About the rent-evaluation thing, I say, sure. But I still can’t babysit, I have plans tonight. As soon as I’ve said it, I know I have to make plans, which is annoying.
Oh Allegra, I wasn’t implying, she says with a shocked expression at my accusation that a discussion of my rent was a thinly veiled threat. Not so thin at all, flimsier than her PJs. Really, people are all so transparent I don’t know why we bother to fuck.
Have a good night, whatever you’re doing, she says before closing the door, wobbly boobs and all.
I can’t afford a small increase in rent but I can’t afford not to live here either. I haven’t done what I came here to do yet.
Maybe I should have said yes to the babysitting.
To get to the village I walk through Malahide Castle grounds: mature trees and landscaped walkways. Benches with brass plaques in honour of those who walked here, sat there and looked at this and that. Immaculately kept flower beds, no litter in sight. The occasional grey squirrel. Curious robins. Mischievous rabbits. A blackbird doing its morning vocal warm-up. It’s not a stressful start. I mostly pass the same people at the same places, at the same time. If I don’t it’s because they’re running late, not me. A man in a business suit, wearing a backpack and enormous headphones. A woman with an alarmingly red face who jogs as though she’s falling sideways. The leaning jogger. I don’t know how she does it. Stays upright, keeps going. The first few days she used to catch my eye, as if in a hostage situation seeking rescue from her ambition, but now she’s zombified, in the zone, staring into the distance and chasing something that keeps her going, an invisible carrot on a stick. Then there’s the dog walker and the Great Dane, followed by an old man with a wheelie walking frame accompanied by a younger man who looks like he’s probably his son. They both say good morning, every morning without fail. Good morning, he says, good morning, says he, good morning, I say to them both.
My shift begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m. It’s relatively quiet in the village itself, until the school traffic mayhem kicks in. Before I begin, I go to the bakery on Main Street every morning. The Village Bakery. It’s owned and run by Spanner. He always has time for a chat when I’m there, because I’m there earlier than most of the crowd. It gets momentarily busy when the 7.58 Dart arrives and everyone gets off and scrambles into his place for a coffee. He’s been there since 5 a.m. baking bread and pastries. You can barely see him over the top of the counter that’s filled with a dozen type of breads, twisted and braided, puffed up, polished and decorated in sesame, poppy, and sunflower seeds. They’re the kings of the bakery, in prime position above the glass cabinet of cakes. He insists I call him Spanner, even though it’s Dublin slang for idiot. He did something stupid one time during his school days and it stuck. Maybe more than one time – I know he served time in prison. Said that’s where he learned how to bake. So I told him I once had a nickname too, at school they called me Freckles. And he took it upon himself to start calling me that. I didn’t mind. After moving to Dublin it was kind of nice to have something here that was familiar, like somebody here knows me.
Morning, Freckles, the usual, he asks, barely looking up from guiding dough through a machine and folding it over. Danish pastries, he tells me before I even ask. Apple and cinnamon ones, fuckin machine broke this morning. I’ll have them ready for lunchtime instead. Good enough for them.
He always talks about customers like they’re the enemy, like they’ll be the ending of him. I’m a customer but it doesn’t insult me, it makes me feel good that he talks to me like I’m not.
He folds the dough over again, into another layer. White and blobby. It reminds me of Tina Rooney’s stomach when she came back to school after having a baby, and her flesh had grown around her caesarean scar, doubling over like raw dough. I watched her in the changing room as she lowered her camogie jersey over her head. She’d seemed so exotic at the time. A girl our age who’d had a baby. She only got to see him on the weekend, and her bedroom cubicle was plastered in photographs of the little thing. I don’t think any of us had appreciated how hard that was for her. How she was living two completely different lives from one day to the next. She’d told me she slept with a fella at Electric Picnic, the music festival. In her tent. During the Orbital set on the main stage. She didn’t know his full name or have his phone number and she was going back the next year to see if she could find him. I wonder if she ever did.