Have you a vendetta against me, he asks.
I shake my head, no vendetta, I say, just doing my job.
What’s your problem, he asks again, more angry, as if he didn’t hear my answer. He steps closer to me. Shoulders square and wide. I’m tall but he’s taller.
I don’t have a problem, I say, sidestepping the situation now, I don’t like it. It’s too tense, he’s too angry and his aggression levels are rising. I should move but I can’t. I’m stuck, frozen on the spot.
You power-tripping fucking wannabe garda, he growls suddenly.
I look at him in surprise. Part of that sentence is correct.
Now now, Paddy says. Come now, Allegra.
But I’m stuck where I’m standing. This is like a road accident, I must slow down to see clearly, all the grotesque details that my mind doesn’t need to see. The blood and guts. I’ve trained for this moment, for the moment someone gets aggressive. A week of intensive training on the meanings of kerbside stripes and squiggles and also on conflict management. I’m supposed to stand side-on and be prepared to walk away but my training goes out the window. I’m stuck to the spot, head-on, staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights. Waiting for more.
They say you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, he says, glaring at me, nostrils flaring like a wolf. Doesn’t say a lot about the company you keep, does it. That’s one, he points in Paddy’s direction. I wonder who the other four losers are in your life.
He slides the parking ticket from the plastic slip and proceeds to rip it up into pieces. They flutter to the ground, a confetti storm. He takes the steps in twos back into his office and slams the door.
My heart is pounding. It’s in my actual ears. Like there’s been an explosion and my ears are ringing.
Jesus Christ, Paddy says, giving a wheezy nervous laugh and moving to me as quickly as his chafing legs will allow him. The inner legs of his trousers have risen to the line of his socks and are all bunched and gathered around his crotch.
I look at the bits of paper on the ground. The parking fine in smithereens.
It takes a while for the blood to rush out of my head and back around my body, for my heartbeat to calm, for the panicky feeling to subside, and when it does my body is left shaking.
She’s still standing out there, I hear somebody say loudly, followed with a laugh. A mocking laugh. It has drifted out of a window from the office where a few of them have gathered to watch me, smiles on their faces. The two familiar lads and a few new faces. When I look at them, they disperse.
I’m going to avoid this terrace for the time being, Paddy says. You take St Margaret’s and everything west. Okay, he asks, when I don’t respond.
I nod.
I wouldn’t let him get away with that, Paddy says, or he’ll think he can rip up every fine he gets and he won’t have to pay, but we’ll leave it for the time being. Let him cool down. I’ll come back later and check on it. I’ll ticket him if he hasn’t learned his lesson.
I still can’t move my feet. My legs are shaking.
You didn’t take him to heart did you, he asks, watching me.
No, I finally speak, and it comes out all croaky and choked. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.
And that’s true.
When he was saying it, none of it made sense. Just a bunch of angry words too ridiculous and drawn out to be an insult. But that’s why I had to think about it more, I had to re-hear his words over and over in my head for the rest of the day, and well into the night, to make sense of them.
His insult was like a song that you don’t like when you hear it first, but grows on you the more you hear it. It’s an insult that didn’t really hurt the first time I heard it. The words were too complicated to be powerful. Not an easy F you. But the more I hear his words, the more they grow on me. And they hurt more each time. Like the wooden horse of Troy, his words innocently passed through my boundaries, and then bam, deceived, all the troops jumped out, hitting me hard, one after the other, spearing me again and again and again.
The cleverest kind of insult.
And so that’s how he leaves me. A slushy, mushed snail, crushed by the sole of his trainer, by the strength of his words. Shattered. Flattened. Forcefield down. Antennae up.
Eight
I have a turbulent night’s sleep. The same dream on a loop. It’s exhausting. I’m doing the same thing over and over, trying to solve the same problem. I keep finding myself in a toilet cubicle with no walls or door, everyone can see me. So very busy in my dreams that I wake late on Tuesday morning.