Lou and he placed his phone into his pocket. ‘Sorry, Gabe,’ he wiped his brow, ‘it’s been a funny day. I’m not myself today.’
‘Who are you then?’
Lou looked at him with confusion but Gabe just smiled.
‘You were saying about your sister.’
‘I was? Well, she’s just being the usual Marcia.’ Lou sighed. ‘She’s driving me crazy about organising my dad’s seventieth party. Unfortunately it’s on the same day as the office party, which causes some problems, you know. Always a good night here.’ He looked at Gabe and winked. ‘You’ll see what I mean. But I’m taking the whole organisation off her hands now, to give her a break,’ he said.
‘You don’t think she’s enjoying organising it?’ Gabe asked.
Lou looked away. Marcia loved organising the party, she’d been planning it for the past year. In taking it out of her hands he was in fact making it easier on himself. He couldn’t stand the twenty calls a day about cake-tasting and whether or not he’d allow three of their decrepit aunts to stay overnight in his house or if he’d lend a few of his serving spoons for the buffet. Ever since her marriage had ended she’d focused on this party. If she’d given her marriage as much attention as she did the bloody party, she wouldn’t find herself crying to her friends at Curves every day, he thought. Taking this off her hands was a favour for her and a favour for him. Two things accomplished at once. Just what he liked.
‘You will go to your dad’s party, though, won’t you?’ Gabe asked. ‘Your dad turning seventy,’ he whistled. ‘That’s not one you want to miss.’
Irritation and uneasiness settled in on Lou again. Unsure if Gabe was preaching or was just trying to be friendly, he quickly stole a glance at him to judge, but Gabe was just looking through the envelopes on his trolley, figuring out which floor to go to next.
‘Oh, of course I’ll go.’ Lou plastered a fake smile on his face. ‘I’ll drop in for a while, at some stage. That was always the plan.’ Lou’s voice sounded forced. Why the hell was he explaining himself?
Gabe didn’t respond and, after a few loaded seconds of silence, Lou punched the elevator call button a few times in a row.
‘These things are so bloody slow,’ he grumbled.
Finally, the doors opened and the crammed lift revealed room for only one person.
Gabe and Lou looked at one another.
‘Well, one of you get in,’ a crank barked from the lift.
‘Go ahead,’ Gabe said. ‘I’ve got to bring this down.’ He nodded at the cart. ‘I’ll get the next one.’
‘You sure?’
‘Just kiss already,’ one man called, and the rest laughed.
Lou rushed in and couldn’t take his eyes away from Gabe’s cool stare as the doors closed and the lift slowly lowered.
After only two stoppages, they reached ground level and, finding himself crammed at the back, Lou waited for everybody to unload. He watched the workers rush to the doors of the lobby for lunch, bundled up and ready for the elements.
The crowd cleared and his heart skipped a beat as he caught sight of Gabe standing by the security desk with the trolley beside him, searching the crowds for Lou.
Lou slowly disembarked and made his way towards him.
‘I forgot to leave this on your desk.’ Gabe handed him a thin envelope. ‘It was hidden beneath someone else’s stack.’
Lou took the envelope and didn’t even look at it before crushing it into his coat pocket.
‘Is something wrong?’ Gabe asked, but there was no concern detectable in his voice.
‘No. Nothing’s wrong.’ Lou didn’t move his eyes away from Gabe’s face once. ‘How did you get down here so quickly?’
‘Here?’ Gabe pointed at the floor.
‘Yeah, here,’ Lou said sarcastically. ‘The ground level. You were going to wait for the next elevator. From the fourteenth floor. Just less than thirty seconds ago.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Gabe agreed, and he smiled. ‘I wouldn’t say it was quite thirty seconds ago, though.’
‘And?’
‘And …’ he stalled. ‘I guess I got here quicker than you.’ He shrugged, then unlatched the brake at the wheel of the trolley with his foot, and prepared to move. At the same time, Lou’s phone started ringing and his BlackBerry signalled a new email.
‘You’d better run,’ Gabe said, moving away. ‘Things to see, people to do,’ he echoed Lou’s words. Then he flashed a porcelain smile that had the opposite effect to the warm fuzzy feeling it had given Lou that same morning. Instead, it sent torpedoes of fear and worry right to his heart and straight into his gut. Those two places. Right at the same time.
It was ten thirty at night by the time the city spat Lou out and waved him off to the coast road that led him home to his house in Howth, County Dublin. Bordering the sea, a row of houses lined the coast, like an ornate frame to the perfect watercolour. Windswept and eroded from a lifetime of salty air, they got into the great American spirit of housing giant Santas and reindeers on twinkling rooftops. Every window with open curtains twinkled with the lights of Christmas trees, and Lou recalled, as a boy, trying to count as many trees on show as possible to pass the time while travelling. To Lou’s right he could see across the bay to Dalkey and Killiney. The lights of Dublin city twinkled beyond the oily black of the sea, like electric eels flashing beneath the blackness of a well.
Howth had been the dream destination for as long as Lou could remember. Quite literally, his first memory began there, his first feeling of desire, of wanting to belong and then of belonging. The fishing and yachting port in north County Dublin was a popular suburban resort on the north side of Howth Head, fifteen kilometres from Dublin city. It was a village with history; cliff paths that led past Howth village and its ruined abbey, an inland fifteenth-century castle with rhododendron gardens, and many lighthouses that dotted the coastline. It was a busy, popular village filled with pubs, hotels and fine fish restaurants. It had breathtaking views of Dublin Bay and the Wicklow Mountains or Boyne Valley beyond. Howth was a peninsular island with only a sliver of land to attach it to the rest of the country. Only a sliver of land to connect Lou from his daily life to that of his family. A mere shred, so that when the stormy days attacked, Lou would watch the raging Liffey from the window of his office and imagine the grey ferocious waves crashing over that sliver, licking at the land like flames, threatening to cut his family off from the rest of the country. Sometimes in those daydreams he was away from his family, cut off from them forever. In the nicer
