Move.
Move.
Tom turns to the side slightly, spots a number of spanners on the upper shelf, a vice-grips, screwdrivers, Philips and flathead.
He grabs the vice-grips, brings it up to the pipe and keeps this pose while listening for her movement.
But the floorboards don’t creak any more and the only sound is a scuffling noise, faint and quick.
Tom holds this pose until his arm begins to ache. He can’t hold it for much longer. He quickly wipes his finger along the grime of the pipe and smears it across his forehead. He draws his frame away from the cupboard and stands, coughs a warning before leaving his hiding place behind the frame.
He recognises the woman near the bed. He has seen her bundle about the building, her pastel blouses billowing behind her, her bright necklaces resting across her massive bosom. She is Maureen Hill, a tenant from downstairs. He has never spoken to her but he assumes she is a widow because she hangs her head as she walks, like someone who has lost someone and is afraid to look skyward in case they discover that there is nobody up there smiling down at them.
Tom holds the vice-grips at his side.
Her eyes move from his face to the tool, widen, her mouth contorting sideways.
‘I was just looking,’ she says and holds her left hand in front of her. There is a gold chain wrapped around her palm, a couple of rings loose on her fingers. ‘They’re so lovely,’ she says. Her tone is the dotted-line type, the type that causes faltering and stammering between words.
Tom looks from the jewellery to her ankles. They are fat and trunk-like. Once they catch his attention he can’t release them.
‘I’m doing a bit of work for the Walters,’ he mumbles.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I saw the door open and I was just checking that everything was okay.’ She brushes the rings from her fingers into an opened jewellery box and swiftly unwinds the necklace from her hand. ‘I was worried that someone might break in.’
‘Yeah,’ Tom says, still staring at her ankles.
‘I was passing, you know. Just walking by,’ she moves away from Tom. ‘I just saw the door open.’
Tom suddenly looks up and raises the vice-grips to shoulder-height.
‘There’s a leak under the sink. And I’ve to do a bit of work while I’m keeping an eye on the place. They’re away.’
‘They are?’ She inches toward the door, all the while maintaining her sight on Tom.
‘Yeah, they’ve gone to England.’
‘England?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, it’s good to know that someone is looking after the place.’
‘Grimsby,’ Tom says. ‘They’ve gone to Grimsby.’
‘Lovely,’ she says. ‘I’m glad the place is safe. You can’t be too careful.’ She offers a chuckle. It is low and fake.
She turns when she is on the landing. Tom gets one last glimpse of those ankles before she waddles from view.
His head feels full and weighty as if he has been hanging upside down. He exhales, kicks the rug flat and closes the door behind him. The space changes, becomes smaller, more confined.
He is alone with his lie.
He rests the vice-grips on the coffee table, sits down and patiently waits for the pressure to drain from his head. Tom picks the vice-grips up again. His grandfather had one just like it. He didn’t use it solely as a grip. He would hammer things with it, remove nails, smash tiles and break wood. Tom spins the bolt so the grip tightens. He puts his finger inside the mouth of the tool and applies pressure slowly to the handle so the mouth tightens and loosens at the tip of his finger. He presses and releases the lever for a time.
Close. Open.
Pressure. Release.
Continuously, so he hardly realises he is doing it. Thoughts wash back and forth.
And the pressure in his head reduces like a slowing locomotive.
And he becomes aware of a photograph to his right. Mr and Mrs Walters, both smiling that awkward smile that comes with the awareness of a camera being in close proximity. Tom places the photograph on the table, face down so the eyes are no longer looking at him. He suddenly becomes aware of other photos in the room and a vague memory enters his head, a girl and her mother in a café or fast-food place, he isn’t one hundred percent sure where. They are talking about glass eyes, the young girl unable to get her head around the fact that it is impossible to see with a glass eye. She had a book about pirates on her lap, the drawings in the book deliberately lacking detail and the dots for eyes askew. The girl would point to each character they came to and ask if the eye was a glass one.
‘No, just the pirate,’ her mother would patiently reply each time.
About halfway into the book they came across a spider with a multitude of eyes, thirty or forty.
‘Are any of those glass eyes?’ the girl had asked.
‘No, only the pirate has a glass one,’ her mother replied.
‘So the spider can see with all those eyes?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Why has he got so many eyes?’
‘He has a lot to see.’
‘If they fell off could the spider still use them to see?’
‘No, that’s impossible.’
Impossible, yes, but it stayed with Tom, this idea that the spider could still see with the eyes he was missing. And there have been times when Tom has pictured the ground littered with tiny eyeballs just like the spider, eyes which are watching his every move.
There is a cold crawling sensation along his spine.
He stands and begins to face every photo on a flat surface into a downward position. When he has finished this he starts on the photos which hang on the walls, turning the wooden frames so the photographs face the wall. He feels better when he can’t see any eyes watching him.
He doesn’t lock the door on his way out. He puts it on the latch and wedges a folded page in the end to prevent it from opening without force. There is little evidence of his presence in the room. Apart from the photograph frames which lie on the flat surfaces and the fact that the garish wallpaper is broken up by small, wooden rectangles on strings.
Tom thinks about his neighbours’ bed-sit, about the muddle of the room and the large window. This terrible feeling of wastefulness comes over him. He tries to distract himself. And at times he does, enough to eat his dinner, enough to clean the counter in his kitchen, enough time to change into his blue and white stripy pyjamas, the ones which help him keep warm in the drafty bedsit at night and the ones which he knows will have to go as soon as he meets the right woman.
At around half ten he begins to hear the bees. At eleven he has gone to the bathroom on the landing three times. By twelve he is doing laps of the kitchen. At six minutes past twelve he is outside his neighbours’ bed-sit. He stalls for as long as he can, studying the number on the door. It is slightly crooked. There are bubbles in the paint on the door. There is a fuse-box above it.
Bzzzz
Black squares in a dusty mould, a counter behind a dim glass shield, the end number rolling slowly on to the next.
Bzzzz
He pushes the door open and enters.
What a mess.
He immediately removes the cushions from the sofa and arranges them into a rough pyramid shape. He puts them in the corner of the room to the right of the door, ensuring that they are pushed in as far as possible. The sofa is in the wrong spot. It is slap-bang in the centre of the room. This doesn’t make any sense to Tom, the fact that if you are sitting on the sofa there is a television blocking a clear view of the window, the fact that you would have your back to the door.
Everyone knows that a sofa goes against a wall.
Tom has his own sofa against a load-bearing wall but that isn’t essential. Any wall will do. He moves it so that it forms an L-shape with the bed, pushes the television and stand so they are at the opposite side of the bed. He does the same with the armchair and the table, any other piece of furniture that is i
n the central area. When finished he rotates to look at all the furniture framing the empty space. He exhales slowly, a sigh of relief. There is even a free space at the wall to the right of the kitchen area. He moves across and places his palms flat on this wall. It feels cool against his skin. He stands this way for a time, neither pushing nor being pushed, just feeling the plainness of the wall.
After a time he moves to the window. With a window like this you can think clearly, he muses. You can map out a few things. You can really analyse the little details.
Don’t worry about the details, Anna from the agency had said. But it’s all about the little details.
He blinks and sees an image in his head, a white rectangle, A4 in size.
He knows what it is. It’s an agency form. His form.
The words are covered the way someone would censor a document, with rectangle blocks of black ink. He’d love to be able to peel back those blocks to see the word which is hidden, but those words don’t exist yet. He sees the shape of the form though, the structure of the headings and the space available for subcategories and square borders, the space available for drawings and diagrams, maybe even photographs.
He could include details about himself, the little details, about what he would like in an ideal woman. And his match doesn’t even have to tick all the boxes.
Not all.
Just enough to increase compatibility factor, which could equal relationship, which could equal …
What?
He’s not sure.
Everything?
But first he will have to make some lists, prioritise, create a plan.
He sits for a time and thinks about the key compatibility characteristics needed in his ideal woman. Soon, he is drafting up a chart. He feels that it isn’t important which section the characteristic goes into because he has already come to the conclusion that no single component should take priority over another. In that way he won’t be unfairly swayed toward beauty or personality. The headings will merely be a series of areas to think about so as to find the ideal-case scenario.
He tapes the chart to the wall. In keeping with his indiscriminate approach Tom takes a pen in his right hand, closes his eyes, spins his hand in circles before randomly landing it on the page.
‘Sense of humour,’ he says to himself and moves away from the chart.
Sense of humour.
He smiles, arches his back and places his hands at the base of his spine.
He inhales deeply.
He likes this place, really likes it.
And it will be nice to look after it for the neighbours.
Sure, isn’t that what good neighbours do?
Chapter 6
The only thing new about the Alpha Bar is the name. At one time it was called Brandy’s Nightclub and before that it was Magnums. It is situated on the ground floor of the Manhattan Hotel and it looks like it was designed from an oral description of what a typical Irish pub should look like, from a person who had never actually been in a typical Irish pub. Things are a little bit off kilter, the snugs are too small, the bar is too long, the pictures on the wall are scenes of Ireland but they are depressing ones, lonesome people standing in fields, sheep in the rain, a battered cottage seemingly cowering in a storm. There are wide wooden shelves set high near the rafters with trinkets and vintage bicycles and small mechanisms that look like they belong to farm machinery.
The tables are square and chunky and uncomfortable to sit around but at the moment there is barely enough room to stand and Tom has to continuously lift his pint above shoulder-height to stop other patrons knocking against it. There is a dancefloor in the centre. The music is loud. The women don’t look old enough to be referred to as women to Tom. He’s not sure when the kids had taken over the pubs. It was done quietly, a silent coup.
The night is small-talk and plenty of alcohol. The lads drink much quicker than Tom. There is a round of shots which Tom refuses to take part in. The lads take on a rubbery quality the more they consume, lolling on the ledge next to them and lolling on each other, spilling drink on the floor, their necks bowing forward as if they are wilting flowers.
Tom lines up the glasses on the ledge, tallest to the back, smallest to the front.
‘That’s some watch you have there,’ Karl grips Tom’s arm and shows the rest of the group.
They move closer to see.
‘Where would you get a watch like that?’ he asks.
‘Jaysus, looks ancient,’ Jimmy says, drawing out the words slowly. ‘Here, what time is it in 1973?’
Tom laughs with the group, even though he doesn’t want to laugh.
‘Here, give us it for a second,’ Karl says. ‘I’ll show you a trick.’
‘You’re all right.’ Tom takes a sip of his beer to distract.
‘Come on, it’ll only take a minute.’
‘Jesus, give him a shot of your watch, would ye,’ Dave waves his hands and shouts. The sudden movement causes him to stumble to the left.
‘All right,’ Tom says. ‘Just for a minute. And mind you don’t get beer on it.’
He reluctantly removes the watch and gives it to Karl who ushers the group closer.
Karl places the watch on the ledge so everyone can see.
‘Check out the second hand,’ Karl says. ‘It’s working grand, isn’t it?’
They all agree it is.
‘Watch this.’
Karl places his hand over the watch for a moment. When he removes it, the second hand has stopped rotating.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Dave says.
‘How did you do that?’ Jimmy smiles.
‘Magic,’ Karl says.
‘Have you broken my watch?’ Tom finds his voice.
‘Wait,’ Karl blocks Tom from grabbing the watch. He then gently taps the watch with his finger and the second hand begins to move again.
‘No way,’ Dave slaps his thigh. ‘No fuckin’ way.’
‘Give me my watch back,’ Tom says.
‘Hang on.’ Jimmy holds his hand out for the watch. ‘My uncle showed me how you can use a watch as a compass, ye know, if you ever get lost.’
‘You live on a housing estate,’ Dave says. ‘What would you need a compass for if you live on a housing estate?’
‘You’d need a compass to find your way around a pair of knickers,’ Jimmy answers. He holds his hand out again but Karl is distracted.
‘I’ll be back in a second,’ Karl moves away from the group. He stops to talk to a woman who wears a coat buttoned up to her neck. Her hair is blonde, an old-fashioned style, shoulder-length with a fringe. She has a small chin and large eyes. She is pretty.
Karl shows her the watch and she laughs.
He’s probably doing his trick again, Tom thinks.
What if it goes wrong and the watch breaks? What’ll he do then? He needs that watch.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
The woman soon disappears through a door to the left of the bar and Tom gets that lifting feeling in his chest that comes with hope. It lasts until Karl exits through the same door.
The toilets are in that direction, he thinks.
That’s where Karl is going. He’ll be back any minute.
Tom waits. He thinks of his watch.
Minutes pass.
There is no sign of Karl returning.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
Tom stands and pushes through a crowd on the dancefloor. The air feels hot and compressed. Drum and bass vibrates through the soles of his shoes. It instantly dampens when the door beside the bar closes behind him. He finds himself in a corridor, the Ladies and Gents toilets in the centre and another door at the far end.
Tom enters the Gents.
There is a man swaying at the urinals and a self-admirer in front of the mirror.
No Karl.
Tom exits and investigates the door at the far end of the corridor. It leads to a set of stairs which lead to a number of hotel rooms. There is no sign of the woman or Karl. He hurries back to th
e nightclub in case Karl has somehow returned without him seeing.
The two lads are still next to the ledge. Dave is leering at the dancefloor. Jimmy is texting on his phone, most probably to his soon-to-be wife.
Having a great time. Give my love 2 the dog. Jxxx
Tom goes to the bar and queues for a drink. After a few minutes of being ignored he roams the floor.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
He follows a corridor which sits to the left of the main entrance. The carpet is yellow diamonds on a wine background. There is artwork along the wall, colourful streaks on a dark canvas. It resembles oil splashed on a roadway. The corridor leads to a door which is the mirror of the one he has just walked through. Tom likes the uniformity in modern hotels. He likes the strong lines and shapes, the way one area is the same as the next.
His walk leads him to a small bar with a couple of snug areas and a few tables in the centre. The place is dark wood and calm lighting. It is quiet here. A couple sit in the corner, whispering, the woman with a concerned face, her hands cupped together as she stresses a point. There is a man at one end of the bar. He sips coffee from a white cup, his newspaper spread out on the counter. There is a bartender facing away from him. She is writing in a ledger and, on hearing him approach, turns.
Tom slowly takes a seat at her end of the bar. The beer-mats sit in even stacks of two in front of the taps. The bottles of cordial are tucked away under an arch on the left side of the bar. Everything is nicely placed, fine rows and columns.
Except for a stack of menus behind the bar.
Two menus on top are askew. Tom leans forward so as to fix them.
‘Ah, ah, ah,’ the bartender slaps him on the hand.
‘Hey,’ Tom withdraws his hand quickly.
There is something cat-like about her, the shape of her head, her plump cheeks and wide eyes which curl upward slightly at the outer edge. Her dark hair is clipped tightly on her head. A badge on her top tells him that her name is Fiona.
‘I was only trying to fix the menus.’ Tom moves for them again.
She raises her hand and he stops mid-air.
‘It’ll only take a second,’ Tom says.
‘See this point here,’ she directs his attention to the edge of the bar with the swift guide of her right hand. ‘And everything behind this point.’
A Model Partner Page 5