James has focused entirely on my sex. Enormous erect brown nipples, exaggerated areolae, and a raging crimson fleshiness between my legs. I’m a compilation of interlapping pigments on his canvas; burnt sienna, dark yellow ochre, carbon black smoke. There are no distinguishable features on my face, just a blur of sketches, criss-crossing. I try not to laugh. He, with the clearest view of the scars linking my freckles, has chosen not to include this peculiarity in his painting at all. I don’t think he has omitted them out of kindness, and I don’t think he ran out of time to paint my face. My take on James is that no matter what woman he looks at, all he sees is sex.
Some men. Not all men. Tut tut.
But babysitting is off tonight and I’ve nothing else to do, so I sleep with him anyway. Maybe we’re more erotique noire than romantic comedy. But the idea of our dalliance as being anything remotely romantic at least makes me laugh.
Seven
Monday morning. Wake at 6.58. Up at 7.00. Dress in grey and high-vis. Pass the dapper suited businessman with headphones. The leaning tower jogging woman. The Great Dane dog walker. The old man with the wheelie walking frame and the younger version of him. Good morning he says, good morning says he, good morning I say to them both. I reach the Village Bakery at 7.45. Spanner looks up quickly as the bell rings and straight back to his work again.
Howya, Freckles. The usual.
He turns his back to me to first pour batter into the waffle machine and then operate the coffee machine. Broad back to me, white T-shirt, muscular shoulders and tattoos down his arms. I’ve never tried to figure out what’s on them, there are so many, blue in colour, and all running into each other. He operates the coffee machine, arms everywhere, as it hisses and slurps and he twists and bangs, like an old nutty professor. He turns to me with my coffee in his hand. It didn’t go quite to plan, Freckles, he says, placing the coffee cup on the counter and seeing to the waffle.
I think at first he’s messed up my coffee but it’s grand, so I look back up at him. There’s a fine black ring around his right eye that’s slightly closed.
Turns out Chloe has a new fella and if she thinks this fella is going to live with my little Ariana and see her whenever the feck he wants to, when I’m the da, then she has another thing comin and I told her so. Simple as that.
He hands me the waffle. He’s forgotten the icing sugar.
Freckles, he says, he was a skinny little muppet, with the flat head on him, five years younger than her. He could be a paedo for all I know, all I asked was for him to be Garda vetted. He could be preying on Chloe because she has a little one, a da has to be careful, mindful of perverts. Paedos are everywhere. Manky bastards, the lot of them.
You said all this to her, I ask, while pouring sugar into my tea. Two sachets. I wonder if I can sprinkle some over my waffle while he’s not looking. It’s not the same as icing sugar though. If he’d stop talking about his woes, I’d have my icing sugar. I care about his life, but not to the detriment of my day.
I said it to him meself he says, moving his neck around, rolling his shoulders as though gearing up for another fight, proud as a peacock. He punches the air with his pointed finger and says, you, I says to him, better not be a fuckin paedo.
So he gave you the black eye.
I wasn’t expecting it, to be walloped at a christening. Came out of nowhere. Bleedin muppet. And then all the sisters jump in. You don’t be starting on him, cluck cluck cluck, like a bunch of hens. I should get a restraining order on him.
Probably not wise, I remind him, if he’s living in the same house as Ariana. You want to be able to get near her.
Yeah well … He throws the dishcloth over his shoulder and comes around the counter reaching for his cigarettes in his apron and going to the front door.
I’m sorry, Spanner, I know you were really trying, I say, watching him drinking in the tobacco, his black right eye squinted shut even more to stop the smoke from getting in.
Shouldn’t you get a solicitor, Spanner, I say. You have rights.
The cost of paying a wanker solicitor, Spanner says straightening up, when I’m well able to sort this out myself, there’s no point.
Whistles, sitting on his cardboard box, wrapped in a grubby blanket, looks away with an amused expression. He might be down and out but he knows better. Whistles goes for the still-lit smoke that Spanner has flicked down the pathway. He’s left more of it than usual. He hasn’t flicked it as far as usual. A kindness.
I glance down at my waffle. I can’t do this any more, I can’t be what I’m not.