He’d never forget the day he first saw her on Archer Street, or actually, the day she’d looked up, and seen him.
It was early December.
She’d driven seven hours from the country with her mum and dad, and they arrived late afternoon. A removalist truck was behind them, and soon they carted boxes, furniture, and appliances, to the porch and into the house. There were saddles there, too, a few bridles and stirrups; the horse-works important to her father. He’d been a jockey once as well, in a family of jockeys, and her older brothers, too; they rode in towns with awkward names.
It must have been a good fifteen minutes after they got there when the girl stopped and stood, midlawn. Under one arm she held a box, under the other, the toaster, which had somehow come loose on the trip. The cord hung down to her shoes.
“Look,” she’d said, and she’d pointed—casually across the road. “There’s a boy up there on that roof.”
* * *
—
Now, a year and a few months later, on Saturday night, she came to The Surrounds with a rustle of feet.
“Hey, Clay.”
He felt her mouth and blood and heat and heart. All in a single breath.
“Hi, Carey.”
It was nine-thirty or so, and he’d waited on the mattress.
Moths were there, too. A moon.
Clay lay on his back.
The girl paused a moment at the edge, she put something down, on the ground, then lay on her side, with a leg strapped loosely over him. There was the auburn itch of hair on his skin, and just like always he liked it. He could sense she’d noticed the graze on his cheek, but knew too much to ask, or to look for further injuries.
But still, she had to do it.
“You boys,” she said, and touched the wound. Then waited for Clay to speak.
“Are you enjoying the book?” The question felt vaguely heavy at first, as if somehow pulleyed up. “Still good the third time round?”
“Even better—Rory didn’t tell you?”
He tried to remember if Rory had said something along those lines.
“I saw him on the street,” she said, “a few days ago. I think it was just before—”
Clay almost sat up, but quelled it. “Before—what?”
She knew.
She knew he’d come home.
Clay, for now, ignored it, preferring to think about The Quarryman, and its faded old bookmark betting stub, of Matador in the fifth. “Where are you up to, anyway? Has he gone to work in Rome yet?”
“Bologna, too.”
“That’s fast. You still in love with his broken nose?”
“Oh yeah, you know I can’t help it.”
He gave her a short, broad grin. “Me too.”
Carey liked the fact that Michelangelo had had his nose broken as a teenager, for being too much of a smart mouth; a reminder that he was human. A badge of imperfection.