by Dan Mooney
He spent Monday evening in relative silence. He cleaned up the mess that only four fully adult children could make and prepared dinner. He cleaned up again. He watched some TV and, before he went to bed, he cleaned. For their part, his housemates let him be. They played their games and destroyed the house while Denis moped about. Even his usual formulaic cop dramas couldn’t help. He loved cop dramas. Particularly the ones that followed the same pattern: bad guy commits crime, good guys are stumped, red herrings emerge, among them a sure suspect for the grisly crime. The enigmatic genius of the group makes some excellent off-the-cuff quips and is generally misunderstood by all of his peers, but then he saves the day and the bad guy is apprehended. Occasionally the show threw something of a curveball and the bad guy got away, or one of the good guys got injured, or worse, killed. These episodes made Denis sad and forced his housemates into an orgy of destructiveness, which inevitably kept him cleaning for hours. Worse still were the episodes, very infrequent as they were, when the characters in the show became emotionally attached to one another. These episodes caused an internal struggle within Denis that could, if the episode in question was particularly soppy, keep him up at night.
On this night, there were none of the booby-trap episodes, but he couldn’t make his mind be still. He thought back to the grim determination that marked Rebecca’s behavior at his front door, and found himself remembering the smell of her perfume. He tried to focus on potential solutions for keeping someone as dogged as she out of his life, and found himself idly rolling the single bead she’d given him around his palm while he thought about how her jawline looked so perfect when she tilted her head to the side. His to-do list for the following day was written in handwriting that was so appallingly bad, he had to cross through it and start all over. He briefly considered burning the book rather than permitting such an egregious scrawl-stained page. He decided against it. There would certainly be no coffee the following day. Going outside was becoming increasingly problematic. He went to bed unhappy.
It had been a long time since Denis Murphy had gone to bed with genuine happiness. Usually contentment was the best he could manage. At some point, early in his adulthood, going to bed happy had stopped being a goal for him. Surviving each day was in itself a victory, if a hollow one. It had not always been the case. The upheaval of the last few days had stirred something in him. He was recalling things. Sharing a house with Ollie, Frank and Eddie had been a happy time. A time when going to bed was a thing done in the small hours of the morning, after drinking or playing computer games or watching movies surrounded by friends and family. For the first three years of adulthood, going to bed meant Rebecca Lynch next to him and waking up meant listening to Ollie singing in the shower. These memories seemed to reach inside him and tug at emotions that Denis was unprepared and entirely unwilling to confront. Nearly seven years of changing his life, changing his behavior, changing everything he had been had almost erased those old days of sleeping late and sharing company, but they hid deep inside him, and now they were struggling to get out.
He could beat it though; he knew he could because he’d done it before. His housemates had always helped him with that. They asked no questions, they made him work, they didn’t care that he used to cry himself to sleep. They were company during the very rare moments when he felt lonely, and with their help he had faced down challenges before. He would do it again.
Denis’s Tuesday morning was an unusual start for him. The alarm rang, three times, as it usually did, but this time it came with a chorus of imitation voices. Three of them. They were lined up next to his bed, looking straight ahead and mimicking the alarm noise in perfect unison. All except Deano, who had taken his place but, as ever, said nothing.
“Good morning,” he bade them groggily as he rolled out of his bed.
“Good morning,” they replied together, each of the four heads tilting to exactly the same angle as they regarded him.
“What do you want now?” he asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and scratching his head.
“We want to help,” they said together, remaining entirely still.
“I’m not sure if you four have ever wanted to help me with anything,” he told them as he made his bed.
“Not so,” they replied.
“What do you want to help with?” he asked.
“She’s coming tomorrow,” they told him in one voice.
“I’m aware of that,” he replied testily.
“Oooooooooooooooh,” they chorused, mocking his tone.
“You call this helping?”
“We want to help,” they repeated. They were behaving strangely, which for four people who made games out of trying to seal themselves into couch cushions was really saying something.
“Not now. I need to have breakfast, shower, dress...”
They echoed every word he said seconds after he said it. It was eerie.
“We can discuss it later. There are things to do now.”
They laughed. “We can help you, you know. After work it shall be.”
Denis shook his head and went about his routine. Breakfast—sixteen minutes. Shower—ten minutes. Ironing—twenty minutes. For a man with Denis’s considerable intellect, such things shouldn’t really occupy too much of his brainpower, and yet the way he approached them allowed him not to think. Thinking was the enemy. Three of them followed him here and there. Deano, Penny O’Neill and Professor Scorpion went wherever he did, supervising the meticulousness of each job, as if mentally preparing for the best way to undo that work later on. Plasterer did not join them. He sat at the breakfast table and waited. By the time Denis joined him, Plasterer had laid a place for himself; his bowl was full to the top of shredded newspaper. He’d poured some white paint from under the utility-room sink over the paper. The bowl was certainly destroyed, but miraculously not a drop of the paint touched the tabletop.
“I was never going to get the table,” Plasterer told him confidently. “If I did, we couldn’t talk, because you’d be having a meltdown.”
Denis nodded in agreement as he attempted to measure exactly forty grams of Bran Flakes in the small scales in front of him.
“You know that I know the score,” Plasterer continued.
“I do?” Denis asked, arching an eyebrow skeptically.
“I do,” he said, nodding. “And I know that you know that I know the score.”
“Is that a fact?” he asked.
Plasterer was nodding like a madman now.
“It is. You know that I know that you know that I know the score.”
“What’s the score then?” he asked.
“TEN NIL TO THE MONSTERS,” came a pair of voices from the living room.
“Ignore them,” Plasterer told him. “They don’t need to have this little chat with us.”
Denis was becoming confused. There was little doubt that Plasterer took the lead in most things that his housemates did, but his leadership was at best laissez-faire, and at worst a complete fiction. How much could the worst-looking clown you’ve ever seen really control anyone? There was something about his tone too. Something alarming. Something that seemed too familiar. They’d never shared this kind of familiarity before. His facial features, so difficult to read under the mountain of makeup, seemed to be smiling knowingly.
“Go on,” he told the slightly grinning Plasterer.
“Your problem, Denis, is that you’re approaching this the wrong way. She thinks you’re broken. She wants to fix you. That’s how it is with some of them. The more you behave like someone who’s broken, the more she’s going to fixate on fixing things. If you’ll pardon my alliteration. And I think there was some assonance in there too.”
“YOU SAID ASS,” the living room seemed to call out.
“Shut up, idiots,” Plasterer barked in exasperation. “You too, Deano,” he added as an afterthought. “You’re not playing
it right, Boss. That’s what the score is. There’s a way for you to play this and win. Reel her in and then close her out. Invite her in like it’s no big deal. Quit panicking every thirty seconds because you think her eyes sparkle like the sea or some crap like that. Just chill.”
His voice changed tone several times during the speech, and once or twice it sounded like he was doing impersonations of movie characters’ voices.
“I don’t understand, Plasterer. I know you’re trying to give me advice, but I’m not sure if you’re talking to me or picturing yourself in a movie.”
“Little of both, Boss, little of both,” he replied with a smile. “What I’m saying is that you’re a mess. You were a mess the second you saw her and you’re a mess now. What you need is a return to order. To you. If you want to get there, and I’m pretty sure you do, you’ll need to get over this tiny little hurdle. It’s only small, but you’ve convinced yourself that it’s a big deal. It’s just a girl. If you want your life back, you bring her in, show her your life. Convince her you’re happy. Convince her that you like your life the way it is. Be nice, but not too nice. Be friendly but not over friendly. When she realizes that you’re not broken, that you don’t still secretly crave her touch, well, then she goes away, and we get our house back. You don’t still crave her touch, do you?”
“Of course not,” Denis replied sharply, remembering the softness of her hands and the way she liked to link arms.
“Then this plan will work. Trust me.”
“I don’t know, Plasterer. This is our house.” Denis could hear a tone of pleading in his own voice.
“It’s not our house, Boss, it’s your house. She won’t even know we’re here.”
“Of course she’ll know you’re here,” Denis replied spluttering. “Half the neighborhood knows you’re here. Last week you dismantled the old bicycle I had in the garage so you could make the world’s crappiest marching band. The noise disturbed people for miles. I’m pretty sure she’s going to know you’re here.”
The clown looked at him steadily, unblinking, unflinching. His look said, “don’t be stupid,” but it hinted at something else too, something Denis was missing, something important. For the life of him, he couldn’t work out what it was that he was missing here.
“Tell her nothing, Boss. Say nothing about us. We’ll behave. We’ll stay out of the way. We’ll all stay in my room, and you and her can stay in the rest of the house. We can play when she leaves, and we’ll even clean up afterward.”
Denis considered Plasterer. There was something wrong about this conversation, something deeply and truly wrong, but if his life depended on it, he couldn’t put a finger on it.
Please, reach for it. You need to understand this now, before it’s too late.
“I’ll think about it,” he told his housemate.
“She can’t know we’re here, Boss,” Plasterer told him, his voice quiet.
Silence descended on the room like a dark and moody blanket.
Denis wanted to ask why not, but Plasterer’s tone had taken him by surprise.
“She can’t know. You know she can’t know. And I know that you know that she can’t—”
“Oh cut it out,” Denis snapped.
“I’m right though,” Plasterer said. “She should stay. She’s worried, and she won’t go away until you let her in, so just let her in for a while. Once she sees that you’re okay, then everything will be fine. She’ll let you be you, and you’ll have another friend. She’ll move into her own place when it’s ready, and then you can add her to the list of people you meet for coffee. Everything will be fine. But you can’t tell her we’re here. Ever.”
“I won’t,” Denis almost whispered. “I won’t tell her you’re here.”
“Promise?”
“I promise I won’t tell her you’re here.”
Plasterer nodded, satisfied.
You poor idiot. You poor, sick idiot.
“Time to eat, Boss,” Plasterer told him. “Then you can work, and I can get back to eating paint.”
Denis nodded. It was the tone that was so wrong, Denis thought. Something about it frightening him. Something too quiet. Something brooding. He shook his head. Another task had to be done.
After this, his day seemed to right itself. If he was honest with himself, and he frequently was, then he’d have to admit that he wasn’t just worrying about Rebecca’s reaction to him. He was worrying about how she’d react to his housemates. The thought of them hiding themselves for what little time she’d be staying seemed like one less worry to have playing on his mind. He tackled his day easier after this.
Tuesday was also bathroom day. This is not to say that on this day and only this day could Denis face the relevant duties one associates with a trip to the bathroom. He was organized, but not that organized. No, each day of the week had its own particular area of cleaning responsibility. It was actually something of a rare pleasure when cleaning his home. It was the one room of his house that he wished his housemates would consider off-limits for their wide array of destruction. Sadly, they never did, and too often they would ruin it with scribbles and notes written on the mirror after showering, or by plugging up the sink and leaving the taps on to very slowly and quietly fill the bowl. It never reached spill-over point, but he imagined on the day that it did, they’d throw a party all around the house to celebrate the destruction. He wondered what bizarre changes he might have to endure in a house that Rebecca Lynch shared. His bathroom was, as ever, immaculate. Surfaces gleamed and taps sparkled. Whole armies of massively self-impressed cleaning-product advertisers would gnaw on their own livers with envy at how spotless Denis Murphy’s bathroom was. There was always a trade-off however, and Denis was fairly certain that if he could remember what envy felt like, he’d feel it about their social lives and ability to casually walk on the beach without worrying about whether or not it had an even or odd number of grains of sand.
During the afternoon, he worked. More numbers were crunched and more data was analyzed. At one point in the day he got an email that almost knocked him off his newly reacquired stride. It had an emoticon in it—a small little nodding yellow head that smiled at him from the end of the correspondence. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. He wondered why it was so happy before realizing that, for just a moment, he had been genuinely curious about what was making it smile. That’s a tough realization for anyone. The moment you realized you’re questioning the motivation of a computer icon. He shook his head. The email also had a compliment for his last report. It read: That’s gr8 work. He stared at the digit lost in the middle of that sentence for at least six minutes. It had no business being there. He shook it off eventually. The nature of his work from home was more than a benefit for him, but every now and then other people attempted to interact with him in a wholly unsatisfactory manner.
For all his preoccupation, his mind constantly returned to her. She’d be coming. A decision was going to have to be made, and so that night when the work was done, but before the television could be switched on, he sat them all down for a chat.
“Can you guys join me in the kitchen?” he called out as he sat himself at the table, his tea steaming before him, placed carefully on its coaster.
Three of them shuffled in and lined themselves up. He examined them critically for a few minutes. They were most certainly an unusual collection. Penny’s tail was flicking back and forth again, which typically meant that she was amused or annoyed. Denis had never learned to tell the difference; with Penny, there frequently was none. Deano was hiding behind the Professor’s shoulder. He’d become more and more diffident in the last few days. He made a mental note to speak to Deano about that. Not that he’d be able to understand the fur ball.
Plasterer was a different story. He sauntered in, folded his arms and leaned casually against the door frame, his bulk filling the space in a most intimidating manner. He wat
ched the other three almost paternally before nodding at Denis to begin.
“So. I may have invited a woman to live with us,” he announced. “Your thoughts?”
This was, of course, a mistake. He knew this. Asking for input from any of them at the same time was never wise. They roared their opinions, first at him, and then at each other. Oddly enough, they were all agreeing with one another, but none of them seemed to realize it.
“I THINK SHE’S LOVELY AND IT’D BE NICE TO HAVE ANOTHER GIRL AROUND HERE.”
“I THINK IT’S A GREAT IDEA AND WHY NOT? IT’S ONLY FOR A WHILE AND THEN SHE’LL BE GONE.”
“IT WAS MY IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE.”
“LITTLE CHANGE WILL DO US GOOD.”
Deano was doing a wonderful job of articulating someone who might have been shouting if he knew how. His arms waved wildly and his hips seemed to gyrate. He hopped up and down a little. Denis couldn’t help but smile at him. Plasterer simply watched his friends and shook his head gently at them, as if suffering the fools for their excitement. Denis sat back and watched them not argue with each other for a few minutes before they sort of drifted into quietness.
“Done?” he asked.
Four heads nodded at him.
“I’m a little worried that you guys will mess with her, like the way you mess with me.”
“We don’t mess with you,” Penny O’Neill purred at him.
“Yes, you do,” he assured her.
“I practically guarantee you that we’ll be the very soul of good behavior,” the Professor declared. “Why, I shall this very night prepare a list of the very best of people who ever were good, and then I’ll swear on that list that we’ll be even better. Then we can all eat the list.”