‘I have a good lead on a housemate,’ said Badr, ‘potentially.’
‘Oh, that’s good, someone from work?’
‘Someone from my gym actually.’
I ate half my soup, washed out the bowl and poured a glass of water.
‘He’s coming to look at the place,’ said Badr, folding his bag-for-life under the sink.
‘Oh?’
‘In half an hour. Can you help me clean?’
‘Oh.’
Himself
Badr got it. In came the stranger filling the whole space. Dark blond, slightly out of breath. Black coat like something professional, black jeans, tight, muscle tee under, the wrong thing for the weather and for the other gear, these being some clothes cobbled together in a rush. Black Converse. Younger than me by a good few years I thought, though this based only on his look of unlined confidence. Touch of a tan on his face. Freckles. Unruined, possibly vain. Bigger than both Badr and I. His balance, the way he stood and moved through the spaces suggested the grace of a larger animal, predatorial, a creature that could leap and pounce, but could let you know, in subtle ways that it would not. Fuck me, I thought.
The Tour
I got myself up and smiled and shook the offered hand – handshake just as expected. Badr took the lead and guided him around the communal spaces, the living room first, the kitchen, the halls, then his room – if he wanted it, on the ground floor, view of the garden.
‘The garden is communal too, and you’ll have a key to the shed.’
The stranger stood in the centre of the room and stretched out his arms as if to try and touch both walls, though they were many more metres apart than he could touch, it was some kind of gym move, I guessed, an exercise he might like to do in his new space. When he wasn’t wearing a coat, presumably. ‘Yeah, looks great. Listen – are pets okay? If I’m interested.’
‘Pets are okay,’ said Badr, ‘like, one pet.’ Minto wouldn’t notice an animal if it pissed on his lap. Maybe then.
‘Okay cool, cool. I have a cat.’
‘I like cats,’ I said, ‘always adds something to a house.’
I wanted, after my cringe, for him to look at me like a predator would, turn those eyes on me, scoff, scorn.
‘Yes absolutely,’ was all he said, with a slightly odd smile – he turned his face from me quickly and took a breath, and my thought was that he hates me, it can’t be that he’s shy – ‘Well. Looks good. Listen – any chance I could move in tomorrow?’ He was saying, ‘I know, short notice, but my old lease is up, I have the day off, and like I was saying, Badr, I can’t stay another month . . .’
He looked around proprietorial but also preparing to leave, to be gone. If he moves in he won’t stay, I thought. Also: he looks like a celebrity, not one I know, but one who hasn’t become famous yet, but is marked to, a celebrity in waiting.
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ said Badr, ‘we need the room filled. Sooner works for us.’
‘Cool, thank you. Good meeting you both.’
And then the door was slammed shut, the walls reverbing, and Badr and I were looking out the lease to copy and show Minto, well, leave for him in the cubby.
‘Seems all right, eh?’ said Badr.
‘Yes,’ I said, too firmly. But Badr, if he knew, never spoke with me about my desires, what general part of the population I fancied, nor anything of himself on that matter. I went up to my room to worry about other people, other scenarios.
The next day Tom moved in with Mrs Boobs, and unofficially, his girlfriend.
Herself
Órla was just about the strangest person I had met apart from myself. She came the night of the housewarming, she was late, and the men of the house were tipsy, and rapidly it seemed that she was in some parallel universe way a kind of version of myself, though, as far as she let on, without the hampering awfulness that at all times I have to fight back from my brain. Mind, how would I know such things? Battlefields are sometimes as smooth as a spring meadow to look at, the terror subcutaneous, twisting roots and expanding sinkholes at the biological level. Maybe atomical.
She resembled me physically as well, to my eye, and that was encouraging. She was exactly my height, and had grey eyes – to my brown – of the same long shape and heavy lashes, and brown hair a shade lighter than mine, thick and shiny and unruly. The hair that as a child your mother frets over with the brush and dabs of spit. Stupidly, dimly encouraging it seemed. Daniel . . . I told myself, as I handed her a beer from the fridge, exchanging it for the wine she had brought.
‘So,’ said Órla. ‘Thanks. I got it at lunch so it needs to cool down.’
Irish. I couldn’t tell where from. I shied away from looking at her, as I always did, getting overwhelmed with the contact, the contract, of shared human gazes, taking the time instead to scope out the fruit situation, still five bananas in a bowl on the table. Away elsewhere in the house the macho bonding hour was long in its cups. It seemed the godlike Tom liked to laugh about bad reality TV as much as the others in the living room, and I didn’t need to be in that or any other conversation such a crowd might have.
Órla stood there in the kitchen in her blood-red coat, alert, waiting for something.
At last, I tried to zero in on her face, thinking it was about time I said something, looked at her. Something welcoming, but all I could manage, the eyes too much, a clever, crackling lively stare, was to attempt a deeper picture of this enviable stranger from her atmospherics. Then she seemed like me and also like an open vista of the sea with a high wind blowing, like a glimpse of the shore below cliffs, and the white water and somewhere seagulls crying. Eyes grey but flashing. There was a depth, is what I’m saying. This impression is of course coloured by all that came after it.
But that night: Órla’s blue scarf covering all of her neck and that dark red coat, something I would wear if I was her, because it looked excellent, made her pale face shine and that red lipstick contrasted well with all. I was somewhat awed by the moment, you can tell. Standing together we both looked good, like conspirator siblings, full of health. All that lent strength by her clever way of dressing. I made a note to get myself some oxblood cardigan at some point in the future. Órla cracked the beer, made a face drinking. ‘Nice coat,’ I said. Her eyes sought me out again, and I looked down and away again like always.
‘You’re wondering the why, aren’t you?’ said Órla, ‘I hate beer, I always drink it and hate it. Does the job, but.’
‘Not really,’ I said, opening a bottle of bitter lemon, fingering the bottles on the counter for the right one. Basic gin.
‘Oh look at you, like you know what I was going to say,’ said Órla. ‘No “why what” from you. And thanks, it’s from a charity shop.’
We sat down at the kitchen table, her trying not to break eye contact, but me, the expert at breaking it, slippery, the kind of person a security guard in a shop tries to keep in view, but who always vanishes behind the stacks. I began to wish, despite myself, that I could stop being that way. It was because of her; she was offering me something, I thought. Was it more her almost tangible mood I found so distinctive, rather than what she actually said? From the living room, the throb of music. Badr had a few friends from way back and a few friends from his office, I’d met them and felt the need to be evasive, and Tom had himself, and that was enough. His laughter came often. A pang struck me, a deep ringing sound in my chest.
‘Don’t tease,’ I said, looking at her at last, ‘I know what you mean with your “why”.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Tom, right? You’re asking me if I wonder why you’re with Tom. Instantly, like that, you’ve asked me a question to be the judge of you and him. But you phrase it or believe it – just in this instant you think I’ve come up in my mind first with the question – dilemma – of why you are together. Which is quite presumptuous of you, or—’
‘That I’d be thinking it was a preoccupation of yours?’
‘Just that,’ I answered.
Already
Órla looked at my drink, ‘Is it good, bitter lemon? I’ve never had it.’
‘Try some, I don’t have a cold.’
Órla raised the glass up to her lips. She would get red on the glass. She drank daintily. The bands on her throat moving, shadow and limn. I turned away—
‘Ah, how’d you like it?’ I said, thinking, already?
Órla wrinkled her nose, ‘It’s bitter.’
‘It is bitter,’ I said, looking at my finger swirling a circle on the table. Smiling.
‘I like it. Pour me some.’
I handed her a fresh glass. ‘I feel like I know you,’ said Órla, ‘isn’t it weird?’
‘Do you?’
Órla didn’t say anything for a while. Then – ‘You’re not – flirting with me?’
‘A moment. Could easily be confused for flirting,’ I said. ‘No, I’m not, I don’t think so anyway.’
‘You have one of those faces,’ said Órla, ‘the way you move about. Avoiding my eye. Smiling a lot.’
‘Does Tom have one of those faces?’
‘Is it nerves?’
We both laughed.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘This conversation’s all weird, isn’t it. Started the wrong way round.’
‘I like talking to you,’ said Órla. ‘Let’s talk about some big topic for a while.’
‘I think we were, obliquely,’ I said.
Órla shrugged. ‘Tom – do you think he’ll settle in well?’
‘You sound like his mum,’ I said. But Órla laughed.
‘We’re not, like— I think this could be good for him,’ she said.
‘Are you getting warm? Can I take your coat?’
‘Aye, you could put it in Tom’s room,’
‘I suppose you – might – be here a bit . . .’
‘I promise not to become one of those live-in girlfriends, not paying any rent, eating all your cheese on the sly.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ I said. I picked up the bundle of her coat and walked into Tom’s room. The first time I had been in it as Tom’s room. I stood for a second. Boxes. A strange smell, Tom’s cologne, I supposed, obliterating what it had smelled like before, of vapourised weed; I sniffed, trying to be subtle. It smelled now like white light, you must know what I mean; like light on snow, like green branches, broken. The cat absent but there in its white-haired blanket on the chair. The sound of Órla’s chair scraping on the floor. I put down the coat and I thumped my heart with the flat of my hand, just once.
‘He likes that poster a lot,’ she said. Silent feet. She was standing beside me, we were both facing the same direction.
‘‘‘Reach to your dream by the beautiful ocean.” Very motivational.’
‘It’s Japanese. And ironic,’ said Órla, ‘at least, so he says.’
There was laughter from the other room, at which the two of us laughed.
‘Do you love him?’ I asked. I had meant to ask, how long have you been going out, but it amounted to the same thing. Órla breathed in a little bit, then went to the hair-strewn blanket and stroked it.
‘I was there when he rescued the cat,’ she said, ‘he was drunk but he wanted to help her. She was in an abandoned building. He broke a window, lifted her out. And when he came out his knuckles were all messed up, looked like he had been fighting. That’s what he told people. Fighting a building to rescue a cat.’
A pause.
‘God it’s weird, isn’t it? To talk so quick like this. He’s – anyway, more than he seems.’
I made approving sounds; I didn’t know quite what to think about where she had come from, what world we had grown up together on, quite apart from this one we now found ourselves in.
Órla and I left Tom’s room and went to sit on the stairs.
‘Will we wake the old guy?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if he sleeps anyway.’
‘What, he’s in there, reading from the stack, keeping up on how to be immortal?’
‘Badr told you about the books, hey? Immortal old man with a bookish tendency. Yes. He’ll outlive all of us. It’s his house. We’re just perching in it.’
‘You’d be what bird, exactly?’
I sipped my drink, ‘Parrot.’
‘I had you for a crow myself. And so— Hey, do you think people who have houses get to live longer? Live more real lives than renters?’ said Órla.
‘Ouch,’ I said. I smiled in the way we always do, those of us who will never have money or a place in the world – two unconnected things. ‘Ehhh,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ she said, conceding.
Pale Like Grass Dead Almost
Somehow the hours had passed and I and Órla had spoken it all away learning tilted grand things about each other – and then we were making a snack. Tom got sleepy, he came into the kitchen – Badr upstairs to sleep, the guests away home – billows of colder air, we had moved on to get sustenance, now so had this new third. He looked into the fridge with drunken sincerity.
‘Toastie?’ I offered the plate.
‘Mmm,’ said Tom, putting it up to his mouth, closing his eyes, bit down. Órla, perched on the countertop, already to the crusts and talking away with her mouth full about an old cookbook of her grandmother’s, lies in it, stolen recipes, then on to a child who had been born, his father a priest, and given away to a cousin of the family.
‘I’m off to bed,’ said Tom.
‘Oh, is that how it is,’ said Órla, lifting one tight-covered leg to point in his direction. Now, this late, her top sliding off her shoulder. I all still in a marvel at her. This twin I’d never had. This lucky one.
Tom moved in smoothly and picked her up in his arms. Órla wiped her fingers on his sleeve.
‘And you’re coming with me,’ he said in a low voice. I found myself opening the window, just cracking it for the air. The air was good outside, I envied those who had left. I was going to go outside, after they’d gone. To bed. When I turned round however Tom had dropped Órla back on the counter and was kissing her, his thumbs running up her thighs, her arms around his shoulders. I turned, hesitated, picked up a beer, a second one. Then I looked back. Órla had her eyes open, kissing Tom, and she looked at me, directly.
Lights
I left by the kitchen door, closed it firmly behind me, and sat on the swing, feeling vaguely… Disgusted? No. Turned on? Ah, I wasn’t sure. Yes a little, and much else besides going on. Women were not so much a source of this kind of thing. Displacement, then. But in any case it’s a fool’s errand to try to lay it all out clearly in taxonomy. Emotions have granularity: they respond and evolve to each contrasting situation you find yourself in, so rich is life, so much verve and pounding – texture, and poignancy. Look at yourself, Daniel, I thought. The way she knows and looks at me so quickly, this is some kind of message passing between us. She loves him and she doesn’t know it herself, so my job, eventually, will be the noble route to help her hash that out, and move myself on to fantasising about another dumb straight boy. These and such other types of indulgent late evening shit, in the garden, with the lights going out in the house, with everyone casting themselves adrift into the booze-eased night but me. Here we return, almost, to where it begins.
I like that she is not a stranger to me, I thought. Flashing eyes that lay herself open, scrutinising me at the same time, that’s a bit of a gift. No one wants to be seen more than me. I drank more of the beer and felt cold creeping up my legs. I thought that I would learn more about her and what she wanted; what’s with her and Tom – what does Tom want? He’s the one. To get fucked. She’s going back with him into that room. They are fucking on his bed. It’s not his doing, it’s hers. Her desire, getting him to – I winced at this thought as if it were one of the intrusive ones. But it was all me, and did not really hurt. Two people were together and I was left out, and that was just the world being the world. I meant no sabotage or creep, I had nothing in my heart, other than the violence and in
finite loop of violent acts, dulled at present, thank God. Nothing, I thought, outside, to do with them inside.
But Not Yet
It was later. Foxes crying outside, huffing, foxes in the lanes behind the houses. I was awake for the hour when the bakers and the delivery men, now up and dressed in the dark, are leaving in the dark. A neighbour was rolling the bins to the kerb. A rumble felt in the teeth.
It was later, time flickering. This was habit: sleeping all right, shadowy terrible violences as usual and Badr’s roast chicken, occasionally looking at that stolen book, not reading it so much as acknowledging it for a future time, at fallow then, and Tom was a late riser, I supposed, as I hardly ever saw him. Stayed out longer too, I hardly ever went out after coming in from work but he never seemed to come back. It had been a few weeks. Just a glimpse would do me, then. Foxes crying, shortcut through the lanes to the library, to the rattling carts and typing, or down to my place of work in the digital archive. I was given nothing to go on. And Órla, I hadn’t seen her at all, and missed her the more, even, than my crush, the way that if you woke to realise mirrors all were without your reflection you’d wonder what was going on with your being in the world.
Call me Daniel the monk: for those new weeks, at least where it counted, mostly sexual and socially inactive in the world, though my thoughts I confess were not pure. But I was strong. And so I worked. And to do so, this task of surviving and life’s work, kept out of everything’s way, and outside of it, hands in my back pockets, scarf soft at my neck as I breathed into it. The rain, wind. Books arriving for Minto. Minto asking me via note to sell some read ones. The printer was almost ready to go into use. I had to get the room fitted out for perfect storage. Badr got a pay rise. I got a cold and recovered binge-watching a comedy series on Netflix. Not miserable. At night the sounds of sex in the house. At night Lemsip and gin, mixed together. No word from Mark for a while, perhaps he knew about the diary, perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps Mark, after a lifetime, had decided he hated me, and was letting me out of his life this way, by silence. Just the usual myself, my only always reality of dreadful things.
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