Freckles(49)

And on he goes. Flicking through USBs and CDs and opening and closing contraptions, flicking through settings with one remote control and then another.

I should be getting back to work now but I really don’t want to. Even the van with the hazards on isn’t tempting me. I put my head back on the soft leather couch and close my eyes as he sits down beside me and plays, saying things like, it won’t be as bad as this, and this guy is going to be more muscular, have a thicker neck, I think he should be bald, maybe a tattoo on his head. A web or a spider or something – I don’t know yet. And this will have different music and this guy is going to be a girl and that car is going to be a helicopter with an option to turn it into a boat, and here you’ll have your inventory and there you’ll get the bomb but it won’t have this it’ll be more like that.

I could sit here all day. It reminds me of the Rooster videos I watched on the train from Kerry; he’s right here, live and in person, speaking in the same excited breathless way. So many words, not enough time to say them in. More grown-up but not really. A deeper voice. Still with the same child-like enthusiasm. Suddenly he goes quiet and I open my eyes. He’s looking at me.

Boring you, he asks softly.

Not at all. Hungover.

He smiles. I’d really like to know what you got up to last night.

I think of the fella I went home with. I can’t picture his face. But I can picture other parts of him. I feel sick.

No, I say, you really wouldn’t.

He was that bad, he guesses. Will you see him again.

I look at him, study him. What would he think of me if I told him I’d slept with a stranger, a fella I don’t know and whose name I can’t remember. That it was far from the first time I’d done that. What would he think if I told him I pose nude for money. Would he think I am disgusting, would I shatter his innocent little gaming world. Peter Pan playing with his lost boys. But there’s something a bit lost about him. I feel right at home with him.

What, he says.

Our faces are so close I can feel his breath on my skin. It’s warm. I smell coffee.

I was just thinking of you as this Peter Pan figure who’s trying to grow up, but it’s like a double-edged sword. You have to keep some part of your childhood, your imagination, in order to do all of this gaming stuff, but then you have to grow up or you’ll end up giving away the best view to everyone else around you.

Whoa, he says, his voice a whisper. You got me back.

I wasn’t trying to.

He’s silent. I don’t know what he’s thinking really. Another insult for me. I’m expecting anything. Relaxed about it though. I know it won’t come from a malicious place this time.

Did you get drunk last night because you were upset about yesterday, he asks, about what happened at the post office.

Probably.

My fault again, he says, annoyed at himself.

I don’t correct him, I don’t have the energy to keep soothing his ego and unravelling knotted sensitivities.

Who was the letter for that you ripped up, he asks.

I sigh. My mam.

He looks at me for more. Cornflower blue eyes. Pity he hides them beneath the manky cap.

I’ve never known her, I explain. She left as soon as I was born. Pops raised me. I’ve never missed her, not really thought about her. Well I did, but not in a way that made me want her. In the way where I’d taste Turkish delight and like it when everyone else hated it and think, I wonder if Mam likes it. Or watching a TV show I’d wonder if she’d like it too, was she watching it too at exactly the same time, are we seeing and hearing the same thing. Random stuff like that. But I never wanted her. I never needed her. Until suddenly I did. Want her.

Because of what I said about the five people, he asks.

No. Before that. She’s the reason I moved here. I came to meet her.

His eyes widen. She lives in Malahide.

Carmencita Casanova, I say. My heart beats faster at saying her name aloud. Admitting it. The family secret, out in the big bad world.

He frowns, I can see the name has triggered something.

Casanova, he says, the hair salon.

Yeah, that’s her. She owns it. But don’t ever say anything to her about me, she has no idea who I am. Who I really am. I’ve spoken to her three times, I explain. Once she said good morning, the second time she saw me checking her business permit and was worried something was wrong. She came out of the salon. I couldn’t breathe, I didn’t know what to say, made a fool of myself. I could barely string my sentence together.

I cringe at the memory of my mumbling.

And the third time, he asks.

The third time, she said, and I imitate her Spanish accent, A day for the ducks. I hear her tone clearly in my head. I hear it on wet days, over and over.

He smiles. Sweet, he says. How long have you been here.

Six months.

And she still doesn’t know who you are.

Don’t you start too. Everyone at home was asking me about her. My Pops, my friend, my ex.

Did he want you to come here, he asks.

My ex, no I broke up with him to move here. And now he’s fucking my best friend.

He laughs, then apologises. I meant your Pops.

Oh. Just before I left I asked him how he felt. If I was doing the right thing, and he said, Probably not.

So he’s your honest person.

He’s definitely that.