Under My Skin (2 page)

‘Doreen’s just gone out,’ I tell him.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘But actually… it was you that I wanted to speak to.’

‘Me?’ and really what I’m saying is, ‘
Oh
’ and ‘
God
.’

‘Could I come round?’ he asks. ‘I need to talk to someone. I’m in trouble. I need to talk to someone about Doreen.’

‘Well, this isn’t a good time,’ I answer. And I’m surprised at how firm I can be.

‘Are you busy?’ he asks. ‘It won’t take long. Please, I really need to talk to you about Doreen.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him, ‘but I’m cooking spaghetti this afternoon.’

‘It won’t take long,’ he says again and then he puts down the phone. In five minutes the doorbell rings. He must have
been parked nearby. He must have sat in the driver’s seat and called me on his mobile phone. He must have seen the man lift the coat-stand and he must have watched Doreen leave. He is small and his hair is parted too low down on one side. He reminds me of a tax inspector or someone collecting census forms – and every time I hear myself saying, ‘Gay Byrne’ I still want to get sick.

He sits down on the edge of an armchair and his hands are placed neatly on his knees. He is wearing the kind of grey pants twelve-year-old boys wear when they’re visiting their grandmothers. He is wearing a blue shirt and a grey V-neck cardigan, and everything about him, especially his voice, is apologetic and small.

‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he begins. I have had to turn the spaghetti back so that it’s cooking slower now. In five minutes it will have to come off and if he’s still here I’m going to ask him to leave.

‘The problem is…’ and whenever he speaks I am thinking that there is a little boy in our sitting room. He is sitting there on our armchair and soon his legs which are too close to the gas fire will begin to toast.

‘The problem is…’ he says again, and he is slicing the words out in this thin boy voice, ‘I’m in love with Doreen.’

And I’m nodding back at him and even smiling and inside I am thinking, ‘Oh, beautiful. How lovely. Thank you, Doreen.’

‘We’ve been an item for several months now. I’m in love with her but she won’t tell anyone about us. She won’t tell anyone that I am her boyfriend.’

I have known Doreen all my life. There are lots of things she doesn’t tell me and there are things she tells me that I would rather not know.

‘OK,’ I say again.

‘I don’t know what to do. I am so in love with her. But she will not introduce me as her boyfriend. She pretends it doesn’t exist. But we have had the happiest times together, at the Powerscourt waterfall…’ and here he shakes his head and his eyes drift off.

Doreen is at least a foot taller than him and he guesses my thoughts.

‘I’m not making this up,’ he says and he holds his palms out towards me. ‘I’m in love with Doreen.’

And I just sit there looking back at him.

‘You know her,’ he says. ‘Tell me, help me, what should I do?’

‘You need to talk to Doreen,’ I tell him.

‘She won’t talk about it.’

‘My pasta is ruined,’ I tell him, and now I’m towering over him, ‘and you need to talk to Doreen.’

When the front door closes the phone is ringing again.

‘This is Jonathan Kirk,’ the voice says and it is so well behaved and liquid-smooth. ‘Can you talk?’ he asks politely. ‘You’re not in the middle of something…? I’m sorry to call you on a Saturday afternoon.’

‘No, it’s fine – at the moment,’ I tell him. I am about to pour some more tomatoes into a bowl. I imagine he is calling me from his big walnut desk at the agency and that he is swinging around and around on a black leather chair.

‘We have white smoke,’ he says. ‘We’d like to see you again.’

Upstairs I can smell the pasta starting to burn.

There are several different songs in my head and I want to sing them all together when I put on a new batch of spaghetti and then Larry calls again.

‘It’s crazy in here today,’ he says, ‘I won’t make it until five.’ In the background Vertigo sounds like it is sliding down a hill.

‘Don’t worry, Larry,’ I tell him, ‘and by the way, I think I got the job.’

‘You did?’ he says, and then quick as a flash I say, ‘I love you
muchly
, Larry,’ and he says, without even blinking, ‘Well, you know I’m
crazo
about you.’

The flat is darker now. The winter sun stretches out and covers me in the dull shadow of five o’clock. I sit on the forest floor with the toadstools and the damp green bark and think about Larry. How he stepped into his old jeans this morning when he sat on the bed. How he left the watch I bought him on the bedside locker. How his old leather jacket hung on the door, the Penguin Classic pushed down into the flap pocket. His notebook, dog-eared. His lucky pen. The small extras thrown in and then – just Larry, the
loveliness
of him. He turned on the radio and Aretha Franklin was singing and then he went upstairs and cooked some eggs for me, something he usually hates to do when he’s at home. When he went to work I found one of his little notes which he hides around the flat for me. ‘I miss you already,’ it said, and if he was here I would have said, ‘Larry, I miss you too.’

The only problem is we have no money.
Zip
. We are not even able to buy things like clothes and shoes and on top of that we owe €3,865.00, which Larry lost in a game of Black Jack. He is not even a gambler. He has only ever played once and that was because Doreen and the Indians got him drunk.
But last week someone called to the diner and asked Larry to ‘pay up’. The conversation opened with a very nice black eye and ended with a pleasant head-butt. This year we were supposed to go to New York and now we can’t afford to do that. We had it all planned out and I even rang Jack about a sublet, and one week later he rang me back.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I think I found a place for you. It belongs to a girl called Matilda. She’s dating The Chief’s best friend.’

‘The Chief?’ I said and inside I was seeing a picture of Sitting Bull.

‘Remember? My brother-in-law,’ Jack replied, and I could tell from his voice that he was smiling. ‘He’s head of the Midtown North Precinct. Everyone calls him “The Chief”. I don’t know Matilda or his buddy but I hear she’s got a really nice place on the Upper West Side.’

Then he gave me her email address and we’ve been emailing each other ever since. She even sent me a picture of her apartment and now there is a tall brownstone with its own chestnut tree on the door of our fridge. Someday I know we’ll fly to New York and Matilda will move out to be with her boyfriend, and me and Larry will start our new life and move in.

The front door slams and I know it’s not Larry – or Doreen – or one of the Smell family – I know from the heavy footsteps coming up our stairs that the landlord has let himself in. He’s puffing like a madman and his face looks hot and flushed. When he walks down the little landing he wobbles from side to side and he is wearing squeaking shoes and carrying some extra weight.

‘How dare you?’ he begins and he’s completely out of breath. ‘How dare you?’ and he just puffs the same words out again and then I see he’s waving our letter in his hand.

‘Dear Mr O’Grady…’ he begins and he’s so wound up and gasping I’m afraid he might just collapse.

‘Dear Mr O’Grady, we are writing to complain about the state of our accommodation. For three weeks now,’ and here he takes a step towards me, ‘three weeks – it is NOT – three weeks’ – and he goes back to reading again, ‘for three weeks we have been asking you to fix our cooker. Are you aware that this is a danger to our health and the health of the other tenants in 102? In addition to that the bath is blocked again and we are having problems with the family downstairs – there is a bad smell coming from their rooms.’

And this part came from Doreen. ‘If things are not rectified immediately we will withhold our rent.’

And then he’s off with the ‘How dare you?’ and the ‘How dare you?’ again. There is a half-built mews in the back garden. The Smells downstairs have told us that he’s run out of money. We probably shouldn’t have mentioned withholding our rent – especially when we already owe him more than three weeks.

‘Do not write to me,’ he concludes in one big town crier’s peal. ‘Do NOT write to ME,’ and then he goes off, Mr Anger and Repetition, back down the stairs again. If Doreen was here we would lie down on the floor and laugh ourselves sick over it. And then we would sit up and look at each other and I would say the same thing I say, every day, ‘We need to get out of here, Doreen.’

More than anything I want this job. Not just to have some more money but to have my very own desk and phone and pen. And I think Larry will be later than five today. I guess he’ll make it to our place at around nine.

When Doreen comes out of the bathroom she tells me the
spider is still there. Then we both squeeze in together and look down at him and he is really huge.

‘He’s not from around here,’ she says.

‘Where do you think he’s from?’

‘South America,’ she replies and then before I can even speak she leans down really close to it and shouts, ‘
Hola! Como se va?
’ But still the spider does not move.

Then we hear a loud bang outside and when we lean out the bedroom window we can see that the landlord is back and has climbed up on the mews roof. He’s drunk and shouting and he seems to be attacking the house with an axe.

Downstairs the Smells are all out on the lawn.

‘Mr O’Grady… Mr O’Grady… please come down. You will hurt yourself. Mr O’Grady… please come down.’

And all we can hear is our landlord screaming curses and crying like a baby.

‘Doreen,’ I whisper.

‘I know,’ she replies and she is beginning to laugh. ‘We have got to get out of here.’