He looked around again. Here luck came to you. Another few hundred would rotate in and out during the match, and each person would have four drinks, he figured, on average, at a minimum. Twenty euro per head, it must be, before what would come if Ireland advanced. All over Ireland, there was the great trade off, a little cash for a little hope. His lads in Athenry would be doing the same.

“Someone’s getting rich,” he said toward a man leaning against the bar. Behind the counter, four barmen in Irish jerseys were jockeying between the dripping taps and the bottles hanging upside down from hooks like glass udders and the customers raising their euros. The cash changed hands, disappeared into the register. The barman saw Michael, took his order, and slid in front of him a Guinness from the half-dozen he had pre-arranged over a rubber grate near the tap. He moved away to get the vodka and white.

“Just got here,” the man next to him said loudly. American. “My wife’s off being literate. The World Cup and I’m here for a book,” he said, thrusting out a hand. Michael shook it.

“She is anyway,” the man continued. “Getting literate I mean. A professor. What are the odds, Bloomsday and the quarterfinals simultaneously? You know what I’m talking about?”

The barman put down Niamh’s drink. Michael handed him a ten.

“I know it well enough,” Michael said.

“What’s that?” the man asked.

Michael found himself shouting into the man’s ear about the morning, raising his head occasionally to get the screen in view as he did. He and Niamh had been ready to leave. They had shared a Guinness with Lee, watched a pair of buskers perform their acrobatics and juggle flaming sticks, watched two actors re-enact some scene from the great novel, and gone upstairs to glance around. Niamh and he had been patient, however eager for the match. Then, there he was on the landing, a member of U2.

“U2?” the man exclaimed.

“Bono,” Michael said.

“Bono,” the man repeated.

A commercial had appeared: Eircom’s overgrown mouse mascot was interrupting a staged press conference with the Irish manager. “Hire the bloody rat already,” Michael said, recalling Niamh’s own quip.

“What’s that?” the man asked.

Michael shook his head. The barman placed Michael’s change on the bar, and Michael pocketed it before lifting a drink into each hand. The American ordered a Guinness. The match had returned, and over the heads and hats, Michael saw Damien Duff dribbling down the right side, looking for an opening.

“We were with our daughter,” the American was saying. “But we didn’t meet Bono.”

“You would hardly notice him,” Michael said, not taking his eye from the screen. “Plain clothes. Black pants, white shirt, boots. The shades of course.”

“My daughter wouldn’t even know who he was,” the American shouted back. “She’s a Britney girl. Westlife. Ten years old. I’ll forgive her.”

The man’s hair had flopped over his brow, and he brushed it to the side as if to get a better look at Michael. The man’s face was sweaty, aglow. “He went into the room where they were reading the book,” Michael continued. “I managed to get his autograph. Then we had to leave. The match was already on. We didn’t even see the Spanish goal.”

“You got Bono’s autograph?” the man asked.

“Right in my pocket,” Michael continued.

“Now that’s a lucky fan,” the man said, raising his glass.

Michael responded, tapping the man’s glass with his own, and took a drink. “Time to be off,” he said. “Wife’s waiting. Work to be done.” He smiled at the man and took in the look shining from his eyes before turning to slip between two girls. Breen’s pass crossed the end line and the girls leaned together with a scream, hitting his hand and spilling some of his beer in a foamy puddle over his knuckles. By the time Denis would have been ten, it would be 2012, he had calculated. Of course, he hadn’t told the man the full story, not that it made any difference. It was the bassist, Adam Clayton, they’d seen, not Bono. And there hadn’t been time to get his autograph. Lee had opened her big mouth.

“What’s Tony O’Reilly here done now? Bet on a winner at last?” she’d said, gesturing to Michael. He had been glad to leave. They’d missed enough of the match already.

Slipping in behind Niamh, he lowered the drink over her shoulder. There was a break in the action, and she turned to comment, “That took a while. I’m parched.”

“Long wait,” he replied. “This place is making somebody millions.”

She nodded. He kissed her on the cheek, just above the short streaks of green and white paint. The smell of cigarettes had engulfed them now, and her perfume was lost in it. He added, “What an atmosphere, eh?” But she had turned back. Raul was attacking. Cries of “C’mon now Ireland” leapt from the crowd.

Michael watched with the rest, unavoidably fingering the betting slip through his pocket. In the other pocket he might have had Bono’s autograph, in a certain world. Still, something good would have to come of it all. Too many misfortunes were as good as a guarantee that things would adjust. Even check-in had been a botch. First, the hotel couldn’t figure out which Brennan he was, the clerk flipping through the records and asking him, “Are you sure it’s the Fitzwilliam you’re wanting?” Finally they were escorted to their room. Their porter barely spoke English, and it had been impossible to convey to him that they had requested a non-smoking room. Neither of them could place his east-European accent. Everyone wanted to be in Ireland these days.

At least the night’s weather at first had been agreeable and Grafton Street a lively jam. The crowd filled every space between the surrounding buildings. In the upper stories, the ancient architecture remained, unmoved and unchanged, but below, everything was alive. The jewelry flickered in the displays and the mannequins seemed to shift as the shadows and reflections of passersby slid across the glass. At one window, Niamh had stopped to admire a pair of knee-high black leather boots with two-inch heels. “Aren’t they lovely Michael?” she had said. Every time they came it seemed there were more shops: Cuba, Marks & Spencer, Carl Scarpa, A-Wear, Levi’s. At the Brown Thomas window, a low-slung dress draped on a mannequin caught Niamh’s eyes. It was shades of camouflage. A thousand euros, he guessed.

The mannequin was thin as a reed.“She should eat a sandwich,” he said, nudging Niamh, moving on. He heard so many accents he lost count: plenty of Americans and Brits, but also Spaniards, Germans, French, Dutch. Packs of Irish wove among them in tricolor clothing, many well into the drink, some trying to sing “The Fields of Athenry,” or chanting “Olé, Olé, Olé.” A pair of women wearing some kind of burkas and with eyes dark as olives approached them, hands out. Niamh insisted he give them change. Same for the Traveller boy singing in front of a bollard, his voice pubescent and cracking, an open tin can resting at his feet. No harm in a kindness, Michael told himself. He dug into his pocket and donated the first coin he could grab before he realized it was a two-euro. The boy had at least acknowledged the generosity with a tilt of his head.

The screen was torturing the crowd again with a replay of Harte’s missed penalty. They had seen it as they’d hurried from Lee toward O’Connell Street, the sidewalk slickening in the newly falling rain. Beyond the Gresham, they passed Joyce’s whore, or where it had once been, its space hidden behind the white encasement of provisional wooden walls scrawled with graffiti, the way being prepared for the Millennium Statue to come. Then they ducked out of the sprinkling rain under the awning of the newsagent’s, and Michael felt time shift speeds, slow, not pass but unravel. Ireland would have a major opportunity. So this is what dreams coming true feel like, Michael thought. Juanfran had mistimed his tackle on Duff. It was the 31st minute. The referee had raised the yellow card. They were jostling with other passers-by in the newsagent’s doorway, a small television propped above the icebox gathering their attention. He could hear the roar from the pubs spilling and scattering in the street. Then came the collective holding of breaths. Harte lined up the ball. Michael could not believe it. A penalty, and McCarthy was giving it to Harte. “He’s due,” Michael said to Niamh, to himself to calm himself. The street grew quiet, a thousand wishes and prayers holding every fan together. But it all went wrong. Harte charged the ball, lashed it. It bounced off Casillas’ chest. Kilbane was there for the rebound. Michael felt his blood stop as the shot was blasted, and blasted wide left. The camera panned, and Michael heard his own gasp join the city’s, for to Kilbane’s right there had been an open goal.

Finally they had crossed the Liffey. Plenty of match remained, that was the important thing he reminded her of. On the bridge, a girl, another Traveller, not more than 12, sat with a baseball cap upside down at her feet. Her head, matted with brown hair, was poked through a white plastic garbage bag covering her and dribbling with rain. Someone had placed a McDonald’s bag beside her, and she was looking into it. Niamh held his hand and fought through the bodies going toward O’Connell so he could dig into his pocket again and drop another coin. He did the best he could and gave her a ten-cent piece.

When they had at last reached Temple Bar, the buzz was well on. Every pub was full to the doors, bodies inside pressed against the windows. Packs of fans crossed back and forth over the cobblestone, lines from songs trailing with them, as if the match would wait. He saw the green façade of Paddy Power’s, but refused the temptation to see the late odds. Didn’t he know he would take away €6,380? Wouldn’t it be more than enough? He kept leading Niamh to their destination. They crossed the sheen of stone, dodging the odd patch of vomit, puddles of it thinning in the rain. He felt in command; she held onto him as if he were her rudder, the mob a river. They listened for a few minutes at the foot of Fitzsimons’ entrance until halftime, when people escaped into the fresh air, no matter the pissing rain. Then they had squeezed up the stairs and found a place to stand, plus the bonus of the railing to take their jackets. The large screens, as he had promised her, were up. Luck was turning. “Prayers must have been said,” he joked to Niamh, trying to encourage her with the quality of the spot. But maybe it was true. His mother would have gone to Mass that morning. She certainly would have said a few “Hail Marys” for him. He wanted to be grateful for prayers.

The match was moving fast. Smoke, noise and sweat had become webbed together, the pulse of the match beating in the air. And the Irish seemed to have measured their opponents and found themselves ready. Quinny was in, and the Spanish could hardly advance past midfield. Duff was playing like the master he was. A few times, a crossing pass dead on, a header with more sharpness, and the equalizer would have been theirs. The Irish would not, could not, keep being refused. Eight minutes to go, and Michael felt himself slipping down, thoughts merging as the time ticked away. Niamh’s words had been like a blow to the solar plexus, a ripping out of his insides. She had wept, but somehow she had said it, “We’ve lost him.” He watched Kelly break up a crossing pass, and his mind drifted to it. Not now, he resisted, but the ideas had come. The Eircom shares, a bust. The drink, a problem, he would have to admit. The bets might have been a way back if not for all the bad breaks. He hadn’t done terribly at Walsh’s considering the general decline, but his commissions had still dropped, by a third if not more. And now to think he was not fully a man. Somehow, even approaching the quarterfinals, he had kept his word. No matter how many matches and races there had been, he could assure her of that. But this time, the more he had studied the strengths and weaknesses, the more convincing the facts became. Eleven to five, it had been. Not too great a risk. A reasonable chance. The procedure might begin without delay. All he needed was a little good fortune. Five minutes left the screen said. He drained his pint. Quinny, the old soldier, would have to come through again. “C’mon Quinny!” Michael yelled, and he doubted anyone in the pub hadn’t heard him. He wanted them to hear him in South Korea.

To my dying day, those final few minutes will be with me, he thought later. He would always remember the heat of the crowd, Niamh’s body rising and leaning into his, and the flow of motion as the action on the screen seemed at once to last forever and to whirl into another world almost unseen, and then the goal, and then their embrace, and then all of life colliding back, new. He could not remember when his mind had last been so free. He would think later, as they prepared for bed, that in that moment he became as sure as he was that he lived that luck was real. There had been the pass to Quinny and his shirt in Hierro’s hand and the yellow card, and an eruption that must have shaken the building before he recognized his own voice in it. Robbie’s penalty settled things. He hugged her until he was sure the start of tears had been driven from his eyes. Verses of “The Boys in Green” and “The Fields of Athenry” and chants of “Olé, Olé, Olé” lifted from the crowd, and he sang too.

During extra time, he hardly noticed what was happening. Players from both squads dragged themselves up and down the pitch. Spain had played only ten men for most of it, but none of the lads seemed to notice, and the roar from the pub was wasted. The score rested where ordinary time, and the genius of Quinny and Robbie, had left it: 1-1. The equalizer. Thank God, he kept telling himself. He would give thanks to his mother and to Paddy Power’s and to the Holy Mother if he needed to. He would never forget every detail of how it had happened, Quinny rising, his shirt billowing, stuck in Hierro’s hand, Niamh coming into him, and the room exploding.

The air itself seemed to have been washed clean, and that night, he was deciding, Denis will not be our last. We will raise one of our own. We have had our break, he could tell her, nothing untrue about it. Only great self-control had kept him from telling her immediately. She had wiped away tears as the shootout ended. In the pub, the results had brought silence, the voices of the announcers pinpricks against a wall. They praised the Irish fortitude, the squad’s coming back from a deficit in the last minute, observing how again, just as against the Germans, they had shown the familiar grit. But the crowd had already begun untangling into the streets. He could not tell her yet. He held her without a word, events moving on the other side of the world final and cold. Cameras panned a section of South Koreans in the stadium. They were a wave of green, white and orange clothing that would have fit in Croke Park, Irish flags fluttering in their hands. He had touched the slip for comfort. What kind of Irishman, she would ask, bets his own country will not win? Your man, he would say. You must play the odds, he would explain, and the odds of advancing were five to one. In the betting parlor, you take what you’re given. He could make her see that it was a bet for them and for the child to be and a shrewd play of the odds. He was sure she would understand.

He told himself this again as Niamh curled up beneath the covers and slept. Outside the Fitzwilliam, Dublin had quieted down under a sky grown clear, and he stood at the window in the thick white cotton of the hotel robe. The moon, itself like cotton, sat dimly above the trees of St. Stephen’s Green. Across the tops of the trees, he watched the few clouds move in the sky’s blotchy light. This is my Ireland, and will be our child’s one day too, he insisted. He put his hand against the window, and then the other, and leaned his face into the cool glass. Below, the cobblestones glistened. The odd pedestrian wandered by, no longer bent against the weather. The glowing patches beneath the street lamps were still. The overloaded trash bins looked like towers into which refuse had given up trying to climb, pyramids of exhausted men. Two taxis stood in the queue, lights out, as if resting. Things were at peace, the city finally giving itself over to quiet. Only hours ago, what spirit there had been. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” the crowd had sung proudly long afterward. He wondered if the American had thought of him. There are good chances to be taken sometimes, he would like to advise the man. It had been impossible not to see that if he could parlay only half of his winnings just one time over, a real turn of events might truly follow. He could get them the procedure, and more than a little breathing room. He had tallied the figures in his thoughts. “Sunday Bloody Sunday” had been the accompaniment, blaring from every pub, only growing fainter, less frequent far into the night, like a heart refusing to lose its thrust, surrendering only at the last. The words had taken root in his ears, “I can’t believe the news today. I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.” The American had surely heard it as well. Take your chance, Michael would tell him. He knew his own odds. Fifty-fifty was more than reasonable. In their own way, the lads had shown him again what a little luck could do. They had come through as he had needed and wished for and, yes, bet, bet like someone unafraid.

Michael leaned back from the window and removed his hands and watched the shapes of his fingers and face grow faint in the fading mask of his breath until the world