Tommy followed soon after.
Once Clay and I had sat for a while, he’d quietly walked to the bathroom. He showered, then stood at the basin. It was cluttered with hair and toothpaste; held together by grit. Maybe it was all he needed to prove that great things could come from anything.
But he still avoided the mirror.
* * *
—
Later, he went to where it all began.
His hoarding of sacred sites.
Sure, there was Bernborough Park.
There was the mattress at The Surrounds.
The cemetery on the hill.
Years earlier, though, for good reason, it all started here.
He made his way up to the roof.
* * *
—
Tonight he walked out front, then around to near Mrs. Chilman’s house—fence, to meter box, to tiles. As was his habit, he sat about halfway, blending in, which was what he did more as he got older. In the early days he went up mostly in daylight, but now he preferred not to be seen by passersby. Only when someone climbed up with him did he sit on the ridge or the edge.
Across the road, diagonally, he watched the house of Carey Novac.
Number 11.
Brown brick. Yellow-windowed.
He knew she’d be reading The Quarryman.
For a while he watched the varied silhouettes, but soon he turned away. Much as he loved seeing just the slightest sight of her, he didn’t come to the roof for Carey. He’d sat up here well before she’d even arrived on Archer Street.
Now he moved over, a dozen tiles to the left, and watched the length of the city. It had clambered from its previous abyss, big, broad and street-lit. He took it all steadily in.
“Hi, city.”
At times he liked to talk to it—to feel both less and more alone.
* * *
—
It might have been half an hour later when Carey came out, fleetingly. She put one hand on the railing, and held the other, slowly, aloft.
Hi, Clay.
Hi, Carey.
Then back in.
Tomorrow, for her, was a brutal start like always. She’d wheel her bike across the lawn at quarter to four, for trackwork at the McAndrew Stables, down at Royal Hennessey.