Freckles(12)

I glance down at my waffle. I can’t do this any more, I can’t be what I’m not.

Spanner, I say, you forgot the icing sugar. I hand the waffle back to him as he makes his way to the counter.

I walk away from the school area, leaving the insults and murderous glares well behind, glad the rain has stayed off again. It’s easier to work without droplets blurring the windscreens, distorting tickets and discs or condensation and frost making tickets unreadable. Paddy may often be lazy when it comes to checking details but I know people display old parking tickets thinking they’ll get away with it. It’s not enough to just witness a white ticket on a dash; the numbers count.

Though my mornings move like clockwork, I don’t have a fixed route. I used to when I started, until I moved faster than usual one morning and arrived at a zone a few minutes earlier than usual and caught a car illegally parked.

I do this every day the driver says, you don’t usually get here until ten.

Biggest mistake he ever made telling me that. I realised then that people in the village were watching my movements, and I don’t want to be predictable. Got to keep them on their toes. It doesn’t give me a feeling of absolute power, as some of them spit at me, it just reveals them for the absolute idiots they are. All that messing around to avoid paying one euro for an hour’s parking. It may be just one euro for them, but all those euro add up for the council. They’d miss us if we were gone. Paddy told me that in training.

Without us, he said, it’d be pandemonium around here.

I find myself walking directly to James’s Terrace. I’d like to tell myself it’s for the comforting view of the sea but I know it’s because of the yellow Ferrari. I’m curious, oddly drawn in that direction. Even though the aim is to see the car, I’m still surprised to see it parked there at this early hour. I thought someone like him would have the kind of job where they stay in bed until noon. It’s not just the model, but the yellow that specifically makes me think that. It’s lonely on the empty road at this hour. A few other cars dot the street but these quieter side streets don’t get busy until after nine. It could be sitting there since last night but I don’t think someone would leave a car like this on its own overnight. Maybe if they were drunk enough.

The garda cars are parked in their special positions. I don’t even glance at their windscreens, it would be an insult to them if I did. I tip my hat at a young female garda through the window, thinking that could have been me, wondering which part of my application let me down, knowing it must have been the interview. You and me aren’t like other people, Pops had said one time when I was frustrated by yet another confusion over an interaction with somebody. Hearing him say it was both harsh and a relief. I knew he was right. Still is. There’s something about my timing. Like the icing sugar and Spanner. Human interaction is often like a dance I can’t catch the rhythm to.

I don’t approach the car yet. I stand back and survey the building it’s parked outside. Number eight. It’d been under intense refurbishment for the past year, for as long as I’ve been working here, with a skip outside and work vans taking up all of the spaces for other businesses. White vans and delivery trucks caused congestion and issues with parking for nearby businesses. I had to hear about their woes and ticket them.

It’s a Georgian row. Number eight has four floors including a basement. High ceilings, huge windows, fancy cornicing, overlooking the tennis club, the sea to the left, detailed plasterwork on the ceilings. A nightmare to dust, especially now with no servants. The Ferrari doesn’t fit with the building somehow. Classic and tasteful versus ostentatious and garish. The building was bought for two million euro, I’d looked it up online, dying to know what was inside and saw pictures of the property when it was on the market. Like most of the row it had been broken up into businesses per room and per floor. It had a hair salon on one floor, an internet café, acupuncturist and nail bar on the top floor, a Chinese restaurant in the basement. It was grotty and old. They had to rip it all out, modernise it, new plumbing, new heating, new everything. A building like that would be a money pit, who knows what the final spend was.

The skip and the builders are gone now, for the past two weeks it looks as if whatever business is inside there has begun, and it’s just one, with a shiny gold plaque reading Cockadoodledoo Inc. What the fuck. I dip my cap low again over my eyes, place my hands in my pockets and take on my patrol walk.

My heart is pounding. I don’t know why exactly, I never fear issuing tickets. I’m a warden, and it’s my right, but maybe I can admit that leaving a ticket yesterday with only five minutes to go until the end of business was unfair. Still. It was legal. It was my job. I go directly to the car, conscious of the large office windows overlooking me. Heart thumping, maybe I’m scared, maybe it’s excitement, but it’s different to anything I’ve felt before on the job.

The big reveal. I look at the windscreen. Nothing. I can’t believe it. After two tickets yesterday he hasn’t bothered to pay today.

No pay and display on the dashboard.

No new disc or permit on the window that businesses can purchase for ease, for all-day, all-year parking.

I scan the reg. He hasn’t paid online either. Or used the app. It couldn’t be made any easier for him.

He’s egging me on, that’s what this is. It’s a taunt. Well, the next move is mine.