Freckles(18)

There’s someone sitting on my bench.

Fuck.

I say it out loud.

The elderly couple sitting on it look at me. The man is leaning forward, holding onto a cane, wheezing as he breaths heavily.

Do you think you’ll be here long, I ask them.

They both look at me.

Alive or on the bench, he asks.

On the bench, I say.

He needs a rest, she says, defensively.

Do I need a ticket, he asks, eyes twinkling, and I smile.

I’ll let you off this time.

I recalibrate. Everything off again today.

I sit on a low stone wall overlooking the marina. I’ve never sat here before and I feel like a dog, circling it a few times before choosing how to sit. Before me is a boat slipway leading down into silky water. Calm and mirror-like on this fine day. A man stands in the centre of the slipway, hands in his pockets staring out. I watch him for a while, then the island across the way. Now and then I see a few dots moving as golfers traverse the golf course on the island.

I’ve just bitten into my cheese sandwich when a foot and leg appears over the wall beside me, quickly joined by a full body. I recognise the trainers first. Prada.

Mind if I join you, he asks. He stands, waiting to be welcomed.

Sure.

He sits.

Thanks for these, he says, the envelope and the loose pages in his hand. I just got out of a meeting. I’m guessing they’re from you.

I thought it would be easier for you than to keep running out and topping up the machine. Most businesses around here use parking permits.

Yeah makes sense. Thanks.

I take another bite of my sandwich. I can feel him staring at me, chewing becomes unrhythmical and unnatural. I should have spoken instead of eating. That timing thing again. Swallow.

Look, you can pay for parking whatever way you want, I say, but if you don’t, I have to ticket you, it’s my job, it’s not personal. I don’t have a vendetta against you. I ticket lots of cars. Most of the time I don’t know the owners.

Though I do have a very good memory for who owns what around here, but I don’t bother telling him that.

Look, I’m very sorry about the other day, he says, about ripping up the ticket and saying what I said. It was extremely disrespectful, really out of character, I don’t usually, I mean I never blow up like that, and I didn’t mean it.

Yes you did.

Well I did at the time, but it wasn’t … I’m sorry anyway.

He cowered immediately. Maybe chickens can scare foxes, maybe snails can crush people.

Tell me more about it, I say.

Well, he says and thinks. I’d had a bad day. And I’d gotten a parking ticket every single day for two weeks. And I was stressed, very stressed, you know, new business, office politics … Why are you smiling.

I meant tell me more about what you said to me. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, I say. I say it loud and clearly as I’ve been saying it to myself since he uttered the words. The hex. The curse. The Trojan horse.

Oh that. No. Really. I didn’t mean it.

He seems embarrassed. About insulting me or over how he insulted me, I don’t know which. Kind of a dorky insult when you think about it. Still, I need it broken down for me more.

Okay, I say, but what does it mean.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with is a business expression, he explains. An inspirational quote. Jim Rohn said it. He’s a motivational speaker. It means the people you spend the most time with shape who you are.

He looks up at me then, finally, to see if he still has me. He has. He’s had me since he said the words to me. Not in a Jerry Maguire way, he has done the very opposite of completing me, but the phrase has triggered me.

According to research, he says, the people you regularly associate yourself with determine as much as ninety-five per cent of your success or failure in life. They determine the conversations you have. They affect the attitudes and behaviours you’re regularly exposed to. Eventually you start to think like they think and behave like they behave. I’m taking some business classes and I’d just read it, I suppose it was fresh in my mind, when I saw you, and … you know, just blurted it out.

You thought that I was surrounded by losers, I say. That the five people I spend the most time with must have been nothing, to be able to group together and make me so nothing. You called Paddy a loser. My colleague. As you ripped up the ticket in my face, you weren’t intending to inspire me.

Clever, really. Sly old fox. I look out to the fisherman on the slipway.

Like I said, I’m sorry.

Stop saying sorry, I say. We’re past that. I need to figure it out.

Figure what out.

My five people. I mean if everyone was to pick five people wouldn’t it just be their husband or wife, and kids, or parents or— No, you see it can’t be family, he says, smiling.

Why not.

Because then everybody’s five people would only be their families.

Mine would only be one.

Oh.

But continue.

When you look outside of the family group there are other influential people in your life who are having an effect on you that you may not have considered.

I open my container of walnuts and offer it to him. He shakes his head.

I don’t think you should read into it so much. What I said to you was stupid. A bit of a random thing to say. It was just on my mind.