“You’re taking the piss, right?” Paolo dropped his pen on the table and swept his arm around the cafe. “I told you, this time most days I’m crying into the sink. I haven’t looked at the accounts in months. If you can show up a few days a week and give me a break from that, the job’s yours.”
“For real?”
“For real. I mean, we need to talk numbers and shit, and I don’t have time for that right now, but I can give you a call later so you can make your mind up?”
Luis’s heart sank. “I don’t have a phone.”
“Why not?”
Because the one I had six years ago is rotting in an evidence vault somewhere, and I don’t have the money to buy another one. “Haven’t got round to it yet.”
Paolo’s dark eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head sideways, studying Luis hard enough to make Luis squirm before he seemed to reconcile with whatever he was thinking.
He pushed his chair back with a screech that rattled Luis’s ears and disappeared into the kitchen. The minutes ticked by. Luis considered slipping out the front door and never coming back. He needed a job, but Paolo made him feel strange. One moment Luis was lost in his dark beauty, the next he was embarrassing himself over a plate of egg on toast.
Luis shuddered, the sound of the plate hitting the wall echoing in his head. In a world he didn’t hear enough of anymore, fuck, he’d heard that. Felt it too, in the pit of his stomach, as the food had splatted on the floor. It had been thirty-one hours and counting since he’d last eaten. Risking his precious cash on supplies depended on him getting a job.
On keeping a job.
With a heavy sigh, he dropped into a nearby chair just as Paolo emerged from the kitchen.
Paolo returned to his own seat and held out a battered phone. “You can borrow this if you like. Get yourself a SIM card from the Tesco Express down the road. You can get them preloaded with credit for a fiver. Text me the number later, and I’ll give you a call.”
“You’re lending me a phone?”
“I am. But it’s a piece of shit, so if you decide not to come back, you can bin it.”
Luis hadn’t held a phone in years. Inside, some prisoners had them smuggled in, but he’d tried to avoid those faces, even the ones Dante had instructed him to watch over. Luis rubbed subconscious fingers over the scar above his left ear. He’d grown his hair out to hide it, but sometimes it throbbed and burned like the devil had been stitched into his skull.
He took the phone Paolo held out, a foil-wrapped package, and the scrap of paper scrawled with a phone number. Paolo’s phone number. Of all the ways Luis had dreamt of scoring Paolo’s digits the previous night, none were the charity handout this was turning out to be.
The foil package was warm and smelt of bacon. Luis’s head spun. “What is it?”
“Bacon and egg bap. I made you one earlier, but you threw it at my head.”
“Sorry about that.”
Paolo shrugged. “Whatever. It was only a plate. Just do me the courtesy of letting me know if you’re not interested in the job, okay? I’ve got better shit to do than chase you.”
Luis nodded and took his cue to disappear. He tucked the phone and the scrap of paper in his pocket and made tracks. Outside, it had turned cold again and was already starting to get dark. Luis’s T-shirt was damp from washing dishes, and the biting wind cut deep. Home was a bus ride away if he didn’t fancy the cold walk—news flash, he didn’t—but he’d left the bedsit that morning without his magic envelope. His only choice was to trudge his way back on foot, then head straight out again for a SIM card.
Thirty minutes later, he staggered inside with leaden legs, numb hands, and nipples that could cut glass. The by-now cold sandwich called his name, but a hot shower came first. Clean and defrosted, he devoured the bap Paolo had made him in two bites. It was the nicest thing he’d ever eaten. Real food hit his stomach like a warm hug, and he lay back on the bed, tempted by sleep. A cocoon of fatigue enveloped him. He shuffled under the covers and closed his eyes before he remembered the phone, the SIM card, and Paolo’s phone number.
Crawling out of bed felt like sacrilege, but Paolo’s number called to him like a beacon. He loaded the SIM card and turned the phone on. It was fully charged, and the home screen was a picture of the burly old man Luis remembered as Toni, smiling, with his arm around a dainty woman who had Paolo’s flinty smile. The phonebook had six contacts, all Italian, but none of them Paolo. Luis typed in the number from the scrap of paper and saved it.
“Text me the number and I’ll give you a call.”
It sounded so simple, and it was, but something about Paolo terrified Luis more than any road man he’d ever faced. Not because of anything he did, but for how his mere presence made Luis’s heart thump and blood rush. That shit ain’t normal.
But what was normal? In this brave new world, Luis had no idea.
He tapped out a message.
this is my number, Luis Pope
Then erased his surname as if he could scratch it from history, or at least from the memories Paolo clearly had of him. He pictured his world six, eight, ten years ago. Perhaps they’d been at school together. Sat next to each other in class, but Luis didn’t remember because he’d lived a lifetime since then, and the boy he’d been was nothing like the washed-up piece-of-shit man he’d become. Still, the possibility that Paolo had once been in his life and he’d been too distracted by slinging to notice burned. Paolo had looks that stopped traffic. How engrossed did a man need to be to not see him?
Luis stared at the phone for a full ten minutes, resisting the urge to scroll through the old messages and social media accounts, all the while pondering who the phone had belonged to. The lack of contacts saved pointed to someone old, but then, Luis could count on one hand the people he’d want saved in his own imaginary phone. A sum total of zero. He was twenty-seven years old and a total billy no mates.
Paolo didn’t reply. Luis shoved the phone under his pillow and closed his eyes. A nap seemed a world away now, and he had shopping to do, but Paolo’s silence bothered him. What if he’d had second thoughts? What if he’d inspected the pots and pans Luis had cleaned and found them not clean enough? Luis’s discharge grant was supposed to last until he got paid from employment or a dole cheque came through, whatever they were calling it these days. Either way, if Paolo had changed his mind, that money would have to last weeks.
Sleep cost nothing. Luis tried to quiet his mind and take himself back to the only normal he could remember. The snoring and fidgeting of three other men replaced the silence of the bedsit. The mattress beneath him hardened, and the worn duvet cover became a scratchy blanket. Cold faded to stuffy warmth. Racing thoughts slowed. Two days of stress and hard work caught the anxious beast and tamed it. Luis drifted in that sacred place between consciousness and sleep, enjoying the ride. He was so nearly there, then a tiny click from the hallway startled him back to the beginning.
Dazed, Luis sat up, half convinced the sound had come from his hazy imagination. If he hadn’t sensed Paolo behind him, how on earth would he hear whatever his brain was telling him had come from the hallway?
It doesn’t work like that, remember? They told you lots of different things affect what you can hear. Luis’s good ear was nearest the door to the hallway. That, along with the knowledge he wouldn’t sleep if he didn’t, convinced him to get up and check.