by Colin McAdam
He saw her only once that night. The hallway was dark, so he saw his own face transparently imprinted on the scene, a sort of smoky portrait that he ignored as he strained to look through it to the hall. Every now and then his face would become his focus, but he paid little attention, looked through it again because acknowledging it would remind him that he was standing on a stranger’s fence, and that the flesh around his jaw was beginning to soften in a mournful way.
Lights appeared under doors, altering his view, altering his face. And then finally a door was opened, throwing light into the hall, and he saw Renée in her pyjamas. He was beginning to forget himself.
ON THURSDAY EVENING he showered thoroughly and looked forward to the dinner. Renée dominated his thoughts at that point because she was the only new peer he had worked with so far. Eleanor Thomas seemed a bit severe; Randolph seemed neglible; Leonard, frankly, wore a dogsmell tweed; and his wife, Matty, if she was able to put up with a husband like Leonard, was not going to be of interest. But Renée; there might be some fun with Renée. Over and over he thought of how he might greet her, what they might talk about in the car on the way to dinner, after the dinner. He thought he might as well kiss her when they met, get it over with, kiss her deeply if she liked, and then touch her thigh through dinner. And afterward . . . He showered until there was no hot water left.
He drove to Renée’s, proffered his lips in greeting and as a taste of things to come, but she took his hand, ignored his lips, and said, “Thanks for picking me up.”
She wasn’t wearing the skirt he had imagined, the space between his car seats was greater than he had remembered, and his interest had been lowered anyway because of his long and vigorous shower.
Not being kissed when one’s lips are pushed forward is humiliating, of course, so he quietly thought about that while he drove her to the restaurant. “Am I nothing but a colleague?” And at dinner, as soon as he met Matty, the confusion was compounded. My God, there was something vital about Matty, a confidence (that was it, confidence, he was already yearning for it then, you see), and a smile behind her words as though she knew what liars words can be but didn’t mind a bit.
No, he did not touch Renée’s thigh during dinner. No, he did not, over coffee, feel her stockinged foot between his legs.
But, yes, he slept with her that night. He drove her home, but halfway there, with Matty on his mind (that mouth) he asked Renée if she would like to go to his place for a drink. And in the car (why not?), before they went inside his house, he leaned over to present his lips again, and, with Matty on his mind, he kissed Renée and she met his tongue.
3
STAND THERE WITH me in front of the walls of waiting. A young Jerry waiting for fifteen days for hips and hope and hair curled like questions. Don’t look at me, because I looked like a kid, but listen to what I was thinking.
I was thinking of finishing touches. Sanding the walls of the last Rossi house, getting it ready for the painters.
I guess we can call what happened next a sort of beginning, the important beginning, the beginning of something that I didn’t notice then or didn’t want to notice and maybe only noticed a few days ago when I started thinking about all this. But there it was, definitely, by her goddamn little truck years ago. I don’t even know what to call it or how to describe it, and if I had to build it I wouldn’t be able to make a mix thin enough.
The fifteen days passed and I was walking back to Mrs. Brookner’s after work one night, and I saw Kathleen’s truck parked on the wrong side of the road. I didn’t know whether anyone was in it because the lights were off, but the serving window was down which she usually closed when she wasn’t around. I walked up to it and maybe I shat in my underwear a bit and I knocked on the side of the truck but there was no answer. I said “Kathleen?” through the window but I couldn’t hear anything, and then I said it again in a higher voice like a little sister.
“Kathleen?”
She came to the window looking tidy and beautiful and completely different like she was borrowing someone’s blood.
“It’s Jer.”
“I’m not serving.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Just so yiz know. I’m not serving. It’s what, it’s eight o’clock, and there’s no reason for me to be serving anyone.”
“Right.”
“I’m just having, I’m just taking a nap in there, in the back.”
“Sorry.”
“So you woke me up.”
“Sorry. I saw the truck.”
“And you were hungry.”
“No.”
“Well, everything’s turned off, the griddle and all that and I can’t be arsed to make anything, and there’s no need or reason.”
“I just saw the truck, and I was seeing whether, you know, you were all right. Where you’ve been.”
“Since when?”
“Since, you know, a couple of weeks.”
“What do ya mean couple of weeks? Where have I been? I’ve been everywhere I always am. In this truck. Where have you been, if it’s any of my business?”
I told her where I’d been.
“Well, I don’t know about all that, there, Jer, because, we’ve not been far apart and it’s not like I’ve got to tell any fella where I’ve been and all, like he’s the priest who’s gonna tell me mam. I’m bloody tired at the moment to be honest with yiz.”
“Well, like I says . . .”
“Yeah, well, it’s like I says too, I’ve been doing nothing to make someone come asking after me like he’s Father Flippin McGuinty, especially when I’ve just been here and if I haven’t seen him it’s not my fault. I’ve been here, right here in this spot for a couple of days with the men from the DeFalco site coming over every day for lunches and sandwiches and that, you know, for a couple of days, and you can ask them.”
Which wasn’t true because I’d been all over looking for her and I was sure I would have noticed that truck right there. Even if I never really looked away from the Rossi walls.
“And I’ve been driving around to new areas because that’s the point, Jerry, of having this van. Ya drive around and find the new business, and so I’ve been working. And I was right here. And we saw each other just a few days ago, anyway, not a couple of weeks, Jerry. We had dinner, remember?”
“That was fifteen days ago.”
“What’s wrong with yiz?”
“It was.”
“We had that dinner with all the talk and that. And afterward. I remember all of it. That was just a few days ago. I don’t like that, Jerry. I don’t like a man telling me what time it is. I know where I am and how long I’ve been here and it’s always someone telling you where ya should be or where ya should have been, and that’s what you’re doing, Jerry, so I wouldn’t mind, if you’ll excuse me, if you’d flippin stop, is all. I was having a nap back there, a bit of a nap after a long day of selling the sandwiches to the DeFalco men who’s a bunch of flirts, and getting whistled at all day and I was tired of playing the game and I’ve gone and run out of the feckin sausages, so I got tired. It was just a moment of peace right now where a woman can have a small nip and a nap and God help her for relaxing. And maybe you couldn’t have known, but you might know in the future, and, you know, here I am after a perfectly honest day’s work and I’m confused because I just woke up and I’ve no idea what yiz are talking about with fifteen days like I just went asleep for fifteen days in some other city and I’m supposed to be here more often serving sausages and that.”
“I’m sorry. I was, I don’t know, maybe I’m . . . but I was worried, because, you know, fifteen, or so, days, and why was the truck on the wrong side of the road, is what I was worried about.”
“Well, it’s bollocks to be worried. I don’t know. The truck, the truck is on this side of the road because I was tired and not thinking. I suppose you’ve never walked into the wrong room you’re building or forgotten something, or maybe not, but that’s the reason for the truck. And it�
��s all the wrong side of the road in this country. And I’ve been thinking a lot since we had dinner a couple of days ago, Jerry, about a lot of things and I need to get my head together just now so don’t expect me to be all nice and that. I’m not telling you, I’m not going to tell you to feck off or anything, but it’s a fine thing to do, disappearing like that and then just turning up at the window looking for a sandwich.”
“I wasn’t looking for a sandwich.”
“Well, whatever yiz are doing, I’m not in the mood. You’ve confused me.”
So I remember that at some point I turned my mind again to how the last fifteen days had passed, just for a minute while she looked over my face for all the things wrong with it. And I saw nothing but those young white walls at first. She was looking at me thinking that’s a small head on him and a greasy nose and he’s not as smart as I thought; and I pressed my mind hard against what I’d been doing, what I’d been thinking.
Sometimes truth has a taste like smoke or metal. I hate it. I close my eyes, think of something else. I think: Forget it. Eventually it goes.
Anyway the troubles with Kath, usually, see, it was all something like a draft you don’t notice till you’re freezing. That was the day the crack appeared, maybe.
But next thing you know I’m in her truck.
SO IS IT THE STORY of a woman warming to her man?
My warm Kathleen.
A woman wakes up angry, growls a bit, looks at her man’s gentle face and warms into steam?
She invites him up into her truck to stand by the bed where they both see the dent of her happier self and all their confusion is gone?
It was something like that, and excuse me if part of me wants to say you’re goddamn right it was. I can remember the dark of the tarmac on the way to her truck’s door, the yellow of the door, the smell of the truck—all of it certain, and all of it coloring over the minutes before.
I can remember the tickling heat of the truck inside like static, and there was that smell of pork that comforts and makes you sick at the same time. I wasn’t so nervous as I had been, even though there was now a bed back there squinting at me through blankets like a challenge. I didn’t ask her about the bed because now was a time for a quiet steady Jerry.
And quiet and steady he was, my friend, firm on the dizzying world. I could tell you all about it. Our squirming, what I look like in the nude. You might enjoy that.
Instead I will tell you about a line like “S” and the taste of the milk of lost hope.
I have known a number of surveyors in my life, a lot of good solid men as precise as their tools. And I have stood with them on some beautiful land and wondered at how they can gauge so calmly all those delicate misleading lines around them. Marking and measuring and rarely being taken in. I remember standing by one of them once, looking at a fairly simple plot of land by a creek that I was going to build on, and he was working there quiet, measuring the curve of the shore when all of a sudden he stood up from his slouch, packed up, never finished his report and I never heard from him again. It was the only love of a line I had seen as strong as the one I had for Kathleen’s as she stood there inviting a kiss.
Now there was none of that “I was so happy, I didn’t know where I was.” When you’re happy you know exactly where you are and I was definitely naked in the truck of Kathleen Herlihy. I was aware as I have ever been. I was aware enough to notice this taste that I can tell you about now and happy enough to ignore it then.
I ignored it for a lifetime. It was on her mouth and on her neck and on every other inch I was lucky enough to visit. As much a smell as a taste. The right touch would have made it weep from her skin and declare itself honestly, but I never had the right touch. And I don’t want to suggest that there was anything obviously wrong. I couldn’t name the taste then.
Maybe it was something like vinegar.
SO WE WERE LYING on the bed in the back, having fallen asleep and awakened, and I was proud because I had done well on top of her, when she told me she had moved out of her apartment. That’s why the bed was there.
“I couldn’t afford it any more,” she said, “and I like it in here besides. I told yiz I was going to do that.”
“When did you tell me that?”
“The other day. So I just did it yesterday, just packed up and told the landlady her apartment was awful because that’s who I am, and I moved all of my things in here, and I think, Jer, that the bed fits nice.”
“So it does,” I said.
“And I sold a couple of records and some other things, which is sad but feck it. I have to say, Jerry, that I’m a bit confused at the moment, you know, not quite myself, but when it all settles I’ll be glad I done what I did. Cause it’s not just the money. I don’t mind telling yuz I couldn’t afford rent and that won’t surprise you cause yer wise, but I would have done this anyways, moved into this van. Freedom, Jerry, is what we’re lying on. An apartment that moves with your life. Cause Jerry, I don’t know whether it makes any sense, and God I’m craving something, something sweet or maybe fried, but having an apartment that moves around with your life makes so much more sense than moving your life into some sort of space you wouldn’t go to otherwise, right? That’s what came to me in a sort of flash, even though I’m totally penniless and that’s why I moved.”
“But you’re making money.”
“Oh, sure, I’m making money but it all goes, you know, on petrol, on gas or whatnot? Most of it. All of it. And there’s lots of sites around to make money from and I think word’s round that my food warms the gut, but it’s driving to the sites that’s the problem, and between them. All that petrol, and keeping the thing running while I’m serving, and that. Keeping the . . . keeping the oil hot, and that. But now at least I can just park at the site I want to start from next morning, I don’t have to get up so flippin early. I can drive to the Y sometimes to clean up, but I don’t get dirty generally speaking cause I’m a lady. Not like you lot. And to tell ya the truth, when it all settles down a bit, I’m a bit bloody excited. And you’re lovely. So I’ve got to do a bit of planning, you know, do things at night that’ll be right in the morning. If I’m out say somewheres else I’ve got to remember to park near where I want to be the next morning. But that’s not difficult and I’m not a flippin eejit. There’s some cement or something on your finger that’s hurting me, Jer, just on my stomach there if you don’t mind. So it’s a big change, moving, you see, but I’m personally in favor of that.”
Even though the place was decorated with nothing but grease, there was something womanly about it, and I let Kathleen know that I found it all exciting. We started talking again about twenty minutes later, and I started thinking about the situation a little more deeply. Kathleen was up digging out some doughnuts which she wanted, having poured us both a whiskey, and I was sitting up thinking about my own room in the basement.
As happy as Kathleen seemed with the idea of living in her truck, I thought there was something not right about it, and the whole situation seemed urgent to me. Why was I in a basement and she in a truck? It was my duty, which I was too excited to mention, to put us both in our own house, and I was pleased to think of the loan I’d got and my plans for my first development.
“I’m feckin exhausted,” she said.
AND I BOUGHT land. Three thousand, three hundred and fifty-five dollars is what I paid for thirty-two acres, and if you think that is cheap you are not as stupid as the man who sold it. He thought I was giving him a lifetime’s weight of gold, and I haggled over that last fifty-five dollars to convince him that I was. When we turned away from each other after we shook hands I’m sure we both had the same smile, and I know for a fact that he died a happy man because he wrapped a beautiful new Mustang around a lamppost six weeks later.
No development of land in the history of concrete-laying man has ever been a pure success unless it was bought from someone desperate or confused. If you see land for sale or land you want, don’t measure it or stare at
it or plan how much you would pay. Go to the nearest bar or church, find out from the locals what sort of person owns the land, and if he’s a bankrupt, drunk or idiot, buy it. Like I said, in those early days it was hard to go wrong, but the fact that that man was a happy old fool didn’t hurt.
I knew from what I’d seen, from knowing how long the building alone could take, that there was no point in sitting around being careful. Once I bought that land, the worst thing I could have done was sit on it and dream. I had already got a good corrupt surveyor who was willing to trespass to have a look at the land before I bought it, and he figured I could divide it into at least eighty-five lots, throwing bits away for paths, the road, and taking into account a few of those surprises that land always carries in its coat.
Once I bought it, the surveyor went out there properly and pegged it, and while he was walking around with string and orange tape, I was always near him. I met Johnny Cooper out there and told him, asked him, to look at what he would build on, saying I would meet him there in a month if he wanted, when I expected municipal approval. I said I’d match his wages at first, and if he helped me get things going quick I’d give him time and a half.
I needed at least six other men, and sometimes more than that, so I turned my eyes over all the men I’d worked with during the past couple of years. Antonioni I would definitely want for the wood, Espolito and Calzone I hated but needed for strength. Men can be good with their hands, but they’re not good builders unless they can stand for nineteen hours in the rain. I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford the most experienced builders I had worked with, but the strong ones who were quick were what I hoped for. Tony Antonioni and Johnny Cooper would be worth some extra expense. I’ll tell you the rest of their names when I need to.
I worked nights at other jobs, and spent the days visiting other sites to meet the men I wanted or the men I could afford. One of them, Edgar Davies, had started his own crew. Some of the others said yes, some laughed at me. It took me longer than I expected.