by Dan Mooney
Just as the man was making his final approach, he was caught by the wrist by a beautiful young woman, with deep brown eyes and a stunning smile. A woman who wore beads in her hair. A woman with a first-class honors degree in Communications and Event Management. A woman with a terrible knack for being in Denis Murphy’s head. She took the man by the arm and, smiling, pressed some money into his hand. They spoke, just out of earshot, but loud enough for him to know that their conversation was amiable and friendly. He cursed his luck. Was there a chance that she was following him? He once again wondered if this was some elaborate prank by Ollie and Frank designed to shock him back to what they called normality. It seemed a little sophisticated for Ollie, but Frank could pull it off. The beggar was moving on, a smile on his face. Rebecca had that effect on people and try though he might, Denis was unable to avoid smiling at her as she made her way to his table.
“Avoiding me?” she asked.
“Trying to,” he fired back before he had time to think.
She just laughed at him. “And why would you do such a thing? Aren’t I wearing symmetrical enough jewelry today?” She did a little turn as she spoke. He couldn’t help himself and found his eyes drinking in her form.
“Eyes off the ass, Pudding,” she ordered with a half smile.
“Don’t call me that,” he replied, a little harsher than he’d intended. If it bothered her, she showed no signs of it.
“Why not?” she replied.
“It’s not my name. It’s a strange meat byproduct that no one should eat,” he told her, asserting himself. It was high time he stopped allowing her inside his head. He was making a stand this time.
“It is your name. I named you it. And you used to love it. You once snorted like a pig when I called you Pudding in bed.”
“I once did a lot of things,” he replied coolly, outwardly calm as the memory of a bright sunny morning in bed crashed into his head like a train. The rays were spilling through a gap in the curtains and bouncing off everything in her room. He lay naked underneath the covers, staring at the ceiling as the first stirrings of her awakening reached his ears. She had wished him a good morning and called him Pudding. He had snorted like a pig. She had laughed like a bell ringing.
“Now there’s something we can talk about—” she ventured.
“No. That’s not something we can talk about,” he retorted, cutting her off. “You do not have a special pass, Rebecca. I don’t talk about these things to anyone. You are no different from Ollie, Frank or anyone else.”
“I think I am,” she replied, her face stern with his rejection. “But we can let that slide. What are we allowed to talk about?”
“Events of the day, politics, sports, weather...such things.” He realized that his tone and language had taken on a pompous quality that made him sound like he was auditioning for an Oscar Wilde play, but he couldn’t help himself. Emotive language was not going to help. It’s what she wanted.
She narrowed her eyes for a moment, clearly irritated, but the stern quality of her features eventually gave way to a smile. Damn her smile.
They sat in a slightly tense silence for a while. Denis was determined not to give ground.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, her face growing serious. “This can’t be easy for you. But it’s not all about you, you know. This isn’t easy for me either. I came back here, moved into a crappy hostel and the one thing that was keeping me motivated was seeing you and the guys. Especially you. I came back expecting to find you, but what I found was some stranger wearing your face. Every now and again there’s a flash of the guy I used to know, but then it vanishes behind that grim expression you always seem to wear. Like every moment of the day is a battle that you have to win. Not easy for me to swallow, you know.”
She was right. All too often Denis was aware of the difficulty he presented for others, but in three days he had barely considered how she must feel about seeing him. She was also right about the stranger. She didn’t know Denis Murphy. Not anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he told her.
She sat looking like she expected more. Truth be told, he wanted to say more, but it seemed that his brain had passed on orders to his mouth and the apology was about as far as he was going to go. One would think that controlling one’s brain is a relatively straightforward process. It is not.
But his mood softened considerably, and the two eased into more amiable conversation. They chatted about this and that, her new job, the fact that she’d have real money to live on, instead of whatever meager wages she scrimped by on during her travels. It was enticing to her, financial stability. He talked about how he had managed to climb up a few rungs on the managerial ladder without ever having to leave his home. Then they both marveled at how old they had become, how their priorities had shifted, leaving them in an adult landscape that their younger selves could never have foreseen, prioritizing finances, insurance and groceries over fripperies, luxuries and booze.
She laughed at his reclusiveness and made fun of him, but never probed too deeply; Denis never gave too much away, and despite his reservations, he found himself enjoying his time with her. Her easy, relaxed manner soothed him. Her conversation was, for want of an expression that didn’t belong in a 1950s screenplay, sparkling. She was witty, bright, funny and insightful. In his daily routine, with its particularly ordered timeline, there was little room for reminiscing and so he had forgotten that she was so much more than simply graceful and beautiful. She had a way of lulling him into a sense of comfort. That led to mistakes though. He would have to be on his guard, he realized. Even now, sitting here, he was aware that she was slowly creeping into his head again. Vigilance was needed.
“Denis? You there?” She had asked him a question. He had been thinking about vigilance and missed it.
“Hmm?” he replied, aware that the noise and his facial expression were working together to make him look like an idiot.
“I asked you why no one has ever been in your house.” The question was innocently asked, without a hint of confrontation or probing.
He blinked at her. She arched her eyebrows at him.
“Do you want to see it?” he replied.
Now it was her turn to blink at him.
“You’re welcome to visit,” he told her. It sounded wrong coming out of his mouth. What would his housemates make of this decision?
“I’d love to,” she replied, clearly stunned. “It might be nice to get out of the hostel for a bit, visit a real house. There’s something so transitional about living in a hostel. It’s hard to unwind. Might be nice to chill at yours for an evening. If you’re sure you don’t mind? I could just hang with Ollie if it makes you uncomfortable though.”
There was a surge of something in his chest. An emotion. Not a new one, but one so rarely felt that it was almost alien to him. A distant part of his brain remembered it. Jealousy. Irrational jealousy. As if there was any other kind.
“You can stay with me if you like. Plenty of rooms in my house.”
The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. He hardly believed it was possible for him to say such things. It was as if someone else had taken over control of his mouth. The words sailed through the space between the two of them and straight into her beautiful brown eyes, which lit up as they struck home.
“Denis, that’s a lovely thought, and I’m blown away by your offer, but are you sure you want a houseguest? What if I put one of your forks in with one of your spoons?” she asked with a half smile. “I can always just stay with Ollie. I’m sure he won’t mind if I change my mind.” The first comment was not said unkindly. It wasn’t intended to hurt, but for some reason it did, all the more because he had involuntarily flinched at the thought of the fork mixed with the spoons. Some cutlery just shouldn’t mix, and it was blatantly obvious that forks had no business with spoons. The second comment hurt even more, and another surge of
jealousy battered him at the mention of Ollie’s name. Distantly, he dissected the emotion; there was nothing about Ollie that upset him. Nothing about his friend’s house upset him. There was no part of this feeling that he liked. It was a tumult inside his head, a feeling of intense panic at having invited her, that ping of jealousy that had slid up on him from nowhere and a sense of excitement hidden in the middle of it all. A sense of something that might be.
“Hey, it’s my house, isn’t it? I’m sure we’ll get on fine. It has to be better than a hostel, right?” He tried to sound nonchalant, but that’s not easy for a man who flinches at the thought of a fork and a spoon sharing a plastic cutlery tray.
“Pudding, I’d go back and pack my stuff right now if I thought that you really wanted me to live in your house, but I’m not sure you do. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove to yourself, but Ollie and Frank have been with you through all of your ups and downs, and they’ve never been past the porch. Are you really sure you want, or are ready for, a housemate?”
A part of him wanted to smile. He had dealt with all kinds of housemates for many years now. It was the thought of those housemates that shocked him back to reality. He was inviting her to live in his home, but it wasn’t just his home. It was theirs too. What if she tried to sit in the Professor’s seat or, even worse, Plasterer’s?
But what if she stays with Ollie or Frank instead of you? You wouldn’t like that.
He couldn’t tell which was worse. Something of his torment must have shown on his face, as Rebecca sat up and looked at him in alarm.
“Something wrong, Denny? I didn’t mean to offend, I just want to know if you really want me to stay with you?”
Two voices seemed to be screaming in his head now. One said no. The other said yes. Denis simply said, “I have to go. If you wouldn’t mind...” He left some money on the table for her to pay for his latte. He was gone before she could object. The rhythm of his shoes pop-popping on the sidewalk was more rapid than normal, matching his accelerated heart rate. He could just take it back. Text her and tell her he changed his mind. He didn’t want to. Through town, avoiding the cracks. Over the bridge. Past the stadium. Gate open, closed, steps counted, lock tested, home safe. Denis heaved a sigh of relief.
The Professor met him in the hallway.
“Deano tried to set fire to himself a while ago. No conceivable reason. We had to tie him to a chair. He wasn’t happy about it so we set fire to all the tea towels to cheer him up. He’s sleeping now.”
Denis looked at the Professor and sighed.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Not precisely. Something happen to you? You look frightened.”
“Two days in a row, Professor. Two days in a row I’ve seen her and three times I’ve done something that I regret.”
“Any chance she’s a witch?”
Denis gave him a flat, unfriendly look.
“All options must be explored,” he announced loftily. “Anyway, what did you do this time?”
“I invited her to live with me.”
The Professor broke into gales of laughter. Denis had been expecting a drastic reaction—the Professor was unpredictable at the best of times—but he certainly hadn’t been expecting laughter. He doubled over, clutching at his sides, tears careering down the ruined mess of his face.
“Wait till Penny O’Neill hears of this. This is better than good. You? Her? Living with one another?” He was laughing so hard that some of the words were barely coherent. The others, drawn by his mirth, appeared at the door to the office, Penny O’Neill swaying more than walking, standard for her, really. Plasterer seemed to burst into every room; even when he was strolling there was something about him that hinted he was always on the edge of exploding.
“What’s all the racket? Jokes? Can the zombie tell jokes?” he asked as the Professor attempted to pick himself up off the floor.
Penny O’Neill cocked her head to one side questioningly.
“Nothing. Haven’t you got anything better to do?” Denis snapped.
“Not really,” she told him. “We’ve burned all the tea towels and painted all the crockery, so we were actually getting a little bored. It’s not as much fun playing games with three people, but Deano tried to light himself on fire, which is odd because he never really does anything without being told by one of us, and nobody said anything about fire to him.”
Denis sighed again.
“So what’s he laughing at?” she persisted, pointing a finger at the Professor, who had regained his feet but was continuing to shake with glee.
“You’ll never believe it,” he told them, still trying to compose himself from his laughing fit. “Our lordship has asked that woman to move in here. With us.”
The Professor began howling with laughter all over again, holding Penny O’Neill upright as he did. Sometimes in life, even your nearest and dearest are utterly without sympathy. Plasterer was most certainly not laughing. He was looming. Denis pushed past them disgustedly to free Deano in the kitchen, who was struggling against his bonds.
“Relax, fur ball,” Denis told him. “I’m setting you free.”
Deano quivered slightly at being let loose and then bounded out into the corridor to join the other three. If he had a tail, Denis was sure he would have wagged it.
The floor of the kitchen was still a mess of charred tea towel remains, and the crockery, which had been painted crudely with a collection of faces, some smiling, some frowning, stared at him from the kitchen side table, like a little army whose primary weapon was judgment. The smell of singed material was strong. Their constant, wanton destruction should have bothered him more, but for the first time in a very long time, he felt a serious need for it. Now he could lose himself in the task of cleaning and tidying, all of the thoughts and irritations of the day, all the conflict, the struggle for clarity that seemed to come with just thinking about Rebecca Lynch, the stupid opening he’d left her, all of it could be left behind so that tidiness and neatness could be imposed on the mess that his four housemates, some of them still howling with laughter, had made. The quiet voice in his head told him that at some point a decision was going to have to be made, a decision about what to do with Rebecca and whether or not she had a place in his life. That decision would not be made today though. Today was a day for cleaning and reasserting the correctness of a tiny universe belonging to him and four housemates. A universe that existed within the confines of a securely locked door. Guests not welcome. He would have hummed with satisfaction if humming was a thing that Denis Murphy permitted himself to do.
The fact that guests were not welcome in this little universe, and very infrequently tried to impose on it, was the main reason that Denis got such a shock when the doorbell rang. All mirth in the hallway ceased. He walked out of the kitchen to check it. His four housemates were lined up, single file, just inside the office door. They wouldn’t be seen there. He knew before he opened the door that it was Rebecca. It couldn’t be anyone else. No one else would simply turn up. She had a knack for invading his space. A singular talent that had no practical use in the real world, but was disastrously damaging in this universe.
“Invite her in,” Penny O’Neill whispered as he passed the door. “You two can hold hands and kiss and stuff.” Her tone was mocking. Denis didn’t like it very much, but he ignored it and, after testing the lock, turned the key and opened the door, just slightly.
“You can’t just take off like that, Denny. It’s rude,” Rebecca said, her tone stern. She was not pleased.
“I’ve had a long day,” Denis told her. “And I’m tired. If that’s all you’ve come here to tell me, then please leave.”
The words seemed to strike her face like a slap. She looked as though she was about to well-up, but then, strangely, she just shook it off.
“If you think you can drive me away, you’re wrong. If you think I
’ll give up and just avoid you, you’re wrong. Like it or not, Denis Murphy, we’re a big part of each other’s lives. We were for three years. We all went through a terrible tragedy and clearly it’s hit you harder than us, but that doesn’t mean you can wallow in self-pity all your life. We all lost someone dear to us, and you don’t have a monopoly on that. I don’t care if you were the only one of us there. You don’t own our grief. I’m not about to let you ruin your life feeling permanently sorry for yourself.”
Denis tried not to hear her words. They stung him inside and out. Something was leaking out of one of his eyes. He drew a breath to say something, but nothing came out.
“You can have tonight off,” she told him, her tone not softening a whit. “And you can have tomorrow to think things over and straighten yourself out, but on Wednesday, I’m coming over here to view one of the rooms, and if I like it, I’m moving in.” With that, she turned sharply on one heel and left. She never closed the gate on the way out.
Rationally Denis knew that he could simply say no. She didn’t have keys, there was no way for her to gain access to his home, but somehow he knew in his heart that if she decided to come in, she was going to be coming in. For a Monday that had started so well, this day was turning into a complete disaster.
“I don’t like her, Boss,” Plasterer announced coldly from the office. “Now lock the door twenty-two times and help us tie Deano to something else.”
GOOD LUCK MOVIN’
Time, for something that seems quite objective, is remarkably flexible. Pots being watched still boil water, regardless of what the old saying tells us. For Denis, that Monday night and the Tuesday that followed were a lesson on the flexibility of time. Wednesday morning seemed to be rushing toward him like an asteroid, and he was utterly powerless to prevent what would certainly be a shocking impact. For all of this inevitability, he still managed to do a remarkable amount of worrying, which made minutes drag and made hours unbearable. All at once things were moving too fast and too slow. Time, it seemed, was not his friend.